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| Obliquity |
| 11.12.04 (6:11 am) [edit] |
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I've been very interested in the idea of the "oracular" lately. I'll pick up some books on the Delphic oracle, maybe dig up any primary sources I can find to see what the Greeks themselves said. You could say that a prophecy is a statement that people relate to their own lives and experiences. Under pressure of desire, cause and effect relationships become much muddier. Some anthropologists might say that the definition of magic is the confluence of cause and effect relationships under the influence of desire (i.e. you stubbed your toe on the chair-leg and attribute cause and effect relationships because of certain desires that you have). If literary criticism is the practice of interpreting, then oracles are supposed to have access to something beyond the ordinary, whether chewing on bay leaves or having a direct line to God. We'll read all sorts of things into the gaps in our information on a writer's access (and life), which is why it's better not to lay out things explicitly. Speaking of explicitness, at least three people have described my writing as "oblique." It's always difficult to characterize one's own writing because how it's different from what you don't write, and by definition you can't see past the limits of what you know. So when the word "oblique" pops up a few times, it's a gift from those who can see me more clearly than I can. So can I use the word "oblique" to understand not only my writing, but myself as a person? Am I an "oblique" person? What does it mean to be oblique? What does it mean to be oblique? What does it mean to embody "obliqueness"? In this way, if several people give us a word to understand ourselves, then it's a gift from those who may see us in ways we can't see about ourselves. This adjective tells us how our writing relates to our lives: an adjective about our art tells us how we work in non-art domains. This adjective shows how our aesthetics are already part of our lives.
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posted by: kat (reply)
post date: 11.12.04 (9:47 am)
For the oracle at Delphi, i think ambiguous is a better term, but let me know what you find out about oblique.
posted by: Andrew (reply)
post date: 03.27.06 (3:47 am)
Nice blog you Gotcha here
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