On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 5:23 AM, Tim Allen <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I am one of those who believe there is a connection between form and
> thought - it might seem obvious, but for many people it is anything but. If
> there is a connection between form and thought then there is a connection
> between politics and poetry. Such a connection, of course, is going to be,
> in a lot of cases, extremely complex and difficult to track.
>
Hmm. This sounds perilously like a Sapir-Whorfian belief. I am extremely
suspicious of any idea that the nature of language influences the nature of
thought. Such ideas became popular in the 20th century, and though they've
been very thoroughly discredited in Linguistics and Psychology, they do
persist, and I think there is no more dangerous ground for such
preconceptions than in Poetry.
There are of course basic, mechanical qualities of specific language use
that enhance to mimesis, as I think is well established, and I'm pretty sure
formal poetry tend towards these qualities, but to go from such basic
mechanics of memory and apperception to anything as abstrusely cognitive as
political thought is such an enormous leap that even your caveat of extreme
complexity doesn't quite cover it. I think it's complex entirely beyond
reckoning, and so it's not very meaningful to posit a connection in the
first place.
--
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