I think, wrapped in the joke, is a perfectly serious statement: his
point about philosophy being a product of fear, for example. So he
is demanding from poetry a total fearlessness, which can be, in fact,
totally stupid, whatever semantics you want to play with. Muller
does have an aversion to a kind of intellection, quite a severe one:
pace his comments on Sassure in the same book.
Robert Musil wrote an essay on stupidity too, which I remember also
being quite funny, but I can't remember it very well. I might go and
look it up...
Best
Alison
>Hey thanks, Alison--this really is funny and much more consistent with the
>Muller who wrote all those smart plays and poems. But this would be the
>Muller who also knows perfectly well that Plato didn't want to keep the
>poets out of his republic because he thought they were stupid. Muller's just
>busting some prime Andre-chops here, not making a serious statement upon
>which we should reflect (for our sins), right?
>
>Candice
>
>
>> I didn't take it that David was valorising little r romantic idiocy
>> either. The quote comes from a rather testy interview called "Poets
>> Have To Be Stupid" published in the Semiotext(e) book "Germania".
>> The interview itself is pretty funny.
>>
>> "HEINER: Now we're back at the abysmal. You're constantly trying to
>> unmask me. That's why you're doing this interview. You shine this
>> flashlight on someone from your own abyss, and when there is nothing
>> you think he is unserious. In the end, your line of thought will
>> lead you to Plato's exile of the poet. Plato wished for a
>> philosopher state where there would not be any poets.
>>
>> ANDRE: Because they're too stupid?
>>
>> HEINER: Exactly, that's what he meant. And he was absolutely right.
>> Stupidity is a prerequisite for poets. I am a good example of this.
>> I just don't have the compulsion to think about anything. Maybe I
>> have too little fear. Philosophy is a product of fear, like
>> religion. One attempts to establish values when it isn't a question
>> of values at all, but of fear.
>>
>> ....
>>
>> ANDRE: Why do you so seldom tell the truth?
>>
>> HEINER: Because the truth requires the most imagination. And I am
>> no documentarist. What I write is always fiction and truth. A
>> combination between document and fiction. I find something and raise
>> it to a poetic form to create a distance. When I read it, it seems
>> like a dead man's text to me."
>>
>> If anything, it shows that Muller is not himself stupid, whatever he
>> says - but he rejects outright a number of things (his favourite
>> phrase is "I'm not interested"). He does however value something
>> else, which I cogitate as a kind of freedom. A bit like that quote
>> of Pasternak's - "a poet must be free of opinion, especially his own".
>>
>> Best
>>
>> A
>>
>>
>>>
>>> But who knows what Muller meant, absent original context and language.
>>> (Alison, can you fill those in?)
>>>
>>> Candice
--
Alison Croggon
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