Pierre has this interesting (and distressing) piece here
There is some ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry but is there also one between religion and poetry? Aren't they on the same side? I would love to read commentaries of the surah on the poets in the Qur'an but from the translations I have it seems that poetry is viewed in the same negative light. Which is amazing, really, given how it has flourished in many Muslim societies (which is just another way of saying that poetry is a universal mode of expression.
So, what is it about poetry that is so dangerous? And here I feel that even in the attempts to suppress it there is a secret nod to the power of the word. This stands in stark contrast to those who think that words are fundamentally incapable of expressing human truths. There is a strain of thought that maintains that all that is true or beautiful is "inward" and not something that can take on bodily or material form. The "divine spark," as it were, radiates with an inner brilliance but is unknown in, or distorted by, the world. The word and the world will always be shadows, poor imitations of the genuine thing. In one way the ideal is the philosopher who sits alone with his thoughts, untroubled by other people, the body (which is to say time) but also disenchanted. Is there a type of thought that recognizes the existence of time (Lowith)? And isn't poetry one manifestation of it?
~~~
Do you know what, little one?
"Yes," she said, with feigned sense of inevitability..."I love you more than worms can say"
That's right, yo got it, more than words.
~~~
"The boon of language is that potentially it is complete, it has the potentially of holding with words the totality of human experience-everything that has occurred and everything that may occur. It even allows space for the unspeakable. In this sense one can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot b hostile to man."
---John Berger.
And you wonder, is that poetry's magical hold on us: our ability to be dazzled by words? Is that why it is seen as competing with religion? Or is it because poetry can be in love with itself, its own sound, and not the truth? Anything can be said if it sounds right. Poetry is a digression, a distortion, a refraction and a fraction of what is true?
There is some ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry but is there also one between religion and poetry? Aren't they on the same side? I would love to read commentaries of the surah on the poets in the Qur'an but from the translations I have it seems that poetry is viewed in the same negative light. Which is amazing, really, given how it has flourished in many Muslim societies (which is just another way of saying that poetry is a universal mode of expression.
So, what is it about poetry that is so dangerous? And here I feel that even in the attempts to suppress it there is a secret nod to the power of the word. This stands in stark contrast to those who think that words are fundamentally incapable of expressing human truths. There is a strain of thought that maintains that all that is true or beautiful is "inward" and not something that can take on bodily or material form. The "divine spark," as it were, radiates with an inner brilliance but is unknown in, or distorted by, the world. The word and the world will always be shadows, poor imitations of the genuine thing. In one way the ideal is the philosopher who sits alone with his thoughts, untroubled by other people, the body (which is to say time) but also disenchanted. Is there a type of thought that recognizes the existence of time (Lowith)? And isn't poetry one manifestation of it?
~~~
Do you know what, little one?
"Yes," she said, with feigned sense of inevitability..."I love you more than worms can say"
That's right, yo got it, more than words.
~~~
"The boon of language is that potentially it is complete, it has the potentially of holding with words the totality of human experience-everything that has occurred and everything that may occur. It even allows space for the unspeakable. In this sense one can say of language that it is potentially the only human home, the only dwelling place that cannot b hostile to man."
---John Berger.
And you wonder, is that poetry's magical hold on us: our ability to be dazzled by words? Is that why it is seen as competing with religion? Or is it because poetry can be in love with itself, its own sound, and not the truth? Anything can be said if it sounds right. Poetry is a digression, a distortion, a refraction and a fraction of what is true?
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