Addition to Strings of Thought 5-19-2018

Hermeneutics

                               To Gadamer

Though eye must squint, eye must explore the bird

Who plays at the horizon of the word,

Whose far tints flash, far notes lag as it hops 

Beyond and back from where the language stops.

For the entire "Strings of Thought" as it currently stands, see here.

Addition to "Strings of Thought" (2/7/18)

2/7/18 A legislative bill or other proposal isn’t simply a string of words on a page. Instead, a legislative bill or other proposal involves concepts (the signified) to which words (the signifiers) refer with varying degrees of precision.  Legislators debate the concepts signified and the signifiers as signifying such concepts.  Justice Scalia therefore oversimplifies how language works when he claims that “the only thing one can say for sure was agreed to by both houses and the President (on signing the bill) is the text of the statute.”  (Reading Law, p. 376) Justice Scalia oversimplifies here because any such text was adopted as part of a greater whole, as signifiers of concepts involved in the bill.  For example, a statute reading “All cars must drive on the write side of interstate roads” adopted by both houses of Congress and signed by the President no doubt likely means “All cars must drive on the right side of interstate roads.” It’s hard to believe that both houses and the President agreed on “write side” instead of “right side” of the road. I at least cannot “say for sure” that they did. Justice Scalia concedes the same by acknowledging what he considers “the rare case of an obvious scrivener’s error.” (Reading Law, p. 57)  In the real world, of course, obvious scrivener’s errors are hardly rare.

The entire text of "Strings of Thought" can be found here.

Addition to "Strings of Thought" (1/21/18)

Speaker Meaning

1/21/18 “Original” speaker meaning includes the unexplored.  Imagine I buy a netted device I categorize as “my hammock” before I unbox and see it.  On the next day, I unbox “my hammock,” count its strings, and note their makeup and weave. On the third day, I tie “my hammock” between two trees.  I broadly gauge its new shape when tied into the world. On the fourth day, I refine “my hammock’s” new shape:  it contradictorily resembles both a canoe and a crescent moon. On the fifth day, I wonder whether “my hammock” now qualifies as a bed and tentatively conclude that it does. On the sixth day, I lie down in “my hammock” and see interesting new views from its vantage point. On the seventh day, I rest with no hammock thoughts in my head.  The “original” meaning of “my hammock” thus casts a wide and variable net not captured from day one. Instead, day by day through day six, I have obtained fuller and fuller understandings of “my hammock” including how it intersects with (and provides vantage points to) the world to which it is tied.  Thus, any “original concept” signified by “my hammock” is larger than any “original conception” (or first-day conception) of something boxed and unseen, is larger than any second-day conception adding counted strings, their makeup, and their weave, is larger than any third-day conception of the hammock as tied, and so on.  Furthermore, for those seeking speaker meaning, any “original concept” and any preceding daily conceptions don’t sleep the seventh day.

The entire post of "Strings of Thought" can be found here.

President Trump & Word Association

As a lover of words, I am of course interested in the following Quinnipiac poll which asked responders "What is the first word that comes to mind when you think of Donald Trump?"  The list provides endless fodder for analysis of speaker meaning.  The top two answers were "idiot" and "incompetent."  Did the speakers mean some subtle difference between those terms?  What about any meant difference between those two terms and such other terms as "unqualified," "ignorant," "stupid," and "clown"?  The third most frequent response is "liar."  Was "liar" meant in a different sense from "dishonest" or "con-man" which pop up later in the list?  Is "leader" (fourth on the list) a complement or is it a factual statement such as "president"  (sixth on the list)?  What about "trying"?  Does that mean the man is attempting to succeed (my guess but it's only a guess) or that he is "causing strain, hardship, or distress" (American Heritage College Dictionary 4th ed.)?  I also wonder how Originalists like Neil Gorsuch would interpret and parse each word in this list.  Reasonable contemporaneous readers can of course draw wildly different conclusions about the meanings of these words.

Ekphrasis & Prose: Sonnet Translations of Poe & Hawthorne

I sometimes wonder whether a prose piece should have been verse from the outset.  Could the deep meaning have been more effectively captured and conveyed by poetic form than by prose?  I've wondered that, for example, in the case of Poe's "The Mask of the Red Death."  With no illusions that Poe's sonnet wouldn't have been much better, here's a concrete example of what I mean: 

Shadow After Poe 

We noticed there was pestilence about.

We played instead of passive victim an
Aggressive agent capable of plan
And execution.  In, we locked it out,

A simple action, really, which we sealed
With weighty velvet curtains drawn across
An iron door bolted tight.  “Our gain, Hell’s loss!”
We toasted with good bourbon and were steeled.

“God helps who helps himself,” we boasted till
We saw a shadow by a comrade still
And cold throughout the reverie.  It hid

As quick within the heavy draperies.  Did
Drink fool?  No.  Oh, no fancy has composed
Such vast lost voices in a single ghost.

I've also wondered the same about individual passages in longer works.  Here, for example, is a bit of Hawthorne's The House of The Seven Gables set to sonnet form:

Blake Within Blake Within Blake Without End

As I have written before, the great William Blake magnificently employed signs beyond mere words in his poetry.  His powerful illustrations of verse add much additional meaning to his work.  As I have noted before, his symbols such as words are greatly supplemented by other types of signs such as the iconic signs of his drawings.  He applied these same principles in reverse in his great illustrations of the verse of other poets such as Thomas Gray and Edward Young.  Such illustrated verse injects blocks of symbols within Blake's icons, and it can be fascinating to replace these blocks of others' symbols with additional iconic expressions by Blake himself.  Blake's illustrations repeat common themes and can build on each other in such fascinating exercises.  I think Blake would enjoy seeing others doing this with with his icons, and I would enjoy seeing how others might attempt the endless possibilities of such substitutions.  For example, in the illustration above I have replaced Gray's verses about the "Stern Rugged Nurse" with one of Blake's illustrations of Urizen, the severe god of reason who traps the imagination with his compasses and strict categories.  The compass in fact is an awful symbol for Blake.  It's no accident that the "Stern Rugged Nurse" has one in her hand just like Urizen.

Beyond Words Alone: Poets as Artists of the Intentional

 

In his wonderful The New Book of Forms, Lewis Turco tells us that poets “focus on mode, on language itself.”  Focusing on language, a poet in Turco’s view is therefore an “artist of language; his or her concentration is upon the language itself.”  Taken this way, “[p]oetry can thus be defined as the art of language.”

Though these definitions of poets and poetry are correct as far as they go, they do not go far enough. Poets are artists of the intentional; they are artists using signs that point to things beyond the signs themselves.  Since words are not the only signs, why should poets limit themselves to words?  Using C.S. Peirce’s terminology, there are in fact three kinds of signs: symbols (arbitrary signifiers such as words), icons (signifiers such as paintings that resemble what they signify), and indexes (signifiers like photographs or weathervanes that participate in what they signify).  In the realm of symbols, why should poets limit themselves to words?  In the broader realm of signs, why should poets ignore icons and indexes?  They should not of course, and William Blake gives us excellent proof.   

Wittgenstein's Sonnet: No Pictures See Themselves (Addition to "The Apology Box")

    Wittgenstein’s Sonnet

When I was young, words worked a different way.

We hung them round like pictures on a wall

To replicate real objects.  Words used ink

Instead of photographic plates and dyes.

In replication either method worked

So long as illustration captured truth

By rendering objects as they really are.

What more to say?  It all seemed obvious

Until I pictured pictures without us.

No pictures see themselves, their objects, or
A world that is unfiltered by a mind.

Words and their objects are no different.  Thus,

Duck-rabbits now play games within the mind
Where certainty's more difficult to find.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

  
The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Ishmael's Sonnet: Built As "Normal" Boys (Addition to "The Apology Box")

            Ishmael’s Sonnet

                        

They called me Ishmael.  I was a first

Who wrestled with the "bastard" name though I
Was built as "normal" boys.  With Mother, I

Was cast into the desert.  Struggling first,

 

I'd often hide myself.  I'd lie about

My essence in some feint of normalcy

That let me pass.  As I was outwardly

A normal boy, I need not always out

Myself.  And yet the loss of me within

Such phantom lives did further damage. In

Such feints I slandered parents, slandered, too,

The Lord whose kingdom lay within me, too.

I therefore washed my mouth.  "I am" replaced
The "stain" of "bastard" washing had erased.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

  
The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Witch of Endor's Double Sonnets: I Accept No Words for Me Except My Own (Addition to "The Apology Box")

    Witch Of Endor’s Double Sonnets

                            I.

I can't deny that I've known sorcery.

Men's words have cast their spells transforming me

Into a "witch" through verbal alchemy

Purporting to change essences of me.

I am a medium I will admit

But there's no shame or villainy in it.

How can it be an evil if I lend

A tongue to Heaven?  Hypocrites defend

The man who does the same when they declare

A "prophet" in their midst though they would tear

A woman into shreds who has the gift--

Unless of course a woman is more swift

In raising Samuel's ghost when trembling men

Must see it quick.  It's right to use her then.

                       II.

At men's request I raised up Samuel's ghost
That wore white veils across its sunken head
And mouth:  "Saul and his sons will soon be dead!"

Saul blanched and swooned. Now done with Samuel's ghost,

Men scorned my charity.  Not needed more,
I was a witch again good men abhor
And suffer not to live--though oddly men
Who have such powers are most godly men.

I  spat upon their terms, spat out my own,
And recognized no languages where few

Monopolize all prophets for themselves

In "piety" no doubt attempting to
Monopolize all profits for themselves.
I accept no words for me except my own.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

  
The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Ezekiel: The Universe Leaps Over Heart & Head (Addition to "The Apology Box")

Ezekiel’s Double Sonnet

                                                               (A prophet of the exile)
                         I.

A rift ran down the middle of my soul

With halves that tugged perpetually at war

And kept me torn as both a priest and man.

I found that rules and that exceptions can

Be true at once.  Though contradictory,
We must have justice, must have mercy, too,

And must have death although we hear the din

Of dusty bones redressing into skin.

A nation must be punished for its sin,
A nation made of aggregates where one
Thus bears the guilt of all although no one
Is guilty for the deeds another's done:

The father's never guilty for the son
Nor is the child for what the father's done.

                        II.

God's scroll was written to be read. Yet, God
Fed me the message, too.  Sad to the ear
Words somehow tasted honeyed to the tongue.

In honeyed thought, I thought of being young
In Israel again although I knew
That logic stays me.  God, though, had free hand

To seize my hair and whisk me off to stand
Outside the temple walls. I found a hole
Within one wall and peered in where I saw

Beyond facades, beyond exterior awe
To inner awe that dwarfed all things that we
(However wise) have ever felt or said.

The universe leaps over heart and head
Whose terms of course can't curb a universe
Whose essence always brings it back to God.

 © Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here. 

Daniel: Nighttime Hieroglyphics in the Head (Addition to "The Apology Box")

        Daniel’s Sonnet

   (A Jew “exiled” in Babylon)

Through deepest faith, I tapped night's lexicon

That Nimrod changed. Confusion fell upon

More than the day when Babel’s Tower fell.

The language of the night collapsed as well,

And dreams took dialects they’d lacked before.

New gibberish infected night.  Therefore,

Men needed me to translate dreams that hid

Night's messages to them.  Of course, I did.

And when God wrote upon the wall instead

Of nighttime hieroglyphics in the head,

I was the only person who could read

The markings and convey what he had said.

I revel and reveal with words.  They are
Mind's whiskey, its key, and its reservoir.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Old Testament Words & Rhetoric: Ehud, Elisha, & Jonah (Additions to "The Apology Box")

           Ehud’s Solid Rhetoric

     (Left-handed judge who killed Fat King Eglon)

Somehow it seems we have reversed our roles.

I was to speak for you in judgment, Lord,

In Eglon’s case, yet now must plead my own

Which I presume cannot be severed from

The former.  I shall, therefore, make my case

By how I made your own where you required

More rhetoric than mortals could possess.

With words more flawed and limited than yours,

My noises, meanings, grammars would blaspheme

Should they pretend to speak as you would do.

With proper language absent for the task,

I would but mock ineffability

Were I to mouth in any way the scope

Or purpose of such sacred agency.

Instead I thus used your own elements.

My iron blade made your point. Although his fat

Made heavy armor, it did not deflect

But swallowed up the knife.  His fatty folds

Released a stench that summarized him well,

That underscored your judgment as he fell,

And yet misled his guards by such a smell.^*

Although the spectacle was horrid, it

Avoided sacrilege of words not fit

For godhead or good agents serving it.

*They thought Eglon was relieving himself thereby giving Ehud more time to escape.

            Elisha’s Apology

I watched Elijah leave in fiery flight.

The sound of nothingness roared in my ears.

I was alone.  I trembled, was in tears.

I only had his cloak to calm my fears

As I stepped in to bear bare heaven's light.

Persuasion's manifold.  Elijah thought

The fastest and the surest lesson taught

Was by the rod.  I tried another way:

Example of good deeds can also sway.

I salted down the spring of Jericho

And caused pure waters once again to flow.

I turned the poison gourds into a soup

That safely fed a desperate, hungry group.

I made the axe-head float back to the top

Of that deep Jordan where they’d let it drop.

I took a little bit of barley bread

And made a feast where many mouths were fed.

I filled a widow's empty jars so she

Could pay her debts and set her children free.

I cured the awful curse of leprosy,

And moved men with my skills of prophecy.

Example and good deeds were rhetoric
That served me better than Elijah's stick,
And though no fiery chariot brings me
I trust the light I carry shines on me.

            Jonah’s Defense

With just eight words* I brought a city round.

In rhetoric’s annals nowhere else is found

A rival.  I will move the heavens, too,
And once again will keep my phrases few.

                                                      

I erred once I admit--although I should

Feel gross aversion handling pagan things.

Aversion keeps good order.  God would not

Condemn disgust toward anything unclean.
Instead he counseled that sometimes one should
Endure the filth he'd have one remedy.
Thus, for two reasons he unleashed the whale:
To right my course and in its belly train
Me for the stench ahead.  (I spent three days

Within its filthy gut till I was heaved

A chunk of living vomit on the shore.)

I made my way to Nineveh and gave

The famous speech.  I then withdrew to watch

The consequence. Beyond doubt I'm devout

To take a journey here, too, past the bounds

Of any maps or terms I’ve known.  I've come

(Although in fear) because God called.  I would

Give that as further proof of Jonah’s good.

*"Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!"  

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here. 

Abelard: The Peril & the Price of Careless Thought (Addition to the Apology Box)

                         Abelard’s Ballade

Thought is the cruelest place where charts mark no

Fixed latitude or constancy of shore

For shifting airy coasts and courses.  Though

Polaris holds without, within one's oar

Has no such brilliant constant marker for

Safe navigation.  Vague, obscure and fraught

With shifting inner shoals, one can’t ignore

The peril and the price of careless thought.

Did man precede the beasts?  Both “yes” and “no”

Say Testaments where just a pair yet more

Go in the ark, where Eve’s made second though

She’s simultaneous in lines before,

Where we’re commanded to love yet restore

Slaves to a master, where it’s said we ought

Not judge yet brook no sin.  We’re fodder for

The peril and the price of careless thought.

There’s such confusion--turn the cheek yet go

Acquire a sword as well?  Why wasn’t more

Care taken in the drafting?  All should know

That words have consequences.  Maimed, I bore

The scars of mixed-up syllables.  Before

More suffer needless butchery, one ought

To master language.  I explored, therefore,

The peril and the price of careless thought.

Lord, thus I did my volumes.  Since they store

All I discovered, I can rest.  Full taught

Below, no suffering here would teach me more

The peril and the price of careless thought. 

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Confucius and Lao Tzu (Additions to "The Apology Box")

            Confucius’s Sonnet

Mere force brings no true order since forced change

Warps from without and thus can never fit

An inner nature that’s rejecting it.

Without such fit, there’s but apparent change.

As mere force is deficient, sages thus

Discount it.  Righting wrong, they find a way

To change a man by his own choices. Thus,

They speak and do precisely. Sages sway

With virtue and right language of the kind

They’ve learned in studies of the old archives

Of ritual and common mythic mind.

Their teaching teaches them. Example drives

Without a whip. On earth, in heaven, too,

Truth bans all thrashings hells purport to do.

            Lao Tzu’s Sonnet

Would breath that loathed to make a sound in life

Somehow reverse itself in airless death?

Would it somehow convert itself at last

Into fools’ terms?  No--death is muter still.

I’ve neither arrogance nor wish to harm.

I’d not presume an ant cares how my mouth

Might label it.  I all the more of course

Would not presume that heaven gives a damn.

Man’s categories cause him needless ill—

A man can’t covet or despise a thing

Some category’s not disjoined from him.

Man's words spread categories' ills about.

Without air heaven must be wordless.  Hence,

I'm mute where no decrees expel me hence.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Boethius, St. Ambrose, and Marcion the Docetist (Additions to "The Apology Box")

               Boethius's Sonnet

Was Theodoric’s prison in the end

That proved the real academy.  Was there

They taught first hand true good cannot depend

Upon mere fortune.  There caged in despair

This humbled bureaucrat learned power flees

In but a moment and, too, learned, how fast

“Good” title both in name and properties

Is marred.  Yet, I found hope!  Though no things last

Below at length, that maid Philosophy

Took pity, visited dark dungeons and

Consoled me with her higher poetry

Of permanence.  Caressing that sweet hand,

I thought no more of nooses or of cells

But of divinity and where it dwells.

 

               Saint Ambrose's Sonnet

Before the awful bench where all will stand

We come in turn to plead and do admit

Our errors though in doing so submit

In mitigation it was not our hand

That sought the staff.  Instead, Milan asked.  We

Were acquiescent, humbly turned our backs

On Roman boons (yet kept her bones as racks

For Christian ornament--past lies would be

Upholders of the truth.)  Thus we transformed

Words, music, marbles, even living flesh--

Behold Augustine we baptized afresh.

Mere spirit now, our temporal see performed,

Pray let us see Rome’s church ascending now

Above Rome’s ruins we’ve refurbished now.

             

            Marcion The Docetist’s Sonnet

I’ve kneeled before the true God now revealed

Through that majestic phantasm called Christ

That clarified true faith and thus repealed

The older books.  Sweet ghost!  If sacrificed,

I knew it was not God.  Perfection by

Its very terms can never suffer.  For

To suffer is to lose, to be less than

Complete and thus prove imperfection.  Nor

Could it have been a man.  Though man could be

Sinless despite the lie of Eden, You

Could not allow a sinless man to be

Condemned and killed for sins he did not do.

Great ghostly messenger!  It had to be

Of course fantastic coming, Lord, from Thee!

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.

Cyrus and Esther (Additions to the Apology Box)

     Cyrus The Great’s Proof

It’s wrong to disown any family.

We must be fair in hospitality

To every member. We may not despise

Another made in Heaven’s image.  Wise

Ones know the converse would be blasphemy.

We had to unify.  No boundary

Is moral.  Even Hebrews now are free

To come back in the fold, to realize

It’s wrong to disown any family.

Death can’t destroy your Image. Unity

Has to survive the grave and cannot be

Extinguished.  Live and dead must still comprise

A common brood.  We specters therefore rise

To meet you knowing that you will agree

It’s wrong to disown any family.

 

                      Esther's Sonnet

There’s bravery that’s physical in bed,

That’s cousin to the field of battle’s.  I

Burned with such valor from the day I wed

Another by whose whim I’d live or die.

I passed, had spies, laid trenches in the sheet.

I suffered the assaults but never gave

A true surrender.  I held till defeat

Had closed the enemy within his grave

With my assistance.  There’s no felony

In war’s attack, in what I had to do.

There are no lies or whores in battle.  We

Have heroes or we’ve cowards--just the two.

This star of Esther stayed though others fell:

By name, the heavens are where Esthers dwell.

© Harold Anthony Lloyd 2016

The current contents of "The Apology Box" can be found here.