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December 03, 2008

connections

This will be my shortest ever (now, and in time to come) article on Auden, though it has involved a monumental amount of research and many accidental discoveries of a surprising kind. In fact, the "article" reduces to no more than this lean diagram.

Does it signify anything? The conventional answer is -- no. That means the "poetic" answer is -- yes. But what? You tell me. I am not a poet; I am baffled. Still, it is success of a kind simply to be able to frame a simple question. If only half the paragraphs I write, or read, did as much.

There is a seedy prestige (and a sort of madness) in trying to make things more complex than they are. It is harder to make things simple. Estrangingly simple. Simplicity is a goal, as in a statement that is only a diagram.

Posted by njenkins at December 3, 2008 05:52 PM

With the exception of interspersed quotations, all writing is © 2007-09 by Nicholas Jenkins