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CHRISTOPHER KELEN
University of Macau
Abstract
This paper proposes a framework for theorising a
collaborative poetics in the space between languages. The hope
is to imagine conditions and structures that might be of
practical use to those working with poetry in translation (as
well as in modes of imitation, variation and response). The aim
is to assess prospects for a cosmopolitan community in the space
(of poetic potential) between cultures and languages.
Poetry, as a continuity in the effort to acknowledge the power
of words in themselves, manages to short-circuit a transcendent
wish to stand the world out of words. The position of the poet
in the modernist – and later – conception is, like that of the
foreigner in a new culture, one we might see as foreshadowed by
Lewis Carroll’s Alice, who, in Through the Looking Glass, enters
a wood where things have no names. Yet the poet finds names in
this space beyond, and names the things of one world as if they
were in and of another.
For the purposes of this paper, Lyotard’s différend is employed
in arguing the place of poetries as situated by work of witness
in the space between languages. Questions of ethics arising here
concern power relations in the present and the disingenuousness
of subjects who refuse to historicise the positions they occupy
as languaged subjects. To envisage the cosmopolitan community
demanded of poetic work between languages, Levinas’ criterial
ethic is invoked – ‘the word is a window; if it forms a screen
it must be rejected’.
Keywords: Poetics, poetry, différend, doubt, community,
language, cruelty, Dada, Lyotard, Levinas
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