As I said earlier today:
, and I want to add
. I wanted to respond in words to the next part of your post but couldn't because my keypad had breathed its last and I was reduced to being able only to cut and paste links. So . . .
I think it's definitely Stevens's difficulty and accounts for various aspects of the poetry that would take a long time to point out with examples. But I think it's also the difficulty of any thinker or artist who reflects on his or her experience in the world more than superficially (i.e., in terms of what Husserl referred to as 'the natural attitude'). This is of course the position of naive dualism: "I" am inside myself and "the world" is out there, separate from me. Individuals who spend time in 'reflective consciousness', analyzing their experiences in terms of that which is presented in the environment and that which ensues in the form of feeling and thought, recognize the first level of their unavoidable interconnection with the sensually palpable world. They also begin to realize the various ways in which they respond to what presents itself in their perception of things and the behavior of others in the world, many instances of which cannot be perceived without immediately involving emotions along a broad spectrum of possible responses from felt affirmation to felt revulsion and rejection. If we look at the responses of even very young children to witnessing certain things (e.g., the abuse of animals or other children, or the helplessness of wild creatures such as young birds on the ground that cannot fly) we understand that these feelings do not depend on conceptual reasoning or attitudes picked up from their parents but on an instinctive sense of values -- rightness and wrongness in things, beings, and their behavior -- in other words
felt meaning in the world and also one's felt involvement in it.
What is perceived in the world calls forth responses before it is understood, in children and also in primordial consciousness according to Heidegger, MP, and other phenomenologists. I think the sense of a 'self', of one's having an individual continuous and unified presence in the world, arises in our prehistory and history from the very ground of our sense of being in relation to the 'world', of Dasein (being-in-the-world), which is a distinct sense of presence to, with, and in the world that precedes systematic thinking. I think it is precisely this active sense of presence as 'compresence' that modern humans have increasingly lost in the dominant reductive ideas and ideologies of the modern world. Our planetary ecological crisis is the most vivid expression of this loss. Before I write all night (on my wonderfully functional new keyboard), I'll recommend this excellent book again:
Amazon.com Review
David Abram's writing casts a spell of its own as he weaves the reader through a meticulously researched work that gently addresses such seemingly daunting topics as where the past and future exist, the relationship between space and time, and how the written word serves to sever humans from their primordial source of sustenance: the earth.
"Only as the written text began to speak would the voices of the forest, and of the river, begin to fade. And only then would language loosen its ancient associations with the invisible breath, the spirit sever itself from the wind, the psyche dissociate itself from the environing air," writes Abram of the separation caused by the proliferation of the written word.
In writing
The Spell of the Sensuous, Abram consulted an engaging collection of peoples and works. He uses aboriginal song lines, stories from the Koyukon people of northwestern Alaska, the philosophy of phenomenology, and the speeches of Socrates to paint a poetic landscape that explains how we became separated from the earth in the first place. With minimal environmental doomsaying, Abram discusses how we can begin to recover a sustainable relationship with the earth and the nonhuman beings who live among us--in the more-than-human world.
--Kathryn True
From Publishers Weekly
How did Western civilization become so estranged from nonhuman nature that we condone the ongoing destruction of forests, rivers, valleys, species and ecosystems? Santa Fe ecologist/philosopher Abram's search for an answer to this dilemma led him to mingle with shamans in Nepal and sorcerers in Indonesia, where he studied how traditional healers monitor relations between the human community and the animate environment. In this stimulating inquiry, he also delves into the philosophy of phenomenologists Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who replaced the conventional view of a single, wholly determinable reality with a fluid picture of the mind/body as a participatory organism that reciprocally interacts with its surroundings. Abram blames the invention of the phonetic alphabet for triggering a trend toward increasing abstraction and alienation from nature. He gleans insights into how to heal the rift from Australian aborigines' concept of the Dreamtime (the perpetual emerging of the world from chaos), the Navajo concept of a Holy Wind and the importance of breath in Jewish mysticism.
Put down your books; learn to read the world around you. . .
By
Ruth Henriquez Lyon VINE VOICE on January 15, 2001
The Spell of the Sensuous reveals how our Western worldview has evolved to be based on literacy, abstract thought, and separation from the body. By "the body" I mean not just our individual, animal bodies, but the body of the earth and the material cosmos. By removing ourselves from this sensuous realm, we have lost the connection to "the living dream that we share with the soaring hawk, the spider, and the stone silently sprouting lichens on its coarse surface."
There is a paradox here, because Abrams' book exposes the drawbacks of literacy and abstract, logical thinking. But it is itself a piece of very well-argued written discourse. However, it works, and not just because Abrams' arguments are so convincing. Part of their power stems from the fact that Abrams is an artist; he has the gift of using words and imagery that can reach below the logical brain to inspire a more direct way of perceiving the world. The result is a book which is a moving combination of philosophical writing and pure poetry.
Abrams works from a phenomenological standpoint, and the book begins with a discussion of phenomenology's history and major ideas.* This is a readable and unintimidating introduction to the subject. Abrams then proceeds to show how, starting at the time of alphabetization, the Western mind began to grow away from direct physical knowing of the world and toward abstract, conceptual representations. Our language became removed from nature, and helped us to remove ourselves from it and to inhabit an almost entirely human-centered world.
As a counterpoint to the Western use of language, Abrams goes on to show how people in non-literate cultures use language as a way to connect with the body and the physical realm. In these oral cultures language "is experienced not as the exclusive property of humankind, but as a property of the sensuous life-world." In other words, the world--the animals, plants, stones, wind--speaks a language that most of us can no longer hear. Abrams explores indigenous oral poetry and stories to illustrate this entirely other way of experiencing language.
My first reading of this book triggered a conversion of sorts. It spun me 180 degrees, from the world of concepts to the world of immediate perception. I'm on my third reading now and still incorporating teachings passed over previously. I am finding that returning my gaze to the uninterpreted physical world is a difficult practice, as I have been conditioned (like most Westerners) to run my experience through a filter of concepts and judgments. But, like meditation, this practice can help to loosen one's psyche from its "mind-forg'd manacles." For this reason, The Spell of the Sensuous is really a manual for liberating one's inner and outer vision.
*Phenomenology is the study of how we experience consciousness. Unlike many branches of philosophy which rely on arguments built in logical steps, phenomenology is more about how we perceive and feel the immediate play of events around and within ourselves. Thus it is less abstract and more experiential than many branches of philosophy.
