11-15-2013, 03:07 PM
There is a quote from Ernst Cassirer at the end of one of his book, Language and Myth, about the essence of poetry. I keep coming back to it, because I think it places poetry so very well among other forms of discourse. Here it is.
"What poetry expresses is neither the mythic word-picture of gods and daemons, nor the logical truth of abstract determinations and relations. The world of poetry stands apart from both, as a world of illusion and fantasy--but it is just in this mode of illusion that the realm of pure feeling can find utterance, and can therewith attain its full concrete actualization. Word and mythic image, which once confronted the human mind as hard realistic powers, have now cast off all reality and effectuality; they have become a light, bright ether in which the spirit can move without let or hindrance. This liberation is achieved not because the mind throws aside the sensuous forms of word and image, but in that it uses them both as organs of its own, and thereby recognizes them for what they are: forms of its own self-revelation."
Of course, to rip the final paragraph of the book away from its entirety is a problematic maneuver. It makes it hard to understand exactly what Cassirer is getting at. But the point, broadly speaking, seems to me essentially this. Poetry occupies a kind of middle-ground between two different aspects, types and powers or potentialities of language. The first of these is characterized by compulsion, the necessity and opacity endemic to the earliest forms of mythic and religious language. The second can be identified in the practical power, the freedom and transparency afforded to us by rational and scientific determinations of language. This makes more sense if you read the book; in the beginning of it, Cassirer goes at lengths to discuss how early man "fell under the spell and shadow" of language; how in antiquity and prior, it was often supposed that the mythical creatures and beings described in mythic lore could be grasped in their essences, by attending to the etymological study of their names. To name something offers the illusion, then, that there is a connection between the meaning/root of its name, and the reality of the named. This is what I mean, in part, by compulsion, necessity and opacity. Language first speaks through and masters us; only late in the game of history, as it were, have we learned how to employ it as a tool. Natively and initially, language doesn't necessarily permit us to achieve the most sophisticated of descriptive, practical, technical and scientific tasks. Rather are the latter features of a language that has evolved in power and purpose.
Poetry, then, is the quintessentially human form of language, insofar as it occupies a tension between these two forms of discourse. For poetry is not just composed ciphers whose sense is shrouded, enigmatic and illusory, but must also be the self-conscious, self-revelatory deciphering of the same. This latter aspect is something of which poetry's performative dimension seems inherently to lend it. Furthermore, the tension between these two aforementioned elements itself is just a determination or expression one that is contemporaneous to poetry: the tension between absolute freedom and absolute necessity that is constitutive of human existence.
But why should anyone care about this -- particularly, I'll ask, why should we care about this, as readers and writers of poetry? I'll try and spell that out below.
One of the marks of a truly good poem, for me, is one that displays a certain sort of play between these two and variously aforementioned elements in its sense. What I mean by this is that a good poem cannot 1) merely evoke possible meanings that suggest particular interpretations or 2) be merely descriptive and apophantic (i.e., a story told in the driest and most abstract fashion). Put differently, a good poem always has some sort of a unifying theme or another, yet at the same time, it has elements in the form of images that, in some sense, exceed the theme in the full depths of their meaning. Perhaps as profound, we must recognize that in the play between these two elements, poetry expresses itself as just that sort of activity, namely, play.
The technical aspect of writing, then - while its importance perhaps cannot be overstated - is something whose mastery is achieved for this higher purpose: to create a delicate balance between evocative images and descriptive symbols; a teetering see-saw between clarity and opacity, freedom and necessity, ambiguity and univocity. That I can recognize this, furthermore, does not mean that I can consistently achieve it, but it is something, I felt, that might be of some use to the sympathetic among you all.
Anyways, if you made it to the end of that, you deserve a banana sticker. Discuss away.
"What poetry expresses is neither the mythic word-picture of gods and daemons, nor the logical truth of abstract determinations and relations. The world of poetry stands apart from both, as a world of illusion and fantasy--but it is just in this mode of illusion that the realm of pure feeling can find utterance, and can therewith attain its full concrete actualization. Word and mythic image, which once confronted the human mind as hard realistic powers, have now cast off all reality and effectuality; they have become a light, bright ether in which the spirit can move without let or hindrance. This liberation is achieved not because the mind throws aside the sensuous forms of word and image, but in that it uses them both as organs of its own, and thereby recognizes them for what they are: forms of its own self-revelation."
Of course, to rip the final paragraph of the book away from its entirety is a problematic maneuver. It makes it hard to understand exactly what Cassirer is getting at. But the point, broadly speaking, seems to me essentially this. Poetry occupies a kind of middle-ground between two different aspects, types and powers or potentialities of language. The first of these is characterized by compulsion, the necessity and opacity endemic to the earliest forms of mythic and religious language. The second can be identified in the practical power, the freedom and transparency afforded to us by rational and scientific determinations of language. This makes more sense if you read the book; in the beginning of it, Cassirer goes at lengths to discuss how early man "fell under the spell and shadow" of language; how in antiquity and prior, it was often supposed that the mythical creatures and beings described in mythic lore could be grasped in their essences, by attending to the etymological study of their names. To name something offers the illusion, then, that there is a connection between the meaning/root of its name, and the reality of the named. This is what I mean, in part, by compulsion, necessity and opacity. Language first speaks through and masters us; only late in the game of history, as it were, have we learned how to employ it as a tool. Natively and initially, language doesn't necessarily permit us to achieve the most sophisticated of descriptive, practical, technical and scientific tasks. Rather are the latter features of a language that has evolved in power and purpose.
Poetry, then, is the quintessentially human form of language, insofar as it occupies a tension between these two forms of discourse. For poetry is not just composed ciphers whose sense is shrouded, enigmatic and illusory, but must also be the self-conscious, self-revelatory deciphering of the same. This latter aspect is something of which poetry's performative dimension seems inherently to lend it. Furthermore, the tension between these two aforementioned elements itself is just a determination or expression one that is contemporaneous to poetry: the tension between absolute freedom and absolute necessity that is constitutive of human existence.
But why should anyone care about this -- particularly, I'll ask, why should we care about this, as readers and writers of poetry? I'll try and spell that out below.
One of the marks of a truly good poem, for me, is one that displays a certain sort of play between these two and variously aforementioned elements in its sense. What I mean by this is that a good poem cannot 1) merely evoke possible meanings that suggest particular interpretations or 2) be merely descriptive and apophantic (i.e., a story told in the driest and most abstract fashion). Put differently, a good poem always has some sort of a unifying theme or another, yet at the same time, it has elements in the form of images that, in some sense, exceed the theme in the full depths of their meaning. Perhaps as profound, we must recognize that in the play between these two elements, poetry expresses itself as just that sort of activity, namely, play.
The technical aspect of writing, then - while its importance perhaps cannot be overstated - is something whose mastery is achieved for this higher purpose: to create a delicate balance between evocative images and descriptive symbols; a teetering see-saw between clarity and opacity, freedom and necessity, ambiguity and univocity. That I can recognize this, furthermore, does not mean that I can consistently achieve it, but it is something, I felt, that might be of some use to the sympathetic among you all.
Anyways, if you made it to the end of that, you deserve a banana sticker. Discuss away.
“Poetry is mother-tongue of the human race; as gardening is older than agriculture; painting than writing; song than declamation; parables,—than deductions; barter,—than trade”
― Johann Hamann
― Johann Hamann