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Thanks, Jamie, for your considered thoughts. Any chance you can post the entire translation of Vanishing Point (hoping of course it's not 20 pages long!) along with the italian? I'm attaching Uccello's Hunt by Night below. I'd be interested in the poem, and I think others would be as well, for its philosophical questioning if nothing else. My guess is that Magrelli and Drucker came to the same questioning through different paths. He through contemplating a painting; she through her familiarity with the medium of lead type, which has been a primary aspect of her art work, though she has said that Stochastic Poems would be her last letterpress book. When you talk about the conflict between visual and verbal art it reminds me of G E Lessing's "Laocoon: An Essay Upon the Limits of Painting and Poetry", the influential 19th-century book on aesthetics. Lessing found the two arts connected to different aspects of reality: poetry to time and painting to space. He also set the one above the other, making painting and the plastic arts in general an inferior form of art. Both points, I think, are entirely fanciful. I had forgotten about this pivotal essay, so many thanks for reminding me. My personal experience is that the visual and the verbal play two different roles in the mind, serving two different functions in relationship to the perceiver. But I've never been able to sort out what the different functions are, only that there is a different kind of engagement and a different kind of satisfaction in the process. That may be an entirely personal experience, and perhaps oddly I've never asked before how visual poets experience their process. After a very interesting weekend at a conference called "The Neuroscience of Aesthetics" I'm beginning to doubt my experience of the verbal and the visual. It sounds like the difference in quality of the Blake work might be topic rather than mode of expression. Cheers, J ___________________________ Jaime Robles The Hunt in the Forest, or The Hunt by Night Paolo Uccello c.1470 Tmepera and oil with traces of gold on panel 73.3 x 177 cm On 8 Oct 2014, at 19:19, Jamie McKendrick wrote: > Hi Jaime, > Thinking about those questions you quote from Johanna Drucker ‘How to conjugate an image?’ and ‘How to see the shadow of a word?’ reminded me very strongly indeed of an untitled Valerio Magrelli poem which begins: > Qual e’ la sinistra della parola / come si muove nello spazio, / dove proietta la sua ombra/ (ma puo’ una parola fare ombra?)... > My translation (I’ve given it the title ‘Vanishing Point’) can be found somewhere a long while back in a footnote in Jacket magazine, though I can’t do the links – but the first 4 lines go: > > Which is the left hand side of the word? > How does it move about in space? > Where does it cast its shadow > (and can a word cast a shadow)?.... > > The poem goes on to meditate on a picture I take to be Uccello’s Hunt by Night, but rather than offering something ekphrastic keeps exploring what language does as oppose to the image at the same time as logging what the image can do and language can’t. > I wonder if Drucker knows this poem, such is the similarity in phrasing. > > As it happens I’ve been trying to think, for a talk I might be giving, about this question of poets crossing over into the visual arts, or rather about what separates the perceptions behind the two media. As yet I’m foundering, and have little to offer. I’m starting off perhaps on the wrong foot with the idea that they are conflictual modes of perceiving, the two rarely in step, and that the one precludes the other. That puts it too crudely, but think of Blake’s slightly insipid illustrations for Songs of Innocence and Experience beside his great works for Jerusalem? Though I can see a different case could be made. And I’d be glad to be wrong on this. Against this is the way poets have to have a sense of the materiality and plasticity of language just as the artist has to have with paint or ink – this is almost a cliche’ but it means something. Berni said of Michelangelo’s poems “E’ dice cose e voi dite parole” (He says things and you say words) which catches the massive, tangled, nervy thickness of his poems. Also the Herculean energy you need to be good at both, as Blake and Michelangelo undoubtedly were. > Maybe I won’t give that talk. > > Jamie > > > > > > Though I suspect > From: Jaime Robles > Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 11:58 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: Article on text-based art > > It has not been my experience that a mathematical/logical viewpoint turned on language is inherently negative, nor that there is a price to pay for thought, mathematical or otherwise. Though there seems to be a commonly held uneasiness toward science among people in the humanities. Certainly Lewis Carroll exemplifies a benign aspect of this intersection. > > At Frede's point in history most European Christians were slavering anti-Semites. And the majority of an entire country applauded Hitler and followed the lead of his government. I'm not, of course, putting that forward as a justification for either anti-Semitism or Hitler, but rather to point out that he was not atypical in his politics or his religious predilections. I can't really comment on the man, knowing little about him. > > But turning back to poetry. I would like to know what you think of writers, especially poets, crossing over into visual arts. Do you think these are two different kinds of language? Clearly, they are different forms of expression. And how do you see them functioning, if they are two kinds of language? > > Cheers, > J > > > ___________________________ > > Jaime Robles > > > > > On 8 Oct 2014, at 15:05, David Bircumshaw wrote: > >> Yes, Jaime, Frege's paradoxes make me dizzy too. I noted that Frege received Russell's definition only while his work was in proof "Russell wrote to Frege with news of his paradox on June 16, 1902. ... The paradox was of significance to Frege's logical work since, in effect, it showed that the axioms Frege was using to formalize his logic were inconsistent." with the result that Frege had to publish a work, the second volume of his summa vitae, that was already partially undermined. >> It is possibly disturbing to discover that Frege was somewhat negatively preoccupied with Equality outside of logic and mathematics: he abhorred universal suffrage, was a fervent anti-Semite, admired Bismarck and in his later years applauded the advent of Herr Hitler. >> Perhaps there is a price to play for turning the principles of calculus on to language? >> >> best >> >> db >> >> On 8 October 2014 18:49, Jaime Robles <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> Thanks, David, all very useful. As you guessed I have been using Ogden's translation. >> >> And thanks for your previous comment. I had to look up Frege and after doing so may have some insight into your discomfort. What little symbolic logic I remember/ understand is from high school decades ago. >> >> The description of Frege at the blackboard reminds me of the pre-Vatican 2 practices for priests giving mass: with their backs to the congregation and in Latin, a somewhat distant and (post Rome) non-demotic language. The question, I suppose, is why turn your back to your audience? Shyness? Power? Perversity? Aspergers Syndrome? And/or, as I'd like to think, an absorption into the event. The event being in the case of priest the presence of the divine within the iconic cross, and in the event of Frege the purity of logic. And in both cases: a giving over to another form of consciousness. >> >> It's always difficult to say why someone does something, even for the person doing it. >> >> Language being a great mystery. >> >> Along with the definitions of Frege, The Dictionary of Philosophy listed the paradox that Russell found in Frege's work. Among several paradoxes, which reading literally made my head spin. But then, it was late at night. >> >> Cheers, >> J >> >> >> ___________________________ >> >> Jaime Robles >> >> >> >> >> On 8 Oct 2014, at 09:35, David Bircumshaw wrote: >> >>> In the matter of translations of the Tractatus, btw, things area little more complex than a distinction between Wittgenstein's idiomatic German and Ogden's Cambridge translation. Professional philosophers prefer the 1958/74 translation of Pears and McGuinness but it should be noted that the 1921 translation by C.K.Ogden (who was also the creator of Basic English and an early admirer of Finnegans Wake) with the assistance of F.P.Ramsey (who had only recently learnt German) was published with the German en face and was decidedly Wittgenstein's authorised translation. Apparently Wittgenstein himself spoke English in a very fluent, 'Cambridge' style, though with some German turns of idiom. The Pears and McGuinness translation do though incorporate Wittgenstein's suggestions in later correspondence with Ogden. >>> Very usefully, the German and Ogden and Pears/McGuinness are available side-by-side at: >>> >>> http://people.umass.edu/phil335-klement-2/tlp/tlp.html#bodytext >>> >>> On 8 October 2014 06:13, David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >>> Thank you for that Jaime. The picture (I use the word with care) of Drucker's visit to the LACE event and the question it woke is very telling (I use that word with care too). >>> >>> I'm currently, and not entirely happily. looking at Wittgenstein's precursor, the Frege of 'Sense and Reference', a man whom a student painted as lecturing chalk in hand at the blackboard, with his back to the class. >>> >>> >>> best >>> >>> db >>> >>> >>> >>> On 8 October 2014 05:44, Jaime Robles <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >>> Hello All, >>> >>> Fortnightly Review has just published an article of mine discussing Wittgenstein's ideas (some of them) about the pictorial nature of language in the light of several poets' work. Here is the link: http://fortnightlyreview.co.uk/2014/10/picturing-language/ >>> >>> I'm very pleased to have this out in the world. It discusses five poet's work: three women and two men, ranging from mid-30s in age to late sixties, and from the UK (2), the US (2) and Canada (1). Wittgenstein, as is well known, was male, an ESL Austrian, probably homosexual, misogynistic and is now dead. >>> >>> I am, despite the male spelling of my name, a W-O-M-A-N. I am also American but NOT a Yankee, think far west and Spanish-speaking rancheros, sadistic Catholic missionaries and heaps of dead Native Americans, the latter of which I am one/eighth. >>> >>> I'd love to hear what you think … of visual poetry, of the article, of language and its functions. Recommendations about other poets who work with visual art in concert with language would be valued. >>> >>> Cheers, >>> Jaime >>> >>> >>> ___________________________ >>> >>> Jaime Robles >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> David Joseph Bircumshaw >>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet >>> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk >>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html >>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw >>> Tumblr: http://zantikus.tumblr.com/ >>> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave >>> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/ >>> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.com >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> David Joseph Bircumshaw >>> Website and A Chide's Alphabet >>> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk >>> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html >>> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw >>> Tumblr: http://zantikus.tumblr.com/ >>> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave >>> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/ >>> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.com >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> David Joseph Bircumshaw >> Website and A Chide's Alphabet >> http://www.staplednapkin.org.uk >> The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html >> Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/david.bircumshaw >> Tumblr: http://zantikus.tumblr.com/ >> twitter: http://twitter.com/bucketshave >> blog: http://groggydays.blogspot.com/ >> Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.com > >