Das Rheingold: Erzte Szene

Darkness: not of the eyes, but from
Behind the eyes, as far as they can see,
Wild and wasted, empty, blank
As an unwritten song. It pulses, the nothing
Pulses, is itself: this vane unity has being, and so divides,
Splits in two, and each of these together forms a third,
And from the third, a fifth, and so on flies
The infinite space. Now there is all
And one, and one is all, and all is one. The nothing, noted, swells
Like a movement, like a trickling movement, a slight drip, flash
That drops across the stillness, spreads and grows into a rivulet,
A stream. The stream courses, multiplies its unity, procreates
A roaring river’s rush: the Rhine eddies and pools
Through this immensity of darkness, conjoins with, conforms
To its towering depths; its mist becomes an air, the air,
A mist, rolling, flowing back into the water,
Reeling round the rising rock, crags, darkness down
And up above. The darkness lengthens, folds,
And from its folding shapes come shades, gradations, genesis
Of colored light. This green fog, ample bosom
Of the waves that glide beneath the lichen and the rock,
Now cloaks a barren earth who squirms and claws, pushing up
Sinuous clods that mix with the rising mist, into which
The water breathes and laps, who sit, falling into flourishes
Of scattered pose, lips, ruby-baked in Erda’s
Oven, rise into lumps and breaded breasts, necks,
And throats that join in fleshy song: “Weiala weia,
Weiala weia haha”, floating over and above the waters,
Leaping, diving, kicking in the garden, rocking
Cradle of primeval light. “Woglinde, watching alone?”
The river seems to speak, and to itself reply,
“We would be two, if Wellgunde happened by.”
A splash, and from the rippling depths emerge
Maidens of the mere, Rhine’s daughters,
Laughing in the wending waters.
First the other dashes, then the one, slipping like a fish,
Anticipates her flight in covered coves; now she in turn,
Wellgunde, flies; they play and flip, half seize
Each other’s Rhine-smoothed tails. “Wild sisters, weird,
Who ring the rocks of Moonborne’s early grace—”
“Flosshilde, check her leap!” “Better keep the gold,
The shining, dawn-born sleeper; throng
The lovely boy!” But as she speaks (the ringing conch’s
Rush) she slithers off the rock and plunges
In between the glimmer of the chasing twins. The one, then both
Evade her, laughter twinkling on the air. “Haha! You Nixies,”
Belching from the dark, a dwarfish devil creeps and climbs,
Pinching, clutching with his pincers at the craggy rock, there perches,
Poised above the rousing scene, a hardened, ruddy crab,
Waiting to claw a crusty fish. “What is that?” Woglinde cries, be-stilled,
Then twisting like an insect in a web. Her sisters, for a moment, float
Like glaciers through the mist, then melt, ascend like mist
From the abyss – the fascinated tryst joins at
The water’s highest slope and scans the depths
To catch the thing who interlopes. But Alberich is groping for a voice,
Baritone of grinding rocks or sliding quakes: “My heart
Begins to shake; molten lava never burned so fierce, and never
Would I swim, to sear myself in Niebel’s burning night,
But passion beckons, and I think the immolation of my body
Works the thing I want.” “Dive deeper sisters,
Look who is below,” Wellgunde cries, and arcs the piercing flood,
To quiver like a spear plunged in the banks. Her sisters dive
Along her side, as swordfish jumping high will tumble low,
And gawk upon the dwarf, upon the lusty heights.
“What a schmuck,”
A double moan, as winds do when they plan a storm.
Flosshilde gives high counsel, “Father warned with
Cool, loquacious tongue of men who live below the earth,
Below the gentle folds and floods of his protective arms, a species
Older than the giants Mother belched to smite the hoary sun
For ravishing her burning peaks. Forged in anger, forging
Always twist of lavish steel in fiery loins, the Niebelung
Would eat a home from out the world’s heart. ‘Fear for the gold,’
He said, ‘Since darkness hates our light.’” But, “Vixen of the waves,”
Alberich calls, and “What want you?” Woglinde, youngest, now replies.
“I see you playing in the mere; I see the waters half-caress
Your flying forms, evading even that in silver slips
With light that sparkles through you, surges
On the waves, tossing back the dazzle
Of a golden sun, and long to touch my precious
Premonitions, jewels of my wondering eyes.” “My fright,”
Flosshilde barely can suppress a laugh, and claps
Her hands, “Was vain, misplaced; the dwarf is dazed,
And dozes in the languor of an insane love.”
“I’ll get him up to speed,” Woglinde dives, then flashes
On a rock nearby. “She comes! Will one fall near?”
A throaty gurgle in anticipation of climactic acts;
Alberich extends a hand in salutation
(While his other readjusts suspended slacks). Woglinde
Tosses sea-slicked hair, glimmering with water
Like the moon-drenched sun, and puckers
Coral lips: “Come hither, lover of the night,”
And just as soon, as when a playful ball
Escapes the young girls’ grasp, she falls away,
Floats quickly down the stream,
And leaves her Alberich with only fleeting dreams. “Up here,”
A church-bell peals; the dozing friar
Starts, comes to himself, and then, to come to her,
Struggles up the greasy rock. He leaps,
Then slips, then hangs above the hungry waves
On swaying limbs; gathering momentum forces him
To fly, and so, an inept monkey tumbling through tall trees,
He climbs. “Achem, Achem, the lichen
Loosens my fingers, while the rocks’ sharpening teeth
Gnaw at my feet, and meanwhile swirling mist
Besieges my nose, invading either nostril
Forces out an ill-timed sneeze; I can’t see
Or breathe, I grope on a slippery frieze.” “The far off
Murmurs of a lover’s glee,” Woglinde coos.
“You’ve but a foot to go to reach me; I can see
Your raspy hand, clutching for the surface
Near my toe.” “Oh child of my love,
You’re mine at last.” “If I am yours, then follow me
Here,” Woglinde teases through the water
To a nearby rock. The dwarf, bemused:
“While all my wit can barely scale
Ten feet, a graceful flip will carry you away
Just when we’d meet.” Woglinde arches,
Pitches with a spin and spirals deep, a hundred feet
Below. “Would you prefer an inferior seat?”
“At least it’s safer,” distraught, he mumbles and,
With muscles taut, he stumbles down the dizzy rock,
Arrives, and suffers from another lie.
“Higher, higher, for a better view!” The sisters laugh,
The dwarf makes moan, and flops down on his stomach,
Squeezes irritated eyes, squirms, kicks, and writhes:
“False fish, flowing through my hands
Like spilling streams. Wait! Let, at least,
Just let me catch my breath.” “Why catch your breath
When you can catch me here?”
The second lights up near the rock
Just on the prostrate Nieblung’s other side.
“You call for me?” “I’ll give you a tip:
Come here, ignore Woglinde’s tricks,
For thus Wellgunde’s wish.” Weary, wishful,
Half undeceived, half hoping he is undeceived,
He ruminates and plots a better course:
“Come closer, lusty maiden, for your light
Is joy; you shine brighter than your sister, seem realer,
More substantial than her dream – but let me pinch you,
Just to be sure.” The maiden swims close, slaps her tail,
And showers Alberich with briny gems, then swirls out,
And circles on the tide. “Now am I near?”
The sneezing, dwarf, shaking in the draft and with his need,
“Not near enough for me to comb your golden hair, to pet
Your supple scales, to kiss your little nipples
And give mad embrace.” “Who are you, that would dare
So frivolous a liberty? Let’s see,” and she swims
Round and round, but half her upper half submerged
To give the wicked dwarf a glimpse: “A crusty little imp, flaky,
Pointed, bald on top, but from your beard down to your loins,
Grosser than the slimy rocks, and blacker too; hug coal, or plunge
In muck: find your love in something dark
As thee.” And now she perches on the rock,
And knots her finger in an ivory twist
Of tress. Enraged, the glowering dwarf tries to engage
Her in a grip, which she evades to show him
That she too can, like Woglinde, slip.
Again the sisters laugh; the Nieblung rasps,
“Perfidious strumpet, bony, cold-blooded fish,
If I’m not light, if my feet don’t dance on the rock
Like yours o’er the water, I fresh-shorn, shiny,
Smooth – well if that’s what you like, how you feel,
Go play with a slippery eel!” “Don’t complain
In haste,” and now Flosshilde croons, careens
Into his lap. She leans into his lips,
And strokes his shaggy face. “If twice you fail,”
She whispers in his ear with tickling tongue,
Then bites the shocked dwarf’s lobe,
“At least remember there are three.”
“Oh lucky number, three is thrice
What I could ever hope from one,
And more than none,” He babbles,
Holds Flosshilde ‘til she wheezes,
“Foolish sisters, how could you deny
This lover’s tender squeezes?” They titter,
While she struggles for a breath, then mounts,
With unexpected weight,
The kobold’s straddled chest, who addled, leans
Into her lap. “Sing me a gracious song
With your soothing voice, you beast.”
The creature starts, then sighs subtly,
“I lose myself in your lovely light,
Your limber, lascivious length,
Longing to love you, loving you long
With a fond and lingering heart.”
“Your beauty,” she in canticle replies,
“More lovely than a bog of peat,
Sets fire to my eyes, and over fond
I wail and weep.” “Flosshilde,
Flowering flame of my fluttering
Fantasy, an ecstasy, who rule your crazy,
Craving kobold with a kiss!”
“Of those lips, sprouting from the pimple
In between your ears, for the kiss
Of craven kobold I long,
And for wretched, retching,
Refreshing drink from decanters
Of pure and purest filth.”
“Come to me my darling, let me kiss you
With the kisses of my lips!” Flosshilde squirms
And turns the other cheek, the sisters gasp
And mocking laughter dances
On the peaks. “What?” Alberich, enraged,
Lets loving loose, “They dare
To taunt?” Then he gives his girl
A greedy gaze, “Let them play,
For who would pay an ass to hear them
Speak their mind?” “I would,
If it were you!” Flosshilde
Pushes him away, he grasps at her
Too lightly and she lightly leaps,
Skidding off to join her sisters on the higher rocks.
Alberich howls as if struck, claws
At his hair in a blind rage, beats
A battered heart, “She too, she deserts me too,
She too? Ah, I am assailed, besieged
On every side. Within me my heart
Burns to leap upon the girls out of my chest,
Without they slip and glide about, everywhere,
Give way before my grasp like ghosts,
And still they burn my eyes
And make me blaze.” On a distant peak,
The Rhine-maids laugh and loll, twanging
Voices in the air, pouring blandishments and promising
Their loyalty, if ever they were caught. “I shall
Assault them, won’t turn back,
I give myself to lust and rage!” With a thunderous crack,
Alberich leaps, flapping his arms, screeching like a wild
Crane, then swoops upon the daughters of the Rhine, who laugh
And flee. The water whorls, pools around the chaser
And the chase, the rocks shudder wherever foaming Alb’rich
Throws his weight, re-echo everywhere the maidens’ glee.
He slinks, he boils, flashes, perches at a height,
Then plummets like a hawk; the three explode his dive,
And churn through tempestuous waves. Falling, scrambling into
And then out of water, shivering, bounding and rebounding,
Always touching scale or fin or lock with struggling fingers,
Lurching in the gurgle of a strangled breath – finally,
As when the rumbling earth subsides before a last
And telling effort, Alberich gasps, deflates,
And – only for a moment – rests. As when a storm
Rages through the valleys, rumbles on the crags,
Ripping up clods of land, chasing farmers
And shepherds in their terror alike, frightening
The bleating sheep, and pounding a withering crop
With lash upon lash of cold hale, a heaven-born harvest
Borne upon and by the beaten earth,
Then with a last, fulminating hit, goes hence,
But leaves one parting gift, a fresher smell to seep
From the grass, and a faint light, bridging the gap
Between the frozen peaks and guarding the dome of the sky
Enveloped of novel blue, to, like a crowning jewel in her diadem, set
Bright red, viridian, opal and gold – so while the spent dwarf
Glowers bolts at the ground, a light bursts through the mere,
At first a lucent streak, a boulevard of rippling gleams,
Now in crescendo waxing highways, uninterrupted
Tides of gold on the waters, gold that reflects off the hills.
“Hark, sisters, through the glowering gloom, the sun salutes
The gold.” “The sleeper is roused
By her tender kiss, the coffers of his eyes
Open, they flash and play on the water, envelop us all
In a smile of transfixing song. Rheingold! Rheingold!
Rein of glittering gold, who steady the course of the waters
And clear the gloss of the mists. Rheingold! Rheingold!
Let us turn and twist, entwine you with trembling garlands,
Sing of your lucid genius, play in your furrows and folds.
Rheingold! Rheingold! The sleeper awakes, the dream
Of the sleeper awakes!” Three voices, darting over each other,
Climbing, twisting, knotting, resolved and flowing dulcet
In flowering vines bearing harmonized grapes and fermenting
With sound of the purest wine. Inebriate, the Nieblung
Changes love for greed, and, with groping gaze, grazes
The flickering gold. “What is that whose watery gleams
Pierce my cupid heart and stir my murmuring mind?
There is a whispering promise, a vague rumor, harsh but proud,
In these waters, suggesting a glory, a fate, and a race.”
“Oh imp, hath lived under rock, not to know of the wanderer
Who wakes and sleeps in turn, the rein of the Rhine, his order
Of tremulous gold? This is Rheingold, light of our hearts,
Heart of our souls, glorious star, smooth and shimmering gleam.”
“And is it good for more then pretty words, or good for nothing
Else?” “Foolish dwarf, if only you knew, you would revere it,
Prostrate yourself to the depths, gape in awe, follow the gleam
To the ends of earth and down the abyss if it led you. For he
Who forges the Rhine-gilded ring will inherit the earth,
And all will bow to its lord.” “Fear, fear that freezes the heart
And numbs the limbs, Father’s warning, the breaking
Rapids’ rage at the traitor, benedict who steals the gold, overtakes me,
Traitor to life! Gossips, guard the gold, pledge yourself
To the playful gleam!” “Benedict of life? Flosshilde, benedict
Of love, I will protest, for only he who curses love, forsakes
All pleasure to mull on wealth and fame his remnant days,
Only he can forge the ring; and should he live
A thousand shriveling years, he will never know again
The sweet touch driving the signet heavens
And leading the earthly flocks, for whom
The winds part and horses train through the streams;
Will brood upon darkness, in darkness, with dark
And bitter heart.” “My fears evaporate, Woglinde, you bring me
Into the burning light that none would deny, and not a few
Cherish, caress, and long for, moving all things,
And surely most incredibly this dwarf, this vile imp,
With pants and foams with love like a rabid dog.”
“Foolish fish, prattling prawns,” Alberich mutters,
And mumbling privately, turns up thoughts
Half undiscovered, obscurely rooted, radicals
Of craven seeds. “If I cannot have love, if my lot
Is the foul and the ugly, then I will be ugliest,
Foulest of all, fearsome and fearful, towering wealth
Will buy my lust.” And gathering his strength,
He thrusts his body into the air, jets high, spurts
Like water from a bursting pipe, onto the highest rock,
Where the golden eye surveys the Rhine, green valleys,
And a distant, snowy, cloud-capped peak.
“Look! He takes flight, the penguin has become
A crook-necked vulture, ravenous and mad with love.
The water foams where he’s lurched. Haha!”
Rhine’s daughters tumble, double over, laughing, gasping
For more, merry breath. “The gold,” Alberich wrenches
Red fingers into the rock, the flickering fire slips
From its socket, “Yields to my touch. Laugh and be whimsy,
My nixies, my treacherous maids. I’ll snatch your sun
From under you, I’ll forge that ring in the world’s
Burning heart, and leave you in darkness, black darkness.
Waves, hear, custodians of the wavering sea, I
Profane forever love!” He rips the gold, the glimmering light
Is gone, and cold night falls upon the banks, the maids, whose titters
Turn to sobs. “Capture the robber!” “Rescue the gold!”
“Help us! Help! Help!” Already somewhere deep,
From the re-echoing rocks, the original darkness’ retreat,
Rotten core of the earth, the cackling Nieblung sneers.

Rheingold

What I want is bright, what I want
Glows in the lake, out of the deep
A word of love, whose spiritual achievement
Drags the sky in his yellow net, all fastening gold!
Like air, where the apples hang, I feel the pulse
Of an after-word, un-succumbing and trod-less,
Entirely fresh. Find me this dark beginning,
Defaced visage of a traceless beard, un-peaked,
Who lips the chaotic of marmorous mumbles,
Smooth and strong. Bring the beyond to here,
The herein beyond, and take light,
Whose glowing in my emptiness I long.

Discrete Infinities

If matter flies through the invincible and limitless abyss,
Of structure aggregate or desolate, its part-less parts
Reforming through the whole,
Then surely where each volatile member dies,
A new form will arise to take its place, in which the former lies,
Immortal matter passing through unending mortal lives:

Not so – a part is not the whole, and when the structure perishes
Though every piece of it survives, the thing it was cannot reply
The errant waves that let it be;
Eternity passes in a thousand deaths,
Since every irreparable type is lost, and my particularity
Is just a tiny, breaking cross.

Because

Because time marches forward, because things, but not as they are, continue to decay, because the future accomplishes the degradation of the past, and all its inhabitants vanish like the ancients, even though you can still see their nails on the walls and the steeples of their Holy Cross. But I see a time when each general was a firm particular: the Mother, the Father, the House, before the iteration of an ‘I’, when the ego and the id were one. Why is it the nature of the second to split, so that the one becomes two, and two four, and continues to age while time grows younger and older than itself? But it happens as quickly as a thought, taut between the future and the past, the future, which will be already past, and the past, which was once the future, as far as a point, the blink of an eye. Soon each reality becomes an idea, and each idea a general will – will because only what wants is needed; the Mother and Father are gone. What is love in this frailty, who covets, a child lost, a childhood swathed in bright arms and between shining legs, furry and light as a peach? Idolatry of the rod that spurts light and youth, that divines again the renewal of time? Or the lithe pleasure of things that forgets? Or just another face, another sun swimming in dawn, fresh from the heat of the day? But sex rushes towards twilight, procures death in the birth of another (and another) little rush; the very instinct of lust is decay. But for disease, which we forget, but for pain, which we only dimly remember, to bathe the senses in this hallowed glint of the sun, to dip into the apertures of a hollow only fit for two, but where all of our progeny swarm; to be with a human, and by a human; to be in a human form. I see only moments, the frozen tips of the mountain, peak of the glassy eyed dawn.

Mondaine

Dans un monde parfait où tout le monde est «well hung»,
Où la beauté brille sur les visages des hommes,
Et les gouttes des sueurs étincellent sur les mentons noirs et rouges,
Noirs avec les premiers peus de barbe, et rouges
Comme les éclatants espoirs d'un sol coupé par l'aube
– Mais aussi dans ce monde, le monde des désespoirs
Fumants comme les fausses lunes, des tisons des yeux qui baignent
Déjà dans le sommeil des rêves, et des poids lourds
Qui grondent sur les rues et parlent très haut
Des naissances et les lourdeurs, inévitables, des bébés.

A Week Offline

Mother, with what tenderness we part:
Those loves are too true that quit us too soon.
But I will always be within you,
Just as your life throbs in my veins --
Your existence prophesied my own,
And mine will be a token and a witness
To this, your having lived, when you are gone.
Only the lie of a physical absence
Keeps us apart, but how can we be separate
Who live with one heart?

Rancune, rancoeur,
The vile thoughts of a heart
Bitter, fetid, rank. Who are we when the loves
Get sucked away?
Hollow tubes pipping jealously despair into the night
We would shatter and stab, and everything in it.
Morality for the miserable is nothing –
The man who wants, wants all.

I have failed, knowledge eludes me. All I have is stilted prose.
I might as well take to myself the convenients of song,
All habitudes of art, for fear that only, if I don't move,
I will die. Will it be roses or lilacs, then, the sun or austere moon?
Keep me in the twilight of my reason, muse, so I may dream of stars.

My heart, are you lonely?
He will come, perhaps he is already here --
Green eyes like the sea, a breath of the wind
On a day with sun and clouds.

These clouds are your inheritance, and the sun
That mingles with them, spending its light
On a vain sky; learn the weather and its seasons,
For these will be company all your days.

Theodicy

Let me make peace with language -- I almost said (perversely) with the stars.

The revelation always knows a specific place -- whether it's Sinai, the Stoa,
Golgotha, Bright Mecca, Gaya, or Taos (not that these agree the least in kind) --
And occurs at a specific time. I count myself among those who will harrow the world,
And nothing pleases me more than my harvest. But I was false to the revelation,
We are always false to the revelation -- because the revelation can never be true.

Let me elaborate on that: we cannot know the revelation.
In order to know the revelation, we would have to become the revelation:
If there was ever a revelation, it was lost in comparison --
The language of God is written in a mortal script.
Not that I believe in these things, but I could, and I once did:
I am still myself in every way.

The night was about me;
I thought I was going to be eaten by a night
With the head of a black dog and the ruckus of a bark.
I looked up at the stars.

The star is a factor of climate --
This has ethical implications.

The sages knew it: you have to go somewhere you can see the stars.
Awakening of the will, the desire to realize this goal,
Then motion, a motion upwards, and one begins to shape things --
I mean time, space, and all the permutations thereof.

Up to this point one is still an artist.

But -- how I would have hated to hear this, how many will hate to hear this --
Art is the ticket, the vehicle, and the road; it is not the goal.
There is another kind of work that begins when we arrive --
Then one is among the wise.

"For what purpose?"
It is senseless to speak of that --
'The world of the happy is very different from the world of the sad' --
Until one has arrived, it is senseless to speak of a meaning in the journey.

The believer only supposes that there is an end --
What can he say about the Kingdom of God?
It was a mistake to assume that, if there was a City of God,
It was analogous with the earthly dispensation:
We must assume the impossibility of Dante.

This city does not have laws: a law is always the beginning of corruption.
For answer this -- do you pursue justice because that is the law,
Or do you follow the law because it is just?
If we were to mount a Defense of the Law (in court)
We would refer to the Will of the People, or Education;
When we have arrived, and the Will has become something entirely Else
And the People are an Other, then there is no Education --
Education is what we stumble upon; what will we see at the top?
It follows that if there is no law, there will be no courts --
And certainly no jail. Heaven is built upon the ruins of the earth.

We should talk of these things as little as possible, however.
I was simply chiding the faithful for believing that they can speak of It
And still have faith.

We live in this world, we must understand this world.
The destruction of language? When we say what we mean!
There is no need to worry about what will be:
We can know only what is. Now is the place to start:
That is the name of my book on boredom.

Lyrical Philosophy

Socrates Before Plato

There are different modes of philosophy,
At least two: the satiric and the lyric.
(Might we not say also, the tragic?)
The purpose of satire is to reveal the tragic:
The satirist pulls out the curtains
When Brünhilde sings. Like Samson,
The satirist is tragic, but his is a tragedy of truth:
He rips down pagan temples,
Sometimes with blind thrusts.

Against the double destruction of this goat-tragedy,
The lyric creates. Lyricism is a celebration of life,
The affirmation, Nietzsche's "yes."
The analytic is tragic, continental satiric;
Only a poetic philosophy, that is, my philosophy,
Can construct a new lyric of life, a life-lyric.

The life-lyric is fundamentally ethical.
Why? Because it undermines the foundations of boredom:
There is no longer a place for this, the first problem of ethics
Is resolved. Also, every reason to despise life
Is exposed as nonentity, a sickness unto death --
The lyrical philosopher is never cranky, even his destruction
Makes. By breaking what is not, he fixes down a limit on what is
And ties it to the shore of what we know. Look at what we gain:
A vessel to surpass the wastes.

Is it time for the lyric,
Which we might even liken to a golden calf?
Not yet, not until we know the limit --
Until then, destroy everything, leave nothing untouched,
Because everything partakes of the corrupt.

Parmenides

The Parmenides. Objections to the Forms (all sly):
Not of hair, mud, fingernails, *chairs*? -- Everyone loves to make fun of chairs.
Then, the division of the forms so that things can partake of them,
"Spread over them all like a sail": each form has *parts*.
But if smallness has a part, won't smallness be *larger*?
And can something larger make anything small?
Next, the first argument from similarity:
Supposing several large objects and largeness itself
-- Since they are all large in the same way, isn't there some largeness beyond them, *ad infinitum*?
And if we make the mistake of saying that the forms are patterns, each thing made in the image of a form,
*If* a form is the image of something,
Don't we have a double reflection of the form in the image,
And hence need another form for both
(In this way constructing a hall of mirrors)?
Finally, the forms are unknowable, if we assume they are beyond:
Slavery itself is the master of the ideal slave, and we are lesser masters of a lesser race --
Leading to this conclusion, that knowledge is the ideal *magister* of all the things *over there*,
Whereas ours can only know of what is *here*. The twist?
That God, who must have perfect knowledge, cannot know of us.

Socrates objects twice: the forms are patterns of experience, and they exist in thought.
The second of these is the more important, which they try to refute thus:
"If forms are thoughts, then shouldn't all things think? (Presumably
They must think the form they would possess)."
Here we have the essential pattern, the *form* of the objections --
Wordplay signifying nothing.

Take the first, most *common* objection, that chairs cannot be formed:
A harmless misunderstanding. We need only say that the forms *structure* reality;
They make it possible, but they do not determine every part of it, every activity, at least not in themselves.
What are some of the candidates for form? Time, space, and motion --
A form need only encompass the broadest categories, without which experience would be *formless* chaos;
Everything else can be logically deduced *from* them,
And hence no need for an ideal chair.

Of course, we may be speaking of entirely different forms than Plato,
But we are interested in using these objections to explore the idea of *form*:
If Plato made mistakes, they will become apparent.
And here is an objection to a common practice -- understanding the philosophers --
What does it matter if you can argue that he meant Y rather than Z?
Not: to reconstruct the meaning of the work -- but to apply it to some problem like a light,
And see how far every permutation of its logic will take us.
We are reconstructing the foundations of life,
Looking over the shoddy remains of past efforts, tearing them apart
When we need an odd screw or a nail or a widget
That wasn't doing much good there, but can do much, and much more, here.

Resume. Supposing that the form of smallness were like a pill,
One of the cakes in Alice in Wonderland,
Which, if you partook of it, would make you smaller, larger, etc.
Of course, the metaphor breaks down --
We should not admit that the forms have quantity,
Because then we might imagine that large amounts do more, and smaller less,
Just as ten Advil cure a migraine, one a gentle ache.
It would be better to think of the forms in analogy with logical operators,
F(x), where x is the variable, and F() unchanging form;
If this were so, an endless number of specific things could be predicated to each form --
So much for that. This solves too, I think, the trouble with largeness.
If we were to say anything, it would be this:
The forms are of a different kind than the things which partake in them --
Logical and a priori -- and only if we treat them as material and a fortiori
Do we begin to run into a multitude of absurdities,
Such as those Parmenides later espouses in relation to the One, a barren wife.

Science of Reality

Why turn away from the universe towards what is not?
The reality of the senses should be realized in the mind,
Not through an act of language, but by assent.

There is a whole work of the assent, a poetics of the assent,
Which we could call the ascent towards reality,
Because we are moving from the clouded surface of our thoughts,
Which mirrors and reflects it,
To reality itself.

Every structure, insofar as it is merely logical, is an enemy of reality:
Language is such a structure, mathematics, history, etc.
We want to see how these structures derive from reality,
That is, to experience their being in terms of what they show
And not in terms of what they tell.

But just as Wittgenstein said that the mystical
Was the experience of the whole as a limit
Beyond which we cannot think,
Can't I object that the mystical lies in the experience of parts
Suddenly made whole, misaligned from the totality of the real
So that they become, in themselves, its entire significance,
That is, a symbol? But these are the living symbols,
And must be experienced as such. There is a principle in reality
That aids in the destruction of language,
Because every part of reality can be experienced
Outside of that structure.