He may not look the part, but he certainly is a "doer"...

He who creates re-creates himself


...........for René Passeron*

(and to whom my book: “Poietics: Disquisitions on the Art of Creation” is dedicated)


......................You may not grow old too soon
........if
Things you have known will come back to you again
No revision nor recall need put them back in place

............Time was when you knew the time
.....the place......the face
..........Even the scarce women in prized moments gone in pain

Who would care......nor what would it matter
...in which life............upon what water
........you have trailed your fingers
............upon waves of papers

Let your mind brush
...............................some canvas in a rush
Left your mark
.....................upon some bark
................Wed some wanton women
spawned wholesome omens

Made as if........the artier your words
.........held some moment in a perennial frame
..Never to be banged away by fading suns
............collapsing quasars
................asteroid storms
....................puncturing galaxies
.........................usurping black holes

Can this act of writing seize the moment
Or is it your way of saying

............What else is there to be done?

Let the unknowable undermine the unknown

.........................................Here on this planet
we have made our sinuous conventions
.........stick to paper and canvas
................stone and sound

And words that are haloed
..............by the sickness of the poet
..though all is not lost for the pen
.......whose blood will
............possess
................anchor
....................expose

our futile justifications
..........................explications
...................................ratiocinations
doctoral dissertations

And generations will tremulously grant him
......The right to unravel the eternities
For one who dared capture the moment
......In the capsule of a poem


*René Passeron, b. 1920, a surrealist painter and philosopher, was the principal figure conducting research into “poietics” (the science and philosophy of creation) in France, since the eighties, after the renowned aesthetician Etienne Souriau took over from the internationally famous poet Paul Valéry who first mooted the project in 1939, though the Russians had already begun publishing in this field of research during the First World War. Professor Passeron led a twin career as a Senior Research Fellow with the premier world research organization: the French National Centre for Scientific Research (C.N.R.S.) and as a Professor (Directeur d’Etudes) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and at the University of Paris-I-Panthéon Sorbonne where he was the Director of the Institute of Aesthetics and Fine Arts.

After Chair Professor René ETIEMBLE underwent cardiac arrest during a doctoral viva at the Sorbonne during 1978, he wrote to 170 doctoral candidats under his “direction”, including me, saying he had retired from active duty. I was then roped into teaching a post-Masters doctoral seminar (Diplôme d’Etudes Approfondies) at the Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, and the viva was scheduled to take place on June 4, 1983. For reasons I won’t go into here, Etiemble recused one of the directors, and the University President
put the viva on a ”pending” status sine die. From then on, I had to look for a director with some help from Etiemble, but in 1986, Professor René PASSERON most ably organized the viva and brought it to a successful conclusion on March 6, 1987 at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University.


©: T.Wignesan 1987 - April 12, 1987 [from the collection : “back to background material”, 1993] Pub. in Poietics: Disquisitions on the Art of Creation. Allahabad: Cyberwit.net, 2008, 214p.
Copyright © T Wignesan | Year Posted 2012