paranoid thinking

[JULIUS RAPER]

In line with Greg's comments on paranoia and conspiracies, who can forget
the brilliant remarks of Fausto on the essential work of the 20th century
poet: to lie.  But to lie knowingly.  Other men take science and religions
literally.  Poets know that they are the constructions of individuals
(some of them poets) who impose the human needs for order, meaning,
purpose, causality, consciousness, tenacity, etc. on a brute universe.
Lots of people do this: Hesiod, Homer, Moses, Ikhnaton,even Mulder, you
name 'em. But it is the poet who understands such images of order are
metaphors mirroring the needs and fears of those who create the images.
Knowing the order, no matter how reassuring or paranoid, is a
psychological projection, poets, like Fausto after WWII, can reclaim the
qualities projected in order to augment their own humanity and thereby
avoid the fates of Herbert and Victoria.  Has TRP ever created a character
more moving and brilliant than the Maltese poet?  Surely he is a
philosophical brother of Kant, Henry Adams, and Wallace Stevens, among
others.
	To be sure, individuals like Herbert, Victoria, Hitler may pursue
death-dealing projects, but these are relative orders, not absolute ones.
The proper pursuit of absolute order, such as may exist, would be with the
reasonable doubts of something like chaos theory--not by buying into the
revelations of individual order-makers.  
 	Perhaps Fausto's insights have become axioms evaluated by those on
the list longer than myself.  But they do not appear to have been taken
seriously.  Surely they are fundamentals of TRP's poetics and concepts of
what exists and how we know what exists.  Am I wrong?
	If one sets out to draw a line across a wild land, one may base it
upon the stars, but does it have a human meaning more valid than the
truths of astrologers?  Is it more fruitful than a jar placed upon a hill
in Tennessee to order the wilderness?               JRR