I like the idea of an imagined doppleganger-Heidegger so references to Heidegger are to this Swiss version rather than the German Nazi-appointed rector of Frieburg University. Stevens is the great poet of the poetic dwelling time on earth, poised at a pitch between birth and death, as good a poet as Holderlin, and asking the same question as the German: what are times for in times of poverty?
Lotman would say. The first we might label the mythic and the second the scandalous. In this respect then it could be prefaced by Henry James who wrote exactly that about his own novel, The Ambassadors. This links to Stevens who was concerned to dwell in the mysterious occultness of the ordinary, the everyday, the unconcealed, signaling that there was this doubleness, this remarkable atemporal element alongside the temporal, a secret inside a secret hidden in the plainest of plain sights.
The Dark Object reminded me of an intense poem that wanted to bring certain things to light, to reveal them so to speak, and as such it reminded me of other several things, but most of all the Kafka parable in The Trial and its troubling, dark intimation to the concealedness inherent in everything. A parable therefore is the opposite of open proclamation; its purpose is to conceal, to retain the secret, to keep people out and in this the Gospel according to Mark is a key text, the one Gospel narrative that has Jesus say that he uses parables to keep the uncircumcised ear from understanding.
It is a dark object. The man waits outside the door for years waiting to be admitted. He tries all kinds of ways of getting past the doorkeeper but fails. He gets close to dying and sees a great light beaming out from the door. As he dies he asks the doorkeeper why no one else tried to see this particular door to get to the Law.
Now I am going to shut it. The glosses on the parables, the interpretations that follow in both Kafka and Mark, seem inept, melancholic, depressing. All this reminds us of the double plot idea, the occult and the scandalous, that like serpents within serpents swallow whole the very idea of unconcealedness and make it, at the very least, a job to be done. What is the story? Palmer makes sure we know that there are occult forces by having multiple stories performed within the story, each bafflingly self referential at times but in ways that are closed, difficult to grasp.
