[lit-ideas] Re: 'P' For ...
- From: Chris Bruce <bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 17:11:19 +0200
A couple of weeks ago I posted the 'poem'
"'P' for Poetry Month (13th) - A Word or Two ..."
as my offering for the 13th of April (I have appended
it below my signature for those of you who have 'lost'
it). Now I would like to post some of the (long overdue)
commentary which I intended to include with it.
In this posting I will for the most part limit
myself to 'meta-commentary' dealing primarily with
reading(s) (of) the 'poem'.
I use the 'scare quotes' here (around 'poem') because my
'offering' is in fact merely the juxtaposition of two quotations
which I originally thought to send to initiate discussion of
some aspects of a topic not unsuitable for this list (especially
during poetry month) - the relationship between poetry and
philosophy. Although the 'title' includes the phrase "'P' for
Poetry", the 'P' stands for (at least) *two* words in the original
quotations (hence the 'subtitle' - 'A Word or Two'): 'poetry'
and 'philosophy'.
The first 'stanza' of my 'poem' is (as no doubt many of you
recognized) a quotation from W.H. Auden's "In Memory of
W.B. Yeats" (with the substitution of 'P' for 'poetry'). The
remaining 'stanzas' are (as I'm sure not a few of you also
recognized) a form of 'found poetry' (with the substitution
of 'P' for 'philosophy') taken from remarks 124 - 128 of
(Anscombe's translation of) Wittgenstein's _Philosophical
Investigations_. (I insisted on the ellipsis [...] in the title
in part because there are 'ellipses' in my 'quotation'. I took
care to place them - 'unseen' in both a literal and figurative
sense - at the ends of 'lines'.)
I thus intendeded several 'readings' of the 'poem' - with the
substitution 'poetry' and 'philosophy' for 'P' either in separate
'monological' readings or in various 'dialogical' voicings. (One
can also, with the minor grammatical alteration throughout
necessary for agreement with a 'plural' subject, substitute the
words 'propositions' and 'poems'. And of course one can
substitue *any* particular phrase for 'P' ....)
About the actual 'dialogue' between poetry and philosophy -
and in particular between those quotations from Auden and
Wittgenstein - I will post at a later date. I will here, however,
remark that I have departed on this dialogue keeping firmly in
mind (especially while 'invisibly inserting' the aforementioned
ellipses) another passage from Wittgenstein's _Philosophical
Investigations_ (this time from the preface - again in
Anscombe's translation):
"[The idea of publishing my work] used ... to be revived from
time to time: mainly because I was obliged to learn that my
results ..., variously misunderstood, more or less mangled
or watered down, were in circulation. This stung my vanity
and I had difficulty in quieting it."
In my defence I will state (for now, and *argue* later) that the
ellipses in my 'poem' are not a 'mangling' or 'watering down';
rather they are to serve as foreshadowing for the 'decadence'
inherent in, and necessary for, (what I will term, borrowing from
Adorno in acknowledgement of his lessons) a - or perhaps, *the*
-'negative dialectic' on / between / about poetry and philosophy
(which I will undertake, or at least attempt to introduce, in at least
one other posting).
Chris Bruce
Kiel, Germany
'P' For Poetry Month (13th)
- A Word or Two ...
For P makes nothing happen: it survives
in the valley of its making
P may in no way interfere with the actual
it can in the end only describe it.
It leaves everything as it is.
It is the business of P,
not to resolve a contradiction by means of a
discovery, but to make it possible for us
to get a clear view of the state
that troubles us; the state of affairs
*before* the contradiction is resolved.
(And this does not mean
that one is sidestepping a difficulty.)
P simply puts everything before us,
and neither explains nor deduces anything.
- Since everything lies open to view
there is nothing to explain.
If one were to advance *theses* in P,
it would never be possible to to debate them,
because everybody would agree to them.
Chris Bruce
Kiel, Germany
--
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
