Tragedy is what it is, that so many people today appear not to even know what a sestina is, let alone recognise Auden's 'Paysage Moralise' as a sterling example. Par for the course is the reaction I got when I asked one of my friends for her opinion.
'Who the hell is Auden?'
Heresy! Sacrilege! Ready the bonfires, the racks, the Iron Maidens!
It is truly hideous that the above is a standard response in today's world. Not to know of Auden - the creator of such unimaginable beauty as 'If I could tell you', 'The Shield of Achilles' and 'Musee des beaux arts' - is akin to saying that one is unaware of the sublime aesthetic pleasure that words can bring. So much of the pretentious, yet dumbed-down, shite that's on bookshelves today is such utter rot that I wouldn't even use it as an alternative to toilet paper. People have learned to want a fast, action-packed story with little to no actual beauty in the words themselves.
However, I shall stop my 'meandering', as David Copperfield might put it, and return to the topic at hand: sestinas.
It is a strange predilection of today's reader that they are put off by structure in poetry, while something akin to verbal diarrhoea splattering all over the page is praised as being 'heartfelt' and 'unadulterated'. Well, if adulteration would result in something remotely aesthetically appealing and possessed of some meaning beyond 'Dude, I'm stoned - check out the pretty colours', I'm all for it.
Why is is that the rigid power of iambic pentameter is unappreciated, that the thrust of the trochee is looked down upon? Why is the exquisite detail and architecture of a sestina passed over as artificial and pretentious? Can they not see how much sheer talent it would take to compose a work of that style?
Clearly not.
Ah, well, at least this leaves more books in the library for me.
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