«Form is the individual body of poetry (...); but shouldn't there also be a poetry deeply penetrated into the essence without the limits established by a form? »
[Bettina Brentano]
This question, which DanieleScarpetti brought up in the discussion "The Ninth is only the beginning," after an initial moment of difficulty, I understood in this way: Could there not be a poetry so.... beautiful, perfect, profound... that it could afford not to have the limits established by a form? (ultimately: to be able to be 'formless')
To my doubt about having understood it according to the original intentions, Daniele replied to me with this post
«Mine can only be a response of a general nature. As with all arts and forms of culture, especially from the second half of the 19th century, the need to write and to poet in a new, anti-traditional way—even from a technical-formal aspect—became increasingly alive and widespread, because the moods, problems, and customs of the people of that time were changing profoundly in reflection of the changing political-social situations.
Bettina Brentano, with this question of hers, was visionary because she anticipated what would become a need a few decades later: the need to break free from the traditional metrics—and thus from the form—of poetry, to create a new one that, in its content, could enter into the essence of the new problems and the new figures that the evolution of society proposed.
The evolution prophesied by the poetess will begin to bear its greatest fruit at the end of the 19th century when poets and literati coming from different currents: Scapigliati, Decadents... were nonetheless united in the common negation of traditional formulas, giving rise to a radical renewal that denied not only the validity of traditional metric forms, but also the old spirit, the civilization of the “fathers” and, obviously, above all, the Romantic one.
This was the first step; then came the Avant-gardes of the second half of the 20th century, and Poetry, like all Arts, emerged from all formalism».
The general nature of Daniele's response—as he himself maintains—is, in my opinion, a merit: the discourse is thus broadened to any form of art, and therefore to anything created or composed. And it is for this reason that I propose the issue under the 'Composition' section, even if not strictly musical.
With due respect (I do not know what is hidden behind these ellipsis points), to Bettina Brentano's question I would answer no: there can exist no work of art that does not have a form. I fully agree with the observations that Daniele proposes in his post which I have quoted above. However, an artist's eventual intolerance toward forms received from tradition never translates into the creation of something without a form, but, generally, into the creation of something with a different form, often less structured: simpler (it comes to mind, for example, the transition from a poem with rhyming verses to one in free verse). In other cases, the change is toward the production of something more structured (for example, increasingly dense polyphony instead of homophonic and homorhythmic procedures).
What do you think?... I cannot conceive of anything that can be without form.
Even a thought, to express it (even just to oneself), must be formulated.
