Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition: The Sea: From Elemental Stirrings to Symbolic Inspiration, Language, and Life-Significance in Literary Interpretation and Theory

503 Pages·1985·9.307 MB·

by  Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (auth.), Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (eds.)

POETICS OF THE ELEMENTS IN THE HUMAN CONDITION:
THE SEA
AN ALECT A HUSSERLIAN A
THE YEARBOOK OF PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
VOLUME XIX
Editor-in-Chief
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
Belmont, Massachusetts
POETICS OF THE ELEMENTS
IN THE HUMAN CONDITION:
THE SEA
From Elemental Stirrings to Symbolic Inspiration,
Language, and Life-Significance in Literary
Interpretation and Theory
Edited by
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA
The World Phenomenology Institute
Published under the auspices of
The World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological Research and Learning
A-T. Tymieniecka, President
D. REIDEL PUBLISHING COMPANY
A MEMBER OF THE KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS GROUP
DORDRECHT/BOSTON/LANCASTER
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Poetics of the elements in the human condition.
(Analecta Husserliana ; v. 19)
Inlcudes index.
I. Sea in literature-Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Tymieniecka,
Anna-Teresa. II. World Institute for Advanced Phenomenological
Research and Learning. III. Series.
B3279.H94A129 vol. 19 142'.7 s [809'.9336) 85-18278
[PN56.S4)
ISBN 978-94-015-3962-3 ISBN 978-94-015-3960-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-3960-9
Published by D. Reidel Publishing Company,
P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, Holland.
Sold and distributed in the U.S.A. and Canada
by Kluwer Academic Publishers
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In all other countries, sold and distributed
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All Rights Reserved
© 1985 by D. Reidel Publishing Company
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1985
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means; electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner
Dedicated to
Professor Manuel L. Hernandez-Avila,
Director of the Sea Grant Project
at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez,
whose inspiring love of the sea
sustained the spirit of our work.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The Theme: Poetics of the "Elements" in the Human Condition xi
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv
INAUGURAL STUDY
ANNA-TERESA TYMIENIECKA / The Aesthetics of Nature in the
Human Condition 3
PART I
THE POETICS OF THE SEA AS AN ELEMENT IN
THE HUMAN CONDITION: LITERARY INTERPRETATION
A. RESOUNDINGS OF THE SEA IN THE ELEMENTAL TWILIGHT
OF THE HUMAN SOUL
L. M. FINDLAY / Death or Life of the Spirit: The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner - Thalassian Poetry in the Nineteenth Century 23
BEVERL Y SCHLACK RANDLES / The Waves of Life in Virginia
WooIrs The Waves 45
VICTOR CARRABINO / On the Shores of Nothingness: Beckett's
Embers 57
SHERL YN ABDOO / Ego Formation and the Land/Sea Metaphor in
Conrad's Secret Sharer 67
MEENA ALEXANDER / Wordsworth: The Sea and Its Double 77
NESTOR EDUARDO TESON / EI mistico significado del mar (en el
lenguaje poetico) 85
B. MAN'S ELEMENTAL RESPONSE TO THE VITAL CHALLENGE
AT THE CROSS SECTION OF ANCIENT CULTURES
HORST WOLFRAM HUBER / Between Land and Sea: The End of
the Southern Sung 101
viii T ABLE OF CONTENTS
VEDA COBB-STEVENS / Hesiodic Fable and Weather Lore: Text
and Context in Figurative Discourse 129
GILA RAMRAS-RAUCH / The Response of Biblical Man to the
Challenge of the Sea 139
VALDO H. VIGLIELMO / The Sea as Metaphor: An Aspect of the
Modern Japanese Novel 149
C. THE POETIC INSPIRATION OF THE SEA IN
LlTERAR Y EXPERIENCE
CARMEN BALZER / The Poetic and Elemental Language of the
Sea 171
HANS H. RUDNICK / The Sea as Medium for Artistic Experience 191
EDGARDO ALBIZU / Las dimensiones poeticas del mar y la idea
del tiempo 203
LOIS OPPENHEIM / The Oneiric Valorization of the Sea: Instances
of Poetic Sensibility and the "Non-Savoir" 213
JERRY L. McGUIRE / Figuring the Elements: Trope and Image in
Shakespeare 227
D. THE WATERY MIRROR OF THE ELEMENTAL
MARLIES KRONEGGER / Mirror Reflections: The Poetics of Water
in French Baroque Poetry 245
CECILE CLOUTIER-WOJCIECHOWSKA I The St. Lawrence in the
Poetry of Gatien Lapointe 261
PART II
THE ELEMENTAL THREAD IN THE TWILIGHT OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
The Ciphering of Life-Significance in the Poiesis of Art -
From Interpretation to Theory
A. ON THE BRINK
ELDON N. V AN LlERE / On the Brink: The Artist and the Sea 269
ALPHONSO LlNGIS / The Rapture of the Deep 287
TABLE OF CONTENTS ix
HEATHER ASALS / The Voices of Silence and Underwater Ex-
perience 299
YOU-ZHENG LI / A Contrast Between the Sea and the Moun-
tain: A Comparative Study of Occidental and Chinese Poetic
Symbolism 309
B. THE SHORELINES: ELEMENTAL MOVES IN THE TWILIGHT
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
SIDNEY FESHBACH / Literal/Littoral/Littorananima: The Figure
on the Shore in the Works of James Joyce 325
GA YLE L. ORMISTON / Already Not-Yet: Shoreline Fiction
Metaphase 343
CHRISTOPH EYKMAN / Thalassic Regression: The Cipher of the
Ocean in Gottfried Benn's Poetry 353
RICHARD COBB-STEVENS / Derrida and Husser! on the Status of
Retention 367
E. T. GENDLIN / Nonlogical Moves and Nature Metaphors 383
C. POETIC DISCOURSE: "REALITY" AND THE RETRIEVAL
OF LIFE-SIGNIFICANCE
YNHUI PARK / The Reading as Emotional Response: The Case of
a Haiku 403
HORST RUTHROF / Literature and the Ladder of Discourse 413
WOLFGANG WITTKOWSKI / The Sea in Faust arid Goethe's
Verdict on His Hero 433
PART III
CREA TIVE ORCHESTRATION IN THE POIESIS OF
LIFE AND IN FICTION
MARLIES KRONEGGER / Preamble 449
EUGENE F. KAELIN / What Makes Philosophical Literature
Philosophical? 451
RICHARD T. PETERSON / Kaelin on Philosophical Literature 469
x TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAUL B. ARMSTRONG / The Hermeneutics of Literary Impres-
sionism: Interpretation and Reality in James, Conrad, and Ford 477
A. C. GOODSON / Hermeneutics and History: A Response to Paul
Armstrong 501
INDEX OF NAMES 505
THE THEME
POETICS OF THE "ELEMENTS" IN THE
HUMAN CONDITION
As a consequence of the extreme intellectual refinement of our analytic
powers, which have come to dominate understanding and criticism, the
authentic significance of literature and fine arts has been diffused into in
numerable interpretative methods and ultimately lost from sight. Its essential
message of relevance for human life is either disintegrated into artificial
distinctions or distorted by the intellect's destructurizing and inadequately
reshaping manipulations. It is an irreplacable loss; man's creative endeavor
brings in the significant guideposts for the specifically human business with
life: Man's self-interpretation in existence.
Where do we have to turn in order to retrieve it? Where shall we find the
pristine inspiration proposed to us by the work of art?
In our approach to literature through its dialogue with philosophy it has
been argued that we may recapture the life-significance of literature by
retracing step by step the creative itinerary along which the message of
art has been taking shape prompted by the interplay of the forces of life
with the virtualities of the Human Condition. The "creative forge," in which
these virtualities work and which brings forth a work of art as the crowning
point of all human endeavors, is the locus where we attempt to penetrate as
a means to unraveling its progress.l
At the preceding step of our collective investigations we have pursued the
three main lines of life-significance which the literary creativity establishes:
tragic, epic, poetic. We have proposed them as the "existential coordinates of
the Human Condition" with respect to which the poetic/aesthetic significance
inspired by Imaginatio Creatrix is infused into human life. 2
Yet further questions emerge. Could the lmaginatio Creatrix bring its
novel and original inspirations into human existence without being operative
at the primogenital phase of the human self-individualizing progress in which
the forces of life and the human genius diversify and commune? To what
urgencies of life is the imaginative creativity of man a response? In what
forms do these urgencies confront the human being with respect to the
Human Condition? How do the Human Condition, on the one hand, and the
human genius, on the other hand, reveal themselves in the interplay of life
forces?
xi