‘Could a rule be given from without, poetry would cease to be poetry, and sink into a mechanical art. It would be μóρφωσις, not ποίησις. The rules of the IMAGINATION are themselves the very powers of growth and production. The words to which they are reducible, present only the outlines and external appearance of the fruit. A deceptive counterfeit of the superficial form and colours may be elaborated; but the marble peach feels cold and heavy, and children only put it to their mouths.’ [Coleridge, Biographia ch. 18]

‘ποίησις’ (poiēsis) means ‘a making, a creation, a production’ and is used of poetry in Aristotle and Plato. ‘μóρφωσις’ (morphōsis) in essence means the same thing: ‘a shaping, a bringing into shape.’ But Coleridge has in mind the New Testament use of the word as ‘semblance’ or ‘outward appearance’, which the KJV translates as ‘form’: ‘An instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form [μóρφωσις] of knowledge and of the truth in the law’ [Romans 2:20]; ‘Having a form [μóρφωσις] of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away’ [2 Timothy 3:5]. I trust that's clear.

There is much more on Coleridge at my other, Coleridgean blog.

Sunday 5 November 2017

Thor: Ragnarok (dir. Taika Waititi 2017)



I enjoyed this very much, and so did my ten-year-old son. You've already encountered a bunch of reactions to and reviews of the movie, I know, and I don't presume to claim there's anything very much I can add to them. The design is superb. There's a wonderful, garish, proggy vibe throughout. The whole is rendered well-paced and exciting by embracing (rather than despite of) its many sillinesses. It's funny. I laughed aloud, many times. I read an interview with Waititi in which he said the initial cut of the film, omitting much of the farce, was under ninety minutes, but he decided it didn't work and reinserted all the funny stuff, which gives us the two-and-a-half-hour action-comedy on general release now. And it is funny. And I like funny.

It's a question of balance, though, isn't it? Because this is a movie that almost manages to say something quite interesting, in a kinetic and accessible manner, along the lines of there being no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. Almost. Cate Blanchett's Hela knocking away the outer layers of fresco to reveal the violent and warlike images beneath. But punches are pulled. As, for instance, when Anthony Hopkins's Odin walks to the edge of a Norwegian cliff and dissolves into a mystic cloud of petals, instead of (as it might be) expiring in a hospital bed in this universe's equivalent of Spandau Prison. That kind of thing.

Hela, gesturing at Asgard, and asking her brother ‘where did you think all this gold came from?’ ought to be the heart of the movie. But it's drowned out by the sheer insistence of the film's hearty guffaw, the politically sedative implication of which is that nothing under any of the nine suns is serious or urgent. I feel like a killjoy saying so, but it does seem to me an opportunity, of sorts, missed.

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