Re: [-empyre-] poetics...

Kenneth Newby <knewby@sfu.ca> · Sat, 7 Jan 2006 18:09:57 -0800

Hi Jim,
The poetics of form you imply remind me of a variety of interesting 
alternatives to the Aristotelian narrative arc that have come up within 
the Euro-American thread of culture.   Ars Combinatoria, the 
Musicalische Wurfelspiel of Mozart, Haydn and others, English change 
ringing of permutations on sets of bells, Schoenberg's serial 
formalism, Cage and Cunningham's exploration of compositional process, 
Oulipo to name a few... all interesting proposals for other ways of 
doing it.
The south and south-east Asian examples are of particular interest in 
that they are typically made up of profoundly integrated 
multidisciplinary forms: music, narrative, dance, dramatic elements, 
character, scenography, projections on screens, etc.  And in the 
Balinese example all of this complexity  is orchestrated with an 
openness that allows the work to respond to the local characteristics 
of its performance.
Kenneth.
On 7-Jan-06, at 6:24 AM, Jim Andrews wrote:
After I posted, I thought of Aleksandra's posts that talk about the

process-oriented, braided 'poetics' of Balinese drama versus the less

process-oriented poetics of Aristotle and much of western literature.

Certainly writers involved in digital media have wrestled with the 
apparent

disjunction between the structure of western narratives and drama, on 
the

one hand, and the more process-oriented possibilities of new media. It 
may

be that the sort of thing you and Aleksandra note--that useful 
paradigms for

dramatic, process-oriented art exist (as in Balinese drama)--could be 
useful

to writers and others. Interesting that the 'braided process' approach 
is

not only of drama but song and dance...Greek theatre also had these

elements...it seems likely that the roots of Greek drama go back to

religious rites/rituals (so much work done on that matter by the 
'Cambridge

anthropologists' Jane Harrison et all).
I wonder if you know when the Balinesians acquired writing? Much later 
than

their dramatic form? It would be natural for writing to be strongly

influential on form emerging from cultures that have writing.
I'm currently reading one of the better books I've encountered in a 
long

time, called Snow by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk. Though there are

conventional progressions between chapters in the narrative, you can 
pick it

up at any point and its interesting to read from there. That's a fairly

'simple' poetics, in a sense, but difficult to achieve: excellence at 
every

point. I suppose it doesn't hurt that the main character is a poet.
The approach is hinted at in the first paragraph of chapter one 
(titled The

Journey to Kars).
"The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus 
driver. If

this were the beginning of a poem, he would have called the thing he 
felt

inside him the silence of snow."
A wonderful introduction to the character's poetics--and the 
novelist's.

Poetics as what we mediate experience and language with.
ja
http://subtle.net/empyre
http://vispo.com

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