H.L Hix's new book, Demonstrategy: Poetry: For and Against sheds new light on poetry's place in the world, bringing philosophical, political, economic, "ethopoetic," cultural, historical, and psychological models to a broad and fascinating discussion. Here's a brief excerpt.
And below that, you'll find a behind-the scenes-look at the making of Demonstrategy with a heated (and comic) discussion between Etruscan editors and the author.
Article 1: Make another world, make this world otherwise.
1.1: Poetry Against Growth
"One take on contemporary life sees technology as having displaced poetry, rendering it irrelevant or at best compensatory. On this view, we live in the information age, under the sign of Moore’s Law, and poetry, as Wittgenstein observed even before digital supplanted analog, “is not used in the language game of giving information.” Absence from popular culture confirms poetry’s reduction to insignificance. Gaming and film and television reach billions worldwide, and generate billions in revenue; poetry reaches a tiny, tenuous, negligible audience, and operates at a loss, propped up by patronage, burdening rather than bolstering economic growth.
Consider, though, this contrary view: technology’s influence makes poetry more urgent than ever, so urgent that it conditions the continued survival of the human species. Exclusion of poetry from popular culture symptomatizes not poetry’s illness but culture’s. Poetry is not dying for want of an audience; humanity is dying for want of poetry. In Charles Bernstein’s words, we suffer “not the lack of mass audience for any particular poet but the lack of poetic thinking as an activated potential for all people.” In fulfillment of that contrarian understanding, as a response to our want of poetry, I propose ethopoesis. The ethopoetic would recognize the urgency, even the necessity, of poetry, and envision a poetry adequate to this cultural need.
Technology and economy now enmesh the globe in ways, and to a degree, beyond precedent. Transportation has overcome regional limitations to the movement of goods; digital technology has overcome the limits distance once imposed on communication; corporations now enjoy worldwide market reach; resources from any region are accessible to exploitation by entities in distant regions; and so on. The economy has raced toward total globalization, but cultures and concepts of citizenship have lagged, remaining local and sectarian. Corporations have become thoroughly multinational, but political institutions remain stubbornly national; natural resources and manufactured products move easily from one place to another, but movement of humans is tightly restricted by national boundaries; those with capital find safety and security for their money more readily than those without capital can find safety and security for their persons; and so on.
This disparity between a global economy and local cultural and civic values has as one upshot structural violence: violence, as Paul Farmer puts it, perpetrated “by the strong against the weak, in complex social fields” in which “historically given” and “economically driven” conditions guarantee “that violent acts will ensue.” Political democracy cannot be had without economic democracy; cultural and civic values must also check, not only be checked by, economic forces. Farmer does not identify poetry as an ally, but poetry urges, and furthers, the revaluation for which he calls. Until we construct, and enact, a global culture and global citizenship, our global economy will only be destructive: exaggerating the disparity between rich and poor, exhausting resources and generating waste faster and faster, prompting ever more terrorism and war and
Among the many ways to articulate why this is so, Janet Dine’s is especially lucid. Capitalism, she affirms, in its essence is simple, and its primary tool, the contract, is functional and ethically sound. But “like any other human institution it [contract] can be corrupted,” and the dominant contractually-based institutions, namely multinational corporations (e.g. banks) and international financial institutions (e.g. the IMF), have been corrupted. In a market economy, commercial law ought to allocate risk, but, Dine observes, it has not done so equitably. Instead, both international and national laws, “written,” Dine reminds us, “mostly by wealthy élites,” have participated in creating poverty the results of which include: more than one of every eight humans is undernourished; one of every eight humans does not have access to safe drinking water; two of five do not have access to adequate sanitation. That combination of factors kills 1.4 million children every year (4,000 every day, one every 20 seconds). In creating laws about contracts, commercial law establishes rules defining and protecting property, regulating how it is acquired and disposed of, but Dine emphasizes that “property rights are not rights over things but, on the contrary, rights against other people,” specifically the right to exclude them. Laws constructed by and for those who already own property will pursue “the widest concept of property and freedom to trade” without regulatory control, inviting “accumulations of property without imposing countervailing responsibilities.”
Dine depicts the global economy as not merely out of step with, but dependent upon the suppression of, valid conceptions of global culture and citizenship. Such an exposition suggests a condition for any suitable response. To mitigate the structural violence of our economy, we need cultural and civic parameters able to stand up to, and to modify, economic activity. Without what I call here the “ethopoetic,” our attempts even to envision, much less to implement, such parameters cannot but be impoverished and futile. That impoverishment and futility is revealed by contrasting the medium of economic exchange with the medium of cultural and civic exchange. Along at least one vector, the contrast is stark. The medium of economic exchange, currency, homogenizes and distorts value. It makes everything fungible: by means of it, anything can be rendered equivalent to anything else. So many tons of rice equivalent to, and traded for, one automobile; so many hours of a person’s labor at a certain job for one month’s rent on an apartment. The medium of cultural exchange, language, recognizes value in its full variety and particularity. Its differentiating capacity enables it to resist and to limit fungibility, to preserve uniqueness from equivalence.
Currency performs its generalizing by substituting price for value, a substitution that erases any distinction between price and value. Currency, in other words, pretends that price just is value. Only in a medium other than currency can the substitution of price for value be challenged. Identifying language as such a medium grounds an apology for poetry, and proposes an ideal for poetry. That is, it explains why poetry is necessary and what poetry at its best might be."
Thought it might be fun to reveal a little behind the scenes action, editing and copyediting a book as complex as Demonstrategy. This conversation takes place between Sally Lehman, assistant editor, Phil Brady, executive director (me!), Etruscan advisor J.Michael Lennon, and author Harvey Hix
April 30, 2019 at 7:11 PM
From: Sally Lehman
To: Philip Brady
Subj: Heraclitus or Herakleitos
Hi Phil,
I've finished reading Demonstrategy and have a question.
In Article 3.2, beginning on page 64, Hix consistently spells the name Heraclitus as Herakleitos. I figured that it was something he had picked up in his various work with translations. However, in Article 9.1, page 155, paragraph 2, he uses the more common spelling "Heraclitus". Would you like me to call for the various "Herakleitos" to be changed?
Thanks,
Sally
April 29, 2019 at 9:40 PM
From: Philip Brady
To: Sally Lehman
Subj: Re Heraclitus or Herakleitos
Hi Sally,
We’ll look to be consistent. The Herakleitos might be a more literal transcription from the Greek? Dunno. But I’m copying Harvey who will make the final call.
Phil
April 30, 2019 at 6:19 AM
From: Harvey L. Hix
To: Sally Lehman, Philip Brady
Subj: Re: Heraclitus or Herakleitos
Thank you, Sally, for taking such care. And thank you both for not silently altering anything. I wavered on this one myself. Phil is right that Herakleitos is a transliteration of the Greek, and Heraclitus is the (more common) Latinized version. The problem of (less usual but more true to the original) transliteration vs. (more usual but "invasive") Latinization is broad: if I were going to be consistent with the transliterating, I should, e.g., have used Theophrastos and Empedokles and Sokrates on p. 67. But that form of consistency seemed like it would make the spelling of names a distraction from the main concerns of the book, so I adopted the principle of using the most common spelling when the person being named is not the main subject of the essay (as when Socrates is mentioned in various essays), and the less usual spelling of Herakleitos in the one essay, because that is of a piece with its effort to "get back to the original." Even in it, I followed the principle of using Herakleitos when writing "a sentence of my own" but Heraclitus when quoting others who spell it that way, e.g. when quoting Kahn on p. 65.
It's tricky because on 155 I'm not QUOTING Kahn, even though I am CITING him. Hmmmm. I finally decided to combine the principles, and use the Latinized Heraclitus because Kahn uses that spelling AND H. isn't the main focus of the 9.1 essay.
So I'm inclined to let things stand as they are, but I'm open to arguments for a different judgment call.
Again, thank you for attending to fine detail: these things matter, and we want to get 'em right!
Harvey
April 30, 2019 at 6:45 AM
From: Philip Brady
To: Harvey L. Hix, Sally Lehman
Subj: Re: Heraclitus or Herakleitos
Harvey and Sally,
Let’s just call him Harry.
Phil
April 30, 2019 at 5:04 PM
From: Sally Lehman
To: Philip Brady, Harvey L. Hix
Well, Phil, I guess the ball's in your court. What would you like me to do here? Do you want to argue this out with Harvey?
Incidentally, Harvey, I loved this book. It has given me so much to consider as I come back to my writing. Plus, it's very funny in places. I feel really privileged to have been a small part of this.
Sally
May 1, 2019 at 1:57 PM
From: Sally Lehman
To: Philip Brady, Harvey L. Hix
Subj: Re: Heraclitus or Herakleitos
Hi Phil,
Having thought this over, I would suggest that we add a footnote or endnote to include what Harvey Hix said. It would be a big change in terms of RLCs, but it would preserve his idea without causing too much conflict for the reader.
Please let me know what you'd like me to do here.
Thanks,
Sally
May 2, 2019 at 8:03 AM
From: Philip Brady
To: Sally Lehman, Harvey L. Hix, J. Michael Lennon
Subj: Re: Heraclitus or Herakleitos
Readers of Demonstrategy, it seems to me, fall into four categories. The largest class—call them “the Dreamies,”—float between eye and text. No orthographic inconsistency will break their trance. Dreamies lean on an elbow at the windowsill, half-hearing the gardener snipping at the spring morning. The book is not a pastime—it is too heavy and serious to pass easily through the afternoon. Demonstrategy is a strategy to dream another kind of time. Paragraphs, examples, allusions, sequences of thought—all are arrayed in barely intuited patterns, immanent and unreadable. Demonstrategy may be a map to another place—its serpent insignia cover suggests a quest-journey—but Dreamies will not commit. It is too much. Demonstrategy is almost a Borgian book of sand. For moments at a time the dream stays clear. It might someday be gleaned, but not today. Its pages are runed with river flotsam, mysterious as Herakleitos.
The next group are the Assigned. Etruscan cannot imagine the course for which Demonstrategy is an assigned text. The Assigned assign themselves. They might be a friend or colleague of the author, or perhaps the Assigned hopes to notch a line on their CV by writing a review. For the Assigned, Demonstrategy is an agent of self-transformation. When they arrive at Herakleitos, at the tail of the second paragraph on page 62, they feel a frisson of pleasure. Their eyes dart up and down the page; their awareness momentarily sharpens, as at a familiar road marker—yes, I am in the right place. This is the real text. Herakleitos is an insignia of belonging. The author is a master, a philosopher, a Greek. Then they fade back, and only their id registers Heraclitus, Heraclitus, Heraclitus, whispering uneasily as a word whose meaning is half-forgotten.
Then there are the Critics. They read the way athletes or beauty queens check each other out, surreptitiously—not willing to admit that this is a competition. No one assigns them. When they encounter Herakleitos, an eyebrow twitches. Is this author conversant with the original? Is he qualified to employ the κάππα? A gauntlet has been thrown down. When they discover—only a page down—the lapse into the latinate, they smile. This glitch confirms a flaw. It reveals the pedantry of the upstart author and/or the faulty practices of the publishing house. Critical knives sharpen. But the Critic can relax, having neutralized the latest threat to suzerainty.
The fourth and smallest (we hope) category are the Etruscans. We have followed Demonstrategy from ms to IPP to ARC. This is our ninetieth title, our fourteenth Hix. We know the terrain. We have transcribed the prose villanelles and numerically balanced seasonal sonnets and boustrophedonic counter-narratives. Each book, we carry carefully as a chalice, which is our colophon, trying not to spill a drop of the higher nonsense. Every syllable has been distilled and tasted. This is our mission. We are serene. The Dreamies and the Assigned and the Critics cannot touch us.
Still, we worry about sales. About reviews. Gossip. Grants. Lists and awards. Sometimes we fret over the Dreamies, Assigned, and Critics. Sometimes we fear that Harvey himself—with his monochrome covers and Wyoming sinecure and gentlemanly bearing and semi-divine distance from pobiz—wants us to stay pure and exclusive and alone.
Harvey! we want to cry. We are lonely, lonely. Let us appease the Dreamies and Assigned and Critics. Give us our Latin Heraclitus. Come down. Come down. Why dost thou hide thy face? May 3, 2019 at 6:29 PM
May 5, 2019 at 7:20 PM
From: J. Michael Lennon
To: Sally Lehman, Philip Brady, Harvey L. Hix
Subj: Re: Heraclitus or Herakleitos
Dear Friends,
I enjoyed this hairsplitting; that’s what good editing is, a sedulous dialogue with the author and other stakeholders.
The thought that came to me was of the paperweight that Robert Gottlieb, a distinguished editor, has kept on his desk for a half-century. It reads: “Give the reader a break.”
Congratulations on the new book, Harvey.
All Best,
Mike
May 7, 2019 at 5:42 PM
From: Sally Lehman
To: Philip Brady, Harvey L. Hix, J. Michael Lennon
Subj: Re: Heraclitus or Herakleitos
I still stand by my suggestion and by Harvey Hix. As a writer, I want his true voice preserved. I've included the call for a footnote in my running list of changes.
Also, as one of the "Assigned" - although I was assigned primarily to find any errors - I found this book utterly fascinating. I will reread Demonstrategy. If I were a college level teacher, I would teach Demonstrategy. I sincerely believe that it is an important book which recognizes the space between the Greek and the Latin.
Sally
May 6, 2019 6:40 PM
From: Philip Brady
To: Sally Lehman
Subj: Re: Heraclitus or Herakleitos
Thanks for the good words and all your good work. You are not assigned. You are Etruscan!
Sent from my iPhone
May 7, 2019 at 3:21 PM
From: Harvey L. Hix
To: Sally Lehman, Philip Brady, J. Michael Lennon
Subj: Re: Heraclitus or Herakleitos
Demonstrategizing Etruscans:
Thank you again for lavishing such care (in Mike’s words, such “sedulous dialogue”) on Demonstrategy.
From here where I sit, pure and exclusive and alone (clasping the crag with crooked hands, close to the sun in lonely lands, watching, with eternal lids apart, like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite), this looks like a red herring. Or, in the edifying formulation so often appealed to by our Esteemed Leader (described in a letter I received yesterday from a Canadian friend as “a child-caging, climate-denying Roman emperor”), like fake news.
Sally rightly noted the presence in Demonstrategy of two spellings of our friend Harry’s name. From the mere fact of two spellings, though, it does not follow that anything is amiss. If the two spellings had occurred through Harvey’s ignorance (as, to cite an example from a previous Hix book, happened with Walmart and Wal-Mart) or inattention (as when Hix, in a previous manuscript, sloppily employed the spelling “t-shirt”), it would be appropriate to assume a problem existed. But the variant spellings of Harry’s name occurred through Harvey’s decision, in each instance through the deliberate application of the principles identified in response to the initial email of alert from Sally.
We don’t have to solve a problem if we have no problem to solve.
Two spellings would be a problem in itself if and only if uniformity of spelling were an absolute value, if, that is, the best available spelling were unconditionally the same in every case. If, though, best available spelling is context-dependent (as we know it is, from depositing checks at the bank drive-through here with our left arm out the driver’s window and depositing cheques with our right arm when in that royal throne of kings, that sceptred isle), then decisions might need to be made not once for all but case by case. So is it for spellings of Harry’s name in Demonstrategy.
In the case on 155, where H appears in one paragraph, which is reporting on a translation by someone else who himself uses the spelling Heraclitus, and where the consideration of H is subordinate to other concerns, the most invisible spelling is the best available. In the instances in 3.2, by sharp contrast, where H is the subject of the essay, and where the point of the essay is that the sediments of two thousand years impede our access to H’s vision, accepting the Romanized spelling, itself a token of those sediments, would undercut the point of the essay. In 3.2, except in direct quotations, the spelling arrived at by transliterating the Greek is the best available.
Sales figures of H. L. Hix doorstops prove decisively that I know nothing about Etruscan readers, so I am in no position to contest anyone’s characterization of them. Still, I cling to the hope that Etruscan readers will bear up under the intellectual duress of registering the transliterated spelling Herakleitos no less readily than New Directions readers have borne up under Anne Carson’s Kreon and Eurydike, no less readily, indeed, than Broadstone readers have borne up under the burden of mysterious glyphs in Book VI of a recent Philip Brady tome.
I hope that the Press will allow the two spellings to remain, leaving each instance of Herakleitos or Heraclitus in the final book as it stands currently in ARCs.
Come, one and all! Come, Etruscanites,
join me here on the lonely heights!
No cell phones or other detreitos
impede our reading Herakleitos.
Monochrome covers are legible here:
the air is thin and cold, but bright and clear!
Harvey
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