NOTES FROM A COMPOSITION BOOK

1967

1

The world is in my head. My body is in the world.

2

The world is my idea. I am the world. The world is your idea. You are the world. My world and your world are not the same.

3

There is no world except the human world. (By human I mean everything that can be seen, felt, heard, thought, and imagined).

4

The world has no objective existence. It exists only insofar as we are able to perceive it. And our perceptions are necessarily limited. Which means that the world has a limit, that it stops somewhere. But where it stops for me is not necessarily where it stops for you.

5

No theory of art (if it is possible) can be divorced from a theory of human perception.

6

But not only are our perceptions limited, language (our means of expressing those perceptions) is also limited.

7

Language is not experience. It is a means of organizing experience.

8

What, then, is the experience of language? It gives us the world and takes it away from us. In the same breath.

9

The fall of man is not a question of sin, transgression, or moral turpitude. It is a question of language conquering experience: the fall of the world into the word, experience descending from the eye to the mouth. A distance of about three inches.

10

The eye sees the world in flux. The word is an attempt to arrest the flow, to stabilize it. And yet we persist in trying to translate experience into language. Hence poetry, hence the utterances of daily life. This is the faith that prevents universal despair—and also causes it.

11

Art is the mirror of man’s wit (Marlowe). The mirror image is apt—and breakable. Shatter the mirror and rearrange the pieces. The result will still be a reflection of something. Any combination is possible, any number of pieces may be left out. The only requirement is that at least one fragment remain. In Hamlet, holding the mirror up to nature amounts to the same thing as Marlowe’s formulation—once the above arguments have been understood. For all things in nature are human, even if nature itself is not. (We could not exist if the world were not our idea). In other words, no matter what the circumstances (ancient or modern, Classical or Romantic), art is a product of the human mind. (The human mimed).

12

Faith in the word is what I call Classical. Doubt in the word is what I call Romantic. The Classicist believes in the future. The Romantic knows that he will be disappointed, that his desires will never be fulfilled. For he believes that the world is ineffable, beyond the grasp of words.

13

To feel estranged from language is to lose your own body. When words fail you, you dissolve into an image of nothingness. You disappear.