Both For And Against Poem by gershon hepner

My views, if you chart them,
both for and against,
in utramque partem,
are past-future tensed,
and basically caviar
for present day readers,
by straying too far
from the cheer that our leaders
obtain by ignoring
the future and past,
while always deploring
all views that are cast,
ahead of their time
or behind. Mine are meant
to amuse, and in rhyme
to agree and dissent.


Inspired by an article on Shakespeare in the January 9,2009 edition of TLS by John Guy (“Rural and Urbane”) , reviewing John Bate’s “Soul of an Age in which he menions that Shakepere learned to argue utramque partem:

Venus and Adonis is used to show that Shakespeare could write elegant poetry in imitation of the ancients despite having no more than a basic grammar school education. His proficiency in Latin emerges from Bate’s reinvestigation of the syllabus he followed at school: after practising double-translation from Latin to English and back without a crib, students were trained in the art of rhetoric; they learned to mould language like wax, to argue in utramque partem (ie “for” and “against”) and to “move” audiences by their silver tongues. As Quintilian, the prince of orators, had explained, rhetoric “is an art which relies on moving the emotions by saying that which is false”. Or as Touchstone puts it in As You Like It, “The truest poetry is the most feigning”. The kinsman of the persuasive orator, Bate observes, is the convincing actor, and this gives fresh meaning to Shakespeare’s decision to embark on a stage career.


1/10/09