CIENCIAS Y LETRAS

We have already said that one of the main motors of human being consists in seeking knowledge but, what for do we want that knowledge? There are many ways of answering to this question, and they all differ very little from each other. Aristotle attributed that need to the seeking of good by saying that �Every craft and every line of inquiry, and likewise every action and decision, seems to seek some good� (Aristotle 1999, p. 1) whereas authors like Nietzsche ascribed it to the instinct of self-preservation. The fact that the last goal of humankind is �the best good� (Ibis.) (i.e. happiness) for the Stagirite and self-preservation for the philosopher from Leipzig is only due to the fact that Aristotle places �good� on the top of his ontological theory whereas Nietzsche places �instinct� in that position. What may derive from this reasoning is that, whatever label we give to that position, it contains the primary cause of life as cause and effect, and they call each other recursively.1

These causes for our existential need of knowledge all derive from an awareness of the fact that there is something �more material or less� that causes life and that there is no life without it. Again, labels are different, but content implies the principle of causality and the trying to solve the problems/conflicts that we find in life as a proof of that causality.

Now that we have defined the motor of life as a seeking of life itself by means of solving problems/conflicts, let us see how we face those problems and how we try to answer our questions. The first unavoidable term about which to talk is �crisis�. This term comes from Greek �κρισς�, which was used by Hippocrates and Galen as a medical term meaning �the point when a disease is at its height� , what implies a necessary change in the state of the patient. The term was applied later to law as �judgement� , and its derivatives �critic� and �critical� were lately used to refer to �one capable of forming an opinion� and �doubtful� respectively. A crisis is, then, a way of changing our point of view, of doubting and wondering about the basis of the self, and this is about what Einstein�s Theory of Relativity talks, this is about what Descartes� Discourse on Method talks, and this is about what T.S. Eliot�s Pruffrock talks when he says �Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, / Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?� We try to solve the problems we find in life by means of changing our point of view, by means of crisis, and this is the reason why there is no possible maturity, happiness, good, faith, OR life without crisis.

This crisis is identifiable in the two poems that we are going to analyse in this paper: Traherne�s Wonder and Raine�s A Martian Sends a Postcard Home. Our concepts of �I� and �Otherness�, and our way of understanding context have varied in the last centuries. Although, the seeking of knowledge by means of stepping out of the �stage of life� trying to find another point of view from which to observe life is still the motor of metaphor and creativity.

This is what makes poems like Traherne�s Wonder and Raine�s Martian similar and different at the same time. While Traherne�s lyrical voice tries to recover his own perspective in a past time, Raine�s one tries rather to find a new perspective in a present time:

What we see here is the same critical direction oriented to different senses; Traherne looks for a new point of view within himself whereas Raine looks for that new point of view in otherness, getting out of the self. This difference in sense gives the feeling of being Traherne more subjective than Raine because �past� and �I� are indexicals that we relate to subjectivity whereas �present� and �Martian� are indexicals that we relate to objectivity.

According to Elinor Ochs , indexicals do not index directly concrete social conventions �such as gender� but abstract generalisations �such as prestige�, which index those social conventions. Very simply, we could say that she claims that gossiping is not related to women but to nonsense talking and that it is nonsense talking what indexes women. If we try to apply that way of understanding how we index concepts to the way in which we understand objectivity and subjectivity, we may realise that our current sense of knowledge rejects subjectivity as it assumes that the subject has no science and so, no prestige. With the spread of technology and the last century world�s globalisation, our generation makes a very clear but unconscious distinction between relativity and subjectivity and distinguishes that subjectivity is not scientific whereas relativity permits changing our points of view without losing prestige. This was not the situation in Traherne�s 17th century, when the sense of self-identity had just burst in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms (1639-1651) while the Thirty Year�s War devastated Europe. It is for this reason that we must keep in mind that the tip of our arrow�s direction is always affected by context, which belongs to otherness, but is interpreted by the self.

Language and the use of it are primary tools for the individual to reach a crisis �to change our point of view� because it integrates individuality and otherness. Whenever we are uttering a sentence, our self relates to what is outside the self by means of noises (physical) OR meanings (non-physical). Whether the self is physical or not and whether it is simple or composed are topics about which I am not going to discuss in this paper. What I am arguing is that the fact that written language differs from spoken language is a proof of written language giving a new point of view to the self. This point of view is given by symbols �such as letters� to face a crisis towards what some authors like Martin Luther King Jr. have called �freedom�.

From this understanding of language, we may assert that, as far as our way of referring to the other is close to its essence rather than to its accident (i.e. as far as we refer to otherness by means of universals rather than of concreteness) we become more metaphorical. Metaphoric language contains, indeed, one of the clearest antitheses of humankind as it belongs to the concrete �self� but refers to the abstract �other� by means of using a concrete �other� indexicalised by an abstractive �self�. This means that metaphoric language is made by interiorised indexicals �which are abstract� of the self �which is concrete� used as referents of a certain other �which is abstracted by the self�s indexicality� by means of using a concrete referent.

Let us see a practical example of this way of understanding metaphorical language: �The streets were paved with golden stones,� . The lyric voice of Traherne�s poem is a concrete �self� who has indexicalised, in an abstractive way, the colour and shine of the stones that pave the streets �which are concrete and other� with an abstract referee: �value�. This referee is identified with a concrete physical stone: gold, which relates to otherness again. As we have already said, Rine�s poem must be peppered with its historical context, so relativity is expectedto be found rather than the subjectivity that we saw in Traherne: �alone. No one is exempt / and everyone�s pain has a different smell.� The Martian is a concrete �self� in relation to the addressees of the postcard, but he is a concrete �other� in relation to me �reader�. This Martian has stablished an abstract �for the other: the reader� relationship between pain and smell, but this relationship may be concrete for him if he can smell pain. For me �other�, his indexicalisation physicalises an abstract other (i.e. pain), and the result is that �pain� becomes even more abstract than before for me �other�, and less for him �self�.

What we are arguing is, basically, that humans are antithetical and that metaphors are a clear sample of that antithesis, but there are much more samples of it. While Traherne�s Wonder expresses the experience of God as a return to innocence (e.g. �A native health and innocence / Within my bones did grow;� ), Raine�s Martian describes a reality that we all know empirically �such as books or mist� as if it was more a na�ve definition than a description (e.g. �Mist is when the sky is tired of flight / and rests its soft machine on ground:� ). The author whose �new� point of view remains within himself only varying temporal context expresses, in a very natural, probable, and close manner, what is not experienced by the other �us�. Although, the one who chooses otherness as his �new� point of view prefers defining what we already know searching probability by means of fictionality. These are ways of making close what is thought to be far and far what is felt to be close. Moreover, Traherne is using feelings expressed by interjections, exclamations, and enumeration (e.g. �Oh, how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!� ) for counteracting thought as it is reason �indexed to maturity� the one who impedes the soul to Live in God and to Love innocently:

Although, both the cause and the response derived from that �Living in God� result in a meditation on how to do it, what explains Traherne�s Centuries of Meditations.

Raine, on the other hand, is using reason by means of re-defining the world. The use of thought counteracts the feelings for concrete items and situations that are common in our lives (e.g. �Only the young are allowed to suffer / openly. Adults go to punishment room�) . These �reasoned� references give a strong semantic charge, which appeals to feelings, to those common items and experiences.

I have used the term �antithesis� to define metaphors because �antithesis� and �crisis� are related. Simplifying a little what it has been explained, feelers use reason for appealing to feelings and thinkers use feelings for appealing to reason. There we see the crisis; in the antithesis itself. Maybe this is the reason why Martin Luther King Jr. explained, in his Strength to Love, the quotation �be ye therefore wise as serpents, and simple as doves� (Mat 10, 16) by saying that all strong men have an antithesis in their nature.

This relationship of feelings and thought and the antithesis derived from it is also noticeable in the deep structure of both poems. While Traherne�s Wonder presents a repetitive vertical structure abbacdcd, Raine�s Martian is a free verse poem composed by pairs of lines.

As we see, �crises� are defined by the ability to see a world that we are supposed to know already as if we saw it for the first time, to wonder about it and, at last, return to our previous context being aware that �we only know that we know nothing� neither of our �self� nor of our �other�. It is not surprising at all the fact that metaphysical and contemporary poetry is incongruent. Modern society already knows that being congruent is impossible because of relativism, and metaphysics realised a long time ago that, as Maria Jose de Ben would say, �If you love the sweets of God, you are not loving the God of sweets�. That is exactly what Santa Teresa de �vila proclaimed when, according to Peterson (1970: 4), she wrote that �the soul�s highest realization was not in ecstasy but in obedience, the habitual conformity of the individual will to the divine will�. Both ways of approaching to the self and otherness are so different that it is very difficult not to see that they are nearly the same.

Here we are back to the ontological discussion of duality and unity; the same one given by Plato and Aristotle, in the frame of poetry. And what is amazing is that our antithesis lead us again to an unexpected result, as the author who unifies ontological realities of the self (i.e. the equivalent to Aristotle) is Traherne, the mystic, whereas the ontologically dualistic author (i.e. the equivalent to Plato) is now Raine, the fictional Martian.

• Aret� Magazines

Publicado el 29/09/2008

Por Esther Gimeno Miró

Votar

0 votos