I enjoyed the moonshine of your will-and-wave post awhile back, though in a
rather black-humored way as we'd just had to sell my husband's grandmother's
HUTCH (stirsky) for grocery money, which maybe I could have earned if I'd
been free to work at the time. No hard feelings, though--C
on 5/19/02 4:54 AM, Patrick Herron at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> What about taking the rose simply as the object that escapes a dream into
> reality? (Or forgive me for imitating any understanding of what you are
> discussing, and for not noticing that this was precisely your point.)
>
> "Around 1938 Paul Valery wrote that the history of literature should not be
> the history of the authors and the accidents of their careers or of the
> career of their works, but rather the history of the Spirit as the producer
> or consumer of literature. He add that such a history could be written
> without the mention of a single writer. It was not the first time that the
> Spirit had made such an observation."
>
> - from "The Flower of Coleridge," J.L. Borges
>
> I think it's important to consider the flower in the context of sleep, as in
> your Rilke quote. In the essay from which I quoted, Borges considers that
> the symbol of the rose surviving some sort of fantastic realization has
> happened over and over again without each author stealing the idea from the
> earlier authors. The rose as a symbol of the profound unity of the
> fantastic and the real is a sort of symbol for what Borges calls "the
> profound unity of the word." Coleridge, William James, H.G. Wells all used
> this symbol, albeit in different ways. Rilke's rose dreamt, perhaps without
> a dreamer. Just a rose.
>
> Borges' four page essay changed my life. I think it is my favorite Borges
> essay. On a practical level it's about imitation and plagiarism. On
> another, it's about something far greater, that greater something perhaps at
> once both illusory and real. Something that makes our selves not so
> important. One dark dream delivered a rose. Yes, the blending of self and
> other, and life and death, but also the blending of sleep and wakefulness,
> understanding and mystification, signifier and signified, reality and
> illusion, and the self and no-self.
>
> Of course my general lack of understanding of Italian may help me to
> completely misunderstand your conversation, or, worse, lead me to repeat
> everything you've already said. I hope you at least find my comments
> foolishly comic.
>
> Best,
> Patrick
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc provides a venue for a dialogue relating to poetry and
> poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Erminia
> Passannanti
> Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 4:09 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Rosa, oh pura contraddizione....
>
>
> I am posting this again, since I edit is with the wrong subject.
>
>
> Cara Anny,
>
> nei "Sonetti a Orfeo" e nelle "Elegie duinesi", opere della maturità di
> Rainer Maria Rilke, si assite a una vera e propria ascesi della parola che
> tenta di continuo il varco verso l'Altro. E con Altro, in Rilke si
> intende l'inconoscibile.
>
> Mi chiedevo se tu fossi a conoscenza di testi di altri autori tedeschi in
> cui compare la 'rosa' nel simbolismo medesimo, o affine, della fase
> poetica in questione in cui Rilke concepisce e realizza questi topoi
> attraverso una crisi dei propri mezzi espressivi, profonda ed emblematica
> di tutta la lirica continentale mittel-europea novecentesca.
>
> Parlo della stagione che, se ha influenzato nel profondo la grande crisi
> della razionalità sperimentata in tutta Europa all'inizio del secolo
> scorso, è rimasta comunque meno indagata.
>
> Vi sono, che tu sappia, altre liriche che ripropongono il tema
> della 'rosa', nella stessa accezione usata in questa lingua rilkiana che
> giungerà al massimo di contrazione estetica, e di senso, nel celebre
> epitaffio che egli detta 'Rosa, oh pura contraddizione / piacere d'essere
> il sonno di nessuno / sotto tante palpebre,' in quella che possiamo senza
> tema definire l'assoluta accelerazione delle esperienze culturali più
> avanzate e dell'evidente supremazia lirica e filosofica della lingua e del
> pensiero tedesco all'interno della tradizione continentale mittel-europea
> a cui faccio riferimento.
>
> Buona domenica, Erminia
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