Thank you Jill, Ken and Rebecca, one feels much gratified when her/his work
is positively commented. The guilt described is a Christian one, with all
the tinges attributed to it, as Kenneth intuited. Also the ones Rebecca
highlights, in the sense that the snapshot has a fundamental negative
imprint.
And Rebecca goes further:
Isn't it like ennui
> or angst, (any of those feelings that is a 'state' more than
> a feeling), thought to be so symptomatic of modern life that a protagonist
> may be characterized by guilt or angst etc. and not feel
> anything else, the complex state precluding other feeling
> which for all that it may be real or intense or various is
> not so attached to oneself, though perhaps it's that one's
> sense of identity is attached to it?
Exactly, a preclusion of everything else. Or, one's sense of identity is
attached to it. -
I am not describing myself, but a process, even if the "I" is the main
voice. Or better, one of the infinite I's, part of the self; or one of the
infinite selves part of the I.
Anny Ballardini
http://www.fieralingue.it/poetcorner/index.php
If you go with rivers, not roads, the trip
takes longer and you weave and see a lot more.
(from Houses)
Richard Hugo
From: "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
> I like your snap too, Anny, and find your questions, Ken,
> "Guilt as a way to ward off what kind of paralysis if not a
> sort of moral inertia? Guilt as better than the absence of
> intensity?" very interesting. That sort of argument for
> guilt as a kind of 'better-than-statis-state' as if it had some
> saving quality, which does seem very Catholic. But on
> the other hand, I wonder as I do with all 'saving' qualities,
> if they don't create the very predicament from which
> one must be 'saved.' For instance, isn't guilt a kind of
> paralysis in itself? and is it better than the absence of
> intensity or a substitute for it, like those complex feelings
> which catch up all other feelings in their various intensities
> in a net? If I am feeling 'guilty' for having stolen a peach
> from my neighbor's tree, ala Augustine, I am probably neither
> eating it nor giving it back and so the intensities of those feelings
> that attend the eating of it or the giving of it back are all
> muted, submerged in the paralysis of guilt which neither
> feels nor does anything but feel itself. Isn't it like ennui
> or angst, (any of those feelings that is a 'state' more than
> a feeling), thought to be so symptomatic of modern life that a protagonist
> may be characterized by guilt or angst etc. and not feel
> anything else, the complex state precluding other feeling
> which for all that it may be real or intense or various is
> not so attached to oneself, though perhaps it's that one's
> sense of identity is attached to it?
>
> Well, I know this is far from the poem, I'm just wondering,
> it has occurred to me lately that I don't really understand
> guilt. And thanks for the snap, Anny, and I'm glad you got
> the Comfy Chair, Ken,
>
> Best,
>
> Rebecca
>
> Rebecca Seiferle
> www.thedrunkenboat.com
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Nov 19, 2003 7:56 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: snapshot
>
> Much here to fascinate. Really almost a moral drama, greatly
> understated. Guilt as a way to ward off what kind of paralysis if not a
> sort of moral inertia? Guilt as better than the absence of
> intensity? Love this:
>
> >you end up discovering
> >
> >the same old riddle
> >
> >in the middle of your intention
>
> I read simple acceptance of a cycle. Maybe that is me. "Intention" seems
> in this context a profoundly Catholic word--intentions, desires,
> interrupted by repetitive uncertainty. This is how things are. Even
guilt
> is something to be accepted as a moral good.
>
> >your guiltiness
> >
> >protects against daily repeated paralyses
>
> Yes--guilt turned in another light, the better-than-stasis state. Almost
a
> subversive poem that reduces me to jagged phrases.
>
> Ken
>
> -------------------------
> Kenneth
> Wolman http://www.kenwolman.com
> http://kenwolman.blogspot.com
> "Sometimes the veil between human intelligence and animal intelligence
> wears very thin--then one experiences the supreme thrill of keeping a cat,
> or perhaps allowing oneself to be owned by a cat."--Catherine Manley
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