TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

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The origin of Benjamin‟s late thoughts about culture and its millenarian- apocalyptic conclusion can be traced back to his early thought about language, truth, and knowledge, found in his study of the German baroque trauerspiel (mourning-play) - The Origin of German Tragic Drama (OGT). For example, Benjamin‟s introduction takes a linguistic turn in its pursuit of apprehending and critiquing the ontological Platonic verities that constructed classical tragedy, and provides an important precursor to the desperate tragedy of Angelus Novus: 5 The idea is something linguistic, it is that element of the symbolic in the essence of any word. In empirical perception, in which words have become fragmented, they possess, in addition to their more or less hidden, symbolic aspect, an obvious, profane meaning. It is the task of the philosopher to restore, by representation, the primacy of the symbolic character of the word, in which the idea is given self-consciousness, and that is the opposite of all outwardly-directed communication. Since philosophy may not presume to speak in the tones of revelation, this can only be achieved by recalling in memory the primordial form of perception. Platonic anamnesis is not far removed from this kind of remembering; except that here it is not a question of the actualization of images in visual terms; but rather, in philosophical contemplation, the idea is released from the heart of reality as the word, reclaiming its name-giving rights. (OGT 37) Here Benjamin is describing the linguistic nature of Platonic ideas in a manner that makes them amenable to his argument that the right activity of philosophy is naming, just as the Angel correctly assesses man‟s delirious narratives of progress as the continuing story of alienation and suppuration from that which would be truly redemptive – to use words as names in a better fidelity with the obvious and profane “heart of reality.” Adam is Benjamin‟s first philosopher, because, for him, “ideas are displayed, without intention, in the act of naming,” which placed the onus on later generations to try to recall the moment of the first names‟ release to Adam‟s contemplation: “They have to 5
e renewed in philosophical contemplation. In this renewal the primordial mode of apprehending words is restored” (OGT 37). In this act of naming and re-naming, Benjamin advances a two word theory of language, silently at work behind that beguiling and eccentric quote about taboo and title, mentioned above, from “The Collector” section of The Arcades Project. The first is a word that exists as an original name, released from reality through philosophical contemplation. This unintentional Adamite word is lost. It requires redemption through ensuing acts of philosophical anamnesis. It is Benjamin‟s concern to understand the mechanism through which that Ur-name occurred by arguing for the virtual play between nature and history that was the object of original philosophical contemplation. Benjamin‟s Origin of German Tragic Drama is, in some basic way, a treatise for an environmental linguistics; words are formed out of natural conflicts that are captured in historical time. Before discussing the second word, it is worth mentioning that it is through this lens of how natural forces become manifest in names/aesthetic language that Benjamin discusses the practices of baroque and modernist expression: Glory was sought in devising figurative words rather than figurative speeches, as if linguistic creation were the immediate concern of poetic verbal invention. Baroque translators delighted in the most arbitrary coinings such as are encountered among contemporaries, especially in the form of archaisms, in which it is believed one can reassure oneself of the wellsprings of linguistic life. Such arbitrariness is always the sign of a production in which a formed expression of real content can scarcely be extracted from the conflict of the forces which have been unleashed. In this state of disruption the present age reflects certain aspects of the spiritual constitution of the baroque, even down to the details of its artistic practice. (OGT 55) These thoughts about language and their allusion to natural ―wells,‖ ―springs,‖ and ―forces‖ begin to articulate the way in which aesthetic modernism takes as its 6
Page 1 and 2: TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHET
Page 3 and 4: Christopher David Chapman practice.
Page 5 and 6: CONTENTS PREFACE ..................
Page 7 and 8: objectification, while titles are a
Page 9 and 10: ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to ack
Page 11 and 12: taboo, as the following remark indi
Page 13: emind us too hastily only of Benjam
Page 17 and 18: the word “Title.” I do this out
Page 19 and 20: where fate - the agent of nature‟
Page 21 and 22: Cantos with Nancy Cunard. The final
Page 23 and 24: come into their meaning through the
Page 25 and 26: meaning in the words he appoints to
Page 27 and 28: ―The Role of Language in Trauersp
Page 29 and 30: God‘s genetic ―pure word,‖ re
Page 31 and 32: conceived of as a pantomime where t
Page 33 and 34: ensnared within post-lapsarian syst
Page 35 and 36: aspects of his linguistic theory th
Page 37 and 38: decision-making powers, we can demo
Page 39 and 40: him to transpose arguments about th
Page 41 and 42: Caesar‖ is an obvious case in poi
Page 43 and 44: eath of this world, and from it the
Page 45 and 46: magnanimity wins out in dire and pa
Page 47 and 48: elegated to the setting in which th
Page 49 and 50: Notes 1 In an early, unpublished, t
Page 51 and 52: every locution being, in essence, e
Page 53 and 54: CHAPTER TWO: LONG SERIES OF TRANSLA
Page 55 and 56: dramatic monologue, a feat he would
Page 57 and 58: terms that this chapter wishes to c
Page 59 and 60: structural factitiousness that the
Page 61 and 62: is implicit to baroque criticisms o
Page 63 and 64: meaning of the poems it collects. P
Page 65 and 66:
Pound's fragments as commentary on
Page 67 and 68:
Few critics read these poems in the
Page 69 and 70:
a diorama booth in which his hero a
Page 71 and 72:
the genetic milieu into which it be
Page 73 and 74:
In fact, two complaints can be hear
Page 75 and 76:
while keeping lines that praise Bro
Page 77 and 78:
Cantos deliver a poetic condition i
Page 79 and 80:
Quia Pauper Amavi, and, after McGan
Page 81 and 82:
George Steiner uncovers the ramific
Page 83 and 84:
to register history differently to
Page 85 and 86:
commitment to past modes of critica
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modern poet. Pound exhorted Barry t
Page 89 and 90:
the case, is deliberately making ou
Page 91 and 92:
Pound's genius was to see Propertiu
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delineate Pound's portrayals as fai
Page 95 and 96:
presence of a continuous patina of
Page 97 and 98:
described by Christine Brooke-Rose.
Page 99 and 100:
10) of their rows over fidelity. Fo
Page 101 and 102:
obsessive desire most critics find
Page 103 and 104:
passing from hand to hand, becomes
Page 105 and 106:
Propertius as Propertius once had C
Page 107 and 108:
saw no viable future for his own ex
Page 109 and 110:
then, these imaginary aesthetes wer
Page 111 and 112:
‗persona,‘ an impersonation of
Page 113 and 114:
difference between his intention an
Page 115 and 116:
itself a Western bourgeois assumpti
Page 117 and 118:
subject. Deleuze's 1977 discussion
Page 119 and 120:
his subjectivity as a blend of fact
Page 121 and 122:
eak occurs in the poet's mind as th
Page 123 and 124:
dogmatic binding and over which to
Page 125 and 126:
Pound‘s impersonality, to use the
Page 127 and 128:
Mill, Jackson notes, finds the conc
Page 129 and 130:
apostrophe to ‗Misery‘ performa
Page 131 and 132:
―Mauberley,‖ the poem‘s narra
Page 133 and 134:
to posit a fictional author being n
Page 135 and 136:
neither Rainey‘s Institutions of
Page 137 and 138:
y Piero della Francesca. Pound was
Page 139 and 140:
E gradment li antichi cavaler roman
Page 141 and 142:
that have not traditionally been co
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The library of the dukes of Milan w
Page 145 and 146:
Rainey‘s disdain for bourgeois hi
Page 147 and 148:
Bornstein, for example, is interest
Page 149 and 150:
the meaning of Pound‘s text by co
Page 151 and 152:
Do come, do come. I can see us at B
Page 153 and 154:
the political implications of that
Page 155 and 156:
the winners of its game (148). Beca
Page 157 and 158:
iography and how he can be seen to
Page 159 and 160:
to him is plain: ―News of Nancy?
Page 161 and 162:
view of Pound‘s political beliefs
Page 163 and 164:
which to describe the force of natu
Page 165 and 166:
interrogation of that two-word theo
Page 167 and 168:
elationships that they believed to
Page 169 and 170:
commemoration is to writing (Derrid
Page 171 and 172:
knowable “as a combination of ato
Page 173 and 174:
new‖ emerges: ―it is a movement
Page 175 and 176:
ejects any teleological argument fo
Page 177 and 178:
Ontologies, such as those that belo
Page 179 and 180:
this mystery could only be experien
Page 181 and 182:
attention to the way names effect t
Page 183 and 184:
Adorno acknowledges that Kant‘s w
Page 185 and 186:
understanding how de-personalizatio
Page 187 and 188:
Fate becomes a term that Benjamin i
Page 189 and 190:
WORKS CITED Arkins, Bryan. ―Pound
Page 191:
The New Age. 27.26, 1919. Ovid. The
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