File spoon-archives/nietzsche.archive/nietzsche_2001/nietzsche.0112, message 11


From: "Frank W. Stevenson" <t22006-AT-cc.ntnu.edu.tw>
Subject: Re: milkman
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:22:45 +0800



----- Original Message -----
From: "edwin ruda" <edwin.ruda-AT-verizon.net>
To: <nietzsche-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 10, 2001 11:16 PM
Subject: Re: milkman


> > "Frank W. Stevenson" wrote:
>
> > when one is trying to "solve" metaphysical puzzles one can only
> > go back into the "mystery" of poetic language itself (rhythm, rhyme,
> > phonemes and syntax for their own sake) (i.e. poem as sort of
self-reflexive
> > design) (perhaps derrida in "What is Poetry": poem as hedgehog.
>
> Frank,
>
> I do appreciate the extent of your argument, but not your
> intent to parallel poetic mystery with metaphysical
> puzzles. The play of rythm, sound, and "meanings," would
> seem to defy the unity of metapysical foundations rather
> than promote them


it's exactly dickinson's pt. (i think) and would have been mine if i'd tried
to make myself clear. (well, but i did put "solve" in quotation marks
above--and also "mystery"...) D in poems like "The Brain is Wider than the
Sky" seems to suggest that we could never actually "know" the relationship
between (human) mind and God--or indeed the "meaning" of either of these
terms--and that all we can do by way of "approaching" this is to "fall back
into" the language of the poem itself....(thus perhaps laying bare its
aporia-nature, impassability or non-approachability, as opposed to
irreproachability): "The brain is just the weight of God, / For heft them,
pound for pound / And they will differ, if they do / As syllable from
sound....." Perhaps then we are always embedded within a language/textuality
which suggests to us the possibility of metaphysical ideas/transcendental
signifieds while already making clear that this is a (linguistic) chimera or
mirage...... But--especially when we include paradox or non-standard
langauge usage as a trope of language--this may seem to be the only way we
could have "solved" or even attempted to solve these metaphysical
puzzles--like D's last line in "I Heard a Fly Buzz When I Died" (on the
question of eternity, God, "life after death"): "I could not see to
see".....  fws



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