Genghis Khan died on August 25, 1227,
mourned (?) by some 600 wives,
and at his grave the Mongols immolated thirty maidens.
Eight hundred years later, half of humankind reportedly descend from him.
In the year 2827, it would be but just
If half the world sprang from the loins of Elon Musk,
at whose sepulchre let ’Mericans now resolve
to decommission thirty virgin replicants.
It's never too soon to firm up such funeral plans!
“Pure intelligence is . . . a product of dying . . ..and is therefore in principle madness.”—Ferenczi
Confined to the prison house of our wit
digital abstraction grows neurotic
imagination cannot plumb the point of it.
Reality should be deemed erotic
—not the transgressive genitality
celebrated by pornography,
but polymorphous docibility:
a bullseye prism in the deck above
to transmit a little healing light
—screw AI’s specious love!
Epigraph: Sándor Ferenczi, Final Contributions to the Problems and Methods of Psycho-analysis (New York: Basic Books, 1955), p. 246.
Monday, March 17, 2025
Prometheus and the eagle
(black-figure kylix, 560–550 BCE)
A wise blindness, abrogating
Promethean chariness, Rilke
recommends*—that fire burns too hot!
It's to Epimetheus† that we should turn,
the patient recollection of things past,
officered by a saving Afterthought,
so as to perfect our malleable lives,
scorning all convertible values
and the usury that purchase entails.
The Old Ones knew this; why else
would they have invented those two figures,
chaining Prometheus to a Caucasian rock,
with an eagle to devour his liver,
continually, time without end?
Pandora’s jar is simply there to be rejected—
temptation put in our path on purpose.
Epimetheus has another daughter
—Metameleia,‡
whose name signifies repentance.
It's on her that we best ought place our bet.
* "Not chariness , but rather a wise blindness. . . . Instead of laboring to acquire a dumb, slowly mounting possession pile, an ongoing discarding of all convertible values."—Rainer Maria Rilke, "On Art" [Keine Vorsicht , sondern eine weise Blindheit. . . . Kein Erwerben eines stillen, langsam wachsenden Besitzes, sondern ein fortwährendes Vergeuden aller wandelbaren Werte.—Rilke, “Über Kunst”].
† Whereas the Titan Prometheus (Forethought, viz., science) is penetrating and ingenious, his brother Epimetheus (Afterthought) is an instinctual poetic klutz.
‡ Metanoia. A portmanteau name derived from the Greek preposition μετά (after, beyond) and the verb μέλω (to care, be concerned). See also James Warren, Regret: A Study in Ancient Moral Psychology (OUP, 2021).
Thursday day, April 10, 2025
