Paul Valery

A favourite poet of mine, a poet who also had some philosophical aspirations, is Paul Valery. French, living in the 19th Century, he had a short (but successful) poetic career, until he turned to a more private pursuit of letters. During this absence from poetry, he kept a series of notebooks, known as the Cahiers. These books contained a systematic exploration of philosophical, literary, scientific and mathematical ideas, which was to secure Valery as on object of study for roughly 100 years. He finally returned to poetry in his later life, and always maintained the poignancy of his early work. His greatest work - La Juene Parque - is a testament to his complete command of the French language and its great poetic fluency.

Nietzsche and the Literary

I take the German Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to be one of the true early literary Philosophers. His ideas have sparked considerable controversy, and have indeed been associated with many unsavory moments in political history. But his thought is very much intended, I believe, to spark debate. He was familiar with the writings of Baudelaire, who also courted the controversial. Nietzsche's work in texts such as The Birth of Tragedy simply swim in the passionate execution of language in a very poetic and stylistic fashion. His distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian (a distinction, at heart between desire and restraint) has didactic resonances, but should rather be read as a poem might be read - for enjoyment and aesthetic appreciation. Nietzsche was also aware of Holderlin's work, and importantly struck up a correspondence with August Strindberg. These two writers have been covered below in this blog, and are important for understanding madness as it expresses itself in literature. Nietzsche's own madness, reputedly cause by a syphilitic condition, was to mark the end of an amazing and indeed controversial career as a thinker. And this is how we should take Nietzsche, as one to spark debate and controversy, not one to take didactically.

Dante Alighieri - Inferno

Dante has always captivated me. His most profound text, I believe, is his Inferno. Part of a trilogy (Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso), the work is a literary exploration of hell as it is conceived in the Christian tradition. The poem, written in the terza rima form, is a powerful evocation of the torments that humans are prone to encounter. Its power, I believe, lies in the poem's depiction of suffering, and the many forms it can take. Dante, accompanied by his guide Virgil, enters hell to find a sprawling labyrinth of sin, decrepitude, and ultimately suffering. The poem is not simply, however a bleak exploration of the darker side of humanity. It has a dignity and sense of ultimate redemption which guides the reader through the torments they are reading of, and takes them on a journey to a certain appeasement of their own suffering. In this, Dante has constructed a sort of map you might call it - a map of (dis)ease, that has, at its heart, an ultimate salvation.