"I will not settle for shallowness in my relationships.
The world opens its arms to me.
There is great beauty in intellection. "
Freitag, 17. Dezember 2010
Sonntag, 26. September 2010
The Emperor of Ice-Cream
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
- Walace Stevens.
"For us, anything that can be said well in prose can be said better in prose. And a great deal, in the way of meaning, belongs to prose rather than poetry." - T.S. Eliot.
I watched a whole hour of super city mayor debate today. I don't know when I became that intrested in politics, especially politics that is like..... stuff I can't even vote for. I was also intrested too at the end of the debate in thinking that I'd perhaps vote for John Banks. I didn't feel that way before I watched it. Maybe he did a good job (in the deabte). I think those two are real intresting, actually. Both of them have a real appeal for me, personality-wise I'm talking, not just politically. I don't really understand their politcs actually, I think it's near impossible to do that,(sure yes, I know one's left one's right, but..) I just feel like I'd have to spend hours and hours really thinnnkinnng and reading and researching and pouring over their pasts and council economic documents and all that before I got an accurate picture. but personiality wise. I'm intrested in personalities, feelings, ways and things that are quite hard ot pin down. And appeal. I do feel an affinity with Bank's hardness (right word?) and firmness and kinda conversatyness (image wise, again, not politically) the solidity of his presense, firmness, unwishywashyness. I feel confortable with that. But then, I don't like how he doesn't know who Temapara (sp.) George is. And I like Len Brown's communityfocusyness, and his amicableness, and his downtoearthyness, and his touch of eccenticity. that's appealing too. I feel like, just talking about myself, they capture a bit of who I am, bits and pieces, in each direction. I'd feel more comfortable talking to John Banks than Len Brown. I'm still more confortable in that side of my personailty than the other side, at the moment. stilll. i duno. this hurts my tendons but it's intresting. (same thing with my law students vs. arts students, Sonya). and though, yes, I'm an arts student full stop, not a drop of law in there. and what does that mean?
I duno. it's 3.17am, I don't even feel tireddddd. it's terrible. Back to some unrelated poetry, then I'll leave this and maybe try plan some essays out a bit.
Nothing to be Said
For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.
So are their separate ways
Of building, benediction,
Measuring love and money
Ways of slow dying.
The day spent hunting pig
Or holding a garden-party,
Hours giving evidence
Or birth, advance
On death equally slowly.
And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves
Nothing to be said.
- Philip Larkin.
sorry for a sort of depressing poem.
I'm begining to feel more confident swiming in poetry. it's a good feeling.
Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
- Walace Stevens.
"For us, anything that can be said well in prose can be said better in prose. And a great deal, in the way of meaning, belongs to prose rather than poetry." - T.S. Eliot.
I watched a whole hour of super city mayor debate today. I don't know when I became that intrested in politics, especially politics that is like..... stuff I can't even vote for. I was also intrested too at the end of the debate in thinking that I'd perhaps vote for John Banks. I didn't feel that way before I watched it. Maybe he did a good job (in the deabte). I think those two are real intresting, actually. Both of them have a real appeal for me, personality-wise I'm talking, not just politically. I don't really understand their politcs actually, I think it's near impossible to do that,(sure yes, I know one's left one's right, but..) I just feel like I'd have to spend hours and hours really thinnnkinnng and reading and researching and pouring over their pasts and council economic documents and all that before I got an accurate picture. but personiality wise. I'm intrested in personalities, feelings, ways and things that are quite hard ot pin down. And appeal. I do feel an affinity with Bank's hardness (right word?) and firmness and kinda conversatyness (image wise, again, not politically) the solidity of his presense, firmness, unwishywashyness. I feel confortable with that. But then, I don't like how he doesn't know who Temapara (sp.) George is. And I like Len Brown's communityfocusyness, and his amicableness, and his downtoearthyness, and his touch of eccenticity. that's appealing too. I feel like, just talking about myself, they capture a bit of who I am, bits and pieces, in each direction. I'd feel more comfortable talking to John Banks than Len Brown. I'm still more confortable in that side of my personailty than the other side, at the moment. stilll. i duno. this hurts my tendons but it's intresting. (same thing with my law students vs. arts students, Sonya). and though, yes, I'm an arts student full stop, not a drop of law in there. and what does that mean?
I duno. it's 3.17am, I don't even feel tireddddd. it's terrible. Back to some unrelated poetry, then I'll leave this and maybe try plan some essays out a bit.
Nothing to be Said
For nations vague as weed,
For nomads among stones,
Small-statured cross-faced tribes
And cobble-close families
In mill-towns on dark mornings
Life is slow dying.
So are their separate ways
Of building, benediction,
Measuring love and money
Ways of slow dying.
The day spent hunting pig
Or holding a garden-party,
Hours giving evidence
Or birth, advance
On death equally slowly.
And saying so to some
Means nothing; others it leaves
Nothing to be said.
- Philip Larkin.
sorry for a sort of depressing poem.
I'm begining to feel more confident swiming in poetry. it's a good feeling.
Dienstag, 14. September 2010
In Broken Images, Robert Graves.
He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,
Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.
When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.
He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.
He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.
a kind of a judgemental poem, and not acting in the way I think it's best for poems to act, but I like it all the same.
I thought I should talk on here more. I do have things to say. I do think about things. Maybe I've just been too busy lately. or pretending to be too busy. or just not in the right mood. i did have something to say, though. a few things. who knows how long this post will be, probably not so long, but that's okay, right?
I realised something I should be honest about. Everytime I'm feeling down, the best way to pick myself up is to watch The History Boys. I realised from doing this that for ages now, I guess what I've wanted to be more than anything else is an English school boy (and while I could still be an English University student of sorts possibly, this school boy 'fantasy' (I think that is the correct word, actually, it is) is now never going to happen, never was). I think that's intresting. And something yeah, I need to be fully open and consious about. Not that it's something that's at a confessional level, but, I think it's significant. you know. I think I often put to the back of my mind just how much of an influence that film has been on me. I mean... it shaped my whole view of academia really... and my whole opening of my mind, my whole opening up of seeing the wider world, the wider scene of things... it really I think inspired me to be truely competitive in the classroom... I think it's even true to say that when I get angsty about classroom success, when I put into perspective any success here in NZ (e.g. Sonya, top in 10 in new zealand in media studies means nothing!), when I compete against sort of imaginary foes whom I don't know personality, but who must be out there (there's always someone brighter out there), I am competing against, thinking of, the kids in that film. it's true. i've watched it so many times. I bought and read the play. its introduction by Bennet shaped my whole angle on how to tackle scholarship exams, and now how to tackle university essays (working for english - philosophers sometimes less than impressed (by this I mean As and not A+s on occasion)). it was the one thing me and MacLean agreed on in Y12 drama - that that was a good play, and we should do it (unfortunately, the rights cost like 5000 pounds or something...). She even lent me a book with the film script in it, and stuff all about the film ,and I read that too. Yeah, it must be the text, in all its forms, that I've poured over the most, possibly only closely followed by Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now (the later based on the former). Yet they were for class, that was totally independent. I must admit to myself and others that it has deeply shaped my thinking. and, where my life is at at the moment, defintely. I watched it I think it was Saturday night yeah, and I did realise there's quite a bit of kind of... average parts in the text, actually, but it's at the point where there's too much enthrallment, too much love, yeah, that I can only just enjoy it, enjoy the immersion in the world of it all. I was intrested watching how, unlike with out texts where now I'm often distant, viewing them with the eye of the critic, picking out themes and all that englishy crap, here was just enthrallment. I found it hard to pull back and analayse as usuall. Sure, there was plenty of analysing still going on, I can't deny it, but comparatively... there was so little. just you know, more pure enjoyment, regardless of theme/techniques/overall merit.
That's enoigh of that, but yes. A strange thing to bring up. But really I go on about Conrad and Melville and that enough, but really that's got to be the most influential text in my life, still to this day.
few thoughts.
1.) I feel funny watching Maori TV/ that 'Te Reo' something something one that's fully in Maori. it's like, that's NZ, right, but, it's completely different. They had on like the other day (I"m always watching it) a whole school gathering thing, and all the kids were speaking Maori. in New Zealand. Don't think I've ever been anywhere where that's happened. it's crazy! they're all speaking maori man. I don't understand. it's whack, but it's new zealand. it feels funny. totally different side of life here I know next to nothing of.
2.) the other day in the library the girl sitting in front of me got a phone call on her cellphone. she pulls it out, opens it up, and she goes "what? she's dead!" and then there's like muffled laughing. Then a serious 'but, are you okay?' then like lots of 'oh my Gods' then more laughing, then more serious concern... it was really strange. some 'so, she's really dead?' some 'awwww, will you be alright?' and then some more laughing in what seemed a really inappropriate manner. it seemed really strange. the serious parts didn't seem insincere... and there were a lot of them... but the kind of caual laughing after 'she's dead' and at points following it seemed totally out of place. it didn't make any sense. Just like, you hear the phone. look up, and you hear, fairly loudly, 'she's dead?' and then you hear laughing. and then the swinging between serious-laughing-seriousness that follows. non-sensical.
3.) on my bed I have The Bible, Proust Volume 2., The Book of Luminous Things, The Great Modern Poets (open at Robert Graves, see above), Burning Chrome (science fiction, for ENGL238), Selected Auden (ENLG231), Hesse's Siddhartha (his most famous novel, about Buddha, Buddhism), and Springsteen's Born in the USA. also my german 'progress task', german vocab written over and over on refill ,and half-written poems and theory on how poetry/ literature should opperate. and a sweet as S.J.C. postcard recieved today with big books on the cover.
4.) I think soooo mucchhhh about what the role of poetry/literature (when I say poetry/poets right, you must know (for all my posts) that I just mean lit in general/writers) and what it should be for, and how it is unique from other things. I used to think theorising about such things was bad bad bad (under the influence on Dylan natrually - but more on this later, it deserves a whole post of its own, right, I've been thinking a lot about it)
but I am coming to realise I am a theoriser. I need to understand. I need theory. I have instinct I do, but it does neen much shaping, much direction. I need a lot of the Apollonian. I do have a dionysian side I do believe, but I should perhaps accept Apollo does dominate a fair bit, and I should accept that - it's not neccessarily a bad thing, at all. anyway, to continue from the below post, right, poetry is about saying too things at once. I beleive what makes poetry unique, and thus what good poetry should be doing, is saying two things at once. contradictions, confusions. this is the true capturing of human experience. it's what other things can't do. We did Walace Stevens last week. I will read more of him. From what I heard, and from what I heard about his theory (it seems similar to how I've been thinking lately), I like. neccessarily it makes his poems pretty much impenetrable (at least by rationality, by a rational mind seeking what it normally expects to find), which is an intresting side effect, but take note:
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
duno eh. 'parently it's pretty famous.
I haven't been enjoying Auden so much. he's alright, and there's some nice, and of course some very skillful stuff in there, but you know, yeah nah. first the politics, then the didcatorial - be free, be happy stuff. there is some good stuff there. But I just don't feel like it's my kind of poetry. not wild, not open enough, not confused enough, sometimes. the earlier stuff often is, sure, sure. But still. I duno. just not geling so well.
5.) Dylan is full of complexities and slick coolness, Johnny Cash just has a great warmth. I have a great love of complexities but it's warmth that sustains, warmth that has a great love for you.
6.) Proverbs 14:12 "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" - isn't that just brilliant? so... I can't find the word... so like, abrupt, forthcoming, direct. just straight up. also 21:21 "All a man's ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart." I think they make a good pair. Also relates to Dylan vs. Cash (I can't give up the Dylan vs. Cash man - and yet they both loved each other - there is polarity there, but also a great unity) I think. there are some weird proverbs in there man, lots about just appeasing the King and doing what he says or else you'll get in shit, even if what he's saying is a little off, (not weird - contextually understandable, but not so relevant today, realllyyyy), but there's some good ones. I do like those ones. it's true, All a man's ways seem right to him. (But does the Lord really weight the heart? Does Oedipa's Trystero really exist (Pynchon reference, thanks to ENGl238)? A modernist or a post-modernist? the plausability of post-modern religion? relatives vs. absolutes? questions, questions.
7.) I am a New Zealander and I live in New Zealand. I find that hard to understand sometimes, and what it means. I will keep reading my New Zealand literature. I love some parts of NZ. I love being chilled as, and having open space, and wearing stubbies, and just you know, that whole side. But I struggle with a lot of it. When you go to London, to Berlin, to Tokyo, Shanghai, it's like shit man, shit, it's crazy, your mind gets blown... just the shit you can do there man, the shit that's there, the access, the opportunities, the size, the age, the population, the culture.... we undenyably pale in comparision to a lot of that. you come home with NZ feeling so empty, and so small. it's nice right, and enjoyable, but smallllll. isolatedddd. i do struggle with that, I must admit to myself. it's beautiful, but.... you know. once I get out of here in a few years (maybe next year? keen. come on vic OE.) I can't see myself coming back for a while. even Sydney man. so muchhh bigger - the whole population of NZ in one city. boom. I'll always feel at home in New Zealand. but there's a lot out there New Zealand just don't have. on a side note, I want read that autobiography (http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Anthropologist-Memoir-Michael-Jackson/dp/187736147X) of that NZ anthroplogist/poet Michael Jackson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson_(anthropologist) who's professoring it up at Harvard recently (?) out here. I think it'd be plenty intresting. costs like $45 or something, though.
ah, that'll do for tonight. not that I think i'll be able to sleep any time soon, but hey, I can go maybe read or something. go hide my laptop downstairs.
P.S. (EDIT) I wanted to add to the Proverbs quotes... Ecclesiastes 7:29 - " This only I have found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes." Same kind of sentiment, right. schemes, ways... love it. this book brings me peace.
He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images,
Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.
Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact,
Questioning their relevance, I question the fact.
When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
When the fact fails me, I approve my senses.
He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.
He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.
a kind of a judgemental poem, and not acting in the way I think it's best for poems to act, but I like it all the same.
I thought I should talk on here more. I do have things to say. I do think about things. Maybe I've just been too busy lately. or pretending to be too busy. or just not in the right mood. i did have something to say, though. a few things. who knows how long this post will be, probably not so long, but that's okay, right?
I realised something I should be honest about. Everytime I'm feeling down, the best way to pick myself up is to watch The History Boys. I realised from doing this that for ages now, I guess what I've wanted to be more than anything else is an English school boy (and while I could still be an English University student of sorts possibly, this school boy 'fantasy' (I think that is the correct word, actually, it is) is now never going to happen, never was). I think that's intresting. And something yeah, I need to be fully open and consious about. Not that it's something that's at a confessional level, but, I think it's significant. you know. I think I often put to the back of my mind just how much of an influence that film has been on me. I mean... it shaped my whole view of academia really... and my whole opening of my mind, my whole opening up of seeing the wider world, the wider scene of things... it really I think inspired me to be truely competitive in the classroom... I think it's even true to say that when I get angsty about classroom success, when I put into perspective any success here in NZ (e.g. Sonya, top in 10 in new zealand in media studies means nothing!), when I compete against sort of imaginary foes whom I don't know personality, but who must be out there (there's always someone brighter out there), I am competing against, thinking of, the kids in that film. it's true. i've watched it so many times. I bought and read the play. its introduction by Bennet shaped my whole angle on how to tackle scholarship exams, and now how to tackle university essays (working for english - philosophers sometimes less than impressed (by this I mean As and not A+s on occasion)). it was the one thing me and MacLean agreed on in Y12 drama - that that was a good play, and we should do it (unfortunately, the rights cost like 5000 pounds or something...). She even lent me a book with the film script in it, and stuff all about the film ,and I read that too. Yeah, it must be the text, in all its forms, that I've poured over the most, possibly only closely followed by Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now (the later based on the former). Yet they were for class, that was totally independent. I must admit to myself and others that it has deeply shaped my thinking. and, where my life is at at the moment, defintely. I watched it I think it was Saturday night yeah, and I did realise there's quite a bit of kind of... average parts in the text, actually, but it's at the point where there's too much enthrallment, too much love, yeah, that I can only just enjoy it, enjoy the immersion in the world of it all. I was intrested watching how, unlike with out texts where now I'm often distant, viewing them with the eye of the critic, picking out themes and all that englishy crap, here was just enthrallment. I found it hard to pull back and analayse as usuall. Sure, there was plenty of analysing still going on, I can't deny it, but comparatively... there was so little. just you know, more pure enjoyment, regardless of theme/techniques/overall merit.
That's enoigh of that, but yes. A strange thing to bring up. But really I go on about Conrad and Melville and that enough, but really that's got to be the most influential text in my life, still to this day.
few thoughts.
1.) I feel funny watching Maori TV/ that 'Te Reo' something something one that's fully in Maori. it's like, that's NZ, right, but, it's completely different. They had on like the other day (I"m always watching it) a whole school gathering thing, and all the kids were speaking Maori. in New Zealand. Don't think I've ever been anywhere where that's happened. it's crazy! they're all speaking maori man. I don't understand. it's whack, but it's new zealand. it feels funny. totally different side of life here I know next to nothing of.
2.) the other day in the library the girl sitting in front of me got a phone call on her cellphone. she pulls it out, opens it up, and she goes "what? she's dead!" and then there's like muffled laughing. Then a serious 'but, are you okay?' then like lots of 'oh my Gods' then more laughing, then more serious concern... it was really strange. some 'so, she's really dead?' some 'awwww, will you be alright?' and then some more laughing in what seemed a really inappropriate manner. it seemed really strange. the serious parts didn't seem insincere... and there were a lot of them... but the kind of caual laughing after 'she's dead' and at points following it seemed totally out of place. it didn't make any sense. Just like, you hear the phone. look up, and you hear, fairly loudly, 'she's dead?' and then you hear laughing. and then the swinging between serious-laughing-seriousness that follows. non-sensical.
3.) on my bed I have The Bible, Proust Volume 2., The Book of Luminous Things, The Great Modern Poets (open at Robert Graves, see above), Burning Chrome (science fiction, for ENGL238), Selected Auden (ENLG231), Hesse's Siddhartha (his most famous novel, about Buddha, Buddhism), and Springsteen's Born in the USA. also my german 'progress task', german vocab written over and over on refill ,and half-written poems and theory on how poetry/ literature should opperate. and a sweet as S.J.C. postcard recieved today with big books on the cover.
4.) I think soooo mucchhhh about what the role of poetry/literature (when I say poetry/poets right, you must know (for all my posts) that I just mean lit in general/writers) and what it should be for, and how it is unique from other things. I used to think theorising about such things was bad bad bad (under the influence on Dylan natrually - but more on this later, it deserves a whole post of its own, right, I've been thinking a lot about it)
but I am coming to realise I am a theoriser. I need to understand. I need theory. I have instinct I do, but it does neen much shaping, much direction. I need a lot of the Apollonian. I do have a dionysian side I do believe, but I should perhaps accept Apollo does dominate a fair bit, and I should accept that - it's not neccessarily a bad thing, at all. anyway, to continue from the below post, right, poetry is about saying too things at once. I beleive what makes poetry unique, and thus what good poetry should be doing, is saying two things at once. contradictions, confusions. this is the true capturing of human experience. it's what other things can't do. We did Walace Stevens last week. I will read more of him. From what I heard, and from what I heard about his theory (it seems similar to how I've been thinking lately), I like. neccessarily it makes his poems pretty much impenetrable (at least by rationality, by a rational mind seeking what it normally expects to find), which is an intresting side effect, but take note:
I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.
duno eh. 'parently it's pretty famous.
I haven't been enjoying Auden so much. he's alright, and there's some nice, and of course some very skillful stuff in there, but you know, yeah nah. first the politics, then the didcatorial - be free, be happy stuff. there is some good stuff there. But I just don't feel like it's my kind of poetry. not wild, not open enough, not confused enough, sometimes. the earlier stuff often is, sure, sure. But still. I duno. just not geling so well.
5.) Dylan is full of complexities and slick coolness, Johnny Cash just has a great warmth. I have a great love of complexities but it's warmth that sustains, warmth that has a great love for you.
6.) Proverbs 14:12 "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" - isn't that just brilliant? so... I can't find the word... so like, abrupt, forthcoming, direct. just straight up. also 21:21 "All a man's ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart." I think they make a good pair. Also relates to Dylan vs. Cash (I can't give up the Dylan vs. Cash man - and yet they both loved each other - there is polarity there, but also a great unity) I think. there are some weird proverbs in there man, lots about just appeasing the King and doing what he says or else you'll get in shit, even if what he's saying is a little off, (not weird - contextually understandable, but not so relevant today, realllyyyy), but there's some good ones. I do like those ones. it's true, All a man's ways seem right to him. (But does the Lord really weight the heart? Does Oedipa's Trystero really exist (Pynchon reference, thanks to ENGl238)? A modernist or a post-modernist? the plausability of post-modern religion? relatives vs. absolutes? questions, questions.
7.) I am a New Zealander and I live in New Zealand. I find that hard to understand sometimes, and what it means. I will keep reading my New Zealand literature. I love some parts of NZ. I love being chilled as, and having open space, and wearing stubbies, and just you know, that whole side. But I struggle with a lot of it. When you go to London, to Berlin, to Tokyo, Shanghai, it's like shit man, shit, it's crazy, your mind gets blown... just the shit you can do there man, the shit that's there, the access, the opportunities, the size, the age, the population, the culture.... we undenyably pale in comparision to a lot of that. you come home with NZ feeling so empty, and so small. it's nice right, and enjoyable, but smallllll. isolatedddd. i do struggle with that, I must admit to myself. it's beautiful, but.... you know. once I get out of here in a few years (maybe next year? keen. come on vic OE.) I can't see myself coming back for a while. even Sydney man. so muchhh bigger - the whole population of NZ in one city. boom. I'll always feel at home in New Zealand. but there's a lot out there New Zealand just don't have. on a side note, I want read that autobiography (http://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Anthropologist-Memoir-Michael-Jackson/dp/187736147X) of that NZ anthroplogist/poet Michael Jackson (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson_(anthropologist) who's professoring it up at Harvard recently (?) out here. I think it'd be plenty intresting. costs like $45 or something, though.
ah, that'll do for tonight. not that I think i'll be able to sleep any time soon, but hey, I can go maybe read or something. go hide my laptop downstairs.
P.S. (EDIT) I wanted to add to the Proverbs quotes... Ecclesiastes 7:29 - " This only I have found: God made mankind upright, but men have gone in search of many schemes." Same kind of sentiment, right. schemes, ways... love it. this book brings me peace.
Samstag, 28. August 2010
It seems to me that all life is characterised by attempting to know, and accepting that you don’t know. If you think you know, then you’re in the first category, but also in denial. I think you’d have to be pretty cocky though to say you know, though.
For me too, it’s the scholars who attempt to know, the poets who accept that they don’t know. It should be said that it doesn’t necessarily have to be an optimist/pessimist dichotomy (though maybe it is sometimes?), and it should also be noted that it is perhaps the case that many scholars are in the ‘category 1 + deluded’ group. Thus they claim to know. When really they don’t. But even if they are in denial, and do not actually know what they claim to know, they still engage in the process of attempting to know, yeah? Thus the categories. Of course, poets ‘attempt to know’ things, too. But we’re talking about a very specific type of ‘knowing’ or ‘not knowing’. It’s not knowing things like ‘1+1=2’ and it’s not knowing things like ‘I am confused’ or things like this. We could go on categorising like philosophers, but I’m not a philosopher. Really it’s knowing the real things, what the world is and what God is. And maybe scholars don’t even claim to know these things. But in trying to order everything of the universe, there is still some attempt to reach an answer. A hope (which, we must note again, does not mean that poets are not possessive of hope) there is one answer, and one order. Poets much more often embrace a certain degree on confusion. One could argue they offer simply a different kind of order, but if we were to say this, we would still have to admit that it is a very different kind of order, with no or very few constants, an 'order' not built on any sort of.. slowly accumulated foundation of knowledge, but rather one entirely open to change, shifts, freedom - one that is different for everybody, one completely maleable.
A thesis offers a hypothesis, and a conclusion, and, as it goes, will lead to a Ph.D being awarded if it ends up being 'a significant original contribution to knowledge', or something like that. It seeks to add to the building blocks. without doubt, it can certainly challenge the established structure and basis of knowledge entirely, evne attempt to tear it all down, but still let it be said that this is done in order to build another structure, lay new foundations for a claimedly more accurate representation of the world, the nature of things.
poets are not generally concerned with building blocks, pure rigour and creating structures. I am not really sure what exactly they are concerned with, at the moment I want to say that a good poet is simply concerned with capturing experience and nothing more, I haven't thought it all through quite enough. For poets also seek truths, like we can say theses do. But different kinds.... I'm not sure. Poets can be empiphanic, to be strongly influenced by the wikipedia articles on Joyce and Proust. Proust can dedicate a good part of Volume I of In Search of Lost Time (a beautiful, beautiful book) to simply thinking about flowers and church steeples, and he does want to know something about them, and the world, by doing this. But, it's not the same kind of knowing. It's using them... to know the experience of the world, to know... God... (Proust being extremely patheistic, to qualify the term contextually), and it's different to using evidence and facts and things to claim to 'know' the nature of the world like one does in academia. We are entering Alvin Plantiga sensus divitus territory now, which is helpful, I guess, he talks about proving God's existance, and you see the night sky or a flower or something, and it is not evidence in an argument where the conclusion is 'God exists' (i.e. I see this flower, therefore God exists - he says this would be a terribly weak argument) but rather when you see the flower, you simply come to know that God exists. Replace the flower with anything, any experience. They don't even have to be like the flower at all, one of his other key examples is when you do something bad and you feel terrible - and this leads to belief in God. Again not an argument like 'P1 - I killed my brother, P2 - I feel bad, Therefore P3 God exists' no, but just through the experience, you can say you 'know' God exists. The idea is actually way more complex that that but, that's the core of it. The faculty through which you come to 'know' in this manner he calls the 'sensus divinitus' (sp.) ~ obv. translating to something like the 'sense of divinity' (Latin next semester, eh.).
These are just experiences. Poets are about experinces. Maybe both poets and scholars have conclusions. Maybe poets use experiences to reach them and scholars evidence. But that's a muddled idea. I don't know. I still just want to say that poets are just about capturing experience. you know, an academic can go, x, therefore y. And a poet can go, 'x'. (and, oh, that's intresting, x is intresting, let's have a think about it and a float around it and give it an all round good consideration and possibly think about trying to penetrate right to the heart of this x).
I have to note somewhere again of course, the rationality vs. irrationality thing. Academia is strictly rational. Maybe it's not fair to say that poets are irrational, perhaps only the most madly wild of them are, but still, they are not wholly rational. And is the universe wholly rational or not wholly rational? AH! There is a good question. Its answer of course proving who's getting at things in the right way (if not both/neither). Rationality again, to refer to now long forgotten posts, a strictly human thing, at least as far as any of us are able to prove. Steven Hawking talks of a great hope of us building a grand comprehensive model of the universe, and this finally built, will then put us in the position of 'knowing the mind of God' (or some wording extremely similar to this). This of course, this model, is meant to be created through yeah, this careful, slow accumulation of building blocks, ultimately intended to form this comprehensive model. Yet what if the mind of God can't be accessed through a stack of building blocks? What if God simply lives inside each and every one of those building blocks - each x, and we don't need to stack up all the xs in a massive pile to know Y - in fact, this method is not going to work at all?
But then perhaps it will, though? we don't know. everyone has faith in something, right. Hawking in his building blocks, Plantinga in his sensus divinitus. And a man in his wife, and a child in his parents, and everyone else in everything else. I'll feel like Ecclesiastes if I start giving those big long lists; 'a time to live, a time to die...'.
I want to end with a poem, but it will show a bias to the poet side, and there's already a stong enough one of them running through here. But let it be said, the scholar is an entirely reasonable position. I currently spend my days studying, and I may for may more yet. And we owe them plenty. We also owe poets plenty. yeahh i duno. this was quite short, but i gotta get some sleep.
For me too, it’s the scholars who attempt to know, the poets who accept that they don’t know. It should be said that it doesn’t necessarily have to be an optimist/pessimist dichotomy (though maybe it is sometimes?), and it should also be noted that it is perhaps the case that many scholars are in the ‘category 1 + deluded’ group. Thus they claim to know. When really they don’t. But even if they are in denial, and do not actually know what they claim to know, they still engage in the process of attempting to know, yeah? Thus the categories. Of course, poets ‘attempt to know’ things, too. But we’re talking about a very specific type of ‘knowing’ or ‘not knowing’. It’s not knowing things like ‘1+1=2’ and it’s not knowing things like ‘I am confused’ or things like this. We could go on categorising like philosophers, but I’m not a philosopher. Really it’s knowing the real things, what the world is and what God is. And maybe scholars don’t even claim to know these things. But in trying to order everything of the universe, there is still some attempt to reach an answer. A hope (which, we must note again, does not mean that poets are not possessive of hope) there is one answer, and one order. Poets much more often embrace a certain degree on confusion. One could argue they offer simply a different kind of order, but if we were to say this, we would still have to admit that it is a very different kind of order, with no or very few constants, an 'order' not built on any sort of.. slowly accumulated foundation of knowledge, but rather one entirely open to change, shifts, freedom - one that is different for everybody, one completely maleable.
A thesis offers a hypothesis, and a conclusion, and, as it goes, will lead to a Ph.D being awarded if it ends up being 'a significant original contribution to knowledge', or something like that. It seeks to add to the building blocks. without doubt, it can certainly challenge the established structure and basis of knowledge entirely, evne attempt to tear it all down, but still let it be said that this is done in order to build another structure, lay new foundations for a claimedly more accurate representation of the world, the nature of things.
poets are not generally concerned with building blocks, pure rigour and creating structures. I am not really sure what exactly they are concerned with, at the moment I want to say that a good poet is simply concerned with capturing experience and nothing more, I haven't thought it all through quite enough. For poets also seek truths, like we can say theses do. But different kinds.... I'm not sure. Poets can be empiphanic, to be strongly influenced by the wikipedia articles on Joyce and Proust. Proust can dedicate a good part of Volume I of In Search of Lost Time (a beautiful, beautiful book) to simply thinking about flowers and church steeples, and he does want to know something about them, and the world, by doing this. But, it's not the same kind of knowing. It's using them... to know the experience of the world, to know... God... (Proust being extremely patheistic, to qualify the term contextually), and it's different to using evidence and facts and things to claim to 'know' the nature of the world like one does in academia. We are entering Alvin Plantiga sensus divitus territory now, which is helpful, I guess, he talks about proving God's existance, and you see the night sky or a flower or something, and it is not evidence in an argument where the conclusion is 'God exists' (i.e. I see this flower, therefore God exists - he says this would be a terribly weak argument) but rather when you see the flower, you simply come to know that God exists. Replace the flower with anything, any experience. They don't even have to be like the flower at all, one of his other key examples is when you do something bad and you feel terrible - and this leads to belief in God. Again not an argument like 'P1 - I killed my brother, P2 - I feel bad, Therefore P3 God exists' no, but just through the experience, you can say you 'know' God exists. The idea is actually way more complex that that but, that's the core of it. The faculty through which you come to 'know' in this manner he calls the 'sensus divinitus' (sp.) ~ obv. translating to something like the 'sense of divinity' (Latin next semester, eh.).
These are just experiences. Poets are about experinces. Maybe both poets and scholars have conclusions. Maybe poets use experiences to reach them and scholars evidence. But that's a muddled idea. I don't know. I still just want to say that poets are just about capturing experience. you know, an academic can go, x, therefore y. And a poet can go, 'x'. (and, oh, that's intresting, x is intresting, let's have a think about it and a float around it and give it an all round good consideration and possibly think about trying to penetrate right to the heart of this x).
I have to note somewhere again of course, the rationality vs. irrationality thing. Academia is strictly rational. Maybe it's not fair to say that poets are irrational, perhaps only the most madly wild of them are, but still, they are not wholly rational. And is the universe wholly rational or not wholly rational? AH! There is a good question. Its answer of course proving who's getting at things in the right way (if not both/neither). Rationality again, to refer to now long forgotten posts, a strictly human thing, at least as far as any of us are able to prove. Steven Hawking talks of a great hope of us building a grand comprehensive model of the universe, and this finally built, will then put us in the position of 'knowing the mind of God' (or some wording extremely similar to this). This of course, this model, is meant to be created through yeah, this careful, slow accumulation of building blocks, ultimately intended to form this comprehensive model. Yet what if the mind of God can't be accessed through a stack of building blocks? What if God simply lives inside each and every one of those building blocks - each x, and we don't need to stack up all the xs in a massive pile to know Y - in fact, this method is not going to work at all?
But then perhaps it will, though? we don't know. everyone has faith in something, right. Hawking in his building blocks, Plantinga in his sensus divinitus. And a man in his wife, and a child in his parents, and everyone else in everything else. I'll feel like Ecclesiastes if I start giving those big long lists; 'a time to live, a time to die...'.
I want to end with a poem, but it will show a bias to the poet side, and there's already a stong enough one of them running through here. But let it be said, the scholar is an entirely reasonable position. I currently spend my days studying, and I may for may more yet. And we owe them plenty. We also owe poets plenty. yeahh i duno. this was quite short, but i gotta get some sleep.
Sonntag, 13. Juni 2010
Some thoughts stemming from Pascal's Wager.
rationality is a human faculty and has nothing to do with the universe. It is an evolutionary development that has been exceptionally useful to us in dealing with this world. However it has many great flaws, for example it cannot deal with concepts like infinity. It can only deal with the finite, which is understandable, as the world which shaped our genetic structure is finite in all the relevant aspects. How could science then, a practice based entirely on rational inquiry ever form a complete picture, obtain a total understanding of the universe when by its nature it is unable to contain or fully understand/conceive of/ comprehend concepts like infinity, and possibly others that I’m not aware of. We can form some idea of the infinite, we can claim to know it exists, we can incorporate it into some of our equations and theories. But we can’t truly be said to know it like we know the finite world. It requires a totally different way of knowing that, of course, we humans can’t conceive of, and so don’t know what this ‘way of knowing’ is. So I assert that yes, science will never obtain its complete picture, and rationality with it.
What then is the alternative? It is, (by default), irrationality. some form of it. If rational inquiry fails, irrational actions/belief/etc. something else/etc. potentially can succeed. However it really is unquantifiable and unchartable territory for humanity. Can we prove that irrationality can succeed in this way? No, we cannot, and in fact, to even attempt to prove this is paradoxical, as the concept of proving is inextricably linked to logic and rationality. Thus there is necessarily a leap of faith.
But there are problems.
a.) Which direction to leap in? A: I don’t know.
b.) I think this is a big one. The idea of actually desiring to know the universe, to understand it, to be embraced by it, to have a life of meaning, to find meaning, to pursue things in general, to desire, well, these things are unavoidably evolutionary. They are traits for survival. But if we are rejecting rationality then, this rationality that comes from evolution and the environment, should we not then reject these rational traits also? Why pursue? Why desire to know, to come closer to anything, let alone the infinite? Then we have, of course, why live? We need to justify a pursuit of the absolute and the infinite.
However again there are issues of cyclicality. Why are we attempting to justify? This is again a concept of logical and rationality, if one is rejecting rationality in making an irrational leap of faith, why should it need justification?
I guess this is again a paradox. It’s like the idea if the sceptics’ ladder, when sceptics try to justify their belief that we know nothing, except that we know nothing. Some sceptics have argued this is justifiable by way of the following method (I think it’s something like this, but I need to go re-read it), that they have followed a logical process, analogous to climbing a ladder they say, and at the top of this logical ladder, they have found the conclusion that humans can know nothing for certain. Once reaching the top of the ladder, they then kick their feet, disregard it and its logical process, and view the world from their higher position, with the retention of their one certainty. It’s a crazy position, but one must admit they can understand it/ see how it works (perhaps at least if you’ve read a bit more about it than outlined here). And maybe this is the same, or a similar analogy is useful. We have climbed a ladder of rationality, and at the top we have found that we should adopt a position on irrationality and blind faith, perhaps. So the rational action then is to kick away the ladder and embrace this. However, and this is where we differ from the sceptic analogy, we simultaneously realise in going to kick down the ladder that if we are going to embrace this model of irrationality, under irrationality, there is no justification (in a logical sense) for its embrace, for kicking down the ladder. There is only a justification under a rational model. But under the rational model, we have decided to reject rationality, which thus means we have no reason for kicking down the ladder. irrationality doesn't even understand the assent of the ladder in the first place. etc. etc. etc. round and round it goes. Therefore I find one to be stuck on top of a ladder, merely contemplating either a total nihilism, or a total embrace of the divine, the infinite and the absolute, and in this heady dichotomy of the mind you are without any ability to know why you're in it, or why you should or should not be. And of course, in this realm of confusion and total possibility, maybe it is even that embracing nihilsm and embracing of the divine universe and God, are the same "“I wish I was free/ Of that slaving meat wheel/ And safe in heaven dead”, Kerouac writes.
Do you know that feeling, your mind races and races in ecstasy, you are gathering more and more, understanding higher and higher, then suddenly bam, ouch, you can’t go any further in your thoughts and you feel like you’ve hit a great block and you and your mind collapse back down. This is the same thing.
This was going to be a word document where I did study, then it began to turn into a more general discussion of issues relating to Pascal’s Wager, then it has finally become a bare and meagre attempt to capture the chief philosophical problem that has occupied my mind this last year or two, and an attempt to better understand where my mind rests most generally. I have said to myself often these last few weeks ‘you’re stuck between nihilism and theism, nothing else’. This I guess has been an attempt to get at this a little more. It has not been a very good one, but I will admit it has been better than any I have accomplished so far in my life.
Two final comments to myself which are just complain-y:
-do other 18 year olds thing like this? Is it exceptional that your mind does this, or can do this, or strives to do this, this kind of thinking, as above?
-this is what sucks about studying philosophy where I am at in the study of philosophy. You... just talk about random dumb shit and engage in basic-as arguments where you simply take one simple position or the other, write 45 minute essays about something. I feel like all this stuff as above, I have to do myself, but you only have the spare-hours of your day to do it in, because you’re a student, and you’ve got to get grades and things, and your free-time is what’s left. Where you can read some real, full books, write some things. Ah I duno. I guess I am pleased that I’ve clarified my position more clearly to myself. I will continue reading, I know I’m just young and that there is so much more I need to consider here. Kierkegaard I feel will be a reasonable place to start, or as reasonable as any. So after exams, Kierkegaard it is. Then onwards from there.
And back to Moby Dick. Our mad and irrational Ahab after his whale... yet he still can’t get him... perhaps he was not mad enough...
What then is the alternative? It is, (by default), irrationality. some form of it. If rational inquiry fails, irrational actions/belief/etc. something else/etc. potentially can succeed. However it really is unquantifiable and unchartable territory for humanity. Can we prove that irrationality can succeed in this way? No, we cannot, and in fact, to even attempt to prove this is paradoxical, as the concept of proving is inextricably linked to logic and rationality. Thus there is necessarily a leap of faith.
But there are problems.
a.) Which direction to leap in? A: I don’t know.
b.) I think this is a big one. The idea of actually desiring to know the universe, to understand it, to be embraced by it, to have a life of meaning, to find meaning, to pursue things in general, to desire, well, these things are unavoidably evolutionary. They are traits for survival. But if we are rejecting rationality then, this rationality that comes from evolution and the environment, should we not then reject these rational traits also? Why pursue? Why desire to know, to come closer to anything, let alone the infinite? Then we have, of course, why live? We need to justify a pursuit of the absolute and the infinite.
However again there are issues of cyclicality. Why are we attempting to justify? This is again a concept of logical and rationality, if one is rejecting rationality in making an irrational leap of faith, why should it need justification?
I guess this is again a paradox. It’s like the idea if the sceptics’ ladder, when sceptics try to justify their belief that we know nothing, except that we know nothing. Some sceptics have argued this is justifiable by way of the following method (I think it’s something like this, but I need to go re-read it), that they have followed a logical process, analogous to climbing a ladder they say, and at the top of this logical ladder, they have found the conclusion that humans can know nothing for certain. Once reaching the top of the ladder, they then kick their feet, disregard it and its logical process, and view the world from their higher position, with the retention of their one certainty. It’s a crazy position, but one must admit they can understand it/ see how it works (perhaps at least if you’ve read a bit more about it than outlined here). And maybe this is the same, or a similar analogy is useful. We have climbed a ladder of rationality, and at the top we have found that we should adopt a position on irrationality and blind faith, perhaps. So the rational action then is to kick away the ladder and embrace this. However, and this is where we differ from the sceptic analogy, we simultaneously realise in going to kick down the ladder that if we are going to embrace this model of irrationality, under irrationality, there is no justification (in a logical sense) for its embrace, for kicking down the ladder. There is only a justification under a rational model. But under the rational model, we have decided to reject rationality, which thus means we have no reason for kicking down the ladder. irrationality doesn't even understand the assent of the ladder in the first place. etc. etc. etc. round and round it goes. Therefore I find one to be stuck on top of a ladder, merely contemplating either a total nihilism, or a total embrace of the divine, the infinite and the absolute, and in this heady dichotomy of the mind you are without any ability to know why you're in it, or why you should or should not be. And of course, in this realm of confusion and total possibility, maybe it is even that embracing nihilsm and embracing of the divine universe and God, are the same "“I wish I was free/ Of that slaving meat wheel/ And safe in heaven dead”, Kerouac writes.
Do you know that feeling, your mind races and races in ecstasy, you are gathering more and more, understanding higher and higher, then suddenly bam, ouch, you can’t go any further in your thoughts and you feel like you’ve hit a great block and you and your mind collapse back down. This is the same thing.
This was going to be a word document where I did study, then it began to turn into a more general discussion of issues relating to Pascal’s Wager, then it has finally become a bare and meagre attempt to capture the chief philosophical problem that has occupied my mind this last year or two, and an attempt to better understand where my mind rests most generally. I have said to myself often these last few weeks ‘you’re stuck between nihilism and theism, nothing else’. This I guess has been an attempt to get at this a little more. It has not been a very good one, but I will admit it has been better than any I have accomplished so far in my life.
Two final comments to myself which are just complain-y:
-do other 18 year olds thing like this? Is it exceptional that your mind does this, or can do this, or strives to do this, this kind of thinking, as above?
-this is what sucks about studying philosophy where I am at in the study of philosophy. You... just talk about random dumb shit and engage in basic-as arguments where you simply take one simple position or the other, write 45 minute essays about something. I feel like all this stuff as above, I have to do myself, but you only have the spare-hours of your day to do it in, because you’re a student, and you’ve got to get grades and things, and your free-time is what’s left. Where you can read some real, full books, write some things. Ah I duno. I guess I am pleased that I’ve clarified my position more clearly to myself. I will continue reading, I know I’m just young and that there is so much more I need to consider here. Kierkegaard I feel will be a reasonable place to start, or as reasonable as any. So after exams, Kierkegaard it is. Then onwards from there.
And back to Moby Dick. Our mad and irrational Ahab after his whale... yet he still can’t get him... perhaps he was not mad enough...
Montag, 31. Mai 2010
I feel like everyone is blogging a large number of times tonight. Well, Sonya has blogged like three times today. and Wibur has blogged four. not that they know i know this and it might be strange indeed that i have made note of this. but it's not like i even use this as a proper blog. it's just like a big endless white scroll where I can dumb stuff, slash occasionally bring stuff out of. (like, out of the white. give the white form. but that's another story, another time, here's a note to myself to write it down, it involves white paper, wrenching, and the relative methods of Michaelangelo and Rothko for bringing form out of nothingness whiteness. which are both opposing (opposing in some senses, not all, of course) and which go around my head constantly. not constantly but often enough. i came up with the opposition last year. anyway.)
i feel kind of sleepy and underwhelmed at the world. i want to write about how strange and white the world is.
this blog post was just an attempt to keep up.
i feel kind of sleepy and underwhelmed at the world. i want to write about how strange and white the world is.
this blog post was just an attempt to keep up.
Le Petit Prince
I just pour my head out on here. It's such a mess but it feels good. Right now I should be thinking about my German oral assesment, but I was just thinking....
about interpretations. and understanding. and how for me in my own life, The little prince is a really intresting thing.
I think i first picked it up (I was given it as a present for my birthday (?) by the daughter of some french ambsadorial (sp.) official) when I was seven or eight. And I really enjoyed it. But just beacuse it was pleasant, and the little prince, he was a good guy, and becuase it was kind of magical and fantastical, and becuase of all this kind of thing.
Then I put it down for another I don't know, well, untill 5th form, when I was looking for an easy book to add into my reading log, becuase I was rowing first term, and had hardly any time, but we had a quota to fill. And I remember that time, I had decided it was all about the power and value of innocence and youth. We were reading a book about it at the time on class, and I guess that just shone though. The power of youth, even naivity (sp.), to see through the convoluted, even outright ridiculous adult world, to drive through to more absolute (absolute then I considered only in a positive sense) truths. and it was about what youth and innocence could show adults, even the stranded narrator, who himself declared his life to be not so much attached to any adult company as such.
Anyway I think I held onto that reading for a while following this, reading the book a number of other times over especially, I think, 6th form holidays.
Then I came back to it again thinking about schol. english. and by then I'd kind of grown quite a bit english-wise, and was able to concieve books in all manner of strange or novel or intresting ways. anyway I think it was because I'd done some psycho-analytical stuff for media, and if I didn't strictly attack Le Petit Prince in a Freudian sense, it was Freudian-esque. My reading there considered the whole thing in this way:
A man goes out into the desert. The desert is an isolated, silent place. It removes one from society, and gives one time to think. the stranded narrator has been stuck in this baren and silent desert for a number of days, and then the little prince comes along. Now I then saw the prince as the re-awakening, the re-arrival, of the narrator's subconsious, and of his childhood self (that self discussed in the first few chapters, the child who liked flowers, who could see boa constrictors in drawings of boa constrictors). The prince was a metaphor for this, and the journeying through the planets a re-visitation of experiences of the narrator's childhood. And he had come about because of the setting, the desert where the narrator was totally removed from society. And so, the dialouges between the two were really just an internal dialouge in the narrator's head. And I had so much more besides this, and to support it. For example at the end, or near the end, we have our illustration where the narrator tells us we may find the little prince too, this was the place where he found him. and the thing was, the image is totally non-descript, just two sand dunes and a star, from memory. which adds tothe thesis that anyone may come upon a little prince of thier own, if they head out into some isolated environment where they are removed from society. and it also is like, there is a definte truth, and there are true values in the world, if one just takes the time to sit, and look for them - they will become apparent.
anyway yeah. And now I feel when I think about it, it develops further still. For one I see for example the house in one of the early chapters with flowers and that, as an allusion to Proust (and ah, Proust, he is madly good, and I do want to return to reading him and his giant novel). And I also strart to convieve the prince/the entire story in much more religious/biblical terms. For I beleive it's true that in the bible, a lot of soul-searching was done in the desert, even by Jesus himself. And we have our snake, and we have the little prince, who, like Christ, is a monarch of a heavenly kingdom, is he not? At any rate, he is a prince/king, and he does come from another, higher world. And now I'm begining to concieve the prince as a sort of wandering, naive, passive (perhaps more passive than Jesus was) Christ like figure. In many obvious ways I guess, in his other-worldliness, in his affiliation with the desert, in his ideas about love, his ideas about the confusion/dissilussionment/lack of clarity etc. in society, with his planetary visits, etc., how he likes the old lamp-lighter more than any of the others. and i guess of course the biggest thing is at the end. the little prince dies, but he tells us he's not really going to die. (I'm doing this from memory but, it is something very much like this). He gives himself up to the snake, this metaphor in the bible of worldly evil, which I understand Jesus also gives himself up to (if this is not explicitly the intention, it is the case), but, as with Jesus, it's intentional in the sense that the little prince knows what he's doing, and also knows the ultimate outcome of the action, that he won't actually 'die'. And then there is the return hinted at, by the narrator himself, as discussed earlier. It's not to put forward the idea that The Little Prince is explictly even intended to be a Christ-like figure, but I think there are intresting parallels there, certianly at the very least right at the end, which is something i think i was very aware of actually from even my early readings. But like I said he's more meandering, and he's softer, and more naive.
who knows what I'll think next year. Thinking's always intresting. anyway, german oral assessment. this was a nice short and orderly post.
about interpretations. and understanding. and how for me in my own life, The little prince is a really intresting thing.
I think i first picked it up (I was given it as a present for my birthday (?) by the daughter of some french ambsadorial (sp.) official) when I was seven or eight. And I really enjoyed it. But just beacuse it was pleasant, and the little prince, he was a good guy, and becuase it was kind of magical and fantastical, and becuase of all this kind of thing.
Then I put it down for another I don't know, well, untill 5th form, when I was looking for an easy book to add into my reading log, becuase I was rowing first term, and had hardly any time, but we had a quota to fill. And I remember that time, I had decided it was all about the power and value of innocence and youth. We were reading a book about it at the time on class, and I guess that just shone though. The power of youth, even naivity (sp.), to see through the convoluted, even outright ridiculous adult world, to drive through to more absolute (absolute then I considered only in a positive sense) truths. and it was about what youth and innocence could show adults, even the stranded narrator, who himself declared his life to be not so much attached to any adult company as such.
Anyway I think I held onto that reading for a while following this, reading the book a number of other times over especially, I think, 6th form holidays.
Then I came back to it again thinking about schol. english. and by then I'd kind of grown quite a bit english-wise, and was able to concieve books in all manner of strange or novel or intresting ways. anyway I think it was because I'd done some psycho-analytical stuff for media, and if I didn't strictly attack Le Petit Prince in a Freudian sense, it was Freudian-esque. My reading there considered the whole thing in this way:
A man goes out into the desert. The desert is an isolated, silent place. It removes one from society, and gives one time to think. the stranded narrator has been stuck in this baren and silent desert for a number of days, and then the little prince comes along. Now I then saw the prince as the re-awakening, the re-arrival, of the narrator's subconsious, and of his childhood self (that self discussed in the first few chapters, the child who liked flowers, who could see boa constrictors in drawings of boa constrictors). The prince was a metaphor for this, and the journeying through the planets a re-visitation of experiences of the narrator's childhood. And he had come about because of the setting, the desert where the narrator was totally removed from society. And so, the dialouges between the two were really just an internal dialouge in the narrator's head. And I had so much more besides this, and to support it. For example at the end, or near the end, we have our illustration where the narrator tells us we may find the little prince too, this was the place where he found him. and the thing was, the image is totally non-descript, just two sand dunes and a star, from memory. which adds tothe thesis that anyone may come upon a little prince of thier own, if they head out into some isolated environment where they are removed from society. and it also is like, there is a definte truth, and there are true values in the world, if one just takes the time to sit, and look for them - they will become apparent.
anyway yeah. And now I feel when I think about it, it develops further still. For one I see for example the house in one of the early chapters with flowers and that, as an allusion to Proust (and ah, Proust, he is madly good, and I do want to return to reading him and his giant novel). And I also strart to convieve the prince/the entire story in much more religious/biblical terms. For I beleive it's true that in the bible, a lot of soul-searching was done in the desert, even by Jesus himself. And we have our snake, and we have the little prince, who, like Christ, is a monarch of a heavenly kingdom, is he not? At any rate, he is a prince/king, and he does come from another, higher world. And now I'm begining to concieve the prince as a sort of wandering, naive, passive (perhaps more passive than Jesus was) Christ like figure. In many obvious ways I guess, in his other-worldliness, in his affiliation with the desert, in his ideas about love, his ideas about the confusion/dissilussionment/lack of clarity etc. in society, with his planetary visits, etc., how he likes the old lamp-lighter more than any of the others. and i guess of course the biggest thing is at the end. the little prince dies, but he tells us he's not really going to die. (I'm doing this from memory but, it is something very much like this). He gives himself up to the snake, this metaphor in the bible of worldly evil, which I understand Jesus also gives himself up to (if this is not explicitly the intention, it is the case), but, as with Jesus, it's intentional in the sense that the little prince knows what he's doing, and also knows the ultimate outcome of the action, that he won't actually 'die'. And then there is the return hinted at, by the narrator himself, as discussed earlier. It's not to put forward the idea that The Little Prince is explictly even intended to be a Christ-like figure, but I think there are intresting parallels there, certianly at the very least right at the end, which is something i think i was very aware of actually from even my early readings. But like I said he's more meandering, and he's softer, and more naive.
who knows what I'll think next year. Thinking's always intresting. anyway, german oral assessment. this was a nice short and orderly post.
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