===== Original Message from PzEph <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> at 12/11/00 9:32 pm
>ELEPHANT TO JOHN LAWTON:
>
>ELEPHANT WROTE: I'd like to get a new thread going on mysticism..... I think
>that what Prisig has to say on mysticism in this short passage[P72/3 LILA]
>is just about the most intelligent, perceptive, and important things that
>have ever been said on the subject, bar-girls and all.
>
>JOHN LAWTON WROTE: I really enjoy this turn in the tide. I'm reminded of
>Martin Heidegger's "turn". Where-in he became much more poetic in his
>language and thought. Herein is a clue I think. The usual discursive
>grasping of thought finds greater freedom and accuracy in the ambiguity
>(from a standard perspective) and richness of poetry. I'm more inclined to
>find greater depth and comprehension in the poet rather than the
>philosopher. Let's not forget, Pirsig wrote a novel not a philosophical
>treatise. In the language of poetry opposites are often unified, neat
>boudaries transgressed, ignored, obliterated and transcendance and immanence
>enjoy a mutual collusion. The riddle of language reaching for "Reality" or
>mapping it is untied in the great poems IMO.
>
>ELEPHANT: Poetry in itself. But I wonder. Certainly poetry isn't
>discursive. But do you think that it can actually get to the mystical? Or,
>perhaps, is it rather the (flawed) attempt that counts and reveals: the
>strain and effort of it? The stuggle is itself a kind of signpost,
>indicating a reality that the poet is struggling with. This seems to be how
>Murdoch interprets a saying of Paul Valery:
>
>A difficulty is a light. An insurmountable difficulty is a Sun.
>
>The Sun, of course, is an old Platonic Image for the form of the Good.
>Quality as an insurmountable difficulty, indicated both by our straining to
>reach it, and by our straining to describe it - how does that sound?
>
>Pzeph
>
>
>
>
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===== Comments by [EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Lawton) at 12/12/00 8:59 am
Certainly it doesn't attain the mystical. For that seems to be beyond
language and thought. The unsayable. A flawed attempt to reveal or point
perhaps. It just seems to me to be more congruent to the mystical as opposed
to logical/discursive constructions. SOM is usually transcended or ignored
by the great poets. Yeats Eliot etc. I don't think any content can be
acribed to the mystical via language or thought. In absence of content
(ideas) there is only song or praise or lament etc. Of course many words
have been applied to the mystical but it is very debatable with what
accuracy and appropriateness. Wittengenstein gets to this when he commented
(paraphrased) that when someone understands the "meaning of life" the sense
of the question or doubt evaporates. You don't get an answer in the standard
sense. This is very zen-like I think.
John C. Lawton
Network Specialist
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