By SERAPHIM PIETROFORTE*
The poet, in dialogue with other poets, goes through six stages: clinamen, tessera, kenosis, daemonization, askesis and apophrades.
Those who write prose or poetry do not, as a rule, try to hide their influences; this would be useless, because once there is an influence, it becomes evident by itself. However, alongside the admiration of prose writers and poets, present in the work of every writer, there are other readings, related to other discourses, such as philosophy, religion, politics, etc. From this perspective, that is, outside of the poetic texts themselves, I would like to suggest three references for working with literature.
To this end, I chose two books and an idea gathered from four authors: (i) The magic that takes away the sins of the world, by Alberto Pimenta; (ii) The anguish of influence, by Harold Bloom; (iii) the notion of noosphere, according to Décio Pignatari referring to Teilhard de Chardin, to which I add allusions to the biologist Jacob Uexküll and the linguist Roman Jakobson.
As for the first book, The magic that takes away the sins of the world, Alberto Pimenta, far from discussing literary art only theoretically, follows Erza Pound's observation that the specialist loses the contours of the subject in which he is qualified; to this end, the author articulates various perspectives regarding literature, analyses of poems, philosophical and epistemological discussions, guiding himself, in the twenty-two chapters of the book, by the major arcana of the Tarot.
Such articulations, rare in universities, allow us to review some readings; in semiotics, for example, it is worthwhile to bring together, without constraints, the thoughts of Pythagoras, Saint Augustine, Giordano Bruno, Robert Fludd, Marsilio Ficino, Emanuel Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant, Edmond Husserl, Charles Sanders Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes, thus complexifying semiotics, literature, philosophy, arts and much of the mystical thought, so striking in the works of Fludd, Ficino and Swedenborg.
As for the second reading, The anguish of influence, I discovered Harold Bloom's work when I read Comparative literature, by Sandra Nitrini. In this book, amidst the detailed explanations of the many theories discussed by the author, we find Harold Bloom's ideas about literature, specifically about poetry; according to him – and I will reproduce this below in very general terms – poets, immersed in the network of influences of their predecessors, experience, when composing, the anguish generated between their own statements and imitation, or rather, what is learned from others.
Thus, created in the relationship between identity and otherness, or even trapped in it – after all, anguish also means narrowness, or rather, a reduction in space or time –, the poet, in dialogue with other poets, goes through six stages: (1) clinamen or poetic appropriation; (2) Tessera or completeness and antithesis; (3) kenosis or repetition and discontinuity; (4) daemonization or counter-sublime; (5) askesis or purgation and solipsism; (6) apophrades or the return of the dead.
In summary, recapitulating each of them: (1) clinamen means, for Lucretius, based on Epicurus' atomic doctrine, the spontaneous movement of atoms, assuming, in Harold Bloom's thought, the path of every poet in relation to the main influences; (2) Tessera, in turn, was, in ancient Rome, a tablet divided in two, whose parts, when fitted together, served as a code, similar to the complementarity, whether harmonious or controversial, of the poet with the influences.
(3) kenosis, in mystical and religious terms, coincides with the forgetfulness of oneself in the face of Logos divine, configuring, for Harold Bloom, the moment when the poet moves away from his own knowledge and influences to, precisely, promote discontinuities between his poetry and that of other poets; (4) daemonization It means possession by divine powers, resulting in the poet's reaction against the influences, which goes so far as to contradict them completely.
(5) askesis, or rather, practices aimed at spiritual development, which, in the case of poetry, indicate when the poet focuses on his own talent, finally acquired; (6) apophrades, or the days when the dead visit their homes, reveals itself, in Harold Bloom's system, as a return to influences, but resized, then, from new points of view.
According to Harold Bloom, the poet's path among other poets, themes and poetic forms resembles that of a mystic in search of knowledge; note that, to confirm this, much of the nomenclature proposed by the author is inspired by religious terms. Thus, amidst theories of language and metaphysical speculations, the third reading is advanced, which is not necessarily a book, but a concept, developed from other readings.
Once, quite a while ago, I heard the poet Décio Pignatari speculate on the concept of the noosphere during interviews on television programs. Noosphere, in general terms, means the sphere of thought, but not only that; the word derives from the Greek us, whose meaning, in mythical, philosophical and semiotic terms, admits several meanings, among them, intellect, mind, cosmic principle, etc., not allowing for light and superficial translations.
In the interviews, from which I did not retain the sources, Décio Pignatari refers to the thinker Teilhard de Chardin; according to the poet's mentions, in addition to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, with their respective spheres, there would be a sphere of meaning, that is, the noosphere, responsible for significance.
Now, the implications of this thought are clearly metaphysical, among other reasons, due to the very nature of the notions of sense and significance carried forward, close to consciousness not as a thing, but as a phenomenon; furthermore, Teilhard de Chardin's reflections belong to theology, whose roots are found in the first Greek philosophers converted to Christianity, such as Justin, branching out into occult philosophy, the teaching of the Trivium and Quadrivium, the esoteric thoughts of the aforementioned Fludd, Ficino, Swedenborg and in much of poetry.
In these circumstances, the notion of noosphere emerges in the academic world, recovered by semiotics, hence Décio Pignatari's interest in the concept as a semiotician; in this science, noosphere, in general terms, approaches the concept of semiosphere or, in other words, the field of signs and signification, that is, the kingdom of signs.
That said, and once the noosphere is known, it is worth asking whether the realm of signs is a human invention, conceived by us to mediate relations with the world, or whether it is a singular field, which can be accessed, whether in the superficial strata, experienced by everyone on a daily basis, or in deep zones, such as those visited by Dmitri Mendeleiev or Srinivāsa Rāmānuja, among scientists and mathematicians, and numerous artists, responding to dreams, flashes, illuminations.
Well, in light of this, as a professor of linguistics and semiotics, I usually teach that, according to Ferdinand Saussure and structuralist thought, meaning emanates from semiotic systems, that is, from languages, which project themselves onto the world, endowing it with meaning. Such languages, in turn, are conceived by humanity; from this perspective, meaning reveals itself to be a human construction. However, as a writer, I tend to seriously consider the other option, in which we access the noosphere as if we were immersing ourselves in it, among other means, through poetry – here I understand poetry in the broad sense, or rather, the poetic sense, present in all arts and other human activities.
In short, this is a broad discussion… since it consists of different points of view, it may never end. To continue, I would like to suggest reading the book A foray into the worlds of animals and humansFollowed by A theory of meaning, by biologist Jacob Uexküll, in which the author problematizes the relationships between meaning, biological evolution, the construction of reality and life itself; evidently, when it comes to meaning, I highlight Roman Jakobson's thesis regarding the poetic function of language.
According to Roman Jakobson, when the communication process focuses on the message, or rather, on its semiotic form, the poetic function of language occurs. His reflections undoubtedly deserve detailed explanations, however, in general terms, Roman Jakobson insists that the effect of poeticity arises when elements of the code, organized in systems of signs, order, through specific correlations, the sequences in which they are expressed. That said, rhymes are good examples, since certain arrangements of vowels and consonants guide, as a rule, the phonological sequences of poetry; however, this occurs at other levels of language analysis, from the projection of prosodic arrangements, materialized in verse bases, to the projection of semantic categories, generating metaphors, metonymies, etc.
In short, one of the conclusions of Roman Jakobson's thinking lies in the fact that poetry depends fundamentally on the semiotic system used in artistic creation. After all, it involves correlations between the signs that constitute this system; consequently, all art points to the system of signs from which it derives, or rather, all art reveals itself to be, intrinsically, metalanguage. Finally, as a metalanguage, that is, by using language to take care of language, art certainly indicates paths in the noosphere.
*Seraphim Pietroforte is a full professor of semiotics at the University of São Paulo (USP). Author of, among other books, Visual semiotics: the paths of the gaze (Context). [https://amzn.to/4g05uWM]
References
BLOOM, Harold (2002). The anguish of influence. New York: Routledge.
HJELMSLEV, Louis (1975). Prolegomena to a theory of language. Sao Paulo: Perspective.
JAKOBSON, Roman (sd). Linguistics and communication. São Paulo, Cultrix.
NITRINI, Sandra (2015). Comparative literature. New York: Routledge.
PEPPER, Alberto (1995). The magic that takes away the sins of the world. Lisbon: Cotovia.
SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de (2012). General linguistics course. São Paulo: Cultrix.
UEXKÜLL, Jakob von (2010). A foray into the worlds of animals and humans. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.
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