>But without metaphors, people cannot think. That is, without >metaphors, life is the "blooming, buzzing confusion" perceived by an infant.
Mario initially applies for the job as Neruda's postman because he believes that Neruda is the poet of lovers and of eroticism, and he hopes that some of Neruda's alleged success with women will rub off on himself if he convinces the poet to autograph a book of poetry. The two collections that Mario buys for this purpose are 'Odas elementales' and 'Nuevas odas elementales', collections that poeticize daily life but are unrelated to love poetry. While Mario waits for an opportunity to ask the standoffish and evasive Neruda for an autograph, he reads the books and starts to describe his own environment through the words he finds in Neruda's poems. When he then does this in a short conversation with the poet, Neruda criticizes him for the wrong application of "a metaphor". Mario's response is the fateful question "What is a metaphor?" Neruda does not reply with a definition but with an example: he selfassuredly recites one of his poems about the sea. Mario's response is that he finds the poem "weird". He explains: - The poem wasn't weird. What was weird was the way I felt when you recited it. - How can I'I explain it to you? When you recited that poem, the words went from over there to over here. - Like the sea, then! - Yes, they my moved just like the sea. - That' the rhythm. - And I felt weird because with all that movement, I got dizzy. - You got dizzy? - Of course. I was like a boat tossing upon yoour words. - Do you know what you just did, Mario? - No, what? - You invented a metaphor. - But it doesn't count, 'cause it just came out by accident. - All images are accidents, my son. [...] Neruda claims Rimbaud's metaphors of the splendid city and of burning patience not for the institution of literature, but for the splendid city that Neruda, Allende, and many others tried to build in 1973, and where poets do not deceive people but remind them of their dignity. Spoken by Neruda, Rimbaud's poetry becomes "world-making". And this, as I argued above, constitutes the total scandal of poetry. [...] Transposed into the sphere of literary criticism, Neruda's and Allende's praxis of trust indicates that scholarship which is carried out "with burning patience" does not preclude specialist knowledge, critical thought, and rigorous analysis; quite the contrary, it requires them in order to be effective. However, the effectiveness of such scholarship is measured against the commitment to the splendid city, before it is measured against the commitment to the academic institution. Concept-metaphors offer one possibility for such a rigorous, critical and committed practice of scholarship. Because they explore complex relationships rather than establish truths, they allow for knowledge to be adjusted to context. In so doing, they offend the conventions of criticism because they do not claim a monopoly of truth, specialist knowledge, or specialized competence. But they do require intellectual rigour and critical thought in order to become meaningful. Moreover, they turn object of analysis - poetry - into a means of producing knowledge, and knowledge production is in turn informed by poetic language. In this sense, poetic language becomes world-making for both politics and knowledge. full: Cornelia Graebner, Poetry's Total Scandal: Poets and Postmen in Antonio Skarmeta's El cartero de Neruda. http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/51633/1/Graebner_Poetrys_Total_Scandal.pdf enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLVqE13mMps _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
