2023-03-29 18:09:29 by ambuda-bot
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THE PROBLEM
17
the most striking general, and in a sense canonical, difference is precisely
that the language of poetry is by nature and design not literal. Accepting
this category of expression, poetics appears as the systematization, the
regularization of that vast body of usage whose lower forms are labeled
current, figurative, idiomatic and which by and large stands in direct
opposition to the refined, precise, scientific uses of language whose
principle is consistency and univocality. The expressions of poetry are
in the broadest sense characterized only by deviating from that literal
purpose, by a negative correlation with the universal positive goal of
discourse: the truth. (Of course we do not thereby assert that poetry is
"false": the "truths" of poetry are the same as those of any other genre; we
are discussing here only the question of means, of realization. A poetic
statement is a tour de force, its truth realized despite propositions that
are, by the standards of science, false.)
21
Nevertheless, the forms constituting intelligent discourse generally
are assumed by the poetic, too, whose burden is to redefine their function.
'Similarity' (sādṛśya) is one of seven categories admitted in the mīmāṁsā
logic;20 comparison' (upamāna) is allowed by nyaya as one of four
criteria of apprehension, along with perception, inference, and verbal
authority. The problem we face is defining the poetic application of
this concept. It is not a simple problem like referring the logical form to a
certain content for specific exemplification. Poetry has no more content
than logic. In the same way as logic, it refers itself to the entire spectrum
of human experience and in the same way is concerned primarily with
the structure of that whole. Poetry is not a content, but a context;
poetic similarity is equally as formal as logical similarity: capable of
any exemplification and limited only by a countervailing notion of
falsehood. Nevertheless, the exemplification has a general quality
which it is the business of the poetic to make precise. The content of
the figure is important as a final test of validity (hence the form of the
alamkāra texts themselves: definition and exemplification).
vägvikalpaḥ" ("endless are the modes of utterance'); we return to the issue in more
exhaustive fashion below, p. 50 ff.
Šalikanātha, Prakaraṇapañcika (Benares, 1903-1904), p. 110; discussed in Jhā,
Purva Mimämsā, pp. 61-62. As a "padartha', sadrsya for the mīmāmsakas replaces
the 'visesa* of the nyayavaiseşika.
21 Pratyakşa, anumiti, śabda; cf. Annambhatta, Tarkasamgraha, section 36ff. (p.
24).
Understood not as the logically false, of course, but as the inappropriate, the
ineffective.
17
the most striking general, and in a sense canonical, difference is precisely
that the language of poetry is by nature and design not literal. Accepting
this category of expression, poetics appears as the systematization, the
regularization of that vast body of usage whose lower forms are labeled
current, figurative, idiomatic and which by and large stands in direct
opposition to the refined, precise, scientific uses of language whose
principle is consistency and univocality. The expressions of poetry are
in the broadest sense characterized only by deviating from that literal
purpose, by a negative correlation with the universal positive goal of
discourse: the truth. (Of course we do not thereby assert that poetry is
"false": the "truths" of poetry are the same as those of any other genre; we
are discussing here only the question of means, of realization. A poetic
statement is a tour de force, its truth realized despite propositions that
are, by the standards of science, false.)
21
Nevertheless, the forms constituting intelligent discourse generally
are assumed by the poetic, too, whose burden is to redefine their function.
'Similarity' (sādṛśya) is one of seven categories admitted in the mīmāṁsā
logic;20 comparison' (upamāna) is allowed by nyaya as one of four
criteria of apprehension, along with perception, inference, and verbal
authority. The problem we face is defining the poetic application of
this concept. It is not a simple problem like referring the logical form to a
certain content for specific exemplification. Poetry has no more content
than logic. In the same way as logic, it refers itself to the entire spectrum
of human experience and in the same way is concerned primarily with
the structure of that whole. Poetry is not a content, but a context;
poetic similarity is equally as formal as logical similarity: capable of
any exemplification and limited only by a countervailing notion of
falsehood. Nevertheless, the exemplification has a general quality
which it is the business of the poetic to make precise. The content of
the figure is important as a final test of validity (hence the form of the
alamkāra texts themselves: definition and exemplification).
vägvikalpaḥ" ("endless are the modes of utterance'); we return to the issue in more
exhaustive fashion below, p. 50 ff.
Šalikanātha, Prakaraṇapañcika (Benares, 1903-1904), p. 110; discussed in Jhā,
Purva Mimämsā, pp. 61-62. As a "padartha', sadrsya for the mīmāmsakas replaces
the 'visesa* of the nyayavaiseşika.
21 Pratyakşa, anumiti, śabda; cf. Annambhatta, Tarkasamgraha, section 36ff. (p.
24).
Understood not as the logically false, of course, but as the inappropriate, the
ineffective.