Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Studies - Enikő Bollobás: "My son is a Magyar": Ideas of Firstness and Origin in Charles Olson 's Poems
them as they are, and not as elements of some cultural and historical knowledge. When firstness is folded in process and endlessness, direct experience is collapsed into narrative and cultural paradigm: no originary event at the unfathomable bottom of process, no originary experience at the unfathomable bottom of discourse. La Cosa's landing cannot be considered as an absolute first: the explorers were ahead of the colonizers; the Portugese were ahead of Cabot; the fishermen were ahead of the colonizers; Odysseus was ahead of the fishermen; Hercules was ahead of Odysseus; Pytheas was ahead of St. Brendan (even in seeing mermaids, monsters, and other creatures). In each case, the firstness of the encounter is both asserted and repeatedly withdrawn by references of the previous firsts. A scene of origin as presence or preexistent referent being no longer possible, each "discovery" is preceded by earlier discoveries. Aware of the fact that the desire of returning to origins was itself informed by myth, Olson does not wish to restore some original condition in history; instead, he seems fascinated by simply imagining —as a mental exercise —such situations that are ripped of conceptualization, rationalization, or abstraction. The Juan de la Cosa poem is, more than anything else, a rehearsal of perceiving supposedly first events with a "Phoenician eye": as once contingencies that are still parts of processes. What is claimed to be more important than firstness and originality, then, is process and staying in process. For it is through process that the energy of particularity and contingency can be retained. This whole line of discoveries, explorations, fishing, and navigation is offering interconnected instances of knowing, doing, seeing —always as if for the first time. Olson ties into these narratives without making metaphors or symbols out of them; rather, he stays in process by continuing the stories, but without trying to open up metaphysical depth beneath. This is a contiguous relationship, where the poet is in line with la Cosa, Columbus, Bowditch, Hakluyt, or Homer. This is a feedback situation, an act of passing on and responding to, without loss of energy, the concrete narratives. The voyagers —from the 15th and 19th century alike —the fish, the worms are all real, not metaphorical, they do not refer to something beyond themselves, but are simply the objects that demanded the poem —just 15
