Poems Chat on Hans Favereyâs âFrom the Vaseâ (âAan de vaasâ)
Ellipses indicate intervening comments that have been deleted due to topical irrelevance.Â
A poem in Dutch by Hans Faverey that seems analogous to our earlier discussion about things and archetypes (and potentiality)
And the English translation by J.M. Coetzee
what??? I canât just wait for you to write 38 paragraphs about it?? ;)
Pound wouldâve rendered âcarryâ there as âdragâ instead
Just FYI, in Translator Chicanery News
hahaha thatâs very true
I just find it interesting because itâs a description of an object in which every possible thing that could happen to that object is innate
Iâm trying to ~Change~!!!!
I gotta think about it more tbh Iâm currently in an irl conversation at a dinner and whatever is left of my higher cognition is occupied :(
Taxed, say
But I think youâre very much onto something there especially like you say as it pertains to things in themselves vs imagination etc
haha well, donât let me occupy you then, youâve ~probably~ contributed enough for one day
It also opens up reality as the present and future and past as tropes of imagination I think?
I think what I like about it is that it posits all the possibilities not as potentialities but as actualities
even if theyâre inherently absurd and impossible, e.g. the vase spontaneously combusting
Yeah it concretes the abstractions or even overlays all possible worlds like a quantum interpretation of reality
Is the taking of flame there perhaps a floral trope as wel?
i donât know; elaborate?
The ontology or âRealityâ of the vase is a construction assisted by the poetâs imagination, which brings its possible pasts and futures to bear on its present by means only of the mind that can think these things
something in the 'kort hiervoorâ too, that deepens that concretisation - itâs like heâs casually referring to something real and unremarkable, rather than an absurd imagining
Oh just taking flame as sort of receiving *flamboyant* flowers say
i would be able to elaborate on that wordplay if i had a deeper knowledge of Dutch, haha
Yeah exactly the âearlierâ is an earlier thought the poet had about the vase or vision he had of it, its total reality being a construct of his imagination operating on a sensory reality
'Ă©enmaal nogâ also weirdly suggestive that it is a thing which has the potential to happen (Has Happened) *multiple times*
Kind of veers into Poundâs âperiplumâ view of truth, which Stevens has his own version of, the endless process of the mind building truth by combination or addition not by Platonic subtraction if you will. I can get more into that later although Iâm tempted to consult writing Iâve done on the topic previously which means Iâll get bogged down and anxious and confused and may not make good on this lol
Is that ânoch einmalâ essentially? âOnce moreâ
donât get bogged down in Pound-isms during dinner, I hear itâs considered impolite
I think he filled the vase with its last flowers and then carried it to the sink but dropped it before reaching the sink and it shattered on the floor
I think thatâs the surface narrative
Bahahaha no doubt about it
but then the flow of time is very fucked up if thatâs the surface, surely
heâs still holding the vase, and the smashing of it is posited as a past, not a future event
and a repeated one too
I think he didnât attend to the moment between inserting flowers and smashing the vase - and why would he?
So now it is past, irretrievably. Until his poetic imagination casting itself as memory (he canât remember because he didnât notice at the time, right?) does retrieve it!
so he imagines himself still holding the vase because the moment of him dropping it 'passed him byâ, as it were?
I think so, as the sort of discrete, clear, surface, narrative
ha, insofar as there is one
Yah
I mean as you pointed out its about a sort of simultaneous valence of contrary realities all being real
Together
âAs it is and continues to beâ - even after being shattered it still lives on in its Platonic vase-ness
I like the Dutch phrase for that part too - 'is en blijftâ
perhaps closer to 'is and remainsâ
you could even render the first stanza as a description of a new vase to replace the one that breaks in the third stanza
though iâm not convinced that makes the poem more, rather than less, interesting
iâm now imagining coetzee deliberately not translating it as 'remainsâ to frustrate the potentiality of your wordplay with remains and the remains of the vase, hahaha
Ah yes a Stevensian (really Nietzschean I think) ârepetitionâ as presented in âThe Plain Sense of Thingsâ
"The chimney is fifty years old and slants to one side.
A fantastic effort has failed, a repetition
In a repetitiousness of men and flies."
That bastard!!! Lol
i love 'a repetitiousness of men and fliesâ by the way
Does the Dutch word mean corpse too like the English does? âRemainsâ/âblijftâ?
Repetition in re the new vase
not as far as i know, i believe itâs a separate word
So do I man. What a reduction of the circle of life
I am shattered as the vase!
'ontvlamtâ, incidentally, is more literally 'inflamesâ
which you can probably get something out of
Yeah sounds like a cognate for sure
more like a bodily inflammation than a literal bursting into flames maybe?
Yeah the immune reaction to invasion that ultimately breaks the vase lmaooo
Similar to Plathâs invasion by hostile beauty perhaps
'hevigheidâ is interesting too, it can also mean 'severityâ
or 'violenceâ
or 'fireâ
The vase, its perfect potentiality, its negative capability, seems limited and determined and fixed by the insertion of the gaudy blooms, and it swoons under the beauty which colonizes it, and seeks new potentiality by exorcizing the pretty petals and becoming a merely *potential* vase (where before it was an actual vase which is a *potential* holder of flowers) being shards now on the floor
Wow what a crux Jack!!
and in the original the vase is 'inâ hevigheid rather than 'withâ it
itâs also very interesting that the vase smashes ~itself~
narrator is merely an observer and doesnât really do anything to the vase
Yes exactly I think I kind of riffed on that above as well Jack
yeah i was trying to riff on yr riff, haha!
The other thing is who is the artist qua artist  identifying with here the flowers or the vase or both? I think both
Crane has a similar alternation of power vs passivity he figures as male vs female androgyny tantamount to his own sexual versatility in âVoyagesâ imo
Oh awesome! I was worried the threads were fucked
Good point Jack narrator as mere observer. So is he the vase of the vase as it were?
He âinflamesâ the vase with flowers in a trope of what being a poet basically is I think, imposing a vision on an infinitely potential world
hmm and maybe thatâs why the poem paradoxically feels static? we are seeing the potentialities the poet sees in the object but we are seeing them all at the same time and thus thereâs no coherent movement
itâs a heap of broken images, like the vase
But also he as a vase (that Keatsian ânegative capabilityâ of the artist) had perhaps been inflamed by a flower-like radiant vision he must exorcise into a poem, which sort of dashes himself on the floor, breaking himself into a poem?
i think we kind of arrived, ironically at two versions of the same conclusion independently there, haha
âA horde of destructionsâ as Stevens rendered the world of Picasso where Eliot gave âheap of broken imagesâ
itâs interestingly counter-intuitive that poetry here functions as a destruction of the object rather than a reification of it
But instead of trying to find dynamism in a static mode he tries to produce stasis out this world of Heraclitian churning change, using art
a shattering of the object into its every possible form
We wove our perspectives together beautifully imo yes!
and yet still as weâve established, paradoxically static
Yes! But of course I guess it still *is* trying to treat the object atomically and mythically and preserve it inviolate against time by means of art, BUT, art that tropes as a destruction and breaking into parts and extending into the changes of time !!
Yes! Or even: paradoxically paradoxical ?!
probably of relevance is that in the foreword to this book Coetzee points to the thought of Heraclitus as one of the sources for Favereyâs poetry
Eliotâs âfigure of the ten stairsâ - moving and still simultaneously. âBurnt Nortonâ rings out here also in its floral-ness
Heraclitus of 'no man ever steps in the same river twiceâ
and the unity of opposites
to take it to another obnoxious meta-level, the poem itself is a small seemingly simple object that proliferates these huge confounding trains of thought when we 'breakâ it apart
[100 emoji] observation Jack
That is very relevant yes. And of course Heraclitus is the epigraph to Burnt Norton/ Four Quartets too
thatâs a snippet i didnât know, lemme dig out my four quartets
ah. my edition has no translation of the greek so thatâs perhaps unhelpful to me hahaha
âReason is common to all, but the many live as tho they have their own private understandingâ
Something along those lines iirc
ah right
youâre right about burnt nortonâs relevance, all the talk of time future, time past, speculation, possibility, etc.
Private realities are a kind of image of shattered-ness vs wholeness of Heraclitian âLogosâ which is âcommon to allâ which makes static the temporal flow which is a process of disunities as well I guess
Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future
Etc yeah!
Sorry, to clarify that word flood: the image subjectivity that results in shattered disjoined realities that all coexist but apart from each other is kind of a static image of disunity that is similar to the dynamic image of disunity presented by time/change
mmm this heraclitus connection actually throws a lot of light on it in a weird way
On Eliot or this poem or both?
the vase poem!
just the presentation of that paradox of movement and stillness, really
yes i see what you mean, change over time as dynamic discontinuity, change or rather simultaneity in (poetic) perception as static disunity
Yes, and coexistence of past present and future at least in the mind, although I think Eliot HATES the idea that the Stevensian imagination is where the ultimate Reality lives, he wants it to be objective not subjective not even inter-subjective
Yah exactly
Thatâs a better way to put it J-man I like that
i might be all poemed out now, itâs like 1am here
goooooood talk though, i got a lot more out of that poem than i anticipated
Hey me too Jack thanks for holding my feet to the fire and walking through it with me. I learned a lot
Maybe tomorrow we can focus on the sensual aspects of the poem, the music, how it feels to say out loud, etc
maybe so, although - in english or dutch?
Dutch hopefully but with English as a crutch probably lol
haha same
right, i should at least attempt sleep now, tot ziens!
