Writers know exactly what they're doing.
Monday, January 06, 2025
Friday, January 03, 2025
Thursday, January 02, 2025
What is there?
The ocean exists.
It also inspires.
The ocean asserts itself and admonishes us.
We stand on the shore and look to the horizon.
It is what it is. We must become ourselves.
The ocean has its reasons, and its passions.
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
Sunday, December 29, 2024
Thus,
reason : passion :: rationality : satisfaction
Measure is the rationality of reason.
Pleasure is the satisfaction of passion.
Thursday, December 26, 2024
Sunday, December 22, 2024
Are All Propositional Attitudes Mental States?
Beliefs are surely mental states, i.e., the result of making up our minds about how things are. But what about desires? Should we not rather call them "cordial," i.e., of the heart, not the mind, and do they not feel rather more like "drives" than states?
Mallarmé tried do his thinking with his heart. Frege no doubt thought his feelings were mental. Poets and philosophers, both, want it all, but reduced to a single organ of their professional preference. Is it not rather this: that we think with our minds and feel with our hearts?
We are as passionate as we are rational. Our beliefs and desires do not meet in our minds. Rather, our desires drive us into cordial relations with one another, while our beliefs fix our mental position among things.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
Saturday, December 14, 2024
What does the artist want?
What is a work of art supposed to achieve for the artist?
Robert Graves proposed an answer: the poet is attempting to remove "a concenration which will persist uncomfortfortably" until the poem goes into "circulation".
Saturday, December 07, 2024
Friday, December 06, 2024
"There is the question: what relation must one fact (such as a sentence) have to another in order to be capable of being a symbol for that other? This is a logical question, and it is the one with which Mr. Wittgenstein is concerned." (Bertrand Russell)
There is another question: what relation must one fact (such as a body) have to another in order to be receptive to the symbolism of that other? This is a question of pathos, and it is one that Mallarmé, Williams, and Olson were very much conerned about.
Wednesday, December 04, 2024
Saturday, November 30, 2024
You'll Get Over It
Poetry makes you feel better.
It does not make you happy
when you are sad. It makes
your sadness more precise.