 |
| Wittgenstein & Heidegger: Hedwig |
Darkness, darkness, the consuming dark -
Alive at this night’s beating heart.
What insightful hand or eye could fathom your elusive snare?...
Blake wrote only of the dark’s own creatures;
Not the dark’s very darkness.
The darkness doesn't allow any sensual access to itself;
Save for that of sight.
It can’t be touched or heard.
No smell gives it away when it hides in a cranny,
Or when it fills an empty hall.
The dark’s body-mass forms an unbounded solidity
When at its purest- in the earth’s belly,
Or when alive at a choking-forest’s heart -
Where branch strangles branch
And leaves weave a canopy to snuff out the moonlight.
Such a perfect emptiness
Is as real as a concrete wall.
Far from being a nothing.
Or if a nothing,
A nothing whose non-being is something to fear.
Something to cognise.
You see, Reason’s light can’t shine
When a dark place has snuffed it out.
And yet more evil’s done in the pure light
Than in dark’s obscurity.
Do not fear what the dark hides.
You’ll be hidden from others hidden from you.
Fear the darkness instead.
The darkness itself.
Fear what lives at its heart.
At your heart.
*********************
*) The "nothing nots" is (as far as I remember) Rudolf Carnap's ironic translation of a passage from Martin Heidegger.
No comments:
Post a Comment