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Zukofsky's Literal Hallucination

"*free*, i.e.
'That thing is said to be FREE which exists by the mere necessity of its own nature and is determined in its actions by itself alone.'[Spinoza's *Ethics*, Part I, Def . 7]

This understanding of the processes of the imagination is conveniently applicable to the unity that Shakespeare's writing attains. Considered as an order of words and of drama, it has, at best, the quality of imagination sufficient in itself; but when the characters--both of words and of people--want 'the idea which cuts off the sufficiency of those things' that make for valid imaginings, they err from the sufficiency implied in the theme of the writing--'Nor hath Love's mind of any judgment taste.' This definition of love as applied to the words and the characters is tragic, not the thoroughness of its presentation. For its projection brings into light the mere necessity of its own nature, which is complete and therefore free. Nor do the failures of Shakespeare's imagination in the writing prove a personal tragedy. It can safely be said of him, whoever he was, with respect to these failures, as Homer said of his minstrel: 'the Muse's darling, but she had given him evil mixed with good: she took away the sight of his eyes, but she gave him the lovely gift of song.'

Comparison with Ovid, previously suggested, may help chart the imaginations of Shakespeare's mind that do not err. Ovid establishes his metamorphoses so that they are not hallucinations. Their dramatic conflicts are resolved into natural counterparts. In the telling, *The Metamorphosis* are true stories, whether Ovid saw the point of believing them or not. Their invention resembles those aspects of Cocteau's film 'Beauty and the Beast' which say that it is more salutary for intelligent beings to see their behavior literally than to let it cower in figurative thought: so that an American child of four, not knowing a word of French, may sit through most of the film before he asks, 'When will the beast become fancy?' Apparently, the story has been told as truthfully as when he first heard it read, and he means, of course, when will the good Beast look as good as he is. This is Ovid's method and not, as may be hastily conjectured, Shakespeare's. In the *Works* the adequate faculty of imagining establishes hallucinations (either sur- or sub-natural counterparts of the dramatic conflicts) so that they are literal only because they are successful."
--from Louis Zukofsky's *Bottom: on Shakespeare*

Old Growth

Old Growth
"Trees stay outside one's thought"
--Robert Creeley

A forest grows between us
Metaphors other inadequacies

Trauma bound when a wild
Mole the world was

Blind as such and silent
I touched you there

Then swelled now dimpled
So the forest fell to sleep

And saw its double there
It saw its double there spelling

All the alabaster to come
The feathers of down

The feathers loved ones
Chasing this course

Cleaving this caesura's course
The forest is a tendency

A force of things in history
With a little "h" enactments

And powers if Lear
Could have just ceased gravity

If naturans could have its way
Grace would say farewell

Farewell farewell the forest dispersed
All force the forest solved

In disappearance
We would lay down to bed

And the world and breath would sleep
The breath would forget

Kissing you
Animals laying

down
to bed in dow

n
animals without

history crying re
al

tears no there
is real feeling we h

ave names
the forms of our built a

nd broken
belief O interior recede

risk antecede zip
promise to recover me

So the forest fell to sleep
And saw its double there

It saw its double there sp
elling

All the alabaster to come

The feathers of down
The feather's loved ones chasing

Caesura this course
The forest is a tendency

A force of things in history
With a little "h" enactments and

Powers if Lear could have just
Ceased gravity if naturans

Could have its way
Grace would say farewell

Our bed disappears
But we remain

In metaphors forest confiding
Our coming allegory.