cris -- I guess I should comment here, as it was I who brought up the notion
of "hollow times" -- as the standard translation of Hölderlin's line: "Wozu
Dichter in _dürftiger_ Zeit?" And you are right that the word "hollow" if
applied to our (or H's times) is questionable. (For one, for me, too eliotian
/ elitistic, i.e. shades of the hollow men, & where are we speaking from to
make such an assumption?) In fact the original German word, "dürftig" would be
better translated with something like "needy" thus "in times of need" (which I
wld consider these times to be).
"dürftig" in fact derives from the verb "dürfen" which means "to have the
right, the permission, the power to do something; to have grounds to do
something." So that "dürftig" then points to the lack, the absence of that
right, permission or power to do something. I would thus read Hölderlin's line
as applying to our fin-de-siècle situation in that we are in "Disempowered
times" i.e. that the right and power to act have to a great extent been
removed from us -- citoyens & citoyennes! aux armes! -- and belong to those
impersonal, not to so say inhuman, structures and institutions that mark late
global capitalism and for which the official _national_ political structures
(our one permission, to vote inside a given border) are only an easily
manipulable coverup, a decoy.
pierre
cris cheek wrote:
> Hi,
>
> a couple of weeks back, reeling around in the whirl of transport and
> keeping an eye on mail, i saw and wanted to comment on but then deleted, by
> mistake, references by Doug and Tony to living in 'hollow times'.
>
> It disturbed me, sufficiently to have chatted with others this week about
> it. Is this true? How hollow? Compared to what other times are these
> hollow? Are you making personal or more general observations? What is
> implicit behind the assignation of 'hollow'?
>
> anybody fancy this baton? If hollow, for example, suggests resonance then
> I'm beginning to come around to the notion.
>
> love and love
> cris
>
> ps - if this is effectively a repeat post, it's because the first time i
> asked this question it either didn't get delivered, or was sent to some
> unfortunate as a backchannel communication.
--
========================
Pierre Joris
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http://www.albany.edu/~joris/
6 Madison Place
Albany NY 12202
tel: 518 426 0433
fax: 518 426 3722
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Nomadism answers to a relation that
possession cannot satisfy.
— Maurice Blanchot
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