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A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particular and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and paté de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement–and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, music, and philosophy.
–Alan Watts, Does It Matter?
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Showing posts with label books/language/writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books/language/writing. Show all posts
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Sudden Salience
6
In the Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard says the following:
“The poetic image is a sudden salience of the surface of the psyche”
This is an amazing phrase. When I first read it I think it produced in me the very effect that it describes, an effect produced, curiously, not by a conceptual understanding of what the phrase means but simply by an aural apprehension of it. The wonderfully sibilant alliteration evoked an image of something sizzling, like a brief flash of fire that singes (so many “s” words here!).
I read the phrase two or three more times, slowly. The author says that it is a salience of the surface of the psyche, not on it. The poetic image emerges from the surface of the psyche much like the ephemeral emanation of solar flares from the sun. In this metaphor the sun is, of course, the psyche. The latter has its etymological roots in the notion of breath but I much prefer the potency conjured in the image of a sphere of fire because poetic images are like sparks, as are ideas, when they are first thought of.
And then there is the word “salience”. Wonderful word! Although most would have to look it up in a dictionary to understand what it means, we seem, in this context, to intuitively grasp its meaning. Perhaps the more familiar adjective “salient” leads us to this apprehension. The very oddness and semantic vagueness of “salience” makes it jump out at us as we read, which of course is an enactment of the very thing that it describes. I love words like this.
If any one has a phrase they love for its poetic/linguistic/aural/semantic qualities, please let me know in the comments and I’ll post those and more in later entries.
5
In the Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard says the following:
“The poetic image is a sudden salience of the surface of the psyche”
This is an amazing phrase. When I first read it I think it produced in me the very effect that it describes, an effect produced, curiously, not by a conceptual understanding of what the phrase means but simply by an aural apprehension of it. The wonderfully sibilant alliteration evoked an image of something sizzling, like a brief flash of fire that singes (so many “s” words here!).
I read the phrase two or three more times, slowly. The author says that it is a salience of the surface of the psyche, not on it. The poetic image emerges from the surface of the psyche much like the ephemeral emanation of solar flares from the sun. In this metaphor the sun is, of course, the psyche. The latter has its etymological roots in the notion of breath but I much prefer the potency conjured in the image of a sphere of fire because poetic images are like sparks, as are ideas, when they are first thought of.
And then there is the word “salience”. Wonderful word! Although most would have to look it up in a dictionary to understand what it means, we seem, in this context, to intuitively grasp its meaning. Perhaps the more familiar adjective “salient” leads us to this apprehension. The very oddness and semantic vagueness of “salience” makes it jump out at us as we read, which of course is an enactment of the very thing that it describes. I love words like this.
If any one has a phrase they love for its poetic/linguistic/aural/semantic qualities, please let me know in the comments and I’ll post those and more in later entries.
5
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
When the British had an Empire
6
One of my favorite books is Lady Chatterly's Lover. Not abstractly or generally, but rather concretely. Among the books that are physically in my library this is one of my favorites. Not because of the story, which I imagine is very good (I've never read it), but because of some special characteristic it has. The edition I have was published in Sweden in 1950. Thanks to obscenity laws, it wasn't published in England until 1960. The wonderful thing about this edition is that on the inside front cover it says, "The sale of this book is prohibited in the United States of America and the British Empire." That last bit really impressed me. I had in my hands a little book that, like David, dared to challenge an empire. That's why I love this book. Its like an artifact, as if in an archaeological excavation they had discovered the very stones that David used to knock out Goliath.
I found it many years ago in a small Jewish library in New York. I paid $2.50 for it. What a jewel! Unfortunately it suffered an accident. I was living in Boston at the time and was getting ready for my move to Mexico (where I now live). I had almost all my books stored in boxes in the basement. I was working then at the Harvard Bookstore and one day during work this huge storm came out of nowhere and dumped a deluge of water. My roommate called me to tell me the basement was filling with water. I paid an obscene amount of money for a taxi but got home quickly and found the basement knee-high with water. I've never worked so hard in my life hauling those boxes out of the basement. I lost a good many books that had to be thrown away, but Lady Chatterly's Lover survived. Its safely here with me in Mexico, with some water stains, with the price written on the inside cover in pencil, and that wonderful and arrogant warning of a lost empire.
5
One of my favorite books is Lady Chatterly's Lover. Not abstractly or generally, but rather concretely. Among the books that are physically in my library this is one of my favorites. Not because of the story, which I imagine is very good (I've never read it), but because of some special characteristic it has. The edition I have was published in Sweden in 1950. Thanks to obscenity laws, it wasn't published in England until 1960. The wonderful thing about this edition is that on the inside front cover it says, "The sale of this book is prohibited in the United States of America and the British Empire." That last bit really impressed me. I had in my hands a little book that, like David, dared to challenge an empire. That's why I love this book. Its like an artifact, as if in an archaeological excavation they had discovered the very stones that David used to knock out Goliath.
I found it many years ago in a small Jewish library in New York. I paid $2.50 for it. What a jewel! Unfortunately it suffered an accident. I was living in Boston at the time and was getting ready for my move to Mexico (where I now live). I had almost all my books stored in boxes in the basement. I was working then at the Harvard Bookstore and one day during work this huge storm came out of nowhere and dumped a deluge of water. My roommate called me to tell me the basement was filling with water. I paid an obscene amount of money for a taxi but got home quickly and found the basement knee-high with water. I've never worked so hard in my life hauling those boxes out of the basement. I lost a good many books that had to be thrown away, but Lady Chatterly's Lover survived. Its safely here with me in Mexico, with some water stains, with the price written on the inside cover in pencil, and that wonderful and arrogant warning of a lost empire.
5
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