Friday, September 7, 2012

POETRY AND FICTION AS OBJECTS

I am more and more convinced that when we read, we read in 4 dimensions (or rather N dimensions, but let's make this easy), and that's why we have to consider the phenomenon of reading as quadri-dimensional (or N dimensional if we want to go quantum). To reduce poetry or fiction as mere "concepts" or "elements of our imagination" is the same as saying that living is breathing. Yes, but it is also much more than that, and if we want to apprehend what that "much more" is, we have to think in multiple dimensions and consider what we are reading (or seeing for that matter) as quantum objects, that exist in various states at the same time. Otherwise, one only sees one "side" of the object, and mistakes it for the whole. What's more these "objects" move in time, and so do we - both changing perspectives. That is why we can re-read texts we have already read and not recognize them. That is why, also, we can read ancient texts and find them new. "Modernity" Baudelaire said, "is surprise." Yes, absolutely. And this surprise comes from a shift of the object, or of the onlooker, or both. A question of perspective and the speed of light.

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