Template:Did you know nominations/René Ghil

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 01:29, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

René Ghil

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René Ghil
René Ghil

Created/expanded by Satdeep Gill (talk) and KCVelaga (talk). Nominated by KCVelaga (talk) at 05:00, 30 August 2018 (UTC).

  • Article creation and filing dates okay. Article length okay. Article sourcing and neutrality seem okay. No obvious copyvio's seen (many of the sources are foreign language anyway). QPQ perfunctory but done.
  • However I have a problem with the hook, and with the underlying statement in the article: I find it really hard to believe that Ghil is "the only known poet in history to challenge the system of symbolic poetry". First of all, what exactly is this system of symbolic poetry? Is this a reference to some particular school of poetry writing or poetry criticism? Or just a reference to any poem that uses symbolism? Secondly, poems have been written in every form imaginable and breaking every convention imaginable. I'm sure there have been many poems outside the symbolic system, whatever that is.
  • Other comments. "Death and later" section might be better titled "Death and legacy". Since Ghil's poetry is supposed to be incomprehensible, it would be very useful to include a brief excerpt of some of it (under fair use guidelines, if it is still under copyright). Don't know how much got translated to English, but I see that the first page of the Acquisto article has a sample. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:20, 13 September 2018 (UTC)
@Wasted Time R: Thanks for reviewing this. Yes, symbolic poetry is a school of poetry writing prevalent in some part of Europe during the 19th century. Anyways, I've removed the statement of "only poet in history" from the article, am proposing a new hook. I did so because; even though there are a couple of sources which state that, but it still remains unclear why and what led to arrive at this particular claim. Having this sentence may create confusion for readers, and also it is an exceptional claim, which requires an exceptional source, and at present, we don't have any. So I removed the sentence. I also renamed the section and added the sample from Acquisto article. I don't think it still has copyright because works get into PD after 70 years of author's death in France, it must have been into PD in 1995. Here is the new hook:
ALT1: ... that René Ghil, a French poet, worked towards developing an ideal poetic language that would "subsume and supersede all the other arts", by establishing his own system of verbal instrumentation? Source: Acquisto 2004, p. 28. KCVelaga (talk) 12:47, 15 September 2018 (UTC)
@KCVelaga: Good that that claim has been removed. Regarding ALT1, I am unclear here, and in the text, on who is using the phase "subsume and supersede all the other arts"? Is it Ghil, or some historian describing Ghil's aims, or some later critic's evaluation of Ghil's works? This is the kind of quote that needs in-text attribution. In addition, I've noticed some issues with the last sentence in the article. Who are Bobillot and Illouz – biographers? critics? Shouldn't their first names be included when mentioning them? And what is "the public thing"? Wasted Time R (talk) 12:39, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
@Wasted Time R: Yes, you are right, I should have mentioned author, my bad. I've added the author both in the article and the hook as well. As for the last line, I've added their first names and linked "the public thing". KCVelaga (talk) 12:53, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
This attribution change was beneficial to the article but it pushed the hook well over the 200-character limit. And on second thought, hooks are allowed to be not fully explained (that can be part of the hookiness), so there is no need to attribute the quote in that context. Accordingly I have reverted ALT1 to what you originally had. This is now good to go. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:37, 16 September 2018 (UTC)