Aporetica

The second volume, in which Sam emerges from WW2, from the unspeakable (unamable) phantasmagoria of war, to maturing self-reflection and a close study of the craft of writing (in the footsteps of his literary father, James Joyce) Beckett: Storming for Beauty by John Banville The New York Review of Books

Philip Larkin on jazz in 1968 – ‘this development, this progress, this new language that was more difficult, more complex, that required you to work hard at appreciating it, that you couldn’t expect to understand first go, that needed technical and professional knowledge to evaluate it at all levels, this revolutionary explosion that spoke for our time while at the same time being traditional in the fullest, the deepest ... ofcourse! This was the language of criticism of modern painting, modern poetry, modern music. Of course! How glibly I had talked of modern jazz without realising the force of the adjective: this was modern jazz, and Parker was a modern jazz player just as Picasso was a modern painter and Pound a modern poet. I hadn’t realised that jazz had gone from Lascaux to Jackson Pollock in 50 years, but now I realised it – relief came flooding in upon me after nearly two years despondency.’ The principal themes of modernism – mystification and outrage, deliberately obscure and

The Sea And The Man by Anna Swir (1909-1984) You will not tame this sea either by humility or rapture. But you can laugh in its face. Laughter was invented by those who live briefly as a burst of laughter. the eternal sea will never learn to laugh. Translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz and Leonard Nathan

View With a Grain of Sand By Wislawa Szymborska (Polish poet) Translated from the Polish by Stanislaw Branczak and Clara Cavanagh - We call it a grain of sand, but it calls itself neither grain nor sand. It does just fine, without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect, or apt. - Our glance, our touch means nothing to it. It doesn't feel itself seen and touched. And that it fell on the windowsill is only our experience, not its. For it, it is not different from falling on anything else with no assurance that it has finished falling or that it is falling still. - The window has a wonderful view of a lake, but the view doesn't view itself. It exists in this world colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless. - The lake's floor exists floorlessly, and its shore exists shorelessly. The water feels itself neither wet nor dry and its waves to themselves are neither singular nor plural. They splash deaf to their own noise on pebbles neither l

'The world deprived of clear cut outlines, of the up and the down, of good and evil, succumbs to a peculiar nihilization, that is, it loses its colour, so the grayness covers not only the things of this earth and of space, but also the very flow of time, its minutes, days and years. Abstract considerations will be of little help, even if they are intended to bring relief. Poetry is quite different. By its very nature it says: All those theories are untrue. Since poetry deals with the singular, not the general, it cannot - if it is good poetry - look at things of this earth other than as colourful, variegated, and exciting, and so, it cannot reduce life, with all its pain, horror, suffering, and ecstasy, to a unified tonality of boredom or complaint. By necessity poetry is therefore on the side of being and against nothingness' Czeslaw Milosz

'Sometimes grace overcomes that distance. In spite of our definite isolation, we experience closeness. I think everyone, myself included, cheapens that closeness through short-cuts, by naming ourselves avant-garde artists or Libertarians or Christians. We assert that familial bonds are unbreakable when the grace of familial love resides in the difficult fact that our love for family, even our children, is ultimately conditional. I need not give examples. In my experience, grace always arrives through the dismantled, disfigured, and disturbed.' Matt Henricksen

'The mysteries of birth and death. . .can never be understood because they can never be objectified. But there is a creation that mystifies and a creation that reveals, and the latter is identical with the former. Except that the mysterious creation, the one infinitely far back in the past, is the one that Job has heard about but cannot directly see (42:5). When the infinitely remote creation is re-presented to him, he becomes a participant in it: that is, he become creative in himself, as heaven and earth are made new to him. He is given no new discovery, but gains a deeper apprehension of what is already there. This deeper apprehension is not simply more wisdom, but an access of power. Myths of a paradise lost in the past or a hell threatening us after death are myths corrupted by the anxieties of time. Hell is in front of us because we have put it there; paradise is missing because we have failed to put it there. The Biblical perspective of divine initiative and human response p

Question: Speech spoils the transcendence of Reality, while silence spoils the Manifestation. How can one combine speech and silence without spoiling Reality?' Whether we speak or remain silent, the ultimate reality in its suchness can never be indicated. For if we use language in trying to re-present the reality, the latter will necessarily become articulated on the spot, and consequently only the phenomena will be apparent and the Urgrund (primary principle) lost, while if we keep silent, the non-articulated may very well be symbolically presented, but the aspect of articulation will be left in the dark.' Lou Mitsunen Nordstrom

Western history was shaped for some three thousand years by the introduction of the phonetic alphabet, a medium that depends solely on the eye for comprehension. The alphabet is a construct of fragmented bits and parts which have no semantic meaning in themselves, and which must be strung together in a line, bead-like, and in a prescribed order. Its use fostered and encouraged the habit of perceiving all environment in visual and spatial terms – particularly in terms of a space and of a time that are uniform – c,o,n,t,i,n,u,o,u,s and c-o-n-n-e-c-t-e-d. The line, the continuum became the organising principle of life. ‘As we begin, so shall we go.’ ‘Rationality’ and logic came to depend on the presentation of connected and sequential facts or concepts. Marshall McLuhan

'Outside Logos, says Aristotle, is primary matter, the principle of indefiniteness, pure potentiality, absolutely unknowable in itself. Beyond the boundary of the eidos with it's unitary formula (logos), unformed matter would appear infinite predication, a limitless spread of particularization, which would be nothing but babble. The flux is the flux of particulars. The transcendental function of language is the heightening of the abstracting and generalising power of words. To know is always to categorise, and even for Aristotle the name of that which guarantees the unity and self identity of this individual here is the same as the name of it's membership in a category: eidos means both form and "species". All philosophy takes place within the medium of nous or Logos, within which form is possible.' Henry Staten

Chesterton - "There are no bad things, but only bad uses of things. If you will, there are no bad things but only bad thoughts; and especially bad intentions ... but it is possible to have bad intentions about good things; and good things, like the world and the flesh, have been twisted by a bad intention called the devil. But the devil cannot make things bad; they remain as on the first day of creation. The work of heaven alone is material - the making of a material world. The work of hell is entirely spiritual." According to Simon Leys, it was 'poetry that finally preserved (Chesterton's) sanity. For the gift of the poet (which is also the gift of a child) is an ability to connect with the real world, to look at things with rapt attention. Both the poet and the child are blessed with what Chesterton called "the mystical minimum": the awareness that things are - full stop. "If a thing is nothing else, that is good; it is - and that is good." Chr

Ruminations on the word aporia. Etymologically, from the Greek word aporos, meaning without passage, impenetrable, being at a loss. In Rhetoric. The expression of a simulated or real doubt, as about where to begin or what to do or say. IN Philosophy and Logic. A difficulty encountered in establishing the theoretical truth of a proposition, created by the presence of evidence both for and against it. Antonyms: trusting, believing. Source: Dictionary.com Unabridged. Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009. The word - unearthed in Beckett, ‘I will, I won’t go on’ or ‘I have enough trouble as it is in trying to say what I think I know.’ Could be something like this: I’m having difficulty getting started, and then, once in motion, I face the Impenetrable. This word has always been there, concealed below appearance and posturing, anchored in the ambivalence of ‘I’m not so sure.’ Surely a relative of Doubt, I hear you assert, although I’m not certain. Borges preferred