hmmph...well, a bit on the history of audiences has seemed in order, and I've cast about for things on the web, or in the web, which is a kinda net, full of flopping viewers, like so many squirming sardines being hoisted aboard a fishing boat!!!...sigh...back to Graves again...I've been pondering the writing of Robert Graves for like forty or more years, which is way too much of an indulgence pondering someone else's indulgences!!!...but there is stuff to consider in his books, which find elliptical expression in his poems.. I found a sense lately of 'elliptical' with regard to meaning in poems in reference to Emily Dickenson's poems as being 'elliptical'... elliptical is compressing meaning...in his books and commentaries, Graves expands on the compressed meanings of his poems...ah...I'm squirming a bit here!...let me get at what I snipped from his Paris Review interview regarding audiences....
quote
INTERVIEWER
Your poems are very complete and personal statements. Are you not at all reticent about what you reveal?
GRAVES
You tell things to your friends that you don't put into print.
INTERVIEWER
But your audience . . .
GRAVES
Never use the word “audience.” The very idea of a public, unless a poet is writing for money, seems wrong to me. Poets don't have an “audience”: They're talking to a single person all the time. What's wrong with someone like Yevtushenko is that he's talking to thousands of people at once. All the so-called great artists were trying to talk to too many people. In a way, they were talking to nobody.unquote
The trouble with Graves, is if you look at his comments with the same critical eye that he recommends in books like The Reader Over Your Shoulder, what he writes kinda goes soap bubble, and pops into insubstantialness!!!.... I'll not take a pin to the quote, but on reading Graves (and many others!) I take a defensive stance, and regard him as a potential huckster or charlatan!....
But it seems true enough, one does, with poems anyway, have in mind one person....one of my poems for example...
Animals and Dreams
There ain't nobody here or there
Of that much importance,
So you can relax, and not worry your pretty head.
The Animals and Dreams ignore us, sure,
For the greediness of our wanting to know, that's why.
Someday, when we decide,
That we are ignorant and stupid things, after all,
The Animals and Dreams might not run away.
Until then, we'll sit by the campfire alone,
Surrounded by darkness.
DolphinWords
There was a companion poem to this one that I wrote, which I still have, but it is buried in a scrap box...some have scrap books, I have scrap boxes...and if I get around to digging it out, I'll reference it here...it was about outer space and such, and cues the last line in the above poem to the sun as the campfire, and to space as the darkness....like I said, poems are elliptical!!!...and I should add the poem is patronizing, a trait I have the 'you' in the poem once pointedly pointed out!...sigh...but one doesn't stop offering one's muse poems over a criticism!!!...to continue...
A search of 'audience history' on google doesn't bring up much, oh, on the first scroll...no telling what's further along...but this site I thought good...
quote
The theatre of the Restoration
consisted mainly of light, fluffy comedies performedin an oratory style—actors posing, wearing BIG
costumes and practically screaming over the din of
the audience. Theatre companies still existed on the
patronage of the very wealthy and often performed
plays exclusively in the salons of the rich, famous and
powerful. A few hundred years later, opera composer
Richard Wagner figured out that to focus the
audience’s attention away from themselves and onto
the stage, the lights needed to be off—forcing the
audience to watch the performance. Since that time
the audience has taken its cue that the performance is
about to begin from the lights overhead beginning to
dim. This small adjustment in lighting effectively
erected a permanent barrier between the action
onstage and the audience.
http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/_pdf/first_folio/about_shakespeare.pdf
That link will have to do for reference...it's a pdf file...wait...
http://www.shakespearetheatre.org
well...not sure where in their site one finds the pdf file...anyway, I'd like to note the author..hmmph...
end quote
One is tempted here to drift into the relation of audience with politicians, and being in the dark!!!...but I had in mind a recalled vision from a movie scene of monkeys or baboons sitting about in the trees watching, audience like, and have found much on google about 'audience effect' in primates, and that search turned up this site, which I think very good!!!
quote
The herd instinct produces weird phenomena. At one zoo, an entire baboon troop gathered on top of their rock, all staring in exactly the same direction. For an entire week they forgot to eat, mate, and groom. They just kept staring at something in the distance that no one could identify. Local newspapers were carrying pictures of the monkey rock, speculating that perhaps the animals had been frightened by a UFO. But even though this explanation had the unique advantage of combining an account of primate behavior with proof of UFOs, the truth is that no one knew the cause except that the baboons clearly were all of the same mind.
Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey Connect
The most profound bonds between people begin in our bodies with imitation and synchronized movements.
unquote
The Discovery magazine article quoted is from this book, which is another for the Naturalist's bookshelf!!!
Reprinted from The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society. Copyright © 2009 by Frans de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University. Published by Harmony Books, a division of Random House.
The web is turning the lights back up on the audience!!!
Now, don't yawn...don't you dare...please no...no yawning!!!...sigh...one endures much...Crocodile...
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