Poetry, The Unbroken Thread of Language
From its early stages, poetry and poets heavily influenced philosophy’s linguistics, concepts, and imaginative growth.
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A degree in English literature taught me that each age produces its kind of language, giving us three types of verbal expression, one of which is the poetic use of language.
But in the age of “me-first” contemporary liberalism,’ the wisdom that some of the greatest minds across the centuries remains ignored in our modern pursuit of self-fulfillment, economic growth, and technological advancement. Exposing such trend as symptoms of a profound cultural crisis in which we claim a false superiority over the past — grasping at the thin, bare threads in our hands while we still can help work our way back to tradition.
From its early stages, poetry and poets heavily influenced philosophy’s linguistics, concepts, and imaginative growth. Questions — explored by ancient and contemporary thinkers — reveal how some of the most moral problems are as fresh and relevant to our age as they were to our ancestors.
Poetry has indeed, like other arts, played a part in human culture. Ancient Greek philosophy set off a way of thinking that supplied the roots for the Western intellectual tradition. Philosophers in antiquity believed in the word’s psychagogical power, which provided the foundation for ancient ethical literature, whose primary purpose was to call for a spiritual transformation.
To this day, I remember the epic stories, telling the tale of a great cultural hero and his exploits, of The Iliad, set during the Trojan War, and the Odyssey of Odysseus as he journeys home from the battle. The two epics remain among the most significant poems of the European tradition.
Ancient philosophers believed in the persuasive power of words, and belief in the power of words accompanied Greek culture from its beginnings. Poetry, music, and performances on stage were attributed to the power of tuning the spirit.
With Socrates comes inquiry into ethical matters. With Plato comes one of the most innovative ways of doing philosophy, which some endeavored to emulate by writing philosophical dialogues covering topics still of interest today, such as ethics, political thought, metaphysics, and epistemology.
The characters and events of mythology are about the eternally essential issues of what it is to be human: love and anger, war and the reasons for war or lack of them, identity and loss, complexities of family relationships, justice versus the rule of law, what heroism means, hope, despair — these are some examples from a long list.
Poetry is the one unbroken thread between us and the past, seeking the inherited traditions and ideals that give our lives meaning; from vanished cities and civilizations, this common utterance links us with heroism and righteousness, the loves and festivals-all that have gone before.
Poets may have created, modified, or used poetic forms, but centuries later, the same forms provide a snapshot of the civilizations from which they emerged. The gorgeous, lyrical love poems of Ancient Greece and Rome reflected cultures open to physical and emotional expression. It could be an allegory, a story-myth that finds its true meaning in a conceptual translation.
Poetry is also a beautiful manifestation of the spontaneous emotions of a poet. Most poets use their life experiences in creating their poems or are based on society at a particular time.
Check out @Patrick M. Ohana and see what I mean.
Poetry then keeps alive the symbolic use of language. The poet’s approach to language is hypothetical, allowing him to assume anything he desires. Human beings have ways of expressing their mind and ideas. Inside poetry, there are many moral values that we can get.
Defining poetry is not easy because the meaning varies from one definition to another. Not everything in poetry can be named or explained enough to give a fuller understanding of what it is in poetry that offers pleasure and creates form and meaning.
But we know how stories of extinct cities are excavated, interpreted, transformed, and transmitted. Then we search for new ways to express the questions unearthed and question the relationship between forms that convey the nonverbal and forms that rely on language. And this, as I see it, is the unbroken chain.
Thank you!