Roberta Bertozzi interno 38

Poetry and knowledge
in ATELIER
quarterly review of poetry, criticism, literature
n. 52 - 2008

abstract

[…] 2. The continuous modernity

In his essay “Is there any Poetic Writing?” Roland Barthes reads the differences between classical and modern poetry as being the effect of a different linguistic convention: on one side stands classical poetry, which is motivated by the discursive continuity of prose and is mainly characterised by both harmony and beauty criteria. Within classical poetry, the “poetic” “does not refer to any extension [...] yet it only stands as the modulation of a verbal technique”; on the other side stands modern poetry which, by breaking all functional and strictly communicative aspects of language, is able to take the word towards a density that completely absorbs it, “a sort of degree zero, impregnated at once with all the past, as well as the future specifications”. Whereas with classical poetry a word was the tile of an ordered system addressing the expression of a ready-coded idea, with modern poetry words become subjects of knowledge, as they contribute to its construction and make it possible: “Such verbal possibility, from which falls the mature fruit of meaning, presumes therefore the existence of a poetic time which is no more the time of a “making”, yet it is one of a possible adventure, the encounter between a sign and an intention”. Knowledge would then be something that, while being already contained within language, is waiting to coagulate and reveal itself as the right circumstance arrives. This process begins with Romanticism and deals with the movement of poetic practice from translation to invention, from technique to genius; the axis of poetic language thus becomes a truth in act, and the poet is no more a craftsman, but a demiurge; such mutation coincides with the appearance of aesthetics and the idea of the autonomy of art. Poetry, just like any other artistic form, becomes a practice of compensation for a disenchanted world; its cognitive action is aimed at re-enchanting it, that is, at providing the world with a limit beyond which any act of knowledge becomes invasive and profaning, as is the case with scientific exploitation or technocratic excess. Poetry-generated knowledge would therefore be deeply rooted inside language and would tend both to verify and constitute itself as a compensation of the world. Lexical density and meaning in fieri with a value of compensation: this is the continuous modernity. […]