(to be fair to Williams, I think he was initially trying to argue against
the notion that, while anyone can *consume* sugar, it takes an Olympic
pole-vaulter to - somehow, magically - *metabolise* the stuff. I feel
admiration for and annoyance with Williams in about equal measure; reading
Fred Inglis' biography of him tends to intensify both).
Dom
----- Original Message -----
From: "domfox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2001 7:43 AM
Subject: Re: Theory in Literature
> >Therefore poetry itself coincides with the ability to utter, shape and
> conceive languages as systems (of signs and symbols). Meaning (and I do
> believe this): every single human being makes poetry while speaking (in
fact
> the creation of metaphors is a main device for all languages and is an
> ability of all minds)
>
> Although the argument dates back at least to Shelley's "Defense of Poesy",
> with its claim that metaphor-making speech is original speech, this also
> reminds me somewhat of Raymond Williams' contention that cultural
creativity
> is intrinsic to human cognition and perception in general, and therefore
not
> the preserve of the "creative artist": we are all - men, women, bricks -
> "men of genius" in this sense. This isn't an empty egalitarian sentiment,
> but a (possibly factually true; at least testable, debateable)statement
> about the kind of thing that human minds are up to when they attempt to
make
> sense of their surrounding reality. The odd thing is that it does
> nevertheless get elided with an empty egalitarian sentiment that wants to
> disallow any specialised sense of "creative" (and is in fact opposed to
> specialisation in general - see Williams on, for instance, "culture" and
> "education"). It is one thing to observe that creative artists are human
> beings exercising a human faculty, and another to suppose that all
possible
> exercises of this faculty are equivalent: one might equally well argue
that
> because not only Olympic pole-vaulters but in fact all human beings
> metabolically transform sugar into kinetic energy, we are all Olympic
> pole-vaulters.
>
> Dom
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