INTRODUCTION
Where, you might wonder, does philosophy end and antiphilosophy begin? Certainly not in the same place or at the same time, though we may conjecture that philosophy ends with a critique of (the highest manifestation of appearances in) language, and that this development may co-exist with an antiphilosophy that began with a revolt against appearances in a new-found concern for essences, that is to say for metaphysics as opposed to physics, for the supernatural as opposed to the natural.
Such a revolt began, around the mid-nineteenth century, with Schopenhauer, before anyone had thought of writing a critique of language. It was a revolt, in large part, against the Kantian critique of ethics, of appearances conceived in humanistic terms, and we may define it as a petty-bourgeois reaction against bourgeois philosophy, which, in Kant, was also veering in a metaphysical direction. Consequently we may say that, while bourgeois philosophy wasn't entirely immune to metaphysical leanings, a predominantly metaphysical philosophy, i.e. an antiphilosophy, had to await a petty-bourgeois champion in an incipiently transcendental age. Schopenhauer was such a champion, and although he adhered to bourgeois technical procedures (including the utilization of traditional relative genres) he yet wrote - if not exclusively then at any rate predominantly - within a metaphysical framework, given, in his concern with truth, to essences.
So to answer our opening question more fully, we may say that philosophy ends on a petty-bourgeois level of concern for the highest manifestation of appearances in language, i.e. on the most artificial terms, whilst antiphilosophy begins on a petty-bourgeois level of concern for the lowest manifestation of essences in metaphysical speculation.
So much for philosophy! Let us now ask ourselves, in getting to the heart of this essay, where does poetry end and antipoetry begin? And I think we can answer this question, pretty much as we answered the opening one, by contending that, although in practice the two kinds of poetry often overlap, the poetical ends by singing the praises of artificial beauty, while the antipoetical begins in a preponderating concern for the metaphysical ... as a vehicle for the exploration and elucidation of truth. Thus we have good reason to believe that, as with philosophy and antiphilosophy, poetry ends and antipoetry begins on a petty-bourgeois level, the one at the climax to a concern for appearances in the most artificial context, i.e. as pertinent to the urban/industrial environment, and the other at the inception to a concern for essences in the least spiritual context, i.e. as pertinent to the intellectual elucidation of metaphysical speculation.
Once again Western civilization affords us, in Baudelaire and Swinburne, two fairly conspicuous examples of the end of a poetical tradition and the beginning of an antipoetical revolt, which we may also date from around the mid-nineteenth century, even though the concern with appearances isn't always with the beautiful, nor even the artificial, and the concern with truth doesn't always result in metaphysical speculation but may, in its more radical guise, lead (as with Rimbaud and Mallarmé) towards the abstract, and thus to the overcoming of all appearances, including those composed, through grammatical conventions, in the name of essences - the dogmatically metaphysical.
If we can divide petty-bourgeois poetry into a lower and a higher type, corresponding to an earlier and a later stage of evolutionary development, then I think it will be found that metaphysical poetry corresponds to the former and experimentally abstract, or quasi-abstract, poetry to the latter, so that the evolution of antipoetry, on petty-bourgeois terms, is from the pseudo-apparent to the quasi-essential, in accordance with the relativistic criteria of petty-bourgeois civilization - criteria not guaranteed, however, to endorse the establishment and development of a totally abstract poetry (superpoetry?), such that would accord with the free-electron constitution of a transcendental civilization - one less intellectual than spiritual. There is always in petty-bourgeois poetry a degree of intellectual relativity, even when this relativity takes the form of surrealism which, while defying utilitarian reference and traditional descriptive/analytical usage, makes little or no attempt to defy grammatical convention by interfering with the usual links between, for example, adjectives and nouns, adverbs and adjectives, verbs and pronouns, adverbs and verbs, and so on, but, rather, settles for a compromise between the meaningful and the meaningless in some degree of surrealistic relativity. Clearly, while this is compatible with the extreme relativistic integrity of petty-bourgeois civilization, it could have no place in a proletarian civilization founded on absolute values. Only a totally abstract poetry would suffice there, and, in establishing a static community of independent words, it would signify the culmination of poetic development in the most radical essence. It is this 'superpoetry', the quintessence of poetic endeavour, that signifies the salvation of literature; for it is the most artificial, the most difficult to compose, and the most transcendent. And yet it frees the reader, as no other poetry ever could, from intellectual appearances.
Finally, since the distinction between poetry and antipoetry, no less than philosophy and antiphilosophy, is with regard to the apparent and the essential, it follows that whilst antipoetry and antiphilosophy, particularly in their absolute manifestations, will be acceptable to a Transcendentalist, philosophy and poetry won't be, since their concern with different levels of appearance ... puts them beneath the pale, as it were, of what is acceptable in a transcendental civilization. Consequently whilst antiphilosophy and antipoetry, as conceived on the most radically essential terms, will be respected in the final human civilization, neither philosophy nor poetry will be encouraged, since, together with petty-bourgeois levels of antiphilosophy and antipoetry, they pertain to a relative age, and nothing relative will be endorsed once an absolute civilization gets properly under way, not even an anti-philosophical introduction to a volume of abstract poetry! And certainly not fictional literature, considered in its novelistic/short-story manifestations, which either predominantly stems from appearances on philosophical and/or poetical terms, is balanced between philosophy and/or poetry on the one hand ... and antiphilosophy and/or antipoetry on the other hand, or predominantly aspires towards essence on anti-philosophical and/or anti-poetical terms, depending, in each case, whether a grand-bourgeois, a bourgeois, or a petty-bourgeois epoch rules the day and, to a lesser extent, upon the class integrity of any given author.
Whatever the case, no such literature will be considered worthy of study in an absolute age. Only such literature, together with superpoetry, as I have composed for the benefit of a proletariat become civilized - in a word, for transcendentalists. May they appreciate this abstract poetry as they choose, for I have no desire to dictate punctuation spaces to them!
John O'Loughlin,
