Another point. Verse is less musical, or rather pitched to discursive intelligence rather than to the intrinsic musical properties and tropic gamesmanship of speech. The problem modernism set itself was in a sense to startle language back into its adamic freshness, after the long mechanical siege of versification had undermined the salients(salience) of high poetic resistance to the numbing pitch of industrious speech. The ease of rhyme gave a false confidence to aspiring poets, and by kicking this prop from under the feet of practitioners, forced them to visualize more acutely. Verse tended to banalize language, and undermine the imaginative force of poetry.

It is true that much of the distinction rests on late discriminations in a rhyming society where most people of parts could handle rhyming technique, yet very few could rhyme to original musical effect. Poetry however in antiquity had far more formal constraints than mere rhyme, syllabic counts and stresses. The very complexity of many varieties of poetic form, witness Sappho and Pindar, privileged the ear over the eye, and often forced a trope that the practice of mere versification, with its greater facility, would not have been sufficiently pressed by the intricacies of compositional form to think of. The romantic distinction is, in some regards, one which arises from the rising influence of print culture over bardic oral improvisation. The former requires far less training than the latter: one can still observe, or rather listen to, in regional Italy flyting compositions in ottava rima between poets who manage, at a theme tossed at them, improvise in minutes a formally exact divagation, have their adversary reply to it, and then come back with a capping sonnet. The best are not formally educated. They think with their ears.

As for flyting, it is universal, though we typically associate it with nordic, Irish and Scottish poetry. Archilochus's iambic invectives brim with it, and Horace and Juvenal use it masterfully on occasion. The tradition long survived in the vernacular cultures of Europe, as one can observe in dialect poetry.

----- Original Message -----

From: Chaswe@AOL.COM

Sent: Sunday, November 05, 2006 6:24 PM

Subject: Re: [NABOKV-L] Sergei to A. Bouazza on Arabic poetry

In a message dated 05/11/2006 16:46:58 GMT Standard Time, NABOKV-L@HOLYCROSS.EDU writes:

when I mentioned arabic poetry, I wanted to emphasize the
point that the discussion about poetic qualities of PF and
distinction between verse ant poetry in this list does not take into
account the context of the novel in case of PF, and concerning
the verse versus poetry - historic
and cultural context. It seems that most fervent defence
of this distinction is itself based on some unconsious prejudices,
for example, some heritage of romanticism. I don't say
that there is no distinction, but are we able to judge along these lines
what was written not in our times?

I was interested some years ago in arabic poetry (only I don't
read in arabic, I've seen russian translations), I remember
for example a very interesting book about Al Mouttanabi
(sorry if it is not correct spelling in english), and some
very beautiful fragments of poems. I don't see how most
of the participants of this list could judge it. And even if
it would be in their own language, but of different epoch
and forgotten genre...

Johnson's answer to Boswell about poetry precedes Romanticism; and the discussion about whether or not Pope wrote poetry must have been actual well before Romanticism had properly arisen. I concede that a distinction between poetry and verse may not have been fully formalized in the C18th, but there must have been some sort of conceptualization of what was poetry and what not. Shakespeare produced quite a graphic pen-sketch of the archetypal poet.

I very much take your point that PF the poem has to be judged in its book context. Would it have attracted any interest had it been published without footnotes? Possible, but doubtful.

Wikipedia confirms that my memory of flyting was correct. It looks as though this entry could do with some expansion, perhaps from A.Bouazza? It should be reasonably possible to make a comparative evaluation of the quality of one flyting against another.

Flyting

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Flyting is a contest of insults, often conducted in verse.

In Norse and Germanic cultures, flytings are used as either a prelude to battle or as a form of combat in their own right. The exchange is regular, if not ritualized, and the insults usually center on accusations of cowardice or sexual impropriety or perversion. Several poems of Norse Mythology contain many flytings or consist solely of flytings, including the Eddic poem Lokasenna, wherein Loki insults the Norse gods.

Flytings existed in Arabic poetry in a popular form called naqa'id; they were also common in 16th century Scottish poetry. Flyting is similar in both form and function to the modern African American practice of the dozens.

See also: Freestyle battle

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