11.16.2004

Here I compost my difference.

If we accept the R. Formalist 6-sided model, still, we say, language is not dicing. The simple hexagonal formula elides an implication of the fact that the addressor is one of its facets: the implication that motive, impulse, is inextricable from the actuality of language.

"Words are fossil poetry", says Emerson (Thoreau?). The word from its origin is gestural, indexical, representational, mimetic. The "inner image" of the word (Mandelshtam's Potebnia, the anti-R. Formalist) is a complex made up of its etymological-gestural roots.

Imagine, not a six-sided die, but a sword turning every way.

A sequence:
1. the primitive word points to that.
2. the primitive word-maker inches toward self-consciousness.
3. the primitive word takes on the tincture of same (self-consciousness).
4. the primitive word becomes a polished mirror, a flashing sword.
5. the primitive word-maker points toward his/her Maker.
6. the primitive word turns every way.
7. and the primitive word saw that it was good, and rested.

For the (Mandelshtamian) Acmeist, the poetic word exults in liberation from necessity, it celebrates its inner free-standing harmonics, it honors the creative nature of which it is a part, it acknowledges the origin of its freedom in the "historical fact the the Redemption". Thus the primary border is not between past & future, as with the Futurists, but between time & eternity, or heaven & earth, which the intervention of the Divine Word fused together, and which the poetic word echoes & celebrates.

Mandelstam wrote that, ironically, the revolution broke the spine of cultural chronology stemming from the Incarnation (the Christian calendar), and in doing so, led not into a utopian future but a kind of inert state, which he mocked as "Buddhist Moscow".

(Obviously, here, I'm taking Mandelshtam in my own direction, building on certain strands of his oeuvre; I'm not presenting an objective/scholarly version, but a Henry-adaptation.)

To summarize: in poetic language, impulse & representation are inherently meshed & fused with the "verbal material"; there is no toss of some dice-object; rather, language is a human creation which is surrounded by & points toward its maker-matrix. The langpo/futurist/modernist emphasizes chance & formal reconstruction; the acmeist/modernist emphasizes historical fate, the inextricable cultural context. Futurism is construct; acmeism is embodiment & image.

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