tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post8627020948453170970..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: GĂ©rard de Nerval: El Desdichado (Chimeras)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-79821730010903830602015-01-27T04:44:10.740-08:002015-01-27T04:44:10.740-08:00That's a great last thought..reminded me of Jo...That's a great last thought..reminded me of John Burnside's:<br /><br />I dream of the silence<br />the day before Adam came<br />to name the animals,<br /><br />The gold skins newly dropped<br />from God's bright fingers, still<br />implicit with the light.<br /><br />A day like this, perhaps:<br />a winter whiteness<br />haunting the creation,<br /><br />as we are sometimes<br />haunted by the space<br />we fill, or by the forms<br /><br />we might have known<br />before the names,<br />beyond the gloss of things.<br /><br />Haven't read Augustine's account but Fergus Kerr suggests that it is part of the problem: seeing the 'I' before the world (and therefore against it), thinking we can capture the world (name it/control it?)-and all that without other people. <br /><br />Nature and other people are from then on a constraint on the autonomous self, no?<br /><br />billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-3022823742594524812015-01-27T02:34:23.939-08:002015-01-27T02:34:23.939-08:00Now how did Rothko stumble into that mire?
He mus...Now how did Rothko stumble into that mire?<br /><br />He must have been pushed.<br /><br />It's just the metaphysical nobility of the conceptually minimal, I mean.<br /><br />Was always the concept separated the wise men off from Nature.<br /><br />Neither the simplicity nor the complexity of Nature is conceptual.<br /><br />Conceptual is an operation.<br /><br />A bit aggressive like, what with the ordering-around of the various bits of pure ideal nonsense.<br /><br />Augustine's beautiful account of the learning of language in childhood becomes elegiac, in that it's more about the end of something than the beginning of something.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-17886120565383708782015-01-27T02:23:34.682-08:002015-01-27T02:23:34.682-08:00Well, yes, largely agree with you, Tom. Given all ...Well, yes, largely agree with you, Tom. Given all the death, cruelty and barbarism it's hard to make the case for Man (or even God, really..er..not that he needs a case[he says, quickly hedging his bets!]).<br /><br />That "corner" sounds horrific and I shudder every time you mention it.<br /><br />I think your blind friend might want to reconsider things if he'd actually lived amongst 'religious' people (or, to be fair, the self-styled religious).<br /><br />I don't think it's a question of genius just offering solace or consolation-as if they or anyone could balance the books at this late stage in the day. Maybe there is no book? But I do think it is about openings, moments of beauty. And just as much, these come from friends and loved ones. The human hand that has wreaked so much havoc is also, occasionally, one that holds us. So I can't agree with you when you say "equally". <br /><br />billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-28587875409433025612015-01-27T01:54:26.264-08:002015-01-27T01:54:26.264-08:00Billoo, thanks for expanding a bit.
In turn let m...Billoo, thanks for expanding a bit.<br /><br />In turn let me do the same.<br /><br />There's a blind man who lives alone in a room just up up the block.<br /><br />That's about my own extremely limited hobbling range at this stage.<br /><br />When I encounter that man, my heart always skips a beat, because he's always bravely yet errantly tapping his way, with long stick and carrying-sack, out into the insane river of Death (Acheron) (aka freeway feeder), which separates both him and us from that final requirement, food.<br /><br />When I say us, I must include the growing ragged army of stray animals we attempt to support.<br /><br />So we here are well aware it's a really big deal to get across that black river of cars.<br /><br />I won't dare it. I was run over once at that corner, lost a lot of blood, pronounced dead, then not, and the black sun then was with me on the ride to the trauma center at the county hospital, all the way, in and out of life.<br /><br />Now it's my courageous partner, to whom we here all owe life, who takes her chances with that corner. where seven pedestrians have already died, in our time here.<br /><br />My sense now, so deep, is that our time here is so very brief, and I/we were always so very wrong.<br /><br />Two nights ago I had as often helped guide the blind man across the hell stream, me lamer than him, him blinder than me, both with sticks, one seeing the onrushing traffic, one not.<br /><br />This time, once across, he stopped to talk, and spoke at length of God, whom, after some probing, I had to concede I no longer have much interest in, in the traditional format.<br /><br />We're the same age, 75.<br /><br />He's a bit crusty but appears amazingly sound for his age, no discernible bad habits. <br /><br />He was not at all satisfied with my answer to his charges or rather questions regarding my atheism. Deism, he said it was. Wrong, wrong. Missing the mark. <br /><br />Adam. He missed the mark.<br /><br />Do you know what the word is, when you miss the mark, he asked.<br /><br />Three letter word, he hinted.<br /><br />In archery, 800 years ago, the word for missing the mark in archery was:<br /><br />I filled in the blanks.<br /><br />S.I.N.<br /><br />Cars were rushing past. <br /><br />Soon enough, after a host of admonitions regarding Bible reading, he went inside.<br /><br />Some twenty years ago I stopped being surprised by the odd fact that, after he went into the dark ground-floor apartment, the light never went on.<br /><br />I don't know whether he ever had sight.<br /><br />Bible on tape?<br /><br />(Partner suggests braille).<br /><br />In any case, there it was --- faith. The Sun Inside. The real thing. A man whose eyes must never be insulted by this world and what the people blest with vision have done with it.<br /><br />Fortunate he.<br /><br />But for me, much as Augustine or Rothko, or Nerval with his nutty Alchemy, or any other genius may continue to delight and teach and console us... it's impossible now not to regard them, for all their genius, and us, and for that matter, to be fair, God(!), when viewed from a reasonably objective (remote) "long" perspective, as equally members of the great death army which managed in quite a short evolutionary period to all but efface the astonishing and beautiful miracle of life on this planet that is so soon to return to silence, hopefully, if we manage to make our exit quickly enough, with some nonhuman things still left growing, breathing, foraging all those good things non human life used to do, when things were good. <br /><br />What I mean to say I guess is that it's not just the ladders, increasingly, black sun, like every other linguistic construct, begins to lose its lustre here.<br /><br />PS. Vow to self, post Rumi for Billoo.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-57313134695990455822015-01-26T22:10:34.731-08:002015-01-26T22:10:34.731-08:00Tom, I think it's wrong to think that in the f...Tom, I think it's wrong to think that in the face of terrible disasters or despair or personal suffering there is any light in 'the above'. But if the sun isn't *too* black then sadness and longing-which will probably always be with us-can be a part of our life, so to speak, so to speak. No? (Augustine: yearning makes the heart grow deeper").<br /><br />Don't get you? Are you asking about climate change specifically? Don't want to bore you, but I could write a lot on that. <br /><br />Have you read J. Lear's 'Radical Hope'? In it there's this line (I know you don't like ladders but hear me out!) that goes:<br /><br />God-Ah-badt-dadt-deah -is good. My commitment to the genuine transcendence of God is manifest in my commitment to the goodness of the world transcending our necessarily limited attempt to understand it. My commitment to God's transcendence and goodness is manifested in my commitment to the idea that something good will emerge even if it outstrips my limited understanding of what that good is.<br /><br />But the black sun is also, for me, Rothko, also the via negativa.<br /><br />b.billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-81993455242193071062015-01-26T21:11:21.481-08:002015-01-26T21:11:21.481-08:00Aye, and there may be conscious life on Earth as w...Aye, and there may be conscious life on Earth as well, as indicated by the assiduous efforts of Google to efface all notice of this post, and of every other recent post here that has included images related to either climate change or Syria... curiously erased from blog feeds... topics which evidently cause our putatively disinterested Techno Masters to break out in uncomfortable spots?<br /><br />On the other hand, Billoo, and especially in light of the above, if you have the time and inclination, do please tell us more.<br /><br />(And here I'd thought the black sun was just another chimera -- that is, another human invention... fabricated back in the day when it was not yet understood that the more knowledge humans think they have acquired, the more miserable they become...) <br /><br />Anyhow... if nothing else, the sonorities, as brought out in the Jean Vilar recitation.<br /><br />Nerval was doubtless a nut. OK, he liked lobsters, and took his pet lobster out for little walks. Well, promenades. In the public gardens. So it was said.<br /><br />Its name, if I recall, was Thibault.<br /><br />I don't believe lobsters can be taken out for little walks. They'd hate the cold, the heat, the having to walk on hard pavement on appendages suitable only for wriggling.<br /><br />Poetry doesn't have to bother about those anymore.<br /><br />The sonorities I mean.<br /><br />Now the poets of note have cute little sweaters for their imaginary pet crustaceans.<br /><br />Grants make anything possible.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-61330618702441674632015-01-26T20:16:25.913-08:002015-01-26T20:16:25.913-08:00The black sun is also a sun.The black sun is also a sun.billoohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10716970909272480118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-6746909764629838732015-01-26T04:14:20.001-08:002015-01-26T04:14:20.001-08:00Jean Vilar reads Nerval's El Desdichado<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hovkm4hdOvQ" rel="nofollow">Jean Vilar reads Nerval's El Desdichado</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com