Did anyone else cringe in response to that "simple-hearted" in the Oliver
quotation below? I have a deep suspicion of oppositions between poetry and
you-name-it that cast the poet in an implied parallel position of mystic,
shaman, pope--some sort of Overspeaker for truth in general or true feeling
in particular, someone with a unique access to the human heart in everything
but the physiological sense. And if we must have recourse to "heart" in this
metaphoric emotional sense, why need it be "simple"? Is the simple more
truthful? Why not the "large," say, as in Nietzsche's "when your heart flows
broad and full like a river, a blessing and a danger to those living near:
there is the origin of your virtue"?
Here the "you-name-it" is "literary philosophy," by which is meant theory,
presumably, given "such theorists are dangerous guides." Compared to whom?
Well, not a who at all, it seems, but a what: "the poem." And "dangerous
guides" to what or where? "Areas where the poem" evinces something spiritual
to "the simple-hearted." Who are these people, I wonder, and how does the
poem come to be in the business of not only cardiac correction but also
spirit infusion?
By the same analogical token, "literary philosophy" would seem to be cast as
the bad cholesterol of the feeling heart, "dangerous" because it blocks the
metabolism of "spirit" apparently. But isn't "literary philosophy" a pretty
apt descriptor of some kinds of poetry, and "literary philosopher" a
definition that could arguably apply to both Nietzsche and, say, Charles
Olson?
Alison, quoting Doug Oliver:
> What does it mean to talk of spirituality in poetry when no religious
> belief lies behind the inquiry? An unfashionable question... Literary
> philosophy cannot escape scepticism or programmatic ambiguity about
> spiritual issues because we are trapped in a web of language, doomed, it
> seems, to disbelieve in the unity of self and of artistic forms: along
> with that, goes a loss of spirit. Such theorists are dangerous guides in
> areas where the poem, on the other hand, can make evident to the
> simple-hearted: "This happened - spirit entered language and
> simultaneously I perceived such and such sights, spoke such and such
> words."
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