Me Three

Poetry and Contamination

By Marcela Romero

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To the untrained eye, all words are the same. A text is just an accumulation of graphemes that carries the intention of communicating something. In recent days, if this hypothetical eye were to run over the pages of the newspapers, it would find that all words are in fact always the same, and there is just one message.

It is indeed difficult to believe one’s eyes these days. Even more so when, after a brief training acquired by daily practice, anyone can see that there are nuances and shadows in that solid block that texts seem to be. There are words that are endlessly repeated and others that are silenced. Let us remember that no more than two months ago, the White House first organized and then canceled an event in which American poets were supposed to read their work and to let their words express their dissent from official American discourse.

This fashion of keeping poetry outside the limits of the political enterprise is by no means new; there is a thread here, dating back to Plato’s Republic, that tells the story of the poetic language being dismissed for various reasons by philosophers or other non-poets. Certainly, we should mention that the relationship between philosophy and poetry is not as simple as a consistent mutual exclusion, for there is also a parallel history, at least as ancient as the former, of situations where politics, philosophy, and science have reached out for poetry to take over in the form of a quote, when the limits of these disciplines’ explanatory ability have proven insufficient.

Today, when more than one border is being closed, or at least severely patrolled, the limit between official discourse and dissenting voices is no exception. Plato’s words are echoing many centuries later. The words of the Republic may well be suitable to represent the official stand of the US’ public policies today:

You and I [politicians and philosophers,] are not poets now, but we are founding a city, and it is proper that founders should know the general lines which the poets must follow in telling their stories. These lines they will not be allowed to cross.

Here we encounter the mark of origin for the project of censorship that is alive and well nowadays, which pretends to keep something safe from a potential danger. “Thou shall not cross these lines” say the philosopher, the politician, and the censor to the poet.

If Socrates’ aim was to keep the Republic - the public thing - safe, it is only logical that we should ask, “Safe from what? What is the great danger poetry embodies? Is all poetry dangerous?” Being questioned about these matters, Plato’s text responds:

Which stories do you mean? said he, and why do you object to them? Because of what one should object to first and most, especially if the fictitious is not well told. - As for instance?
Whenever a story gives a bad image of the nature of gods and heroes, like a painter drawing a bad picture, unlike the model he is wanting to portray.

According to Plato, the first danger is deviation, producing a bad image that is untruthful to its model: gods and heroes. What is at stake here is the presupposed idea of perfection and purity represented by the model. That is the kernel that must be protected from certain kinds of poetry.

If my opinion is to prevail, he said, we will accept only the pure style which imitates the good man only.

At this point, it is clear that contamination must be censored, and the punishment comes in the fashion of another deviation: that of the gaze of the censor. In Republic, poets are not being persecuted - on the contrary, they can even be celebrated - they are simply not allowed into the city. The philosopher turns his gaze elsewhere, taking little interest in what should become of this exiled poet.

It seems that if a man who in his cleverness can become many persons and imitate all things [i.e. a gifted poet] should arrive in our city and want to give a performance of his poems, we should bow down before him as being holy, wondrous, and sweet, but we should tell him that there is no such man in our city and that it is not lawful that there should be. We would pour myrrh on his head and crown him with wreaths, and send him away to another city.

Today, of course, that other city would only exist as oblivion. If a poet is removed from the system that the city represents, he will just dwell in some kind of limbo, maybe in a small group inside the city (for there is no “outside the city” these days), walking the blurry path between underground culture and oblivion.

In other words, once the limits have been set, the threat of invasion becomes plausible, and if what is being guarded is purity, then the threat is the possibility of contamination. To avoid this danger, the immediate response of the censors is the reinforcement of the surveillance of borders and the expulsion of the agents of this contamination. Admittedly, we are not speaking of some phenomenon that occurs in poetry only, but still in this realm we can find examples of this exclusion of the different: the Other.

José Lezama Lima (1910-1976), a Cuban poet, is relevant to our case for two reasons. First, he spent all his creative life writing poetry and about poetry in a way that the critics never considered pure. And second, his astoundingly rich poetry has remained of interest to just a handful of passionate connoisseurs; he has been denied entrance to the city.

The majority of Lezama’s essays on poetry can be grouped around his most ambitious project; namely, to compose an alternative history that would revise civilization tracking down the poetic image; that is, following the relevant contributions to the poetic sensibility and language. The Imaginary Eras, as the project was called, was intended to be a sort of Poetics of History, in the same sense that Hegel built his Philosophy of History. Nevertheless, the main difference between these two projects would be that Lezama’s did not have a telos to pursue. He predicted no end to the poetic image, for the central aim of poetry is to insinuate the shape of things to come, and that is a perpetual process.

According to the Cuban maestro, then, poetry is a responsible agent that keeps the creative impulse of humankind alive. It works in the primordial mist of non-existence, where things have not yet come to being, and it slowly, through the work of the poet, creates what did not exist previously, a new image, a new word. Throughout the historical revision made by The Imaginary Eras, this primal kind of creation is called poiesis, which is at the same time the Greek word for poetry and for doing. With this move, Lezama recovers the original openness of this term, which could be used to refer almost any action, regardless of its artistic or “poetic” value.

Furthermore, what is important for Lezama is not the transcendental character of poetry, but rather its unpredictable and non-causal behavior, which renders it uncontrollable and “infectious” because it is capable of transmitting its creative impulse. This is at the same time poetry’s contaminating character and its ethos. According to this project, the ethical responsibility of the poet - or the great man, for that matter - resides in poesis, not in consciousness, as for Hegel.

Throughout The Imaginary Eras, Lezama is able to demonstrate that the “dialectic” of metaphor, with its non-rational dynamic that defies the laws of causality, has impressed important historical marks. Taking examples from ancient civilizations such as the Etruscans and the Greeks, and from texts such as the Bible, romantic, and even modern poetry, Lezama makes his point. If we follow him until the end, we will be convinced that metaphor has as many chances to explain history as do the Hegelian consciousness and spirit.

In addition to mirroring Hegel’s project with such scandalous agents as creative compulsions, poetry, images, and non-causality, Lezama is considered an outrageous, contaminating, and impure poet because he, like those expelled from the Republic, can create a world with his words that has no resemblance to the ideal of purity embodied by the gods, or -its modern version- the rational system.

In a time when gods, heroes and reason have failed to preserve the dignity of humankind, we should be able to go back to some alternative histories that could allow us to rely on creation rather than on devastation. Lezama’s work is a hand extended into the night; all of its richness has been expelled long ago from “the public thing.” The attitude of the critics regarding the poetic project of the Cuban maestro is the same as Socrates’ move of praising the greatness of the poet and then quickly turning away his gaze, having sent him to the next city.

The neglectful treatment that the critic gives to Lezama’s works becomes evident when we try to find a translation of his essays or poems. Only Paradiso, his monumental novel, is available in translation to English, thanks to Gregory Rabassa, who achieved a remarkable outcome in embracing such a titanic enterprise. But it is not just in the international scene that Lezama is disregarded by the editorial industry. Even in Latin America or Spain, it is difficult to find current editions of La Dignidad de la Poesía, Esferaimagen, or Las Eras Imaginarias.

Certainly, there is a sort of fascination that comes with being a member of that ultra exclusive club of José Lezama Lima’s loving readers, but this one is a dangerous fascination that can lead to the progressive disappearance of this exciting world built up by the generosity of the Lezama’s imagination, in which the poetic image is the potency that keeps human history going.

Internationally celebrated Argentinean writer Julio Cortázar, one of the most enthusiastic readers and critics José Lezama ever had, once wrote that “he shall have his Blanchot,” meaning that he hoped that someone like the great critic Maurice Blanchot could rescue the maestro from oblivion. Today, though, the possibility of that occurring is sadly diminishing in a world of closed boundaries and fear of contamination. Although it may be time to take the challenge and read Lezama’s poetry, inspired by his best known phrase: “Only what is difficult is stimulating.”

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Marcela Romero is a masters' student in Liberal Studies at New School University. She writes about - among other topics - performance arts, poetry, translation and critical theory. She can be contacted at [email protected].