pensamiento critico y practica poetica en donald davie - Universidad ...

1 will end by expressing two hinches: (1) fhat fhe sod of continu¡fy 1 have in
mmd may be in facf carried by mEnor writers rather than major ones; and (2)
fhat If may be carried, not jusf by prose wrifers raiher fhan poets, buf by
discursive and analytical aid expos¡fory prose raiher than by narrative prose,
especially when fhaf narrative prose is as “poefic” as the prose of Herman
Melville en the ene hand, Ernest Hemingway en hile other. You wiIl notice how
each of these prepesifions has te do wifh hile poinfs thaf 1 made earlier IR these
remarks. And neifher of fhem, surely, is al aH novel er starling. The first rests
upon fhe obvieus facf that genius is often idiosyncratic. A niajor writer,
therefore, by the very facf of his genius, is likely fo be “off cenler”. A Milfon or a
Melville does nol merely rise aboye Ihe fradifion which he adorns; he pushes it
askew under fhe force of fhe highly personal vision which he compeis it to
incorporafe. Ihe tradition fherefore may be carried more securely by wr¡ters
w¡fh Iess taienf and less urgency. And my second proposifion is likewise far
from new. It was expressed w¡fh memorable force more fhan sixty years ago,
by J.S. Phillimore. Poetry is a wind thai bleweth where it listetil; a barbarous
people may have great pnefry, fhey cannof have greaf prose. Prose is an
insfitufion, par! of the equipment of a civilization, par! of its heritabie weath, like
¡ts laws, or jhs sysfems of schooiing, or ihs fradifion of skilled craftsmanship.
(TTE, 197-198)
Davie es contrario a la exaltación romántica de la originalidad y la
singularidad. En esta línea, Davie considera egocéntrica la forma abierta. De
su poema “Petit-Thouars (Guide Michelin)” escribe:
lfs plan is egocenfric; It assumes, or It must seem fo sasume, hhaf hhe geographical
and histomical enfify cailed France has no value, perhaps no s¡gnificant exisfence,
ouhs¡de whaf it does fo one sensibility, my own. This has always seemed fo me
overweening, and poefry wiitten en fhat plan fo be in fhat way child¡sh, screaming,
Me! Me!’ One remembers: Seng of Myself. (XC, 151-1 52)
Egocentrismo, en Davie, se confunde con subjetivismo. Teniendo en
cuenta esta confusión podemos identificar otra característica distintiva de la
poesía norteamericana: la equivalencia entre poesía y subjetivismo. En
palabras de nuestro autor sobre la forma abierta:
Egecenfric is what poetry has been thoughf fo be, necessarily, as it were by
definition; arid poetry which is not thus egocentric has been heid fo be not poetry al
alí, or poefry only by courtesy, of a second or third order of infensity. 1 have thoughf
fh¡s wrong, and 1 fhink so still; and righfly or wrongly 1 fhink of if as a
characteristically American error. (TC, 152)
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