About to Be

"The ancient idea of the sublime, as set forth by the Hellenistic critic we call 'Longinus,' seems to me the origin of my expectation that great poetry will possess an inevitability of phrasing. Longinus tells us that in the experience of the sublime we apprehend a greatness to which we respond by a desire for identification, so that we will become what we behold. Loftiness is a quality that emanates from the realm of aspiration from what Wordsworth called a sense of something evermore about to be."

― Harold Bloom

***********

Dear Kate,

The American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University Harold Bloom was known to have written "too much, too fast."

That is one way to put it.  The other would be that he wrote "inevitably."

"Inevitable in this context takes its primary meaning, phrasing that cannot be avoided, that must be, rather than the secondary meaning of invariable or predictable."  This, in the man's own words, is the mark of all great poetry: "the uncanny power of unavoidable...phrasing."

I am sure Bloom would have problem with what I am going to say, about him not least, as he would just about everything else: I think what he meant is that the poet feels destined to have the words come out of her in such a way.

But how can this be true, about poetry, of all writings, the most precise engineering of words?  I will let you on your own wrestle with this paradox.  I asked this question only because it has to do with the inevitability of the next one: Do you labor for words when you write?

Did you find yourself trying to "put the piece together," like you would in a classroom, on a pulpit, from one boardroom to another?

Wording ourselves is hard labor, that's inevitable (in its secondary meaning), but that's not the point I am belaboring.  I am asking: Are your words, your writings labored, "exhibiting a great deal of effort, lacking grace, fluency, or spontaneity"?

Anything that is labored speaks about the fateful, the avoidable if we only could, a kismet preordained by an arbitrary will less than benevolent, the deadly we couldn't quite make alive.

Destiny is not fate. A destiny is a spiritual drama that is still unfolding. If I am sure of my destiny, I am not afraid of the fate embodied in my personal circumstances and historical situations.  Much that is wrong in our modern consciousness is predicated on the superstition that a human being is identical with his economic status, and when we try to force feed each other bent on also existentialism, there's nothing in our future but fate and the fatal.  There is no light at the end of the tunnel; please don't even joke about it.

I was telling you I might write less in the near future.  That is if I find writing avoidable.

Yours, Alex