Poetry and Posterity IV
Poetry and Leviathan
The other parts of the series can be found here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part V
In Part III, I caution that the Posterity must know what they are up against. So then, let us attempt to examine our times. The psychic necrosis of modern man is that he is always on the cusp of becoming. All human activity suffers suspension in the great becoming. He is a paramecium in the megalithic vat of primordial potential. He is the great teeming mass, possessing only the infinitude of possibility. The becoming is beyond comprehension, and man has no understanding of what it would mean if he actually became. Therefore, the great exception has been declared. All action must end. All contemplation must cease. The entirety of humanity’s energy is required to focus the becoming. Mass neuronal fusion of uncategorical capability and discrete cognition will manifest the heterogenous beyond-man. Modern man lives on the knife’s edge of his own abolition. There are those who worship abolition and there are those who despair of it.
When a man is born, he is admitted into the spiritual bodies which the world of his times patronizes or negotiates with. Organizational bodies govern and mediate all manner of human life across the various levels of being. Bodies of blood, of country, of cult, of physicality, and of spirituality, all serve to bind the life of men. These bodies are perhaps capable of harmonization in a sufficiently governed cosmological model. The well-governed model of all bodies seems to continually recur as the vision of corporal hierarchy. The corporal hierarchy, as conceived by individual men, seems contingent on the understanding of and the relationship to the corpus mysticum. The manner in which men live according to the mystic body appears to have incalculable influence over cognition, developing into both acceptance and denial, of the corporal hierarchy. In the effort to negate traditional corporal hierarchy, the Everlasting Man is shunted into suspended simulation and the Abolitionary Man emerges as a doppelganger in competition for the governance and mediation of all bodies. Today, in our time, we are born admitted into occult bodies—that is, hidden bodies—as fairly advanced acolytes. The Abolitionary Man mediates unknown power from an unknown place for an unknown purpose. The rule of Abolition cuts across all bodies with a venomous “negation-of-exclusion” so as to poison the rule of Faith.
The role of Poetry in our eternal cosmic enterprise is multifaceted. Poetry is a record of action, is both an end and beginning of contemplation, and importantly, provides translational typology for the corporal hierarchy. Translational typology must navigate the symbolic transference which occurs across the bodies of existence so that men may be endowed with a cohesive and meaning-laden cosmology. It is therefore important that Poetry be simulated and subsumed into the occult bodies lest men begin to actualize Poetry’s true purpose. We can see, across multiple levels, the domain of poetry; And why it is threatening to the project of the great becoming. Poetry utilizes both Logos and Beauty. It transcribes action and inspires action. It provokes contemplation and expresses contemplation. Poetry is both Word and Voice. In its higher modes, it blossoms as both Contemplative Praise and Divine Mania; Each being a phenomenon which is incomprehensible to Abolition. Finally, in poetry we can find the reconciled man, as in the Psalms. The reconciliation of being is detestable to the spirit of the world because reconciliation is anti-becoming. All creation groans not to Become, but to commune with what Is.
The spirit of the world aims to negate reconciliation via the establishment of an imposter—the Amalgam. Through proliferation of the systemic androgyne, the Amalgam is at work to disperse the perception of ontological category. Its ultimate end being the fabrication of a fully collapsible system which is capable of the radical flattening of perception into nothingness. This system must be rid of contemplation by first collapsing contemplation into action thus creating hyper-action. Which then allows contemplation to be simulated by use of non-referential signs. The forms or patterns of hyper-action are translated and transmuted via acephalous typology into the counterfeit contemplation, thus thinking is always acting as there is no escape from the counterfeit pure act. Finally action is simulated, by and within temporal authority, so that no single act can push the actor into contemplation. At this point the transformation of contemplation into hyper-contemplation has occurred; As hyper contemplation is merely abstracted hyper action. Inside the walls of this cauldron the Amalgam simmers, accruing mass—this is the creation of the giant flesh. All the while, excess nutrition builds without actual expenditure.
The spirit of the world births in its subjects the lust of the giant flesh—the pathological drive to increase. Incessant stimulation, apart from interrupting contemplation, serves to grow the occult body. This appears, on the individual level, as indulging in non-teleological stimulation. Thus, human activity becomes more and more prophylactic as it continues to separate stimulation from result. (Possibly, this is reflective of a desire to separate Sin and Death.) We can see the physical status of the great becoming in the production of the giant flesh. The human being is suspended in the flow of always growing—always becoming. However, as is learned in myth, those who build the giant flesh—the Giants—need to avoid the wrath of Zeus. Therefore a project of disincarnation must then be pursued and the stratagem of the disincarnation is that the flesh becomes word. Now, the growth of the physical giant flesh is concomitant with the growth of the psychic flesh, but importantly, the physical flesh is used to impose specific spiritual orientation onto the psychic flesh. The flesh-made-word serves as the conduit to manifest the beyond-man, which is, perhaps, the illusory hope that man can exist outside the power of God.
A technique that the world uses to produce the giant flesh is the transmogrification of garment into flesh. All manner of garments of death can be absorbed into the flesh. Poetry, for instance, can be seen as a garment of letter; And not just poetry, but many forms of word can be seen as such. The occult body is occupied with amalgamating garments into the giant flesh. However, this unnatural lusting after addition comes at the cost of sacrificing generation in favor of prophylaxis. Effectively, the manufacture of garments and their subsequent assimilation may be the desire to master death by becoming more akin to death. At this juncture there appears to be a divide about the production of the beyond-man; Either beyond-man is achievable and therefore death is conquered or beyond-man is not viable and death can only be conquered by consent. The amassing of garments thus becomes surrogate suicide as human activity is ignorantly focused towards negotiating about the terms of death. The state of constant becoming leads to human exhaustion via depression. And so, the repetitive collection of garments is sought as the solace of consent in suicidal suffocation.
We must ask ourselves what role poetry can play in the circumcision of the giant flesh. To what degree can poetry cause the reduction of appetite? Through poetic circumcision and coercion, poetry can serve as an exclusionary king governing its domain. It can meet the Amalgam as the Sword. It can counter Mass with Form. It can approach Possibility with Virility—Fertility with Pregnancy; And therefore cause the cessation of Becoming with the beginning of Birth. The choice narrows before us as beyond-man or begotten-man. And so, ideal categories must be increasingly reckoned with—White garments and black garments; Apparent death but actual life, or apparent life but actual death; Submission or Simulation; The revelation of Divinity or the deep things of satan. Those who choose the surrogacy of suicide, choose the darkness of simulation and gnaw on their own tongues of self-referential speech. Now, what we have been discussing by the mention of garments and circumcision is, fundamentally, nakedness; And further, the mediation of nakedness. Even further, nakedness mediated by the spirit of the world—Leviathan, the one who twists, the great city Babylon.
Nakedness, being a permanent fixture of the earthly human condition, must always be dealt with or otherwise conceptualized. It must be considered in both the physical flesh and the psychic flesh—the body and the heart. What man is undergoing is the preparatory breakdown of his interior for the collapse of the exterior into himself. The patterns of the city are to be imploded into the individual after the natural patterns have been made void of Divine permeation via memetic aphasia. The person no longer rightly perceives or discerns the correct nature of things. As for nakedness, Babylon the Beast dictates the character of nakedness, in both permission and revocation, in ways such as shame, pride, pathology or egalitarianism. The manner of disposition greatly influences cosmological perception, especially in so far as the mediation of nakedness has been submerged into the spiritual. Therefore we must be diligently watchful for antichrist in the subtle things of the world. As the kings of the earth continually attempt to produce the common, the threat of Babel is always at hand and consequently the confusion of tongues. The tower looms, ready to collapse into the heart of men. For inside of them lies the potential of a Temple of Christ or a Tower of Babel.
Babylon awaits, patterning man after itself, in anticipation of entry. Slowly, the seduction of the subject into Whoredom is being massaged into assent. The volitionary lubrication from the defilement of innocence decreases reluctance and increases pleasure as drunkenness swells. The subject as Whore overcomes his conscience with the bloody consumption of innocence as Sense and Sanity are released from human grasp. The consideration of poetry in this context must recognize the abilities that poetry has in navigating the mediation of nakedness. It is, however, incapable of mediating nakedness itself. Placing poetry in the role of mediator is the same as erecting an idol. This, however, will be done since Babylon is to be given voice and Whoredom will happily oblige. The poet, then, must be conscious of the tool that he wields. Fire may shed light, but it burns all the same. Finally, it is of great importance that everything I have said must be considered at the accurate degree to which it has been accomplished. Surrogacy and simulation must be measured on a spectrum. This is because I believe that transcendence is possible, indeed always possible. Reality is extant, intelligible and ascertainable; For that is my faith.
I would like to assert that the preceding contextualization, which I have engaged in, is necessary for the consideration of Poetry and Posterity. Also, I posit that the foregoing matters are befitting the discussion of Poetry. Determining the proper role of Poetry is a valuable enterprise and it must be looked at in the light of many other aspects of existence. Just as the philosopher has always pondered politics, culture, language, nature and indeed all things; The poet has done the same. This is because both philosopher and poet are concerned with the same thing: Wonder. Poetry, as an activity, performs sundry and diverse functions. It is a vessel for revelation. It records and defines a people. It stewards language. It navigates typology and symbol. It expresses hate and proclaims love. It is a permanent and edifying human activity. Therefore, it is to our own detriment if we ignorantly narrow our sights when we contemplate poetry. And finally, in consideration of poetry—specifically of poems—we will have discovered that it is we who are the Posterity. Who else did Milton write for? Or Shakespeare? Or Wordsworth? They included us in their audience. We are the Posterity. We are the inheritors of beautiful things. We are the receivers of exceptional gifts. What remains other than accepting them? Beyond that, we work to pass them on; And not to merely hand them down, but to hand them down well. For it is not enough for man to simply live; He must live well.
The wise men know what wicked things Are written on the sky, They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings, Hearing the heavy purple wings, Where the forgotten seraph kings Still plot how God shall die. -Ballad of the White Horse, G.K. Chesterton On the pillow of evil it is Satan Trismegiste Who endlessly rocks our bewitched mind, And the rich metal of our will Is vaporized by that wise chemist. -Flowers of Evil, Charles Baudelaire there on the waves a headless Emperor walked coped in a foul indecent crimson; octopods round him stretched giant tentacles and crawled heavily on the slimy surface of the tangled sea, goggling with lidless eyes at the coast of the Empire. -Prelude, Charles Williams We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. -Little Gidding, T.S. Eliot Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name. -Answer, Sir Walter Scott Since all our keys are lost or broken, Shall it be thought absurd If for an art of words I turn Discreetly to the Word? -An Art of Poetry, James McAuley