In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

342 CODES
theater ... but it is more honest to record that these ideas and actions
then passed naturally. What now looks wanton or sadic seemed in the
field inevitable, or just unimportant routine" (Lawrence, 30-31). Yet
another variation of the same problem emerges in Allen Tate's introduction
to Hart Crane's collection of poems, White Buildings. Tate starts
out with the premise that a core element in the identity of the modern
poet is the poet's inability-perhaps even unwillingness-to "[ apprehend]
his world as a Whole." According to Tate, two reactions to this
situation are possible. Poets can either register isolated, mostly sensual
world-perceptions and transform them into isolated poems, or-and this
is the case with Crane-they can conceive of their texts as fragments of
a single world-vision that they have no hope of ever seeing as a totality
but can never allow themselves to abandon: "A series of Imagistic poems
is a series of worlds. [But] the poems of Hart Crane are facets of a single
vision; they refer to a central imagination, a single evaluating power,
which is at once the motive of the poetry and the form of its realization"
(Crane, xii). Walter Benjamin again comes through with a particularly
distanced comment on the question of cognitive distance. It is unclear
whether his tone is ironic or nostalgic; but Benjamin leaves no doubt that
cognitive distance, which was once a condition for the Authenticity and
depth of understanding, is no longer achievable. At the same time,
however, he finds a positive excitement in this loss of distance [see Movie
Palaces, Authenticity vs. Artificiality]:
Those who lament the decline of criticism are fools. Its hour has passed.
For criticism depends on appropriate distance. It belongs to a world
that consisted of perspectives and prospects, a world in which it was
still possible to occupy a viewpoint. Meanwhile, things have come
threateningly close to the body of human society. Today, to speak of an
'unbiased,' independent view is either a lie or an expression of intellectual
incompetence. The most essentialist-and the most mercantileview
into the heart of all matters is the view of advertising. It makes
the play with the observer's distance collapse and brings things dangerously
close to our face-like a car which, growing to gigantic proportions,
seems to emerge from the movie screen. And just as the cinema
never presents furniture or far,;:ades as objects of critical reflection, because
it aims exclusively at the sensational effect of their sudden closeness,
so good advertising brings things close to us with the speed of the
modern film. (Benjamin, 131-132)