From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Mon Aug 11 08:39:32 2014
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 08:39:32 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Shakespeare and Durrell
In-Reply-To: <0D0275CB7D144B1DA636CE1DA14EFDB0@DenisePC>
References: <0D0275CB7D144B1DA636CE1DA14EFDB0@DenisePC>
Message-ID: <5064E962-7260-43DE-8FEB-8E0A724CC919@earthlink.net>

David, if the "truest poetry is the most feigned," then your very good poem fails, along with Keats's "To Autumn" and the ending to Haag's City of Memory.  So I can't agree with Peter Ackroyd.

Bruce



On Aug 10, 2014, at 1:41 PM, Denise Tart & David Green <dtart at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

> Recently I read some chapters from Peter Ackroyd's excellent 'Albion: the Origins of the English Imagination' in which there is a wonderful chapter on William Shakespeare. Now as you know Durrell was very keen on Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. Here is a passage that could has well apply to him as to the bard of Avon:
>  
> "It is well known that he depended on the plots, and even the words of others; he lifted passages from North and borrowed images from Ovid. There is hardly a play of his which is not established upon some earlier source, historic or dramatic, so that he corresponds to the English archetype; he seems most original when he borrows most freely. Like the language and the nation itself he is altogether receptive, taking up external and foreign constituents and moulding them instinctively to his own purposes." (p 222)
>  
> Then..
>  
> "the truest poetry is the most feigned" (p 222)
>  
> And..
>  
> " In his art of remembering and restoration, all the resources of his imagination clustered around words and images so that they were immeasurably strengthened and deepened; they became echoic with past and present life, instinct with powerful intuition which is the verbal equivalent of feeling, a once startlingly new and hauntingly familiar." (p 223)
>  
> David
>  
> Days fade
> to a scattering of birds.
> trees darken and
> twilight bushes hold fairy stories
> as people drift home
> to fires and wine;
> reality TV or
> leftover hours to kill,
> the radio or Mozart,
> dogs asleep upon the carpet
> and books you always
> meant to read
> and know you never will.
>  
> David Green
> 16 William Street
> Marrickville NSW 2204
> +61 2 9564 6165
> 0412 707 625
> www.denisetart.com.au
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20140811/e0dac7d6/attachment.html>

From bredwine1968 at earthlink.net  Fri Aug 15 13:33:00 2014
From: bredwine1968 at earthlink.net (Bruce Redwine)
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 13:33:00 -0700
Subject: [ilds] Art of Memory
Message-ID: <9B8BBAD1-D651-4470-8255-E1AA9372349D@earthlink.net>

Any evidence that Durrell was familiar with the classical ars memoriae (art of memory)?  Specifically, re Cicero's De Oratore, as in this passage translated by J. M. May and J. Wisse in On the Ideal Orator (Oxford UP, 2002), p. 219:  "Those who would like to employ this part of their abilities should choose localities, then form mental images of the things they wanted to store in their memory, and place these in the localities.  In this way, the order of the localities would preserve the order of the things, while the images would present the things themselves."  The relevance to Durrell is obvious, although probably just a coincidence.  Frances A. Yates has a classic study on this topic:  The Art of Memory (Chicago UP, 1966).

Bruce

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20140815/49ea0976/attachment.html>