Rhythm

It takes some time to get into the rhythm – and to slow the flow of thought: A qualitative study about experience of time and narrative in psychological interventions in general practice

1 Mallarmé and a Proffer of Silence
2 Cézanne: Depth in the World
3 Proust through the Fold of Memory
4 Debussy: Silence and Resonance
5 Cézanne and the Institution of Style
6 Proust: In Search of the True Albertine
7 Harmony and the Movement of Style in Debussy
8 On the Musical Idea of Proust
9 Debussy: The Form That Has Arrived at Itself
10 Synesthesia, Recollection, Resurrection

Confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought

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Much critical writing about the Beat Movement has focused on the strong interrelationship between the literary and social discourses within and around the movement. However, the study of Beat literature also necessitates an awareness of its position within the literary discourse of the twentieth century. Beat writing may be seen as standing in the unstable, shifting territory between two equally unstable, shifting literary movements: modernism and postmodernism. Beat poetry pits itself against high modernism and the New Critical tradition, draws upon some aspects of early avant-garde modernism, and simultaneously remoulds these aspects into what may be regarded as the beginnings of postmodernism in the USA. This article presents a reading of Allen Ginsberg’s Beat poetry against this literary-historical background. A brief general overview of some of the key characteristics of Beat poetry is given, followed by a discussion of a number of Beat poems, organised around some salient features of Ginsberg’s Beat poetry that may be linked to Beat poetry’s position in the transition from modernism to postmodernism.​

​Symbols
The Guru Granth Sahib begins with the ‘ 1 ‘ (1 Oankar). And I am faced with an intractable dilemma: is the ‘ 1 ‘ literal or is it symbolic?

 It is most literal for the ‘ 1 ‘ emphatically states the existence (“kar”) of the ONE God (“Oan”); yet, the ‘ 1 ‘ is a mathematical symbol standing for a larger meaning which cannot be given or not freely given in perceptual experience.

Grounded in literalism, it seems to me that the ‘ 1 ‘ goes beyond, ad infinitum; both literalism and symbolism find their quintessence in it.

 Confining myself to the latter, I take the liberty of replacing a Berkelian claim,.
“mathematics goes from infinitesimals of infinitesimals to nowhere”

by “mathematical ‘1’ goes from infinitesimals of infinitesimals to infinite of infinite!”
Although a mathematical symbol, the ‘1’ is far from being exact or stipulated in any fashion. In fact the various symbols – Father, Mother, Brother, Friend, Judge, Lover, Bridegroom, Gardener, Garden, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva….are completed in the symbol of the numerical ‘1’.

It is the most direct, embracing and unrestrictive symbol of the Metaphysical being existent in the Sikh faith.
In his article on the “Meaning and Justification of Symbols”, Paul Tillich says that symbols are the language of religion and are the only way in which religion can express itself directly.

Going beyond themselves,
“the symbols participate in the reality of that which they represent.”
Signs as opposed to symbols, says Tillich, don’t. The following numerals are used frequently in the Guru Granth Sahib,
Two (dohin) – For God and matter
Three (tine) – For the three “loks” (worlds): akas (upper), patal (nether) and dharti (earth) or the three gunas: rajas, sattva and tamas.
Four (chare) – For the four elements of the four Vedas: Rik, Yajus), Atharva) and Sama. )
Five (panje)) – For the five senses or the five lower passions: kam) (lust), krodh) (anger), lobh) (greed), moh) (desire) and ahankar ) (egocentricity).
They represent entities without participating in them and are, in a way, ‘steno’. We could therefore in the Tillichian term call them ‘signs’. Symbols, as he points out in “Systematic Theology”, enhance rather than diminish the reality and power of religious language.

This Tillichian – might one say Christian? – Understanding of symbols is in congruence with Sikh understanding.
The Bridegroom symbol, a ramification of the ‘1’ illustrates it quite well. Says the Guru in measure Asa: