File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_2000/phillitcrit.0008, message 351


Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 22:07:28 +0200 (MEST)
From: Jeremiah Luna <jeremiah.luna-AT-zdv.uni-tuebingen.de>
Subject: Re: PLC: Poetry, prose, fiction as meaningful


Finally it is nice to see a good email debate on  this list. I would say
it is a nice level of dialog here which I have seen failing in the
internet and in my own circles. I mean if you talk about this shit with
just anybody, or you talk this way with most people around here, they 
think you
are crazy. Chris Jones, I thought you began to get into some interesting
points. The whole roll of idealism and Hegel is important but I would say
that I think Hegel's philosophy as a whole does  not give poetry it proper
due, after all it is only valued with in the SUBORDINATE sphere of the
sciences: aesthetics. After all the highest science for Hegel is that of
dialectics and history. Poetry like all of the arts is the reification of
action, for Arendt. And we have to go back into Hegels' account of action
to see how he addresses the question of action before we make a judgement.
But more than this, in my opinion poetry is also an alternative religion,
after all look at Holderlin. Holderlin and many of the romantics revived
the classical greek notion of poet as "teller of the deeds of great men
and the gods" In this way the poet was not just someone who wrote per see
but rather akin to the soothsayers  and oracle priests. The Poet really
only has a social function within the context of a classical world view
where  he was more than a "man of letters" or a "novel writer" or
"craftsman of language." The poet was in my opinion should be a
"philosopher prophet" who rejects methodology in itself and opts for
reifying the unspeakable langauge of oracle. If one wants to be a Greek,
to find the new Greeks like Nietsche and Holderlin and Byron and maybe
some others, one must begin to reform classical thought as an everyday
practice, and since our western tradition is "already pretty far along
this road"  (Nietzsche).And "the gods have receded from the
world"(Holderlin) Poets can have meaning in society where the old laws or
muses still hold mortals in their influence. ie. fate, destiny,
necessity, fortuna, amor (venus), war (mars), hermes(messages) etc.       

Blahbing away for sheer amusement! 

jeremiah

ass editor
throw yourself down: a journal of radical theory and action
http://homepages.uni-tuebingen.de/student/jeremiah.luna/throwyourselfdown/

On Mon, 28 Aug 2000 zatavu-AT-excite.com wrote:

> Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2000 10:21:05 -0700 (PDT)
> From: zatavu-AT-excite.com
> Reply-To: phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> To: phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re: PLC: Poetry, prose, fiction as meaningful
> 
> 
> On Mon, 28 Aug 2000 11:10:26 -0500, phillitcrit-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> wrote:
> 
> >  You might want to remember that Percy Shelley called the distinction
> >  between poetry and prose a "vulgar error," and that Pound offered that
> >  poetry ought to be at least as well written as prose. In the final
> >  analysis one can say only, I would offer, that poetry can be
> >  distinguished from prose in that it is a freer form. Prose is obligated
> >  to fill the spaces between the margins, excepting paragraph divisions
> >  and chapter breaks. Poetry, on the other hand, can dispose itself on the
> >  page in any way likes.
> >  
> I can pretty much agree with this, as far as the writing of poetry and prose
> goes. Of course, please not that Pound said that poetry should be AT LEAST
> as well written as prose - implying that it should in fact be better written
> than prose. For me, though, poetry and prose represent two different ways of
> looking at the world. Poetry propounds truth. Not Truth, but truth. ANd what
> it says is truth in that poem. In another poem by the same author, we could
> find him stating yet another truth, or even an opposing truth to that first
> poem. WHich of these two opposing poems contains truth? THe answer is: both.
> Each, within the confines of that poem, propound truth. Fiction (I use this
> instead of prose, since prose can be used to write anything, of course) -
> and the novel especially - are less concerned about truth than about
> questions. They are more of investigations into existence, trying to uncover
> new aspects of existence through questions and subjectivity. In fiction, you
> are asked to find your own truth through the text; in poetry, you are asked
> to see the truth that the poem proclaims. That, at least, is the way I read
> poetry and fiction. SOmeone else likely has a differing opinion.
> 
> Troy Camplin
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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