Hi Liz,
Oh, that's supposed to be "lovely" not "love," haha, but then
I was thinking of Weil's quote "love is only a direction"
so it slipped into the keys.
Best,
Rebecca
-------Original Message-------
From: Rebecca Seiferle <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 04/08/03 10:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Simone Weil/what it takes to read a poem
>
> Hi Liz,
Thanks for the quote, it is love and so Weil, the emphasis
upon intelligence rather than sin, food rather than forgiveness,
attention rather than love, though it is not really 'rather'
but a kind of different correspondence, so that food and forgiveness
are altered by being so linked. It reminds me of that image
she often evoked from the Bhavadgita "there are two birds
perched on the branches of the selfsame tree; one of them eats
the fruits thereof, the other looks on in silence." I have to say,
too, that I think her thought has sort of permeated my own, it's
hard to say exactly how, for it's like rain seeping into limestone.
Yes, gardening is a great thing, especially when the weeds tear
free of the ground.
The disdain for the body is, I think,
one of the fundamentals of Western culture. It's in all those myths,
both Biblical and Greek where the head is severed from the body.
The belief in detached reason, the disembodied eye/I, the body
abandoned without the means of speech, hearing, or sight. So
Medusa "the lovely, the lively-locked" become a horror of
a head to hang upon Athena's shield (herself born only of her
father's head, a full grown creature of thought).
Best,
Rebecca
-------Original Message-------
From: Liz Kirby <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 04/07/03 03:16 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Simone Weil/what it takes to read a poem
>
> Rebecca - I agree with you about the uncomfortable elements in
SW'sthinking..... there is a horror of the body and an undelying violence
there - something that your posts in the last few days have touched on in
other contexts. It is bedded very deep in our culture I think, and 'the
physical/nature' is so closely tied to the feminine in the framework.....
a
whole trail of connections that are very pliable, strong and hard to dig
out. (I have been weeding in my little garden! A very comforting thing to
do. As Erin says 'gardening is always anti-war')
I saw a link here too with some of Alison's discussion of how to read a
poem
in an ealier post, so I would like to quote SW again, this time from
'Letter
To a Priest' Section 26......
"... when one gives one's whole attention to a wholly beautiful piece of
music (and the same applies to architecture, painting, [poetry]ect)the
intelligence finds therein nothing to affirm or deny. But all the soul's
faculties, including the intelligence, become slient and are wrapped up in
listening. The listening itself is applied to an incomprehensible object,
but one which contains a part of reality and of good. And the
intelligence,
which annot seize hold of any truth therin, finds therein nevertheless a
food.
I believe that the mysetery of the beautiful in nature and in the arts
(but
only in art of the very first order, perfect or nearly so) is a sensible
reflection of the mystery of faith."
_square brackets are my inclusion_
Liz
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