"From its very beginnings," Montiglio says, "a structural aspect of Greek drama has favored continuous sound over silent breaks: the nearly total absence of empty scenes. Permanently inhabited by the chorus, the stage is filled with its visible and audible presence at the end of each episode" (Silence, p. 160). The image of the drama parallels the image of speech even as one informs (interpolates) the other. Today instead of imagery I'll speak of cosmology, a cosmology of the continuous, the continuous drama, the continuous dialogue. Does a euphemistic cosmology by itself tell us anything about what it leaves unsaid? The unsaid must be interpreted. Too true. If we engage in cosmology–is that what we do? Do we do cosmology by engagement? If we involve ourselves, somehow, with cosmology, with the understanding that the said must leave room for response, that the unsaid must leave room for response, even quiet response, how do we account for our understanding? What kind of understanding is it? Cosmological? We have a cosmological understanding of cosmological understandings, we understand cosmology through cosmology. Ah, if that were true we'd be between cosmologies. Perpetually? Alternatively, one cosmology might dominate another cosmology. That's another cosmology. So is the question of the day "How are we instilled with cosmology" or "How do we move between cosmologies?" Are we able to routinely shake ourselves free of cosmology? Given certain cosmologies (the euphemistic cosmology, for example), would it always be sufficient for freedom from cosmology to merely stop talking about the world? This is dubious, but, if so, to free oneself would one have to specify which world of which one were no longer speaking? How?
Labels: cosmology, interpretation, Montiglio, silence, worldview
3 Comments:
"a structural aspect of Greek drama has favored continuous sound over silent breaks: the nearly total absence of empty scenes. Permanently inhabited by the chorus, the stage is filled with its visible and audible presence at the end of each episode"
Kvond: The "silence" of Greek drama is composed of the very distance between the three points: Hero (mimetic event); Chorus (deitic event) and audience (affective cohension), a triangle of unbreakable circuitry. One might say that the cosmology (order/ornament) of the "unsaid" is explicated in the circuit of these three.
Interesting interpretation. Incidentally, I like the connection between cosmology and ornament. Do you see this ornament of the unsaid, or this structure of ornament, in other kinds of expression, or is it unique to drama?
Just saw your post. Nevermind the preceding question, unless you want to say anything else of course. Your take on intersubjectivity seems fresh to me, though I'm not sure I'd agree entirely. For one thing, I don't know if prescription and description cover all the bases, and I'm not convinced of the priority of prescription (before anything else that happens under the umbrella of communication?), though I have seen you make the argument and think it deserves to be considered. I think it's possible, or at least conceivable, that sharing doesn't require that I imagine that you be like me, if that's an aspect of what your saying. The same sort of criticism may apply to empathy. Well, we've kind of brushed up against this before, haven't we? I'm not convinced that by talking to you I must therefore be presuming that we share one and the same world; I don't think my doubt precludes the possibility of our sharing a world or two (and so on). I'm sure it will take me some time to fully digest where you're coming from. In the meantime, I just want to say it's a great post. I really enjoy your thinking.
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