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Note
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Catkin-blurs
The
form, like that of a few others pieces here, owes a debt to Richard
Wilbur, as does the phrase ‘sensible emptiness’, which he lifted,
with acknowledgement, from Henry Vaughan.
In fact a visit, or return, to the Metaphysical Poets of the 17th
century is a tonic if you’re in this vein.
As a sceptical non-contemplative and mere casual reader to boot,
I’m an outsider to philosophy, but see no reason not to join in the
metaphysical game. Grund
and Erscheinen are pseudo-jargon (‘ground’ and
‘appearance’ respectively) which may or may not have been in
professional use, I don’t know. As
a an interested agnostic, I use ‘soul’ to mean ‘body-mind’, as I
use ‘God’ to mean All or Nature, as I’ve said elsewhere.
The
‘glassy walls’ are the limits to experience and knowledge (see De
Rerum Natura). ‘Mirrors
that magnify’: the best astronomical telescopes.
Reports have been coming in of a large-scale, hitherto unknown
expulsive force which seems to destine our universe to everlasting
expansion within whatever accommodates extension and duration like ours.
A final death this way makes no difference to us.
‘Beauty’s no test / of Truth’: many a truth is ugly.
New notions of truth in new logics and algebras may one day bring
us nearer to that modern Grail, a Theory of Everything.
But the kind of truth which underwrites (or comprises) the
Ultimate is, I hypothesise, unknowable to any order of intelligence, as
I’ve said elsewhere. Beauty, however we might wish to extract it from human
experience, is impossible to define for other reasons, chiefly to do
with history and fashion. People
might claim to have a personal intuition of it but no one can prove a
subjective impression. We
may sometimes feel that a beautiful experience (of sex, a sunset,
shopping) has lit up in us a spark of the ineffable, but that’s an
illusion. Keats’s
‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty’ is a blurring of categories.
Although any truth we discover is still a human truth, most
people seem to believe, perhaps illogically, that there’s also a
universal truth out there, a kind of ultimate necessity.
But I don’t think it’s so easy to feel that there is an
ultimate sense of beauty, since that’s just what beauty is, a sense, a
feeling, and Nature has no organs.
Even to the religious, ‘God’s right hand’ should be a
metaphor, though try telling that to fundamentalists: ‘For it is
written,’ they’ll say, ‘in the penultimate verse of The Gospel
According To St Mark, “So then after the Lord had spoken unto
them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of
God.” Also see Psalm 48.10!’
Alan
Marshfield
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