Gordon Fitch wrote:
>
> [clip]
> If something cognitive is communicated or understood by reading
> "There's a certain slant of light/ winter afternoons/ that
> oppresses like the weight/ of cathedral tunes" I think it's
> well beyond the reach of materialist thought,
Whatever the "poetic effect" of this it is totally dependent on a prior cognitive grasp. Would this work if you didn't know the difference between a slant line and a vertical line, had never heard of "slanting the truth," didn't know the difference between winter and summer, thought afternoon was the darkest period of the 24 hour day, didn't know that "weight" didn't apply to "tunes" except slantingly? There is an enormous cognitive component in all understanding of poetry, simple or complex. Just as there is an enormous emotional component to making sense of 2 + 2 = 4. You have to _feel_ the nature of pure number (as opposed to 2 piles of sand plus two piles of sand (which of course equals one pile of sand) before you can make any sense of the equation. And feeling occurs only in response to a bodily condition (emotion).
Oppresses like the weight of cathedral tunes. There is probably some synaesthesia operating there, but you also have to have an almost immediate tacit (cognitive) grasp of the history of religion in the west for that "weight" to have its effect.
Carrol