Lucian Krukowski | Washington University in St. Louis (original) (raw)

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Books by Lucian Krukowski

The standpoint of eternity is given it by transcendence.

The writings brought together in this work were created between 2013 and 2017. The first three h... more The writings brought together in this work were created between 2013 and 2017. The first three have been published (Wipf & Stock – Eugene, Oregon) - the most recent has not.

Bringing them together into a new and coherent work has been difficult - both conceptually and technically. The technical difficulties can be appreciated by anyone (such as I) who was born before the culture of computers. The conceptual difficulties are more serious, in that they are enlargements of the unruliness of the contents within each writing. In the face of such unruliness, some changes were made in the earlier versions.

In each of these writings, my aim was to weaken the separations between subjects: I now call them “Novellas” because of their ambition at cohesion within insisted-upon difference. My hope is to move (convincingly if not effortlessly) across such subjects as: Philosophy and its antinomies, cosmology and our wonderments, myth and sublimity, poetry of my doing, memories that survive partial recall, fantasies that exhibit both otherness and its limits.

I do not want to write a center which stipulates ite own exclusions - I prefer porous and indeterminate borders. But neither do I want extensions that do not recognize the perils of their thirst for mere novelty. After-all, we do have the richest – and most terrible - of histories, and our self-identities (and ambitions) should, in some way, be informed by the particulars of that past.

But the past is ripe for picking – although it, like the cosmos, is too vast for the taking. Yet, the natute of its knowable inhabitants changes with time (our time) as does the measure of its vastness.

Some say a philosopher cannot be a poet – that these are antithetical. I say a saint can be a scoundrel – and be good at both.

“Times they are a’changin” sings the Laureate.

A standard account of literature is that it occurs between writer and reader. I think there is more to it: The author and the writer are not the same – they occur in different worlds. On the other side of the equation, we also have a dual pairing – between reader and critic. The worlds so inhabited can be parsed this way: Writer and reader inhabit the “actual world” – the world of clocks and empirica. Alternatively, author and critic inhabit the “real world” – the world of memory and imagination. “Actuality” encompasses life. “Reality” extends life into death and history. In reference to an ongoing controversy, one could say (per example) that the brain is in the actual world , and that the mind is in the real world.

The boundary between these worlds is porous and often frightening – one never knows when one oversteps. Art is (should-be) an agent of porosity between worlds.

The standpoint of eternity is given it by transcendence.

The writings brought together in this work were created between 2013 and 2017. The first three h... more The writings brought together in this work were created between 2013 and 2017. The first three have been published (Wipf & Stock – Eugene, Oregon) - the most recent has not.

Bringing them together into a new and coherent work has been difficult - both conceptually and technically. The technical difficulties can be appreciated by anyone (such as I) who was born before the culture of computers. The conceptual difficulties are more serious, in that they are enlargements of the unruliness of the contents within each writing. In the face of such unruliness, some changes were made in the earlier versions.

In each of these writings, my aim was to weaken the separations between subjects: I now call them “Novellas” because of their ambition at cohesion within insisted-upon difference. My hope is to move (convincingly if not effortlessly) across such subjects as: Philosophy and its antinomies, cosmology and our wonderments, myth and sublimity, poetry of my doing, memories that survive partial recall, fantasies that exhibit both otherness and its limits.

I do not want to write a center which stipulates ite own exclusions - I prefer porous and indeterminate borders. But neither do I want extensions that do not recognize the perils of their thirst for mere novelty. After-all, we do have the richest – and most terrible - of histories, and our self-identities (and ambitions) should, in some way, be informed by the particulars of that past.

But the past is ripe for picking – although it, like the cosmos, is too vast for the taking. Yet, the natute of its knowable inhabitants changes with time (our time) as does the measure of its vastness.

Some say a philosopher cannot be a poet – that these are antithetical. I say a saint can be a scoundrel – and be good at both.

“Times they are a’changin” sings the Laureate.

A standard account of literature is that it occurs between writer and reader. I think there is more to it: The author and the writer are not the same – they occur in different worlds. On the other side of the equation, we also have a dual pairing – between reader and critic. The worlds so inhabited can be parsed this way: Writer and reader inhabit the “actual world” – the world of clocks and empirica. Alternatively, author and critic inhabit the “real world” – the world of memory and imagination. “Actuality” encompasses life. “Reality” extends life into death and history. In reference to an ongoing controversy, one could say (per example) that the brain is in the actual world , and that the mind is in the real world.

The boundary between these worlds is porous and often frightening – one never knows when one oversteps. Art is (should-be) an agent of porosity between worlds.