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

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of signification, of an impassive historical time; and once again the king is both man (the end of nature) and also the king (the symbol and bearer of significance). History becomes equal to signification in human language: this language is frozen in signification. There is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature that does not in some way partake of language, for it is in the nature of each one to communicate its mental contents. This use of the word ―language‖ is in no way metaphorical. (63) Through the word, man is bound to the language of things. The human word is the name of things. Hence, it is no longer conceivable, as the bourgeois view of language maintains, that the word has an accidental relation to its object, that it is a sign for things (or knowledge of them) agreed by some convention. (69) The linguistic being of things is their language; this proposition, applied to man, means: the linguistic being of man is his language. Which signifies: man communicates his own mental being in his language. However, the language of man speaks in words. Man therefore communicates his own mental being (insofar as it is communicable) by naming all other things. But do we know any other languages that name things? It should not be accepted that we know of no languages other than that of man, for this is untrue. We only know of no naming language other than that of man; to identify naming language with language as such is to rob linguistic theory of its deepest insights. – It is therefore the linguistic being of man to name things. (64) Lament, however, is the most undifferentiated, impotent expression of language. (73) Clearly, work needs to be done to tie together these various thoughts and qualifications that Benjamin uses to nuance his linguistic theory. In what follows I offer one such explanation. A ―mystical linguistic theory‖ would misunderstand words if it asserts that a word partakes in a thing‘s own and secretive essence. ―On Language as Such‖ makes the argument that things have no words independent of the agents who name them – Man and God. Man‘s word for things is an ambiguous approximation of 19
God‘s genetic ―pure word,‖ revealed to Adam in his contemplation of reality‘s heart. ―Pure‖ naming informs a thing with its divine philosophical import, whereas human names make a thing into an object of man‘s knowledge. This difference determines the underlying assumptions about the aesthetic uses of language in those modes that Benjamin is most interested to explore – tragedy and trauerspiel (mourning-play). (While the framing assumption behind Benjamin‘s theory of language appears to be a pre- lapsarian Hallowing of the Word, ―divinity‖ is recast in Benjamin‘s theory through the special definition he gives to ―fate‖ as the force of nature within his definition of natural history.) Tragedy, Benjamin argues, is fundamentally an imaginary conversation with God about man‘s proper function and how he is permitted to act. Tragedy uses language to weigh evidence in human actions, represented in speech, against God‘s present, yet unknowable, order. The tragic use of language depends upon the assumption that human emotions can positively achieve articulation in speech. For Benjamin, tragedy exists only in uttered language. To that end, Benjamin sees a concomitant limit to the dialogic essence of tragedy. Because tragedy relies solely on man‘s words for expression, it produces a residual sense of despair. Tragic drama only saddens. This does not happen because of some fundamental mishearing or ―complication‖ with regard to ―the heart of reality.‖ Tragedy produces disappointment and sadness because it reminds one of the worldly constraints that a post-lapsarian approximation of the pure word places upon (dramatic) speech‘s ability to encompass and reveal truth. Tragedy has to mimic the pure word in its ontological determination as speech, tout court. This mimicry is felt by the tragic audience as a reminder of its removal from that knowledge of the divine 20
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 and 14: emind us too hastily only of Benjam
Page 15 and 16: e renewed in philosophical contempl
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: ―The Role of Language in Trauersp
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
Page 87 and 88:
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
Page 93 and 94:
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
Page 143 and 144:
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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