Re: PDF author metadata

[David Wright]

On Sun 10 Jul 2016 at 15:57:59 (+0100), J Martin Rushton wrote:
> On 10/07/16 15:09, David Kastrup wrote:
> > J Martin Rushton <address@hidden> writes:
> >> On 10/07/16 00:29, Anthony Youngman wrote:
> >>> On 07/07/16 19:02, David Wright wrote:
> >>>> BTW one of the odd "assumptions" made in LP is in that
> >>>> variable called poet. What about compositions whose lyrics
> >>>> are prose?
> >>> 
> >>> Of which I guess there are very few :-) "Jerusalem" is a
> >>> pretty classic example - about the only one I can think of.
> >> 
> >> And did those feet in ancient time ... [snip]
> >> 
> >> It scans (88.88.88.88), rhymes (abcb.defe), line breaks are
> >> phrase breaks (not arbitrary) - so how is it prose not poetry?

In Anthony's defence, the fact that it's through-composed and,
in some hymn-books at least, they don't bother to set the words
strophically after the music, it might be possible to squint
casually enough at it and not realise it's poetry.

(We're referring to Parry here, of course, and to one of England's
unofficial national anthems.)

> > I actually thought first of "Wie liegt die Stadt so wüst" by 
> > Mauersberger after the bombing of Dresden.  Which, while being the
> > text of "Klagelieder Jeremiahs" (English: "lamentations of
> > Jeremiah"), is pretty much prose.
> > 
> > I suspect there are a few Jerusalems around...
> > 
> True, but plain unqualified "Jerusalem" in Britain (and I suspect most
> of the Anglophone world) will be Blake's.  We'll have to wait and see
> if Anthony comes back with an alternative.

I think his argument was that there are few, and if you exclude
biblical and liturgical texts, prayers etc from the western canon,
then that may be true. But much of that religious material is
prose translations of what were originally poems, or prose
translations of translations of poetry etc.

For a more contemporary mainstream composition of prose words, I'd
offer Randall Thompson's Testament of Freedom, where LP's "poet" is
Thomas Jefferson. AFAIK he didn't write his letters and Declarations
in anything other than prose.

While one might argue that a lot of religious translations might
have been written with a view to intonement, or recitation at least,
and therefore with particular attention paid to the rhythm of the
words, I don't think that Jefferson wrote letters to Adams that way.

Cheers,
David.