Meanwhile, under the chestnut tree, Martin and René extend their thoughts on the history of the poetic.

Nowadays the language of thought is a sad affair, only occasionally revived by polemic. When poetry tries to engage with though, it finds nothing in present-day philosophy, which gravitates, theologically or otherwise, toward science in general and ever-greater confusion with the “human sciences” in particular. Surrealism committed a memorable error in believing that the possibility of progress lay in this direction. The wedding of poetic talent with scientific hubris yielded a few impressive monsters, nothing more. As Heidegger says, there is no bridge from science to thought: One has to jump. And philosophy is no more thought than science is. Hegel taught that philosophy is “thought in a particular guise, whereby thought becomes knowledge, and, more specifically, knowledge through concepts.” This is what thought is for philosophy, and for Hegel philosophy is obviously the highest form of thought. But is it really? Might there not be a form of deep thought that is not philosophy, in the sense that Heraclitus was not yet philosophic, or, as Heidegger says in this Letter on Humanism, in the sense that “the tragedies of Sophocles and their language contain ethos in a form prior to that of Aristotle’s teachings on ethics.”? If so, then thought might become thinking not by philosophizing more but, rather, by freeing itself from philosophy. It might becoming thinking through what Heidegger dares to call the “destruction of philosophy,” where the word destruction is to be understood in Char’s sense: “If in the end you destroy, let it be with nuptial implements.”

“Nupital destruction” might also describe what could happen to the poet’s craft if it renounced its stale game and instead sought to join the elements of language together in a new way. Rimbaud was gone in a flash, like a meteor, yet he had time to say that “peotry will no longer set action to rhythm” but will precede. All of Char’s poetry is in that final word. But will poetry’s forward march drive far enough to mow down the barricades that currently divide poetry devoid of thought from thought specialized as philosophy, therefore making way for language unified at a higher level? “This would be soul for soul’s sake…thought hooking thought and pulling.” But the poet heeds Rimbaud’s words, he is perhaps bound to come upon those matinaux, or early risers in the world of thought, the first Greek thinkers, who were present at the inception of thought, before the schism in the heart of language occurred. They precede us only in appearance. In the maelstrom of changing times, their past is also a future. With the thought of Heraclitus, Char says, “at the tip and in the wake of the arrow, poetry races directly to the summit.” Perhaps poetry and thought both have to risk a new morning. This, of course, does not mean imitating the Greek morning, in which poetic and noetic language were not yet enemies. The morning to come assumes endless centuries of braving the trials of day, evening, and night, ordeals of which we are the survivors. Char’s extraordinary statement is addressed to the survivors of a lengthy history. It says that no history can stanch the true wellspring. It says this frequently, in the rigorous language of aphorism. To speak in aphorisms is to refrain from saying too much; avoiding philosophy, ir provides that much more food for thought. In a stroke, it creates space to breathe. It restores breath. No one who has not had his breath taken away can learn of it. Aphorism is not always in season. Only at the height of crisis does it deliver its boon. Wihtout permission or optimism, without owing anything to man, without avoiding anxiety in any way, “it wishes us well, exhorts us.” The ancients knew the aphorisms of Hippocrates and passed them on to us. If, in Char’s work, the modern piecing-together of poetry and thought is aphoristic, it is because “we have reached the time, the indescribable time, of supreme despair and hope for nothingness.”

P. 160-162

Continued.  ¶ 10:22 AM