The poem is neat and your explication brings to mind a recurrent thought
when I encounter the core idea of "the thought is completed in the word." I
(think I) know what LSV and Mandelshtam are saying, but I always have this
thought that the thought is not yet completed, not in so far as it is taken
up, perhaps transformed, and comes back again at a later time, in some new,
albeit related, form, to begin that side of the cycle over again.
mike
On Sun, May 1, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Tony Whitson <twhitson@udel.edu> wrote:
I clipped the wrong line from Martin's post in that last message. I meant
the Dickinson verse in reponse to the line that now appears below from
Martin.
In Dickinson's verse, what's not timeless is not merely the meaning that a
word does as a lexical unit in a language (i.e., in the philological sense),
but even in a specific utterance the word spoken continues meaning, as it
continues living, non-timelessly.
On Sun, 1 May 2011, Tony Whitson wrote:
On Tue, 26 Apr 2011, Martin Packer wrote:
For LSV word-meaning is not timeless. It changes over time; he didn't
study philology for nothing!
A word is dead
When it is said
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.
--Emily Dickinson
I find it helpful to think of meaning as something that words do -- not
something they contain, convey, etc.
Tony Whitson
UD School of Education
NEWARK DE 19716
twhitson@udel.edu
_______________________________
"those who fail to reread
are obliged to read the same story everywhere"
-- Roland Barthes, S/Z (1970)
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