[New-Poetry] Three Kinds of Poetry Appreciators

[jforjames at aol.com]

http://www.word-origins.com/definition/hermetic.html

There are two Hermeses.


-----Original Message-----
From: David Weinstock <david.weinstock at gmail.com>
To: NewPoetry List <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
Sent: Wed, Oct 6, 2010 2:26 pm
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Three Kinds of Poetry Appreciators


Wouldn't the adjectival form of Hermes be Hermetic?
On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 2:15 PM,  <jforjames at aol.com> wrote:
 Bob, I'll have to read this more carefully later before I comment, but the
 Dionysian v. Apollonian modes poetry was the subject of some lectures that
 Robert Graves delivered at Oxford.
 Oxford Addresses on Poetry (1962)
 It's been a few years since I read the book. But I thought the essays were
 quite good.

 Graves was discussing the poetry more than the appreciation of it. (Not that
 they're
 unrelated, of course.) He missed the Hermesian mode.

 The Romantic v. Classical divide is roughly equivalent to the Dionysian v.
 Apollonian.
 Finnegan

 -----Original Message-----
 From: Bob Grumman <bobgrumman at nut-n-but.net>
 To: NewPoetry List <new-poetry at wiz.cath.vt.edu>
 Sent: Wed, Oct 6, 2010 12:00 pm
 Subject: [New-Poetry] Three Kinds of Poetry Appreciators

 As all of you who bother reading my posts are aware, I'm fascinated by the
 different ways people respond to poetry. I'm also an obsessive explainer and
 taxonomist--with a full-scale theory of psychology for years under way. So I
 often try to divide poetry people into groups on the basis of their taste.
 My latest attempt comes out of some thinking I've been doing about the
 psychology of the causes and effects of pain and pleasure in general.
 Applying it to the causes of pain and pleasure from poetry, I've come up
 with three poetry-lover types:

 the dionysian

 the hermesian

 the apollonian

 I'm unsure how well they fit either to my theory, or to real life, so would
 REALLY appreciate feedback, even just denigration or praise. Here's how I
 see the three (who are new to me, so I'm not likely to get them too right,
 yet, but should get them right enough for discussion):

 The apollonian has a lot in common, I hope, with Nietzsche's version of him.
 He is primarily interested in sunshine-bright clarity, and logic--both
 internal consistency and obedience to the known laws of nature. According to
 my theory, he is wired to recognize contradictions, with pain, and
 harmoniousness, or the avoidance of contradictions. Unity is thus important
 to him. Subject matter is relatively unimportant to him, nor is technique.
 In truth, he is close to insensitive to the poetry of poetry, the kind who,
 when extreme, sees poetry as having "real values" of much greater
 consequence than the beauty of what it says and does, like whatever
 political beliefs the apollonian has. It's pretty much sole function is to
 teach, not to entertain.

 The dionysian is based on Nietzsche's idea of him as the opposite of the
 apollonian. He is instinct-based so far as poetry appreciation goes. This
 means that what is most important of him in poetry is that which he
 instinctively likes--e.g., a smiling human face, archetypal undertakings
 like the quest for a golden fleece of some sort, love between a man and
 woman, a kitten more than a few days old. Okay, what we instinctively get
 pleasure from varies from person to person, and hasn't except in a few
 cases, been firmly established by conventional science, but I think most
 people would agree there are stimuli we automatically find pleasure-giving,
 or painful.

 A dionysian will therefore be more concerned with a poem's subject matter
 than anything else, though not necessarily significantly concerned with it.
 He will be much less concerned with technique and innovation. Frost's poetry
 will delight him. The mainstream will be his favorite, and perhaps only,
 poetry precinct.

 The hermesian's patron deity, Hermes, is the god of invention, among other
 things. I see him as result-oriented. So a hermesian is significantly less
 concerned with what a poem is about than what it does, preferably
 innovatively. According to my theory, he is sensitive to the ratio of a
 poem's familiar aspects to its unfamiliar ones. Too high a ratio repels him,
 as does too low a one. Not too high or low a ratio will neither repel or
 give him pleasure--unless it is just right, whereupon it will elate him.
 This, I claim, is true of everyone, but it dominates a hermesian, and
 unimportant to average apollonians and dionysians.

 It is hermesians who will echo Pound's command to poets about making it
 new.

 Of course, the best poetry people will not be limited to one kind of poetry
 appreciation but reasonably strong in two or all three. Each of them will be
 strongest in one, I believe, so qualifies for one of my groups--but as a
 supra-apollonian, supra-dionysian or supra-hermesian.

 I suspect apollonians are rare, and have a strongly dionysian bias. Many
 dionysians and hermesians are hostile to each other. Knott versus Silliman
 leaps to mind. Needless to say, I'm a hermesian, but not an anti-dionysian
 (by gum). I'm also staunchly apollonian.

 --Bob

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