Originary/Poetic. Phenomenological. Meditations. OPM. PPM.
Keeping with the current impulse to link past with present, and to connect the words written ten years ago, I am compelled this morning by an article in a recent New Yorker to say something about the link between form and content, process and ideas, specifically, the link between 'originary' (a synonym for 'poetic,' which is part of the subtitle of Being and Learning), 'phenomenological,' and 'meditation.' The general context for "The Poet's Hand," by Adam Gopnick, is the claimed discovery of a heavily annotated Elizabethean dictionary, John Baret's Alvearie, printed in 1580. The importance of this discovery is the alleged annotator: William Shakespeare. The article tells the story of the chance purchase of the book by a rare books dealer from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and then links it to the larger field or hobby or obsession known as 'Bardoltry.' It's a great piece of writing, and an even better story. What caught my attention and what has lead me to include this story in this blog post is the concluding section when Gopnick makes what I take to be the real moral of the story: whether or not the annotator was Shakespeare, we should remember that at one time dictionaries served the writer like the beehive the maker of honey. Gopnick says it better: "The annotator, it's plain, found in the Alvearie not a set of fixed definititions but a pulsing network of meaning-by-association. He races back and forth among words, dowsing for connections. The dictionary is a compendium of possible allusions, from language to language and word to word. What is lost in lucidity is gained in the strange poetic power of association that is Shakespeare's most striking poetic feature. His mind leaps sideways -- and, by implication, in cross-referenced, associative, language leaping allusiveness -- as often as it buls forward toward a goal...Our top Bard looked at language as, precisely, a beehive, where words went out and then came back to make honey from the nectar of their exotic engagements....Our minds as readers are also made like beehives -- sending scholar-messengers out into the world for nectar, finding it where they will, and making their own peculiar honey. We cannot police their routes out and back, no matter how we try. Pendantry tries to shut the exits to the hives and makes the bees do all their work in the dark. Scholarship tries to map some of the bees' travel."(4.28.14, p. 49, emphasis mine)
Were I to publish a second edition of Being and Learning and write the requisite second Preface, I would most definitely include this excerpt from Gopnick's article, because it describes so well the general approach I took each day in writing my daily meditations, in terms of the way I approached the language I was working with, but, specifically, because I had a very large unabridged dictionary on my desk that I had 'appropriated' from the dusty shelves of the Literacy Studies department's small library on the first floor of Mason Hall. There were two identical dictionaries, and both were laying dormant, on the top shelf away from all the shining new theory books. When I 'borrowed' the dictionary I felt as if I were rescuing it from a kind of incarceration, and I'm sure it would have been 'donated' when the School of Education moved from Mason Hall to Hagedorn Hall in 2002. (I'd borrowed the book a good two years before I started the daily meditation writing experiment, so it felt like mine by the time 2004 rolled around.) This long-winded recollection is necessary because that big unabridged dictionary was my own Alvearie, and while I didn't annotate directly onto its pages, much of the writing that appears in these meditations is a kind of mapping of the travels of the words. In fact, it's not at all a stretch to say that the writing is a kind of travel log, an account and description of the paths taken by these words. And it is for this reason that so many of the words I use in my writing express this movement: 'path breaking,' 'sojourn,' 'wandering,' etc. But my point here is to recall and share that the writing is a kind of annotation, with this unabridged Webster's the principle source for tracing back the roots of the words, and, thereby, as I wrote in yesterday's blog post, following an approach to writing philosophy that Heidegger modeled for me; see, for example, the move he makes in retracing the roots of building to peace and freedom.
With this in mind, I share a highlight from today's meditation, OPM 95: "Thus, 'purposeful wandering along the proper way of fellowship,' is the response to Heidegger's questions, 'On what journeys does the poet attain to his renunciation? Through what land do his journeys lead the traveler?'...To renounce is to 'give up or put aside voluntarily.' Renounce is derived from the Latin 'renuntiare to bring back word.' Nuntiare is 'to announce' and this is derived from 'nuntius, messenger, news.' [Websters]...in delivering the message the Sage conveys the renunciation by bringing back Word, by conveying the appearance of the ineffable...Nuntius renuntiare."
To be the messenger who brings back the word. Is the sage then the bee keeper? The one who cultivates honey?
Keeping with the current impulse to link past with present, and to connect the words written ten years ago, I am compelled this morning by an article in a recent New Yorker to say something about the link between form and content, process and ideas, specifically, the link between 'originary' (a synonym for 'poetic,' which is part of the subtitle of Being and Learning), 'phenomenological,' and 'meditation.' The general context for "The Poet's Hand," by Adam Gopnick, is the claimed discovery of a heavily annotated Elizabethean dictionary, John Baret's Alvearie, printed in 1580. The importance of this discovery is the alleged annotator: William Shakespeare. The article tells the story of the chance purchase of the book by a rare books dealer from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and then links it to the larger field or hobby or obsession known as 'Bardoltry.' It's a great piece of writing, and an even better story. What caught my attention and what has lead me to include this story in this blog post is the concluding section when Gopnick makes what I take to be the real moral of the story: whether or not the annotator was Shakespeare, we should remember that at one time dictionaries served the writer like the beehive the maker of honey. Gopnick says it better: "The annotator, it's plain, found in the Alvearie not a set of fixed definititions but a pulsing network of meaning-by-association. He races back and forth among words, dowsing for connections. The dictionary is a compendium of possible allusions, from language to language and word to word. What is lost in lucidity is gained in the strange poetic power of association that is Shakespeare's most striking poetic feature. His mind leaps sideways -- and, by implication, in cross-referenced, associative, language leaping allusiveness -- as often as it buls forward toward a goal...Our top Bard looked at language as, precisely, a beehive, where words went out and then came back to make honey from the nectar of their exotic engagements....Our minds as readers are also made like beehives -- sending scholar-messengers out into the world for nectar, finding it where they will, and making their own peculiar honey. We cannot police their routes out and back, no matter how we try. Pendantry tries to shut the exits to the hives and makes the bees do all their work in the dark. Scholarship tries to map some of the bees' travel."(4.28.14, p. 49, emphasis mine)
Were I to publish a second edition of Being and Learning and write the requisite second Preface, I would most definitely include this excerpt from Gopnick's article, because it describes so well the general approach I took each day in writing my daily meditations, in terms of the way I approached the language I was working with, but, specifically, because I had a very large unabridged dictionary on my desk that I had 'appropriated' from the dusty shelves of the Literacy Studies department's small library on the first floor of Mason Hall. There were two identical dictionaries, and both were laying dormant, on the top shelf away from all the shining new theory books. When I 'borrowed' the dictionary I felt as if I were rescuing it from a kind of incarceration, and I'm sure it would have been 'donated' when the School of Education moved from Mason Hall to Hagedorn Hall in 2002. (I'd borrowed the book a good two years before I started the daily meditation writing experiment, so it felt like mine by the time 2004 rolled around.) This long-winded recollection is necessary because that big unabridged dictionary was my own Alvearie, and while I didn't annotate directly onto its pages, much of the writing that appears in these meditations is a kind of mapping of the travels of the words. In fact, it's not at all a stretch to say that the writing is a kind of travel log, an account and description of the paths taken by these words. And it is for this reason that so many of the words I use in my writing express this movement: 'path breaking,' 'sojourn,' 'wandering,' etc. But my point here is to recall and share that the writing is a kind of annotation, with this unabridged Webster's the principle source for tracing back the roots of the words, and, thereby, as I wrote in yesterday's blog post, following an approach to writing philosophy that Heidegger modeled for me; see, for example, the move he makes in retracing the roots of building to peace and freedom.
With this in mind, I share a highlight from today's meditation, OPM 95: "Thus, 'purposeful wandering along the proper way of fellowship,' is the response to Heidegger's questions, 'On what journeys does the poet attain to his renunciation? Through what land do his journeys lead the traveler?'...To renounce is to 'give up or put aside voluntarily.' Renounce is derived from the Latin 'renuntiare to bring back word.' Nuntiare is 'to announce' and this is derived from 'nuntius, messenger, news.' [Websters]...in delivering the message the Sage conveys the renunciation by bringing back Word, by conveying the appearance of the ineffable...Nuntius renuntiare."
To be the messenger who brings back the word. Is the sage then the bee keeper? The one who cultivates honey?
3.0 -- "What is lost in lucidity is gained in the strange poetic power of association that is Shakespeare's most striking poetic feature. His mind leaps sideways." The 2.0 commentary is one of the best I've encountered in this third go around! I'm inspired by reading the description of the method I followed with my writing, which was one way of keeping it fresh and finding the location of spontaneity and responding to inspiration from Improvisation. In yesterday's 3.0 commentary I highlighted my borrowing from Heidegger's method of moving from the present to a recovery of an alternative past to then a renewed present. It is a kind of archeological move that discovers meaning that have been forgotten or covered over by translations, e.g., the Attic word for truth, aletheia, translated into the Latin veritas that evolved to veracity and then finally into the criterion of verifiability. Heidegger recovers and retreives the original and as a way of deconstructing the hold its linguistic descendent, which has lost all connection to the original. The most powerful example is the evolution of technē. Contemporary "technology" is generally speaking a reversal of the original technē. The link to poeisis are mostly forgotten, but I suspect there is an emerging recovery happening with the emergence of makers and their makers' markets, not to mention the emergence of design in programming and printing.
ReplyDeleteBack to my method and this project - this Gopnick piece cited in my 2.0 commentary is another that I anticipate figuring into my forthcoming book project, which will get underway this coming week! Yesterday I wrote about the first moment of the dialectic: study, specially reading. This is the moment when the object of study reveals itself as significant, as worthy of our attention. The books (the reading, text) calls out to us, and the one who respond to the call is relocated in the place of study, the modality of "student." This is always going to be important: the reception of the call and the relocation into the place of study. And immediately the unpacking of "evocation" (the call), of "listening" (receiving the call), of "modality" and "place." These are central terms that will need to be presented...in the Intro? the Preface? That remains to be worked out! (excitement of the forthcoming writing). But I do think this Gopnick article on Shakespeare's annotation will be so helpful to my readers, my students, who will be using this book as a compendium to the course. That is the goal of my sabbatical book. It's not meant to be a erudite and in my case esoteric piece of scholarship. Rather, it aims to be a guidebook for my course. And that means it will not only rely on the greatest hits of readings I have used over the years, and most recently this semester (only Du Bois was left off out of this past semester's reading).
3.0b - The first chapter on the book and the library, reading and study, will describe the book as the significant object that calls out to us, and the student as the reader who receives that call and responds via annotation. Annotation: 'annotat' (marked); to comment upon, interpret. That will suffice. Annotation is the response to the reading that precedes and prepares writing. And the annotation also serves as the dialectical other to the seminar paper. But the writing of paper or exam essay is the final moment in the process that unfolds in the following way: the teacher (Sage) pointing to the reading, the student receiving and responding to the reading, the student gathering with others to share their responses, the student returning back to the place of study and writing. That last moment of writing is the "synthetic" moment. Important to note here that the response to the reading is one part phenomenology another part hermeneutics. Annotation includes phenomenology with the highlighting of passages. The hermeneutic happens with the marking up of the reading, the notes that are written directly on the text, the creation of a meta-text. "Meta" - with, across, or after; denoting a change, a substitution.
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