UbuWeb | UbuWeb Papers Letter to Pierre Garnier, 1963 Ian Hamilton Finlay, Scotland
One of the Cubists-I forget who-said
that it was after all difficult for THEM to make cubism because
they did not have, as we have, the example of cubism to help them.
I wonder if we are not all a little in the dark, still as to the
real significance of "concrete." . . . For myself I
cannot derive from the poems I have written any "method"
which can be applied to the writing of the next poem; it comes
back, after each poem, to a level of "being," to an
almost physical intuition of the time, or of a form . . . to which
I try, with huge uncertainty, to be "true." Just so,
"concrete" began for me with the extraordinary (since
wholly unexpected) sense that the syntax I had been using, the
movement of language in me, at a physical level, was no longer
there-so it had to be replaced with something else, with a syntax
and movement that would be true of the new feeling (which existed
in only the vaguest way, since I had, then, no form for it . .
.). So that I see the theory as a very essential (because we are
people, and people think, or should think, or should TRY to think)
part of our life and art; and yet I also feel that it is a construction,
very haphazard, uncertain, and by no means as yet to be taken
as definitive. And indeed, when people come together, for whatever
purpose, the good is often a by-product . . . it comes as
the unexpected thing. For myself, on the question of "naming,"
I call my poems "fauve" or "suprematist,"
this to indicate their relation to "reality" . . . (and
you see, one of the difficulties of theory for me is that I find
myself using a word like "reality" while knowing that
if I was asked, "What do you mean by reality?," I would
simply answer, "I don't know . . ."). I approve of Malevich's
statement, "Man distinguished himself as a thinking being
and removed himself from the perfection of God's creation. Having
left the non-thinking state, he strives by means of his perfected
objects, to be again embodied in the perfection of absolute, nonthinking
life...." That is, this seems to me, to describe, approximately,
my own need to make poems . . . though I don't know what is meant
by "God." And it also raises the question that, though
the objects might "make it," possibly, into a state
of perfection, the poet and painter will not. I think any pilot-plan
should distinguish, in its optimism, between what man can construct
and what he actually is. I mean, new thought does not make
a new man; in any photograph of an aircrash one can see how terribly
far man stretches- from angel to animal; and one does not want
a glittering perfection which forgets that the world is,
after all, also to be made by man into his home. I should
say -however hard I would find it to justify this in theory-that
"concrete" by its very limitations offers a tangible
image of goodness and sanity; it is very far from the now-fashionable
poetry of anguish and self. . . . It is a model, of order, even
if set in a space which is full of doubt. (Whereas non-concrete
might be said to be set in society, rather than space, and its
"satire," its "revolt," are only disguised
symptoms of social dishonesty. This, I realisej goes too far;
I do not mean to say that society is "bad.") . . . I
would like, if I could, to bring into this, somewhere the unfashionable
notion of "Beauty," which I find compelling and immediate,
however theoretically inadequate. I mean this in the simplest
way-that if I was asked, "Why do you like concrete poetry?"
I could truthfully answer "Because it is beautiful."
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