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Modern Poetry and the Pursuit of Sense
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
When Dante climbed on the devil's flank from the hell-center of earth he was puzzled and disturbed. He could not understand, since he had never changed direction, how he was going up now where he went down before. We have lived through a similar experience. In the old world of rational absolutes one could move indefinitely in the right direction. That was the nature of progress. But in our interwoven and tensile fields we escape one vortex only by slipping into another, and the right when followed leads always more or less to the wrong. It is like running a beast around a tree—there is the critical moment at which the pursuer becomes the pursued.
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- Copyright © 1955 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1. David Daiches' interpretation of the passage from Eliot (see Poetry and the Modern World) that the sea is a symbol of creation and destruction, the waves of life-rhythm, etc., as it is pure projection, does not make the images any less rebel to reason. It gives evidence rather for what follows, that the mind will always seek meaning, even to the point of pretending it is found.
2. Mit gelben Birnen hänget Weh mir, wo nehm ich, wenn Und voll mit wilden Rosen Es Winter ist, die Blumen, und wo Das Land in den See, Den Sonnenschein, Ihr holden Schwäne, Und Schatten der Erde? Und trunken von Küssen Die Mauern stehn Tunkt ihr das Haupt Sprachlos und kalt, im Winde Ins heilignüchterne Wasser. Klirren die Fahnen.
3. Correspondence, 2nd series, Vol. II (Paris, 1907), p. 129.