Third Paradoxist Manifesto by Florentin Smarandache 5063

Brad Ovitt, 2 y.

- Art - Poetry -

1.8 min read.

Therefore, don't enforce any literary rules on me! Or, if you do, I'll certainly encroach upon them. I'm not a poet, that's why I write poetry. I'm an anti-poet or non-poet. I thus came to America to re-build the Statue of Liberty of the Verse, delivered from the tyranny of the classic and its dogma. I allowed any boldness: - anti-literature and its literature; - flexible forms fixed, or the alive face of the death! - style of the non-style; - poems without verse (because poems don't mean words)- dumb poems with loud voice; - poems without poems (because the notion of "poem" doesn't match any definition found in dictionaries or encyclopedias) - poems which exist by their absence; - after-war literature: pages and pages bombed by filthiness, triteness, and non-poeticality; - paralinguistic verse (only!): graphics, lyrical portraits, drawings, drafts... - non-words and non-sentence poems; - very upset free verse and trivial hermetic verse; - intelligible unintelligible language; - unsolved and open problems of mathematics like very nice poems of the spirit - we must scientificize the art in this technical century; - impersonal texts personalized; - electrical shock; - translation from the impossible into the possible, or transformation of the abnormal to the normal; - pro Non-Art Art; - make literature from everything, make literature from nothing! The poet is not a prince of ducks! The notion of "poetry" and its derivatives have become old-fashioned in this century, and people laugh at them in disregard. I'm ashamed to affirm that I create lyrical texts, I hide them. People neither read nor listen to lyrical texts anymore, but they will read this volume because it's nothing to read! However, the Paradoxist Movement is neither nihilism, nor disparity. The book of the non-poems is a protest against art's marketing. Do you writers sell your feelings? Do you create only for money?? Only books about crimes, sex, horror are published. Where is the true Art? In begging... . You may find in this book of uncollected poems everything you don't need and don't like: poems not to be read, not to be heard, not to be written at all! Enjoy them. Only after nuisance you really know what pleasure means. They provide a mirror of everybody's infinite soul. Art, generally speaking, is pushed up to its last possible frontiers toward non-art, and even more... Better a book of blanc pages, than one which says nothing. A very abstract and symbolic language is further used, but very concrete at the same time: non-restrictive verse from any form or content. It takes advantage of cliche against itself. EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE, THEREFORE: THE IMPOSSIBLE TOO! Hence don't wonder about this anti-book! If you don't understand it, that means you understand all. That is the goal of the manifesto. Because Art is not for the mind, but for feelings. Because Art is also for the mind. Try to interpret the un-interpretable! Your imagination may flourish as a cactus in a desert. But, The American Manifesto of the PARADOXISM is especially a revolt of the emigrant to the United States who doesn't speak English, against the language - an anti-language book written in more than a broken English (the American speech of Tomorrow?)... [From the book: NonPoems, by Florentin Smarandache, Xiquan Publishing House, Phoenix, Chicago, 1991, 1992, 1993; the volume contains very experimental so called , such as: - poems without verse; - poems without poems; - poem-drafts; - drawn-poems; - poems in Pirissanorench (language spoken in the South-West of the United States by a single person); - super-poems; - graphic poems; - upset-poems.]

fs.unm.edu/a/paradoxism-en.htm

THE MEDITATIONS - Book I.[1/3] 3917

Bluwr X Commons: Marcus Aurelius, 2 y.

3.7 min read.

1. I learned from my grandfather, Verus, to use good manners, and to put restraint on anger. 2. In the famous memory of my father I had a pattern of modesty and manliness. 3. Of my mother I learned to be pious and generous; to keep myself not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts; and to live with a simplicity which is far from customary among the rich. 4. I owe it to my great-grandfather that I did not attend public lectures and discussions, but had good and able teachers at home; and I owe him also the knowledge that for things of this nature a man should count no expense too great. 5. My tutor taught me not to favour either green or blue at the chariot races, nor, in the contests of gladiators, to be a supporter either of light or heavy armed. He taught me also to endure labour; not to need many things; to serve myself without troubling others; not to intermeddle in the affairs of others, and not easily to listen to slanders against them. 6. Of Diognetus I had the lesson not to busy myself about vain things; not to credit the great professions of such as pretend to work wonders, or of sorcerers about their charms, and their expelling of Demons and the like; not to keep quails (for fighting or divination), nor to run after such things; to suffer freedom of speech in others, and to apply myself heartily to philosophy. Him also I must thank for my hearing first Bacchius, then Tandasis and Marcianus; that I wrote dialogues in my youth, and took a liking to the philosopher’s pallet and skins, and to the other things which, by the Grecian discipline, belong to that profession. 7. To Rusticus I owe my first apprehensions that my nature needed reform and cure; and that I did not fall into the ambition of the common Sophists, either by composing speculative writings or by declaiming harangues of exhortation in public; further, that I never strove to be admired by ostentation of great patience in an ascetic life, or by display of activity and application; that I gave over the study of rhetoric, poetry, and the graces of language; and that I did not pace my house in my senatorial robes, or practise any similar affectation. I observed also the simplicity of style in his letters, particularly in that which he wrote to my mother from Sinuessa. I learned from him to be easily appeased, and to be readily reconciled with those who had displeased me or given cause of offence, so soon as they inclined to make their peace; to read with care; not to rest satisfied with a slight and superficial knowledge; nor quickly to assent to great talkers. I have him to thank that I met with the discourses of Epictetus, which he furnished me from his own library. 8. From Apollonius I learned true liberty, and tenacity of purpose; to regard nothing else, even in the smallest degree, but reason always; and always to remain unaltered in the agonies of pain, in the losses of children, or in long diseases. He afforded me a living example of how the same man can, upon occasion, be most yielding and most inflexible. He was patient in exposition; and, as might well be seen, esteemed his fine skill and ability in teaching others the principles of philosophy as the least of his endowments. It was from him that I learned how to receive from friends what are thought favours without seeming humbled by the giver or insensible to the gift. 9. Sextus was my pattern of a benign temper, and his family the model of a household governed by true paternal affection, and a steadfast purpose of living according to nature. Here I could learn to be grave without affectation, to observe sagaciously the several dispositions and inclinations of my friends, to tolerate the ignorant and those who follow current opinions without examination. His conversation showed how a man may accommodate himself to all men and to all companies; for though companionship with him was sweeter and more pleasing than any sort of flattery, yet he was at the same time highly respected and reverenced. No man was ever more happy than he in comprehending, finding out, and arranging in exact order the great maxims necessary for the conduct of life. His example taught me to suppress even the least appearance of anger or any other passion; but still, with all this perfect tranquillity, to possess the tenderest and most affectionate heart; to be apt to approve others yet without noise; to have much learning and little ostentation. 10. I learned from Alexander the Grammarian to avoid censuring others, to refrain from flouting them for a barbarism, solecism, or any false pronunciation. Rather was I dexterously to pronounce the words rightly in my answer, confining approval or objection to the matter itself, and avoiding discussion of the expression, or to use some other form of courteous suggestion. 11. Fronto made me sensible how much of envy, deceit and hypocrisy surrounds princes; and that generally those whom we account nobly born have somehow less natural affection. 12. I learned from Alexander the Platonist not often nor without great necessity to say, or write to any man in a letter, that I am not at leisure; nor thus, under pretext of urgent affairs, to make a practice of excusing myself from the duties which, according to our various ties, we owe to those with whom we live. 13. Of Catulus I learned not to condemn any friend’s expostulation even though it were unjust, but to try to recall him to his former disposition; to stint no praise in speaking of my masters, as is recounted of Domitius and Athenodorus; and to love my children with true affection. 14. Of Severus, my brother, I learned to love my kinsmen, to love truth, to love justice. Through him I came to know Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, and Brutus. He gave me my first conception of a Commonwealth founded upon equitable laws and administered with equality of right; and of a Monarchy whose chief concern is the freedom of its subjects. Of him I learned likewise a constant and harmonious devotion to Philosophy; to be ready to do good, to be generous with all my heart. He taught me to be of good hope and trustful of the affection of my friends. I observed in him candour in declaring what he condemned in the conduct of others; and so frank and open was his behaviour, that his friends might easily see without the trouble of conjecture what he liked or disliked.