Poetry and the Fundamentals
of the Poetic Act
Luiz
Jean Lauand[1]
Associate Professor of the Universidade de São Paulo
(English translation by Alfredo Alves)
«Contemplationis desiderium procedit ex amore obiecti:
quia ubi amor, ibi oculus» - Thomas Aquinas [2]
The work of the brazilian poet
José Gilberto Gaspar needs no introduction:
it is pure poetry, it convinces at first contact. And it speaks for itself! Or rather, it speaks in the language
of things by putting us in direct contact with reality.
Curiously enough, however, it is
there that a difficulty arises: Gaspar's poetry is not, after all, so readily
accessible, for it is reality itself that has become a problem for us.
This problem is the result not of
how the poet speaks, but of a difficulty at the opposite end, that of the listener
and his lack of capacity for hearing. For the disconnected thinking of our days
and the all-too-ready snatching at catchwords have turned us aside from what is
essential, so that what is proffered has become hardly comprehensible: what is
simple seems to have lost its force and we find it difficult to understand the
most clear truths (and in turn, give facile answers to what ought be a problem,
to mystery).
Every once in a while Gaspar points
a warning finger at the insensitivity and the dulling of the intelligence
which beset us on all sides: From «Do not step on a flower/do not trample
on love» («Não pises a flor/não pises
o amor» - p. 5) and the little boy with his electronic playthings, «who
lives today in this world so devoid of fun» («He never had a wooden horse
to play with/nor ever played on a home-made fiddle» - «nunca teve um cavalinho de pau/e não conhece uma violinha de cabaça» [3]),
he goes on to the self-sufficiency of the artificial rose in «The Dialogue
of the Roses, Diálogo das Rosas»
(p. 67) a tract for the times on our fascination with the supposed omnipotence
of technology.
In face of all this muddled
thinking, this absence of a true north, this outright wrong-headedness, what is
pressingly urgent is a rediscovery of what is simple and what is human - the
truth of things.
This is precisely what poetry is
all about, and on this point - as the classical philosophers Aristotle and
Aquinas affirm - the poet is akin to the philosopher «uterque circa mirandum versatur» [4]
both are in the thrall to mirandum,
to that which excites a sense of wonder.
This affirmation, that wonder is
the principle of the act of philosophy/poetry - admiratio est principium philosophandi [5],
says Aquinas [6]
is at the same time an affirmation of a commitment with the simplest everyday
reality. A dulling of the spirit occurs when man is no more capable of wonder,
or needs the sensational, the bizarre, to provoke in himself a substitute
for true wonder, in other words, when he needs ersatz wonder: «To apprehend
in the ordinary, the everyday, that which is uncommon and not the humdrum
everyday, mirandum, that is the principle of philosophy
[....] both the philosopher and the poet concern themselves with the marvellous» [7] .
The poet, then, as Gaspar shows clearly in «I Don't Know, Não Sei» (p. 72), finds his material in the plainest of realities,
in a drop of water, even:
I have
for a long time been noticing
Observing
with interest, what a beautiful thing is nature!
The
night dew falls and starts forming, suddenly,
Just a
tiny drop of water, and how much beauty there is
............................
Just one
tiny drop of water, and suddenly there is so much poetry.
Já há muito tempo que eu venho reparando,
Com interesse observando, como é bela a natureza !
Cai o sereno e vai formando, de repente,
Uma gotinha somente a mostrar tanta beleza.
Equilibrando-se, ela desceu pelo arame
E, na folha do inhame, foi cair com o calor.
Desceu dançando, que bonito o seu bailado
Pelo Sol iluminado, seu vestido é furta-cor.
(...)
De uma gota, de repente, vejam só quanta poesia [8].
The secret is that the poet looks [9]
while others merely see....
It is the «sublime gift» [10],
which Gaspar describes again in «Judgement - Parecer» (p. 76): it is «winged» and «navigates» the seas of thought.
It is a question of sensitivity: It is
not that the poet inhabits a different world [11] ,
but that he sees - with wonder in his eyes - the meaning and the beauty that
exist day after day in the same reality.
For us, however, reality has ceased
to be an object of wonder, and has become nothing but a dull and colourless
thing[12]
.
The unpretentious simplicity of poetic values eludes contemporary man, a creature
stifled by a consumer and mass mentality which has given him the illusion
of self-sufficiency in a world made his creature by technology - with all
its flash and «special effects» - but which has left him discontented and
with a sour taste in his mouth: it is not for nothing that «sophisticated»
is derived from «sophist».
Where are the roots to be found
of this stifling of both genuine philosophy and the poetic act? The clue can
be found in Hölderlin's [13]
very much to the point: «Of what use are poets in times of penury?»
Our difficulty in understanding
poetry - and it is symptomatic that great poets are so scarce in present-day
Brazil! - lies above all in a true appraisal of this penury: «Our times», says
Heidegger, «can hardly understand the question; how are we to understand the
answer given by Hölderlin?». And Hölderlin's answer coincides exactly with the
essence of the great classical tradition of aesthetics: that penury is absence.
The penury of our times has nothing to do with material want, but with the
absence of meaning, absence of being, and the absence for us now of God, who
might possibly exist, but in anderer Welt,
«in another world», not in ours.
True poetry, in the last resort,
can only flourish as affirmation, as the expression of its witness to the
world, and the beauty [14].
«But», to return to Hölderlin's
poem, «ah, my friend, we have arrived too late.... yes there still are Gods,
but they are above us [....] What do I mean? I don't know. Of what use are
poets in times of penury?». This absence should not be regarded as a lament resulting
from a facile sentimentality: it has a deep, solid content perceived
intuitively by Gaspar and expressed in his poetry in a masterly fashion.
And a classic example of this is
«The Dialogue of the Roses», a poem that restates the idea of creation as an
intellectual blueprint conceived by God.
We must remind ourselves - following
as always Aquinas's analysis - that mirandum, wonder over an object, arises from its exemplar formal cause,
God [15]:
«Deus est causa formalis creaturarum» [16] .
To affirm that God is the formal
cause is to affirm that Creation is an intelligent act from which being receives
- from the Logos [17]
- a truth, a ratio, an intelligibility
in its being: «the truth adds to a being a relationship with the exemplar
form» [18]
,
that being, so to speak, is transmitted to human intellect and ingenuity:
the artificial pressupposes the natural - «Ars
enim in sua operatione imitatur naturam» (C. Gentiles III, 10, 10; In
Phys. II 4,6.).
Thus in «The Dialogue of the
Roses», an artificial rose argues with a natural rose and vaunts its
«immortality». The natural rose, in its turn, after demonstrating that, in
reality, the artificial rose never had life evokes double exemplar causality:
You are
a copy of me
It is because
of me that you exist....
........................
So I do
not envy
Your
long existence
You
were made by Man
And I,
by the hands of God!
- Tu és uma cópia minha
É por mim que tu existes...
(...)
Não tenho inveja, portanto
Dos longos dias teus
Foste feita pelo Homem
E eu, pelas mãos de Deus!
The negation of God nowadays is
above all the negation of creation and of exemplar causality: «There is no
human nature, says Sartre, the principal spokesman of contemporary atheism,
since there is no God to conceive it» («puisqu'il
n'y a pas de Dieu pour la concevoir») [19].
In Gaspar we meet the selfsame
word that Sartre and Aquinas use to refer to creative formal causality: to
conceive. Even the simplest of flowers [20], recognizing that it was
created (by the «miraculous» intelligence of God: its little seed «by God
chosen», etc.) preens itself: «not because it is beautiful and sweet-smelling
/ But because it was well conceived».
[1] .
Preface to the volume of poetry
«Nos Braços do Sol» by José Gilberto Gaspar.
Edix, São Paulo.
[2].
«The desire for contemplation arises from the love for its object: for love
opens the eyes of the beholder» (In
Sententiarum III, 35, 1, 2).
[3]. «Toy
Fiddle» («Violinha de Cabaça»,
p. 65)
[4] . In Metaph. I, 3, 4.
[5] . Summa Theologiae I-II,
41, 4 ad 5.
[6] .
Both Plato (Teeteto, 155d) and
Aristotle (Metaph., A, 2, 982b)
had affirmed that wonder is the arkhé
(the principle) of philosophy.
[7].
Pieper, Josef Was heisst Philosophieren?,
München, Kösel, 8a. ed. 1980, p. 63.
[8] .
«The Tiny Drop of Water - A Gotinha»
(p. 17).
[9] .
«Look with attention» is what the verse in «Message, Mensagem» says again (p.
15).
[10] .
«The Gift , O dom» (p. 34).
[11].
«Parecer» begins by affirming, «Sing, Poet, yours is another world. Canta, Poeta, que teu mundo é outro».
It
is - as the poem itself shows - the same world but lived in on a «larger
scale, dimensão maior», and that
is what gives the poet possession of «all that exists»: he looks while everyone
else merely sees.
[12].
«Causa alicuius usus idest utilitatis...», as Aquinas says of non-poetry
and non-philosophy in the quotation from In
Metaph. I, 3, 4
[13] .
From the poem «Brot und Wein».
[14].
Or, at least, as an absence felt as such, experienced as a form of deep
longing for its created character - and to the presence of God.
[15].
If we were making a more thoroughgoing analysis, we would arrive at the
consideration that God is also the efficient and final cause (De veritate
I, 2, 6, 3).
[16] .
De veritate I, 2, 3, 11 or I,
3, 1, 3.
[17] .
«Verbum est forma exemplaris» Summa
Theologiae I, 3, 8 ad 2.
[18] .
Verum (addit ad ens) relationem ad formam exemplarem (In Sent. I,d.8,1,3).
[19].
The creative act of God is an intelligent act, says Aquinas, like that of
the craftsman who realizes the form that his mind hasconceived (quam mente concipit - S. Theol. I, 15, 1).
[20].
«The Branch and the Flower, O ramo
e a flor» (p. 70).