Credo de un Poeta
I write to nourish my withered
heart.
I shall devour any or all who criticize
my outpouring of soulful indifference
known to the world as simply Poetry.
I am the only critic that matters to me.
Those who critique but do not write
are vicious spiteful urchins found in the
stagnant shallow pools upon the rotting
and festering marshes beside the ocean;
and those who do write should never be
tempted to critique another's work for
egos bleed with ease; joyful bliss fades.
Albeit said, I shall write on the shell of a
freshly opened Hawaiian Macadamia Nut:
"Steal my Thunder; Reap my Lightning."
Now where's my Jack and Coke?
Crítica -- Julio Ruelas
Crítica -- Julio Ruelas
John Dennis was a literary critic and would-be playwright. His "Appius and Virginia" opened at Drury Lane in London in 1700, an adaption from Titus Livius' 1st-century "Ab Urbe Condita Libri" in which the plebeian centurion Lucius Verginius killed his daughter Verginia to prevent her enslavement and rape by Appius Claudius Crassus Sabinus Regillensis, the leader of the anti-democratic decemvirs. Dennis' source was "The Palace of Pleasure," which William painter published in 1566 and 1575 (the basis of several Elizabethan plays by William Shakespeare and others, including "Appius and Virginia" by John Webster, perhaps in collaboration with Thomas Heywood. As a a clerk of the Ordnance in the Tower of London, Painter confessed to embezzlement in 1586, though he kept his office until his death in 1595. The Webster play was revived as "The Roman Virgin, or The Unjust Judge" in 1670, adapted by and starring Thomas Betterton as Verginius. Betterton reprised the role in Dennis' play, which was a failure, although Dennis had
ReplyDeletedeveloped a new way of simulating the sound of thunder in order to enhance the play's sound effects. A few days after his own play closed, Dennis watched a production of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" at Drury Lane which employed his thunder-making technique. Dennis reacted by shouting, "Damn them! They will not let my play run, but they steal my thunder" [the origin of the phrase]. In a later dispute with Alexander Pope the critic, who gained the nickname "Furius," remarked about the poet that "there is no creature in nature so venomous, there is nothing so stupid and so impotent as a hunch-back’d toad." In "The Dunciad," Pope responded by including his foe with other critics:
Now thousand tongues are heard in one loud din:
The Monkey-mimicks rush discordant in.
'Twas chatt'ring, grinning, mouthing, jabb'ring all,
And Noise, and Norton, Brangling, and Breval,
Dennis and Dissonance; and captious Art,
And Snip-snap short, and Interruption smart.
Hold (cry'd the Queen) A Catcall each shall win;
Equal your merits! equal is your din!
But that this well-disputed game may end,
Sound forth, my Brayers, and the welkin rend.
[Much later, in 1933, G. E. Trevelyan used "Appius and Virginia" as the title of his satirical novel, described as “A story of a spinster who raises an ape in isolation in hopes of turning him into a man.”]