Sunday, April 8, 2012

Genius by Agamben

While I haven't finished a book in a month and a half, I've been reading - here and there, throwing books across the room, forgetting about them as they slowly slink deeper into the shadows beneath my bed. The poet Dan Beachy-Quick recommended I read this essay after "Self-Reliance." What I have gleaned so far is that Genius is a god, a ghost, a possessor who simply happens to appear. One cannot claim his name, only his influence.

Quotes
Passion is the
rope kept taut between ourselves and Genius, the rope on which life, the tightrope
walker, balances.

With time Genius divides in two (si sdoppia) and begins to assume an ethical hue.
The sources, perhaps due to the infl uence of the Greek theme of the two demons
inside every man, speak of a good genius (genio) and a bad genius, of a white
(albus) Genius and of a black (ater) one.

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