Symbiosis
 

Maryann & Ann:

I suspect that you are correct; we're likely talking about annotation rather than criticism. Indeed, "translation" may be the best description. As you know (and as mentioned elsewhere), most modern poetry is written in Tamarian. This supports an industry of such translators serving universities and the literary community at large.

Were the poems written originally in English the translators would be excluded, leaving critics to discuss boring stuff like technique, rhythms, style, innovations, influences and form.

-o-

Ah, Colin - my favourite episode! I devoted a chapter of a book of my own to it. Inappropriate (irrelevant) to quote it here, but I'll send it via PM if you're interested.

Ann, there's a slightly Tamarian tinge to the conversation here. What's the episode you're referring to? I clicked on Colin's link but can't manage to find where it comes from or what it's a part of. I'm intrigued and would also like to know which book of yours you're referring to and what's the topic you deal with.

Gregory:

The reference is to the Season 5, Episode 2 of "Star Trek: The Next Generation". The episode can be downloaded here, among other places.

-o-

Ah - the Tamarians are a race who converse in metaphor and feature in "Darmok", an episode of Star Trek -The Next Generation. Jean-Luc Picard is marooned on a planet with a Tamarian leader and they play out a Tamarian myth which, since it is peculiar to their race (parallel with our Arthurian or Graeco-Roman legends), Picard struggles to understand. He succeeds by tying it in to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and, at the end of the episode, is seen to be reading The Homeric Hymns...

I used it in a book called "Discussing Wittgenstein" which is about the relationship between two people who spend much time in each other's company. The chapter deals with Wittgenstein's assertion that there can be no such thing as a private language and posits that all language is private.

The myth thing is popping up all over the Sphere at the moment, where other threads touch on the modern uses made of the dusty contents of the myth-kitty.

Ann:

In addition to the basic premise that alliances are easier to built than friendships, you gotta love the look of surprised frustration the Tamarians give on realizing that no one understands their referents and metaphors. I'll bet we've all seen that look at readings!

Please do!

Speaking of irrelevant, I wonder if many know (or care?) that the guy who gave us Sturgeon's Revelation (i.e. "90% of everything is crap") is the same Theodore Sturgeon who wrote "Amok Time", the episode from the original Star Trek series where Spock mates.

Returning to the subject at hand (my apologies for the sidetracking, Maryann), I guess it depends on whether we reject or believe the notion that poetry is form, not content--that it is not about what one says but how one says it. For us koolaid drinkers, actual criticism begins where contemporary "criticism" leaves off (i.e. after interpretation/translation/footnoting/annotation).

-o-

Thanks for the information, Ann and Colin. I would never have got there on my own, as I've never seen Star Trek, the Second Generation. But you make me think that perhaps I should (at least that episode).

At the risk of adding irrelevance to irrelevance (not that I think the Wittgenstein connection is really irrelevant to the official topic of the thread), let me just add that I came across Sturgeon's name this very afternoon in connection with an interesting literary hoax: the creation, by a New York night-time radio DJ of an entirely fictional best-seller, I, Libertine, by an entirely fictional author, Frederick Ewing, created by himself and his nocturnal listeners, who all contributed to the hoax, going to bookshops and asking for the novel. Theodore Sturgeon apparently volunteered to write the book, after it had become the talk of the town - and it did become, briefly at least, a genuine best-seller.

Perhaps I can suggest a kind of connection to the thread: the hoaxers in a way demonstrated that talk about a literary work, in certain circles, can even substitute the work itself. (Not that I'm sure where that leads us...)