h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Lake - A87717261
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - Post Editor, moving target - U1590784

Okay, poetry...maybe.

Keith made me think of water. And Keats. And Roger Corman (it's Halloween, give me a break) made me think of the Shelleys and Lake Geneva. A name which might come from 'juniper'. Which is where Elijah sat and mulled it all over.

Oh, and I'm cold. We had an unseasonable cold snap.

That's about all you're going to get from me.

Wow, very , in a good sense that is.

I love most of this

But I'm not sure about the last stanza. One of my rules-which-aren't- rules is to be wary of writing in abstractions.

Or it could be simply that I don't understand it.

And can thought really be 'void of emotion'?

The idea that thought can be void of emotion is central to the thesis of the poem.

As is the abstraction. Now, it may not work...but, er, that was the idea.

It's intended to be a bit like Brecht's famous poem 'Der Rauch', in which he states, quite abstractly,

'Fehlte er
Wie trostlos dann wären
Haus, Bäume und See.'

Meaning: 'If it [the smoke] were missing,
How disconsolate would be
The house, the trees, and the lake.'

I suppose mathematical, or logical thought can be void of emotion. 2+2 is always 4, whatever your emotional state. I don't know how much thought this applies to, though .

As for the Brecht, I don't know the poem but he seems to be using simple concrete things - smoke, house, trees, lake - to illustrate an abstract idea. Something like 'without human life the landscape is empty' perhaps?

I think so. Hundreds of thousands of German schoolchildren have been forced to analyse that poem.

Bel and I were discussing poems you have to read in school the other day, apropos of my response to the latest acrostic challenge. I saw the word Panther, and thought Rilke. It's, er, Pavlovian...

Getting back to the idea of thought without emotion, it is my experience that a great deal of thought is possible without emotional colouring. But then, I'm a big fan of Krishnamurti's injunction to examine things 'without praise or blame'.

I suppose this is a matter of choice.

I remember when I was studying philosophy, someone in my seminar group said that Aristotle's views were different from Plato's because Aristotle was heterosexual, while Plato was homosexual.

I thought that, if he was right, the claim that Western philosophers made, that you can put aside appetites and emotions and reach wisdom by reason alone, must be wrong. And you can see that the conclusions philosophers reach are influenced by their backgrounds and their personalities. However, Western philosophy gave rise to the scientific method, which is supposed to strip out the personal bias and reach conclusions by objective experimentation. I have heard a few stories about scientists cheating, though...

I should go and study Krishnamurti.

That claim about Plato and Aristotle sounds bizarre to me.

I doubt either Plato or Aristotle would have recognised the concept of 'heterosexual' or 'homosexual' as categories of being.

Have fun with Krishnamurti. (Take on Rudolf Steiner next. He's way cool.)

hah! Whilst wandering through the vast and wild landscapes of h2g2, I find this magic lake, beside which are philosophers and poets discussing philosophy and poetry.

Let me smile at you, philosphers and poets! And the magic Lake is extraordinary in its resonant frequency, because I just sort of like chanted it.

Interesting, you know, the mystery of poetic language. Are vectors things? Are they? And what does vector mean? You see, this is the mystery and the magic to me. Its like a song lyric. I don't have to know what it all means. It takes me places, into musical textures.

What? Ah yes.

h

I would like to hear this song.