Page 30 - The Irony Board
P. 30

Into the Mind


              The drive to
           Abstraction
              Is paved with
              Concrete blocks.

             Efforts to change oneself begin in the  mind. Two methods are
         commonly  employed,  alone  or  in  concert:  acquiring  wisdom  and
         altering  behavior.  The  final  works  in  this  section  deal  with  those
         subjective and objective pursuits of self-development from the point
         of view of the individual; other aspects are discussed later.
              The  present  poem  is  a  proverbial  pastiche  indicating  one
         problem encountered on the path to wisdom. Since that saying is an
         ironical one (“the road to hell is paved with good intentions”), and
         “drive” is a pun, Gluckman is suggesting that the search for ultimate
         truth is something less than holy; in fact, he suspects the quest to be
         a sublimation of the will to power. Thus, a hint of Faust and a whiff
         of brimstone underlies the image.
             “Blocks”  may be read three ways. Taken literally,  it  means that
         one arrives at abstractions by means of mental operations performed
         upon real objects; the concrete blocks are paving stones over which
         one  drives  toward  the  goal.  However,  those  stepping-stones  may
         also be stumbling blocks, since their nature is opposite to that of the
         goal;  the  drive  is  still  a  path,  but  not  smoothly  paved.  The  final
         interpretation is totally psychological, returning to the irony of the
         original  proverb:  the  emotional  drive  to  gain  conceptual  power  is
         continually  frustrated  by  non-conceptual  obstacles,  themselves
         devilishly emotional  in  character. On this level,  the first two  lines
         resonate with a figure of speech for the process of mental overload,
         to be “driven to distraction.”








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