3 February 2020 – Tim Parks on Poetry and Consciousness

Every once in a while, it is informative to take a step back from the forest of poems and see what those, other than poets, think about the art of versifying. This week presents such a stepping back in the form of excerpts from Out of My Head: On the Trail of Consciousness, by Tim Parks (see bio below) who is an extraordinary explorer of the mind and its habits. His book covers a multitude of subjects including thoughts on poetry and consciousness. If you choose to read the passage below, please think about the meaning of a poem. Is there one meaning? Of course not. Even in straight forward poems, like ballads, the narrative therein begs interpretation, which is different from person to person, and for one person, from encounter to encounter.

One of Parks’ main contentions is there is no separation between subject and object, for as soon is one or more of our sensory apparatuses apprehends the “object,” contact is made, and meaning is up for grabs. In all art forms, but especially in poetry, each encounter between subject and object (e.g. the poem and the reader) is unique – a never-to-be-repeated experience. Keep in mind that Parks’ journey in this book is about seeking out the nature and activity of consciousness, perception, and the meanings we make.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Friedrich Holderlin, a pantheist who believed nature was not only conscious but divine and that the ultimate meaning [of nature] could only be grasped, or announced, in poetry; certainly not seen with a laser microscope. . . Everyone who stands in front of the Eichendorff memorial stone and reads the poem engraved there will have a slightly different impression. Or we could say, each of us brings the poem into being in different ways each time we come to it. No that’s not quite right. If the experience, in this case, the poem, is both subject and object, how can I say that ‘we bring the poem into existence’ since this would be tantamount to bringing oneself into existence. Let’s say, rather, that reading a poem brings a ‘we’ or ‘I’ into existence, which during these moments, is the poem [i.e., subject and object are one and the same].

Either way, the poem is not the words on the page, but the experience that accompanies reading or reciting words. So that actually the poem is different, or new, on each reading, even though the conditions that prompt all these ‘poem experiences’ remain exactly the same, which is to say, the signs on the page. Or engraved in stone. Translations are a demonstration of this, each one being an intersection of the original formula of words with the translator’s sensibility and resources, at a particular moment, since one might well translate the poem differently on another occasion. And translating something a second time one is aware of the first time, which is very likely causally present as one begins again, perhaps drawing us back to the first version, or pushing us away from it. Or now one, now the other. So, time is spread, and the new translation is in relation to the old. Unless old is completely forgotten.

Is this a useful analogy for perception itself?

Could one say that the monument to Eichendorff, and indeed the whole surrounding landscape, from the shrubs and trees . . . to the river far below like the poem, waiting to happen afresh when I or anyone else, or rather my body or anyone else’s, returned to see it? That it – the memorial stone [the poem]  -- really is a different object [with different words and interpretations] from the object of a year ago, a different experience, a different ‘I’ brought into being, even thought the conditions for my having that experience remain substantially the same? . . . I know that when I leave the scene, or simply turn my back, the experience will be gone. . .. 

No doubt there were a thousand complications to be taken into consideration. The body’s perception of itself. The accumulation of previous but still present perception, conditioning the new. And language forever intruding as words from the past hurry to meet experiences in the present.”

Background

Tim Parks has written eighteen novels, including Europa, and most recently In Extremis. He is the author of several works of nonfiction, including Italian Neighbors and Where I’m Reading from: The Changing World of Books. Parks has only translated several books by other authors. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books and London Review of Books. He lives in Milan, Italy.

Exploration 1: What do you think about the proposition that subject and object are the same once they have made contact through the sensory apparatus (seeing, hearing, tasting, and so on)?

Exploration 2: Do you believe that each person in each different encounter with an object creates a different meaning?

Exploration 3: What is consciousness? What is perception?