And what I was saying, nihil, is that the words of the Marsellaise and of Dixie do NOT move ME, nor does the "Recessional" particularly...
In fact, I will go further, and say that none of the above are "great poetry."
And why would "Come live with me an be my love" be "repulsive" if someone decided to sing it "TO a nasty person"? Now, if it were sung BY a nasty person, to ONESELF, some caution might be in order. <gg> But, in any event, there is no indication in the poem itself as to whether the singer & the recipient of the song are of good or bad character, so the whole issue is irrelevant here.
Of course, one's appreciation of poetry depends on a lot more than the "rational" faculty. But you are going to have to come up with better examples to get me to "accept meaning which is ordinarily repulsive" to me. The word "accept," after all, means a lot more than "understand" or even "not object to." I can understand the feeling in a Kipling poem, for example, without "accepting" (that is, "sharing") it.
One of the things that poetry can do is to expand one's understanding of how other people feel. Nothing wrong with that.
Joan |
