I love "Omeros" for all the criticisms you outline here. As an Artist, I dip in and out exactly for inspiration from the visual similies. I do the same with "Ulysees". The whole is not as important to me as the snippets. Shards of colour and experience, made richer because of the literary anarchy. Bring on the cream!
'the totalising will of the epic and the subdivided reality of the modern world’
Going off at a bit of tangent from this Moretti quote, as I'm strongly reminded of Julian Jaynes's argument in On the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind that in the ancient world the voices in our heads were not ours but the commanding voices of gods to be obeyed. Naomi Alderman posits in her Third Information Crisis that the subdivided reality keeps on dividing, and everything becomes more fragmented. We seek not commonality in the plurality but the individual and personal - not the world, but ourselves.
Brilliant takedown of the simile overload problem. That bit about "things resemble other things" really captures how Walcott's metaphor-generating machine can feel exhausting rather than illuminating. I dunno if Raine is totally fair calling the classicism spurious, but the "lances of rain" recycling does start feeling like Homer-flavored window dressing after the tenth time. The textureversus structure tension you raise is spot on though, because those individual moments of visual brilliance (that lilac horns lifting the horizon line is genuinely gorgeous) almost work against epic momentum instead of building it.
Actually it sounds very good indeed. More a slippery blowhole cornucopia than benefiting any schema, leg pulling or otherwise. Wanting a quick splashing read. Funny he should get a Nobel for it, or for this kind of thing, which I always thought you got for consistently being something or other generis. Is Dublin hell? I am out of it, haven't ever been in it, but if hell has beer brightness, it's worth a visit.
I love "Omeros" for all the criticisms you outline here. As an Artist, I dip in and out exactly for inspiration from the visual similies. I do the same with "Ulysees". The whole is not as important to me as the snippets. Shards of colour and experience, made richer because of the literary anarchy. Bring on the cream!
'the totalising will of the epic and the subdivided reality of the modern world’
Going off at a bit of tangent from this Moretti quote, as I'm strongly reminded of Julian Jaynes's argument in On the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind that in the ancient world the voices in our heads were not ours but the commanding voices of gods to be obeyed. Naomi Alderman posits in her Third Information Crisis that the subdivided reality keeps on dividing, and everything becomes more fragmented. We seek not commonality in the plurality but the individual and personal - not the world, but ourselves.
Brilliant takedown of the simile overload problem. That bit about "things resemble other things" really captures how Walcott's metaphor-generating machine can feel exhausting rather than illuminating. I dunno if Raine is totally fair calling the classicism spurious, but the "lances of rain" recycling does start feeling like Homer-flavored window dressing after the tenth time. The textureversus structure tension you raise is spot on though, because those individual moments of visual brilliance (that lilac horns lifting the horizon line is genuinely gorgeous) almost work against epic momentum instead of building it.
Actually it sounds very good indeed. More a slippery blowhole cornucopia than benefiting any schema, leg pulling or otherwise. Wanting a quick splashing read. Funny he should get a Nobel for it, or for this kind of thing, which I always thought you got for consistently being something or other generis. Is Dublin hell? I am out of it, haven't ever been in it, but if hell has beer brightness, it's worth a visit.