ENVISION




















For Paul David Hojda

Something flows. Knowledge has movement. The movement of knowledge is to flow towards acknowledging that there is another kind of knowing than the Socratic one. The Greek’s proposition that "I know that I know nothing" is not very useful. Socrates is not thinking about knowledge in relation. But any androcentric maneuver should consider containers, counter-factuals, and contradictions. As such. And in as much. One desires to have one’s knowledge (of nothing) be contained by another’s knowledge (of something). As it were. Has Socrates ever read David’s song: “I am my beloved’s, his desire is for me?” Seeing as becoming. We contain knowledge and the other. There are only passages. Such as the one I quote from Language, Eros, Being: Kabbalistic Hermeneutics and Poetic Imagination: “whoever desires to be seen before his master should not enter except by means of this stone." The pronoun “this” takes the feminine form (zo’t). It is through the Shekhinah, the gateway to dwelling, that one gets to know about dwelling. "Communion can ensue only from envisioning, and envisioning only from communion." Envision the secret of the rainbow. The telephone rings. My nephew plays a Satie piece on the piano for me, and then whispers: “You know, I adore you.” I know.

Comments

Anonymous said…
si acum tradu. dar si daca nu inteleg prea mult si ramin doar cu ultimile cuvinte care mi le-ai amintit sint incintat si ma bucurca am putut trimite un strop de fericire celei mai dragi . your nepheu, Paul David Hojda
Anonymous said…
Though you often prefer to be lost in thought, it seems that you have now advanced to the stage where to be 'lost in revelations' is a more apt description of the goal of your frequent poetic mind trips. Just listen to what Ashbery has to say about what he finds characterizes Robert Duncan's experimental poetry:

"..., he has continually pushed on toward a kind of poetry that is more truly experimental. He is the alchemist of modern poets, and his work is an endless series of experiments, each changing the nature of the last (he has written that each poem is a revision of what has gone before). Alchemy exists beyound a universal doubt that it can realize its object, just as Duncan's quest can never be fulfilled precisely because it is an ideal one. Yet in the course of it he enlarges his preoccupations so that their original goal is lost in revelations. Reading him, we feel we are living into the body, down toward the soul which is below rather than above, until one day we emerge on the heights, like Capricorn, without realizing that was where we were heading all along".

From John Ashbery, "Introduction to a Reading by Robert Duncan" (1967)
Camelia said…
Ah, Søren, spot on. I love the idea of the alchemist. Where poetry is concerned, there is no point in exercising the art if one does not consider oneself at least a visionary. As Allen Ginsberg says: “I won’t say the Lord’s prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.” Of course, what he means to suggest is that poetry, at its best, is about reading souls. Getting others on your wavelength, or rather should I says, frequency. The more such lines entangle the more interesting it gets. Ashbery and Duncan understand what it means to be in the space of vibrations – cosmic or alchemically produced – as vibrations cut across set boundaries and throw you right at the core of things. What you are left with is a heightened sense of perception, among other things, of how marvelous and privileged an endeavor it is to try to register via poetical thought the soul of another. Of course, experimental writing as ideation is hard to achieve, but then form is hard to achieve, when you are busy standing in awe of the sight that vibration cuts open. When it works, we are often left with this knowledge: we know what to do. Why, because it is really that simple. Ride the wave you are given.

Paul, what a wonderful comment – a thorough translation is on its way. But then you already got it. As with such things, and since you’ve always been in my sight, and furthermore, as special things run in the family, you get a special hug too, also here, though it is one that not will surprise you, as you will know it right away, as you already know it.

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