I won't argue with your personal experience with the Tao Te Ching. — Noble Dust

For what it's worth, when the "My Favorite Verses from the Tao Te Ching" discussion was active, some people made the same sorts of comments as you are about whether it is possible to really get what Lao Tzu was saying.

I can't make any sense of the idea of a musical metaphysic. For me music evokes feelings; among them feelings of the sublime, feelings of awe, feelings of reverence but none of those feelings are inextricably linked to any particular metaphysical conjecture or belief as far as I can tell. The same goes for poetry and the visual arts, but then they, being more capable of representation, can present metaphysical ideas in ways that music cannot, except more vaguely by association with the church or whatnot. — Janus

This matches the thoughts I had when I read the OP. Not to get into an infinite loop, but is the claim that metaphysics is not applicable to music and other art a metaphysical statement.

As I promised, here is my more complete response to your post.

As I noted before, I really enjoyed this post. It gave me a challenge to get off my butt and try to articulate my feelings about what poetry, and by extension, other art means. My position - poetry doesn’t mean anything beyond the experience of reading it or listening to it. It doesn’t point to anything else, which is my understanding of what meaning means. It is only about itself.

In the end, the only thing I can tell you about a poem is what it made me think, feel, see, hear, remember…Much analysis, explication, criticism of literature describes definitively what the written work means. If you read more than one analysis, you often find that it definitively means different things to different people, which defeats the purpose of the analysis.

That’s not quite right. I’ve read discussions of a poem that I found really helpful, including a particular one for lines in Frost’s “Wild Grapes.” To begin with:

Grapes, I knew grapes from having seen them last year.
One bunch of them, and there began to be
Bunches all round me growing in white birches,
The way they grew round Leif the Lucky's German;

Every time I read the poem, I wondered who Leif the Lucky’s German was. I knew that Leif the Lucky was Leif Erickson, who is supposed to have been the first European to discover the new world, which he called Vineland because of all the grapes. I searched the web and found an analysis that indicates the German refers to was Erickson’s foster father. I still am not sure what his foster father’s role was in the discovery. The analysis also includes explanations of several allusions to Greek mythology that were helpful. This information didn’t change how I experienced the poem dramatically, but the additional context added color, dimension, and satisfaction.

That analysis didn’t tell me what the poem meant. It wasn’t an explication. Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite “interpretations” - It’s a god-awful analysis of Frost’s “A Dust of Snow.”

There is one word that Frost uses that pervades a certain meaning throughout the rest of the poem: hemlock. We associate hemlock poison with death, specifically the Socrates’s proverbial willful death. In the Phaedo, Socrates claims philosophy (the pursuit of wisdom) is ultimately a preparation for death. It is this recognition of death that inspires the narrator to have a change of heart: once he realizes he is condemned to death, his day takes on a whole new meaning.

The connection between hemlock and death in this poem is one I’ve come across in several analyses. The problem, of course, is that the hemlock that killed Socrates is a completely different plant than the hemlock tree, which is a relative of the pine tree common in New England. I have one in my yard.

As for the analysis of “Assasi” you included in your post… I didn’t read it all, but some of it I liked. In particular the upfront questions were useful. They could help a reader pay attention more carefully to aspects of the poem the reviewer found important. Not to tell the reader how to experience the poem, but to guide her through it in a way that the reviewer found helpful personally. That’s what a good critic, or disk jockey, does - guides you through their experience of a piece. Gives you a taste of their taste, if you will. That can help a reader explore the poem. It gives some structure to the experience without telling them what it really means.

For example, from the analysis you linked to:

The opening stanza begins by introducing the first character, describing him in some detail: “The dwarf with his hands on backwards sat, slumped like a half-filled sack on tiny twisted legs from which sawdust might run,” That first phrase, “The dwarf” immediately makes the man seem less than human. We know that dwarfism is a medical condition that causes disability, but the word “dwarf” has many other, perhaps more immediate, associations. It might make us think of characters from Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings. These are fictional, mythical characters, which makes the disabled beggar seem not fully human.

This is not what came to mind when I read that stanza at all. When I read it, I got an effective visual image of the dwarf, but all that baloney about Harry Potter left me really cold. If the writer had just noted that this was what came to his mind when he read it, that would be fine, but that’s not generally how it’s done, as I think the “hemlock” example shows.

I’ll end there. I don’t think I’ve made my point as clearly as I would have liked, but at least it’s a start.

Thanks for this; really appreciate it.
So much to be getting on with. This whole thread is thought-provoking.
I need time to read and digest.
In amongst all the other stuff that is filling my days/mind.
Dazed mind :scream:

Talk later :sparkle:

--------
Still waiting for @Gus Lamarch to respond to earlier posts and questions.

I can understand your questions around Gus's thread about the thread title and I am also aware of the problematic nature of metaphysics in relation to subjective experiences connected to poetry and other art forms. But, I do have my own question related to this, which is where does creativity come from?

I know that it is wired in the brain, and a many writers have suggested that it is connected to the left and right hemisphere. However, while we are moving on it does still leave the question of the underlying source of images and ideas which come into consciousness. We have the whole tradition of ideas as Forms which goes back to Plato and I believe that Jung draws upon this in his ideas about the collective unconscious and archetypes. However, I believe that many people find Jung's ideas as being outdated, so I would ask how people view the source of the flow of images. I know that in poetry there is a focus on language and sensory experiences, but it does still, from my point of view, have to be connected to underlying consciousness itself, because the writing of poetry is connected with conscious interpretation of experience, and, in general, imagination. In other words, I believe that it involves questions about imagination as a source for creativity.

Noted.

This matches the thoughts I had when I read the OP. Not to get into an infinite loop, but is the claim that metaphysics is not applicable to music and other art a metaphysical statement. — T Clark

I don't think the statement that the arts, and the various kinds of aesthetic experiences associated with them do not support any particular metaphysical viewpoint is a metaphysical statement. I think it is merely an expression of the understanding that no metaphysical position is entailed by the human experience of the arts. It seems to be more of a phenomenological statement than a metaphysical.

The arts might be more likely to lead to an intuition that there is something greater, a sublime or higher being or order, than they would be to lead to an intuition that there is nothing but the movements of atoms in the void, but there is no logical entailment there such that we could say that a higher or divine order is a rational inference from the arts.

I think the idealist/ materialist polarity is very naively stereotyped, and there is room for an infinite range of nuance with no need to commit to any propositionally determinate metaphysic.To me the arts are suggestive of the ineliminability of mystery, and the advantage of learning to live with uncertainty. Metaphysical ideas are to be played with, and inspired by, not to be clung to as Absolute Truths. That's my take anyway.

Metaphysical ideas are to be played with, and inspired by, not to be clung to as Absolute Truths. — Janus

I agree.

[ Thanks to everyone for the questions, answers and statements; I will try to settle all doubts about my initial writings, and in advance, I apologize if I forget to talk about any point already mentioned and that should be better discussed; it's great to know that interest in the "epistemology of poetry" doesn't just afflict me. ]

And I don't think art - poetry, music, visual art - are about emotions in particular. At least not just emotions. I think they're about something that can't be explained or understood, only expressed and experienced. — T Clark

And can "emotions" be understood and explained? In fact, if we are debating "instinctive and/or biological emotions", they can be objectively detailed so that in a basic research, all their causes and effects can have a rational and logical conclusion.

However, if we are discussing a philosophical concept of "emotion", which, as it is already a "concept in itself", includes metaphysics in itself, something that can be "experienced and expressed" being pre-mediated by an idealizing conception must necessarily be plausible in terms of understanding and comprehension, whether this understandness is subjective or not.

None of this is to say that some metaphysic of Poetry doesn't exist, but if it does, it's at best apprehended by the poet at the time of writing and possibly at no other time, but probably not by readers, and certainly not by dilettante philosophers hundreds of years later. Just off the top of my head; I probably missed some things — Noble Dust

Fact, it is very likely that (1) or the poetic metaphysical "substance" is something completely subjective, where only the creator and momentary projector of such writing is the only one able to "grasp" the true meaning and "essence" of the text, or (2) the poetic metaphysics is a "quasi-field of substances" from which ideas are drawn and put into existence through the human mind - and by the very end of the process: - the writing of such a concept -, which afterwards - and externally to the "creator of such sayings" - and subjectively, can be discovered through the linguistic analysis of such a poem - as, for example, the Sufis were able to do -.

Take, for example, Khatai's first poem which I quoted in my original post; in a deeper analysis of the linguistic means used there, we can, with certainty, affirm that the "ousia" of the first text is the concept of "Faith", so - through this interpretation of poetic metaphysics - the "world of ideas" of the concept of "Poetry" can be reached by others than the writer.

the OP is not restricting the term "metaphysics"/"metaphysical" to a school or period of English poetry, as Sam Johnson did. Rather, he appears to be using those terms to describe the commonalities of all poerty, the purpose and intent behind the "poetic enterprise". In this, Gus seems to be suggesting that the impulse behind the poetic undertaking is the elucidation of fundamental truths of the human experience of life. — Michael Zwingli

:100:

What is meant by an 'authentic metaphysics' ? — Amity

"A field of metaphysics distinct and unique to the imaginative world of general metaphysics"

So, poetry itself is supposed to be able to deconstruct its meaning to enable an understanding of its 'metaphysical essence' ? Or a 'substance' such as 'Faith' or 'Heredity/Glory' ?
What is 'substantial', in 'metaphysical essence', about 'Faith' — Amity

The thesis defended by me in my original publication is the Sufi linguistic-mystical analysis, which, through the use of tools used in the construction of language, during the development of such a text - poetry -, allows, after completion, with a deconstructive analysis of the tool used - linguistic - and with a "temporal" - mystical - analysis of the entire process of the production of the text - beginning, middle and end - the "substance" - idea - of such work to be understood.

What on earth does this mean ? — Amity

"Poetry" could only comprise an authentic metaphysics if the individual linguistic methods of each text produced were, not only its bases, but also its processes and conclusions.

In summary: - Khata'i, Muhibbi, etc... when searching for the essence of some work they had written, they looked only for those where they used only one method from beginning to end - not only materially, but also consciously - since conception of the idea with the same method - -.

Isnt it the case that it is the particular CONTENT conveyed by any of the innumerable modes of cultural expression within an era ( including poetry) that manifests a mataphysics? For instance , if one were to delimit a cultural history of poetry in the West, would one not be able to correlate the changes in the way poets considered their craft over the centuries with changes in metaphysical outlook? Doesn’t classical Greek poetry reflect a different metaphysical thinking than the poetry of the Renaissance or the Modern or postmodern eras? — Joshs

I personally believe not, because the idea presented here - in the original publication - does not defend a "plurality" of "metaphysical fields" that differ in culture, religion, geography, etc...

The point made is as follows:

"If the metaphysical field of the concept of "Poetry" exists and can be perceived - as evidenced by the Sufi poetry -, whether through language, mysticism, etc..., it is more than plausable that more fields of knowledge also contain their own individual metaphysics, which should be further researched and analysed."

"Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love.
The most beautiful among the beautiful ...
My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf ...
My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this room ...
My Istanbul, my karaman, the earth of my Anatolia
My Badakhshan, my Baghdad and Khorasan
My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of misery ...
I'll sing your praises always
I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy."

My favorite poem.

What makes me so fond of such writing is that, if we use the Sufi method of poetic analysis, its "substance" can be found even though its "core implicit concept" is completely unknowable - for whom I am in love? -, which makes it an "existential poem" - which exists, but without purpose, and which can be given purpose by the individual will of Man -:

Core explicit concept = I am in love
Core implicit concept = (?) - For whom I am in love? -
Substance = Love

"For whom I am in love?
You may answer this question
But only do it mentally
Because the love of Poetry
Rages jealous deeply"

And can "emotions" be understood and explained? In fact, if we are debating "instinctive and/or biological emotions", they can be objectively detailed so that in a basic research, all their causes and effects can have a rational and logical conclusion. — Gus Lamarch

The sonics and harmonics of a piano, the anatomy and physiology of the ear, and the neurology and cognitive processing of the nervous system can be explained. Is that the same as the experience of music?

However, if we are discussing a philosophical concept of "emotion", which, as it is already a "concept in itself", includes metaphysics in itself, something that can be "experienced and expressed" being pre-mediated by an idealizing conception must necessarily be plausible in terms of understanding and comprehension, whether this understandness is subjective or not. — Gus Lamarch

I don't see any reason to believe that emotion is or must be "pre-mediated by an idealizing conception," or that it "must necessarily be plausible in terms of understanding and comprehension." That certainly is not the way I experience it.

Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight.
My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan, my one and only love.
The most beautiful among the beautiful ... — Gus Lamarch

While I was reading this, I thought of this:



Which you posted in the "Beautiful Things" thread a few months ago. I think I see a connection between the two. Am I wrong about that?

Poetry is to thought as makeup is to a woman. A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness. The metaphysics of beauty is simply our dissatisfaction (dukkha) with reality and thus our obsession with illusion (maya). Turns Buddhism which believes maya is dukkha on its head. — TheMadFool

I agree with the sentiment!

It's just that there are two large books of poems in Early Buddhist scriptures, Verses of the Elder Monks (Theragatha) and Verses of the Elder Nuns (Therigatha), and other poems in the scriptures.

How is that a good peom can be written about the bad? — TheMadFool

Such is the power of poetry. If you read the above mentioned poems, they still have that aspect of "beautifying the ugly" to them. The effort it takes to become enlightened is great, much hard work, and the poems afford a dignified distance toward it, or else one would be crushed by it.

As I’ve said in several recent posts, I think that poetry doesn’t mean anything beyond the experience of reading it or listening to it. As an illustration, I’ll provide a description of my experience of a poem I really like. “Dust of Snow,” as always, Robert Frost.

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

I really like this poem. First off - it’s really short. It was easy to memorize and when I quote it, people think I’m erudite. I tried to memorize “Two Tramps in Mud Time” once - nine stanzas, 72 lines. That didn’t turn out well. Also, it’s funny and Frost uses one of my favorite animals, no surprise, a crow. Not everyone sees the humor in the poem and I get that. I don’t know how idiosyncratic my reading is.

First stanza. Light, amusing. Very visual. I can see the man walking through the woods after a snow. That’s something that happens regularly in Frost poems. The snow is deep. He’s wearing boots. I can see the tree with the crow sitting at the top. Hemlocks are dark green with short needles ranked on many short branchlets. If that's a word. I’ve seen crows in the tops of trees plenty of times. Sometimes one, sometimes five, sometimes more. They’re usually noisy. Rambunctious. Very social. They’re really smart. It was clear to me the first time I read this poem that the crow shook the snow down on the man on purpose. That image always makes me smile. Having snow fall down on me from a tree branch has happened to me plenty of times. I can feel it going down my neck. Annoying.

Second stanza - More serious. Darker. It also makes me look back at the first stanza and think more about it. It seems like something has happened that the man regrets. So, he feels unhappy, sad, maybe guilty. It’s later in the day. Maybe he’s walking home afterwards or maybe he’s walking in the woods to think things over, brood, head down, not paying attention to where he’s going. And then the crow. He looks up. He sees the crow. He can see the crow looking down at him. He smiles. Maybe he laughs a little.

Why does this change his mood. I can think of a couple of reasons. First, it makes him break out of his introspection and look around at the day, the woods. That’s happened to me plenty of times. You just shake your head and get on with things. There’s another way to think about it that I really like. I like to think that at the moment the crow and the man are looking at each other, there’s a recognition. The crow made a joke. They both know it’s funny. Maybe the crow would cackle a little. I guess not. Frost would have mentioned that. The crow should have cackled. It’s hard to brood when your dignity has been tweaked. When someone has seen you for what you are.

As I said, this is not what the poem means. It is how it makes me feel. What it makes me see, think, feel. I don't expect anyone else to get the same things as I did or see it the same way.

The sonics and harmonics of a piano, the anatomy and physiology of the ear, and the neurology and cognitive processing of the nervous system can be explained. Is that the same as the experience of music? — T Clark

In a objective, scientific, logic way, it is the "meaning" of the word "Music", but if the specificity to be studied is found in the "concept" of such object of study - in this case, the "essence" of what is "music" -, philosophically, this is something we are still unable to answer.

However, under the Sufi poetic perspective, its method of analyzing the concept of "Poetry", it is evident that a "field of ideas" exists for every written poetic text, therefore, it is concluded - even if theoretically - that the "Philosophy of Arts" does imply something different from the scientific statements and methods.

experience of music? — T Clark

We differ on the point where you take any and all "art" to be merely the "experiential moment" of such art - be it Poetry, Music, Images, etc... - which I - and many other philosophers and artists - disagree, because an existential process needs a metaphysical starting point - in terms of something artistic, "any real process, initially needs to be ideal" - which, if it does not exist, cannot be projected by nature.

"That which is "Real", must be, necessarily, and beforehand, "Ideal".

Let's take as an example, the portrait of Shahanshah - King of Kings - aka, Emperor - Isma'il I - or as I have been referring him to, "Khata'i", his pen name -:


(Portrait of Isma'il I by Tiziano)

Isma'il lived, and died, and his features lived and died with him; what we have as a record - in the case of his portrait above - is an "idealization" of something that was once real, and which, through the reception to the painter's consciousness - Tiziano's -, goes through the process of being projected again to existence as something real, but totally different from its previous conception - what was once something real - a human being - became an idea, that then became real again - as a portrait - -.

Even though the painter had personally seen Isma'il, what we have - through the artistic metaphysics - from the concept of "Isma'il", is Titian's idea made real.

This can also be applied to another exemplary scenario - where the concept did not arise from something previously real -:


(Conquest of Shirvan by Isma'il in 1514 AD)

The difference between the image above, for the aforementioned portrait of Khata'i, is that this one was not based on any "previous realism", as its painter did not witness such an event - the "idea" was completely created and processed by the painter, independently of reality -.

A poem set to music:



Article on the poem:

https://slowlander.com/2019/09/10/split-the-lark-and-youll-find-the-music/

We differ on the point where you take any and all "art" to be merely the "experiential moment" of such art - be it Poetry, Music, Images, etc... - which I - and many other philosophers and artists - disagree, because an existential process needs a metaphysical starting point - in terms of something artistic, "any real process, initially needs to be ideal" - which, if it does not exist, cannot be projected by nature. — Gus Lamarch

You're right. We do disagree. I'm thinking now about whether the disagreement you and I are having is a metaphysical one. My understanding of metaphysical statements is that they are neither true nor false. If that's right, we don't have to resolve our differences, we just pick the meaning that works the best for each of us. I'll just say, to the extent I am an artist, my way of seeing things is consistent with my artistic process and experience

Isma'il lived, and died, and his features lived and died with him; what we have as a record - in the case of his portrait above - is an "idealization" of something that was once real, and which, through the reception to the painter's consciousness - Tiziano's -, goes through the process of being projected again to existence as something real, but totally different from its previous conception - what was once something real - a human being - became an idea, that then became real again - as a portrait - -. — Gus Lamarch

I guess I don't see the need to put an extra step, idealization. In my experience with writing poems, which is limited, they usually start out with a feeling, an unspoken experience. Often the poem comes to me as a visual image. It's a neat feeling. Once, after a period of anxiety, a sense of peace came over me and the image of a horse came into my mind. Then this poem wrote itself out onto the page:

Peace, like a yoke on my neck
I feel the weight pulling me down,
The harness pulling me back
I feel my feet straining against the earth
Like a plow horse
Waiting to feel his master snap the reins.

I have no idea where that came from. From the sky I guess. I don't hang around horses or have any strong feelings about them. There was no in between step. Right from the unspoken feeling, to the image, to the page. Whether or not that's a good poem, I love it. It was magical.

My understanding of metaphysical statements is that they are neither true nor false. If that's right, we don't have to resolve our differences, we just pick the meaning that works the best for each of us. — T Clark

Metaphysics, regardless of the situation and context in which it is applied, completely depends on the idealization and subjective contemplation of existence - in the case of a painting, idealized, and which, later, will be projected to the world, for example -, therefore, metaphysical concepts, by themselves, do not contain an essence of "absoluteness" - true or false, 1 or 2, etc... -, however, when captured by human consciousness, and, through the understanding of such Being, this metaphysical concept comes to have a limiting and real - true or false/1 or 2 -, "essence".

Take Khata'i's painting as an example again:

While in the world of ideas - pure metaphysics -, the concept of "Isma'il" can be:

(1) or idea;
(2) or real;
(3) or idea and real.

When the idea is perceived by an existing consciousness, the first limitation is found for the concept:

(1) or idea;
(2) or real.

And when, finally projected to the world through the "physical", such a concept becomes self-limiting:

(1) Idea or Real.

A concept can only be understood from 2 or more truths or falsehoods within the pure metaphysical field - without the intervention of the physical/real -.

Our disagreement arises from the moment you assert that even in existence, which is a minor and more limiting field than that of metaphysics, concepts can still exist without the perception of "absoluteness", which is what makes up reality.

In my experience with writing poems, which is limited, they usually start out with a feeling, an unspoken experience. Often the poem comes to me as a visual image. It's a neat feeling — T Clark

You, without understanding, affirmed my previous argument with this passage.

The concept itself, without "idealization", cannot become "real"; you needed to capture it - idealization - so that you could project it to the "real" world.

Our disagreement arises from the moment you assert that even in existence, which is a minor and more limiting field than that of metaphysics, concepts can still exist without the perception of "absoluteness", which is what makes up reality. — Gus Lamarch

The concept itself, without "idealization", cannot become "real"; you needed to capture it - idealization - so that you could project it to the "real" world. — Gus Lamarch

You think about art and the philosophy of art really differently that I do. I don't think that means either of us is wrong. My understanding of aesthetics goes along with the rest of my understanding of how the world works. I sometimes call that pragmatic. Yours seems more idealistic. But those are just labels. We are what we are; we see what we see, we feel what we feel.

I've enjoyed this discussion. You started a good thread.

Article on the poem:
https://slowlander.com/2019/09/10/split-the-lark-and-youll-find-the-music/ — PoeticUniverse

Thank you so much for the video clip with beautiful song to the poem.
And link to a fascinating and informative article.

I have a slim volume of selected poems by Emily Dickinson - Fall River Press, 2016.
My favourite. I love everything about it. I've hardly opened it. Until now.
To read 'Split the Lark'.

I would never have understood this fully without reading the article.

This part stood out as being particularly relevant to the thread:

In other words she wants the song to be enjoyed for what it is, and that to look too far into it misses the whole point. The song is supposed to be beautiful. Yes, the song has meaning in that it calls out for a mate, but it also has its own beauty as separated from any further meaning. The song and the poem can be enjoyed just by listening to it. One doesn’t need to understand synesthesia to love how “Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled” sounds – it just rolls off the tongue, it’s pleasant to hear and to say. Yes, it carries a deeper meaning, but it first should be enjoyed at the most sensual level, it should speak directly to the heart before it speaks to the mind. The rainbow can just be a beautiful experience – the possibility that it also carries a more significant meaning is almost irrelevant. — slowlander - split the lark and you'll find the music

This is how I feel about poetry. First, to enjoy it for the immediate effect.
By listening.
Then, a second closer look, to explore further...

***

The poem even mentions the lute.
An instrument I picked up on my travels; following Plato's Symposium and Ancient Greek poetry/music. *
How strange all the connections...

'Saved for your ear when lutes be old'.

:sparkle:


*
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/588297
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/588322

What is meant by an 'authentic metaphysics' ?
— Amity

"A field of metaphysics distinct and unique to the imaginative world of general metaphysics" — Gus Lamarch

Well, this just leads to more questions e.g. What is the 'imaginative world of general metaphysics' ?
Why should your definition be more 'authentic' than that of others who study metaphysics ?
What is it that makes it 'distinct and unique' ?

So, when you talk of 'metaphysics' this is an, arguably, narrow and perhaps 'superior' perspective ?

Metaphysics, regardless of the situation and context in which it is applied, completely depends on the idealization and subjective contemplation of existence — Gus Lamarch

I'm not sure that this is right. It is such a strong claim.
However, I have only looked at the subject of 'Metaphysics' lightly. *
There is so much to the history of theories and any practical 'applications'.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/metaphysics/#toc

***

Our disagreement arises from the moment you assert that even in existence, which is a minor and more limiting field than that of metaphysics, concepts can still exist without the perception of "absoluteness", which is what makes up reality. — Gus Lamarch

Are you saying that 'existence is a minor and more limiting field than that of metaphysics' ?
That doesn't seem right either -
Again, about 'Concepts' - more to consider...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/#toc

Are you saying that you need to perceive 'absoluteness' before the existence of concepts ?
Why ?
More questions but I think possibly enough - it would need another thread.

***

Upshot is, I still don't understand what you mean by 'Authentic Metaphysics' or its application with regard to poetry.

he appears to be using those terms to describe the commonalities of all poerty, the purpose and intent behind the "poetic enterprise". In this, Gus seems to be suggesting that the impulse behind the poetic undertaking is the elucidation of fundamental truths of the human experience of life.
— Michael Zwingli

:100: — Gus Lamarch

@Michael Zwingli seems to have a grasp. Perhaps you could both clarify by using Dickinson's poem as an example ? https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/589633
Can you say that what impels her - is to elucidate 'fundamental truths of the human experience of life' ?
@PoeticUniverse Your thoughts ?

***

*

Metaphysics studies questions related to what it is for something to exist and what types of existence there are. Metaphysics seeks to answer, in an abstract and fully general manner, the questions:[5]

What is there?
What is it like?
Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time, cause and effect, and possibility. — SEP - Metaphysics

My best guess is @Gus Lamarch wants to say that art has something to do with the Platonic world of forms - faer focus on ideals seems to suggest so. Unfortunately or not, Plato had, so it's said, a very low opinion of art, it being an imitation of an imititation (the world we know being an imperfect instantiation of heaven). Sad that.

My best guess is Gus Lamarch wants to say that art has something to do with the Platonic world of forms - faer focus on ideals seems to suggest so. — TheMadFool

Possibly so.
BTW, why do you use the word 'faer' ?

Unfortunately or not, Plato had, so it's said, a very low opinion of art, it being an imitation of an imititation (the world we know being an imperfect instantiation of heaven). Sad that. — TheMadFool

[ Again, that would be another thread on what Plato actually thought and how he expressed his thoughts. So very clever. Artful, even.
As can be seen from other TPF discussions on Plato's dialogues, there are many conflicting interpretations. See @Fooloso4's. ]

Possibly so. — Amity

Yes, possibly but something tells me I'm right - Gus Lamarch is trying to marry Platonism with art.

faer — Amity

Preferred Gender Pronoun

My best guess is Gus Lamarch wants to say that art has something to do with the Platonic world of forms - — TheMadFool

Indeed, my position is very similar to that defended by Plato, however, I am against the hypothesis of a "world composed of forms", which Plato fervently defended.

Project into your mind, my vision of the "metaphysical field", as being a distinct field of that of existence, in which there are no forms, images, perceptions, etc...; it is an endless field and paradoxically with infinite borders, where any and all concepts that already exist, that never existed, and that will come to exist, are.

When a "Being" belonging to existence - a smaller and more limiting field than the metaphysical world - captures a concept through its subjective awareness, such "ideal" becomes "real", and a "movement" between both fields - metaphysical and existential - occur - as if two cubes, one immobile - existence - and the other mobile - metaphysics - suspended over the smaller cube, intertwined -.

"Something can only be real, if previously, it was ideal"

faer focus on ideals seems to suggest so. — TheMadFool

"His"

I would be very glad, if before deciding to categorize me with your preferred gender pronoun, you would ask my person first. Thank you.

it would need another thread. — Amity

Indeed.

Can you say that what impels her - is to elucidate 'fundamental truths of the human experience of life' ? — Amity

Yes:

A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
Which by showing unapprehended proof
Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty:
It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth.


Emily's poem was already lyrical and so it was all the more suitable for being sung with music in the and so it became doubly powerful:

Poetry makes clear what’s just barely heard,
For it translates soul-language into words,
Whereas, music plays right on the heartstrings;
Merged, they create song; heart and soul converge.


Yes, her poem was private and so we need the background of it to fully understand it, but it still works wonderfully on its surface:

A poem is both the thought and the presence,
An object born from one’s profoundest sense,
An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
It’s both the existence and the essence.

Poems are renderings of the soul’s spirit,
The highest power of language and wit.
The reader then translates back to spirit;
If the soul responds, then a poem you’ve writ!


To get the unity of the flow, music, as well as any happening, requires three stages for continuity:

Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone;
Sensation savors what is presently known;
Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
The delight is such that none could produce alone.


In the Poetic Universe…

We are both essence and form, as poems versed,
Ever unveiling our live’s deeper thirsts,
As new riches, from strokes, letters, phonemes,
Words, phrases, and sentences—uni versed.

We have rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, sense,
Metric, melody, and beauty’s true pense,
Revealed through life’s participation,
From the latent whence into us hence.

The weave of the quantum fields as strokes writes
The letters of the elemental bytes—
The alphabet of the standard model,
Forming the words as the atoms whose mights

Merge to form molecules, as phrases,
Onto proteins and cells, as sentences,
Up to paragraphs of organisms,
And unto the stories of the species.

In this concordance of literature,
We are the Cosmos’ book of adventure,
As a uni-verse of sentient poems,
Being both the contained and the container.


In other more difficult words:

Informationally derived meanings
Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
In a relational reality,
Through the semantical life happenings.

Syntactical information exchange,
Without breaking of the holistic range,
Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
Within her requisite of ongoing change.

So there’s form before gloried substance,
Relationality before the chance
Of material impressions rising,
Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.

All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
Of basic superpositional traces
Of Possibility, as like the whirl’s
Probable clouds of distributed paces.

What remains unchanged over time are All’s
Properties that find expression, as laws,
Of the conservation of energy,
Momentum, and electric charge—unpaused.


Emily, my 3rd or 4th cousin:

My great grandfather, Henry Johnson, famously captained schooners and steam ships to China and all over the world, somehow finding time to marry Henrietta Wood, who was related to Norcross somehow (my brother does the family tree, not me!), which was Emily's mother's maiden name.

Indeed, my position is very similar to that defended by Plato, however, I am against the hypothesis of a "world composed of forms", which Plato fervently defended.

Project into your mind, my vision of the "metaphysical field", as being a distinct field of that of existence, in which there are no forms, images, perceptions, etc...; it is an endless field and paradoxically with infinite borders, where any and all concepts that already exist, that never existed, and that will come to exist, are.

When a "Being" belonging to existence - a smaller and more limiting field than the metaphysical world - captures a concept through its subjective awareness, such "ideal" becomes "real", and a "movement" between both fields - metaphysical and existential - occur - as if two cubes, one immobile - existence - and the other mobile - metaphysics - suspended over the smaller cube, intertwined -.

"Something can only be real, if previously, it was ideal" — Gus Lamarch

Your view of the real-ideal pair is in line with how things are done. The ideal guides the real i.e. first one must conceive of an ideal (object, event) and then the real must approximate that ideal as best as it can and, once in a blue moon, the real becomes the ideal.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/590426

Thanks for all of this. So much to think about. Here's a starter:

Can you say that what impels her - is to elucidate 'fundamental truths of the human experience of life' ?
— Amity

Yes:

A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
Which by showing unapprehended proof
Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty:
It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth. — PoeticUniverse

I'm not sure what you mean by 'unapprehended proof'. Not perceived or understood. Proof: Evidence establishing a fact or truth. So, a poem might be 'a truth' showing 'hidden beauty' but not all poetry or poets are impelled to or can 'make something clear'. Sometimes, it's the very opposite.
Not all see human experience, in general or in particular, in terms of 'fundamental truths', whatever they are. What are they ?

As for 'eternal truth'...that sounds like an 'absolute truth' not a particular truth, relative to time, person or context.
Is that what you mean ? Is that your view of all kinds of poetry ?

***
The truth(s) of Poetry v the truth(s) of Reports. In war.
Similar scenes expressed in different ways. Powerful descriptions of a reality, from different perspectives. Our vision is not absolute. We hear sounds difficult to put in to words. We smell death.
Unimaginable for some; all too real for others.

***
Poetry and truth

The tension between poetry and truth gave Goethe the title of his autobiography, Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit (“From My Life: Poetry and Truth”), written between 1811 and 1833. W. H. Auden borrowed Goethe’s title in 1959 for a prose sequence on love, and, in 1977, the poet Anthony Hecht (a great admirer of both poets) took the same title for a poem in which he considers, among other things, Goethe, the Second World War, and the thorny relationship between truth and art. Hecht conveyed the truth of his war experience as a poet not as a journalist or historian...

Poetry without music is a relatively recent development. A pronounced separation came around 1550, before which, Kirby-Smith notes, “the concept of a unified performance combining melody, words, and dance had never completely faded out.” The songlike cadence of poetry, in fact all of prosody, is in itself semantic and carries an emotional charge. Every syllable, every phoneme, is highly ordered in such a way as to communicate feeling...

What truths can poetry tell us and what could its real-world use possibly be? W. H. Auden wrote that “poetry makes nothing happen.” He understood that no poem had saved a single Jew from death at the hands of the Nazis. Still, he believed in the necessity of action. “Poetry is not concerned with telling people what to do,” he writes, “but with extending our knowledge of good and evil, perhaps making the necessity for action more urgent and its nature more clear, but only leading us to the point where it is possible for us to make a rational moral choice.”

In this respect, the poet Anthony Hecht possessed one of the most compelling moral visions in late-twentieth-century American poetry. In “Dichtung und Wahrheit,” he juxtaposes a marble statue and a photo from World War II:

The Discus Thrower’s marble heave,

Captured in mid-career,

That polished poise, that Parian arm

Sleeved only in the air,

Vesalian musculature, white

As the mid-winter moon—

This, and the clumsy snapshot of

An infantry platoon,

Those grubby and indifferent men,

Lounging in bivouac,

Their rifles aimless in their laps,

Stop history in its tracks.


If the documentary evidence, the photograph, does not contain the whole truth of experience, where, then, does the truth lie?...

Hecht’s poetry about the war is filled with echoes of Shakespeare, including the poems in his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, The Hard Hours, which includes “More Light! More Light!” King Lear, in particular, recurs throughout the collection....

The second scene in the poem, quoted above, constitutes a tightly woven pattern of negatives. Goethe’s emphatic dying words become:

Not light from the shrine at Weimar beyond the hill
Nor light from heaven appeared.

And, then, two stanzas later:
No light, no light in the blue Polish eye.

The final image, again with an echo of Lear, is of sightless eyes:

and every day came mute
Ghosts from the ovens, sifting through crisp air,
And settled upon his eyes in a black soot.

The survivors of the camps, as Hecht himself witnessed, were naked, skeletal, their yellowed skin stretched over bony frames. As one soldier from C Company reported: “Many had died with their eyes wide open staring into space as if they were seeing over and over again all the torture the Germans had put them through—their mouths open, gasping for that last breath that might keep them alive.” When a prisoner died, one of his fellows would carry his body to the stack of bodies beside the incinerator. The smell, he added, was unimaginable...

If the poem has a “use” in the sense that Plato intends, then perhaps it is that those “mute ghosts from the ovens” are not entirely silenced.

Through Hecht’s poem, they instruct our emotions. To adopt Auden’s formulation, they extend our knowledge of good and evil, clarifying the nature of action, and leading us to a point where we can make a moral choice. — new criterion: poetry-truth

I agree that war poetry did so much to instruct emotions as opposed to the 'factual' ? propaganda-like media. It could even have led to a point of awakening of morals.
Thoughts moved.

I don't think we can make absolute generalisations from a particular poet or poem.
Sometimes, more important than the message communicated was the person's own need for expression and recording of memories - whether 'real' or 'false'.
It is their 'truth'.

!! ATTENTION all Physicists !!

An article re 'profound truths' about the universe and our place in it.

https://insidetheperimeter.ca/12-poignant-poems-and-one-bizarre-limerick-written-by-physicists-about-physics/

12 poignant poems (and one bizarre limerick) written by physicists about physics
Though they typically employ the language of mathematics to describe nature, physicists sometimes find ideas are better conveyed in verse.

It can be said that science and poetry share the common purpose of revealing profound truths about the universe and our place in it.

Physicist Paul Dirac, a known curmudgeon, would have dismissed that idea as hogwash.
“The aim of science is to make difficult things understandable in a simpler way; the aim of poetry is to state simple things in an incomprehensible way,” Dirac grouched to a colleague. “The two are incompatible.”

The colleague to whom Dirac was grumbling, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was a lover of poetry who dabbled in it himself — as did, it turns out, quite a few great physicists, past and present. Physicists have often turned to poetry to express ideas for which there are no equations...

Maxwell’s best-known poetic composition is “Rigid Body Sings,” a ditty he used to sing while playing guitar, which is based on the classic Robbie Burns poem “Comin’ Through the Rye” (the inspiration for the title of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye). In terms of melding poetry and physics, however, Maxwell’s geekiest composition might be “A Problem in Dynamics,” which shows both his brilliance and sense of humour. — inside the perimeter - poems by physicists about physics

***
https://www.newscientist.com/article/1966905-a-problem-in-dynamics/

A Problem in Dynamics
By James Clerk Maxwell

An inextensible heavy chain
Lies on a smooth horizontal plane,
An impulsive force is applied at A,
Required the initial motion of K.

Let ds be the infinitesimal link,
Of which for the present we’ve only to think;
Let T be the tension, and T + dT
The same for the end that is nearest to B.
Let a be put, by a common convention,
For the angle at M ‘twixt OX and the tension;
Let Vt and Vn be ds‘s velocities,
Of which Vt along and Vn across it is;
Then Vn/Vt the tangent will equal,
Of the angle of starting worked out in the sequel.

In working the problem the first thing of course is
To equate the impressed and effectual forces.
K is tugged by two tensions, whose difference dT
Must equal the element’s mass into Vt.
Vn must be due to the force perpendicular
To ds‘s direction, which shows the particular
Advantage of using da to serve at your
Pleasure to estimate ds‘s curvature.
For Vn into mass of a unit of chain
Must equal the curvature into the strain.

Thus managing cause and effect to discriminate,
The student must fruitlessly try to eliminate,
And painfully learn, that in order to do it, he
Must find the Equation of Continuity.
The reason is this, that the tough little element,
Which the force of impulsion to beat to a jelly meant,
Was endowed with a property incomprehensible,
And was “given,” in the language of Shop, “inexten-sible.”
It therefore with such pertinacity odd defied
The force which the length of the chain should have modified,
That its stubborn example may possibly yet recall
These overgrown rhymes to their prosody metrical.
The condition is got by resolving again,
According to axes assumed in the plane.
If then you reduce to the tangent and normal,
You will find the equation more neat tho’ less formal.
The condition thus found after these preparations,
When duly combined with the former equations,
Will give you another, in which differentials
(When the chain forms a circle), become in essentials
No harder than those that we easily solve
In the time a T totum would take to revolve.

Now joyfully leaving ds to itself, a-
Ttend to the values of T and of a.
The chain undergoes a distorting convulsion,
Produced first at A by the force of impulsion.
In magnitude R, in direction tangential,
Equating this R to the form exponential,
Obtained for the tension when a is zero,
It will measure the tug, such a tug as the “hero
Plume-waving” experienced, tied to the chariot.
But when dragged by the heels his grim head could not carry aught,
So give a its due at the end of the chain,
And the tension ought there to be zero again.
From these two conditions we get three equations,
Which serve to determine the proper relations
Between the first impulse and each coefficient
In the form for the tension, and this is sufficient
To work out the problem, and then, if you choose,
You may turn it and twist it the Dons to amuse.

Read more: “Victorian scientists’ poetry: An anthology“ — New Scientist - A Problem in Dynamics

***

Marks out of 10 ?
For sense and sensibility...