Mandelstam 2

“For where there is amenability to paraphrase, there the sheets have never been rumpled, there poetry, so to speak, has never spent the night.” O. Mandelstam, Conversation about Dante.

difference

If poetry is that which is not amenable to paraphrase, this means that there is no question of equivalence or generality. No possibility of exchanging or equating one term for another. One is dealing with something unexchangeable and irreplaceable. In this sense poetry is a form of repetition (Deleuze). Each time one writes, recites, reads, listens to a poem, there is a repetition of a singularity.

However, this does not mean that poetry is simply mystical oneness or that its difference is immediate instantiation, reduced to the moment of its uttering. While important, the performative approach has ended up subsuming any action/thought to the unfolding of a subject which, even if split, remains the main character in the story. Even Deleuze and Guattari’s chapter “On the Refrain” in Mille-Plateau at time returns to a subjectivation which eludes some of the power of poetry. [One would have to remember that Deleuze always underlined the specificity of philosophy (the creation of concepts) so that even his “poetic” language is one step removed from poetry in the full sense of the term, i.e. as not being amenable to paraphrasis].

Nevertheless, Deleuze’s argument that ideas actualize themselves by differenciation, (Différence et Répétition 1967: 358) amplifies the notion of non-paraphrasis by introducing the virtual as that determined dimension of reality which remains indifferenciated but is differentiated (c in one case, t in the other). With this arcane formulation, Deleuze indicated that while each poem/verse or even (poetic) word or interjection is distinct in itself, it carries with it an obscure element (as opposed to the distinct and clear idea), something that remains opaque, undefinable. This zone of obscurity, pre-individual, though singular, is the “dark side” of poetry, the one that makes it different, but the one whose “expression” cannot be paraphrased. This is what Deleuze will call the virtual.

[Deleuze also helps in thinking the question of analogy. He saw analogy as a particular case of resemblance and therefore still invested in identity—reflect on how this impacts the common assertion that poetry is analogy]

Deleuze’s zone of obscurity seems to (re)insert a metaphysical domain into singularity and difference, an unspeakable but present element upon which signification is predicated. But Mandelstam’s sentence is instead all about the speakable. The opening of a domain of difference that the sheets, the night, the rumpling all point towards, while leaving it undefined. But this indifferenciated – has not consistency, no “existence” if not in the sentence itself.

This is also what sets aside poetry from algorithms. While algorithms are functional towards an end different from themselves, the productivity of poetry only effects itself, or rather its own (virtual) unfolding.

Erotics

Mandelstam in his lines also introduced another characteristic of poetry. Poetry is not only difference unamenable to paraphrasis. Poetry needs to rumple the sheets, to spend the night. An erotics of poetry. And at least two additional dimensions: a) temporality b) experience, or if this is too messy a term-- “being there”. (there is the night as well, and obscurity, i.e. the zone of obscurity mentioned above).

If poetry is not amenable to paraphrase, if poetry lacks equivalents, its status as a sign would need to be rethought, and so would its value. Perhaps this is also what Pasolini meant when he stated that poetry cannot be consumed.