Abstract
ANGELAKI journal of the theoretical humanities volume 28 number 1 february 2023 There are not enough mouths to utter All your fleeting names, O water. – Wisława Szymborska, “Water” isława Szymborska’s poetic take on W water is driven by a paradox. On the one hand, the poem speaks to, and celebrates, water’s material heterogeneity and the multi- plicity of its forms and hence meanings. On the other, however, it points to the impossibility EDITORIAL to...
ANGELAKI journal of the theoretical humanities volume 28 number 1 february 2023 There are not enough mouths to utter All your fleeting names, O water. – Wisława Szymborska, “Water” isława Szymborska’s poetic take on W water is driven by a paradox. On the one hand, the poem speaks to, and celebrates, water’s material heterogeneity and the multi- plicity of its forms and hence meanings. On the other, however, it points to the impossibility EDITORIAL to grasp the abundant materiality of water and to INTRODUCTION the inadequacy of language to keep up with its fugitive realities and shapes. The “names” are provisional and potentially countless, the lines suggest, turning the poem, it might seem, into ewa macura-nnamdi a dubious exercise in poetic creation. Indeed, tomasz sikora Szymborska’s piece does what it declares impossible: it offers beautifully crafted names in an explicit recognition of their insufficiency and futility. And yet the lines also, and WATER perhaps by this very reason, suggest that there are no other ways to access water except through the endless acts of naming (as Jamie Szymborska’s 1962 poem beautifully encap- Linton provocatively puts it: “Water is what sulates some of the major currents of thought we make
Angelaki – Taylor & Francis
Published: Jan 2, 2023
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