This is an argument I had today with a colleague started from a facebook status....
"The poet is philosophically superior to the philosopher and historically superior to the historian."Krys Darcelle Dumas The poet is philosophically superior to the philosopher and historically superior to the historian.
Vlad Krys I could not disagree with something more vehemently. This is a very dangerous notion. But I wont expound too much here. I place the poet lower than both. And in this contemporary era of poetry, i consider it even more important that we recognize that. The type of poets that are here nowadays could easily be featured on E , or on The Soup. Poetry unlike both history and philosophy is excused so often for lack of intelligence. In fact, anyone who goes to poetry looking for intelligence taking a chance. The role of the poet is not really to give answers, probably not even to ask the right questions. What takes primacy to the poet as it has been manifest, is the creation of a beautiful thing, metrically beautiful, beautiful imagery, a kind of staid symmetry, that has not received the memo about the many things that have been demystified.
Vlad and the danger of what you're saying here is what has been manifested in our society which really have become desperate for an intelligentsia, that a man who writes good verse, has his opinion sought on things which he knows so little about. And we spend years debating some of their vagaries and stupidities. True the philosophers have had us waste some time as well, but at least they did so directly, we had to wade through no shrubbery and gardens to get to what they were saying
Krys Darcelle Dumas I can speak for no poet but myself. I agree with you about what the poets in this "contemporary era" stand for and represent. It is up to you to follow the fashion or strive for higher purpose. I do not intent to settle into the contemporary. Do you? Because I will have to say that with your talent such a decision will be a great injustice to your art.
Krys Darcelle Dumas Then if that is your view simply present your art sans "shrubbery and garden".
Vlad you see thats the thing....art to me is not a destination. And that is an easy mistake to make, because Art kind of gives people the placebo they wanted, the ether. Art is never a destination. Poetry is just one ramification of a general search. And really that search can be best though not adequately represented by philosophy. So I can get up and leave art at any time, because its not, and can never be a destination.
Vlad art has its purpose, but to me it simply does not rank as highly as philosophy or true history or historiography for that matter or economics or several other arts. I think people like the magic of art, thats y its given so much special attention.
Krys Darcelle Dumas It cannot be a destination because it is ever continuing in change and evolution. It is a means to an unreachable end. Think of my portrayal of the organisation of object, perspective,memory, time and understanding. We use or art to try to grasp the unreachable understanding. Maybe not to a world at large but clearly to ourselves. It is why we first picked up the pen. To express and lay clear our own thoughts, ideas, emotions etc.
Vlad but i do have a question about the actual status though, about the second part, how is one historically superior ? The judgement of superiority or inferiority requires that there is a common ambition shared by poets and historians. History if anything is part of the poet's material, history as in things documented and agglomerated by historians/archaeologists etc. So as for the poet's 'historical' capabilities, well it is dependent ON the historian.
Krys Darcelle Dumas The magic is that it dips so elegantly in all the fields mentioned and has an important part to play in each. In Yoga there is the term/greeting/ idea of "Sat Nam" I am truth, or truth is my identity. I think for the artist this is especially true. The bottom line is no matter what we write or create brings a truth just by us having written it. I am not saying that the great unanswerable questions will be answered by our pursuing the evolution of our art but at the very least can explore the topics and perhaps introduce new perspective.
Vlad i think we can agree to disagree, i don not think that art is the journey either. Art is a pub at the side of the road, in which we drunkenly (drunk on the muse of course ;) ) say quasi-intelligent things. But there is intelligence rendered that can seem unpoetic....so that leaves us with the question....what makes poetry poetic...and i think the answer is somewhere veering between beauty and symmetry, even when that symmetry is specious, even when it ignores certain knowledge and does not confront it. And I think poetry is like the mirror mirror on the wall..and there's nothing wrong with that. All ARt is the mirror mirror on the wall.When we find something beautiful or find some terrible beauty (for those poets who like the gore and so on) we represent/reproduce it but imbue it with our features with our selves, even with our own segmented insides. It is a way of finding one's beauty. BEauty in a much wider sense of the word. IT is only consolatory, but it is still finding one's beauty. Even in writing an elegy....it may be completely wrong and unintelligent in the way it deals with death....and it may convey emotions that we do not actually feel sometimes. But one is satisfied with the beauty which one has produced from his insides....
Krys Darcelle Dumas The poet within himself is a historian Vlad. The purpose is to record, re-present, re-member history. Think of Brathwaite's arguments on the subject. The historian states the facts clearly as they are seen by him, the poet does the same. I think however that we tend to look from a different angle. We re-create history. Not that it is false but in the gatherings of historical facts there remain too many biases it is the poet and the artist that sheds light on many of the hidden aspects of stories to be told and remembered. That is undeniable especially if you look at Caribbean history and what was told of it. What we learned at primary level and even what we are learning now. Just revisit the arguments with an eye on the importance of every contribution to history as 'the white man" knows it and the truth that the artist and later historians to a point bring. Anther aspect is the emotional history that is not covered at ll by the fact fanatic historian.
Krys Darcelle Dumas That is the emotional aspect I was talking about. That is what is missing in the history books. Yes it is a skewed elevated view but I think as neccessary as the dates and names of "glorious discoverers" and all else.
Vlad The historian I think brings less of himself to history than the poet. The poet always approaches history as judge, the historian more than the poet, leaves himself out of the facts. the poor poet can't help it. And you're write, we re-create history. But it is the poet that brings the biases, he biases everything to his own experience. Walcott reduced to histories to his vein. But anyway, there is a small space in my republic for the poet, and much larger spaces for the historians and philosophers. The historian proffers history bare and clinically....and each interprets or mistrusts or rejects what is given....the poet gives us history how he sees it and has interpreted it .....
Vlad i dont think emotion is necessary in history at all! Krys ur gonna kill us! if emotions were to be a large part of history, we wouldnt have history at all. We would have people's biases invade and one quicker rejects things with that sort of attitude. I shall never vote for u for prime minister Krys, im sorry.
Krys Darcelle Dumas So does the historian. How can Columbus flickin DISCOVER an inhabited world? That was clearly a biased view of the situation. It has happened in all of the history books. The historian approaches with suspicion, investigates, and still picks and chooses which part of the story to tell. I think they are equal in that regard except the historian, like a coward, hides behind the veil of "unquestionable" representation while the poet comes brave and says "This is the world as 'I' see it."
Krys Darcelle Dumas lmao It's a good thing I have no intention of ever entering into politics then isn't it. History is full of covered emotion as is. The elite and superior views of the sovereign. According to History blacks were animals and such deserved to be treated like it. That is what was recorded by the 'unbiased, unemotional' historians of the time.
Vlad yes exactly, but those who said that columbus discovered the new world, never deprived you of the fact that there were people there. They truthfully, plainly and factually rendered even the biases of the participants in history. Any writer who uses historical material (that would be all real writers) would tell you that the Europeans keep all their history...the documentations of their cruelties and everything. How else do you think we know all what we know about their inhumanity during the period of slavery. Their records that they kept....
Vlad exactly, and since this is the world as 'I' see it, the historian somewhat says, this is the world as EYES see it, which is a lot more open to interpretation that the inner investment of hte poet's 'I'
Krys Darcelle Dumas as well as their supremacist views. They only told it all to prove to the world as they had convinced themselves that the cruelty and all, including the de-Calibanising (allow me that word) was needed and they were the saviors of the new world. Bullocks! Hiding behind their veils of facts the agendas of their own representations.
Krys Darcelle Dumas It is a lie. It is the world as their tainted and biased EYES saw it. Which is in fact my argument. They are all the same, the historian, philosopher and poet. Just some hide in lies and the other lies directly. And it is the truth in the lying of the poet that makes him superior.
:-)
Vlad yes but the presented it all.....check the archives in england or france or spain....u get everything....even in times when calls for emancipation were going on. who would u rather giving u ur daily news a poet or a historian....this would be the poet:
well i think he was killed but thats unimportant. whats really important is the bestial inhumanity that has inhabited man yada yada yada ....
Vlad anyway i guess we can agree to disagree but you would find with ANY artist that there is a historian and/or philosopher to whom they apprenticed themselves: Joyce -Aquinas Yeats-Blavatsky and others, Auden- Freud, Homer (not the poet), Marx, Eliot-Bergson etc, and the list can go on. So I don't think even they would agree with you on this.
Krys Darcelle Dumas LOL I disagree the poet gives you both. It is not a total disregard for the facts but the coupling of the "factual lies" with the humanity of the situation.
Vlad but the historian...and the history itself, since it works in that way...will allow for you as a person now to say that facts were untrue......u are now able to say that colombus did NOT discover the caribbean bcuz of historians.....during all slavery days there were poets ande playwrights..how much did u get outta them. Whatabout Perse in Guadeloupe? he was busy talking about his little trials and so on. and no one cyah take d man to task for that, but....
Krys Darcelle Dumas It was in an effort to not be accused of what you stated the poet represents today in their time. To not have anyone able to accuse them of ignorance. Again I am not saying to disregard the history or philosophy presented but to take it a step further (which the poet does that makes his superior) and represent as much as possible a holistic view. It is the fact that poets of today not making those conections that causes the art to flop in its true purpose and makes the one we are living in today a "contemporary era" and the same that vexes me. Let us agree to disagree
Krys Darcelle Dumas The historian presented both at the same time true, telling you in one that "There were other people there, he didn't really discover it, at least you can know that if you have sense, but because I rule and I say so you are to learn that Columbus was a great discoverer and this savage ridden filth that he found is the NEW WORLD." Which is still the case now. What does that say about the world that takes in silver spoonfuls the feeding of the historian. You know it is a lie but you stating it as fact anyway casue dem seh suh. No man.
Vlad i think ur being unnecessarily cynical toward historians...and i think ur also restricting the word historian to europeans.....what of all those egyptologists who gave us so much history, who transcribed so much...who translated the hieratics and hieroglyphics...come on krys...the poet can never be superior to both because he takes from both so often.....they are much larger than he is.....the poet shops around for history n phil....which poet ever gave a whollisticv view. All poetry ...all art even can be easily placed within some philosophy....even one that hasnt been uttered yet. The very WAY one writes poetry depends on his PHILOSOPHY. a poet is not a thing in itself. one needs to be a philosopher to one degree or another before becoming a poet....one needs to philosophize id say and one needs a sense of history. thats y i say poetry is a ramification, not a destination or THE journey. poetry without intelligence/philosophy is vanity (paraphrasing and altering slightly what Eliot says here)
Vlad and there were poets at the time when 'history happened' ....so what had they given us? what Whollistic view...and which poet?
Krys Darcelle Dumas Like I said Vlad it is an unreachable goal. I agree that they are all, again, one and the same I just think the poet belongs just a tad higher on the scheme. It is like a King living on the labours of his subjects. If the historians and the philosophers are the dish the poet ads the seasoning and is thus representative of the finished pot. That is my view. Wholistic in the additions of the "humanity" within the numbers.
Krys Darcelle Dumas We can tell from history the state of the land. We can tell from, Elliot, Beckett, Woolfe and the others, the states of the mind, the emotions, the repercussions, the humanity of the humans that lived within it. We can relive it (to a point) with them, re-feel it. I think that is just as important as telling me about the factual state. We will not agree.
Vlad i dont think we can every KNOW that something is unreachable first of all, especially in the incipience of the journey. but i will agree to disagree....but i will say this much.....the food without the seasoning couldve existed as a meal, as opposed to the seasoning without the food. Philosophers/philosophy and historians/history can exist without the poet, but the poet can't exist without them. bless ...off to skool for me cuz i need a break from all the smartness lol...bye
Krys Darcelle Dumas lol yeah me too. bye.
Vlad exactly, poetry is where we stop and debate feeling ....well and good...to represent feeling....but it is dependent upon history and philosophy to decide HOW we feel about things.....love itself that so many poets have written about ...is ONE philosophy on love which they debate around....i mean...come on ....as i have asked...if u can name a great poet that did not apprentice themselves to philosophers or historians, u will convince me...if u find just ONE u will convince me. I can name a zillion philosophers and historians that needed nothing from poetry
Vlad and i dont mean philosophy merely as in the work of philosophers but the fact that one MUST philosophize before he can write any cogent poetry
Krys Darcelle Dumas I agree. It is a coexistent relationship. But going back to my example a King cannot rule without the labour of his subjects. I am not arguing that poet does not need the others I am just saying that with their work combined he is King. I am heading to school. Agree to disagree?
So I ask now...What do you think?
