Poetry in the time of Internet ~ di Alessandro Iovinelli (POESIA)
Alessandro
Iovinelli*
Poetry in the time
of Internet
1. A new Age
The
revolution caused by the coming of the Internet has – among other things –
produced everywhere a flowering of websites, of online magazines, of portals
featuring poems and poets, not to mention articles, reviews, comments, and bibliographies.
In short, everything that until a few years ago would have been necessarily
limited to the paper editions of particular publishers, together with a small
print run and a very narrow readership.
This is
certainly something positive and gives pause for thought given that, at least
in part, it makes up for poetry’s absence from the mass media where the poetic
word is excluded or made fun of, as if it were a ghost of its former self or
even a taboo. Poets on television hardly get a mention, even less so in the
cultural pages of the press unless in the case of a prize or an obituary.
Contemporary poets in the common experience of the average reader might as well
not exist. However, it is also true that there is the concrete possibility of
reading and getting to know a vast list of works and authors belonging to twentieth
century modernism, these crossing the boundaries of ‘national’ literatures.
Without wanting to undervalue or ignore the differences between schools,
traditions, specific peculiarities and obviously natural/historical varieties
in expression, an averagely cultured reader has a direct experience of the many
by now classic poets of the 20th century which probably surpasses that the
readers of the previous generation. What’s more, the present-day reader has
probably a greater sensitivity to interest in poetic language. It is one of the
results of mass culture, something to which, indeed, the whole publishing
industry has contributed to since the 1960a and 70s. Thanks to the use of
translations and excellent critical editions, even in a cheap edition format, a
reader who amasses even a little poetry has incorporated into his intellectual
make-up a much higher number of poets from the generation that came before.
The web
has brought about, then, a leap in quality as regards the process currently
underway since accessibility to information – and therefore to individual texts
– no longer must pass through the publisher, a particular edition and the book.
One can state that with minimum difficulty and a minimum of computer skills
almost anyone can not only read the texts of others, but also put online – and
therefore publish – their own texts as well. And this is without taking into
consideration similar phenomena still in their early days such as digital
books, the so-called e-book, these posing a decisive challenge to the
publishing such as we have not seen in the last two centuries.
2. Contemporary
poetry and the paradoxical situation in which it finds itself
Notwithstanding
the above the growth in the volume of data – or in the number of texts in
circulation – does not automatically generate an increase in specific weight,
in importance and in the value of the poetry sector in itself. It seems,
instead, something of a paradox but – when we come think about it – it is not: poetry
counted much more when its circulation was more difficult and consequently scarcer
since censorship on the part of others prevented its publication, poets being
possibly imprisoned while the masses were forbidden to read their works.
In
post-modern civilisation – thus, not only in Italy but in the West as a whole –
poets can write and publish what and where they like; however, they have lost
their social status, previously more or less privileged or persecuted, as
soothsayers, aedes, unarmed prophets or bards of the masses. For Asor Rosa the
phenomenon can be traced back to the ‘Hermetics’:
Poetry lost its hegemony
in the literary field more than fifty years ago, in the times of ‘’hermetism’.
It no longer has to reckon with surrounding public opinion with which it has a
more direct and more intellectual relationship. Since poetry is no longer
popular, it is more aristocratic (…) Since it is more aristocratic it is better
able to defend itself from the market, or – and rather in what is a
better-founded hypothesis – the market does not know what to do with it.[1]
We can
complete the landscape of contemporary poetry with an observation on the
condition of being a poet at the present time: Poets nowadays act on their own,
almost as if for themselves alone: « […]
each of these individuals – men and women – proceeds by himself, and this is
perhaps the price paid by those who, belonging to these times, decide to go it
alone instead of calling on others’ help»[2].
The
fact is that poets have lost a fundamental point of reference which throughout
the 20th century, they could still rely on: namely being part of a
movement. One could say that only now that movements are no more do we
understand their full importance. One of the strong points of the ‘avant-garde’
consisted exactly in the programmatic content which was given to it. As this
theoretical prerequisite has diminished, so has the individual position of the
poet been weakened. Probably one could be an excellent narrator, even a great
novelist, without going to the trouble to participate in an aesthetic movement
which lays down what is art, what is poetry and what it is not. For a poet,
however such aphasia or such an indifference constitute, is objectively speaking,
a form of weakness. For the rest let us try to imagine a historian who has no
idea of historiography and limits himself to merely gathering and ordering
facts about the past (events, dates, materials, uses and customs). Or let us
apply the same hypothesis to scientists for whom organic and inorganic matter
were simply a field for classifying species, observing certain selected events
and at most for planning useful machines. Point taken, history is not the place
for the final revelation of the truth, just as science only produces theories
which will later be proved false and replaced by others in turn. Neither of the two activities can maintain
its position without being founded on an abstract formalisation of thought. The
movements of the avant-garde drew up their own poetics and brought together
artists from diverse disciplines and countries around particular projects. They
represented cultural currents and inspired equivalent movements world-wide. A
movement functioned as an accelerator enabling the poet to reach the ‘speed of
flight’, in other words to detach himself from the earth’s orbit and travel in
space. Or to drop the metaphor, to get himself known and place his own work
within a particular context and set of aesthetics. Staying with literature, we
can also say that here was the correlative to publishing success for the
novelist. In the global society dominated by a single thought a literary work
undergoes the same laws of the financial market: The starting point is always
from a quantitative basis. How many divisions has the Pope? – scornfully asked
Stalin at the Yalta conference. How many copies has a book sold? It is the key
question of our Zeitgeist – and not just that of a publisher without
scruples.
For
quite some time we have lived in a literary society that has to fit itself to
the logic of the publishing industry which, at the end of the day, are not and
cannot be separable from the marketplace. True, the marketplace is inhabited by
people, but it is not them who decided the priorities but two or three major
publishers who control the overall system. Magazines and journals, no less than
the world of Academe, have an extremely limited influence on tastes as well as
on readers’ horizon of expectations, very often coming off second best in
catalogues, book fairs and multimedia-type events.
Poetry
on the other hand does not have a market and therefore in a sense from an
information viewpoint, might as well not exist – and we know how difficult it
is for anyone to exist in the information society without being visible,
recognisable, identifiable like a brand name, a label and a production company.
3.
The dominant figure of the poet
By
contrast there is no double register in contemporary poetry, not even in the
best; it is almost as if poetry functions in such a way as to ignore its
reader, unless that reader be a specialist in poetic language, hopefully an
academic. The poet also hopefully an academic, a mirror image – one could gloss
playfully. In fact, the contemporary poet is more and more a professor who
writes, an academic who often writes litre criticism on the side. The dominant
20th century figure is not the ‘poet laureate’, still less the ‘Immaginifico’ in which regard the one
and only D’Annunzio left his imitators standing. Bohemian poets can now function at best as
characters in a novel, like the unforgettable Willy G. Christmas of Paul
Auster’s Timbukctu[3].
In realty the university posting is the common denominator for a long line of 20th
century poets, meaning from Carducci and Pascoli onwards.
Therefore,
it is practically inevitable that the tendency to use culture to produce poetry
and poetry’s consequent mirroring procedure – the use of poetry as a phase of a
cultural process – are the prevailing constants. With a further result: the
raising of the average age of poets and their literary debut. Without meaning
to trespass too far into literary sociology, it is impossible not to think of
precedents, some of the giants of modern literature. When I mentioned earlier Ossi di seppia and Allegria di naufragi, I should have added that the former was
published when Montale was 29, the latter when Ungaretti was 31. Without considering
the greats of the 19th century – Shelley, Leopardi and Rimbaud – the
list of poets taking up their vocation early on and producing their
masterpieces at a tender age is too long to tire the reader with. Naturally it would be possible to draw up another
list, equally interesting, of poets for whom ‘old age’ has brought a new spring
in their poetic output. Giorgio Caproni gave us Conte di Kevenhüller (1986) at 76[4], Attilio Bertolucci La Camera da
letto (1988) at 77[5], while Biagio Marin published Nel
silenzio più teso (1980), E anche il
vento tase (1982) and La vose de la
sera (1985), at 89, 91 and 94 respectively[6]. One
can only share Magris’ verdict: «Had he died at 70 or 75, Marin would have
remained a marginal figure»[7].
It is
true that the plant of poetry can flower at whatever age, yet it is also beyond
doubt that the world of poetry attracts fewer and fewer newcomers, new writers
preferring to take their chance with the novel: A good narrative debut can
function as the launch pad for
guaranteeing a literary career, guaranteeing publishing success, attention from
critics, recognition, prizes, in short, the necessary visibility to attain the
status which poetry does not give, nor seems capable of giving any longer.
So as readers we
must resign ourselves to reading and rereading the 20th century
classics: Pessoa and Lorca, Rilke and Celan, Yeats and Auden, Eliot and Thomas
(Dylan or R.S.), Prévert and Char, Achmatova and Cvetaeva, perhaps updating
them with more recent discoveries: Heaney, Szymborska, Walcott and so on?
So, for
poets is there no alternative between being crushed by the publishing machine
and the sensation of being dwarves standing on giants’ shoulders?
Is
poetry not so different from a supernova which, having lit up by day the face
of heaven, is now headed for implosion which will make it disappear from the
event horizon not only for travellers who seek there a point of light in the
night sky – namely the anonymous reader – but also for the astronomers of the
profession – scholars, critics, feature writers?
Of all
the deaths waiting to happen in the last century, only in this case is a
predicted death coming true. Not the death of ideologies – a mystification –
not the death of the novel – a blatant blunder – still less the death of art –
as long, at least, that there is a market for it fixing its exchange value in
the oldest of systems: the sum of money needed for purchase. But is poetry, on
the other hand, destined to disappear soon?
4.
Poetry will not die
The
writer of these pages does not share such an apocalyptic vision. Poetry is a
heavenly body that predates the so–called ‘Gutenberg Galaxy.’ On further
consideration, already with the advent of the press it had changed in function
and reception (one thinks of the passage from oral to written literature, or
the transformation of ancient manuscripts into books printed in moveable type.)
This helps us maintain a reasonable dose of optimism as to poetry’s survival in
the world both present and future. The new technologies have already proved to
be allies as powerful as they are readily available.
I would
like to conclude with a personal recollection. In 2002 I proposed to the
Italian National commission of UNESCO the setting up of a website entirely
dedicated to contemporary poetic production on a world-wide basis: ‘Poetic
Babel.’ The plan was very simple: to put on line one or two texts per poet in
both the original version and in translation (Italian, English, and French),
this inside a user-friendly framework for whichever potential reader, providing
the name of the author, some basic information on the literary background, etc.
Within a few months we had put together an impressive quantity of texts and
poets from all four corners of the globe. The initiative proved successful and
a year later, in 2003, – to mark World Poetry Day – the numbers of contributors
was doubled together with the poetic material and information. My collaboration
with UNESCO is now over, but the project continues to thrive.
The
fact that quickly convinced us of the interest aroused by the project was
expressed in terms of audience: from the first day that the site went online –
21 March 2002 – the number of daily contacts registered by a simple control
program was over fifty thousand – an amount no print publication could have
reached even with sales world-wide, unless at impossibly large cost. Fair
enough, fifty thousand contacts spread over five continents is a drop in the
ocean. But neither is such a drop so small!
For the
rest I was subsequently to discover that my idea was not so original and that
similar initiatives had taken off in France, Germany... Albeit also on a
national level, these had had the same mass impact: Quantity was no longer an
obstacle, still less an enemy to practising poetry. Once again, the myth of poets’ elitism and
solitude had been gainsaid.
Therefore,
let me end with a passage from the manifesto on our homepage which is still
open to extend a welcome to unknown poetry readers about to set out:
Poetry is part of human
nature. All civilisations, epochs and races have known the poetic expression
inherent in human language. A poem, whether oral or written, read in private or
in public, written in a book or an exercise book, can overcome obstacles of
space and time, as well as of national borders. The web revolution will surpass
that of Gutenberg, becoming a formidable instrument for exchange, communication
and knowledge of contemporary poetry.[8]
[1] Alberto Asor Rosa, Storia europea della letteratura italiana,
La letteratura della Nazione,
(Torino: Einaudi, 2009) p.597.
[3] Paul Auster, Timbuktu, London, Faber & Faber,
1999.
[4] Giorgio Caproni, Conte di Kevenhüller (1986), Tutte le poesie, Milano, Garzanti, 1999.
[5] Attilio Bertolucci, La camera da letto (1988), Milano,
Garzanti, 2000.
[6] Biagio Marin, Nel silenzio più teso (1980), E anche il vento tase (1982), La vose de la sera (1985), Poesie, Milano, Garzanti, 1999.
[7] Claudio Magris, Microcosmi, Milano, Garzanti, 1997,
p.70.
[8] “Babele Poetica”: http://www.unesco.it/poesia/babele/benvenuto.htm
ALESSANDRO IOVINELLI
*Buon compleanno, Direttore!
È poeta, narratore, critico e regista teatrale.
Ha pubblicato libri di poesia, racconti, saggistica, nonché tre romanzi.
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