mISLITI SKoZI rAZPor
PeSNIŠKI FILoZoFI IN FILoZoFI PeSNIKI
stephanos stephanides
Univerza na Cipru
UdK 1:82.0-1
Vprašanje razmerja med mišljenjem (teorijo, flozofjo) in pesništvom se v članku navezuje na spoznanje o omejenosti človekovega sporazumevanja. Pri tem so bežno soočena nekatera stališča (Susan Sontag, Julia kristeva, Alphonso Lingis) do omenjenega vprašanja. Avtor uvede koncept izgredni-škega pesnika, ki ruši institucionalizirane hegemonije in s tem tako teoriji kot pesništvu omogoča mišljenje skozi razpor.
Ključne besede: pesnik-izgrednik, teoretik-izgrednik, resnica, spomin, pozaba, mišljenje, pesništvo, narava
Zapleteno in sporno razmerje med flozofjo in pesništvom oblikuje literarno teorijo od najstarejših časov do danes. Naključje je hotelo – ali pa je bil v tem določen pomen –, da sem prav tedaj, ko sem prejel vabilo za to okroglo mizo, prejel tudi sporočilo svoje prijateljice, indijske pisateljice Priyaje sarukkai-Chabrija, ki je nedavno prebrala eno mojih razprav, kajti do tedaj je brala samo mojo poezijo. Takole pravi: »… kako velik in vznemirljiv razpor! Če ne bi vedela, bi mislila, da gre za dve različni osebi. Res je, da obliki zahtevata razliko, toda pri tebi je ta razlika izrazito nasprotje v načinu pisanja. Zakaj tolikšen razmik? Ali ga lahko kako razložiš?« V nadaljevanju sporočila je nakazala, kako je mogoče premostiti ta navidezni razpor. Jaz bi se rad odzval na njeno vprašanje, sklicujoč se na citat iz vabila na to okroglo mizo, to je na verze roberta Juarroza:
Poezija in mišljenje
sta prav
največji nasprotji smrti
ker sta njeni najbolj zvesti priči.
(Juarroz X/19; prev. Taja Kramberger)
Skuša nam dopovedati, da se, bodisi kot flozof bodisi kot pesniki, prepoznavamo na ozadju smrtnosti. govorne skupnosti, ki se porajajo iz
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 29. Posebna številka (2006)                    27
TEORETSKO-LITERARN1HIBRIDI
te smrtne usode, se spreminjajo glede na naše razmerje do uveljavljenih ustanov in kultur. susan sontag je v svojem slovitem eseju »Proti interpretaciji« izjavila, da interpretacija v svojih najmodernejših oblikah pomeni flistrsko zavračanje tega, da bi pustili umetniško delo pri miru. Želela bi si, da se umetnost ne bi podrejala interpretaciji, ki, po njenem, dela umetnost obvladljivo in prilagodljivo; resnična umetnost pa nas je zmožna spraviti ob živce. Interpretacija, tako meni, zanika brezdanje možnosti, da bi se naše razumevanje umetnosti odprlo, da bi presegli dosegljive stvari in se povzpeli do vrtoglavih višin. Potenciale v stvareh bi morali doseči s svojimi sposobnostmi, bodisi, da se s preteklostjo pomirimo, bodisi, da z njo prelomimo, pri tem pa ostanemo nedolžni in svobodni. Susan Sontag (morda sklicujoč se na Adorna, ki tudi pravi, da nič ne more izraziti neidentitete) dokazuje, da koncepti ne morejo zares zapopasti materialnosti umetnosti.
Julia Kristeva je v svojem delu nakazala, da današnje družbeno življenje subjektu preprečuje dostop do tistih lastnosti v umetnosti, ki se ne ujemajo z njegovimi vnaprejšnjimi koncepcijami in stereotipi; toda istočasno so nekateri dokazovali, da se zmožnost konceptualiziranja lahko osiromaši z zavračanjem njene vrednosti ali učinkovitosti - določena stopnja identite-tne flozofje je namreč prav tako bistvena kot materialna neidentiteta. Cilj je subjekt pripraviti do tega, da razvije nove simbolne zmožnosti na družbenem področju in da obenem revidira svojo identiteto. Skupaj s Kristevo so nekateri menili, da ritem zaznamuje razlikovalne prostore v poeziji in flozofji ter iskali možnosti, kako bi glasbeno mišljenje v prihodnosti preseglo nasprotje med flozofjo in poezijo. Ritem je sila, s katero je treba računati, in je bistvena pri razumevanju flozofje in pesništva. Ritem pravzaprav omogoča glasbeno etiko flozofje, ker glasbeno mišljenje presega metafzično nasprotje med flozofjo in poezijo in postavlja okvir za post-flozofsko prakso.
Če interpretator, kot ga pojmuje Susan Sontag, govori na podlagi nekega že vzpostavljenega diskurza, pa flozof Alphonso Lingis zatrjuje, da flozof lahko ohranja svoje dostojanstvo v skupnosti skeptikov, tako da razkriva nedoslednosti in neskladnosti v uveljavljenem kanonu. Toda v akademskih skupnostih smo naravnani tako, da se izogibamo tveganjem, za katere se nam zdi, da nam manjka srčnosti, da bi jih lahko izživeli. Občutja se merijo in odzivi se kodifcirajo, glede na obljube in grožnje. Vendar obstajajo tudi ljudje, potisnjeni na rob in izključeni iz flozofskih trditev, ki sicer veljajo za zanesljive in resnične; ljudje, ki se jim odreka dostop do resnice in ki telesno občutijo utrujenost brezdomstva.
Tu gre za to, kako razumemo pojem resnice, podobno kot pri vseh mislecih in kritikih, ki smo jih navajali. Heideggrova kritika zahodne flozofske tradicije postavlja vprašanja, kot na primer na kaj mislimo, ko govorimo o resnici. Ko Heidegger išče izraz, s katerim bi bolje opredelil resnico, seže nazaj k predsokratikom in da pri tem vedeti, da je Platon zlorabil izvirni pomen grške besede resnica aletheia, ki korenini v lethe, v 'pozabi', torej resnica dobesedno vzeto pomeni ne-pozabo. Heidegger tako izvirni pomen razume kot ne-prikrivanje. Če aletheio, kot pravi, prevajamo kot 'ne-pri-krivanje', ne pa kot 'resnico', ta prevod ne le da se približa dobesednemu
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STEPHANOS STEPHANIDES: MISLITI SkOZI RAZPOR
pomenu besede, ampak nas usmerja k vnovičnemu premisleku koncepta resnice. Ta ne pomeni zgolj pravilnosti trditev, ampak nas raje popelje k razpiranju bivajočega. Heidegger verjame, da nas je Platon narobe usmeril, in zatrjuje, da pot, ki naj bi nas pripeljala k biti, sploh ne obstaja, so le boljše poti za njeno razkrivanje. resnica ni lastnost pravilnih propozicij, ki jih je o nekem objektu zatrdil človeški subjekt in jih potem proglasil za veljavne. Resnica je odpiranje bivajočega in misel o biti v svetu (Dasein), tu se Heidegger premakne od abstraktnega jezika flozofskega raziskovanja k subtilnejšemu pesniškemu jeziku. Namen je dovoliti Dasein-u, da angažira svet, da dovoli bivajočemu, da se razkrije Dasein-u v svoji ne-pozabi, ne v svoji analizi. Prva naloga pesnikov je razkrivati svet, upodobiti in raziskati različna razmerja med bivajočim in Dasein.
Pesniki so manj eksaktni, vendar ne manj strogi, ko ustvarjajo odtenke in metafore, flozofja pa skuša specifcirati izraze, kolikor je sploh mogoče. Blanchot, ki ga je tudi navdihnil Heidegger, se obrne k predsokratikom, da bi razpravljal o razmerju med flozofjo in pesništvom. Blanchot nam v »Pošasti iz Lascauxa« pravi, da so bili pri rojstvu flozofje in pesništva, ki ga opiše kot zelo nenavaden dogodek, prisotni poslušalci Ksenofontove poezije in Heraklitovih preroških in dvoumnih aforizmov. Pri Heraklitu je, po Blanchotu, mogoče opaziti odvrnitev od kozmogonije k novemu dis-kurzu, kjer sveti govor postane diskurz fzisa, ki omogoča stvarem samim, da odmevajo v moči poimenovanja, vnovič zatrjujoč svojo zmagoslavno navzočnost, ko razpirajo materialnost jezika. Blanchotov pojem narave in poezije zadeva tudi razmisleke o bitju in fzisu v Heideggrovem delu in na njegovo pojmovanje, da je ta izkušnja povezana z določeno izkušnjo izvira v umetniškem delu, ki obnavlja zdajšnjost. V Prostoru literature (L'espace littéraire) Blanchot opaža, da se narava ponuja uporabi in se ji hkrati izmika, kar, po njegovem, pomeni, da se pozablja v realnem, in umetniška izkušnja je »zmeraj izvirna in v vsakem trenutku je neki začetek« - »zmeraj nova, privid nedosegljive resnice v prihodnosti« (229) - in tako razbije vladajoči red izkušnje. V svoji obljubi prihodnosti ali v nostalgiji po njej se izvirna izkušnja pojavi v umetniškem delu kot izkušnja ne-pozabe, ki je po-navzočenje realnega. Pesem nas spominja in obenem s približevanjem prihodnosti tudi obnavlja naš čas. Na ta eksces kaže poezija, ko izkuša naravo kot izvirno izkušnjo, kot tisto, kar se je mogoče spominjati s skrivnostnim in čezosebnim ali skupnim spominom. V »Zverini iz Lascauxa« (»La Bete de Lascaux«) Blanchot govori o neposredno navzočem in oddaljenem, kar je resničnejše od vseh resničnih stvari in kar se pozablja v sleherni stvari, vez, ki je ne moremo zvezati in s katero je povezano vse, se pravi celota.
Vprašanje zadeva flozofjo jezika in materialnost jezika. Ko Alphonso Lingis ugotavlja, v čem je problem jezika, njegov lastni jezik koleba med aksiološkim in apofatičnim, iščoč besed, ki imajo moč petja in ne govorice. Medtem ko namiguje na Nietzschejevo trditev, da je prvinska sila jezika aksiološka, Lingis zatrjuje, da »se besede ne izgovarjajo zavoljo njihove re-prezentacijske oblike, ampak zato, ker v sebi združujejo zmeraj večjo moč - mantre«(64); »močne in dejavne sile zdrave čutnosti govorijo; govorijo besede blagoslova in prekletstva« (65). Od časa do časa Lingis piše v tihi
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TEORETSkO-LITERARNI HIBRIDI
sokrivdi z izgredništvom pesnika, iščočega ambientalno snovnost, očarljivo v svojih čutnih substancah. Pri tem sledi Nietzscheju, ki je v moderni dobi odprl pot misli, podobno ustvarjalni, kot je ustvarjalna oblika poezije. V Rojstvu tragedije upodobi poezijo kot velikega zdravilca eksistencialnih težav v človekovem življenju. Apolinični (flozofski) in dionizični (pesniški) značaj se morata namreč držati skupaj, če hoče vsak od njiju doseči svojo polno moč. Nietzsche je videl poezijo kot izjemno obliko umetnosti, za flozofjo precej uporabnejšo od drugih umetnosti.
Sporazumevanja in nesporazumevanja ni mogoče reševati zgolj z abstrakcijo, ker to vodi v izravnavajočo in nerazločujočo zaznavo. Jezik kot stopnjujoča moč zaklinjanja je zmožen prepustiti kakšen šum, ki podre en-kratnost reda. Toda tedaj niti pesnik ne more ubraniti jezika pred stopnjujočo močjo in mora uporabiti obliko reprezentacije - tema je korelat pro-svetlitve. Derek Walcott to čudovito evocira v svoji pesmi Poletni solsticij (Midsummer XVII):
Postojim, da slišim zmagoslavni vrišč škržatov,
ki dajejo življenju najvišji ton, a neznosno je živeti z njihovim
tonom veselja. Ugasnite
tisti zvok. Ko se oko potopi v tišino,
se privadi obrisom pohištva in razum
temi. Škržati so divji kot materine
noge, ki gazijo igle bližajočega se dežja.
dan je potem gost kot listje, tesno skupaj kot ure
in ožgan vonj se je dvigal z orošene ceste.
Z istim strojem prišijem njene poteze k svojim.
Kakšno delo nas čaka, kakšna sončava za generacije!
(Prev. Jure Potokar)
Glasovi škržatov, podobno kot ne-teleološke besede širijo okoli sebe bliske, katerih zvok pomeni razbremenitev presežnih energij in solarno opevanje razdajanja brez povračila. Tu se lahko spomnimo, kaj je dejal Michael serres o šumu, ki je del sporazumevanja. Pesništvo je šum znanosti - brez njega ne bi bilo nikakršne znanosti, in vendar brez vsaj nekaj flozofje ne bi bilo ne poetiziranja ne flozofranja - in spopadanje s šumom je odpiranje v ne-védenje ali v realno onstran racionalnega. serres ima šum za nered, ki igra nosilno vlogo pri proizvajanju reda. Popolna odstranitev šuma bi proizvedla uspešno sporazumevanje, vendar to vodi v izravnavo in nerazločnost zaznave - v proces dematerializacije, ki vodi v abstraktno misel, vendar odstranjuje lom svetlobe s stvari in z njihove bleščeče površine.
Protislovja se porajajo tako iz ontologije jezika, s procesom vključevanja ali izključevanja, kot tudi z vzajemnim delovanjem jezika in institucionalizirane vladajoče kulture. To pa ne prizadeva le akademskega kritištva, marveč tudi poezijo, ker literarna in umetniška produkcija čutita omejenost njegovih hierarhij in ustanov. Morda oba v svojih vrstah (bodisi da gre za literate bodisi za flozofe) potrebujeta izgredniškega pesnika, ki bo zlomil
30
STEPHANOS STEPHANIDES: MISLITI SkOZI RAZPOR
hegemonsko singularnost, ki bo vedel kje zrahljati stopnjujočo moč jezika, ki bo oživil ječanje in hrušč opustošenih teles in opustošene narave ter bo razločil mnogotere obrise in možnosti pokrajine in življenja. To izgredni-štvo je v Serrovem teoretskem modelu zgoščeno v liku parazita - parazit je statični šum, ki poseže v sporazumevanje, v La Fontainovih basnih je poosebljen v nepovabljenem gostu, ki se pusti hraniti od drugih, za vračilo pa pripoveduje zgodbe in s tem podre sistem izmenjave, uvajajoč določen šum v red slavnostne večerje - parazit se giblje skozi vrtinčenje osrednjega toka, njegova strategija pa odpira novi prostor v novi struji ali kanalu. Njegova taktika spreminja značaj slavnostne večerje v njegov prid, kar utegne gostitelja izzvati, da bo poskrbel, da v prihodnje tega gosta ne bo več zraven. Tako je parazit vključen in hkrati izključen (kajti zabava temelji na izključitvi nepovabljenih), vendar ustvarja okoliščino za novo možnost v parazitni logiki premestitve, odpirajoč pot ven iz določenosti z vpeljavo čudeža, srečnega naključja in nepredvidljivosti. Tako kot pri Bataillu, je srečno naključje pomembno tudi v Serresovi misli, ki se približuje teoriji entropije in neskončnemu variiranju v procesu premestitve nekega objekta. Bataille srečno naključje povezuje s tesnobo, ker tesnoba pomeni izzivanje sreče. Sreča je torej prelom z identiteto in utilitarno izkušnjo, utemeljeno na determinaciji dogodkov.
Ko sem študiral v Britaniji in bil priseljenec sredi tujega jezika in na tujem ozemlju, me je begala premočrtna periodizacija študija literature, ki me je vodil od Beowulfa do T. s. Eliota, a me ob tem pustil, da sem se spraševal, kam spadam - iščoč povezave med srečnimi naključji in viharji, ki so me pripeljali v tisti razred. Zmeraj sem si želel premikati se ob strani in prečno, zgoraj in spodaj. Desetletja, ki so sledila, so pripeljala do transformacije z novim poudarkom na takšnih vprašanjih, kot sta postkolonialnost in medkulturnost. Za to, da sem dobil prostor znotraj akademskega sveta, so zaslužni prav izgredni teoretiki in pisatelji, ki so izpeljali ta obrat k ho-rizontalnosti. Toda porajajo se nove hegemonije in ortodoksije, ko se zgodi premik k novemu kanonu in k novemu svetovnemu redu, ki nosi s seboj nove sile singularnosti in homogenizacije v čedalje globalnejšem izkustvu in sile znanstvene ter tehnološke racionalnosti. Žalostno dejstvo naše kulture je, kot je pripomnil W. H. Auden, da lahko pesnik zasluži dosti več s pisanjem in z govorjenjem o svoji umetnosti, kot pa s tem, da jo ustvarja. In vendar to ne bi smelo biti žalostno, ker pesniki, podobno kot čarovniki, niso profesionalci, njihova vloga je subvertiranje menjalnih vrednosti, magija pa je prikrita in skrivnostna, se ne podreja nobenemu redu, je grožnja vsemu družbenemu in omejitvam, zaradi česar sploh ima pomen. Walcott pravi:
genij ni bil aretiran zaradi svojega epoho parajočega krika
pač pa, ker je gol tekal po ulicah - izdavljajoč, da je bilo to, kar odkriva, od
zmeraj na voljo spoznanju. (XII)
Problem ni zgolj napetost med flozofom kritikom in pesnikom izgredni-kom, pač pa je v slehernem od nas, ko se spoprijemamo z mejami našega sporazumevanja. Kot nakazuje Juarroz v gornjih verzih, to sporazumevanje
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TEORETSkO-LITERARNI HIBRIDI
poteka znotraj področja umiranja, ki zarisuje in omejuje obseg možnosti. Susan Sontag nas svari pred omejevanjem resnične umetnosti, ko ugotavlja, da se življenje hrani s svojo neizprosno čutnostjo. Če smo se naučili sebe obvarovati pred naravo, se moramo zdaj naučiti obvarovati naravo pred seboj, ko uporabljamo svoje moči, da bi se postopoma razpustili v njeni tujosti in v tujosti drugih, ki je pravzaprav tudi naša lastna tujost. Zgolj gledanje ne more dojeti svojega drugega. razcvet poezije je posledica omejevanja gledanja, ker je resnica koncepta ločena od resničnosti, na katero se nanaša. Čeprav je znanost v podobi in podoba v znanosti, znanost ne more predvideti poti imaginacije, dejavnosti, ki je odvisna od ustvarjalne volje posameznika in ima opraviti s polzavestjo, z budnimi sanjami in s hierarhijo moči ali z napetostjo, ki jo te izražajo. Zopet navajam walcotta:
izneveriti se flozofji je blago izdajstvo pesnikov, smehljati se vsej znanosti, prezirajoč njena orodja; te vrstice bodo ovenele kot travniško cvetje - kamikaze ali ikari, ožgani v empiričnem sijaju. (XII)
Zdi se, da se kot človeška bitja pravzaprav sploh ne zavedamo, kaj počnemo, bodisi telesno bodisi duševno! Človeške zadeve so nejasne in kot človeška bitja smo govorjeni prav toliko, kolikor sami govorimo. Tu bi rad spomnil na Benjaminov pojem mémoire involontaire, ki ga Benjamin povezuje s Proustom, kjer spominjanje omogoča nastanek izkušnje, četudi sâmo ni izkušnja. Liričnost postane načelo pesniškega prenosa kot neke vrste naknadni šok, prav kakor nehoteni spomin nosi življenje naprej, kljub dejstvu, da je zavest dogodke, za katere gre, utegnila pozabiti - subjekt je utegnil pozabiti, kaj je bil osnovni vzrok liričnosti ali spomina, toda onadva nista pozabila na subjekt.
V tem tonu bom sklenil z navedbo sklepnih vrstic sklepne pesmi wal-cottovega Poletnega solsticija (LIV): »četudi nihče ne bo umrl v svoji lastni deželi / bo hvaležna trava pognala iz njegovega srca.«
Iz angleščine prevedla Jelka Kernev Štrajn
LITEraTUra
adorno, Theodor. Negative Dialectics. Prev. E. B. ashton. London: routledge,
1973. Bataille, georges. On Nietzsche. Prev. Bruce Boone. New York: Paragon Press,
1992. Benjamin, walter. “The Image of Proust.” Illuminations. Prev. Harry Zohn, ur.
in uvod Hannah arendt. [New York, 1968.] London: Collins/Fontana, 1973.
201–15. Blanchot, Maurice. “The Beast of Lascaux.” Trans. Leslie Hill. The Oxford Literary
Review 22 (2000): 9–38. – – –. The Space of Literature. Prev. ann smock. Lincoln and London: University
of Nebraska Press, 1982.
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STEPHANOS STEPHANIDES: MISLITI SkOZI RAZPOR
Heidegger, Martin. Pathmarks. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1998. Juarroz, roberto. Vertikalna poezija. Prev. Taja Kramberger. Ljubljana: Študentska
založba, 2006. Kristeva, Julia. The kristeva Reader. Ur. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1986. Lingis, alphonso. The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. serres, Michel. The Parasite. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. sontag, susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, strauss
& giroux, 1966. walcott, derek. Midsummer. London & Boston: Faber & Faber, 1984.
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THINKINg THroUgH THe gAP
PoeTIc PHILoSoPHerS ANd PHILoSoPHIcAL PoeTS
stephanos stephanides
University of Cyprus
UdK 1:82.0-1
As both a poet and an academic, in this essay I attempt a personal and academic exploration of the controversial and symbiotic relationship between philosophy and poetry. I make reference to several thinkers in the tradition of continental theory, from Nietzsche to Alphonso Lingis, and use the example of a poem by Derek Walcott. The argument raises questions about the ontology of language and what is at stake in the notion of truth when we consider Heidegger’s translation of the Greek word for truth (aletheia) as “unforgetting.” I hope to raise questions regarding how the conceptualizing faculty may (or may not) enhance our understanding of poetry and art.
Keywords: delinquent poet, delinquent theoretician, truth, memory, forgetting, thinking, poetry, nature
The relationship between philosophy and poetry is a complex and controversial one that has informed literary theory since ancient times. By sheer or meaningful coincidence, when I received the invitation for this roundta-ble, I received a message from my friend, the Indian writer Priya sarukkai-Chabria, who had just read one of essays and who hitherto had only read my poetry. She commented "how immense and thought-provoking the gap! should I not have known otherwise, I’d say these are from two different people. True, the forms demand difference, but you are radically oppositional in the way you choose to write in these forms. Why such divergence? Could you expand on it?" In a subsequent message, she gave hints of how this apparent gap is bridged, but I would like to take up the challenge of her question with reference to a quote in the call for papers for this roundtable from roberto Juarroz (“Vertical Poetry” X/19):
Poetry and thought
are precisely
the most opposed to death
because they are its most faithful witnesses. (Juarroz 51)
Primerjalna književnost (Ljubljana) 29. Special Issue (2006)
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This suggests that, whether as philosophers or as poets, we know ourselves in our mortality. The discursive communities that arise from this mortal condition vary according to our relationships to established institutions and cultures. In her renowned essay “against Interpretation,” susan sontag stated that, in most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philis-tine refusal to leave the work of art alone, and she would want to liberate art from the taming of interpretation, which in her view makes art manageable and conformable, whereas real art has the capacity to make us nervous. she implies that interpretation denies the abyss of possibility that opens our understanding in art to go beyond the things within reach, and to make our stance vertiginous. The potentials of things must be reached out to by our powers to heal or break with the past and remain innocent and free. sontag (perhaps drawing on adorno, who also says that no thought can express no-nidentity) argues that concepts cannot do justice to the materiality of art.
Julia Kristeva has suggested in her work that social life today closes the subject from the qualities in art that do not conform to its preconceptions and stereotypes, but at the same time some have argued that the conceptualizing faculty could become impoverished through its rejection of its worth or effcacy - a certain degree of identity philosophy is as essential as material nonidentity. The aim is to open the subject to develop new symbolic capacities in social life and at the same time revise identity. along with Kristeva, some have suggested that rhythm marks the differential spaces in poetry and philosophy, and they seek the future possibility of a musical thinking that would go beyond the opposition between philosophy and poetry. rhythm is the force to be reckoned with and is the essential element in an understanding of philosophy and poetry. rhythm in effect provides a musical ethics of philosophy because musical thinking goes beyond the metaphysical opposition between philosophy and poetry and sets the frame for post-philosophical practice.
If the interpreter, as sontag would have it, speaks from an established discourse, philosopher alphonso Lingis claims that the philosopher can maintain his dignity in a community of skeptics revealing inconsistencies and incoherencies in the established canon. Nonetheless, in academic institutions we position our minds to avoid adventures that we sense we will not have the ardor to live through. One measures feelings and codifes responses to the promises and the threats. However, there are those that are excluded and marginalized from the philosophical statements that are acknowledged as reliable and true, and that are denied access to the truth and feel the fatigue of homelessness in their bodies.
How we understand the notion of truth is at stake here, as in all the thinkers and critics we have cited. Heidegger’s critiques of the western philosophical tradition raises questions as to what we mean when we speak of truth. He goes back to the pre-socratics in search of a term that better defnes truth, suggesting that Plato misused the original meaning of the greek word for truth, aletheia, which has its root in lethe ‘forgetting’, so it literally means non-forgetting. Thus Heidegger reads the original meaning as non-concealment. He say that if we translate aletheia as ‘non-concealment’ rather than ‘truth’, this translation not only draws on the literal mean-
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ing of the word, but directs us to rethinking the concept of truth. It does not merely mean correctness of statements, but rather takes us to the disclosure of beings. Heidegger believes that Plato misdirected us and he claims that there is no right way to get at beings at all, only better ways of uncovering them. Truth is not a feature of correct propositions that are asserted about an object by a human subject and then validated. Truth is the disclosure of beings and the idea of being in the world (Dasein) and here he moves from the abstract language of philosophical inquiry to the subtler poetic language. The intention is to allow Dasein to engage the world, to allow beings to reveal themselves to Dasein in their non-forgetting, not in their analysis. The primary task of poets is to uncover the world, to depict and explore the various relationships between beings and Dasein.
Poets are less exact but not less rigorous, drawing on nuance and metaphor, whereas philosophy tries to make terms as specifc as possible. Blanchot, also inspired by Heidegger, turns to the pre-socratics to discuss the relationship between philosophy and poetry. Blanchot tells us in “The Beast of Lascaux” that the listeners to Xenophon’s poetry and Heraclitus’ oracular and ambiguous aphorisms were present at the birth of philosophy in poetry, which he describes as a very strange event. For Blanchot, in Heraclitus there is a turning away from cosmogony to a new discourse in which sacred speech becomes the discourse of physis, permitting things themselves to resonate in the power to name, reaffrming their exultant presence as they disclose the materiality of language. Blanchot’s notion of nature and poetry also draws upon the refections on being and physis in the work of Heidegger, and on Heidegger’s notion that this experience is linked to a certain experience of origin in the work of art that renews the now. In The Space of Literature, Blanchot suggests that, if nature offers as well as denies itself to utilization, then it forgets itself in the real, and the experience of art is “is always original and at all moments a beginning” - “ever new, the mirage of the future’s inaccessible truth” (229) - and thus disrupts the reigning order of experience. In its promise or nostalgia for the future, the original experience occurs in the work of art as an experience of non-forgetting, which is the coming to presence of the real. The poem, by remembering, also renews our time by drawing on the future. It is to this excess that poetry points in the experience of nature, as the original experience, as what is remembered with an uncanny and transpersonal or communal memory. In the “The Beast of Lascaux,” he speaks of the immediate and the remote, what is more real than all real things and forgets itself in each thing, the bond we cannot bind, and by which everything, the whole, is bound.
The issue is related to a philosophy of language and the materiality of language. In identifying the problem of language, alphonso Lingis’ own language hovers between the axiological and the apophantic, seeking words whose forces chant and do not discourse. Alluding to Nietzsche’s affrmation that the primal force of language is axiological, he affrms that "words are uttered not for their representational form but for their condensing intensifying force - mantras” (64); “the strong and active forces of healthy sensuality speak, speak words of consecration and imprecation” (65). at times, Lingis writes in quiet complicity with the delinquency of the poet
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seeking ambient materiality that enraptures with its sensuous substances, following Nietszche, who in the modern era opened the way to thought as creative, as a form of poetry. In The Birth of Tragedy, he portrays poetry as the great healer of the existential troubles of human life: the apollonian (philosophical) and dionysian (poetic) characters must be held together if either is to attain its fullest potential. Nietzsche regarded poetry as an exceptional form of art, much more useful to philosophy than other forms.
Communication and contention cannot be resolved by abstraction alone because this leads to a leveling and undiscerning perception. Language as an intensifying force of incantation has the possibility to allow some noise to enter and break the singularity of order. However, even the poet cannot sustain a language of intensifying force and has to use representational form - darkness is a correlate to enlightenment. derek walcott wonderfully evokes this in his poem Midsummer (XVII):
I pause to hear a racketing triumph of cicadas
setting life’s pitch, but to live at their pitch
of joy is unendurable. Turn off
that sound. after the plunge of silence
the eye gets used to the shapes of furniture, and the mind
to darkness. The cicadas are frantic as my mother’s
feet, treading the needles of approaching rain.
day thick as leaves then, close to each other as hours,
and a sunburnt smell rose up from the drizzled road.
I stitch her lines to mine now with the same machine.
What work lies ahead of us, what sunlight for generations!
The sounds of the cicadas like words that are non-teleological send forth fashes of light in which vocalization is a discharge of excess energies and the solar chant of expenditure without return. we may recall here Michel serres’ idea of noise as part of communication. Poetry is the noise of science - without it there would be no science, yet without at least some philosophy there would be no poeticizing or philosophizing - and coming to grips with noise is opening to non-knowledge or the real beyond the rational. serres considers noise as disorder to have a founding role in the production of order. The maximal elimination of noise would produce successful communication, but this leads to a leveling and undiscerning perception - to a process of dematerialization that leads to abstract thought, but eliminates the refractions off things and their luminous surfaces.
Contradictions arise both from the ontology of language with its processes of in/exclusion and its interaction with the institutionalization of the social and cultural establishment. This affects not only academic criticism, but also poetry because literary and artistic production feels the constraints of its hierarchies and institutions. Both perhaps need the delinquent poet within them (whether as literati or as philosophers), who will break hegemonic singularity, who will discern where to release the intensifying force of language that will enliven the groan and rumble of wasted bodies and wasted nature, discern the multiple contours and possibilities of landscape and being. This delinquency is troped into the fgure of the parasite in Serres’
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theoretical model - the parasite is the static noise that interferes in communication and is also confgured as the uninvited guest in La Fontaine’s fables, that feeds from others but offers stories in return, upsetting the system of exchange, introducing a little noise into the order of the dinner party - the parasite moves through the turbulence of midstream and his strategy opens up a new space in a new stream or channel. His tactics transform the nature of the dinner party to his advantage, which might provoke the host to take action to ensure his future exclusion. Thus the parasite is both included and excluded (because the party is founded on the exclusion of the uninvited), but creates a condition of new possibility in the parasite’s logic of displacement opening a way out of determinacy through an infusion of miracle, chance, and the unpredictable. as in Bataille, chance is important in serres’ thought, drawing on the theory of entropy and the infnite variation in the course of an object’s trajectory. For Bataille, chance is linked to anguish because anguish is the contestation of chance. Thus, chance is a rupture with identity and the utilitarian experience based on the determination of events. when I was a student in Britain, as a migrant out of language and out of place, I was troubled by the linear periodization of my literary studies, which led me from Beowulf to T. s. Eliot and left me asking myself where I belong - looking for the chance connections and turbulence that brought me into that classroom. I was always wanting to move sideward and across, above and below. The subsequent decades led to transformation in academic literary studies with a new emphasis on such issues as the postcolonial and the transcultural. If I have found a space in academia, it is because of the delinquent theorists and writers that brought about this turn to horizontality. Nonetheless, new hegemonies and orthodoxies arise as we move to a new canon and a new world order that brings with it new forces of singularity and homogenization in an increasingly global experience, and of scientifc and technological rationality. It is a sad fact about our culture, w. H. auden observed, that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it. However, this should not be sad at all because poets, like magicians, are non-professional beings and their role is to subvert exchange value, and magic is furtive and mysterious, irregular, a threat to the social and the boundaries that gives it meaning. walcott says: “genius was not arrested for its epoch-shattering shout / but for running in the streets naked - spluttering out that what it discovers was always there to be known” (XII). The problem is not only a tension between the philosopher critic and the delinquent poet, but within each as we grapple with the boundaries of our mediation. as Juarroz suggests above, this mediation is within the domain of dying that circumscribes and limits the range of possibilities. sontag warns us against the taming of real art in the realization that life is nurtured in its relentless sensuality. If we have learned to protect ourselves against nature, we now have to learn to protect nature from ourselves using our powers to dissolve into her strangeness, and the strangeness of others that in effect is also our own. seeing alone cannot grasp its other - bursts of poetry come from the limitations of seeing because the truth of the concept is separated from the reality to which it refers. although sci-
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ence is in the image and the image in science, science cannot predict the trajectory of the imagination, an activity subject to the individual’s creative will, and has to do with semiconscious daydreaming and the hierarchy of forces or intensities which express it. again, I quote walcott:
to betray philosophy is the gentle treason of poets, to smile at all science, scorning its instruments; these lines will wilt like mayfies - kamikazes or Icari singed in empirical radiance. (XII)
we do not as humans necessarily seem aware of what we are physically or mentally doing at all! There is opacity in human affairs and as human beings we are spoken as much as we speak. Here I would like to invoke walter Benjamin’s notion of memoire involontaire discussed in relation to Proust, where remembrance gives rise to experience although is not itself an experience. Lyricism becomes the principle of poetry’s transmission as a kind of aftershock, just as involuntary memory carries a life forward despite the fact that the events at issue may have been forgotten by consciousness - the subject may have forgotten the basis of the lyricism or the memory, but these have not forgotten the subject.
And on this note I will end, quoting the fnal lines of the fnal poem of walcott’s Midsummer (LIV): “though no man dies in his own country / the grateful grass will grow thick from his heart.”
wOrKs CITEd
adorno, Theodor. Negative Dialectics. Trans. E. B. ashton. London: routledge,
1973. Bataille, georges. On Nietzsche. Trans. Bruce Boone. New York: Paragon Press,
1992. Benjamin, walter. “The Image of Proust.” Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn, ed.
& intro. Hannah arendt. [New York, 1968.] London: Collins/Fontana, 1973.
201–15. Blanchot, Maurice. “The Beast of Lascaux.” Trans. Leslie Hill. The Oxford Literary
Review 22 (2000): 9–38. – – –. The Space of Literature. Trans. ann smock. Lincoln and London: University
of Nebraska Press, 1982. Heidegger, Martin. Pathmarks. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
1998. Juarroz, roberto. Vertical Poetry: Recent Poems. Trans. Mary Crow. New York:
white Pine Press, 1992. Kristeva, Julia. The kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi. New York: Columbia University
Press: 1986. Lingis, alphonso. The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. serres, Michel. The Parasite. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981. sontag, susan. Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, strauss
& giroux, 1966. walcott, derek. Midsummer. London & Boston: Faber & Faber, 1984.
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Heidegger and Truth
With kind permission of the editors I would like to clarify terms that were smoothed out in the editorial process in my article: “Thinking through the Gap: Poetical Philosopher and Philosophical Poets” published in the last issue of the journal. In my article, I refer to Heidegger’s rendering of the Greek a-letheia with the terms unconcealing and unforgetting to refer to truth. As these terms do not exist in Standard English, they were unfortunately and understandably rendered as non-forgetting and non-concealing in the printed version of my essay. However the distinction between un- and non- in English is crucial. Undoing implies the agency of the subject whereas non-doing is just passive continuity. For Heidegger, unforgetting and unconcealing is the agency of meditative thinking in the revelation of Being. Changing the un- to non- is to rob this thinking of its power of agency. The identity of agency is not a given. It must be achieved.
Stephanos Stephanides Heidegger in resnica
Z ljubeznivim dovoljenjem urednikov pojasnjujem razliko med dvema izrazoma (unconcealing in non-concealing)*, ki se je izgubila med pripravami mojega članka za tisk (»Misliti skozi razpor: Pesniški flozof in flozof pesniki.« Primerjalna književnost 29. Posebna številka (2006)). V tem besedilu se namreč sklicujem na Heideggrovo pojmovanje grškega izraza a-letheia, ki ga ta flozof interpretira z izrazoma ne-pozaba (ang. unforgetting) in ne-prikriva-nje (ang. unconcealing). Glede na to, da izraza unforgetting in unconcealing v knjižni angleščini, žal, ne obstajata, se je, pravzaprav razumljivo, zgodilo, da sta se v natisnjeni angleški verziji mojega članka pojavila izraza non-forgetting in non-concealing. Zato je treba tu opozoriti, da je razlika med un- in non- v angleščini vendarle bistvena. Ne-storiti v smislu undoing pomeni delovanje subjekta, nestoriti v smislu non-doing pa nakazuje zgolj pasivno kontinuiteto. Z nepozabo (ang. unforgetting) in neprikrivanjem (ang. unconcealing) Heidegger označuje dejavnost meditativnega mišljenja pri razkrivanju Biti. Zamenjava un- v non- pomeni prikrajšati to mišljenje za njegovo moč delovanja. Identiteta delovanja namreč ni nekaj danega, treba jo je doseči.
* V slovenski različici omenjenega članka te razlike ni mogoče zaznati, saj angleški predponi »un-» in »non-» v slovenščini vselej prevajamo z »ne-». (Op. prev.)
Avtorju in bralcem se opravičujemo za neljubo napako
Uredništvo We kindly apologize to the author and the readers for the unpleasant mistake.
Editors