Stories and poems

"The metaphoric image of 'orphan lines' is a contrivance of the detached onlooker to whom the verbal art of continuous correspondences remains aesthetically alien. Orphan lines in poetry of pervasive parallels are a contradiction in terms, since whatever the status of a line, all its structure and functions are indissolubly interlaced with the near and distant verbal environment, and the task of linguistic analysis is to disclose the levels of this coaction. When seen from the inside of the parallelistic system, the supposed orphanhood, like any other componential status, turns into a network of multifarious compelling affinities.'
Roman JAKOBSON, "Grammatical Parallelism and its Russian Facet", Language, 42/2, 1966, pp. 399-429, p. 428-429

Thursday, September 29, 2011

Muse

Monument in Cordoba to Ibn Zaydûn and Princess Wallada
September has slipped away in a sunny haze, end of summer, busyness and bees. Some goals were achieved. I have found some work to keep me writing through the end of the year, now I just have to get back to the writing. Interestingly enough, I'm helping various children write, which allows me to tap into my own desire to write. I wonder at that easy creativity children have, which goes along, I think, with a refreshing and spontaneous naivety. Afterwards, leaving the tutoring session on my bike, I let myself laugh.

I went to a poetry group, which was also refreshing, and gave some air to my poetic thoughts. It made me want to write more. Words and words and words, en boucle; it helps, as though I could put myself in a room of words and wrap myself up tightly there, and stay, and stare, but not alone. Exchange around writing is a necessity, and words engender words, in the presence of others, please. But how does that suit our idea of authorial invention and the private property of the written word? I think it's poppy-cock, and that my poetry is never mine. That's not to say though that I wouldn't want to call what I write here mine, because it is. There's a conundrum: how creativity can be so completely from somewhere else yet pass through this body, at this time.When writing, or singing, there is like a breath which comes from behind and passes through the exact center of the head, then out of the mouth, or the hand. One knows not from whence it comes. Other poets have called it inspiration, or personified it in the figure of the muse.

I wrote a poem once on being my own muse: 

On being my own muse

I would no longer need the body of another to feed my words if I could write like wrapping myself in seamless white linen, having woven the fabric, etching words with thread, tying the knots that keep me in.

Ultimately, I think this poem  is about a desire for self-sufficiency, not separateness. The idea is that the words keep me in, define me, and that their source is within, they don't come from the outside, the result of some exterior passion or pain. I think it's about the wish for the source of poetry to be interior joy, even though the image is quite morbid. In this poem I also see a funeral shroud. I see the death of the poet. 

A medieval writer and princess from Cordoba named Wallada Bin Al Mustafki had her poems embroidered on her robes. She wore them in the street. She also had many lovers and her passions inspired her writing. This is apparently what those embroidered verses said:

For the sake of Allah!  I deserve nothing less than glory 
I hold my head high and go my way
I will give my cheek to my lover
and my kisses to anyone I choose. 

I think she was her own muse.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Meaning

The Meaning of Night
I'm looking for jobs. I'm still looking for meaning. I'm reading another book by H. U. Gumbrecht called Production of presence: What meaning cannot convey and I'm wondering how he hopes to go beyond meaning. But I probably should get back to practical things, like money, like work; maybe that is what he means by the production of presence. Or maybe I should get back to meaning.

Still wrestling with my chapter on the De Nuptiis, I'm reading the Metalogicon by John of Salisbury. Here is a wonderful thing he has to say about meaning:

Le sens en effet est la signification du mot. Et s'ils lui font défaut, une parole est vide et inutile et pour ainsi dire morte, de sorte que, d'une certaine façon, de même que le corps reçoit sa vie de l'âme, la signification du mot lui sert à vivre (p. 170).

This is the French translation by F. Lejeune, published in 2009, and luckily so for me since I would have been slower to integrate the Latin. The translation also solves the problem of quoting him in French in my dissertation. Thanks to en excellent index, I have also quickly been able to find out who Philologia was for John of Salisbury. Here is my English translation of the passage from the French.

"Meaning is indeed the signification of a word, without which the word is dead, since, in a way, like a body which depends on the soul for life, the signification of a word allows it to live."

Another English translation gives:

"A word's force consists in its meaning. Without the latter it is empty, useless and (so to speak) dead. Just as the soul animates the body, so, in a way, meaning breathes life into a word".

This is Daniel McGarry's translation, p.81. Here is the Latin

vis enim verbi, sensum est; quod si destituatur, sermo cassus et inutilis est, et, ut sic dixerim, mortuus: ut quodammodo, sicut corpus ad vitam vegetatur ab anima, sic ad vitam quamdam verbi sensus proficiat.

The word vis gives force in English and signification in French, which comes from the Anglo-Norman  significaciun, according to the O.E.D. Sensum gives meaning in English and the French sens, which feels more natural since it is closer to the Latin. I'm not sure where all this is going, but, in any case, these different translations show the circular nature of signifying : word, meaning, meaning, word. I think John is right; you can't seperate word from meaning without a kind of death.

So what's the point of Gumbrecht's book? I think he is tired of meaning, all sorts, and wants to imagine an entirely other type of intellectual activity that could rise above hermeneutics. But couldn't this be the soul-death of the discipline? Where would we be without meaning? He uses Heidegger's essay "The Origin of the Work of Art," an essay which I once found terribly problematic in terms of how it represents work and how it represents art, as well as his concept of Dasein, being in the world, not interpreting it or being a subject in it. Still, I like Gumbrecht's book, though I haven't finished it yet. I like his attempt to surpass meaning, sort of like a meditative mind clearing, a move to having no head and non-being (his last chapter is entitled To Be Quiet for a Moment: About Redemption). Maybe it is about embracing that death.

I'm having trouble picking a poem today. I have lots of poems which contain the word meaning. I think I'll put one I wrote while mourning the death of meaning, blaming it on men, of course. 

Last War

These men would destroy meaning with
a force equal to the bomb.
Love turned to contract,
its attributes of folly 
which are feeling.

A world without meaning
or feeling like a funeral shroud,
a winding sheet of white
which death announced and called for
as necessity.

These men would destroy meaning.
No poetry, no thought
tapped in movements between bodies,
no sentient wisdom,
no harking to the present call.

Burning the witches of remorse,
leaving us simmering over pots
and singing 
in fires clamped down,
now cold.

These men would destroy meaning,
gather verse to sticky prose
and bind the two together,
frigid
fixed.

These men would destroy meaning.
Let me gather in my breast
the contrast and the opposition,
the pregnancy of thought,
give birth to new before the end is brought.

Sometimes I get tired of reading the work of male intellectuals and philosophers, though I suppose I can't blame John of Salisbury and I try not to be overly aware of the gender of the author while reading. It sort of gets in the way, of the meaning. 

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Bicycle

Yesterday I changed the inner tube on one of the wheels of my bicycle for the first time. In French it is called a chambre à air, which literally means an "air room". I changed the air room on my bicycle. I changed my air, I changed the air in my room. I rode on new air, in a new inner room.

Bicycle is one of those words I never know how to spell, and I have think a moment before writing. I always want to put the y in front of the i. In French you can call your bicycle la petite reine.

I love learning how to do new things. It brings out the rawness of life, and reminds me of the joy of process, of old hands doing new things. I get excited and nervous. Luckily there are friends to teach us. Afterwards I felt independent and responsible. September is starting with a new élan, a forward motion or impetus, enthusiasm, pushing me where I want to go.

Crossing the Rhône on Bicycle

Let me go my way,
Put your feet in the water.

Don't come to me,
Let me come.

Let me ride,
calmly and sweetly
down the center
lane of traffic.

Would you like to walk?
I'm staying here, you say.

Your car was parked
in my street yetserday.

Though I feel like it belongs here, I am not sure what this poem has to do with learning new things, though I do see how it is about independence and responsibility. 

I learned to ride late, when I was twelve, and I did it on my own, resentful that no one took the time to guide me through it, to pick me up when I fell. But there must have been some invisible hands holding onto the back rail of my bike. It was purple and white. I would ride it around the safe streets of my neighborhood, curving small town residential roads. 

Now I cross bridges, and avoid the tram tracks. I change inner-tubes, I get my hands dirty. I love the sweetness of being with myself on my bike, just one human on this earth, going against the grain. 

Thursday, September 1, 2011

Origins

September didn't catch me off guard. I knew it was coming. I had deadlines, which I didn't make. I knew Mercury would move forward again, and I thought that I would find a constant rhythm, a way to move towards my goals. 

But today I feel strange. Last night it rained and stormed here, as I rode home on my bicycle after midnight. I had danced so much I couldn't walk afterwards, and felt as though we had brought on the rain.

September

September took me by surprise,
light, rain, change,
my pain.

A cause substantial,
a reason just,
a minimal commitment,
betrayed trust.

The battle fought
between the twins of thought,
against the sure of heart.

Where was the fountain
that gave rise to this flow,
seep, mow, sow, reap?
I cook and weep.

September caught me off guard,
lonely, I can’t tell you so,
hurting, wanting you to know.

I do not act.
The energy recedes
back into the earth,
the harvest progresses.

Maybe it's the hurricane. I looked at pictures of Vermont today for the first time, and though I am so far away, I feel like it somehow affected me, as though I were caught in that maelstrom in the sky, or as though some of my inner roads need rebuilding, small communities are isolated. 

I'm thinking about my origins, which makes me think of a quote in my dissertation, by Walter Benjamin, from his The Origin of German Tragic Drama, on the concept of origin :

Origin [Ursprung], although an entirely historical category, has, nevertheless, nothing to do with genesis [Entstehung]. The term origin is not intended to describe the process by which the existent came into being, but rather to describe that which emerges from the process of becoming and disappearance. Origin is an eddy in the stream of becoming, and in its current it swallows the material involved in the process of genesis. (p. 45)

On the way to becoming, thus we are made, within this spiral. Where there is destruction, there is also the forging of the new, creeks and rivers swelling and rolling in their beds, finding a novel way to lie upon the earth.