Robert Peters repeats the same old line.  I won't go into it without
incurring the guilt of repetition myself.  I will address only one point.

>I don't think that the lines you quoted are "bad writing".  It is plain
>writing and it serves the purpose.  The character who speaks is dying and
>speaks plain language.  It is as simple as that.

It's even simpler.  He speaks language that doesn't do anything except
make the corn grow.

>This is not the task of a playwright: a playwright does not necessarily
>have to present things totally new.

I never said he did.  I said that he had to have something in particular
worth saying.

>I remember the film and I found Salieri's behaviour out of a strange
>religiosity very convincing.

So F. Murray Abraham is a great actor.  No argument.

>He rebels against God's wisdom to give talent to someone who does not
>behave as someone like Salieri would expect.

And this is something you didn't know before?

>Amadeus gives me and millions of other not necessarily plain or
>unintelligent people moving insight in human conditions like envy, love,
>pain, humiliation, hope etc.

I'm envious, in that case.

>Some of the scenes of the movie, especially the deathbed scene, are almost
>painful in their intensity.

Again, due mainly to the actors and the director.

>>Poetry is not necessarily verse and verse is not necessarily poetry, as you
>>well know.  Poetry is something sharply and uniquely observed, rendered
>>in language that somehow makes you want to say it and hear it.
>
>This is your private definiton of poetry.

It also happens to be the private definition of a lot of good poets.  But
why should they know anything?

>According to this definition some newspaper editiorials would be poetry -
>which they are not.

Which editorials are we talking about? I don't exclude the possibility a
priori until I read the work in question.

>You cannot use terms and define them in a most private way.

I don't use them in a private way.  In fact, I got my definition from
poets, rather than from literary lexicons.

>Poetry is a literary term with a certain defintion and a certain essence.

Is it really? Then it should be easy to look up.  I've found that with
my dictionaries, poetry is defined as 1) the art or craft of writing poems;
2) poems collectively; 3) the quality, effect, or spirit of a oem or of
anything poetic; 4) something that resembles a poem in nature, form, or
spirit.

The problem is that none of this excludes the definition I've given.
You've given no definition at all, and further you obfuscate.  I've shown,
I believe, that Shaffer's little scene is flat, uninspired language -- full
of pretense, with nothing substantive or linguistically interesting behind
it.  You haven't shown me that it is even good writing, although you assert
it often enough.  Perhaps this is a difference between German and English
poetic traditions.  The English (and Americans) recognize that plain
speaking can be very poetic, as in "I was born in Oakland, California, but
Paris is my home town." It doesn't have to be "Cry havoc, and let slip the
dogs of war."

>...  No actor in the whole wide world can make gold out of shit.

Nonsense.  They do it on American television all the time.

>Ridiculous.  Shaffer uses the technique of collage.  He does not have to
>compose the Mozart Requiem to use it to good effect.

Of course he doesn't.  But that's the only thing in the scene which makes
an effect.  It's not the words, the characters, or the intellectual ideas.
As I said, I'll include a MIDI file of William Byrd's "Non nobis Domine"
with my next review.  That way I can be a great writer too.  It's my
collage technique, you see.

>...  You haven't shown that the lines are bad or did I miss a line-to-line
>stylistic analyis by you? I have not seen any stylistic mistakes, badly
>uses images or stylistic blunders in Shaffer's lines.

So he writes grammatically?  I suppose that's something.  What does he do
well?  Or is it enough not to make elementary mistakes?

>The sentences are plain.

The sentences are also bald and uninteresting.

>They are deliberately written in a plain style.  But plain style is not
>bad literature.

Never said it was.  In fact, I've said and shown the opposite.  The problem
is, none of my examples were by Shaffer.

>Absolutely.  You take your private definiton and I take a literary
>definition.

No, you seem to be taking an elementary definition, one that has very
little relation to literature itself.

>I disagree.  The best actor in the world cannot make real drivel
>interesting.

Explain "Cats" to me, then.

>You cannot judge a play only using the script.

Well, I guess that lets out Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare,
Shaw, Ibsen, Strindberg, etc., etc.

>I have and I have watched the film.  I asked about Brecht because you say
>that Shaffer has not Brecht's language. Well, of course he has not.  He
>has a different language for a different purpose.

You seem to enjoy setting up straw men.  I might not be as dumb as you make
me out.  What I meant was that he hasn't Brecht's dramatically *effective*
use of language.  All you have to do is cite a counter-example and show me
what excites you about it to prove me wrong.

>Steve, a lot of very learned people like Amadeus.

A lot of very learned people preferred Seneca to Shakespeare.  Learned
people can't be wrong?

>Obviously they are all not as learned and cultivated as you (example:
>comparing a play with demolition derbies).

No, I showed an example of effective spectacle, without necessarily
aesthetic merit.  It's up to you to show that Shaffer has achieved this
in the death scene.

>But I doubt that so many clever and intelligent people like Amadeus, both
>play and movie, because they are sheer spectacles.  (Which both are not.)

I'd agree both are not entirely spectacle.  But in my opinion spectacle is
their strongest element -- that and the acting (which Shaffer has nothing
to do with).

>And that popular stuff must not be good is something my teachers already
>told me, thank you.  I find your words very snobbish: obviously something
>a lot of people like cannot be of quality.

How in heaven's name did you get here? Don't attribute something to me
I never said and in fact don't believe.  However, *because* millions of
people like something doesn't guarantee its aesthetic merit, which is the
proposition you advanced -- the vox populi fallacy.  Just for the record,
*because* only a few people like something doesn't guarantee its merit
either.

>Do you really want ordinary people to know and like Mozart?

I've nothing against it.  Does that make Amadeus a good play?

>I suggested that you don't like Mozart being touch by "arsehole" Shaffer.
>But you say you don't care.  Which I do not believe, I am afraid.

It makes very little difference to me.  Obviously, you prefer to read
your prejudices into my posts.  There's no point in continuing this.
Say whatever else you want.  You have the last word.

Steve Schwartz