If Cynicism Music Be The Food Of Love...
For the past couple of days, a song that replays in my head, speaks of love - unconfessed and unrequitted.
Kumari - Kumari - En kaadhal sikki mukki thikki vikkudhuThe cynic in me wants the love never to be reciprocated. For after all, I agree with Keats.
Kumari - En nenju vimmi vimmi pammi nikkudhu
Kumari - En varthai kadal vatri vittadhe...
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal---yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"
Meera @ 3:02 PM| permalink
9 Comments:
Hi Meera,
Am a great fan of your writing! Please keep up the good work...
Hmmm, i wonder if it is love not reciprocated in the keats poem. If iam right, this is from the poem "ode on a grecian urn" and the reason he says "Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve" is coz it is all held in time there in the urn painting. And the rest is left to the imagination of the reader. If only it wasnt the frozen moment there and time moved - quite possibly, the bold lover's love could be reciprocated !
I love this poem
especially the lines
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Those unheard are sweeter coz they still dwell in our imagination :-)
All this talk is stupid. Keats wrote a lot of nonsense.
The poor fellow was having a boring life and wrote stuff like this as a sort of catharsis. Shouldnt read too much into it.
The same holds true for most poets. They just want to show off their writing and a bunch of fools act as their admirers. If they were so overwhelmed with emotion, there is no need to make it public.keep them private.
Plus, no real emotion or feeling of beauty can be conveyed through words anyway. All writers want to be admired. What they say thru the poem is merely an excuse to gain your admiration.
Ashok.
"The poor fellow was having a boring life and wrote stuff like this a sort of catharsis. Shouldn't read too much into it."
- Excellent point. The best example of it being this tripe that Ashok is saying. Clearly someone with serious issues!
For what it's worth, Keats' point here probably has less to do with love (unrequited or otherwise) and more to do with the nature of art and the power of imagination - the point being that great art can convert the "ordinary swoon" of the lover into an immortal statement about life that people can relate to forever. This is hardly an original idea (see for instance Shakespeare - the "Not marble nor gilded monuments" sonnet) but Keats not only expresses it beautiful, he also elevates it to an aesthetic philosophy where the only real 'truth' lies in beauty. According to Keats, therefore, Ashok's comment is not true precisely because it's sloppily written.
It's ironic, incidentally that the poem itself is a good illustration of the power of art and imagination - no actual grecian urn could possibly attain the perfection that Keats' urn achieves so effortlessly, and it is certainly true that if such an urn ever existed, then Keats' poem is the reason it will always be remembered.
For an interesting discussion on the poem see http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/1604.html
I agree with Falstaff & npriya, the stanza from 'Ode on a grecian Urn' is not about unrequited love...it is just a moment caught in frame;a moment so beautiful that would stay that way untarnished by Time. Keats was one of the best poets from the Romantic period of Eng. Lit. and his was a tragic life not a boring one.
@falstaff,
I have to agree with your observation that my life is boring. That much is pretty obvious if I take the time to comment on a stupid poet like keats. Most poets are stupid too by the way. But I dont agree that what I am saying is tripe.
Have you ever felt deeply about anything or anyone? Ever felt any great emotion or been overwhelmed with love or sadness? I am sure you have. The worst thing you can do in the situation is to write about it.Especially for the general public. If you do that, there is only one reason - to be admired and praised. You feel good within due to the adoration. It is like a drug which gives you a "high". Nothing more, nothing less. So all these poets are a bunch of egoists who act as if only they can admire nature or a idiotic Grecian urn.The worst part is when a bunch of art critics start reading nonexistent meaning into these poems and act all pretentious. Dont dismiss my claims outright. consider them and see if they are true or not. It may reveal something about how pretentious YOU are.
Ashok.
I don't agree - the other reason you would share something beautiful and special that happened to you is if you believed you could make other people experience the wonder you've felt, and that's precisely what great art is about. I'm not dismissing what you're saying - I just feel sorry for you because it sounds like you've never experienced the joy that good poetry can bring and believe that the only great emotions are 'real' ones. This means (given that you have a boring life) that you're missing out on a LOT.
You say the meanings I find in Keats are non-existent - what does that mean? Only that you can't see them. If I can put them in words then they exist. You either believe the world is objective in which case the only reality is death or you believe that the world is subjective and 'exists' in the way you experience it, in which case the meaning of Keats is true because I feel it.
As for being pretentious - oh, absolutely, I am. But since life is a pretense anyway, the most pretentious people are the ones who live most fully.
@falstaff,
Glad that you have responded with sense and not made this into a mudslinging match like it happens in many blogs.
Now,do you mean to say that because I dont appreciate "poetry",I am missing out on living a full life?
Dude, anyone who is living a full life NEVER claims he is. Only those who are not make such claims to convince themselves that they are having a good time. And it is not as if I never liked poetry. But once I realised that the whole excercise was meant for the poet to go on a Ego-trip , I moved away.
And instead of feeling sorry for me, you can take some time and look at your own life in which you are merely acting all sophisticated by analysing poetry only to hide the fact that you are quite ordinary otherwise. The same is true for the poets themselves.
And I felt really sorry for you when you make statements like - "But since life is a pretense anyway, the most pretentious people are the ones who live most fully."
You are just trying desperatley to appear more intelligent than you really are. And it shows.
Ashok.
Sigh.
Okay this is absolutely the last time I'm replying to this stuff - after this I just give up you can have the last word.
Good to see that you're consistent enough not to even try to appear intelligent.
Help me understand this - you gave up something you enjoyed because you 'realised' that it was a just a way of someone else going on an ego-trip?! Even if that's true (and I don't agree it is) why should it influence your enjoyment of the poem? Or are you so insecure that you're not willing to allow other people their ego-trip even if it means cutting off your own enjoyment?
And as far as ego-trips go - if you really want to get away from every single activity that is a projection of either your own or someone else's ego, you'd better start seriously considering suicide, since that's the only objective way of wiping out the self. Every act of living is an act of egoism. Everybody's on an ego-trip (you and me included for carrying on this conversation) - it's just that the poets do it better (IMHO) than most other people.
As for full lives - I doubt anyone can ever quite manage that - I certainly don't claim to - the only way to come close is to convince yourself that a lot of things in life don't matter (as you seem to be trying to do) so that you can safely ignore them.
As for being ordinary, I don't know a single person who isn't at some level - the whole point of life is to pick something you're not ordinary at and use it to define who you are. I pick poetry - I don't think this makes me a great person (if anything, reading how brilliant someone like Keats is only makes me more humble) - but it's something that interests and stimulates me. Let's say, for a moment, that I take your 'advice' and admit to being absolutely ordinary. What do I do then - sit around for the next thirty years and wait for my meaningless life to somehow end?
Bottomline - I'm happy to admit that appreciating poetry is a way of filling an otherwise pointless existence with genuine intellectual and emotional stimulation. I'm not saying that it's the only way to do it, but it's one that I happen to like. I'd be interested in what you can suggest that's any better - I'm willing to bet that anything you come up with will be equally hollow and pointless if looked at carefully enough.
Meanwhile, of course, we can just go on feeling sorry for each other :-)....
@falstaff,
Many things that you said make a lot of sense. And since you concede that you are deliberately pretentious to avoid looking at your meaningless existence, there isnt much left to say. I respect you for admitting as much. What is irritating is when people deny it and act all hypocritical.
Ashok.
PS: I wont be visiting this blog again. The reason being that just becasue I dont like poetry doesnt mean I would want to spoil your fun by criticising it. I understand that tastes differ and that is all there is to it. Each to his own.
Post a Comment
<< Home