Philosophy and poetry arise from our dissatisfaction with usage. Prose must make use of the language as it is.

(Philosophy, qua literature, is less like prose and more like verse. It accomplishes itself, not in its apodictic assertions, but in its obiter dicta. The "strophes" of poetry become the "remarks" of philosophy, which writhe against the immedicacy of, respectively, our institutions and our intuitions. What matters is not what is stated, but what is turned. Mallarmé's "divagations" and Williams's "improvisations" may be mistaken for prose, as may Frege's elucidations and Wittgenstein's investigations. Mistaken, I say; mistaken. Poetry and philosophy betray their essence when they aspire to science or politics, to say what is and what should be, i.e., to prose. The reader betrays them by taking them straight.)

What I am trying to say is that, beyond our own determination and capriciousness, there is the determinism and caprice of nature (what happens between facts and acts) and culture (what happens between beliefs and desires).

Acts are known only through their effects on the facts. But these effects are not governed by our intentions. We simply do, and see what happens.

Facts are mastered only as we affect them by our acts. But our affects do not question* our expectations. We look around, and see, there, what we have done.

That is, we control neither what facts result from our acts, not what desires emerge from our beliefs.

But, of course, our acts do affect the facts; and our beliefs affect our desires.

It's just that experience intervenes only empirically, between the facts and our beliefs about them, and normatively, between our acts and the desires that drive us to them.

Never between the fact and the act, nor the belief and the desire.

The intellect intervenes between the fact and the belief. (Facts don't make themselves known.) Volition intervenes between the desire and the act. (Acts do not master themselves.) To desire is not to intend and to believe is not to expect. We have some influence on these moments, some responsibility for them.

________
*Update: this originally read "are not curious about," which I changed, first, to "are not wise to" and then to "are not aware of". But I was trying to develop the (pangrammatical) analogy to "governed by," and governance is to our institutions (and our intentions) as inquiry is to our intuitions (and expectations). After some struggle, I realized that the relevant mechanism (or the lack of machination, perhaps?) is precisely one of unquestioning affect.

An image is a concept backed by emotion or an emotion backed by a concept. It either provides a surface that grips and moves you, i.e., an emotional experience, or an appearance that you grasp to steady yourself, i.e., a conceptual experience.

Philosophy is conceptual notation; poetry is emotional notation. They are the means by which we bring our concepts and emotions to presence so that we may make them more precise, affording clear thinking and intense feeling.

They improve our contact with experience: from the facts to our beliefs about them, from our desires to the acts that live them out.

Philosophy converts necessity to possibility;
poetry, vice versa.

"Given this," the philosopher asks,
"what can I think?

"Thus taken," asks the poet,
"what must she feel?"