Varying

"Being Among Words" Interview with Denis Donoghue in _The Pure Good of Theory_ Blackwell, 1992 p. 96

The only real justification for literature is that it provides us with ways of imagining what it would be like to be different. That's the basis of sympathies and recognitions. You could say, of course, can't we be sympathetic simply by virtue of the fact that we are human, that we are born and that we will die. But that is too abstract. One of the great things about literature is that the different moods and recognitions are given a kind of notional validity in the poems.

My comment: including ways we differently perceive and come to understand sameness. I always have difficulty in fathoming the "too abstract" for does it not pass through the extractable before taking a form to be communicated? The difficult part of living is the constant sifting. No, not the sifting but giving validity to the sifting. Not what passes through. Not what remains. But to the activity of sifting: playing with the extractable with all the resources of abstraction. A concentration so pure that it is open to distraction.

And so for day 92
16.03.2007