Poetic Logic Research Articles

По дантовскому следу: семантика сюжетной организации мистико-философского триптиха Вяч. Иванова («Сфинкс», «Врата», «Миры возможного»)

The article examines the symbolic and philosophical semantics of the plot structure of the poetic triptych Vyach. Ivanov “Sphinx”, “Gates”, “Worlds of the Possible”. The poetic logic of the connection between these poems is established, the unifying element of which is the concept of the initiatory path, widespread in the intellectual and mystical atmosphere of the early twentieth century. It is proved that the author follows in the footsteps of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, seeing in him a poet who opens paths in the symbolic and philosophical comprehension of the world. At the same time, however, Vyach. Ivanov also finds his own ways of artistic interpretation of plot twists, deviating from the “Dantean Code”. The idea of the poet’s metaphysical ascent to the Higher spheres of Being is largely embodied by the figure of the hero-narrator, who goes through an initiatory path and as a result of which the unity of the macro and microcosm of the world and man is revealed to him.

THE REFRACTION OF WHITE: THE PRIMARY COLORS OF HAYDEN WHITE'S TROPOLOGICAL THEORY OF DISCOURSE

ABSTRACTThere has been sustained discussion of the narrativist approach in the Western tradition of theory of history, and it has focused especially on the work of Hayden White. While the reception of White's work in the non‐West has resulted in multiple translations of his oeuvre into Chinese and other languages, there has, as of yet, been no attempt to apply his tropological theory of discourse in a detailed study of non‐Western historiography. Any such future endeavor would require assessing the extent to which White's theory is culturally specific to the inside of the Western cultural tradition and determining which elements may be applicable to the outside of non‐Western discourse. In this vein, the article pries open a possibility for an outside in the narrativist study of history. It establishes a European family tree of White's tropological theory of discourse by first tracing its acknowledged intellectual ancestry to Peter Ramus's rhetorical reductionism and Giambattista Vico's poetic logic. It then extends the genealogy of White's tetragrammatical analysis further back into a European ancestry by identifying its roots in the patristic and medieval exegetical traditions of the four senses of scripture and the four words of Saint Paul. The analysis reveals that White's narrativist method of tropology belongs to a particular refraction of mythic consciousness having an identifiable beginning, middle, and end in the Western cultural tradition. Any methodological step beyond this consciousness would require reading the tropological spectrum of another cultural lineage of myth.

Hölderlin e a poética do paradoxo

This article seeks to clarify and expose the principle of Hölderlin's “poetic logic”, as it appears in the “poetological” texts, mainly in the Observations on Oedipus and Antigone. As we try to show here, Hölderlin's “poetic logic” does not follow the principles of formal logic, but it comes close to dialectical logic, although it cannot be reduced to Hegelian dialectics. The logic here is not aimed at standardizing the rules of the use of thought, but at poetic practice, whose nature, in Hölderlin's sense, consists in the paradoxical apprehension of existence as such. Although it can be more clearly observed in the tragic genre, this paradoxical logic of poetry also permeates Hölderlin's so-called late hymns, such as Patmos and Bread and wine, in which tragic oppositions are coated in the elegiac form.

A Study on the Poetic Ethics Phenomenon of the ceremony of Dujie among the Yao Nationality in the Area of Dayaoshan

From the perspective of national cultural identity, this article through the study of the poetic ethics phenomenon of the Dujie, attempts to question what poetic ethics is and why the ethics is poetic.in Dayaoshan,How the complex poetic ethics of the Yao nationality manifests in the ceremony of Dujie; aims to clarify the poetic thinking, poetic logic, and poetic wisdom contained in the poetic ethics phenomenon of the Dujie ceremony, and reveals how the Dujie ceremony inherits the national aesthetic cultural spirit and demonstrates the internal cultural generation mechanism of the national cultural identity.

Cyclical Composition’s Dramaturgical Principles of the Easter Canon (on the Irmologion Material of the 70s – 80s of the XVII Century)

Over the centuries, church liturgical practice has formulated perfect musical forms, the structure of which is built on internal genres, united by the common idea of all parts. The classification of their musical dramaturgy is determined by the musical-philological component that builds the liturgical and artistic integrity of the cyclic form of the work. This form is represented by the Easter canon, which holds a special place among all works of Byzantine hymnography.The purpose of the research is to consider the compositional structure of the Easter canon genre in the context of its theological and musical-poetic content.The methodology of the research is based on a comprehensive music-analytical, theoretical and historical analysis.The scientific novelty of the research is a comprehensive study of the canon genre from the point of view of establishing relationships at the level of melos, poetics and liturgical content.Conclusions. The dramaturgy of the Easter canon is based on the harmonization of theological accents with the means of poetic expression and musical instruments, in particular, intonation, metro-rhythmic, leitmotifs and the like. In this way, the integrity of all 9 canon songs is achieved throughout the cyclical form. The general construction of the Easter canon is inspired by the laws of rhetorical art, as well as by the defining principles of Christian hymnographers whose work was based on a combination of Old Testament and New Testament images. Thus, the musical and poetic logic of the unfolding of the general dramaturgy of the canon genre reveals an alignment of the aesthetic component with the dominant accents of the theological idea of the Easter holiday.

Emancipatory Aesthetics in Beckett’s Theatre of Affect

Abstract This article uses Beckett’s directorial comments on the screened version of What Where (1982), as a point of departure for teasing out the poetic logic of Beckett’s attention to the formal aspects of the stage image. By having formal aspects take precedence over linguistic expression, Beckett refuses closure on the level of language and makes more authentic acts of judgment possible. Such ‘emancipatory aesthetics’ promotes intellectual freedom, a liberating aspect of Beckett’s work sometimes neglected.

Poetic logic and sensus communis

AbstractGiambattista Vico first published his masterpiece The New Science in 1725, but it did not receive much attention from the academic world until the middle of the twentieth century. The last fifty years of academic research have witnessed a so-called “linguistic” and “cultural” turn which has revived our interest in this great Italian thinker. Looking at the Vichian scholarship of the recent past, it seems that Vico’s theory of poetic wisdom has gained a great deal of recognition and deservedly so, but his concept of sensus communis is yet to be fully appreciated. The present article thus tries to discuss the constructive and imaginative function of language and culture not just through the notion of poetic logic but also in relation to that of common sense, which hopefully can shed some light on the perennial debate over the criterion of truth and aesthetic judgement.

Dichten an der Stelle des Denkens. Bemerkungen zur Genese des Gesangs im dritten Teil von Nietzsches Zarathustra

Abstract Poetry in lieu of thinking. Reflections on the genesis of song in the third part of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. The chapter Von der grossen Sehnsucht opens the final section of Nietzscheʼs Also sprach Zarathustra with a speech in which Zarathustra invites his soul to sing and in which he starts to sing himself. Based on Nietzscheʼs own late interpretation in Ecce homo, this article focuses on the narrative coherence and poetic logic of the chapter Von der grossen Sehnsucht. While the address to the soul can be understood as a soliloquy that corresponds to the definition of thinking in Platoʼs Sophistes, the chapter Von der grossen Sehnsucht also allows insight into the relationship between thinking and writing. Von der grossen Sehnsucht, after all, follows the chapter Der Genesende, in which Zarathustraʼs animals talk to him about eternal recurrence. Moreover, the invitation to sing anticipates the Dionysos-Dithyramben: the address to the soul is followed by Das andere Tanzlied and the Ja-und Amen-Lied, which Nietzsche describes as a dithyramb. As such, the chapter Von der grossen Sehnsucht introduces dithyrambic poetry.

A darkly bright republic: Milton's poetic logic

My first section considers Walter J. Ong's influential analyses of the logical method of Peter Ramus, on whose system Milton based his Art of Logic. The upshot of Ong's work is that philosophical logic has become a kind monarch over all other discourses, the allegedly timeless and universal method of mapping and diagramming all concepts. To show how Milton nevertheless resists this tyrannical result in his non-Logic writings, my second section offers new readings of Milton's poems Il Penseroso and Sonnet 16: “On His Blindness”, along with his prose epilogue to his elegies (and thereby the entire collection entitled Poems). These readings attempt to show (1) the original admixing of philosophy and poetry (under the heading of “thoughtfulness”), (2) the shadow-hidden superiority of poetry in connection to the effeminising disability of blindness, and (3) the potential irony of an apology that arguably suggests poetry's superiority to philosophy. Finally, I rest my case for Milton's rebellion by offering an interpretation of Paradise Lost which affirms the character of Satan qua dark, queer, poetic figure of classical republicanism.

The staging of play

In this essay, I discuss how Jean-Luc Nancy understands the nature or logic of philosophy in relation to literature by drawing on his early readings of Plato. Through an analysis of the notions of interpretation and dialogue, Nancy comes to understand this relationship in terms of shared difference, or partage. I argue that philosophy therefore operates according to a poetic logic that allows it to move between being and nonbeing. This movement, which Derrida calls play and Nancy understands as the act of being, is the object of philosophy. Its task is then the staging of play: showing how logos, meaning or being, displaces itself in establishing itself. Insofar as Nancy articulates this through readings of Plato, he is part of a larger trend within contemporary French thought that performs an overturning of Platonism by means of Plato. For Nancy, this first and foremost means welcoming back the poets after Socrates banished them.

Poetic destroyers. Vico, Emerson and the aesthetic dimension of experiencing

The aesthetic dimension of meaning-making in human conduct has been often overlooked. In this article, “aesthetic” refers to an immediate form of experiencing in which affective, ethical and cognitive dimensions are experienced as a totality, rather than a more restrictive meaning of artistic experience. The philosopher Giambattista Vico (1670–1744) developed the concept of “poetic logic,” that is a specific mode of thought typical of early stages of civilization. Poetic logic is the first form of collective elaboration of experience, a way of creating universals concepts based on sensory, affective sense-making and religious thinking. Vico claims that poetic logic was the cornerstone for the elaboration of whole systems of collective knowledge (poetic economy, science, geography, history, law, etc.) crystallized in myths. Poetic logic, based on imaginative function is a proper epistemological stance that, though overcome by rationality at a later stage of civilization, still plays an important function in keeping alive the ethical dimensions of collective life against the “barbarism of reflection.” Two centuries later, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), one of the fathers of Pragmatism, developed an idea of poetic and imagination as forms of knowledge. Though echoing Vico’s ideas, he represents the aggressiveness of modernity. From the discussion of their ideas, I will try to sketch the psychological aspects of the aesthetic dimension of experience that can be found in a wide range of human activities, including actions of killing, overpowering and social injustice. I will try to argue that meaning-making is oriented through processes that affect such aesthetic dimension.

抒情主義與現代《楚辭》研究———梁啓超、梁宗岱與李長之

LANGUAGE NOTE | Document text in Chinese; abstract also in English.
 誠如湯炳正先生所説：“從漢代起，對屈原的事迹即有不同的記載；談到評騭，從漢代起，對屈原的行誼已有歧異的見解。但是，根本否定屈原這一歷史人物的存在，或貶誣屈原這一代偉人爲‘弄臣’等等，則無疑是晚近纔出現的新的學術動態。”（《現代楚辭批評史•序》）在20世紀二三十年代的《楚辭》研究領域，關注的問題便主要集中在屈原的生平、身世，屈原作品的年代、真偽討論上，循著乾嘉樸學的考證舊路，這本是民國時期屈原《楚辭》研究的主流，向爲《楚辭》學術界所注目。不過，仍有些人主要不是通過屈原作品中涉及的地名、人名、時間、事件等内容推測是否有無屈原、是否爲屈原作品，他們本著文學在本質上是表達主觀情感的感性形式的“抒情”立場，循著情感、人格與體驗來梳理、窺測屈原“傳記”與“作品”，此尤具有學術史意義，值得我們探索。因爲，在革命、啓蒙之外，“抒情”代表中國文學現代性———尤其是現代主體建構———的另一面向。
 唯情是問，從“抒情性”的再發現、被本質化與普遍化，五四以來詩論的“抒情主義”參與了中國現代《楚辭》研究，論證“詩的邏輯”即爲“情感的邏輯”，“情感的邏輯”即爲“詩史的邏輯”。從梁啓超到梁宗岱再到李長之，我們看到抒情主義的《楚辭》研究的拓深與辯證。
 As Tang Bingzheng said, “Stories of Qu Yuan have been variously recorded since Han Dynasty. As to the pass judgment, disputes as well emerged then. However, some new academic developments, such as negating the existence of historian Qu Yuan and degrading the great Qu Yuan to a jester, appeared quite late. “(The Preface of History of Modern Criticism on Chuci) In 1920s and 1930s, the research on Chuci focused on discussing Qu Yuan’s life experience, dating his works, and verifying the authenticity of his works by adopting the traditional textual research method used in Qian-Jia Philology, which had been paid much attention to by the academia as the mainstream in field of research on Chuci in the Period of Republic of China. Nevertheless, there are still some scholars who are not intended to presume the existence of historian Qu Yuan or to verify the authenticity of his works according to the places, characters, time, and events that appeared in Qu Yuan’s works. These scholars believe that the essence of literature is the expression of subjective feelings in the form of emotion—the “lyrical” stance. Thus, they comb and estimate Qu Yuan’s biography and works according to emotion, personality and experience. This research, which is significant in the history of academy, is worth exploring because besides revolution and enlightenment, lyricism stands for another orientation of the modernity of Chinese literature, especially for the construction of modern subject.
 Lyricism is the only thing that matters. From the rediscovery to the essentialization to the universalization of “lyricism”, the poetics of “lyricism” since May Fourth Movement has been involved in Chinese modern research on Chuci, and demonstrated that “poetic logic” is “emotional logic,” which also equals to “the logic of history of poetry”. From Liang Qichao to Liang Zongdai to Li Changzhi, we can observe the extension in depth and dialectics of “lyricism” in the research on Chuci.

Translation as Subversion: Ludwig Tiecks Don Quixote and the Poetic Logic of Jena Romanticism

This article sets out from a hitherto overlooked connection between literature and philosophy in the Jena Romantic period. In Ludwig Tieck’s translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1799) there is a direct interpolation of a major philosophical concept: the Spanish hazana —describing the undertakings of the hero, meaning “heroic deed” or “exploit”—is translated as Tathandlung , the neologism Fichte had forged in the first Wissenschaftslehre (1794). This gives rise not to an abstract question of poetry’s relation to thought but a complex constellation of responses within the literary politics of Jena Romanticism, from the place of Fichte to the role of translation, as well as the theory of the novel, in which, in the quarrel over Don Quixote , the Romantic “transcendental poesy” becomes subverted. I show that Friedrich Schlegel responds with a strategy in which one of the professed collective and collaborative ideals of Romantic thought—symphilosophy—comes to exclude Tieck’s position, applying the framework of Plato’s Ion . The ironic position Schlegel claims can thus, I argue, be constructed as a response, in Platonic terms, to the un- or even antiphilosophical rhapsode—the ionic position—perceived in the poetic practice of Tieck.

Two Arts. Revision and what it leaves behind

Inspired by an experience of teaching the drafts of Elizabeth Bishop’s ‘One Art’, this article rereads the drafts as far more than imperfect precursors to the final poem. The drafts have their own prosodic features and poetic logic, one that values and enacts a vertiginous dilation of thought, expression and memory. The final version of ‘One Art’ records an anxiety about moving away from the openness of drafting to the stability of the finished poem. It is an anxiety that writers and especially writing teachers should consider adopting.

Metaphoric image and iconic likeness

This article concerns the following topics: image and verbal icon; metaphor and language; image and syntactics in metaphoric figure; metaphor and primary modeling device (Sebeok); metaphor and concept; assemblative likeness and attractive or agapastic (Peirce) likeness; poetic logic (Vico) and mathesis singularis (Barthes); metaphor and literary writing; likeness and otherness.

Semiotica della metafora in Vico

- According to Vico metaphor is a fundamental and primary instrument of thought. This concept was further developed by Du Marsais and Rousseau. Particularly important is Vico's concept of poetical logic. Linguistic creativity is the capacity to form new metaphorical associations, to propose new cognitive combinations, and invent new figurations. The species-specific trait of the human being is a modelling device capable of inventing an indeterminate number of worlds. This species-specific human modelling capacity is the lingua mutola, the mute language discussed by Vico: gesture or body language spoken by mankind in its origins. Keywords: Language, Metaphor, Modeling, Poetic Logic, Semiotics, Vico.

Vico and Lotman: poetic meaning creation and primary modelling

The article is based on theories of meaning creation and the concepts of archaic mind of Juri Lotman and Giambattista Vico. It compares the notions fantasia, ingegno, memoria and poetic logic by Vico with Lotman’s concepts of text, memory and modelling systems. Donald Phillip Verene’s and Marcel Danesi’s interpretations of Giambattista Vico’s work are also taken into consideration in the analysis. The article aims to bring out the characteristic features of archaic meaning creation. The archaic mind is considered to be fundamentally poetic. Its main mechanism of generating new meaning is metaphorical identification of two otherwise separate elements. The creativity of this act lies in the presumption that imagination is needed to bring these two elements together — they cannot be identified with each other by the means of syllogistic logic. The archaic mind does not operate mainly with generic concepts, as rational mind does. It forms imaginative universals instead, which are based on the sense of identity between objects or their parts, not on the sense of similarity/ dissimilarity of distinct features of objects. This process forms the basis of poetic modelling, which is primary in relation to verbal modelling.

THE BODY OF SUBLIME KNOWLEDGE: THE AESTHETIC PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

THE BODY OF SUBLIME KNOWLEDGE: THE AESTHETIC PHENOMENOLOGY OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

The ‘handles’ and ‘sides’ of metaphor

This article explores from a semiotic perspective the structural features of the ‘poetic logic’ that lies behind metonymy and metaphor. More specifi-cally, it treats metonymy and metaphor not as ‘abnormal’ uses of language but as the results of the same indexical and iconic ways of thinking that we see elsewhere in our lives. The paper also brings to bear on the topic of metaphor some important insights from the late Chinese scholar Qian Zhong-shu, whose ‘two handles and several sides’ theory of metaphor seems to complement contemporary Western ‘metaphorology’ very well.

Metaphor and poetic logic in Vico

This paper is part of ongoing research on metaphor conducted from a semiotic perspective, implementing, in particular, theoretical instruments as developed by Charles S. Peirce. According to Peirce, metaphor is a type of icon and, like all signs, is part of an interpretive route. The specific object of analysis is metaphor as studied by Giambattista Vico, who recovers the connection between verbal language and the senses, that is, the body. In his studies he refers to Aristotle, Galen, as well as to other philosophers. According to Vico metaphor is a fundamental and primal instrument of thought, a concept developed by Du Marsais and Rousseau. Particularly important is the Vichian concept of poetic logic.