Edge of the tongue
Poetry is a peripheral, borderline activity.
Nothing is clearly separated from anything - that is the principle of all worlds. All borders record the phenomenon edge boiling.
There is, therefore, something dynamic about boundaries - they are changeable, canceling themselves from time to time. The reason for this is what is emitted by all bodies that have the power of enclosure: the urge to eat through look-over there, confirming the principle of autonomous: radiation-outside-me. Physical law: this Cosmos expands as well. By conquering at the expense of the unconquered.
All boundaries have an urge to be somewhere further in space: the unquestionable cosmic conditioning, the only principle that can be said to be affirmed by the Cosmos itself, I mean the only thing that can be read as a reliable meaning in the Universe itself.
This means that all are borders, that the edge is the space of a key (decisive) event in the known.
All this also applies to the edge of the language.
On the border between the sayable and the unsayable - there is a constant simmering that gives the most important picture of us, of our actions, of our times, fears, ecstasies... It is the space of the most grandiose battle that exists. The size of the front is unimaginable, the strategy is unimaginably imaginative, and the formations are, of course, countless.
It is a space where pretentiousness is devoid of all negative connotations, and that is why it can be said: it is the only struggle on which the fate of the world really depends.
Let's imagine, how does it unfold? Recivo is, occasionally, suddenly, incidentally, uncontrollably, overflowing into Unspeakable. This is followed by the settlement of the newly conquered territory. (Which is to say: after the outburst, meaning will come, then the era of interpretation, then the need for reversion, then again, it's time - the urge for outburst. And, then further, in the same way... Endless forcing (loading) of meaning into new spaces which are conquered by the outbursts of the poetic, because this incident, the marginal incident, is - Poetry itself.)
Something like the settlement of the Wild West: only the third generation settled on points that had already been washed over by waves of new, settled souls for some time. When this and that space be possessed (inhabited with meaning) it really just means that the border is now - somewhere else.
From the being of darkness
On that last cosmogonic boundary between Vasiona which is space and that beyond - the Magnificent Nothing to the detriment of which the only known space, Vasiona itself, is expanding, on that hypothetical point from which the light is equally seen, as the pride of the Real Great Nothing is felt, and from where can be "looked at" on both sides - both visible and invisible, both present and absent, both Light and Blackness - well, on that imaginary border point sits the Lion of Poetry.
It eats Nothing and expels Everything.
It eats Darkness and casts out Light.
It bites Reality and spews Language.
It is poetry/poet/poetic - a legionnaire of Light, but eternally staring into darkness. Only it feels a certain warmth of Nothingness, a certain classy indifference of a potential identity (Nothingness is also an ocean of unknowable Possibilities, potency) asleep at the bottom of the Black, and the Light is always behind it.
He creates light, from the being of darkness, the being of darkness.
That is why poetry is necessarily ecstasy.
And that is why poetry must be spoken about - eclogosically.
Which is to say - swimming on the edge of language, even at the cost of the risk of saying more than a good measure of heritage obscurity. The edge of the language, so to speak, is not an immutable limes, and wrestling with the Language is the only way to pull it over some new border. Which must be moved, with the same necessity with which each new generation of people runs faster and faster across the 800-meter track.
Also, vagueness is not the worst thing that can happen to us in searching for any image. Ambiguity is, after all, first of all - a hermeneutic phenomenon.
Varying genesis
Perhaps today one cannot talk about poetry without necessarily imposing the need for such subtle nuances and conceptual demarcations - or verbal (syntactic, also) innovation, even - that it is quite possible that this "prologue" destroys any will to talk. . Under these conditions, it is clear - it is difficult to reach a space where not only agreement is possible, but also talk about anything, including poetry.
But, again, if you are a Traveler, then the vision of the Goal, the City to which you are heading, alleviates the difficulties of the Road. Or even makes them fun, maybe exciting - simply, gives them some meaning. So, you should always go towards Difficulty. The conversation about Poetry will appear from somewhere.
Indeed, one would say, for, apparently, such visible reasons - there is hardly a more senseless activity than Poetry: our social nerve, our civilization vision, our technological fascination, today seem to necessarily push us towards such a judgement.
Is there a more innocent job, Helderlin wondered. Poetry does not produce anything real, it is substantial, and everyone knows that poetry is - a Lie, a Fabrication, a Fantasy, a Fog of Words, a Breath of Illusion, and the like... This is all true - so much as it does not really mean - nothing.
It would be said, therefore, that there is no more meaningless work than poetry. And it has always been like that - and poetry is always there. So, there is some really strong reason for its existence.
Let's say, for example: only poetry endlessly varies Genesis. (Which is, without a doubt, the most fascinating segment of our concept of the World. Genesis: the act that inaugurates the Being; on the one hand, the concept of Genesis introduces the moment of death into the hermeneutics of the Global, as an inseparable part of the power of birth, and on the other hand - if you want to overlook this possibility of two-way finitude, Genesis is the most elusive mystical moment of the Universe.
Therein lies only one part of the reason for the necessity of poetry.
The body and the quest
Ever since the first questions before the harmonies before which the body (great mind, great receiver) of our first people trembled, poetry is as much a grail quest as a pure, disinterested search.
Older than language
In a way, it is older than language, and a step further, it - gives birth to it.
The only mother who gave birth will be without any help from the Other, any Father.
There is no end
The story of the beginning always promotes the principle of ending. All that is born to the heritage of Death. Why the end of poetry will never come, that is, why it will come only a moment - two after the end of the world.
Poetry undoes our temporal frustration.
Among the myths in thought - those constructions, therefore, which have a touch of arbitrariness, rest on some norm, agreement, are generated by the logic of some Great Narrative, a special place is occupied by the myth of the Beginning and the End.
It is possible that this myth of thought derives its greatest strength (in this case: untouchability) from our biological destiny: we are beings of beginning and end, we are those who are born and die. And it would not be unexpected that such beings measure everything by their own measure. Perhaps the theory about the birth and death of the Cosmos is also indebted to that way of experiencing the world. Perhaps by correcting his Big Bang hypothesis, Hawking gave some guiding ideas: what does it mean to have no limits in the infinity of existence? Is his formulation a structural answer to the question of which is older - the chicken or the egg? Which is older - man or language? Which is older - Cosmos or Nothing?
And yet, we will deal with the question of the beginning and the end. Let it be a debt to the myth in the opinion that decisively formed us. Where, then, are the Beginning and the End of Poetry.
Mirror games
It is difficult to imagine the moment of her birth. That other one Big Bang after which nothing was the same, because she brought depth to things and being. How does it add depth? It gives everything a dramatic reason: to be told is the greatest reason known to us, and every duplication produces depth: like games with mirrors, or a picture on which a picture is painted on which you can see the same picture on which you can see a picture, on which ...
So when was she born? That class is certainly older than the language itself. That zero point of poetry must be placed in that space where pure ("divine", not artificial, created) music (the breath of the great I tell myself Nature) preceded sense, but the power of organizing sounds was already slowly (and uncertainly, it was always, even in its fetal age - a peripheral act) conquered.
In that interregnum while the First rode on the mimesis of divine sounds (for, it was the first I tell myself God; it is a question of unseparated pro-parentage God/Nature), he was not yet human (because he had not conquered language), but he was not just an Animal either - staring at the sky and disturbed. Possessed by the sounds that played with his Great Mind, his Body, the purest of his Reason.
Poetry was the gateway that indicated that language was possible. The first pieces of music were tied to meaning by the principle that is poetry. A new world was emerging. I I tell myself the first Man, different from everything Živost had done up to that point.
Large indefinite
To the first, the world looked like Pollock's painting: the Great Indeterminate, reality's impulses were scattered in a chaos of indiscernibility, without any order that would offer meaning. The world was waiting to be seen. When the first man, the possessor of the power of utterance, said tree - the trees came out of the Great Undetermined towards him. Form became possible. Form is a way of seeing the world. Reality, the picture began to gain depth. To offer order, to offer meanings. And each new word brings a new depth to the infinity of the picture. Which one day, of course, will return to the new bliss of the undiscovered. But no one knows, nor can they know, what will be the meaning of such a return. Just as only the last word enables the realization of the poem, so only Death brings the possibility of relevant Insight. But we are human beings, and we are confused by the relatively simple fact that after Death there is no expression. And, thanks to that, we know nothing about the depth of Death itself. It is the edge of our damnation. The rest is impossible to know.
It covers everything
If everything is in language, then poetry reveals everything.
The first formulation of eternity
The liveliness and fixity of poetry indicate its dual nature. She is the seeking, and therefore the dynamic, endlessly elusive, Fire. But it is also a sacred marking of what was found at the same time, and therefore it is clear, unchanging, a Stone.
That is why it could be the first vertical communication of the community. It was the first way to defeat time with anything and formulate eternity.
There is no self-awareness outside of language
Helderlin wrote that we are human "since we are a conversation and since we can hear each other".
If the human phenomenon had to be grounded in one element, there is no doubt that it would be language. Not only does the human concept of self-consciousness not function outside of language, but, quite simply, there is no supra-linguistic or non-linguistic space (that is, it is believed - the prerogatives of Death) anywhere as far as the geography of the Spirit.
Such familiarity with language makes people dialogical beings. "My word seeks community," I wrote the verse, intending to note another of poetry's sacred paradoxes. Poetry is torn between its exclusivity (origin, ecstasy, wonder) and its need for the other, for the other's ear, in fact. The basis of the social drive, I am convinced, originates from the nature and active modes of language. (Or vice versa, take your pick.)
There will be language
The history of the world is a kind of history of dead languages. Dead talk, better to say.
The hundred-year-old philosopher Gadamer - a true peer of the past century - when he talks about Aristotle's determination of man as a logos being - insists on those nuances of meaning that coincide with our term - language.
And indeed, it is probably not possible to define a man more precisely.
Palimpsests of language are the only indicator - of any event. Outside of language as a (relatively) solid order of signs, there are no ways of observing - and what is observed is unimaginable outside of linguistic codes.
"Language is the cause of everything, not action" is a line written by the greatest of tragedians, Sophocles, in "Philoctetes", that most atypical tragedy of the Hellenic world (the naturalistic description of the title character's wound excited viewers at the time - like snafus movies today; social voyeurism is also a constant).
Language, like economics, is a perfect system of symbolic transfer - the relationship between the signified and the signifier is the thread on which the fabric of civilization rests. And to that extent, the hundred-year-old philosopher is undoubtedly right. Man is, first of all - a being of language.
To be means - to inherit a language.
Neurotic psychopomp
Poetry is also the translation of the Ineffable into the Ineffable. From the Divine to Language. From Game to Sign.
A kind of Pound's concept of translation, which admittedly allows the Translator significantly greater powers and relevance in communicating with the World. Guide between worlds, daimonion trapped in Between, neurotic psychopomp, librarian of Insight, String Player, Conductor Being, heretical son of Language, ambassador and reporter from the ancestral home of Absence, spirit of change.
That is why Hermes is equal to Apollo - the poetic deity.
Hellenic characters
Mythological is a way of saying. What do the Hellenic signs tell us about poetry?
The poetic in their order, it seems, resides in the semantic relationship between the three Divine principles, like a royal seal divided among the three sons, so that only together, by the act of agreeing, can they make it a Seal again.
A fixed share, therefore, inalienably belongs to Apollo: Poetry is Light, it is what makes everything else visible.
However, it is also impossible for Dionysus to deny the trace of paternity - Poetry must be ecstatic, metaphors seek euphoria that covers the traces of symbolic transfer.
Poetry is also communication between worlds and between Beings, and seduction is its first Reason, and you must see Hermes' facial features on her (unsurpassed, of course) face. She also owes her passion for paradox to the Hermes gene.
And is poetry obtained when, by some laboratory magic, these three ingredients - Light, Ecstasy and Seduction - are mixed (somehow - brought into connection)?
I'm afraid such a thing is unlikely. Because these elements can only be recognized when something is already Poetry. And only then it is possible to see them. So, there is also the Holy Spirit of poetry, the untouchable beginning, the breath that gives final powers to words and everything they produce.
(2001.)
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