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D.W.Winnicott saw play as a 'transitional' space or phenomenon which the
child uses to negotiate between inner psychic reality and the external world,
but which is within neither. There's some mileage, I think, in seeing the
poem or work of art, as analogous to this - so that the ludic aspects of
writing - like arranging words in particular order to obey certain rules or
so they sound a particular way - are not mere or pure play but serving some
kind of psychological function. I guess you could push the analogy to a
societal level so that poetic 'play' is a public transitional phenomenon,
whereby communities can learn to cope with the world not making the sense
they thought. You could see Bruce Andrew's poem in this light. I think play
can turn into fiddling while Rome burns, though, which was what I took Keston
to mean originally. A neurotic playfulness perhaps - like a middle-aged man
still obsessed with Subbuteo. That Strict and Peculiar moralist poet Tadeuz
Rosewicz criticised poets for that after the war: "and they play - they
forget that modern poetry is a struggle for breath' (quoted from memory, so
probably not 100% accurate.)
best,
Mark
--
Mark Robinson
Programme Director, Arts & Humanities
Centre for Lifelong Learning
32 Old Elvet
Durham
DH1 3HN
England
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[log in to unmask] wrote:
> breathing in and out in out etc it occurred to me that:
>
> Play in children is about discovering and extending relationships to the
> world and to other people, physical and linguistic abilities etc, and may
> be contemplative or absolutely the reverse: it is, in any number of ways,
> a method of exploring a child's realities. It's usually characterised by
> the most serious attention to the mundane, which to a child is of course
> not at all mundane. I don't mean anything cute by this - it seems to me
> that play, in the sense I mean here, a serious and attentive exploration
> of reality freed in fundamental ways from prior or external expectations,
> is the reverse of decadent and not inappropriate to art. Perhaps what is
> sometimes called play isn't playful at all.
>
> Decadence seems to imply some earlier, ideal time when all was ruddy
> apples, when those same ruddy apples are nourished on the rot... but yes,
> certainly certain impulses become etiolated husks with less internal
> vitality to resist hardening external dogmas, and then they are not much
> use since they are incapable of responsiveness to whatever it is that
> generates impulse in the first place. Someone said (I forget who, but I
> remember it was a woman) that a philosophy is dead when it spends its
> entire energy either defending or defining itself. Now, _that's_
> decadence.
>
> Best
>
> Alison
>
> Alison Croggon
> PO Box 186
> Newport VIC 3015
> Australia
>
> Masthead Online: http://www.masthead.com.au
>
> Home Page: http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/bronte/338
--
Mark Robinson
Programme Director, Arts & Humanities
Centre for Lifelong Learning
32 Old Elvet
Durham
DH1 3HN
England
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