Story-Telling

An extract from Don Juan Finish’d, Max's continuation of Byron's comic epic.


Marcel Saunier: Don Juan and Haidee

Let’s pause, I say, and let’s consider whether
  This sticking-to-the-subject business merits
Rigidity or, rather, is’t a tether
  A poem’s or book’s material inherits
To make it all appear to hold together?
  (Though this one seems to wander anywhere its
Blithe author cares)—for nobody has yet
Discover’d story-telling’s raison d'être.

Some purpose, though, it has. That much is clearly
  Establish’d by the pressing human need
For stories. Hadn’t notic’d it? You merely
  Need close your eyes and sleep; your thoughts will lead
To stories—what are dreams but stories queerly
  Arrang’d from life’s materials and freed
From any daytime logic that would fetter
The flow? (And freed from critics—even better!)

Or read the news, no matter which edition.
  How can a single postal worker bent
On havoc justify complete omission
  Of thousands who can’t pay for food or rent?
The answer’s very simple: a condition
  Is not a story. Give us an event!
Not only will we read it, our enthrallment
Will keep us coming for the next installment.

Why, life itself is aided by our viewing it
  As though it were a story, one that traces
Our trip toward ultimate success; pursuing it,
  The happy ending calms—and in most cases
Relieves us of the need of really doing it.
  This urge t’ward stories strikes the highest places.
Great men, when they get caught with their stenographers,
Think how the scenes will play with their biographers.

What did rough cavemen share around the fire?
  What soothes the child and helps her fall asleep?
In what did ancient cultures all attire
  Their earnest explanations of the deep,
Dim ways of nature? What do we desire
  From books? And what do politicians keep
Repeating in their platforms every fall
Election? Stories, stories one and all.

Max Gutmann
 
If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Max Gutmann would be pleased to hear them.

Storytelling is part of Max Gutmann's project, continuing (and commenting on) Byron's epic story of Don Juan:  https://www.maxgutmann.com/verse/don-juan-finishd