Does philosophy have its origins in poetry?

Thanks, Letty.

I think I'll keep my water wings to hand, just for now!

Tarah, odd your use of water wings...So long ago I remember someone who said the same. <smile> My response, "When caught in a rip tide, swim parallel to the shore."..sorry, slipping back in time, but no apologies.

Tell us something about who you are.

does philosophy have it's origins in poetry............

I looked in various dictionaries and found, as you might imagine, tons of definitions for the word. I settled upon this group of meanings which I found at www.dictionary.com:


I wonder if this might not be a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? If, according to these definitions, which seem to me to be the meaning of philosophy at it's most very basic, people have carried philosophies long before we were writing poetry - even rudimentary philosophies. I am speaking here of cavemen, for lack of a more scientific word.

Caveman philosophy: Stay warm and alive (primary), Protect my family (secondary)

However, they did have poetry (or prose) on their walls, in the form of pictures...so those might depict these same philosophies in art form, as Letty's question suggests. Might not the drawings of the crude stick figures represent a caveman/woman 'writing' down what is most important to him/her....writing down those things he/she lives by and for (philosophies)?

It seems to me that this topic can/will go on and on, because how can you really answer the question definitively? How can one say which came from which? When I write, I write what is in my heart - which is not always philosophy driven, and sometimes what is in m mind - which most times is philosophy drive. My most recent poem posted here was most purely written from my heart, from feelings I imagined those speaking in the poem my feel. I also wrote and posted a poem which personifies (I hope lol) my philosophy that Everyone Matters and We Should All Do What We Can to Make Our Lives Count.

so.....I am sure that I had that philosphy before I wrote that poem....but writing that poem made it so much clearer for me. The other, the "Letter" is just an exploration into feeling.

*taking a drink of water* that was a mouthful lol

I have always regarded philosophy as the art of phrasing things to sound more intelligent than they are (sorry if anyone is getting tired of hearing me say that). Poetry is the art of using words to show people how something is more interesting than they thought. Of course you can't be too general in defininf either area, but there is a correlation.

Father and Son
Delmore Schwartz

"From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached." -Franz Kafka

Father:
On these occasions, the feelings surprise,
Spontaneous as rain, and they compel
Explicitness, embarrassed eyes----

Son:
Father, you're not Polonius, you're reticent,
But sure, I can already tell
The unction and falsetto of the sentiment
Which gratifies the facile mouth, but springs
From no felt, had, and wholly known things.

Father:
You must let me tell you what you fear
When you wake up from sleep, still drunk with sleep:
You are afraid of time and its slow drip,
Like melting ice, like smoke upon the air
In February's glittering sunny day.
Your guilt is nameless, because its name is time,
Because its name is death. But you can stop
Time as it dribbles from you, drop by drop.

Son:
But I thought time was full of promises,
Even as now, the emotion of going away----

Father:
That is the first of all its menaces,
The lure of a future different from today;
All of us always are turning away
To the cinema and Asia. All of us go
To one indeterminate nothing.


Son:
Must it be so?
I question the sentiment you give to me,
As premature, not to be given, learned alone
When experience shrinks upon the chilling bone.
I would be sudden now and rash in joy,
As if I lived forever, the future my toy.
Time is a dancing fire at twenty-one,
Singing and shouting and drinking to the sun,
Powerful at the wheel of a motor-car,
Not thinking of death which is foreign and far.

Father:
If time flowed from your will and were a feast
I would be wrong to question your zest.
But each age betrays the same weak shape.
Each moment is dying. You will try to escape
From melting time and your dissipating soul
By hiding your head in a warm and dark hole.
See the evasions which so many don,
To flee the guilt of time they become one,
That is, the one number among masses,
The one anonymous in the audience,
The one expressionless in the subway,
In the subway evening among so many faces,
The one who reads the daily newspaper,
Separate from actor and act, a member
Of public opinion, never involved.
Integrated in the revery of a fine cigar,
Fleeing to childhood at the symphony concert,
Buying sleep at the drugstore, grandeur
At the band concert, Hawaii
On the screen, and everywhere a specious splendor;
One, when he is sad, has something to eat,
An ice cream soda, a toasted sandwich,
Or has his teeth fixed, but can always retreat
From the actual pain, and dream of the rich.
This is what one does, what one becomes
Because one is afraid to be alone,
Each with his own death in the lonely room.
But there is a stay. You can stop
Time as it dribbles from you, drop by drop.

Son:
Now I am afraid. What is there to be known?

Father:
Guilt, guilt of time, nameless guilt,
Grasp firmly your fear, thus grasping your self,
Your actual will. Stand in mastery,
Keeping time in you, its terrifying mystery.
Face yourself, constantly go back
To what you were, your own history.
You are always in debt. Do not forget
The dream postponed which would not quickly get
Pleasure immediate as drink, but takes
The travail of building, patience with means.
See the wart on your face and on your friend's face,
On your friend's face and indeed on your own face.
The loveliest woman sweats, the animal stains
The ideal which is with us like the sky…

Son:
Because of that, some laugh, and others cry.

Father:
Do not look past and turn away your face.
You cannot depart and take another name,
Nor go to sleep with lies. Always the same,
Always the same self from the ashes of sleep
Returns with its memories, always, always,
The phoenix with eight hundred thousand memories!

Son:
What must I do that is most difficult?

Father:
You must meet your death face to face,
You must, like one in an old play,
Decide, once and for all, your heart's place.
Love, power, and fame stand on an absolute
Under the formless night and the brilliant day,
The searching violin, the piercing flute.
Absolute! Venus and Caesar fade at that edge,
Hanging from the fiftieth-story ledge,
Or diminished in bed when the nurse presses
Her sickening unguents and her cold compresses.
When the news is certain, surpassing fear,
You touch the wound, the priceless, the most dear,
There in death's shadow, you comprehend
The irreducible wish, world without end.

Son:
I begin to understand the reason for evasion,
I cannot partake of your difficult vision.

Father:
Begin to understand the first decision.
Hamlet is the example; only dying
Did he take up his manhood, the dead's burden,
Done with evasion, done with sighing,
Done with revery.
Decide that you are dying
Because time is in you, ineluctable
As shadow, named by no syllablle.
Act in that shadow, as if death were now:
Your own self acts then, then you know.

Son:
My father has taught me to be serious.

Father:
Be guilty of yourself in the full looking-glass.

(I'm willing to go with the two being mutually exclusive, with a sibling-like upbringing and rivalry)

Mind if I pull up a chair? I saw Letty's invite on another thread. I will listen & peruse for a while, If you don't mind. Very interesting subject and good debate, Letty!

BTW, welcome to a2k, Tarah! Hope you like it here!

Okay, here's a philosophy poem for you:

Mine is not to reason why.

Mine is to do, do, do, or die.

Cav, as usual, overwhelms. Onyx, silver, tinkling bells. We cannot change what used to be..and thus we sink in poetry.

Later, my friends. One thing is for certain in this life...That nothing is certain....and thus I ring the curtain down...behind whose velvet lies a clown, who knows more than we will admit....




Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some great decision, offering each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever, 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Then to side with truth is noble, when we share her wretched crust,
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just;
Then it is the brave man chooses while the coward stands aside,
Till the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied.

By the light of burning martyrs, Christ, Thy bleeding feet we track,
Toiling up new Calv'ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient good uncouth,
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet the truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

A little teary tonight....

Exactly!




Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.


Robert Frost

I can't answer your question, Letty (a very good question I might add), but I tend to favor Scoates comment. I also suspect a strong historical connection between poetry and philosophy since both are heavily dependent on the discovery of metaphor. Have you seen that wonderful movie, Il Postino? When the postman learned the meaning of metaphor, it was almost as revolutionary as Helen Keller's discovery of "water." At that moment the postman made a quantum step toward both philosophy and poetry.

Well, folks. Sorry I have been so dilatory in replying, but I got a bit of bad news last night. Back later.

My take is the opposite Letty;

Poetry is the 'child' of philosophy!

To me the ideas come first, and then the artistic intellect translates them into 'emotion'!

I hope everthing is okay, Letty.

colorbook, everything is okay with my family. I guess in the long run that fact makes us a little insular, but is to be expected.

JL, no, I haven't seen the movie of which you speak, but "learning the meaning of metaphor" struck me. I wonder, often, if life isn't a metaphor.

Bo, I suppose that as the child of philosophy, poetry holds a unique position just as "the child is father of the man". You don't want my interpretation of that line. <smile>

For those of you who are interested, I will post that link, now.

http://www.janushead.org/4-2/iyer.cfm

My cut and paste of James Russell Lowell's piece was a result of the global war in which we all have a part. It was not intended to add a religious tenor to this thread, just a beautiful, but transient type of philosophy.