Homo Ludens Ils 86 by J. Huizinga

Author:J. Huizinga [Huizinga, J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317834052
Google: JZPsAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-02-25T05:15:54+00:00

4Ibid. p. 102.

1Paideia, i, p. 161.

2Capelle, op. cit. p. 82.

3Fragments, No. 30; cf. Capelle, op. cit. p. 200.

VII

PLAY AND POETRY

IN TOUGHING on the origins of Greek philosophy and its connection with the sacred contest in knowledge and wisdom, we inevitably touch the shadowy border-line between the religious or philosophical mode of expression and the poetic. It is therefore desirable to enquire into the nature of poetic creation. This question is, in a sense, at the heart of any discussion of the relations between play and culture, for while in the more highly organized forms of society religion, science, law, war and politics gradually lose touch with play, so prominent in the earlier phases, the function of the poet still remains fixed in the play-sphere where it was born. Poiesis, in fact, is a play-function. It proceeds within the play-ground of the mind, in a world of its own which the mind creates for it. There things have a very different physiognomy from the one they wear in “ordinary life”, and are bound by ties other than those of logic and causality. If a serious statement be defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's. Nobody has grasped, or expressed, the primordial nature of poetry and its relation to pure play more clearly than Vico, more than two hundred years ago.1

Poesis doctrinae tamquam somnium—poetry is like a dream of philosophic love,2 says the deep-minded Francis Bacon. The mythical imaginings of savages, those children of nature, concerning the origins of existence often contain the seeds of a wisdom which will find expression in the logical forms of a later age. Philology and comparative religion are taking pains to penetrate more and more deeply into the mythical origins of faith.1 Ancient civilization is now being understood anew in the light of this fundamental unity of poetry, esoteric doctrine, wisdom and ritual.

The first thing we have to do to gain such an understanding is to discard the idea that poetry has only an aesthetic function or can only be explained in terms of aesthetics. In any flourishing, living civilization, above all in archaic cultures, poetry has a vital function that is both social and liturgical. All antique poetry is at one and the same time ritual, entertainment, artistry, riddle-making, doctrine, persuasion, sorcery, soothsaying, prophecy, and competition. Practically all the motifs proper to archaic ritual and poetry combined are to be found in the Third Canto of the Finnish epic, the Kalevala. The old and wise Väinämöinen enchants the young braggart who dares to challenge him to a sorcery-contest. First they contend in the knowledge of natural things, then in esoteric knowledge concerning the origins.

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