SIGNS OF SOME-THING ELSE / II
"A wind that blows from the abyss above us
among our brethren who one time existed
ripples and shakes the surface of our spirits,
and, reflected upon this trembling mirror,
the world, too, trembles."
--Miguel de Unamuno (1920)
[...]
MERCILESS
Who comes
After the subject?,
The old canard,
The quintessential
Question mark ...
And what comes
First, and, then,
Who comes after,
Or what comes
Before what comes
After the Event,
The moment, the
Majestic, the
Je ne sais quoi --
But that which is,
And that which was,
And that that will
Be again, when
What was not is
Not to be,
Nor will be ever
Seen again ...
And it is not
For words that such
Is meant to find
Its place in thought,
Because what’s there
Is not for ‘now’,
Nor is it for
The moment lost ...
That is its truth,
Its character,
Its method and
Its ‘coming to’,
Its loss of innocence,
Its mark, its
Coming to itself,
Its far and able
Nimble pace,
The torment after
Which its taste
Is not so bitter
As it’s sweet ...
Fermented grapes
Its voice may speak,
Dionysos, Ariadne,
Mystery and paradox,
Theseus and
Monstrous art,
Is not nor will
Exact this mark;
The Merciless,
Miraculous, the
Antidote, antithesis,
The ‘What’ is
Never found ...
GK (DRAFT 07/21/07)
NOTES - ‘The Merciless’ = The dialectic = The not-not-rational, but not the irrational (not-rational) nor the rational (not-irrational), but what is behind the complex (beyond negations, the ‘negation of negation’), or what in the Gita is called the ‘eternally embodied one’, Nietzsche’s ‘Yes, Yes’ (double affirmation) ... Therefore, to give up all ‘yoga(s)’, to defend the archaic that only ever arrives as ‘futural’ (never arrives) ... Or, that which the Jena Romantics circled endlessly (especially Novalis), and that which Wilhelm von Humboldt found (‘Brahman’) in his humble defense of August Wilhelm von Schlegel’s Latin translation of the Gita (1823) ... Thus, negation upon negation until Some-thing Else ‘appears’ ...
"This self-contained essence may indeed also be represented as self-sufficient, in the way that Brahman's self-thinking. Brahman is the universal soul; in creating, it goes forth out of itself as a breath, it contemplates itself, and from then on it is for itself." G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1831) ...
See Bradley L. Herling, The German Gita: Hermeneutics and Discipline in the German Reception of Indian Thought, 1778-1831 (London: Routledge, 2005)
Coda / The True (Soma)
Image (right), The Most Famous Painting in the World? - Velázquez, 'Las Meninas' (1656) ... / Image (above), Winged Victory ...RECYCLED POSTSCRIPT(S) / BIBLIOGRAPHIE / UPDATES
VELAZQUEZ - "It is perhaps the very greatest tour de force of western painting. In subject and execution, it is as the French philosopher Michel Foucault wrote in 1966, the representation of representation." Dawson W. Carr, "Painting and Reality: The Art and Life of Velázquez" [pp. 26-53], Dawson W. Carr, et alia, Velázquez (London: National Gallery of Art, 2006), p. 48 / See Estrella de Diego, "Representing Representation: Reading 'Las Meninas', Again" [pp. 150-169], in Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt (ed.), Velázquez’s 'Las Meninas' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) ...
TRUTH - "Truth is found behind appearances. And what is behind appearances is a great darkness. And it is that darkness that one will have to search for the truth." John Berger, "Los enanos cambian de sitio", in El retrato en el Museo del Prado (Madrid: Anaya, 1994), pp. 376-377, in Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt, "Velázquez’s ‘Las Meninas’" [pp. 124-149], in Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt (ed.), Ibid., p. 149 (trans. Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt) ... See Nightfall ...
The (Ir)Real Thing (Looking Awry) ...
The Editors
THE WAY OUT? - Levinas, Marion, Chrétien (SAMIZDAT)
