Quote:
Originally Posted by N. Matheson
Maybe I was just raised on archaic scholarship, but what I gleaned was that literature existed on a hierarchy and some are above others, and Shakespeare ranks above everyone else. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, is below him.
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Huh?
To anyone holding this view about poetry (or drama, or painting, or music, or tiddlywinks…) – holding it, that is, on the basis of a well-informed and thoughtful consideration of the issues involved rather than as the view represented by some supposed “hierarchy” – I suggest giving attention to a different activity.
Of course, there, too, such a person will encounter the same trap. Since X has already been determined by some supposed authority to have reached the apogee of attainment in that activity, “why are we bothering? … why do we need [participants in that activity] anymore? what else is there to [contribute] that [X] hadn’t already perfected? Why are we striving when everything we [do] is objectively inferior?” (See post 52 above.)
This is an argument for inertia, for not doing anything – in
any field of life – in which someone else might be touted by some supposed “authority” as “the best”.
Back at post 24 I began as follows: “For myself, I confess that I do not find the category ‘greatness’ very useful in my experience of poetry – or of the arts more generally. It is just too diffuse. Without some agreed criteria among the disputants, I find the resulting discussion largely unenlightening. But settling the question of criteria, which seems a prerequisite to any discussion, would be a mighty undertaking indeed.”
Clive