BERNEVAL

In Confucius — The Secular as Sacred Herbet Fingarette paints Confucious, Jesus and Gautama Buddha as men who have “genuinely and profoudly and self-consciously reanimated their traditions” and there is a hint, for me, of Martin Buber in the affirmation

Shared tradition brings men together and enables them to be men. Every abandonment of tradition is a separating of men. Every authentic reanimation of tradition is a reuniting of men.

This seems almost tautological after the sentence the precedes it:

Only as we grow up genuinely shaped, through and through, by traditional ways can we be human; only as we reanimate this tradition where new circumstances render it otiose can we preserve integrity and direction in our life.

Given a tradition of reanimation, I might be tempted by this only path of being human. Being a social and political creature, yes. Being human: tradition is an insufficient ground. Not a wonder that the prose moves from consideration of being human to the union of men. There is something incommunicable in being human. Still we strive, we the wordsmiths, to make it known and sharable.

And so for day 171
03.06.2007

The poet’s voice in Robert Kroetsch’s The Hornbooks of Rita K invites us to contemplate acts of audition.

The poets of Canada learn to sing by walking barefoot on gravel beaches. This makes for a fascinated listening. A constricted listening.

Any way to redeem that straightend word “constricted”? Perhaps in some understanding of the role of compression in comprehension. That which can be held like a snowball.

And so for day 167
30.05.2007

There are two French verbs, s’attarder and s’attacher that make me think of the semantic ground covered by linger awhile, dwell upon and brood over. Yet the valence is different and can be set in the key of “mindfulness” or that of “inattention” and “habituation”. To become delayed and to grow attached. Time and roots. Easy to spend. Hard to eradicate. But that is another verb, s’enraciner, almost German in its insistence. Attachments need not have depth; the clinging can be all surface.

And so for day 165
28.05.2007

Madalyn Eastus has designed a picture book in which “a series of images made only of paper — cut, folded, and woven […] rely upon each other to create multilayered” offerings. It is evocatively titled Woolf. In the back matter is a set of principles set out in verse form. They are reproduced here with regard to the spacing:

no narrative – only pattern

no glue – just friction

reflection over horizontal
& vertical axes

cropping, symmetry,
surprise

A set of predictable actions; a set of unpredictable outcomes. The story is universal: to be charmed by pattern coming back again. Such a character pattern is!

And so for day 163
26.05.2007