If I can just insert a little thought here, even though I'm out of
playtime altogether for today and am being quite naughty doing so: I
remember Will's use of this idea of the celestial as doing just what
Alison and Leona call for below. If I heard well, and that's always a
question, Will's translation was deeply intriguing because this particular
celestial was just that -- particular to the culture it was extracted
from. Its 'translation' will always be a matter of trying and always
failing to fully mine what in every language is a metonymic stratification
of meanings related to historical representations and trauma. How to
translate those, and their impact on the ostensible 'meaning' of lexical
and phrasal units?
But I must finish this thought later, with return to Will's presented
work, because I'm late, I'm late. Anyone want to correct me or add to my
memory of the above?
On Mon, 22 Apr 2002, Leona Medlin wrote:
> >From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
> >Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 07:25:41 +1000
> >>If "celestial writing" means transcendent writing, then hasn't that
> >always been present in literature? And hasn't always the difficulty
> >been how to bring it down to earth and to stop the transcendent from
> >distilling into immuntable Truth, ie God, a projection of our present
> >and historical "human nature" onto eternity?
> >
> Yes. And yes.
>
> >At 10:35 AM +0000 21/4/02, Leona Medlin wrote:
> >>The "few significant patterns" (that is, he believes
> >>there are others as well) Lawler examines in what he claims is only a
> >>provisional manner are chiasm and parenthesis; enjambment; coda of
> >>reversal;
> >>coda of irony; prepositionalising, refrains, journey motifs;
> >>mono-polysylabbic collisions and oscillatory imagery. For example, there
> >>is
> >>an extended passage where he discusses the wave and particle theories of
> >>physics, and their paradoxical unification in the work of Niels Bohr, as
> >>patterned in some poems of Hopkins.
> >Alison again:
> >I have obviously not read the writers you mention when I say that I
> >don't understand how poetic or linguistic tropes can embody the
> >things he claims; my instant reaction is to say they are effects of
> >human language to which we attach humanly created meanings, but in
> >themselves - what do they mean? Do they exist on the same level as
> >natural phenomena, or are they something different (the injection of
> >consciousness? is the universe conscious and feeling, as some claim?)
> I wouldn't have time before the weekend to go into the how; Lawler gives
> very detailed examples, arguements and explanations which are at least
> interesting to me, if not always completely convincing.
> >I don't know whether writing is ultimately done in the hope of a
> >better world, but I might be kidding myself here; writers may _think_
> >it does that, but maybe writing has a different idea.
> Note that I'm not suggesting that writing is done in the hope of a better
> world, though I know some writers believe that of their own writing. Lawler
> is not suggesting that either, by my reading, and I'm sorry if I gave that
> impression. His interest is in the material and human nature of the world we
> live in and us in it, and how certain deep patterns in it and us are made
> outward in certain patterns of language, and how those patterns give the
> poems in which they occur the power to -- what? -- move us deeply, I guess
> would be one way of putting it. He draws examples from many poets, using
> poems he would have been able in 1979 to have assumed his audience know, but
> his touchstones are Blake ("When in doubt read... ") and Wallace Stevens
> ("If still in doubt read ... "). Today, and for the audience of this list,
> I suspect he would also use Prynne. What struck me was the echos I heard in
> what cris wrote of things in the Lawler book, and of course in Stevens'
> work, especially The Man with the Blue Guitar and To One of Fictive Music.
>
> Cheers
> Leona
> >
> >Best
> >
> >Alison
> >--
> >
> >"The only real revolt is the revolt against war."
> > Albert Camus
> >
> >Alison Croggon
> >Home page
> >http://www.users.bigpond.com/acroggon/
> >
> >Masthead Online
> >http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/
>
>
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