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Modernism and Poetic InspirationPoetry’s Voice-Over: Techniques of Inspiration

Modernism and Poetic Inspiration: Poetry’s Voice-Over: Techniques of Inspiration [If, as Wittgenstein remarked, philosophy is a struggle against the fascination of words, poetry may be a struggle in words against the prepossessing clamor of identity. In The Birth of the Modern Mind, Paul Oppenheimer identifies the origin of modern inwardness with the Renaissance development of the sonnet, the invention of which “unwittingly helped to change how human beings were to look at themselves and express themselves … by creating the lyric of the private soul” (40). But as the case of the sonnet suggests, the lyric soul in postures of disclosure or sincerity is mediated by technical requirements. The sonnet’s confidentiality is no simple expression; rather, it is the expression of expressivity. “There is, in the best personal poetry, a deep paradox” Oppenheimer suggests, in that “the personal, or the thrill of the mind revealed for all to see, in all of its individual intensity, may be possible only when the methods of the poetry are impersonal. The greatest intimacy may emerge from the greatest artifice and the greatest privacy, as at a secret meeting of secret lovers” (31).] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Modernism and Poetic InspirationPoetry’s Voice-Over: Techniques of Inspiration

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Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan US
Copyright
© Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Nature America Inc. 2009
ISBN
978-1-349-37658-2
Pages
97 –138
DOI
10.1057/9780230622197_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[If, as Wittgenstein remarked, philosophy is a struggle against the fascination of words, poetry may be a struggle in words against the prepossessing clamor of identity. In The Birth of the Modern Mind, Paul Oppenheimer identifies the origin of modern inwardness with the Renaissance development of the sonnet, the invention of which “unwittingly helped to change how human beings were to look at themselves and express themselves … by creating the lyric of the private soul” (40). But as the case of the sonnet suggests, the lyric soul in postures of disclosure or sincerity is mediated by technical requirements. The sonnet’s confidentiality is no simple expression; rather, it is the expression of expressivity. “There is, in the best personal poetry, a deep paradox” Oppenheimer suggests, in that “the personal, or the thrill of the mind revealed for all to see, in all of its individual intensity, may be possible only when the methods of the poetry are impersonal. The greatest intimacy may emerge from the greatest artifice and the greatest privacy, as at a secret meeting of secret lovers” (31).]

Published: Oct 6, 2015

Keywords: Primary Distraction; Discourse Network; Poetic Language; Speaking Subject; Primal Scene

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