speak, memory/: faust

[jbor]

Interesting comparison; thanks. And on the strength of this I would just 
make the point that even the process of composing an oral poem and
committing it to memory for the purpose of recital is a type of inscription,
or "writing". It's only if one believes that the ancient rhapsodes were
actually channelling some higher entity -- "speaking in tongues" as it were
-- that any real distinction between oral and written text can reasonably be
made.

I don't think that either "Homer", Goethe or Nabokov had quite the same
thing in mind when they were making their respective invocations, whatever
any one of us nowadays may believe about a common wellspring of creative
inspiration.

best

----------
>From: lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de (Lorentzen / Nicklaus)
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: speak, memory/: faust
>Date: Tue, Jan 2, 2001, 10:25 PM
>

> in the very beginning of "faust", in the "zueignung", goethe sez:
>
>   "ihr naht euch wieder, schwankende gestalten,/
>    die früh sich einst dem trüben blick gezeigt."
>
>  roughly that is: you come close again, rocking figures/
>                which early, once, presented themselves to the twilight glance.
>
>   well, in the first place this refers to the early beginnings of the whole
>   "faust" project. but it also - as erich trunz point out in his comment - is
a
>   kind of poetological statement on creativity. goethe considered the poet
>   himself to be something like a harp that starts to sound when the wind [!]
>   caresses its strings ... creating has to do with passive receiving of
>   inspiration ... instead of making plans the poet should just listen to his
>   muses ... & to me, after having followed this p-list debate, this comes
quite
>   close to the saying "speak, memory, speak tenderly ..."