Abstract

The overarching concern in my academic work has been to explore the relationship of ontology to art. Such an interest has historical roots in philosophy, and is a fundamental impulse underlying Romantic art in general. As G. W. F. Hegel suggests, "The true content of romantic art is absolute inwardness, and its corresponding form is spiritual subjectivity with its grasp of its independence and freedom" . The focus on inwardness, or subjectivity, results in art concerned with duality, or the relationship of self to "other." This issue is implicit in aesthetic investigations, as well as in epistemological and ontological ones within the philosophic tradition. Because my understanding of art is as an ontological locus--one that brings forward the possibility of resolving the duality inherent in subject/object positions--my dissertation takes the form of a book-length collection of poems attended by a philosophically based critical introduction. ;The introduction to the poems sets out an articulation of the act of reading as the reader's "participation" in the language of the text. "Participation" in this context means the reader's entrance into the language of the text in a way that activates the ontological categories resident there as essential elements of the text as art. By outlining the philosophic validity of reading so conceived and by describing its methodology, the paper attempts to accomplish a re-valuing of the aesthetic object as viable aside from the ideological and other non-philosophically based critical positions presently being applied to texts. ;My understanding of art as the locus of issues basic to the human condition grows out of my experience as a poet, and is, in fact, founded upon it. Many poems in Resisting Landscapes explore the issue of duality directly via poems based in a garden landscape. These poems document the desire to bridge the gap between self and "other" in an effort to establish a unity that transcends ontological issues such as time and space. Through exploring themes of "will" and the nature of the relationship of self to "other," the poems attempt to discover a sense of the present wherein distinctions between subject and object dissolve, and "Being" comes forward in the context of unity. ;The links between my creative work and philosophy in the Continental tradition continue in the other poems in the collection. For example, a poem based on Heidegger's notion of the temple emerged directly from my readings in Continental philosophy. The "strife" Heidegger notes between the temple and the earth and sky seems provocative because it represents the effort toward a relationship between self and other . Other poems explore architectural sites and the act of building as attempts to resolve the duality inherent in our experience. Philosophic interest in duality and "being" are also reflected in poems which engage explicitly philosophic ideas, such as the Greek notion of aletheia or the unveiling of truth, as well as verfallen or the experience of falling into ruin. The basic tendency in the work, then, as expressed in this dissertation, has roots in a philosophic vision that results in both a creative aesthetic and also a scholarly commitment to the rehabilitation of the work of art