Yes, I agree, especially since baroque defined itself from the outset (17th
c.) as a refusal to reconcile the ornamental/flamboyant with its extreme
expression in the grotesque. The mask is one way of depicting that refusal,
just as kitsch is one way of valorizing it. But I think the confusion of
terms (if not of aesthetics) between Erminia and Mark (BOTH of whom I ALWAYS
read!) may turn more on post/modern than on neo-baroque. What Deleuze does
with Descartes and Leibniz in THE FOLD: LEIBNIZ AND THE BAROQUE (with which
Jorie Graham then argues poetically in "The Guardian Angel of the Swarm") is
a postmodernizing of the baroque that could be termed neo-baroque, while
Lezama Lima's usage would be necessarily modernist--and, as Erminia and I
once agreed on another list, her poetry is as incorrigibly modernist as my
own!
Speaking of "swarm" (as Graham did again in titling her recent collection),
there was a review in yesterday's NY TIMES of 'EMERGENCE': THE LOGIC OF THE
SWARM by Steven Johnson, with an excerpt of its first chapter. "Swarm logic"
also goes by the name of "emergent behavior" and describes systems that
solve problems somehow by means of unintelligent elements assemblaged
(another Deleuzian term) for executive functioning. Very interesting and all
the more so for being part of the same zeitgeist Erminia is articulating, I
think. (Link to TIMES review and chapter excerpt follows.)
Candice
> This:
>
> At 10:30 AM +0100 9/10/01, Erminia H. Passannanti wrote:
>> The mask is there to typify the clash of these elements with the
>> unpersuasive reconciliation of the self with its stereotypes.
>
>
> is very astute.
>
>
>> Neo-Orphic and neo-experimentalists, minimalists and neo-crepusculars,
>> mannerists and post-modernists (that I mentioned in more detail in the
>> half-mocking and half-serious list I posted a couple of months ago to
>> Poetryetc) are all there struggling to make the language of poetry renovate
>> its codes and tools, often consuming authentic vocations in this effort.
>> But having, on the other hand, the duty to do so. The links between the
>> poet and the literary/cultural theorist is somehow unavoidable. I myself
>> do not believe in spontaneity and I hope that behind each poet there is a
>> project not merely a vent of words, an outburst of tears or joy, the desire
>> to give find expression for one’s wrath.
>> The baroque mask is there, for me, to suggest the artificiality of
>> such “post-modern” assimilation of genres and styles, the mendaciousness,
>> if you want, of the vicissitudes of literary theories, and therefore, in my
>> opinion, the elaboration of a mannerism that would dominate the all, and
>> this surely can suggest a return to a kind of disconcerting yet soothing
>> order. The mask is there to typify the clash of these elements with the
>> unpersuasive reconciliation of the self with its stereotypes. As Richard
>> Dillon is noticing, I am making a point to merely represent what I am
>> writing and what I aim to do…I was not describing what is going on. It is
>> my personal response to postmodernity and a turning point from my
>> collection Macchina (that is what Mistici will be). But yes, it is true
>> that especially in visual arts we are in the realm of postmodernist neo-
>> baroque. (?)
>> Thank you for getting involved in this discussion.I know that the majority
>> might disagree.
>> Erminia
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