"Realistic fallacies" – a couple of quick notes

1. The thought that literary or artistic realism means describing reality "as it is", objectively and "as such". Did any writer ever seriously and without any reservations think he or she could do that? The heterogeneous abundance of "the real world" cannot be captured as such; selection and decision are always needed as to what are the details to be portrayed, and which is the significance of each, and which method of description is to be chosen, or how to "filter through oneself" the reality to which one is subjected.

2. Another aspect of the same. The idea that realism (in arts and literature) is actually impossible, because while its objective is to portray reality directly and without significant intervention on the artist's part, there is no common reality, only various subjective realities. This notion is a confused relativism and a – either sophomoric or preconceived – misunderstanding of what "postmodernism" (whatever that is) and "deconstruction" (whatever that is thought to be) are trying to argue. We should read our Derridas more carefully and begin with his early work on phenomenology (on Husserl, and also the critical essay on Levinas) – the deconstruction of logocentrism is far from being a refutation of all objectivity and intersubjectivity – rather, Derrida shows how writing is actually the precondition of objectivity and intersubjectivity, and that the living presence incarnated in "hearing oneself speak" is actually menaced, haunted by the form of absence that is implied by writing – and thus by that which makes objectivity and intersubjectivity possible, at the cost of dissolving the living presence! It is a shared reality indeed, and this constitutes an essential tension between "the world" and "the origin of the world", which is in each case unique – deconstruction is not a form of refutation but a way to affirm aporia and undecidability, to keep the tension alive.

Instead of "reality" as such, an artist's object or her subject matter is "the reality of experience", as for Stephen Dedalus, to "encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of [his] soul the uncreated conscience of [his] race" – you can replace the word "race" with "generation" if you will, as Eliot did.

How to confront ethnocentrism?

My today's – or tonight's – thesis, to be defended in more detail later: Ethnocentrism cannot be refuted efficiently by oversimplifying it. The nationalist or ethnocentrist argument often begins with the sentence "I am not a racist..." (or, as in a Monty Python sketch, "I am not a racialist! But..."). In a certain sense, I tend to accept that claim, even though I know how easy it would be just to smirk at it. I tend to accept it because the concept of racism has become void of all precise content: as far as I know, racism used to be connected with a certain biologism and a belief in substantial differences between "races". No one seriously believes in racism any longer, in that sense, or at least professes such belief publicly (although there are notable exceptions to prove this rule). Ethnocentrism and nationalism need not even signify a belief in the intrinsic superiority of one's own nation or ethnic group. Rather, they seem to be founded on a certain notion of cultural "rootedness" that can very well subscribe to the idea of equality of different nations and ethnicities – a belief in a homestead, fatherland that is the best place for any nation to live their lives. A certain apparently rational myth of autochtony and an argument for monoculturalism...

P.S. I almost instantly begin commenting on my own text – but I suppose "Work in Progress" is all right for a weblog... So, here is a footnote: Ethnocetrism is not a hierarchy of one-over-the-others, but a belief in a "centre", a concentric nationality and ethnicity, one land and one language (or maybe a couple: we have "our own minorities", those that our fathers already learned to "tolerate"...).

P.P.S. "Tolerate" in inverted commas – why? Well, I remember Derrida saying in an interview that "toleration" is actually an insult. I agree on that: the notion of toleration implies a condescending attitude, a hierarchy between majority and minority, "same" and "other", concentric and eccentric. To be sure, "toleration" might not be the worst kind of attitude, but it's still a questionable form of ethnocentrism, I'm afraid.

How to confront ethnocentrism?

My today's – or tonight's – thesis, to be defended in more detail later: Ethnocentrism cannot be refuted efficiently by oversimplifying it. The nationalist or ethnocentrist argument often begins with the sentence "I am not a racist..." (or, as in a Monty Python sketch, "I am not a racialist! But..."). In a certain sense, I tend to accept that claim, even though I know how easy it would be just to smirk at it. I tend to accept it because the concept of racism has become void of all precise content [later: that's rubbish]: as far as I know, racism used to be connected with a certain biologism and a belief in substantial differences between "races". No one seriously believes in racism any longer, in that sense, or at least professes such belief publicly (although there are notable exceptions to prove this rule). Ethnocentrism and nationalism need not even signify a belief in the intrinsic superiority of one's own nation or ethnic group. Rather, they seem to be founded on a certain notion of cultural "rootedness" that can very well subscribe to the idea of equality of different nations and ethnicities – a belief in a homestead, fatherland that is the best place for any nation to live their lives. A certain apparently rational myth of autochtony and an argument for monoculturalism...

A/ Still-born generation/s

Video: Can, "Mushroom" (Tago Mago, 1971), courtesy of YouTube (here's the MTV version; unfortunately I don't know the director, etc.)

When I saw
Mushroom Head
I was born
And I was dead

This is how the refrain goes, as I hear it (no "a" before "mushroom head").

As I see it, it is "about" being part of a still-born generation. Even I am that, even though I was born in 1968 and not for instance 1945 (or 1950 as Damo Suzuki). Part of a generation or generations marked by a profound distrust against our "fathers" (maybe also "mothers") and humanity "in general". A generation — or generations — of despair, but a shared despair, one that has to be "given" ("I'm gonna give my despair" is how I hear the other refrain; some have heard it otherwise).

Saying it is "about" that does not mean that I guess this is what Suzuki and Can "wanted to say" with their song (even though I'm quite convinced it is not, or at least not exclusively, about "'shrooms" or any of that hippy-go-lucky scene — listen to the next track on Tago Mago, "Oh Yeah", beginning with an explosion and sung partly in Japanese, and decide for yourself).

P.S. It brings to my mind Beckett and his Pozzo:

They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more. [Elles accouchent à cheval sur une tombe, le jour brille un instant, puis c'est la nuit à nouveau.]

Is "dead" just a metaphor, then? Well — it most often is, as Blanchot might say — being mortal means being unable to die, because the ability to die and to be mortal "ends" with what we call "death" and what Heidegger calls "the possibility of impossibility", the ever-imminent possibility that all possibilities become impossible.

No one knows what it's like to be dead, "literally" and in person, and yet we "know" the death of the others, all too well perhaps. Mort galore (I know this combines French and Irish, but I guess that suits the context).

Did someone say "Death died in Auschwitz" or am I just hearing voices?

P.P. S. And maybe it's the mentioned distrust, a distrust against "common opinion", that encourages "ambiguous messages" — and laconic comments, too? I would not ask the artist "Am I right? Is this what you wanted to say?" It's an artist's privilege to be reticent about his/her "message", even to give away authorship ("I'm gonna give my despair" is also ambiguous, a "Gift" indeed, if you add the German significations to the English).

P.P.P.S. About the "'shrooms" — I know it's also a generation of hallusinogenetics, all kinds of escape from the shadows of all kinds of clouds and all kinds of "values" that have become questionable, to say the least.

P.P.P.P.S. (Added August 27, 2009) Listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain's cover of the song, I realized they sing "I gotta keep my distance." I prefer "I'm gonna give my despair" – and that's what I hear Damo singing...

"Spring" ("Kevät", 1947) by Lauri Viita

I thought I might as well share this translation of a poem by Lauri Viita (1916-1965).

Räntäseula seudun päällä,
saappaan alla lotinaa,
lantajuova järven jäällä —
kesä tulee, ihanaa!

Upon the field — a sieve of sleet —
Slush is splashing underboot.
Upon the lake — a dungy strake —
'Twill be summer — wonderful!

_________

Maybe "dungy strake" (a previous version had a word rhyming with "sleet") calls for a commentary, in view of the non-Finnish-speaking readership? Back in the day, fertilizer — manure, dung — used to be transported, in early spring, to the fields with sley across the ice (we have ca. 60.000 lakes in Finland). "Strake" is a synonym of "streak" ("strake" rhymes with "lake").

Realisms, objectivity, and the relativism of subjectivities

Tous les écrivains pensent être réalistes. (Alain Robbe-Grillet.)

It's not a question of realism being faithful to objectivity while experience is always subjective. This is a sophomoric misunderstanding.

In art, it is not a question of imitating or representing reality, but of presenting, producing or reproducing an experience. An experience is not like a snapshot, a photograph in a newspaper, capturing objects as neutrally as possible.

Inaccomplished separations

Reading Blanchot's L'écriture du désastre in intervals, long intervals, and this time I come across these words (on pp. 96, 97):

Les fragments s'écrivent comme séparations inaccomplies; [...]

[...] les faisant persister de par leur inachèvement, toujours prêts alors à se laisser travailler par la raison infatigable, au lieu de rester la parole déchue, mise à part, le secret sans secret que nulle élaboration ne saurait remplir.

[...] ces paroles semblent-elles avoir besoin d'êtres reprises, répétées, pour échapper au sens qui les anime et afin d'êtres détournées d'elles-mêmes, du discours qui les utilise?

This fragmentation or re-fragmentation of fragments is not meant as cheap witticism, just as indications of places to be re-read with care.

The difficulty of commenting on Blanchot is double-edged: either you don't understand or you understand too well in order to "explain" or write commentaries: the words hit the mark with so much precision it is impossible to add anything to their clarity.

It is also useless for me to comment on this "arrogance" of my own. Those who think such a comment without a comment has no substance whatsoever will not be persuaded, no matter what.

"... persister de par leur inachèvement ...": that's to insist.

Findagains Wake

. . .

"Cultivate" implies "extirpate"

For the first time since last winter, I think, I return to these remarks and wonder whether to publish this weblog. A friend laughed, in February, when I told him about my private weblog, closed for the world: it doesn't make sense. Maybe that's precisely why I liked the idea of keeping it strictly personal. Strictly nonsensical.

But now I'm having second thoughts. I knew I would, some day. I don't know which is more narcissistic: publishing something that resembles a journal intime or being its only reader.

Cultivation implies extirpation, and therefore I will not feel overly guilty for not being overly honest. I will keep editing the posts, in case I decide to publish them. Them, these: all the pronouns and verb tenses are subjected to the dialectics of sense-certainty. Writing is a game, even when deadly serious.

I will be taking extraordinary liberties. By saying "extraordinary" I am not bragging, but it means that I would not take such liberties if I was writing an academic text.

At the same time, such finger exercises ("you cannot write with your hands folded") are not meant to be inferior to the more "responsible" type of writing.

Words that are flowers that are fruits that are deeds (Paz)

The last verse of Octavio Paz's "Himno entre ruinas":

palabras que son flores que son frutos que son actos.

If words can be flowers (and they can) that can be fruits that can be deeds, is it not because flowers are words, flower is a word, flowers is a word?

Jean Daive: "Métaphore - mais réelle. Vécue."

Métaphore - mais réelle. Vécue.*

Jean Daive's Récit testifies to his friendship with Paul Celan.

The mais in the laconic pair of sentences (a fragment, fragmentary one-liner) implies that metaphor is usually neither "real" nor "lived", and these incompatibilities (incompossibilities) implied by the quasi oxymoron are indeed among the main reasons for Celan's total rejection of, or objection to, the concept of metaphor; i.e. among the contraindications against its application.

______
* Jean Daive, La Condition d'infini 5: Sous la coupole. Récit (Paris: P.O.L, 1996), p. 42.

Boggy soil

Ted Cohen's article, truly a major contribution to metaphor theory, from which I borrow the title of the present weblog, is entitled "Metaphor and the Cultivation of Intimacy".* However, while Cohen's identification of the functioning of metaphors with the fuctioning of jokes tells a lot about jokes and metaphors, this complacent "cultivation of intimacy" between a "metaphor maker" and his audience has very little to do with poetry, I'm afraid...

Truer to poetry than any modern contribution to the theory of metaphor is, as I would venture to say, Martin Heidegger's well-known but most often poorly understood "adage" in "Das Wesen der Sprache": As long as we take Hölderlin's Worte, wie Blumen as a metaphor, as metaphors, or even as a metaphor for metaphor, "we stay bogged down in metaphysics". This is how the English translation, by Peter D. Hertz, nicely puts it. The original text reads as follows (Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 207):

Wir blieben in der Metaphysik hängen, wollten wir dieses Nennen Hölderlins in der Wendung »Worte wie Blumen« für eine Metapher halten.

Outrageous, like poetry.
______
* Critical Inquiry, Vol. 5, No. 1, Special Issue on Metaphor, Autumn, 1978, pp. 3-12.

Being's not a predicate, they say

Time, the unity of contradictory predicates: To be or not to be.

Wolf's-hour fragments on black bile (melancholia)

Woke up at three. Could not sleep, read some Hegel.

The black bile of melancholy knows itself: black soil.

The black bile of melancholy knows itself for what it is: black soil. Therefore it is not simply a metaphor any longer.

Black soil: I’m not sure whether this is the right word.

Mustaa multaa.

Black dirt, earth, mould... I’m still not sure, after looking it up in a dictionary.

The elements are raging in the darkness, outside. What else is my anxiety than – hmh – this picture of Climate Change seen in the window?

In introducing a word I introduce it to itself.

In introducing a word I introduce it – to itself.

Just saw Szabó’s film on Furtwängler

My reluctance to accept the thought that a poet could “give a voice to that which has none”, or in other words, to act as a stand-in of sorts in prayer (see my “Schreiben als Form des Gebets”) – or let’s say, even, my very disgust at the thought.

What was I thinking?

Perhaps I wasn’t – but such unthought things return nachträglich. My disgust – it was directed at the idea that the most intimate, most private voicelessness, wordlessness, could be substituted, surrogated (is there such a verb? have to check), like a poem by its interpretation, as Th. S. explicated my implications... (but that’s different!)

The most intimate, private voicelessness (Schweigen) substituted by a public hearing.

Yes, music is a way of not speaking.

If I may say so.

[Added much later, a clip on Furtwängler conducting An die Freude on April 19, 1942 – "Duldet mutig, Millionen! /Duldet für die beßre Welt!" etc. – :]

Furtwangler on 4.19.1942 Full edition - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Opening words

After reading just a couple of pages in Blanchot’s L’écriture du désastre, fragments on inattentiveness and one on forgiveness. [On page 89: "Pardonne-moi de te pardonner."] These offer me an escape of sorts. From what, if not from myself.

Commentary on myself, i.e. on my “thesis”:

Claiming that when Kant speaks of hypotyposes (yes, in plural: schematic and symbolical type of hypotyposis) he is not speaking of metaphor, I don’t think I was clear enough.

“Images in poetry”, this is approximately what Celan says, “are nothing visual.” Keineswegs Visuelles. Nothing visual, nothing visible. [Later, I add the exact phrase: "Bildhaftes, das ist keineswegs etwas Visuelles". I cite this on p. 206 of my Counter-figures.]

The dog is nothing visible. The schema of “dog” is even less visible, if possible, than the schema of triangle.

“The visible”, writes Merleau-Ponty, “is pregnant with the invisible”. This is precisely a comment on Heidegger’s argument against the concept of metaphor in Der Satz vom Grund.

This love of the “abstract” — it is a love for that which shall disappear. Mortality, terrestriality, temporality, and never the supra-lunar... Never? Perhaps never. Always perhaps, never for ever, never, perhaps.

Love for the ephemeral.

For words too, like flowers.

Watch their éclosion in the morning light.