On Mon, 26 May 2003 19:18:56 +0100, Robin Hamilton
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Actually, I think the binary life/death distinction/interinvolvement is an
>oversimplification.>I once tried to work this out -- what does a full
range of responses to
>"life" involve? -- in a sort of Jungian mandala, the wings of which would
>be:eros / thanatos / potestas / caritas {agape} [the numinous]
- areas explored respectively by Freud/[Jung?]/Adler/Jung.
I initially worked this out in an attempt to understand the dynamics of
John
>Webster's play, _The Duchess of Malfi_, but felt it had a wider
relevance --
>What is human life all about?
>
>I liked it -- but then, everyone always does like their own mandala, don't
>they? -- comes with the territory.
>
>I'm beginning to wonder just how relevant this is, and feel a sense of
>tripidation as to how Mark Weiss will react, especially as I've outed
myself
>as a Jungian ...
>
>But for what it's worth, there it is.
>
>Robin

Hi robin,

Dualism is a spiritual cage, and yet the ability to survive between the
bars of contraries is an crucial skill: survive, between two poles, stay
alive in spite of persecution, death and misery, live to tell the tale,
developing the ability to pretend that the absurd of the life-death
opposition can be overcome. And it will be overcome with pray and
contemplation.
To turn one’s face to the wall,  to see what is behind the wall, beyond
execution.

 'You have no new message', and yet all messages are beyond that simple
statement one is due to receive, once old age is reached.  A gesture: the
wall, and beyond the wall, the spiritual life, the mind's mysticism, the
expectation of a  beyond, but here on earth, in the forest of our daily
relationships.

Slow death is the standpoint for the new life, as in Kafka, when the
parents take Gregor’s sister, their last hope, for a walk to the
countryside, while Gregor, their frustration, has been eliminated: it is
cruel and absurd, yet so true. I have nor eliminated yet from our gardens
the body of that beautiful young bird that my cat Mia killed. It stands
like a symbol. We shall never forget.

Hopefully, the new life of Gregor Samsa's sister is a life which starts
with the memory of her brothe’s calvary, the brother, the one who paid for
her music lessons, the brother she supported and whose 's decadence she
witnessed.

Slow death, the horror of dissolution, of the disease, the abjection.
Men are equally victims of this world's brutality. Less victims than
persecutors, still they too must die, in fear, in  solitude, forgotten,
maybe, in agony.

It will be proper to conclude my contribution (I am sick and tired  of
this thread)  to  the erotics or the nonerotics of poetry with an idea of
transcendence, which seeks no reassurance, no salvation, but bears eye-
witness to pain and metamorphosis, to the living processes and their
movement.

The going beyond the wall of death and of incomprehension, through  a
recognizable shared emotion, the one that makes one  day pass through a
street  in a foreign town, and see one’s loive alive in other beings.
Compassion, then, annunciation, memory.
Good bye, now. I shall return to the other side of the wall, where my
spirit shall wander free, where my mind will meet the moment when I shall
die, and thus see the feature of my spiritual rebirth (no, this is not
Heidegger’s Being and Time,


………..and, most of all…. I am not Kent. This is the second or third time
someone confuses the two of us. This person has not considered the
possibility that in this huge world there might be two people who share
some intellectual, artistic compatibilities, some common psychological,
cultural traits? I think Kent as most intelligent. So, this association
flatters me.
Kent has written to me last month. He spoke of Gabriel, and sent me an
interview between the two of them. I could nor think of a most decadent,
pointless and laughable exercise of reciprocal flattery. So I told him.
Probably he got offended. Who knows.
 I told him that in my new book Exstasis I have inserted a
long ‘absurdist’ dialogue between myself ( a persona, actually) and his
friend Gabe. I told him that the scene was set at  the Bologna train
station at 4.00 am, the day before the terrorist massacre. Kent passed the
information on to Gabe and then wrote again to say that Gabe was glad I
incorporated him in my new collection. Of course I did: I needed some
angelic presences.

But I repeat, Kent and I  are NOT the same person. Also, I have another
friend, in Salerno, who is called Gabriel, the Archangel, to whom I have
dedicated three poems. He is professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the
local University. His name is Gabriele Pulli. He has written extensively
on Calderon De LA Barca, and is an expert in neo-hermeneutics. I have
always be his pupil. He made me read the best philosophical work in the
history of Western though, and for free (meaning, he gave me as presents
all these books, without asking nothing in return: a true seraph, then).

So, I am not the same person as Kent, neither Kent is the same person as
Gabriel, neither Gabriel is the same person as Gabriele Pulli. We are all
together in abstract in the seventh sphere. I am entering now this
smoooooooooooth transition...............

erminia