>Arwin,
>My Melitta reference was a shorthand way of saying that your approach to
>literary art is mechanistic ("the human system").  Robert's explanation
>improved your cultural _knowledge_, not your "cultural wisdom". You might
be
>making a little mistake because your native language is Dutch (so I
assume) but
>your English is so good I don't think that's it. Rather, it seems to me
that in
>all of what you have written, there is no admission of a difference
between
>these two modes of knowing.  Your approach will take you to the former,
not to
>the latter.
 
 
"Cultural wisdom" was ironical, although it might just as well have been a
mistake - as always there are differences between theory and practice. In
theory, I know how to use the English language, but in practice I make
mistakes. Thanks for the compliment though. :-) To get back to the point,
as T.S. Eliot said, "The vast accumulation of knowledge--or at least of
information--deposited by the nineteenth century have been responsible for
an equally vast ignorance." I guess that wisdom can lead to both wisdom and
ignorance, depending on what you do with it. However, as a literary critic
I believe it is my task to unearth the knowledge that may lead to wisdom,
not to unearth wisdom itself - that should turn up in the process. Just
like a physicist would describe the behaviour of an electron, not to
explain the whole universe with that, but to provide others with knowledge
they can build on in their ever continuing investigation of the natural
world (assuming for the moment that the universe or whatever else is out
there is infinite).
 
>A paradox: if the human mind were as simple to explain as you think it in
>theory to be, the human mind would not have the intelligence to explain
itself.
 
I never said anything from which you could derive this. Besides that, I
think that the human mind does have the intelligence to explain itself; a
more interesting and relevant question is how many will have the strength
to handle the explanation. I don't know the answer to that one, but you
yourself seem to imply that some problems with explainability - the
concept of a human being as a 'machine', the possibility of a
mechanical explanation of literary art, will no doubt arise. I believe
that the human system is of limited complexity, and thus ultimately
explainable (and I doubt that at this moment there is much that
cannot be explained about human beings).
 
>Your encyclopedia of allusions and contexts is not much different than
much
>mainstream philology. While such encyclopedias may be necessary for
>understanding, they are not sufficient, and, in themselves, do not
constitute
>literary understanding. Let me give you one example of their meagerness
(while
>giving you another cupful of American culture).
 
 
You mix two ideas in my writing. The encyclopedia was Pound's idea and was
not one of allusions and contexts, but a history of invention. I don't know
if you read anything of Pound's theory on this subject, but you might like
to read my representative article at
 
http://hem1.passagen.se/arwin/EliotProject/Burbank_notes/SeriousArtist.htm
 
This idea you apparently mixed with my EliotProject, which intends to
provide cultural context and allusions for Eliot's poetry. It's only a
small segment of the work to be done on poetry of course; but the form I've
developed here is very efficient method, accessible, easy to update, cheap
to publish (notice that the colour graphics would have made for a very
expensive book).
 
As far as your "where's the horse?" is concerned, I take it that this issue
is addressed by asking how this fragment interacts with the world created
by the novel, and how that world in turn interacts with the world of the
writer and of the reader. In this case, the reader takes cognisance of the
absence of the horse, and an expectancy to hear something more about this
horse will rise; questions such as "where is it?", "what happened to it?"
and so forth. They will raise anticipation and promote the desire to read
on. Anticipation and desire are two of the strongest driving forces behind
the reading process. A detailed analysis could follow, but I haven't the
time.
 
What I've understood from my study of J.R.R. Tolkien is that philology
concerns itself with the interaction between language and culture, often
particularly in the context of literature. That is only a very specific
part of what I've been discussing (albeit not an unimportant one). I guess,
though, that before continuing this discussion, I had better write some
kind of paper detailing my proposals. I need to do that anyway. Once I've
done that, you will be able to give more efficient criticism... :-)
 
Kind regards,
Arwin.