Phenomenology and Literature

Este estudo quer demonstrar a importância do poético-político para toda a obra de José Saramago e sugerir a sua necessária revisitação a partir da filosofia e da política. Argumenta-se, tanto desde uma perspectiva geral como a partir da microanálise de um exemplo de Memorial do Convento, que a escrita saramaguiana se caracteriza por um poético-político não-lírico que excede a história narrada ou o livro publicado. Mostra-se como os grandes textos saramaguianos criam um poético-político e uma responsabilidade ética com base numa ontologia da liberdade inserida num contexto sócio-histórico.

This article examines the perennial idea of the four seasons in relation to notions of place and time and shows the philosophical and environmental importance of emphasizing the periods of winter, spring, summer, and fall. After clarifying the western view of a season, it considers the seasons in the Eastern world. It then identifies and articulates different conceptions and scales of seasonal time in relation to place, including ideas associated with repetition, kairos, chronos, and mythic temporality. It looks in turn at possible challenges to the four-seasons model and discusses seasonal disruptions and discontinui-ties. The essay concludes by setting forth the values of a seasonal framework in terms of both providing an alternative to the idea of "nature" and contributing to sustainable living, noting the roles of seasonal festivals, story-telling, gardening , food preparation, the elements, walking, art, and everyday aesthetics.

The article aims to study Luis Hernández’ poetry from the point of view of the problems that emerge when trying to analyze his Complete Works. Rather than being assessed as “unfinished”, the deliberate and unsystematic appearance of his poetic should rather be understood as the result of a calculated and conscious artistic practice that stems from philosophical trends which traditionally have fostered an ontology of movement against a metaphysics of permanence. Under this view, Hernández work shows up as “plane of immanence” from where sense becomes an event for the creative writing process.
Keywords: Hernández, Poetry, Becoming, Immanence, Transcendence

"Las ruinas circulares" ejemplariza los cuentos en las que Borges retoma
una leyenda tradicional y la reinterpreta de una manera distinta, modificando y
aun ampliando sus metliforas. Por eso estamos de acuerdo con Jaime Alazraki
cuando describe la relación entre el cuento y la leyenda del golem en su libro
Borges and the Kabbalah: nos avisa que sería error destacar una fuente o una
sola entonación de una metáfora como única "perplejidad" que Borges
reinterpreta en su obra (20). Mientras que nos interesa la relación entre "Las
ruinas circulares" y la leyenda tradicional, en este ensay la leyenda se examina sólo con
respecto a las modificaciones que Borges hace de ella para formar metáforas y
plantear problemas estéticos-metafísicos que se extienden más allá de los de la
leyenda. Sobre todo se hace hincapié en cómo Borges emplea la ironía y la retórica
para crear un ambiente fantástico y para conducir al lector hacia una lectura
conjectural y un shock en múltiples niveles.

Poetry is fundamentally an engaged level of life in the world of readers and poets alike. It surrounds those concerned, often with an understanding that extends beyond its possibility as the comprehension of meaningful content embodied in a written or spoken artifact. For readers of poetry, memorized lines and rhythms emerge seemingly out of nowhere to be recited, and poets often tell us that lines, rhythms and linguistic content often appear without prompting as they are carried away in writing poetry. Yet literary studies and phenomenology have tended to focus either on the poetic artifact and its cognition, or poetry as a special sphere and mode of revelation. This paper seeks to question the experience of the poetic as a special level of life and an embodied activity, and sketches some points of entry in which we can enter into a discussion on the poetic as such.

This essay observes that Cordelia figures into Shakespeare's King Lear much as autrui figures into Levinas's philosophy. She is the one who overawes, obsesses, and afflicts Lear. She is the one who summons and solicits him from "beyond being." She is the one who "disincarnates" the divine in a non-systematic and non-thematizable way. This is not to say, however, that Lear is simply a Levinasian fable. Rather, it is to suggest that Shakespeare was every bit as invested in the interpersonal relationship as was Levinas and appears to have entertained a number of similar ideas, including the idea that transcendence is not an effect of ecstasy or apotheosis but of interrelation.

Literature occupies a privileged role in Levinas’ life and work. Classic authors such as Racine, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Cervantes, but also modern writers such as Blanchot and Celan appear time and time again throughout his oeuvre. Alongside, of course, with references to the Bible. For Levinas, as suggested in Ethics and Infinity, literature paved the way to philosophy. “Let no one ignorant of Literature enter,” would be the inscription engraved on the door of Levinas’ academy, had he one.
The centrality of literature in Levinas’ oeuvre is an undeniable fact. Some commentators have understood it merely in terms of illustration: his recourse to literature would be a means to illustrate philosophical ideas. This study will challenge this view. It will try to demonstrate how literature is not only a means for Levinas, but that one can find, in his corpus, a theory of literature, or at least an implicit doctrine of literature. This doctrine – that is to be found mainly in his Jewish texts – is sustained by an explicit phenomenology of the book. Revealing this phenomenology of the book, therefore, amounts to stressing the philosophical centrality of literature in Levinas’s thinking.
The following lines will be guided by the following hypothesis: In order to be understood fully, Levinas’s doctrine of literature should be interpreted in light of one of the central theme of his Jewish philosophy, namely, the theme of chosenness and universality.  Moreover, in his theory of literature Levinas is perhaps formulating, under cover, his most extreme version of the relation between singularity (Israel) and universality (nations). Its scandalous version. This is what I demonstrate in this paper.

This article examines the perennial idea of the four seasons in relation to notions of place and time and shows the philosophical and environmental importance of emphasizing the periods of winter, spring, summer, and fall. After clarifying the western view of a season, it considers the seasons in the Eastern world. It then identifies and articulates different conceptions and scales of seasonal time in relation to place, including ideas associated with repetition, kairos, chronos, and mythic temporality. It looks in turn at possible challenges to the four-seasons model and discusses seasonal disruptions and discontinui-ties. The essay concludes by setting forth the values of a seasonal framework in terms of both providing an alternative to the idea of "nature" and contributing to sustainable living, noting the roles of seasonal festivals, story-telling, gardening , food preparation, the elements, walking, art, and everyday aesthetics.