Ideas

"70. Ideas too are a life and a world."
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
translated by R.J. Hollingdale
Penguin, 1990

"Intense but imprecise memory? Try a poem"

"Dreams as aesthetic achievement: why couldn't one
take pride in a dream as a work of art?"

"Literature: disover localities that have not yet been
claimed by meaning."

"Disgruntled-because I was unable to think."

"Linguistic euphoria is needed for a poem
(even a desolate one)."

"I will not write another poem until I have a new view
of life."

"Writing- safe again."

October/November 1976
*The Weight of the World*
Peter Handke
translated by Ralph Manheim
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
1984



Pantomimes
" 69.The pantomimes of the ancients no longer
exist. But in compensation all modern poetry
resembles pantomimes."
Friedrich Schlegel
translated by Peter Firchow
Univ of Minnesota, 1991


"I speak of the Messiah whom the poet
Senses without naming, the painter
Feels without seeing, the composer
Hears without noting, the philosopher
Supposes without knowing."
Charles Bernstein- *Shadowtime*
1. Level 5.
p.51
published by Green Integer Press, 2005

To Paul Valery, May 5, 1891
"In order to give life and meaning to literature, we must reach that "great symphony." Perhaps no one ever will. Nevertheless, the ideal has obsessed even the most unconscious writers, and its main lines- however gross or fine- are to be found in every written work. The perfect poem we dream of can be suggested by Music itself; and if our own written melody seems imperfect when it has ceased, we must lay siege to the other and plagiarize."
Stephane Mallarme
translated by Bradford Cook
Johns Hopkins, 1956

"How far civilization is from assuring us the pleasures that are supposed to be its attributes! For instance, one might well be amazed that there is no league of dreamers in every great city, existing to support some newspaper that would record events in the light of dream. *Reality* is a contrivance, serving to situate the average mind among the mirages of an event....All ears, one had to be all eyes. From the mimic's stance, one hand straining upwards with fingers wide, I saw that, clever fellow! he had captured the audience's feelings with the movement of catching something on the wing, emblem (and no more) of the ease with which anyone seizes an idea; and that, stirrred by the breeze of this movement, the bear swayingly and gently erect, was querying the exploit, with one paw on the ribboned human shoulder....A lucid pantomime, vaster than the boards and with the gift proper to art of durability...."
Stephane Mallarme
*A Break in the Act*
translated by David Paul
*Poison and Vision*
Vintage Books, 1974