Re: Imagination

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Katha,

>>> Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 05/05/99 11:14AM >>>
Charles, I haven't read Zizek, but I think Wallace Stevens DEFINITELY
has a better imagination than I do! He wrote many volumes of wonderful
poetry that have shaped the course of American literature, I only one
volume of far less wonderful poetry.


CB: Don't sell yourself short. I bet you have lots of imaginary potential yet.

///////////////////


  but I don't think doug was saying that Wallace stevens was a political
thinker, whose poems could be the text of a revolutionary movement and
for whom marx should be set aside. "Sad men made angels of the sun"
isn't so far from marx's view of religion as "heart of a heartless
world."  The question in both cases is whether religion speaks to
something deeper in the psyche than socio-economic-political misery. I
think i would say ORGANIZED religion no, mystical speculation yes.

CB: Yes, I was thinking the same thing. Engels explains religion as the result of the awe and wonder that ancient people felt in experiencing natural phenomena , etc.  And , as you say, in Marx's famous brief statement in "Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Law) - Introduction" analyzes religion as rooted in sadness, similar to Stevens' quote.

On "something deeper in the psyche than socio-economic misery" , I guess this gets personal, but , hey, the personal IS political, no ?  I have to say I have plumbed the depths of my psyche for years, in mystery, misery, joy, you know, the whole nine yards, with diaries, etc., etc. My conclusion is that the key to the individual psyche is the SOCIAL, other people. Introspection is sterile without intimacy. (Skipping a few logical steps) I would therefore say feminism and the liberation of women, who have been HISTORICALLY  assigned so much work in making the fundamentals of the social, is more cogent to this problem than mysticism. Mysticism tends to be an isolated ,individual , one on one with "the universe".

But this is male-centered. Perhaps women, who have been holding so many other people, (especially men's), hands, need more introspection, self-attention in contrast with men ? It might be "ms-tical" instead of mystical.

Still, Doug's post implies that the poet's imagination has something to offer the politicaleconomic movement, no ?


Charles Brown