Thursday, March 5, 2009

Pathetic division within Modernity's Punctal Theory

Meistersinger Hans Sachs writes:

"My friend, just this is poet’s task:
His dreams to read and to unmask.
Trust me, illusion’s truths thrice sealed
In dream to man will be revealed.
All verse-craft and poetisation
Is but soothdream interpretation."

This sad translation from that most jubilantly biting of tongues reveals the oft noted link between the dream-world and the poetic inspiration: a link that Dickinson undoubtedly and (likely) relentlessly clutched to as she dipped her pen in the blue sinews of her ink-stained mind. No doubt, her use of the dash in light of this exhausted and slightly delusional Speaker’s discernments proves that the stringed series of her innumerable poems should be read as the relics of a haunting dream sequence. Indeed, pathos is the logos of dreams—in that world of moldy designs and distorted lines, only feeling can gift the accolade of sense; and is poetry not the billowing eccho of this innate incline? In poetry we find reverie, the day-light equivalent of our nocturnal speculations. And punctles, the bringers of sense; the heralds of logos amidst a fray of lexical strife, must vest themselves in the garb of emotional enterprise. Leading the pathetic division within the larger dimension of Modern Punctal Theory tiptoes the dash, slinking along like a snake through a darkening culvert, followed by the eager (!!!) exclamatory mark, finally skirted by the somber suspension of the ellipsian flecks.

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