[...]San'an story
I am interested in the conventions in which texts can be read, in which a semantic statement can be carried over into someone's own idiom. I am teaching how to reread texts of Attar and so forth.
I think we have civilization because (we have learned) ‘to translate out of time’
übertragen,
handing down thought narrative,
something that also depends on transfer of meaning in *space*
San'an's sudden interest in the woman/child (Tarsaa could also be a young boy) reminds us the uniquely vulnerable and creative condition of the childhood
privileged inferiority (of both child and woman)
we are dealing with both intercourse and discourse
how his voice will change after San'an actually gets the girl?
...communication like breathing is subject to obstruction and homicidal breakdowns, under stress of hatred, of boredom, or of sudden panic, great gaps open ...that their previous understanding had been based on a trivial pidgin which had left the heart of meaning untouched.
What is the female speech in San'an?
-the breakdowns and translations in San'an story.
-The sexual translation and breakdown of linguistic exchange in San'an story.
...having an ‘ear’ for contrasting pressures of sexual discourse or identity
in San'an, man and woman, each respective experience of Eros and language had set them desperately apart.
In whose idiom, male or female, one can grasp (only) falsehood or menace?
...as declaimer of my own stifled, tongue
my performance, corresponding to my level of literacy, and a private thesaurus, part of my subconscious and personal memories, and using the singular and irreducibly specific ensemble of somatic and psychological identity.
the ideal of a totally personal voice, of a unique ‘fit’ between an individual's expressive means and his world-image, perused by the poets.
this is not a formal hard-edged linguistic relegation, rather a metaphysical speculation
*note to self: my interest in the ʿAjā'ib al-makhlūqāt (جائب المخلوقات وغرائب الموجودات) is due to the traces it provides into verbal literacy, a living vulgar language of mix, rather than a dead structure such as Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr (منطق الطیر) of Attar.
Cultures (during Attar's?) seem to expend on their vocabulary and syntax acquisitive energies and ostentations entirely lacking in their material lives.
[very interesting point by Serres regarding the language of mysticism, Attar and others.]
my translation of Attar, an interlinear version of the script, a virtual archetype of translation
think about the presence of interpreters in the building site -- Kafka's literature house
Only if men could use language without perusing meaning to the forbidden edge of the absolute.
‘a poetic vocabulary of concepts’
‘connections or affinities’
pursuit of an inter-lingua for philosophic discourse
as you can see in this writing, I am practicing loosening the tight axiom of relation of A<-->B, something other than the predecessor-successor or cause-effect pair (--> this order of structure is coming from Greek geometric,) I am trying an unordered order-of-reason that is more reflexive, symmetric, and intransitive. (the construction of the text represents each chain incomplete and displaced--Attar knows)
towards a general theory of significant sign
Can we correlate the Persian syntax with the metaphysical ambience, internal divisions, and lyric bias of Persian people?
the language-matrix
language, informed by energies proper to itself, more comprehensive and timeless than any who makes use of it...
discourse (die Rede) would not be muffled by the ground---we walk erect [Serres]
jede Sprache ist ein Versuch---*trial
(Humboldt)
different languages penetrate to different depths
--> (every try is a) starting over with *accuracy
ok, we are starting with language from scratch, here
Literaturhaus, house has always been a metaphor for consciousness
how Attar can become interested in other lives other that San'an's that are worth living?
although we see again and again in Islamic social order the hierarchical structured relationships, I like to show the otherwise in mystic stances, and argue that the model doesn't remain static normative from the master-disciple to the authority and dependence lock, that the master-disciple relationship doesn't affirm the divine order.
and San'an is also against the notion that Sufi man is without the need of a feminine principle.
we are presented with will of the Tarsaa, the destination of San'an, and the poetic representation is feminine. the female image is strong. although at the end it has to give up -- she converts to his style. the will of the disciple is not replaced by the will of the guide, the master himself doesn't have a will.
The Tarsaa is supervising San'an's diet, sleep, and speech
[I have become more interested in the term ‘tradition'---and more suspicious of preoccupations such as ‘invention’ as modernized and capitalist terms.]
tradition: an act of memory based on a salience-effect of shared knowledge
(ein Akt der Erinnerung basiert auf einer Hervorspringen-Effekt der gemeinsamen Kenntnisse)
-there is a sequence (where is the individual terms within it?)
-my storytelling is about: describing relations of inversion, extension, inclusion, analogy, etc. between mythical, lyrical, or even scientific ‘beings’ that are (1) *conventional* (recognizable repertoire), and (2) *closed* (refer to certain predefined situations and symbols)
==> I work-with and bypass with these aspects in Attar, Hafez, Ajā'ib al-makhlūqāt, etc.
the performance of ‘stop’ in San'an
sign-functions that cannot be stopped
the master-pupil lock
‘locken’ is also to lure, seduce, etc.
thank you for becoming my students, temporarily
we are not locked, and not necessarily unlocked
what is concealed behind the special effects of the awesome signifier in San'an's story?
concealed =/= canceled
in Rumi every word is pass-word. you don't translate a password! (fallacy of the literal)
•all same-sex relationships are hierarchical and dyadic (of two, ‘paarweise’ in German)?
and are based on the cultural diagram of the master-disciple relationship in Sufi orders?
Sufi order =/=? flirtation
mystic, is one mode of subjectivity emerged in the middle eastern thought--- a prototype of closeness and removal.
in Rumi--Masnavi's third book--the un-concentrated Sheikh (- story of Daghughi - شیخ دقوقی) is scandalously abandoned by his devotees. they broke his heart.
[Plot: Daghughi and his disciples are in deep trance beside a beach. a ship comes and sink in a sudden theatrical storm right in front of them, but miraculously the passengers survive. the students check with each other if any of them have prayed for the God's help's redirect to the sinking ship. no, they deduce it must have been their sheikh who saved those people: “he is distracted by the world.” finally when sheikh comes out of his Namaz he turns his head to greet his devotees but only to realize that all of them have left him in silence!]
and then Rumi goes in length in differences between mud and water. [the “prison” of mud for the water, who “belongs” to the sea, and this is a problem, the mud doesn't want to dry, therefore doesn't let go of the water, and so on.]
what the image of the sinking ship has to do with the anti-clarity movements of the Sufis?
[and then suddenly: pishe and bishe (پیشه و بیشه)---lion comes out of Pishe(business)/Bishe(bushes) and rubs you off,
bush =/= Arbeit/craft]
also, Rumi opens the mechanics of praying in this story, he zooms in Daghughi's performance, the God is force-handed into the pray, because the human prayer temporarily simulates nonexistence (فنا). the prayer becomes Nichts and God takes over both the position of pray and its answer[...]