Shamanism is profound, human intimacy and that is really all there is to it. I have found it bewildering trying to convey my understanding of shamanic writers, especially as it dawned on me that there are no better concepts to describe communication of this form in English than this and most people really have a different idea of what they want from a writer. I'd just assumed, I suppose, that what I wanted from a writer was intimacy. But for other people it was more like their allure. Did you know that this writer was black and the other was a great philosopher and this one here had status in the system we're now bound to follow?
But that's different from the icy chill that shreds your spine. One doesn't like to go on and on about an experience of reading that got deeper into your psyche than anything else has got. That this is difficult to explain says nothing of its meaning, but it does put a wall around the experience for those who haven't had it. You're supposed to be able to point to a part of a text and say, "Here is exactly where it occurred." But the evidence for this kind of communication is all circumstantial. Bataille's book written during World War Two, On Nietzsche, describes this low undercurrent of meaning from one writer to another. It's not the words that are said in the text that matters, but the structure of the text that leaves a lot unsaid. If your mind can put together what is said with what remains unsaid, suddenly you have intimacy. It may make you cry, as in my case the last part of Marechera's Black Sunlight did. It's that sense that the human being does everything within his or her power to be heroic, but in the final analysis, all that remains is in tolerating the human condition.
That's what Bataille got from Nietzsche as well, the writer's impotence and inabilility to do more to change the course anything including his own life, came across as tremendous effort wasted though a style of writing that threw caution to the winds, rather than being preservative. It showed the naked human, trying and failing to get beyond himself. Bataille experienced that form of writerly endeavour, which is so likely to fail, as a mode of sacrifice conveying vulnerability.
Bataille got that from Nietzsche and I got the same from Marechera. I didn't realize the experience was so rare or near impossible to describe as it has turned out to be. Honestly, when people stated you ought to point to the point in the text where such meanings suddenly become apparent, I thought maybe that was possible and that the failure to achieve that rested with me. But that isn't it because you have to take into account other aspects of the writing, like what's never said, for instance that there is no real descent into identity politics in Marechera's writing. That would have cheapened it. That there is value in what's being said because the easy ways out of emotional pain are carefully avoided.
In any case, shamanism is intimacy and diligence. The writing style does not lend itself well to conventional hermeneutics. We've never going to work up a mass consensus about what a particular text means, nor would we be advised to try it, not if one wants to get the meaning of the text without dividing it into isolated parts. You do that and you'll get some meaning for sure, but maybe not the full impact that comes across in sensing the writer behind the meaning.
I've said enough.
But that's different from the icy chill that shreds your spine. One doesn't like to go on and on about an experience of reading that got deeper into your psyche than anything else has got. That this is difficult to explain says nothing of its meaning, but it does put a wall around the experience for those who haven't had it. You're supposed to be able to point to a part of a text and say, "Here is exactly where it occurred." But the evidence for this kind of communication is all circumstantial. Bataille's book written during World War Two, On Nietzsche, describes this low undercurrent of meaning from one writer to another. It's not the words that are said in the text that matters, but the structure of the text that leaves a lot unsaid. If your mind can put together what is said with what remains unsaid, suddenly you have intimacy. It may make you cry, as in my case the last part of Marechera's Black Sunlight did. It's that sense that the human being does everything within his or her power to be heroic, but in the final analysis, all that remains is in tolerating the human condition.
That's what Bataille got from Nietzsche as well, the writer's impotence and inabilility to do more to change the course anything including his own life, came across as tremendous effort wasted though a style of writing that threw caution to the winds, rather than being preservative. It showed the naked human, trying and failing to get beyond himself. Bataille experienced that form of writerly endeavour, which is so likely to fail, as a mode of sacrifice conveying vulnerability.
Bataille got that from Nietzsche and I got the same from Marechera. I didn't realize the experience was so rare or near impossible to describe as it has turned out to be. Honestly, when people stated you ought to point to the point in the text where such meanings suddenly become apparent, I thought maybe that was possible and that the failure to achieve that rested with me. But that isn't it because you have to take into account other aspects of the writing, like what's never said, for instance that there is no real descent into identity politics in Marechera's writing. That would have cheapened it. That there is value in what's being said because the easy ways out of emotional pain are carefully avoided.
In any case, shamanism is intimacy and diligence. The writing style does not lend itself well to conventional hermeneutics. We've never going to work up a mass consensus about what a particular text means, nor would we be advised to try it, not if one wants to get the meaning of the text without dividing it into isolated parts. You do that and you'll get some meaning for sure, but maybe not the full impact that comes across in sensing the writer behind the meaning.
I've said enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment