Writing as philosophy and craft, Iowa City Public Library, October 26, 2007, Video, 700k |
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Writing as philosophy and craft, Iowa City Public Library, October 26, 2007, Video, 700k
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| Rating | |
| Title | Writing as philosophy and craft, Iowa City Public Library, October 26, 2007 |
| Creator |
Bossi, Elena Chryssopoulos, Chris Pierre, Beaudelaine, 1977- Ulanov, Alexander Todd, Penelope, 1958- |
| Creator - Nationality |
Argentine Greek Haitian Russian New Zealander |
| Contributor |
Durovicová, Nataša |
| Date Original | 2007-10-26 |
| Description | Elena Bossi's discussion of "Writing as Philosophy and Craft" focuses on pseudonymity in fiction, titling her talk "The Names of the Other." Chris Chryssopoulos recalls philosophies of Jorge Luis Borges, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, but argues that "in order to approach the nuances of the practice of writing, we need to distance ourselves from the philosophical stance altogether." Beaudelaine Pierre titles her talk, "World Literature and the Question of Language: Writers or Puppets?" and discusses the ways different language influences thought and sociopolitical position. Alexander Ulanov's talk, "Literature as Impossible" saying that "we now entertain the possibility of being and and not mad at the same time." Penelope Todd works "inside out" starting with the characters and situations she creates and then philosophizes about what that means for her who she is. |
| Venue |
Iowa City Public Library |
| Geographic Subject | United States -- Iowa -- Iowa City |
| Chronological Subject | 2000-2010 |
| Transcription | Bossi Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 1 The Names of the Other Elena Bossi Chance disconcerts us. The idea that the sound and the fury of the world mean nothing is unendurable. We need to create meaning. Writing, playing with the forms of words, creating personalities, and building a text are all ways of pretending that we have some semblance of control. Fiction allows us to believe that all is not chaos, that order exists, and as we write, we show the world the words that we need to hear. We speak of this “reality” as if the proffered phrases came from another. In this manner, every author must coexist with this “other” and must deal with trying to mock, denounce, or pacify him. The many tricks to which the author submits himself (pseudonyms, heteronyms, inclusion of the author’s name in the narrative and other identity games) are some painful ways of denouncing this split. They are forms of reticence: a reticence that inserts a lack of confidence between the reader and the writer. [A silence is being simulated when what is being done is calling attention to the name: in place of allowing this forgetfulness, these games make us focus more on this name, and this becomes part of the text which should be questioned.] Hiding behind other names reminds us that we are always strangers in this world and that we should always be suspicious of language. Anonymity, reticence, and disguises, like erotic games, reveal and hide at the same time; [but they reveal and hide a text, not a body.] They create a relationship between a name and a text. That relationship is necessarily strained: name and text do not conform to one another. Name and text are separated by a fissure; they are in different places, in levels of reality that do not correspond. If an object is approached too closely, it becomes distorted, it loses clarity; in the same way, if an author wishes to see herself clearly, she must introspect from a distance. She must become someone else. We can think of the pseudonym as a keyhole, the small opening of a lock through which that “other” tries to watch herself: [nakedness hidden behind a veil of modesty. Though something of the author is revealed, something is also hidden. A pseudonym that cloaks the name also suggests that the name stands in for something else. It is the veil, not the nakedness, that produces desire.] The mystery that falls over the name confers upon it a sense of the prohibited because it is so difficult to reach. The pseudonym, conversely, becomes a part of the text, creating new implications for the author's relationship to her work. Pseudonyms and heteronyms, as well as other tools of renaming, demonstrate the existence of the “other” constructed by fiction, a revealed self that escapes from the text. Not only is a text the Bossi Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 2 embodiment of a subject, but its subject is recreated as the text is written. The text, in an expression of will, makes its maker. Perhaps to say that one has “read Homer” is more than a metaphor. That may be what we truly perceive as we read the Iliad – we read the poet’s name as we read the epic poem. Or more precisely, we read the poet’s desire to dissolve his own name, his hope that the reader listens to the muse’s voice, a voice with the power to convince the reader that Achilles’ fury is narrating itself. It does not matter whether Homer is the name of a bard who entertained kings after meals or a clan of professional poets or the synthesis of an entire culture’s collective work. Regardless of its source, the name behind the voice summons the muse; as readers build in their minds an image of the battlefield, they also build an image of the name that created the battlefield. The name “Homer” weaves a story around itself, a legend that refers to a blind singer from Chios, a prophet capable of silencing his own voice to allow the gods and heroes to speak. We might wonder about the “ineffable” name of God, as well, a name also hidden behind other names: the name of God, unutterable except in fiction created by those He himself created. Perhaps God himself attempts to separate himself from his own work: a world whose “sounds” compose our language. “Summoning the muse” might be understood as one’s desire to be somebody else. Similarly, the pseudonym is one intrigue that sustains another. The false name brings literary resources to light. Erotic literature, for example, is frequently written under an assumed name, either to protect the privacy of the actual author, or to give voice to a dark aspect of the author’s personality, a voice different than the author’s own voice. [But there is something more: the false name creates intrigue. According to André Malraux, “intrigue is apt to feign something to somebody; everything that intrigues is an architecture of lies...”; a pseudonym, then, is one intrigue that maintains another. It creates a deceptive architecture, while the trick is left in the open. What is revealed is the intent to camouflage, to hide meaning beneath a mountain of names, as well as the impossibility of arriving at the subject of the enunciation. A false name puts literary resources in the visible realm of fiction. In a symbolic way, pseudonyms refer to the enunciation as a desirable destination that cannot be apprehended but that slides through all speech. The subject is always there, and yet we know it is unattainable. It is offered as object of our desire and makes us different from the other beings in our useless and unceasing effort to reach it.] The pseudonym is a resonant name that, like another's eyes or the surface of the water, reflects the original and projects it into the depths, creating an illusion of the infinite. If a pseudonym is a mirror used to “cast eyes upon oneself,” to view oneself as a foreigner, the heteronym is a way of “casting oneself” as someone else altogether. A new life springs from its creation. The “other” holds what the original desires: another set of eyes, another voice. Bossi Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 3 Heteronyms offer three-dimensional images. They offer fragments that grow and take on a life of their own. The relationship between a subject and its heteronyms is dialectic and presupposes the fragmentation of reality in order to constitute the literature. These works are voices imposed through a certain style. Voices of the heteronyms are comparable to the effect of a cinematic montage in which images from different cameras are composed in a single sequence. The heteronym uses the idea fragments as a manner of reconstruction and knowledge of the truth. A pseudonym is a playful deception, another turn of the story's screw. It leads the reader to wonder about the “true” name, as if in finding the true name, something essential would be revealed. It fosters the illusion that a “real” name exists, but that it has been elided or displaced. This idea arises from the very act of prohibition; the reader assumes that if the “true name” does not appear, it must have been displaced and, in turn, something must have been hidden. The owner who allows his words to flow out of someone else’s mouth refuses to acknowledge what his own alias has produced. The author is protecting his own fictionalization. Not one but two mythical beings are constructed: the figure that surrounds the author's own name, and the figure of the pseudonym. The pseudonym is a voice that speaks or a hand that writes. [While the pseudonym can "converse" and "versify" the name of the other is dumb, silenced by an ellipsis.] A heteronym, however, suggests a coexisting multiplicity of subjects. The fracture occurs in a shared language. Incompatible styles are gathered under a single author, and each demands independence. A heteronym declares its own incompleteness. It emerges from an unrecognizable language and announces its birth: I am an outsider; I speak in an outsider’s voice. [The pseudonym is granted the written word on loan. It gives voice to another class of representation.] Unlike all other words, a name has the ability to take control of the person it represents; we do not have a name, the name has us. We are its slaves. The pseudonym, however, relieves the author of that weight. Our names present us, make us "remarkable" because of the name’s power to individualize. Our names are our marks. The opposite is anonymity: to be unknown, to be unindividual. An appropriate pseudonym finds a middle ground, settled between individuality and indifferentiation. A pseudonym has no history, is outside the time, unprescribed, impersonal. The pseudonym nestles between the figures of the “author” and the “narrator” and further loosens the figures’ ties to reality. It intensifies the play between visible and hidden: behind a name lies another; behind a word, only another word. [Pseudonyms and heteronyms create endless openings in the labyrinth of possibilities, passages that depart from the evident, resignifying what already exists by renaming. These words, suspended midair, destroy any vestige of certainty. The obvious is obscured: the subject is made up only of words, and even these words can be a betrayal, leading to layer after layer of meaning and sensibility.] Bossi Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 4 These name-games contain desire, and drive the request of the enunciation even further away, and in this sense they are erotic: they control and distance the object of desire. These disguises whisper that there is no hurry, that the tortuous road is the most beautiful. At times, instead of taking refuge in that other name, the "true" name of the author is inserted into the plot as one of the characters. [In Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges has regularly availed himself of this recourse.] Even though it seems to be a trick opposed to the pseudonym, it is nothing more than its other face. If I turn it into a person, if I include it in a story, then nobody will be able to believe in the reality of that name. The people are fictional, and later this "me" belongs to the world of fiction. It doesn't have a real existence: from "here" from the place of its enunciation, it has passed beyond the narrative world and into another place. This god doesn't fear being named, in fact, he does it himself. And instead of embodying himself, he prefers to disappear into his own fiction. It is not enough for him to create people in his own image and likeness; he desires to be able to write himself, to mold himself to his liking. To convert himself into one of his ephemeral creatures is to guard against the unforeseeable. At least there it won't be in the hands of chance. Chryssopoulos Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 1 Surrendering to Other Means: On Philosophy and Literature Chris Chryssopoulos Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird [..] I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The blackbird whistling Or just after, – Wallace Stevens, ��Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” As is customary in philosophical endeavors, let’s start from common opinions. “Literature—at least in its highest examples—constitutes a substantial paradigm of the world and its ethics, becoming philosophy proper.” 1 This (rather idealistic) position exemplifies a very popular, though (in my mind) false, expectation that art could provide us with surprising and finite conclusions about the nature of reality. Borges gives us a wonderful example of the futility of such an expectation. In the History of Infamy a king orders the making of a map delineating every minute detail of his land. 2 This undertaking eventually leads to total destruction because the whole kingdom devotes itself to the colossal task, disregarding all other activities and aspirations. The same allegory is expressed in another emblematic piece of literature, Balzac’s Unknown masterpiece. 3 In this story (which Picasso loved) the quasi-mythical painter Meister Frenhoffer slaves away for ten years on a painting he cherishes as his greatest creation. When Frenhoffer’s pupil Porbus and the painter Nicolas Poussin are finally allowed to view the miraculous work, all they see are “blocks of different color in a confused mass, bound by a multitude of weird lines which form a wall of paint”" In a desperate bid to represent a “real” figure, the old master covered his canvas with a wild chaos of colors out of which only a single lovely foot emerged in a forgotten corner of the painting. My appreciation of art is more restrictive, though not necessarily more simple. If we consider artwork (in our case, the literary text) for what it really is—an artifact of a specific genre—then it suddenly becomes purely a Form: an Object of devised, autonomous, complex structure which, nevertheless, does not constitute a unifying and defining whole. In that respect, the essence of a work of literature lies not in the everlasting “truth” it carries, but in the synchronicity of a literary 1 Martha Nusbaum, interview in the Greek philosophical journal COGITO, issue No5, Athens, 2006. See also Martha Nusbaum’s major work, Love's Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, OUP, 1992. 2 J. L. Borges, “On Exactitude in Science.” (or sometimes “On Rigor in Science”). The story appears in several books, including A Universal History of Infamy (England, E. P. Dutton, 1972), Extraordinary Tales (with Bioy-Casares, ISS Books, 1973) and Collected Fictions (Penguin, 1999). 3 Honore De Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, trans. Richard Howard, NYRB Classics, 2000. Chryssopoulos Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 2 incident, of something that happens, and its limitations stem from the fact that narrative, forces on its subject a grammatical (that is, linear) procession when, in reality, everything exists concurrently: a timeless “now,” a universe of events. This is something every attentive writer knows well. The writer’s consciousness (or, if you prefer, the writing consciousness) does not stand “above,” or “next to,” or “behind” the physical person that does the actual writing; the writer is not a brain directing the hand that leads the pen on paper. Between the writer (as a guiding intellect) and the scribe (as a craftsman) exists no distinction, because no matter what he does, the writer cannot escape metaphor. Only that metaphor is never the transmission of a concrete feeling or sense or thought, but a signifier that belongs to a specific Language Game.4 Meaning appears within the text, not as an exclamation, but in the form of a voice that listens to itself. It is the “auto-pathy” of a condition where “one listens to oneself speaking.” So literature provides another way to approach Being, becoming an interlocutor and not a disciple of philosophy. Literature is neither philosophy nor theory. In other words, following Maurice Blanchot, “literature remains an exceptional and miraculous power, provided that it is kept in pure condition.”5 Heidegger hands down to us something similar: “Poetry meets Thought at one and only [one] place, . . . as long as the two remain distinctive in their separate natures.” 6 Under those circumstances, literature performs an intellectual leap that surpasses the persuasive process (the ratio of philosophical reasoning). One could say that the writer “abducts” meaning (even though, in essence, meaning never “exists” anywhere concretely). Literature uses expressions that—from the outset—belong to a finite image, an image appearing to have been born adult. The writer does not strive to “persuade,” but (even in our postmodern times) seeks an experience that has no childhood. Kant calls that leap Urteilskraft (“the ability to make distinctions”).7 It is literature’s ability to harmonize even the most distant explanations, to fictionalize them, and deal with them as manifestations of some normality that leads to a “new objectivity”. 4 Wittgenstein used the term Language Game (Sprachspiel) to designate forms of language, “consisting of language and the actions into which it is woven” (Philosophical Investigations [PI], §7), and connected by Family Resemblance. The concept was intended “to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life.” (PI §23). The term Language Game is used to refer to fictional examples of natural language and other regions of our language with their own “grammars”, “contracts” and relations to peripheral language-games. These meanings are not separated from each other by sharp boundaries, but blend into one another. The concept is based on the following analogy: The rules of language (grammar) are analogous to the rules of games; meaning something in language is thus analogous to making a move in a game. The analogy between a language and a game brings out the fact that only in the various and multiform activities of human life do words have meaning (the concept is not meant to suggest that there is anything trivial about language, or that language is just a game). The term was later used and expanded by Lyotar (The postmodern condition) and Austin (Speech acts). 5 Maurice Blanchot, Literature and the right to death, p.64, Stanford, 1995. 6 Martin Heidegger, Poetry, language, thinking, p.218, Harper&Row, 1971. 7 Immanuel Kant, Kritik Der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment), 1790. Chryssopoulos Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 3 Thusly, Urteilskraft becomes (in our domain) a trait of a work of literature itself: everything “connects” on the same level and not as object to subject. Every negation and every affirmation, all questions, have their place in the fictional world under the playful logic of a convention that defies strict Logic. Let’s return then to the position of the writer. He “builds” his thought through suspicion. It would be better to say “he suspects,” because the writer conceives his phrases before he understands the words themselves. Nevertheless, his language carries epistemological value because, while carrying knowledge, it articulates something not yet known. To put it in other words, the writer “takes from what is being said.” In this context, Thought is Form itself. And the mythologized “inspiration,” the “fury of form” that possesses the writer, is the fury of creating one satisfying “shade” or interpretation. It is—in Wilhelm Worringer’s words—a Kunstwollen (a “will for art”), an urge to which broader cultural forces contribute (and partake of), and is never—never!—a simple wish to replicate the objective world.8 This is why every accomplished work of art constitutes a unique “consonatia” (consensus) between Form and Content. The “will for art” is a “will for form” that does not correspond to any specific style or genre, but is explained as a widely varying intention. That’s also why the careless writer, by deciding to imitate the philosopher, greatly weakens the bonds of fiction and his work ends up an anemic heir of idealistic reasoning. It is what we sometimes understand in literature as shallow, pretentious or didactic. In reality this weak literature carries a twofold lie: it both mocks the philosophical fundamentum and it subjects it to its own alien goals. This is the underlying distinction between literature and philosophy: art in general does not respond to the question “what is this?”—or even “what is the meaning of this?”—but rather tries to tackle the question “How could this be interpreted?” Moreover, I would say that in order to approach the nuances of the practice of writing, we need to distance ourselves from the philosophical stance altogether. The philosopher can speak to us only what can be spoken of. Of all else, he would refrain from speaking. I do not propose here a strict early-Wittgensteinean divide. Neither do I proclaim that non-specialist, non-academic philosophy is unattainable. Nor am I saying that literature has no ties to philosophy. I have in mind a sense of Family Resemblance.9 Philosophy is everywhere to be found (even in bare “facts”), and in no place 8 Wilhelm Worringer, “Abstraction and empathy: essays in the psychology of style” in New essays in the psychology of art, University of California Press, 1986. 9 Family Resemblance is an influential idea in the philosophy of language, first proposed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations [§66-71 & §76-77]. Wittgenstein discussed examples of terms which he argued would not admit of a full and complete definition. How, he asks, would one go about giving a definition of “game”? He argued that there is nothing that is common to all games, but rather that games held certain similarities and relations with each other. He admonished his reader not to think, but to look, at the vast range of things that we call games. Some games involve winning and losing, but not Chryssopoulos Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 4 is philosophy safe from narrative. The dividing border among the two disciplines is delineated by Paul De Man’s phrase: “philosophy is destined���to the extent that it relies on rhetoric—to be literary. And literature—as an heir of this problem—to be in some way philosophical.”10 The distinction between philosophy and literature is methodological and does not entail the separation of aesthetic or epistemological categories. The fact is that philosophy—as a discipline— remains a discipline. That is, its method expels what it considers not belonging to its territory. Moreover, philosophy carries with it the sense that it expels all foreign bodies, or at least all sources of potential mistake or folly. This action characterizes all modern philosophy. In the end, what I would like to show (speaking in defense of philosophy) is the futility of a sort of philosophizing that does not control the periphery of its domain. Without the strictest control of language, philosophy cannot reach the outer borders of its territory, even though these borders are, arguably, not clearly marked. The borders between literature and philosophy, the affinity and the distance between the two, are ever changing, but before anything else, we (either as philosophers or as writers) are obliged to choose. First of all, we make a choice of craft. And in reality, no matter what route we take, we never reach so far as a final destination. We just continue forward, hoping to proceed as far as we can. Lastly, swapping positions, speaking now on behalf of literature, I would say that in some sense, all literature starts from the last phrase of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. It is what Richard Rorty put so eloquently: “post-Nietzschean philosophers (including Wittgenstein and Heidegger) became caught up in the quarrel between philosophy and poetry which Plato began, and they all ended by trying to work out honorable terms on which philosophy might surrender to poetry.”11 all; some are entertaining, but not all; some require skill or luck, but not all. Similarly, he argued that there is nothing that all “numbers” have in common; but furthermore that we regularly extend the notion of “number”. So we might start by thinking only of the natural numbers, and later learn to extend this to rational numbers, integers, cardinal numbers; but then to irrational numbers, complex numbers, surcomplex numbers, surreal numbers and so on, the only limit being the capacity of mathematicians to innovate. Similarly he says we are only playing games with words. The major example he uses, and the one that provides him with the name, is a “family”: I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities between different uses of language, than “family resemblance”; for the various resemblances between members of a family: build, features, color of eyes, gait, temperament, etc. overlap and criss-cross in the same way. Nevertheless there is no unique definite characteristic that necessarily runs through all members. Family Resemblances might be taken to have “blurred edges”. Wittgenstein points out that in such cases the term nevertheless has a sense; for example one can quite sensibly say “stand roughly there”, indicating a spot by pointing. The lack of precision does not make the expression meaningless. Similarly, even though the definition of “game” may be imprecise, it is still meaningful. Furthermore a sharp boundary can be chosen, to suit whatever purpose one has to hand. In such cases, it is the way in which the term is employed, and how it is learned, that are pivotal, rather than any precise meaning. 10 Paul De Man, The epistemology of metaphor, p.11, Chicago, 1978. 11 Richard Rorty, Contingency Irony and Solidarity, p.26, Cambridge University Press, 1982. Pierre Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 1 World Literature and the Question of Language: Writers or Puppets? Beaudelaine Pierre I got into the business of writing through my father. While I was still young, he predicted that I would end up a writer. That’s not to suggest that I started writing at a young age. Rather, his prediction was based on my mastery of the French language, which he considered a trump card in a writer's career. At school, I was punished for speaking Creole. The church we attended was no different. The pastor used Creole often during the ordinary worship services. But when he celebrated a marriage or performed a baptism, French was the only language allowed. I live in a country where everyone speaks Haitian Creole; only about 15 per cent of the population speak French, and even then it is to varying degrees. For me, French has served as the language of knowledge, as the language that opens one to the world and as the exemplary language of writing. Quite naturally, my earlier writing is in French. Some years later, at the College of the Humanities at the State University of Haiti, I wrote my final thesis in Creole, even though a number of my professors warned against it. It was my way of exposing certain contradictions within Haitian society, history and culture. After all, why would I write in a language spoken by so few in my country? From that point on, I wrote in Creole. Please excuse me for having imposed my personal stories upon you. I am aware we are addressing today a question that touches the very heart of our social existence – the question of language. Language is a problem that touches each one of us, and at the same time, informs our individual and collective points of view. Within the great debate on world literature, I have chosen to tackle the language question because, in my opinion, the debate over world literature is fundamentally a debate over languages. How much weight does linguistic and cultural diversity carry within the concept of world literature? What is the role of the writer in society? As Antillese writer Edouard Glissant asked, “How can one be oneself without closing oneself to the other, and how can one open oneself to the other without losing oneself?” In addressing this topic, I have relied upon the work of Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, an eminent Belgian professor whose works are well-regarded in the field of modern linguistics. I shall also draw from the works of Glissant and another distinguished Antillese writer, Wilson Harris. Pierre Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 2 I write what I speak Literature is not a simple social act. It is the highest expression of human existence, in all its manifestations. The author Carlos Fuentes describes literature as the “revelation of humanity's cultural, personal and spiritual variety and the proof that the centers of power are in the process of loosening, transforming themselves to us to form new constellations.” Literature attains this power because language provides the entire set of tools and materials, which in turn constitute the essence and the objective of the process. Literature is built from each work, each play, each tongue, no matter the country of origin, no matter which culture, no matter what vision of the world gives birth to it. In this way, each nation has its own literature. As Nadine Ly writes in Language and Literature, “A writer works with what he has and what he has; above all else, is the feeling and the awareness of his language.” This assertion expressly conveys the kind of relationship that binds the writer to his work through his language. This close link between language and literature exists not only because language forms literature’s basic element, but also because the individual is defined by the language he speaks or writes in. Each person eats, drinks, loves, sings and thinks in the language which he speaks. And yet nothing is said, eaten, drunk, loved, sung or thought in the same way. Language codifies experience, and vice versa. The writer works with the words in his language and possesses, more than any other speaker of his language, this awareness of working with words. The principle sociopolitical and cultural asset any writer or poet possesses is the language he speaks. His language allows him to develop a certain vision of the world. Clearly, language is the most potent tool of expression and communication. It is the product of a culture and a civilization. Haitian Creole, for instance, permits us to think of the world in a certain way. English makes us think differently. The Chinese language provides yet another different viewpoint, and so on. Language provides us with an image and a concept of our world. Our expression is conceived in and developed from language. Jean-Marie Klinkenberg rightly states in La langue et le Citoyen, ��One lives not in a country, but in a language.” Likewise, Jacques Berque contends, “A language is not a means of communication, it is a way of being.” For this reason, no language exists on its own. Relying on Klinkenberg, I would go so far as to say that no language exists. What exist instead are people who speak a certain language. People everywhere engage in political, economic and social activities, which all find expression through language. This is why there has never been a battle between languages. No language can rise up against another, whether we are referring to “peoples,” groups separated geographically, or “people,” who share a country have different standards of living. Nirwan Dewanto, my Indonesian colleague here in the IWP, expressed the same sentiment in his presentation in a similar forum early this month. Pierre Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 3 I will stop short of defining English, French or Spanish as “the right language” (or languages) because their prevalence is partly drawn from their imperialistic history, and from the persuasive explanation that “they have longer literary traditions.” Because languages exist primarily for their social functions, it would be problematic to declare that where these “right languages” do not exist, there is a void in people’s political, economic and social experiences. Put another way, languages are there to serve people, not the other way round. Beauty springs from diversity According to Edouard Glissant and Wilson Harris, in their analysis of Antillese literature, the writer has the social responsibility of creating, from his own language, literary forms which express the destiny of people in search of their identity and who wish to have their various ways of representing the world recorded in literary works. For these two authors, writing represents the only way to resurrect the traces left by “minority cultures” and to acknowledge the necessity of change and of mutual dialogue, which characterize every intercultural situation. Stephanie Ravilon, in an article on these two authors, writes: “Edouard Glissant considers writing to be the best way to understand the ceaseless mutations of being and to demonstrate that the clash of cultures can have other results apart from the negative ones.” For his part, Edouard Glissant writes: “It will take a long time, but in today's global relations one of the most evident marks of literature, of poetry, of art, is to contribute little by little to making humanity admit ‘unconsciously’ that the other is not the enemy, that the different does not erode me, that if I change through my contact with him that does not mean that I will be diluted in him, etc. It seems to me that this is a form of combat distinct from that of the daily struggle and that the artist is well situated for this type of combat.” In this way, the writer plays a crucial, but not unique, role by creating a literature of diverse thoughts. The writer’s principal role in his society is to contribute to the construction of a national literature that offers as many languages, as many visions of the ways of seeing and constructing the world, and as many literary forms as possible, within the vast field of world literature. This also means the writer must be open to external experiences and to participation in a global debate without renouncing oneself or one's culture. It may not, in fact, be a myth to say that a writer who engages in a language other than his mother tongue enriches the language in which he chooses to write. Modern linguistics offers examples of this truism. There is nothing wrong with a writer who sets out to enrich another language, because his work becomes a contribution to world languages and, therefore, to world literature. What is fundamentally wrong is society's collective refusal to create a literature from its languages, thereby depriving the world of the building blocks necessary to build the edifice of world literature. Pierre Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 4 Certainly, a national literature is not made up only of literature composed in the nation’s mother tongue. Translating the national experience into another language also builds up a national literature. The literature of migration and of exile also contributes to the enrichment of both national and world literature. How would one fully explain vodou in another's language? Or the Haitian lakou and konbit traditions in a language which is, after all, foreign? So far, I have been unable to do this myself. On the other hand, using and promoting the mother tongue in order to develop a national literature does not preclude the use of other languages. It all comes down to demonstrating that from the clash of cultures there can emerge beauty and light. Each of us, alienated or not, helps make up the world as it is The collective refusal, by writers in numerous countries, to write in their mother tongue has produced numerous problems. Many today slave away in search of their solutions. As a general rule, it is easier to follow the well-trodden path than it is to seek one's own way. It is much easier to follow fashion than it is to build up and promote one's own style. For many of us, it may be easier to become a great writer by writing in another’s language. Major literary prizes, like the Nobel or the Goncourt, have enormous prestige, but they are the product of Western thought and vision. However, nothing prevents any other continent, country, or organization from establishing other notable prizes, residencies or literary opportunities. Perhaps it would require too much time and too many resources for some countries, including my own, to provide an alternative to the grand prizes, particularly if the new prizes, too, could be snatched away by Westerners. Should we worry, then, about a one-way world literature? We should also mention the Internet, which is so omnipresent that it has ushered forward a new phase of globalization. The International Data Corporation (IDC) performed a study regarding the relative presence of languages in internet interchanges. An IDC analyst, Steve McLure, concludes that “the shift between a strong support for ‘universal English’ and the lack of interest in other languages would be dramatic.” According to the study, the preferred language of 27,000 survey subjects around the world was English, followed by Japanese, German, Spanish and French. Thus, this space that should serve as a forum for equal exchange and debate, too often turns into a one-way conversation. So, we ask, given the space consumed by these few languages, who is doing the speaking? And who is listening? Would it not be worthwhile, in Haiti for example, to push for the increased presence of Haitian Creole in these conversations? We must not forget that each language carries an ideology, a vision of the world. I hope these scattered reflections lead us to reflect more on how we participate in the development of a world literature. World literature is always shifting and moving, sometimes in a single direction, sometimes in several directions at once. At the same time, I am aware that the debate over language Pierre Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 5 will never be finished. Do we speak of world literature in the singular or the plural? Does it matter? What matters most is what the phrase “world literature” refers to. Even if expressed in the plural, it may still refer to only a single literature. It could also just as easily be singular and yet result in diverse literatures. The most important thing is how one holds oneself before others, remaining open, but without losing one's identity, one's essence. I remember a tale I read as a child. I do not recall the entire story; but what I remember quite well is that it was about a kingdom in which a king and queen had a daughter. Through an unfortunate accident, the princess lost all of her front teeth. She was unhappy because of her loss, and could not stand that the other little girls, mere subjects, still possessed of all their teeth. The princess did not need to brood over her fate for very long, because the other little girls did not wait long before pulling out their own teeth, for toothlessness had come to be regarded as “in fashion.” The subjects were unaware that the princess had lost her teeth by accident. They felt, quite simply, that if it was good enough for royalty, it was good enough for them. When thinking of questions of globalization, or world literature as defined by the West and others, I cannot keep from thinking back on this story. I hope, all the while, that we writers from “other countries” avoid serving as puppets the way these unfortunate subjects did. References: Beaudelaine P., Rapo kreyol franse nan repwodiksyon sosyal nan lekol an Ayti, 2002, FASCH; Jean Marie Klinkeberg, La langue et le citoyen, décembre 2003, PUF ; Nadine Ly, Langue et littérature, Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux ; Stéphanie Ravillon, Ecrire dans les Antilles:Edouard Glissant et Wilson Harris au carrefour des cultures, Brown University ; Translated from French to English by Peter Small Ulanov Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 1 Literature as Impossible Alexander Ulanov More than 50 years ago, Albert Camus said “write novels if you want to be a philosopher.” Perhaps now, in the post-modern world, poetry and poem-like prose have become more like philosophy than like novels. The novel (in its classical variation) is narrative and linear. Now we perceive the world as a net of senses. The text is a map, and philosophy, perhaps, is only one kind of writing. I would like to mention, first of all, that writing allows exploration of life’s different possibilities. Joseph Brodsky, for example, has some poems and essays written from a Christian point of view and, at the same time, some poems and essays written from a polytheistic point of view. Brodsky said that monotheistic religion is totalitarian, but also made a habit of writing poems every Christmas day. Who is Brodsky – a Christian or a polytheist? I think the question itself is incorrect: Brodsky explored both sides, and he lived both simultaneously. Maurice Blanchot said that literature is the impossible thing. It isn’t interesting to speak of the possible, the “sayable,” when we can instead speak about what is impossible to say, about our unclear and complex feelings and thoughts, about things without exact meaning. Wittgenstein, in his early works, suggested we keep silent about things about which we can’t speak clearly. However, there are many things that fit into this category. There is a great world of extra-lingual experience – a kiss, a smile, sadness, a city, a sea, a stone. It is useless to try to name these experiences directly. We can try to circle around them, to approach them across associations or through connotative meanings of words. We try to obtain their individual portraits. And we understand, at the same time, that this approaching leads to no final success. Naming is always a part only. It is always a failure. We can see the same process in life. All good things are impossible. We should be free, yet we depend on people dear to us; there can be no love without dependency and, at the same time, no love without freedom. We should be rational, we should understand what we do, we should keep to our plans. And, at the same time, a man is nothing without irrationality, playfulness, tenderness. Two weeks ago our guest from Malta, Simone Inguanez, said that she is a woman and an eternal girl. Truly, man has no age; we should have, at once, wisdom and playfulness. It is important to keep our balance; because the point of balance shifts every moment, literature helps us find the center. It seems to me that the most important problems have no solution. Or, rather, their solution is to live with the problems, to solve them again and again over the course of a life. This way, we return to philosophy as a lifestyle, not as a writing style only. Though philosophy can be a source of ideas for literature, literature corrects philosophy. Literature is a superposition of meanings, so it keeps philosophy from the danger of becoming overly determined. Philosophy’s aim is to describe the world with the help of ideas. But philosophy, at Ulanov Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 2 times, reduces the world to these ideas, and reduces, in turn, the diversity of the world. Sometimes philosophy is too sure in its ideas. Writing’s ideas are always “partly,” “probably,” “perhaps.” Writing tries to show many points of view, to provide a dialog. A text replies to itself. So literature opens to us an unsuspected, uncertain, colorful world. Thus corrected, philosophy now has become the research of a multitude of virtual worlds, as well. Literature opens our minds. Perhaps you have read some poems written in the nineteenth century by poets under the influence of drugs. Today, we encounter texts with an even more complex movement of images, which were written by clear-minded poets. If a nineteenth-century reader were to see such a text, he might claim it was written by a madman, and that only a madman can read it. Now, however, we know it isn’t so. We now entertain the possibility of being mad and not mad at the same time. Today, literature is the best drug. Understanding literature is a very important problem. If I immediately understand what I read, I have no need for I’ve just read, for I have it already. Likewise, if I understand clearly what I have written, it isn’t literature – it is information. I haven’t written something, I have only told something. Perhaps the information I have recorded is useful to somebody, but it is not literature. It is only a newspaper account. The attempt to understand, the habit of endless approaching – these are fruitful practices. So I am glad to have written poems that I don’t understand. They allow me to see more than I could see when I began to write. What is the source of these additional meanings? It is, on one hand, language, the associative net of words, and on the other hand, the memories contained in our culture and gathered throughout our lives. Thus, the experiences of many American poets, from Emily Dickinson to the members of the Language School, and beyond, are very important for me. Literature helps us to listen, to understand the inner life of words, things and people. So a writer is also a reader and a listener, and a spectator as well. Literature and philosophy no longer dictate; now, they look on and wonder. Though writing is craft, we should, at times, limit the exercise of that craft. If not, words will tell us only what we want to hear, but nothing more. At the same time, surrealistic automatic writing isn’t enough either. We must search for something in language; we try to find a way through it. Because there are so many books, too many books for any one person to read, my task is easier: if I open a book and understand instantly the first line I encounter, I close it and don’t open it again. It saves me a lot of time, really. Or if I see a chaotic everyday experience recorded there, but I don’t see any work with language, I close that book, too. Such books don’t offer me a new way to see. They don’t give me a new world. Suppose a book only offers me knowledge about how the people of a certain country live. I can find such information in a newspaper. Many people, of course, like to read about themselves, but in that case a text only returns them to them, to their usual experience, and their world is not extended. Ulanov Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 3 Literature shows us something difficult: not everybody is a person, and every person is not always a person. Personality is a problem, not a gift from God; not every experience is interesting; we do not really live every minute of every day. We spend much of our lives simply realizing common standards. Literature allows us to personalize our lives, to find our individual way to thinking, feeling, speaking, writing. Of course this process is difficult, so it pressures us into constant though. Words are a good thing: they allow us to see our thoughts and feelings, to place them in hand. Is this really what I think? Perhaps not! Cut it! Is this really a new experience? Perhaps not! Cut it! This way, writing tidies our minds. Unfortunately, because individuality is difficult, not many people dare to attempt it. Writing, therefore, leaves a man alone. At the same time, however, some words and some titles of books act like passwords. If someone else possesses a password I posses, it means he or she has had an experience that is near my own, and it is possible to approach him or her, seeking understanding. (If a girl reads harlequin romances, for example, it is no use speaking with her; if she reads Rilke or Valéry, perhaps it is worth a try. One day at a literature party in Moscow, Emily Dickinson presented me with an excellent girlfriend, so I thank her for it.) Literature, I think, should be as complex as is possible. We should try for this complexity, though our imperfect feeling for language, our low standards of thought, and our lack of ability, in the end, will leave our literature not as complex as is necessary. But we should try. Of course, complexity cuts literature from the market. Because of market forces, literature is impossible. However, philosophy isn’t for the market, either, and writers and readers can be independent and make their living outside the world of literature. There are many voices, among them the voice of American poet-turned-critic Laura Riding Jackson, which argue that professionalization is a danger for both philosophy and literature. At the same time, literature should not be taken so seriously. It is one pathway to a more interesting life, nothing more. If a writer thinks too highly of his own work, he slips from the dialog and out of our literary world. I understand all these questions beg the further questions, “What is writing?” and “What purpose does writing serve?” We could not answer these questions in fifteen minutes, for we cannot answer them at all, but we can discuss them. And I will be glad to do so with any who find such questions interesting. Todd Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 1 Writing as Philosophy and Craft Penelope Todd ‘Like a fish which swims calmly in deep water, I felt all about me the secure supporting pressure of my own life. Ragged, inglorious, and apparently purposeless, but my own.’ – Iris Murdoch, Under the Net About the philosophy of writing I have only my own story to tell. I work from the inside out, learning as I go. When you sit to write fiction on any given day, you don’t know what you’re coming to. You might know the scene and who will be there, but you can’t tell what they’ll think, or say to one another, who will be rolling a leaf in their fingers, who will lean out the window and see the cat in the street below, who will let fly the first punch. That is the thread your writing unrolls from the spool, inch by inch. Serendipitously, I started out writing fiction about teenagers. My own children were the age, roughly, of my protagonists. While they were making that metamorphosis from children to adults, subconsciously I was forced to reconsider my own: what I’d done well, what badly, how I had come to my middle years so numb and dumb to my own life – what it needed, where it had been, where it meant to go. There are stories already sealed within each of us. Some of us take a long time to uncover, decipher and assent to them. We start our search when we find that the ones we’ve attached ourselves to prove no longer accurate, their themes too limited. Via fiction, via the explorations and quandaries of my characters, I began to write out the most basic premises of personhood. Who am I? What am I doing here? Which way am I facing? Which way is up – or should I go down instead? What has life given me, with which I might navigate? As a nurse and a mother I’d become pragmatic, responsible, and good at attending to the surface details. At first I approached fiction writing as simply another (albeit very rewarding) practice. When I wrote it was as though one hand hid what the other produced, and I made little connection between the stories and my inner world. It took a while to sink in, the role of the imagination (which I’d considered a curious and optional extra: a childhood relic and means of escape from the real) – not simply to create fiction, but to lay out the ground ahead; to realise new ways of being, both in a story’s characters, and in one’s own life. To go forward truthfully requires more courage than you think you have. It’s one thing to write a difficult scene—you tell yourself you can erase it before publication—but usually those are the very scenes you may not delete if you are to enlarge your boundaries. Hidden matters come to light and demand to be named. Then you must stand by them. Todd Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 2 You’re building a house from the mud of the self. The stories are the bricks dug and shaped from your own past and present and future – what you didn’t know you knew. As you write, your real life takes shape around you. You may not build with cardboard, cheap cuts, straw. The rubbish, anything unsound, has to go. As a believer, I thought I might write books about God, but the god I’d shaped, or allowed others to shape on his behalf in my head, wasn’t up to it. He had to go. I don’t know if there will be another. My half-cocked theories about life had to go; judgements; divisions in the mind. Your hands are prised open. Only after you’ve been writing for a while do you realise how you’re being propelled and how flush your characters sit with the recesses of your own psyche. With each fiction you find the same people appearing in different guises but they become more nuanced; stereotypes diminish; paradox is rife. Fiction-writing is the plunge into deep water where sooner or later you realise that the pale limbs following you around are your own, that the sunken ship, as Adrienne Rich has it in her poem ‘Diving into the Wreck’, is also yours: ‘I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps. I came to see the damage that was done and the treasures that prevail.’ This ship holds all you pushed under all your life, now sea-changed treasure. All the currency you need. The jewellery you were too young to wear before; the ship’s logs; strange food sealed in old tins and still edible. In fiction you enter new countries, you wrestle with situations and people you never thought you wanted to meet, but the stories insist, then in real life it starts to happen: you enter new countries. You’re made to wrestle with situations and people you never thought you wanted to meet but your soul—if you believe in a soul—has insisted. Writing, you do what you can, the best way you can with the handful of tools you’re given: that past with its psychological grist, these present circumstances with their limitations, this aesthetic, this intelligence, these capacities for work or imagination, this temperament, that fascination – all of which, being bendy and slippery and hard to hold, conspire to make your work as flawed as you are, but also as rich and multiple. You are always assessing, sharpening, dismantling and putting back together your tools, trying to improve them. Comparing them to the tools of others is seldom helpful. Fiction is the local anaesthetic and handbook that allows you to open again and again your wounds. Who knows if they’re not wounds with which you entered the world, but in your early life, between Todd Iowa City Public Library and the International Writing Program Panel Series – October 26, 2007 Elena Bossi (Argentina) Chris Chrysopoulos (Greece), Beaudelaine Pierre (Haiti), Penelope Todd (New Zealand), Alexander Ulanov (Russia) For electronic text, please visit www.uiowa.edu/~iwp and click on “News & Events” 3 you and your parents and a select few others, you made sure they were marked out, opened, filled with grit, closed up and sealed – all but the faintest scar left visible. Fascinations, compulsions too, of mind, emotion, body, are the wounds itching, festering, prying themselves open and you have to investigate them; if you deny them they come back in another trickier form or format. You’re half-blind, clumsy, you blunder about; you inspect the damages and the glimmers of new growth; you do what you have to. Writing fiction is the pale thread that leads you in and leads you out again. And in again, and out. But as long as you write down at the bone then it is not only your own shape you describe but the shape of a human. I don’t know if there’s any healing to be had, only wounds open now to the air – open wounds; open doors and windows; if you didn’t have it before, the entire feeling spectrum; permeable skin, allergic reactions, intense attractions to, or respectful presence with, the other. Perhaps the other is God. When you’ve done enough of this digging and stacking, poking and crawling about in the dark, meeting and wrestling and parting, I think the process begins to change. You might be a little less prone to your own dramas, and the dramas of your characters, a modicum of detachment becomes possible. You’ve learned some restraint, been offered some grace. You’ve done what may be considered your apprenticeship. On one hand, everything has changed. On the other, nothing has. Writing, you go quietly about your life as you’ve always done, perhaps even more quietly because now you know what you need and what you can do without. A family motto from my father’s side was Portet Vive. It behoves us to live. I choose a magnificent over a mundane interpretation. It behoves us to live well: richly, broadly, deeply and intricately – which adverbs, for me, describe the route that writing seems to take. [Portions in italics are from my memoir, Digging for Spain, to be published in March 2008.] |
| Type (DCMIType) | Moving image |
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| Language | English |
| Digital Collection | Virtual Writing University Archive |
| Contributing Institution | Iowa City Public Library |
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| Date Digital | 2007-10-26 |
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| Title | Writing as philosophy and craft, Iowa City Public Library, October 26, 2007, Video, 700k |
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| Duration | 01:24:07 |
| Digitization Specifications | Received as MPEG2 and converted to mp4 for streaming. |
| Date Digital | 2007-10-26 |
| File Name | iwp-icpl_10-26-07.mp4 |
| Original File Name | iwp_10-26-07.mpg |
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