Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Jan 16, 2009, at 8:50 AM, Chris Doss wrote: [clip]before around 1800. Bad Dante! Bad Homer! Evil
> > Voltaire! Down with Shakespeare!
>
> Isn't it always worth thinking about why you like or don't like things?
CD seems to be muttering to himself in a mirror. But I find it easy to admire a work just for its power in presenting a worldview I despise. (I don't think it worthwhiel spending much time with run-of-the-mill expressions of idiocy.) That's why the Republic (Cornford) is one of my favorite works. And I worked out my sense of bourgeois individualism (my understanding of Marx's Theses on Feurerbach) by wrestling with the first great appearance in literature of that abstract individual, Milton's PL. In CD's vulgate, "bad Milton," but wrestling with Milton brings understanding. Wrestling with triumphs of decorum can expand understanding:
Much wine had passed with grave disoourse Of who fucks who, and who does worse. . . .
The remainder of this particular poem does not live up to the power of the opening, but there are worlds of human experience in the gap between *grave discourse* and "who fucks who," made to conront each other over a line break. It is better evven than Pope's "Where thou great Anna, whom three realms obey / Dost sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tea" or "When husbands, or when lapdogs, breathe their last" or "Thy country first, in arms abroad, defend"(all quoted form memory). The last line is a simple translation from Horace, but _this_ Augustus (George 2) had a mistress in Germany.
Carrol