Tuesday, October 14, 2008

on anagogical lightbulb

I had several lightbulb moments while reading the anagogic section. Actually its really only one lightbulb but I found a couple different passages pertaining to it. On page 119 Frye says that, "In the anagogic phase, literature imitates the total dream of man, and so imitates the thought of a human mind which is at the circumference and not at the center of its reality." I read this to mean that the poet is commenting from far away, from the edges of reality rather than from the center of it. On page 122 he later describes "the function of the poet as revealing a perspective of reality like that of an angel, containing all time and space, who is blind and looking into himself." This is kind of the same idea of detachment, that the poet's commentary is from the sidelines. He says that literature exists in its own universe and contains life and reality in a system of verbal relationships. I really don't know what thats supposed to mean exactly. I think it kind of goes with that other quote about nature going from being the container to being the thing contained. The poet is the creator and by doing it from the margins, from the circumference rather than the center he can encompass the whole universe. maybe.?

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