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‘The Greatest Poet That Has (N)ever Existed’
Will Wilkinson has an interesting post discussing a rather odd remark made by Charles Murray in a recent interview:
“I think that the number of novels, songs, and paintings done since 1950 that anyone will still care about 200 years from now is somewhere in the vicinity of zero. Not exactly zero, but close. I find a good way to make this point is to ask anyone who disagrees with me to name a work that will survive–and then ask, “Seriously?” Very few works indeed can defend themselves against the “Seriously?” question.”
In responding to Murray’s assertion, Wilkinson asks the following question:
“A more interesting, albeit unanswerable, question would be: What works would a cultured person in 1800 cite as likely to last 200 years? And then the followup: Would he have been right?”
The question is far from unanswerable. Two hundred years ago The Poems of Ossian, a set of forged works attributed to a nonexistent Gaelic bard, would have been an unimpeachable selection for any list of works likely to last 200 years. Napoleon carried a copy of the book. Goethe wrote that “Ossian has, in his heart, supplanted Homer.” Thomas Jefferson even referred to the fictitious Ossian as “the greatest poet that has ever existed.”
Two centuries later, the book only really remains in print as a historical curiosity. And strangely, newspaper op-eds from roughly the same period are read as “classics” by every high school student in America.
There is a part of me that finds it arrogant that anyone would presume to know what works of art will stand the the test of time.
Another part of me immediately began making a list of my own, starting from Murray’s cutoff in 1950:
- Madame Récamier de David by René Magritte (1951)
- “4′33″” by John Cage (1952)
- The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (1952)
- On the Waterfront directed by Elia Kazan (1954)
- Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955)
- “Howl” by Allen Ginsberg (1956)
- Kind of Blue by Miles Davis (1958)
I really don’t know for certain if any of these works will be remembered in 2203 A.D., but I simply don’t want to believe Murray will be right and these wonderful things will be forgotten.
4 comments posted
Posted by jia - 03/22/2004
great day i could say… :)
Posted by sinergy - 03/23/2004
great day i could say… :)
Posted by sinergy - 03/23/2004
What bothers me is even legal gambling is really stupid. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon - or a head of the Department of Edumacation - to figure out that there’s no way to beat the house. It calls to mind a cartoon I once saw. In the first, these two guys are sitting in a booth with the banner “Tax on Stupidity” over them. Nobody around but them. In the next frame, same two guys in the same booth, but they’ve crossed out the original sign and replaced it with “Lotto!” Folks are lined up for miles.
Posted by jia - 03/24/2004
The stereotype of Washington interns falling prey to lecherous lawmakers is just that — a stereotype. So reveals a new dating and politics poll of Capitol Hill interns in which students share details of their dating lives. The Independent Women’s Forum survey shows 70 percent of Washington interns haven’t hooked up with anyone yet this summer. The students are evidently saving the hanky panky for their college campuses, because around two-thirds say they had at least one “hook up” during the past year at school. Other intern information… – 41 percent of the interns are single. – 56 percent came to the capital to get professional experience, but 5 percent came for the “social aspects.” – And, finally, Democrat interns are five times more likely than Republican interns to categorize the “hook-up” as the most common type of dating at college.
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