The Lost Mysteries of Everyday Life
Worte gehen noch zart am Unsäglichen aus ...
Und die Musik, immer neu, aus den bebendsten Steinen,
baut im unbrauchbaren Raum ihr vergöttliches Haus.
──“Die Sonette an Orpheus．II．10” by R. M. Rilke
Writing Chinese modern poetry and reading world poetry are my upmost hobbies. While the experience of reading accumulates, I feel that the poetries are withering, especially the Chinese’s. Some scholars believe that this feeling is an illusion because the much old time-slice in consciousness would be much condensed; those events sifted out become the memories of the whole golden period. But take the Chinese modern poetry for example, the “Annual Poem Selection of Taiwan” in the period of 1960-1980 are much better than those after 1990; poetry in Taiwan is really decaying, and while carefully analyzing, we can discover the indifference to daily life. In 1980s, 洛夫 wrote his master piece ‘因為風的緣故’, which is about a man loves the candlelight he lighted because of the electric power cut. This is one the few Chinese modern poems which mention the kind of light source in their piece, and this poem confirms the source of light, which besides those from Nature, is still the flickering candlelight. Gaston Bachelard has discussed this topic in his latest book “The Flame of a Candle”, in which he thought that the historical progress of imagination is always slower than perception, but he was also afraid of that maybe we will lose the ability of meditation while illuminated by a lamp, and then we will also lose the poetic thoughts about modern life. Because of the capacity of pages, I shall address my conclusion directly. The reason how a poem maintains itself a poem, is not the form or the topic, but the poetic caused by thinking and meditation. Through this poetic, objects emerge as metaphors, and remember those conclusions we debated. So, when objects’ moving becomes our everyday life, we can have a chance to live in the image of the world we consciously choose.
Truly this is a very academic and mystic view of poetry. There are also tones of resisting, discussion, and mocking, but I think that all above are not firmer than this mystic version. The mystic poetic enables the daily objects to harmonize the wisdom and feelings, make the Reality become human acceptable. The German poet, Durs Grünbein’s ‘Belebter Bach’ is a good example:
mit alten Autoreifen, Glas,
Sperrmüll und der Attrappe
eines kleinen Wehrs
aus Zellophan und Schrott,
in dem inmitten Schaums
auf einem Ölfilm ausgesetzt
ein grüner Badefisch sich
zwischen Zweigen schaukeland
leicht um seine Achse dreht.
Kommt
Wellen klaren Wassers, kommt.
Every morning, I ponder the collective life I will attend in while the aura is full of my dorm room. Unconsciously I move the dishes and bowls which fill with porridge, fruit, or bread, and gaze at them to see how gleams reflex through the edges of these porcelains composing a picture, which likely brings the oracle. But it brings only silence rather than meanings; though where is no silence, where the meanings can’t manifest itself. Then, should I raise the cup and ruminate on the origin of its form and material, that the meanings maybe concur with? But if the meanings concurred with the beginning, then the end which all things will meet could cancel these meanings. Take the silence as background, things in the aura changes their contours, reveals many images. As the deceiver viewer of images, the question should never be “Why is there something rather than nothing?” but “Why they emerge in this way, this contours?”. This question which avoids the beginning makes objects the knots of the causality network, and then to think of objects is to think of the world. And the world which now contains this new thought keeps be in motion, causing things transfiguration one day.
Nowadays the education of Europe music seems to meet an invert in Taiwan. They always take many historical, sociological, or economic facts as the causes of the works; or they bring up a classification lift of schools and then try to find the characteristics in the works which the definition has mentioned. This way seeks the definite but accidental facts rather than hearing the music they discuss. European regard these factors as the inheritance of continuous cultural body, but we can have these as nonfeeling knowledge. Why wouldn’t bravely listen to the romantic dualism, its dialectic and fracture, the first yearning for height, the elements’ frolic in daily images? Truly a listener who concentrates on can feel the beauty in the works, but because of the absence of expository language, this beauty keeps in suspend.
Music seems have the ability to discern the symbols culture remains between the truths of mind, say, the imagery. For example, in the opening(“Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen”) of the “Matthaeus Passion”, it’s not necessary to imitate a traditional pilgrim leaning on a stick, but his stumbling expressed by the triplet notes leads a extreme tension about waiting for or coming close to somebody, and the hidden stick indicate the upper space where he may appear; it is not the way according to a tradition which can express the pilgrim’s piety, but the way he makes himself a pilgrim creates his piety and object in mind. Music chooses the effective combinations from accidental facts, and transforms it into an imagery. Another topic we mentioned this semester also points out the great analysis and synthesis abilities that we have seen how those characteristics of water like limpidity, coolness, flowingness, reflection, swayingness have been analyzed, and combine with libido, reflexion, vitality. It not only allows music using metaphors but also producing or recasting metaphors. And we have learned that the link between objects and meanings is metaphor.
Finally no one including music can tell us the exact meanings, and the Socrates’ meditating daimon always refuses rather than encourages. Glenn Gould played his version of Partita No.6, the Toccata in BWV 830. The Rubato ,the broken chords, and the Vibratos are pervading and seeking their correspondence in this city we live daily. The reflexion of our own face reflexes in the flow of vehicles, the great building’s standstill, and the hot and dry waste gas near our ear when we waits for the traffic light to turn to green. In this moment, rings out the trills, the agile consciousness moves, what is likely in this complex system mediated by music, the meanings will be delivered from the background.
留言列表
