Wat de dichter witte moat. Filosofyske fasetten fan Obe Postma syn dichterskip

Abstract

In this article several philosophical aspects of the poetry of the Frisian poet Obe Postma 1927 are considered. Earlier critics held out that Postma’s treatment of the sublime was essentially kantian. However, a closer look proves that Postma was a romantic rather than a kantian. Postma’s treatment of the sublime is not characterized by rationality and by transcendental distance, but by feeling and transcendent proximity. Postma’s recurring theme of poetry as the mediating and connecting force of the world may also have been inspired by the romantics. And around 1922 he probably found the validity of this theme confirmed and reinforced when he read Lebensanschauung by the vitalistic philosopher Georg Simmel. In one of his notebooks he made an extract of this book in which he records the idea that people have the power to transcend their lives in their awareness of the possibilities and boundaries of their own knowledge. In the brilliant poem ‘Wat de dichter witte moat’ (‘What the poet must know’) we see the outcome of his philosophical-poetical quest, when we notice how he compares his own knowledge of the world to that of the great German poet Rilke and full of confidence states that he may have grown up ‘in the surveyable/ Community of the village’, but has known miracles that Rilke never knew. This poet knows enough.