06-05-2017, 12:55 AM
Denial
I am a dark room:
curtains drawn,
mirror made meaningless, The mirror is made meaningless because it cannot reflect any light.
consciousness defiled by the unconscious. The conscious self is a sort of light, the unconscious self is a sort of darkness -- ironic, considering the logic of the poem.
You are the light You is the other.
shining against my window,
hot like temptation. This is the only language that informs the nature of the other. At least according to my messed up philosophy, man, and I'm playing along with Western stereotypes here, has three "others": God, woman, and the savage. God is, and is beyond anything man can comprehend; woman is the other sex, and is what the man should not aspire to be; and the savage is the outsider, and does not conform to the beliefs or arbitrary standards of man. The language is not reverential enough, so this isn't God; neither is it imperialist enough to show the savage; and woman is universally treated as either temptress, Jocasta as the wife, or as motherly goddess, Jocasta as the mother, such that the other here is very clearly woman.
But that is playing in a pit I didn't make, whose heart is ready to swallow my "savage" heart whole -- I'd like to think the title alone declares a denial of this mode of thinking, or of the situation as taken by other standards (for example, literally), but I guess it's really only a label for the first stanza, ie the speaker denies him (or her) self of the other. Especially with the other placed so late, and with the whole being so purely abstract, I'm not really engaged by the piece -- scratch that, considering this long reply, I'm very engaged with the piece, engaged in a manner positive for me, but also revealing that the piece doesn't really have much to it. Thanks for the read.
I am a dark room:
curtains drawn,
mirror made meaningless, The mirror is made meaningless because it cannot reflect any light.
consciousness defiled by the unconscious. The conscious self is a sort of light, the unconscious self is a sort of darkness -- ironic, considering the logic of the poem.
You are the light You is the other.
shining against my window,
hot like temptation. This is the only language that informs the nature of the other. At least according to my messed up philosophy, man, and I'm playing along with Western stereotypes here, has three "others": God, woman, and the savage. God is, and is beyond anything man can comprehend; woman is the other sex, and is what the man should not aspire to be; and the savage is the outsider, and does not conform to the beliefs or arbitrary standards of man. The language is not reverential enough, so this isn't God; neither is it imperialist enough to show the savage; and woman is universally treated as either temptress, Jocasta as the wife, or as motherly goddess, Jocasta as the mother, such that the other here is very clearly woman.
But that is playing in a pit I didn't make, whose heart is ready to swallow my "savage" heart whole -- I'd like to think the title alone declares a denial of this mode of thinking, or of the situation as taken by other standards (for example, literally), but I guess it's really only a label for the first stanza, ie the speaker denies him (or her) self of the other. Especially with the other placed so late, and with the whole being so purely abstract, I'm not really engaged by the piece -- scratch that, considering this long reply, I'm very engaged with the piece, engaged in a manner positive for me, but also revealing that the piece doesn't really have much to it. Thanks for the read.