Abstract
This introductory essay does not summarize the work presented in the volume, but rather begins at the beginning (Fig. 1): the wonder of our own existence in a magnificent universe that we can appreciate, but never fully understand. Such an awareness is captured in the gentlest of human utterances, the lullaby. The essay’s phenomenological analysis of Jane Turner’s “The Star” turns toward Franz Rosenzweig’s 1923 discussions of wonder and the healthy human mind. This naturally leads to essays within the volume itself: Daniel Hughes’ characterization of Husserl’s championing of pre-theoretical conditioning life, Witold Płotka’s treatment of doxa and the natural attitude in Husserl, and finally Annabella Duforourq’s analysis and Lena Hopsch’s description of Merleau-Ponty’s “cosmic flesh.”
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Notes
- 1.
In Tymienieckan terms, the lullaby would be considered as the expression of the passions of the soul, reinforced by examples offered in Scottish lullabies, in which a number of songs deal with dark subjects, loss of a parent or a child (http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandssongs/about/songs/lullabiesdandlings/index.asp). Frederico García Lorca notes both the poetic character and depth of sadness in the many Spanish lullabies he studied, concluding that they help the mother vocalize her worries and concerns; they are therapy for the mother.
- 2.
Jane and Ann Taylor’s Rhymes for the Nursery is a collection of English poems by sisters, published in London in 1806. Jane Turner’s later works were edited and published by her brother Isaac Taylor in 1832: The writings of Jane Taylor, In Five Volumes, Boston: Perkins & Marvin. For the sisters’ positions in literary history, see Feldman (2002, 279–289).
- 3.
Mozart might have done variations, but the basic tune was popular in the seventeenth century; its lyric has nothing to do with the heavens. See “Ah ! vous dirai-je, maman,” Wikipedia, consulted June 1, 2013. The “Alphabet Song” and “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” use very similar tunes.
- 4.
Lorca (2008) recognizes the importance of proxemics for the lullaby effect: “And sleep comes, achieved by the opposite process to ‘distancing’ … In her song the mother often constructs an abstract landscape, almost always a nocturnal one, and places in it, as if in some profoundly simple and ancient play, one or two characters who execute the most straightforward actions almost always with a sorrowful effect of the greatest beauty. Across this little stage pass actors whom the child must necessarily imagine and who loom large in the hot fogs of sleeplessness.”
- 5.
Nancy Goldfarb (p.c.) pointed out Auden’s 1958 “The More Loving One,” which questions whether such a relationship must be symmetrical.How should we like it were stars to burnWith a passion for us we could not return?If equal affection cannot be,Let the more loving one be me.Echoes of Auden’s personal affairs might be present in this verse, but, in the context of this essay, it is interesting to read it as a validation of the pathetic fallacy. Even if nature cannot love us back, aren’t we better off for loving it?
- 6.
When Timothy Morton (2001) thinks that “Taylor’s ‘like a diamond’ makes of nature a fantastic luxury item, handy as jeweled fruit in an interior garden” (paragraph 61), he thinks of the object and not the ambience. Although children’s books were luxury items in that day (paragraph 5), again we should consider the ambience: seems to me that the wealthy (and therefore educated) would have appreciated the poem’s literary qualities as a lullaby. Lorca’s lullaby study is pertinent: “The lullaby requires a listener who can follow its events intelligently and delight in the anecdote, character or evocation of landscape the song expresses. The child that is sung to can already talk, is beginning to walk, knows the meaning of words, and often sings alone.”
- 7.
Lorca (2008).
- 8.
“Understanding the Sick and the Healthy: A View of World, Man, and God” (earlier titled “The Little Book of Healthy and Sick Human Understanding”) was commissioned in 1921 by the Frommann Publishing House, Stuttgart. Rosenzweig was not satisfied with the work, so it was first published in an English translation in 1953, edited and translated by Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Noonday Press). Hilary Putnam introduces the 1999 edition, translated by Nahum Glatzer, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/rosenzweig/
- 9.
Benjamin Pollock (2009), “Franz Rosenzweig,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2009 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/rosenzweig/.
- 10.
Daniel James Hughes, “My Living Body: The Zero Point of Nature-Mind and the Horizon of Creative Imagination.” in this volume.
- 11.
Witold Płotka, “Knowledge and the Lifeworld, Phenomenological Transcendental Investigations,” in this volume.
- 12.
Annabelle Dufourcq, “Bachelard and Merleau-Ponty: Is a Cosmic Flesh of the World Feigned or Disclosed by Imagination?” and Lena Hopsch, “American Walk: Imagining Between Earth And Sky” in this volume.
- 13.
Sułkowska-Janowska (2011).
References
Feldman, Paula R. 2002. Women poets and anonymity in the romantic era. New Literary History 33(2): 279–289.
Lorca, Federico García. 2008. “Las nanas infantiles” [On Lullabies], 1928 Madrid lecture. Reproduced by A. S. Kline, (2008). http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Spanish/Lullabies.htm, consulted August 2, 2013.
Morton, Timothy. 2001. ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ as an ambient poem: A study of a dialectical image; with some remarks on Coleridge and Wordsworth. In Romanticism and ecology, romantic circles praxis series, ed. Orrin Wang. http://www.rc.umd.edu/praxis/ecology/morton/morton.html, consulted June 1, 2013.
Pollock, Benjamin. 2009. “Franz Rosenzweig.” The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta. Fall 2009 edition. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2009/entries/rosenzweig/
Rosenzweig, Franz. 1999. Understanding the sick and the healthy: A view of world, man, and god. Ed. and trans. Nahum N. Glatzer. Introduction by Hilary Putnam. New York: Noonday Press.
Stoeger, S.J., and R. William. 2011. Rationality and wonder: From scientific cosmology to philosophy and theology. In Astronomy and civilization in the new enlightenment: Passions of the skies, Analecta Husserliana, vol. 107, ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and Attila Grandpierre, 259–268. Dordrecht: Springer.
Sułkowska-Janowska, Mariola Anita. 2011. The end of skyscrapers-Architecture in the transcendentless world. In Towards the skies, Phenomenological Inquiry, vol. 35 (October), ed. Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Feature Study, 2–16.
Taylor, Jane and Ann Taylor. 1806. Rhymes for the nursery. London: Darton & Harvey.
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Trutty-Coohill, P. (2016). Scintillations: An Introduction to the Volume. In: Tymieniecka, AT., Trutty-Coohill, P. (eds) The Cosmos and the Creative Imagination. Analecta Husserliana, vol 119. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21792-5_1
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