{"id":35,"date":"2005-07-05T19:41:00","date_gmt":"2005-07-06T03:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=35"},"modified":"2005-07-05T19:41:00","modified_gmt":"2005-07-06T03:41:00","slug":"on-opacity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/on-opacity\/","title":{"rendered":"On opacity"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n


Two days ago, Ron Silliman noted on his blog, in a piece on a poem by Geoffrey Brock: <\/span><\/p>\n

While there is nothing here that could be called opaque, as such, the scandal of opacity \u2013 representation\u2019s ultimate failure-from-within \u2013 lurks everywhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span> <\/p>\n

I’ve been trying to think through that sentence, but am having a hard time. Maybe because I’ve been thinking about opacity from a diffferent angle all together. But is opacity such a “scandal” (& what a French formulation for such an American writer as Ron is)? I.e., is opacity indeed “representation’s ultimate failure-from-within.” Then it would be a scandal only for Brock, or better, essentially for poets, like the <\/span><\/span> SoQ, <\/span><\/span> who have invested so much in clarity \u2014 to the point of claiming a fake clarity for the world in their poems? A thought-provoking formulation, but one which also makes me wonder if opacity is really a function of representation. Is locating it there a way of denying opacity to the world or even to the poem itself? Or to the relationship between the two?<\/p>\n

Though, maybe I am simply not getting it, because too caught up on some formulations by Paul Celan on the subject of opacity, from his notes on\/for the MERIDIAN essay, which I am in process of translating. Paul Celan, whenever asked about the difficulties of his poems, insisted that they were \u201cganz und gar nicht hermetisch,\u201d in no way hermetic and that all one had to do was to read them again and again. At the same time he claimed a necessary opacity for poetry today, first of all because the poem is \u201cdunkel\u201d (dark, obscure) due to its thingness, its phenomenality. In a note toward his essay \u201cThe Meridian\u201d he writes:<\/p>\n

Regarding the darkness of the poem today, imagination and experience, experience and imagination make me think of a darkness of the poem qua poem, of a constitutive, even congenital darkness. In other words: the poem is born dark; the result of a radical individuation, it is born as a piece of language, as far as language manages to be world, is loaded with world.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Language, for Celan is not simply an instrument for humans, even less a simply human object. Language is assimilated to a solid matter that exists out there in the world. Celan has a note around that same \u201cDarkness\u201d complex that reads: \u201cThickness: to be understood from the vantage of the geological, and thus from the quiet, the slow catastrophes and the dreadful fault lines of language.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is of course a profound disbelief, an absolute skepticism in relation to history (& what is world to us but space & time, history) in Celan, understandably so for a survivor of Khurbn. Not a Hegelian bone in his body \u2014 Benjamin’s blown-backward angel is a closer figure. Thus he writes in one of the unused pieces toward the MERIDIAN essay:<\/p>\n

I am not speaking of the “modern” poem, I am speaking of the poem today<\/span>. And one of the essential aspects of this today \u2014 my<\/span> today, for I speak on my own behalf \u2014 is its lack of a future: I cannot keep from you how to answer the question [in the direction] of which morrow the poem is moving; if the poem borders on such a morrow, then it possesses darkness. The poem’s hour of birth, ladies and gentlemen, lies in darkness. Some claim to know that it is the darkness just before dawn; I do not share that assumption.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/span><\/span>
<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two days ago, Ron Silliman noted on his blog, in a piece on a poem by Geoffrey Brock: While there is nothing here that could be called opaque, as such, the scandal of opacity...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}