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Ode to Man
Tho’ many are the terrors,
not one more terrible than man goes.
This one beyond the grizzled sea
in winter storming to the south
He crosses, all-engulfed,
cutting through, up from under swells.
& of the gods She the Eldest, Earth
un-withering, un-toiling, is worn down,
As the Twisting Plough’s year
into Twisting Plough’s year,
Through the breeding of horse, he turns.
& the lighthearted race of birds
all-snaring he drives them
& savage beasts, their clan, & of the sea,
marine in kind
With tightly-wound meshes spun
from all-seeing is Man.
Yet too, he masters by means of pastoral
beast, mountain-trodding,
The unruly-maned horse holding fast,
‘round the neck yoked,
& the mountain’s
ceaseless bull.
& the voice & wind-fast thought
& the passion for civic ways
He has taught, so from crag’s poor court
from under the ether’s hard-tossed arrows
To flee, this all-crossing one. Blocked, he comes
upon nothing so fated.
From Hades alone escape he’ll not bring.
Tho’ from sickness impossible
Flight he has pondered.
A skilled one, devising of arts beyond hope,
Holding at times an evil,
But then to the noble he crawls,
honoring the laws of the Earth, &
Of gods the oath so just,
high-citied.
Citiless is the one who with the un-beautiful
dwells, boldly in grace.
Never for me a hearth-mate
may he have been, never equal in mind
He who offers this.
Ode to Man
A BwO is made in such a way that it can be occupied, populated only by intensities. Only intensities pass and circulate. Still, the BwO is not a scene, a place, or even a support upon which something comes to pass. It has nothing to do with phantasy, there is nothing to interpret. The BwO causes intensities to pass; it produces and distributes them in a spatium that is itself intensive, lacking extension. It is not space, nor is it in space; it is matter that occupies space to a given degree—to the degree corresponding to
the intensities produced. It is nonstratified, unformed, intense matter, the matrix of intensity, intensity = 0; but there is nothing negative about that zero, there are no negative or opposite intensities. Matter equals energy. Production of the real as an intensive magnitude starting at zero. That is why we treat the BwO as the full egg before the extension of the organism and the organization of the organs, before the formation of the strata; as the intense egg defined by axes and vectors, gradients and thresholds, by dynamic tendencies involving energy transformation and kinematic movements involving group displacement, by migrations: all independent
of accessory forms because the organs appear and function here only as pure intensities. The organ changes when it crosses a threshold, when it
changes gradient. "No organ is constant as regards either function or position, . . . sex organs sprout anywhere,... rectums open, defecate and close, . . . the entire organism changes color and consistency in split-second adjustments." The tantric egg. After all, is not Spinoza's Ethics the great book of the BwO?
Ode to Man
But human power is extremely limited, and is infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes; we have not, therefore, an absolute power of shaping to our use those things which are without us. Nevertheless, we shall bear with an equal mind all that happens to us in contravention to the claims of our own advantage, so long as we are conscious, that we have done our duty, and that the power which we possess is not sufficient to enable us to protect ourselves completely; remembering that we are a part of universal nature, and that we follow her order. If we have a clear and distinct understanding of this, that part of our nature which is defined by intelligence, in other words the better part of ourselves, will assuredly acquiesce in what befalls us, and in such acquiescence will endeavour to persist. For, in so far as we are intelligent beings, we cannot desire anything save that which is necessary, nor yield absolute acquiescence to anything, save to that which is true: wherefore, in so far as we have a right understanding of these things, the endeavour of the better part of ourselves is in harmony with the order of nature as a whole.
I’ve certainly noticed that some of the most interesting responses to philosophical texts that I’ve ever come across came out of people with no training or education in philosophy whatsoever.
The sorts of philosophical conversations held between only those with professional stakes or pretensions to expertise in the field tend to be very predictable, dry, and bogged down in oneupmanship or the sort of misfired potshots that are par for the course in history of philosophy-based wrangling.
This is why I–and I’m entirely serious here–like open-source “philosophical” discussions, e.g. the kinds that often take place on message boards. For all of their messiness and inefficiency, I’ve found them much more provocative of rigorous thought than the other more traditional types I’ve participated in have been. (Usually this productive thinking happens after the argument is over, but still…)
Comments box discussions seem especially rewarding in this sense as well, as you pointed out in an earlier post.
AL,
I”m not so sure that I share you’re love of message boards, but for me it all comes down to whether the person talking/writing is still learning, still exploring, AND whether you can feel this in their writing. This is what is particularly interesting about Wittgenstein’s PI, nothing is explicated, nothing is dictated, nothing is ever defined in the usual sense. Communication with others becomes exploration, hopefully in a kind of mutuality.
even sticks it in his mouth so as to feel its shape. . . . I can almost synesthetically put my mouth around the two concepts . . . a child-picture that makes the whole thing turn?
I am fascinated by the conjunction of turning and the mouth here, of turning in the mouth (ruminatio) as tactile tasting and gustatory touch (anagogy, aka ‘foretaste’ of paradise in medieval hermeneutics). Seems that you would, as per previous desires for poetry-philosophy, ‘bring back’ the anagogic sense (am slated to present something called “Getting Anagogic” next year!). Cf. the turning component of commentary as geophilosophy: “Turn it and turn it again for everything is in it; and contemplate it and grow gray and old over it and stir not from it” (Aboth 5.22). What the Talmudic commentator here says of the Torah is sayable of the earth.
More clearly perhaps, we are talking about the nature of the utility of philosophical language, how it is used, handled, carried, and the difference betweeen philosophy as intellectually understanding concepts vs. philosophy as acts of using and experiencing them. Here the broader premodern ideas of philosophical experience, of what thinking can do to a body come in handy.
I think Wittgenstein’s writing does give itself as anagogical experience, a thought-poetry of statement, where the act of reading/understanding moves around the pleasure of grasping and turning the perception in the mind as true, as giving one the taste and sight of something beautiful.
And there is an important relation here of course to aphoristic language (cf. ghazal couplets), of which the appendix to Agamben’s Coming Community, introduced as a fragmentary commentary on section 9 of Being and Time and proposition 6.44 of the Tractatus, is a beautiful recent example.
Sorry for scattered nature of this comment, in a rush. Cheers,
Nicola
I have in mind something of the etymological “tasting” of sapientia, the suppressed way that even the most abstract of contemplations, no matter how jargon-filled, still operate out of the body, through experiences (not experience as evidence, but experience as way-finding). I am convinced that human abstract reasoning grows out of animal topographic compassry.
I appreciate the scattered nature of the comment, that you took the time to riff, some of the best thoughts come this way.
As for the turning in the mouth, and the turning of things in the world, perhaps the link that some of established between the movements of the tongue in language acquistion, and the dexterity of the fingers (how the child moves the tongue when learned to perfect cursive letters), is an important aspect, or perhaps this is just my own personal experience, but really concetual ideas I almost have shapes to me. I can almost feel them in my mouth, not like a word being formed, but a complex of words.
The spoken word shapes the world because it shapes the mouth.
I am less inclined to the mystical than you seem to be, but I am just coming to see the outlines of your thought. I believe in full materiality, including the materiality of words. In a sense the silence of the Tractatus recommendation is to be completely filled with all that is. We may cease speaking where words lose traction, but certainly we should/could gesture, and gesture is a kind of speaking. And words may be insufficient at one moment in time, but not another, even though the subject matter remains the same.
p.s. Nicola, I look forward to your future presentation on the Anagogic, (if you will post it on your blog). If I wanted to say how I feel about the anagogic, I would want to change the word to Diagogic, with strong emphasis on the Greek. I have in mind Sophocles’ notion of the path, two-out-of-one, a mutuality of bodies:
https://kvond.wordpress.com/2008/05/18/teiresias-resolves-non-being/
Perhaps we agree, or disagreements are only those of emphasis, but I am looking to the way in which leading is combination.
i love this black and white photo above.
the unclear clear. yeah, via the image or in general anyway via language that according to humboldt leads us “there” yet it never entirely leads us there…isn’t it lively to be halfway stuck between the clear and unclear? this is one of the most loveliest things to ponder about, the unclear clear…
Antonia,
Thanks for the good thoughts on this. Very glad to have the unclear clear described in this way. There is an odd kind of strong descrease in depth of field that occurs in philosophy, where so much goes out of focus so that other things become crisp. And as you suggest, there is a distinct pleasure of pulling into and out of focus, and the play in-between.