Phenomenology of Spirit

“Without this formative activity, dear remains inward and mute, and consciousness does not become explicitly for itself. If consciousness fashions the thing without that initial absolute fear, it is only an empty self-centered attitude; for its form or negativity is not negativity per se, and therefore its formative activity cannot give it a consciousness of itself as essential being. If it has not experienced absolute fear but only some lesser dread, the negative being has remained for it something external, its substance has not been infected by it through and through. Since the entire contents of its natural consciousness have not been jeopardized, determinate being still in principle attaches to it; having a ‘mind of one’s own’ is self-will, a freedom which is still enmeshed in servitude. Just as little as the pure form can become essential being for it, just as little is that form, regarded as extended to the particular, a universal formative activity, an absolute Notion; rather it is a skill which is master over some things, but not over the universal power and the whole of objective being.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831).
 
Tree branches creak

like the fast melting snow

Where are you from?

Time to go

In the thaw I

feel the

awe

In the

thaw

I feel

awe

Clock snaps its arms

Guillotine swing

Darkest of beats

Marches to Spring

Resist instinct

all to end

Let light

in

Let me be

cured

In the thaw I

feel the

awe

In the

thaw

I feel

awe

Hermetic

“No individual inspection of a work ever exhausts its meaning” – Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834).
 
Reconstructions

Objective Texts

Objective historical: how language shapes text

Objective divinatory: how text shapes language

Subjective Texts

Subjective historical: text produced from author’s soul

Subjective divinatory: author’s soul produced from writing text

Hermit

“It follows that ever person is on one hand a locus in which a given language is formed after an individual fashion and, on the other, a speaker who is only able to be understood within the totality of the language. In the same way, he is also a constantly developing spirit, while his discourse remains an object within the context of other intellection.” – Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834).
 
Prussian Plato 
Feels in church 
An infinite realm 
Blossom within 

Interpretation  
Grammatical or 
Technical 
 
A woman’s intuition 
Divining rod trembling 
Towards the lunar pool 
 
Comparatively his story 
Flexes tenses hard 
Like concrete cracking 
 
circling 

the part in the whole in the 
rat in the hole in the 
art n he ole 
 

o

Corinne

“Man’s most valuable faculty is his imagination” – Germaine Necker De Staël (1766-1817).
 
One minute I, 
more Emile than Sophie, 
am everything, the next, 
Nothing. 
 
Freedman under emperor 
agency exercised 
a violation 
of parole. 
 
Degraded heart, 
mediocre mind, 
my dear, do I satisfy low 
expectation if not desire? 
 
Dear sir, from beneath 
courageous cloak 
naked vanity is showing 
shrivelled and furred. 

Uncovered I stand alone and 
bear my immodesty. 
protect me not, but 
witness. 

Delphine

“Man’s most valuable faculty is his imagination” – Germaine Necker De Staël (1766-1817).
 
All we have 
upon this earth 
are beginnings 
 

an opening, void, 
a space where 
happiness floats 
 
Pierce the eyeball. 
Strike 
the heart. 
 

Fiction’s only truth 
is the impression 
it produces 

 
Reason and 
imagination 
bound 
 
A history not 
of past but 
future 
 

Nothing true 
and everything 
likely 
 
Each stab within 
my sensitive 
suffering heart 
 
All that falls 
into time’s 
vast chasms 

Vindication

“I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they have the same simple direction, as that there is a God.” – Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797).
 
On the shore 
Ephemeron triflers  
Swarm 

 Times and tides 
Soulless bloodlines 
Submissive as soldiers 
 
Legion’s swine squeal 
I was too fond 
of Fanny Blood 
and daughter’s education 

Cast them, cliff-plunge 
Into mortal 
Furnace and  
Airless satellites 

Through sunbeams charming  
and oblique 
Minnow ticklers 
Hook dolphins 

While graceful ivy 
Clasps the oak 
Placental tears and 
Playing God 

Thus God ordains my beauty 
To win the god in him 
And in his name 
My gothic death and resurrection

Fine Art

“Impart to the world you would influence a Direction towards the good, and the quiet rhythm of time will bring it to fulfilment.”– Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805).
 
Dry 
The muses have 
Drained me 
 
Revive 
Through living springs 
Of milk from better ages 
 
That I may 
Into a stranger of my century 
Grow 

Be moved by the drive 
Of the beautiful soul 
To play 

Endure the ordeal 
Defy the opinions 
Masquerading as the world 
 
To resist becoming  
The creature of the 
Century that bore me 

Dignity lost yet artfully rescued 
Amber preserved. 
 
Truth’s terrible vengeance 
Radiant in the dewy  
Valley of the night 
Pursues the tim’rous fugitive 

To the ends of the earth 
To the ends 
of the earth. 
 

The Totality of Our Nature

“True, we know that the outstanding individual will never let the limits of his occupation dictate the limits of his activity. But a mediocre talent will consume in the office assigned him the whole meagre sum of his powers, and a man has to have a mind above the ordinary if, without detriment to his calling, he is still to have time for the chosen pursuits of his leisure.” – Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805).
 
Wedded 
Without seduction 
To Art’s delights and 
Wisdom’s dignity. 
 

Return: 
 
Before poetry tumbled 
In the hayloft with wit 
And speculation spread 
For sophistry’s purse. 
 
Now: fragments uncombined 
Nature torn to ribbons 
 
A shambles. 
 
Clock-work ingenious 
Where the master within us 
Dismantles our cogs 
 
Empty subtleties and 
Pinched pedantry 
Cold and narrow hearts 
 

Glass-armed eyes 
Bending absolute light 

Utility

“Art is a daughter of Freedom, and takes her orders from the necessity inherent in minds, not from the exigencies of matter. But at the present time material needs reign supreme and bend a degraded humanity beneath their tyrannical yoke. Utility is the great idol of our age, to which all powers are in thrall and to which all talent must pay homage.” – Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805).
 
Shun  
The noisy marketplace 
Where stalls and gallows 
Frame the mighty guillotine 
Rectitude blind. 
 
Speak 
With tongue loosed 
From the cud-chew of gossip 
A thin voice grating 
Against the boom of the world. 
 
See 
Above all 
That Beauty will 
Must 
Set you free.

Handmaid

“I should prefer that only those be called works of art in which the artist had occasion to show himself as such and in which beauty was his first and ultimate aim. None of the others, which betray too obvious traces of religious conventions, deserve this name because in their case the artist did not create art for art’s sake, but his art was merely a handmaid of religion, which stressed meaning for beauty, or, out of consideration for art and the more refined taste of the period, has ceased to emphasize it to such a degree that beauty alone would seem to be the sole object. […] Paint for us, you poets, the pleasure, the affection, the love and delight which beauty brings, and you have painted beauty itself.” – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781).
 
In the mute tongue of painters 
Urania’s wand must 
Into her starsphere 
Ever be thrust 
 
But in other voices 
This handmaid can read 
Inscribed celestial 
Fates mortals heed 

Reduced and visible 
To action suggested, or, 
In progressive imitations, 
Invisible and infinite 

A shield forever turning in a forge.