In Praise of Poetry by Olga Sedakova

Author:Olga Sedakova
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Letter

. . . I mingle

Tears with a smile, like April83

Whoever guesses where inspiration is leading will realize that no image is anything more than a pretext:

from paper see it rise—

a spire to empty skies.84

What are these empty skies toward which it is only possible to rise by giving the eye a near or far-off point, some scenery, a depth—some kind of other thing? I fear that admirers of fullness and richness, intensity and brightness in art will not know what is at stake here. In fact no one can know, but some can hazard a guess. When borrowing material, Pushkin elevates it from being a mathematical equation to an algebraic formula. He makes the grounds, the pretext, for inspiration clearer, which arises thanks to, and in spite of, that pretext: like pictorial depth, which is created thanks to the curtain and foreground, and in spite of them. Deep inspiration, like deep life and deep sleep, deals with a place that has no images, no ideas, nothing at all. A place where everything is whole. And that same scenery, spire, pretext, or ground, from behind which we come to recognize such a total absence, makes it clear: everything is made whole again, healed. I do not mean to say that Khlebnikov or any like-minded “discoverer” poet cannot enter this domain. They enter it when their readers become poets at every given pretext or prompt:

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.