>>> I read Keston's post as stating that the totality "allows" meaning,
rather than provides it. That is to say, whatever "meaning" a poem (etc.)
might contain, only beocmes valid when it is viewed in relation to the
things that surround it, and in turn, the things that surround them, etc.
"Meaning" is something which necessarily preys upon relationships and
contexts, and a failure to view poetry (or x, y, me, you, etc.) as part of a
totality must result in a lack of "meaning"; after all, a poem's situation
in relation to its readers, author, other poems etc., the various
relationships it exists within, are a fundamental part of it's being, and
therefore I suggest, its "meaning" as well.
I see no problem with this. Of course and indeed, it must be so. This is a
succinct and modest version of an essential condition to the tranfer
enacted in poetry and elsewhere, what I usually call the "constant
elsewhere". But it doesn't necessarily make the notional outer margin of
that vision "the origin of meaning". Why could you not have a vision
which saw meaning as moving constantly from the human out through those
necessary gyres to the limits of thought, and rebounding back and forth?
Would that not be just as unprovable, and just as large-scale? We receive
meaning from our company, who receive it from theirs, from history, and we
bend it to our purposes. That it is possible (rather than "allowed" which
is too schoolmasterly) by the conditions of the human entirety, as that by
the astro-physical, is certain, as also that those reaches are themselves
integral to sense, but the directions of movement in that circus are as we
decide to appoint them, or leave them as an outer chaos. I'm trying to
avoid authority presiding over the total, in favour of authenticity, so
that the totality clinging to a particular connection is not power over it,
but a power of it, a reach, held back, grounded on experience. And I'm
trying to steer out of a vision of hierarchic descent which, for whatever
reason, and by whatever logic, I don't care, risks diminishing the acts of
the individual to a function of a higher entity. It is, as a matter of
fact, principally a matter of tone. The condition is undoubtedly such,
but the tone of our seeing it betrays us.
So what I mean by saying that meaning does not derive from the totality of
relations is no more than: we cannot say so, or it is better not to say
so, because the individual effort to pronounce then becomes bound in a
structure of fidelity which finds its ultimate goal so far beyond the
particular that it must drain the message of hope. We end up redundant
witnesses of our own acts. The "meaning" of a word such as "love" is a
deep responsibility which cannot be handed over to an unknown as its
ultimate source and authenticator. It requires versatility. I believe this
beyond all place names and artistic forms in the world.
By tautological I mean when the totality of relations (an unknown) is
defined as that which is the origin of meaning (another unknown). That's
the only way I can make the statement true.
These are just my personal takes on these matters. I incline to believe
what will support what I think needs to be written. I couldn't possibly
assert a case. My problem with Keston's missives (perhaps other people
find this too?) is that I don't think he thinks he has a personal take on
anything, but absolute objective authority. So he can't be argued with,
only bowed to or contradicted. Yet that long piece of reasoning seems to
me to be full of choices.
/PR
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