ABENDLAND
Soon fish and game slip away.
Blue soul, dark wandering
Soon parted us from loved ones, others.
Evening changes sense and image.
-- Georg Trakl*
HOW do we express in garden-architectural form, if at all, the sensibility of "return", as expressed by Massimo Cacciari in the essay “Abendland”, Posthumous People: Vienna at the Turning Point (1996)? Is it even possible? This sense that “evening” and “twilight” represent a point of critical and momentous departure in Western metaphysics has recently been disclosed in virgilian études by poet-artist Ian Hamilton Finlay (most recently in the Serpentine Gallery Garden in Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park, London).This meditative pose -- a state of reflection that turns on questioning subjectivity itself -- is carried to the “woodland” edge of poetic language and form, by Finlay, by fleeting, temporal allusions to a very real, and (at the same time) metaphorical twilight and evening. Virgil has been identified by some (Panofsky) as the “author” of “evening” (in its full, occidental poetic sensibility at the least). The departure west -- e.g., of the Sun -- signals a migration (inward or into the underworld or otherworld) -- an introduction of alterity of/by the action of someone/something (e.g., The Sun as Being).
This transit to the edge of and beyond the horizon is linked metaphorically to the eternal return and the mystical (as that which is “unconcealed” or “manifest” but without linguistic signs to indicate its presence); therefore, the perennial quest for a “new language” in literature, art and architecture. But certainly such a “language” -- since it is almost pre-linguistic -- is not possible in the normative sense. Instead, it is likely that we are at the edge of something else more physical, more real and more of the earth. A language of things made manifest perhaps. Can such things then constitute a garden? And if so, is it not the exact opposite of the Cartesian garden, the Sun’s passage along the great central axis of Versailles empirically validating the reign of the Sun King? Is it more akin, then, to the unbuildable garden of Pascal?
Allen Weiss, in Mirrors of Infinity (1995) and Unnatural Horizons (1998), has suggested that a Pascalian garden would be almost impossible to conceive of (as opposed to a garden based on Cartesian subject/object relations). Not unlike von Kleist, we would be seeking (in constructing such a conceit) a long-neglected, perhaps mythical rear entrance to the Garden of Eden. Here, if successful, we would be reconnected to the cosmic strings (the Great Chain of Being), as re-animate marionettes? Again, we would converse with angelic orders? gods and demons? Perhaps the Renaissance gardens last attempted this as a synthesis (Ficino inspired many such apostrophes). Or is it all a ruse, simply a strategy to recover the lost aura of things and the ostensible reversibility of the diachronic (the synchronic within the diachronic) -- Francesco Colonna’s secret agenda?Metaphysics, as such, would (as Wittgenstein and Nietzsche predicted) no longer exist. Time would slide past Itself. And, according to Cacciari and Nietzsche, what must be passed through in any case is the wasteland of nihilism. The search for the hidden would slowly dissolve into an acknowledgement of the knowable. As such, nihilism would be a transit through the conditions of abject (Cartesian) subjectivity to an altogether new/old state. This state is not a shadowland of the World (as metaphysics). It is a territory that already exists (existed) in the space where metaphysics appeared (was implanted). If it is perceived as a “primordial” condition, it is misconceived. It must be entirely new as a new condition and a new reflexivity. It can be “originary” only in the sense that it always-already existed (as a formal possibility) within the time/space continuum, as an opportunity or possible point of departure. It is of Time, but a creative principle within Being (Time as phenomenal Being-in-the-World). Of Time, such a point of departure need not be determined empirically. Instead, the nature of such a condition is a shift in the seeming a priori (Kantian) foundation of thought itself. It is not about the limits of Reason. It is not a mirror condition of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Metaphysics is fatally ideological from Day One. A priori conditions are not founded (rooted) in metaphysics, but vice versa. They are, instead, epochal signifiers (the days and nights of Brahma) that can and do undergo “evolutionary” change. These changes may appear epistemic but in fact result from incalculable processes. In this way, Time Itself is implicated in undoing the very teleological sense of development that hides its true essence (face). This essence is evident in the clearest expressions of Body-Mind (Bodhi) as synchronic (as already-always occurring, repeating phenomena). It remains, by nature, unfathomable to the dichotomistic rationalist and sensualist temperaments. There is no Hegelian dialectic involved and no willful drive for the Absolute.
Even if such an evening strategy is wishful thinking, it deserves being thought -- A garden of Hesperides? or a garden of Agony? Perhaps neither. But a garden nonetheless, recognizable in nascent form in Dante’s Paradiso (and Virgil was the guide, there, too). But, by the conventions of the day, Dante could only allow Virgil (the pagan mage) to venture part way. Beatrice as Sophia led Dante to Abendland ('into the blue'). The azure and gold of the Russian Symbolists (Blok, Bely, Soloviev, et alia) were the then impressive colors of an iconological threshold for a cultural (poetic) form of Abendland. Such things continue, today, to haunt the Worldsoul.At the radiant hour, receding
Storms we’ll hear, we two.
Hands clasped, silent, we’ll go sailing
Far into the blue.
-- Aleksandr Blok ("Prayers", 1904)
Gavin Keeney (1998)
Lundi 27 Mars 2006, 23h53
“Décès de l'artiste écossais Ian Hamilton Finlay”
LONDRES (AP) - Ian Hamilton Finlay, l'un des artistes écossais les plus connus, est décédé lundi des suites d'une longue maladie, selon une porte-parole de sa galerie à Londres. Il avait 80 ans. / L'artiste, dont les oeuvres allaient de la sculpture à la philosophie en passant par la poésie, s'est éteint dans une clinique en Ecosse, a precise Victoria Miro. / La relation de Finlay avec la nature était présente au coeur de son oeuvre, et son legs le plus célèbre est "Little Sparta", le jardin de sa ferme à Stonypath, au sud ouest d'Edimbourg, en Ecosse. / Il s'y était installé en 1966 et a transformé les lieux en un jardin jalonné de sculptures et de colonnes. Stonypath est resté la maison de Finlay jusqu'à sa mort. / Né en 1925 à Nassau, aux Bahamas, l'artiste s'était installé à Edimbourg en 1950. Il a été élevé au rang de commandant de l'Ordre de l'Empire britannique en 2002. / L'an dernier, son 80e anniversaire avait été marqué par une grande exposition, "Sentences", à Inverleith House à Edimbourg. Une installation permanente de l'artiste est présente dans la Serpentine Gallery de Londres.
SMALL 'BIBLIOGRAPHIE'
Ian Hamilton Finlay, Pia Simig, A Proposal for the Grounds of the Serpentine Gallery (Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997)
Massimo Cacciari, Posthumous People: Vienna at the Turning Point (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996)
Gavin Keeney, "The Method of Ian Hamilton Finlay" (essay), Daidalos 65 (Berlin, 1997)
___________, "A Revolutionary Arcadia: Reading Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Un jardin révolutionnaire" (critique), Word & Image XI/3 (London, 1995)
___________, "Moravian Shadows" (photo-essay), Landscape Review 8:2 (Autumn 2004)
___________, "Prague: May Day 2004" (travelogue/poem), Log 3 (Autumn 2004)
Graeme Murray (ed.), Poiesis: Aspects of Contemporary Poetic Activity, (Edinburgh, The Fruit Market Gallery, 1992)
Giorgio Agamben, Infancy and History: Essays on the Destruction of Experience, (London: Verso, 1993)
NOTES / OUTTAKES
*Georg Trakl (1887-1914), in Heidegger's Unterwegs zur Sprache (1959), cited in "Geschlecht II" ("Heidegger's Hand"), Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida, edited by John Sallis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) - "Heidegger connects: 'The travelers who follow the stranger find themselves immediately separated from 'Loved Ones' (von Lieben) who are for them 'Others' (die fur sie 'Andere' sind). The 'Others', let us understand the ruined stock of man." (p. 185)
**Ian Hamilton Finlay, Tree-Plaque, Serpentine Gallery
PASSAGE TO THE 'WEST' (W/ BADIOU) - 'OBSCURA DE RE TAM LUCIDA PANGO CARMINA' - BEING & EVENT - "Once it is understood that the savour of the site resides uniquely in it being the serpent and steed of itself, and that its desire -- ineluctably revealed in some uprooting, in some departure -- is not its bound form, but the un-bound, the duty [of the poet] is then to anticipate the second joy, the conquered liaison ['horizon'], that will be given, at the most extreme moment of the uprooting, by open return within the site; this time with the precaution of a knowledge, a norm, a capacity for maintenance and discernment. The imperative is voiced: fidelity is required. Or rather: let's examine each and every thing in the transparent light that comes after [from] the storm." --Alain Badiou, "Holderlin" [pp. 255-261], Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (London: Continuum, 2006), pp. 260-261 ... / INFINITE THOUGHT - "Finally, the bare truth, anterior to the occupation of its place, essentially appears sad. The philosophical place, the place of the occurrence, or the proving ground of the true, when seen from a distance, is, for most people, melancholic. This desposition of pleasure must be sustained by a supernumerary and lateral pleasure, that lavished by the finery, Lucretius says, of 'sweet poetic honey.'" --Alain Badiou, "Philosophy and Art" [pp. 91-108}, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return of Philosophy, trans. Oliver Feltham, Justin Clemens (London: Continuum, 2004), p. 106 ... Badiou: De rerum natura = "Of the real of being-multiple" (Ibid., p. 106) ... / More Alain Badiou (Yellow Pages) …
Review of Cacciari's Posthumous People (Rodica Ieta, University of Western Ontario)
IHF Biography (Victoria Miro Gallery)Ian Hamilton Finlay Papers: 1948-1992 (Getty Research Institute)
Images of Little Sparta (Hippeis Gallery)
"The Death of Piety", Interview / 1996 (Jacket, 2001)
Some items from the Wild Hawthorn Press (UbuWeb)
Research database, ENSP (Versailles)
IHF (The Horse's Mouth)
IHF CV (CIAC)
Gilles A. Tiberghien, philosophe, spécialiste du paysage - "N'est-ce pas, par des moyens très différents, ce que recherche Ian Hamilton Finl[a]y dans son jardin de Little Sparta, en Ecosse? - A travers une symbolique et une poétique très concrète qui renvoie, par exemple, à des épisodes de la Révolution française, l'œuvre de Ian Hamilton Finlay est le jardin d'un homme, l'expression d'une vie. Le jardin déploie toute une existence, la rêverie souterraine de son créateur. On pénètre à l'intérieur d'une âme humaine. C'est une démarche artistique aussi intime que celle d'un poème. Ian Hamilton Finlay nous ouvre un monde qui renoue en même temps avec l'histoire du jardin, et nous présente ainsi comme le microcosme d'un macrocosme." (Le Monde, 12/25/01)
Regarding the 2004 symposium @ Bard Graduate Center (on Little Sparta) and the concurrent exhibition ("Works on Paper") @ UBS, cliquez ici ...
For an essay on the subject of Infinity Doubled, including a mnemonic detour to Little Sparta, see Infinity Doubled: Double-Black Cat (RTF) ...
