Nov 29, 2016

Arthur Schopenhauer, 19th century philosopher from Germany, had this to say about Eminem:

"The sign by which we recognize most immediately the genuine poet, of the higher as well as of the lower species, is the easy and unforced nature of his rhymes. They have occurred automatically as if by divine decree; his ideas come to him already in rhyme. On the other hand, the homely, prosaic person seeks the rhyme for the idea, the bungler seeks the idea for the rhyme. We can very often find out from a couple of rhymed verses which of the two has the idea as its father, and which the rhyme. The art consists in concealing the latter, so that such verses do not appear almost as mere stuffed-out [verses composed to set rhymes].

... Least of all do accumulations of rhymes merit the heavy sacrifices that they cost...Such accumulations are the cause of the spiritual and mental torture with which we sometimes read these productions; for under such severe mental effort poetical pleasure is impossible.

That the great poetic mind can sometimes overcome even those forms and their difficulties, and move about in them with ease and grace, does not conduce to a recommendation of the forms themselves; for in themselves they are just as ineffective as they are tedious. And even when good poets make use of these forms, we frequently see in them the conflict between the rhyme and the idea, in which now the one and then the other gains the victory. Thus either the idea is stunted for the sake of the rhyme, or else the rhyme has to be satisfied with a feeble approximation."

There we have it. A 19th century philosopher basically told Eminem to stop forcing his rhymes and bring meaning back into his lines.

I have to mention @WPG for this.