Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott Miller
I'd get on board with the Emerson/Blake definition.
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Scott,
Naw!
They sound good, but when you really think about them, not so much. "Particular natural facts are symbols of particular spiritual facts." This is just the
doctrine of signatures warmed over, and transferred from botany to linguistics. It's no accident people are talking about Böhme. God placed plants among us to treat physical or spiritual condition, and their forms are signs from him we can learn to read? Yes, and Whitman found letters from God dropped in the street, and each one was signed with God's name!
But forget, for a moment, the origins of these views. Forget their implications, forget how loose their terms are. Here's the real question: Can you make pragmatic use out of them? Emerson believed in "a divine aura which breathes through forms," and wanted poets to speak wildly, so the aura could find its own way, like a slack reined horse. But does that really help us construct new metaphors?
Maybe we shouldn't be trying to reflect the world. Maybe we should be trying to invent the world, to invent reality.
"Stop moping, she would cry. Look at the Harlequins!"
Thanks,
Bill