Poetic Language and the Expression of Nothing

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

1. For a thorough and clear discussion on Eckhart and Heidegger and their notions of Nothing, see Caputo, Mystical 9–30.

2. For an in-depth treatment of this problem, see Loevlie, Literary.

3. This religious turn today constitutes a vast field. Some useful references are Caputo, Tears; Religion; Weakness. See also After the Death of God for contributions from Caputo and Gianni Vattimo. Vattimo's After Christianity and Belief are worthy of mention, as are Hart; Marion; Nancy; Kearney; Manoussaksi, Metaphysics; After God. From feminist theory we can mention the anthologies edited by Morny, O’Grady, and Poxon: Religion; Feminists.

4. The term appears in Paul's letter to the Philippians (2.6–8).

5. It is especially the work of Vattimo, Levinas and Derrida that is discussed as presenting different versions of kenosis, that is, different manners of thinking this relationship. For discussions, see Ziljstra; Baird; van Riessen.

6. See Caputo, Weakness; Caputo and Vattimo, After.

7. See Caputo, Belief; Caputo and Vattimo, After.

8. See Derrida, Gift; Kearney.

9. I have previously found it useful to “transport” or “transcribe” certain concepts from this (non-)religious field of thought into the aesthetic or literary realm. More specifically the aim has been to increase our understanding of the aesthetic experience of literature (see Loevlie, “The Sacred”; “God's”).

10. Here, most of Vattimo's work is relevant, but in Belief the argument is laid out in a manner both clear and personal.

11. To Vattimo this Christian incarnation paradoxically signals the beginning of secularisation in the sense that God is weakened and humanised. Any sense of God as absolute, metaphysical Being is dissolved through the human figure of Jesus. Secularisation, claims Vattimo, starts as God becomes man, or: Christianity marks the beginning of secularisation. Hence Nietzsche's death of God can be viewed as the paradoxical end result of the incarnation. To sum up, we might say that kenosis, which describes the Christian incarnation, in fact heralds a secular turn.

12. See ten Kate.

13. Jakobson's most famous example is in fact not from poetry but a slogan from Ike Eisenhower's election campaign – I like Ike. Here the poetic function is at work in that this message cannot retain the same function through a translation or paraphrase. Vote for Ike Eisenhower cannot replace the slogan, which rather plays with assonance, repetition, alliteration, etc., thereby drawing our attention to the material side of the sign, its rhythm and musicality.

14. My translation from the original: “j’invente une langue qui doit nécessairement jaillir d’une poétique très nouvelle, que je pourrais définir en ces deux mots: Peindre non la chose, mais l’effet qu’elle produit” (Correspondance 206).

15. I have previously discussed this quote in more detail in a different context. See Loevlie, Literary 209–29.

16. Blanchot, in his short text The Instant of my Death, describes a young man's meeting with his own death. It is widely accepted that this young man is Blanchot himself. The text is a testimony of death taking place in life, of a moment of dying that lasts, throughout life, and that is, impossibly, experienced by the writing subject. In his Demeure: Fiction and Testimony, which is a reading of Blanchot's The Instant of my Death, Jacques Derrida discusses this absolute aporia and describes it as “an impossible possibility” (46).

17. Translation by the author.