File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2001/heidegger.0109, message 153


From: "Blank" <gulio-AT-sympatico.ca>
Subject: Re: Poesis II: hiding from big bird
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 14:20:41 -0400


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Re: Poesis II: hiding from big birdDear Allen,

You were asking what if the hidden doen't show itself in words? I started reading reading Beckett and what impresses me about reading Malone Meurt for instance is _how_ he uses words in such a way that their sense are taken away in a sort of art of disappearnace, a purifying abstraction that shows the nothing that 'is' there. A kind of literary suicide perhaps, or the "old shipwreck" which is an expression that comes up in this novel, a disaster showing nothing but the dust and debris of twisted metal and broken glass... ultimately Beckett it seems "helpful" reading because afterwards we are left with an abstraction that is boring and somehow life is more empty. On this list we don't talk enough about how to do this sort of abstract writing. Sure, it's not a message because the effacement of words leaves nothing to decipher perhaps it borders on painting with words as much as it could be a sound; Beckett, or Mallarme for that matter, would say a "murmur", or a "rustling of leaves" to use an old image. What is left of words but their own ruin, their failure to express some tragedy, some terror? That seems to me the challenge but the truly macabre  and comical is that one could just as much be speaking of love, especially unrequited love, the terror of falling in love. A heart is broken because something precious is taken away, say, the subtance of words as their meaning or legibility. The writer or reader is left without a voice, speechless, with an impossibly weak and poor expression. If something is taken away then it's effect is like that of something being interdicted and prohibited, a limit is impossed on expression which takes away the power of speaking about anything. It could only be a strange kind of possibility, of a caring that borders more on insensibility and indifference than anything else. You say we shouldn't be too trusting. That is an interesting, ordinary topic. The word "trust" is so used up we hardly know how to discuss trust. I know I'm not sure what to say. Is it not the same as saying, for instance, that we should love, or be attached as little as possible? Love is perhaps a useless human emotion?

Gulio

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Re: Poesis II: hiding from big bird
Dear Allen,
 
You were asking what if the hidden doen't show itself in words? I started reading reading Beckett and what impresses me about reading Malone Meurt for instance is _how_ he uses words in such a way that their sense are taken away in a sort of art of disappearnace, a purifying abstraction that shows the nothing that 'is' there. A kind of literary suicide perhaps, or the "old shipwreck" which is an expression that comes up in this novel, a disaster showing nothing but the dust and debris of twisted metal and broken glass... ultimately Beckett it seems "helpful" reading because afterwards we are left with an abstraction that is boring and somehow life is more empty. On this list we don't talk enough about how to do this sort of abstract writing. Sure, it's not a message because the effacement of words leaves nothing to decipher perhaps it borders on painting with words as much as it could be a sound; Beckett, or Mallarme for that matter, would say a "murmur", or a "rustling of leaves" to use an old image. What is left of words but their own ruin, their failure to express some tragedy, some terror? That seems to me the challenge but the truly macabre  and comical is that one could just as much be speaking of love, especially unrequited love, the terror of falling in love. A heart is broken because something precious is taken away, say, the subtance of words as their meaning or legibility. The writer or reader is left without a voice, speechless, with an impossibly weak and poor expression. If something is taken away then it's effect is like that of something being interdicted and prohibited, a limit is impossed on expression which takes away the power of speaking about anything. It could only be a strange kind of possibility, of a caring that borders more on insensibility and indifference than anything else. You say we shouldn't be too trusting. That is an interesting, ordinary topic. The word "trust" is so used up we hardly know how to discuss trust. I know I'm not sure what to say. Is it not the same as saying, for instance, that we should love, or be attached as little as possible? Love is perhaps a useless human emotion?
 
Gulio
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