L32-05-27-14-252

1. L32-05-27-14-252 • Papers: Mean: 3.3 • Reading, thinking, writing. The good news. & the persisting problems. Time & patience. • A caution on the internet and cool apps: • Infantilization and learned incompetence: • ‘I can’t do that’ ‘Show me how.’ ‘That’s not Ms X told me!’ • ‘This is too hard—confusing—ambiguous-&c. ‘ ‘Tell me what I am supposed to do. ‘ ‘What does this mean?’ Statements all inflected as questions. A fetish for information as if it were transparent. • The next paper, and the last: A CRUSH, but you are actually ready to do both • Six days left: Last novel, FOE, starting tomorrow. 157 pages, 4 sections • I: 1-46 • II: 47-112 • III: 113-152 • IV: 153-157 • On the website: Daniel DeFoe’sThe Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.

2. Ideas in Kundera Everything is structure by the fundamental model of metaphor, with open extension: r A B apposition of features Concept: replication of profile Idea: generation of a general (extendable pattern) Litost, the Border, key terms (Angel, laughter, loss)

3. Tautegory (Coleridge) / Einstein • This isn’t hard: it is the habits of post infancy that block it. It is to see sameness without cancelling difference. Albert Einstein, from Schlipp,Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist (1951) v. I, p. 7 • “What, precisely, is ‘thinking’? When, at the reception of sense-impressions, memory-pictures emerge, this is not yet ‘thinking.’ And when such pictures form series, each member of which calls forth another, this too is not yet ‘thinking.’ When, however, a certain picture turns up in many such series, then—precisely through such return—it becomes an ordering element for such series, in that it connects series which in themselves are unconnected. Such an element becomes an instrument, a concept (Begriff).[note that this is Coleridge’s Idea, since it cannot be a concept of stuff which always entails that the members of the series are connected through the categories-LS] I think that the transition from free association or ‘dreaming’ to thinking is characterized by the more or less dominating role which the [Begriff] plays in it. It is by no means necessary that the [Begriff]must be connected with a sensorily cognizable and reproducible sign(word); but when this is the case thinking becomes by means of that fact communicable.”

4. All thinking inherent poetic and inherently Historical • Otherwise, it is perennially immature calculation. • Augustus de Morgan: 19th century pioneer in symbolic and mathematical logic. • The historical rule of innovation: from A Budget of Paradoxes (paraphrase) • All major discoverers, without exception, are those most profoundly knowledgeable about the history of their field. Most are also antiquarians, revelling in the details of past inquiries.

5. Composition and Logic • See the interview with Christian Salmon. • The ART (root: poesis, to make: techne, the principles of construction) consists in intentional apposition, which in itself is the ground of logic. Note that the schema for metaphor is the basis of an equation, and that reasoning from premises does not have three fundamental axioms (identity, non contradiction, and excluded middle, since these are just guidelines for the formation of decidable questions.

6. The Angel The angel was flying through sky in midnight, And softly he sang in his flight; And clouds, and stars, and the moon in a throng Hearkened to that holy song. He sang of the garden of God's paradise, Of innocent ghosts in its shade; He sang of the God, and his vivacious praise Was glories and unfeigned. The juvenile soul he carried in arms For worlds of distress and alarms; The tune of his charming and heavenly song Was left in the soul for long. It roamed on earth many long nights and days, Filled with a wonderful thirst, And earth's boring songs could not ever replace The sounds of heaven it lost. http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/lermontov/prophet.html Prophet 1841 Since that time when the highest court Had given me the prophet's vision, In eyes of men I always caught The images of sin and treason. Then I began to promulgate The clear love's and truth's commandment: At me all humans threw for that Hard sticks and stones, like the madmen. I put sackcloth and ashes on, And ran -- a beggar -- from the town, And there I live in desert lone, Like birds, on food that God sends down; Here earthly creatures serve me right, The laws of the Lord obeying; And stars here hear me in night, With their rays, like babies, playing. And when to towns' walls, by chance, I hurry through the noisy places, The old men say to younger ones, With selfish smiles on their faces, "Look, there is an example for us! He was expelled from life, like ours: The fool was forcing us to trust That God is speaking through his mouth! So, see, my children: how grim, Thin, pale he is -- with shaggy hair! Look, how poor he is and bare, How all people despise him!" Minor edit, L Searle Mikhail Lermontov, Russian, 1814-1841

7. Poets included in “Litost” • Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), Italian poet, devised the Petrarchan sonnet • Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Italian poet, author the Decameron • Voltaire [François-Marie Arouet ]: French, 1694-1778 • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) major German romantic writer, all genres • Mikhail Lermontov, (1814-1841) Russian poet • Paul Verlaine (1844-1896), French Symbolist poet • Sergei Yesensin (1895-1925) Russian poet

8. Kristyna • P 191: Goethe turns Krityna into a Queen • The plot, the folly, the poetry • Litost: the sudden vision of one’s own misery: make poetry of that.