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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