Reading

I'm reading The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism, which Paul Hoover assigned for a class last semester. I read much of it then, but without the attention it deserved, and I am now re-reading/fully reading it. I'm fascinated by Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy's idea that the German "Romantic" writers in ways invented the literary genre - writing that engages in its own discourse. Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy believe that we are still within the romantic mode, but what would a truly modern romanticism look like? Most attempts seem closer to the high modern style. Like this poem I wrote back in September.



Fragments
After Empedocles, fragment 17


to look into the vast [darkness] and perceive stars burning in their fixed heaven
only the soul seems a fitting complement
[ ] void as deep and black as sky
or otherwise vast, red
sinking into vaster expanses

we are only so much flesh as the Void will relinquish
each, equally, coughed from and again [darkness]
swallowed into it
the ease of dust arising and settling


****

what [changes most] is most known to be [most the same]
and all beings forget to find
the old form in the new
Love and Strife
every lover knows [. . . ] they are the same


****

the old philosophers talk of Love, love
a metaphor for [ ] or
for closing the spaces between objects so:

by coming together we are [emptying the void of] meaninglessness,
we are closing the gaps between stars
and stars then, are not fixed, though they burn

and though we too burn until we are dust
you need only embrace me until, outside of our bodies,
in the vast spaces of the firmament,
stars collide
and the world has meaning for a time