Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Kristeva on Heidegger: colours

In his Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie, Heidegger invites the students in his Marburg lecture to consider what it is to think on the wall.  He cannot tell them how, when she first entered his office, that he asked her to removed her hat, her raincoat - or did not.  Husserl insists that when the thing is present, the backside is present in consciousness in the horizon, a phenomenon well-known in the worldwide demand for denim.

Colour.  Denim was originally colored using Newton's absent shade (just as the sun and the moon with the known planets numbered seven, so must his colours of the prism) - indigo - and not Genoa blue.

Kristeva draws our attention to the turn from green to brown in his thought of his saucy wood nymph.  Here is a possible clue: Trakl "Die Raben".

In Die Raben we find the Schatten, the doe, the braune Stille and the furrowed acre.
Über den schwarzen Winkel hasten
Am Mittag die Raben mit hartem Schrei
Ihr Schatten streift an die Hirschkuh vorbei
Und manchal mal sieht man sie mürrisch rasten.

O wie sie die braune Stille stören,
In der ein Acker sich verzückt,
Wie ein Weib, das schwer Ahnung berückt,
Und manchmal kann man sie keifen hören.

Und ein Aas, die sie irgenwo wittern,
Und plötzlich richten nach Nord sie den Flug
Und schwinden wie ein Leichenzug
in Luften, die von Wollust zittern.
Or not.  But what awaits the doe (hind), if not the buck (stag, Hirsch) in rut (Brunst, Hirschbrunst)?

3 comments:

  1. Kitsch in Heidegger - however lowbrow - should never be underestimated: he mocked academic niceties mercilessly when with Jaspers in provate conversation (and from Arendt, we know that Jaspers, the psychiatrist, was not easily shocked.)
    See Jaspers on differences in hallucinations.

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  2. See Aristotle on the etymology of οὐρανός as god of the night sky (see as god of poetry versus ερατώ, the goddess of erotic poetry);
    note: Ouranos and Abelard
    cf: the voice of Καλλιόπη
    cp: Heidegger on Apollo (Ἀπόλλων)
    note: Urania, muse of astrology
    Q: did Heidegger know that the Soviets named the Stalingrad offensive the Уран Operation?

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  3. Heidegger to Arendt on the "maiden" - cf Aratus on Dike; Aratus on Hermes.

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