Oh, but they do receive attention - one just doesn't always react
overtly to what one attends to (think of all those lurkers...). You seem
to be suffering from Insufficient Attention Disorder ;-)
>Think about a complex German sentence, which, until it's capped with a
verb prefix at the very end, may not be clear as to its meaning or even
entirely what it's talking about.< Well, I often think about complex
German sentences - here's one where the whole doesn't quite make sense
until the semantic information delivered by the participle at the end
arrives: Sie gestand, sie habe eines Abends nach einem alkoholisierten
beiderseits vereinbarten Wiedersehen aufgrund verschiedener
gewalttätiger Übergriffe seinerseits und zugegebenermaßen in Erwartung
einer beträchtlichen Erbschaft den besagten schon lange getrenntlebenden
Ehegatten mit seiner Seidenkrawatte, die sie vor vielen Jahren
anlässlich seines Geburtstages in einem Berliner Modeschäft erstanden
habe, erdrosselt. But of course the Satzbau (which the late Gottfried
Benn thought was behind everything) is a form, infinitely variable, it
is true, a preexistent deep structure permitting precisely that longterm
expectancy of closure not to collapse into psycho-semantic chaos, just
as in music - as you say - the whole (the first movement of the
*Eroica*, say) only really fully makes sense at the end, if that
expectation has been set up, which requires a background (as Hans Keller
would say) to set up/off the foreground. If we agree on that - which is
somehow selbstredend, I feel - then there is a consensus - whether or
not the background is of a material or an ideal nature (they are two
sides of the same coin.) But I've seen a quite a bit of *pomo* poetry
that sets up no background & doesn't therefore succeed in creating a
foreground gestalt. And I agree with Pound that no vers is libre for the
poet wanting to do a good job, or words to that effect.
There's no etymology for "gingerly" apparently - a pity, as you say.
cheers
mjay
Mark Weiss wrote:
> Thanks for the kind thoughts, Martin--they serve as a reminder of what I
> was alluding to. My ideas apparently deserve no attention.
>
> Be nice to know the history ofthe word, how a common spice became
> synonymous with apprehensiveness.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
> At 11:54 AM 1/6/2005, you wrote:
>
>> Mark wrote
>> >This is an area I enter gingerly, as it's essentially the same set of
>> ideas I proposed some time ago and got clobbered by incomprehension for
>> my troubles.<
>>
>> '"I weep for you", the Walrus said, "I truly sympathize"'....
>>
>> "Gingerly" * is* a lovely word, innit?
>>
>> cheers
>> mjay
>
>
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