Mimesis in a Cognitive Perspective: Mallarme, Flaubert, and Eminescu: 0 by Babuts Nicolae

Author:Babuts, Nicolae [Babuts, Nicolae]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mimesis in a Cognitive Perspective: Mallarmi, Flaubert and Eminescu
ISBN: 9781412818674
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
Published: 2011-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Blaga: The Dragon’s Armor

An unexpected answer comes from the poem “Before a Statue of Saint George” by a Romanian poet, Lucian Blaga (1895-1961). It is an inviting parallelism because in both poems the observer’s eye looks at a work of art, a sculpture of a mythic figure in conflict with a monstrous antagonist. Contemplating the statue that represents Saint George in full armor on horseback on his way to fight the dragon, the poet sees in a sort of visionary manner that the protective links or plates (Blaga uses the word “ochiuri,” i.e., rings, links) of the saint’s armor look like the scales of a saurian. At the center of the poem is the idea, “That he who would conquer / Must bear some likeness to the conquered” (Blaga, 1981: 101). The poet ends the poem with this exclamation: “See how in the saddle in the act of striking, / Saint George himself seems like a dragon!” (101) Beginning with the outward resemblance of chain mail plates or scales, the poet moves step-by-step, dynamic pattern by dynamic pattern, to the final relation that links the saint and the dragon in their uncanny likeness. Again, like in Bidart’s poem, the poet’s vision of a statue enables him to discover meaning that begins with outward appearances and ends with a deeper understanding of relations, of knowledge, that art, literature, and myth convey.

The resemblance between Saint George and the dragon is clearly no accident or a matter of eyes that create an illusion and deceive. On the contrary, it is a required condition revealed to the Saint in an initiation as a formula for victory. To that extent, it has some magical qualities. But it is no illusion. The question that haunts the poet is, who taught the hero the necessity of wearing the saurian kind of armor? Whatever the answer, it is clear that the mystery of the resemblance between the two antagonists is a fundamental relation in our conception of the world. Our memory has made sure that (to paraphrase Mircea Eliade)2 from the point of the breakthroughs into the world of art and poetry, victor and vanquished would be remembered together. Caution is needed, I agree, if one is to transfer the knowledge of the two poems to the level of history. Even in the most heated phase of the cold war, during the Cuban missile crisis, one could not equate the United States with the Soviet Union. And that is even more evident in the present asymmetric confrontation with terrorists. But what poetry may reveal is some uncanny whirlpool, whose tension in such conflicts creates resemblances by facilitating the way toward an all-out hate and fury. Be that as it may, poetry brings into focus the fault lines, interchanges, and confrontations that characterize life.

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.