Hi Doug:
Writing (hurriedly) in broad sympathy with your quotes from Creeley -
isn't writing a poem half curiosity to see what happens? Steiner also
suggested that art was a gamble on transcendence, which is an interesting
way of thinking about it; certainly a gamble. In his somewhat crazed
discussion on Nietzsche, Bataille says it's a gamble on divine laughter.
Whatever, it's a gamble. And a gambol.
>And all that... I think a writer is often
>telling something other than what many take to be the 'truth,' that is
>after all what we mean by fiction (& I am reminded about George Steiner's
>arguments that we really began to use language when we found out how to
>'lie' in it). But to do so as honestly as possible, being as 'true' to the
>art etc...?
>>
>>And should anything be left to the philosophers?
>
>Well, whatever gets them as far away from the quote 'real world' as
>possible...?
It was Picasso, wasn't it, who said famously "art is the lie that reveals
the truth"?
To be true means firstly to be faithful, or steadfast. That other
meaning of a kind of exterior mold with which one must be in accordance
(God, I suppose, as an ultimate Reality) does not attract me so much,
though absolutes are always seductive. And therefore to be resisted in
my all-too-human world.
Best
Alison
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