Mathematics uses braces to denote sets.
''R'' is the set of real numbers and also contains rational and irrational ones, completing each other.
Let's consider Humanity a set and our current reality, the apex of reason. Who would dare not to suspect irrationality rules over us?
Revue {R}évolution aims at giving non-rationality the attention it deserves, so it ceases to move us without our consent, the lack of which creates irrationality. Our tool? A process called Existential Poetry.
We believe Knowledge liberates from irrationality, ugliness, confusion, mediocracy and Beauty is a regulating principle in our individual and collective lives.
Revue {R}évolution promotes Knowledge, Beauty & Truth in Poetry and the Arts.
Our tool? Polymathy.
Polymathy is a practice, not a personality.
We are a polymath review of Poetry-Art.
Existential Poetry & Art:
a polymath's guide to creation
Being a polymath leads to existential Poetry
(and the other way around).
Existential poetry is the outcome of a three-step process exploring collective events with philosophy (a science in itself), art and mythology, the blending of which allows natural, ecstatic poetical expression.
Editor-in-Chief
[Existential] Poetry is the outcome of a process which explores thought, action, and emotion.
[Existential] Poetry is not about things, neither about conveying images to the mind, nor about accumulating endless narratives of our sensual experiences with things.
In phenomenology, an image or object is a 'being in itself.' Once formed, neither of them requires our sensitivity to be and the number of interactions we can have with either one is limited. We subscribe to that. Interacting with objects or people creates relationships.
Relations require outwardness, a mode of perception which dominates human affairs and modern literature. We love stories of outwardness, but over time, cease to create narrative symbols (myths). Entertained with mythologies, we became incapable of extracting what's subtle in them.
[Existential] Poetry is about that subtlety, the unseen, the truth behind the gross game of outwardness. [Existential] Poetry and art are a doorway to the absolute.
[Existential] Poetry is the outcome of a three step-process using Philosophy, Art and Mythology as conduits to that unseen and allows natural, elegant, and meaningful expression.
Step 1: Attention in observation (philosophy)
When events persist, they become phenomena which force us to think about them. The first step to existential poetry is philosophical attention; conscious, deliberate, and focused thinking. Beyond academic definitions and quarrels, philosophy is clarity in thought resulting in the love of wisdom.
On Earth, the love of wisdom (knowledge) is shared by three categories of people: scientists, creatives, and mystics.
Scientists strive to extract information from what's perceptible. They enhance our understanding of the physical world. Science reveals the intrinsic laws of nature, from the grossest to the infinitesimal, and does not necessarily seek matter transformation (technology does). Scientific thought tends to be objective. For scientists, matter is information is law.
Step: Motivated action (Art)
Creatives interact with the outer as transformative agents exclusively. They change how we perceive the physical world through ideas, emotions, and feelings shared. Art is a conduit to sensitivity. When artists respond to
philosophia, they use their subjectivity to beautify the world. For them, matter is beauty is emotion is law.
Step 3: Exalted storytelling (Myth)
Mystics, whether recluse or socially active, endeavor to know the Self behind the scientist and the creative. [Existential] Poetry transcends analysis and emotion, not because it is separated from them, or despises them, but because it knows them from experience. Existential poets tend to be or become mystics since their medium is consciousness. For existential poets, consciousness is law which is why they are children of Polymatheia.
Polymaths are named after Polymatheia, ancient Greek goddess of Knowledge, also known as Polymnia (she of many hymns). Deities embody what’s not only abstract, but absolute. The closest thing to the absolute for human perception, besides godliness, is consciousness, without which knowing is impossible, within which infinitely relative information and perceptions of the world are gathered.
What is consciousness? What does it look like? How would you describe or begin to fathom something tangible, yet invisible; something that appears infinite while ingrained in our mortal bodies; something that begins, ends, and precedes our existences, yet is nowhere to be found?
If you wanted to tell the elusive journey of consciousness, wouldn’t you use grandiose, majestic, lavish, and improbable symbols and language? Wouldn’t you speak in myth and sing the praises of the human soul in Poetry?
Of course you would. Now you know why religions are packed with myth. Because they try to fathom the unfathomable.
Now you know why somehow myths can survive without religions. Because they are the song of the Self voyaging in consciousness.
Now you know why sacred books and religious mythologies are written in poetry.
Then, effortless poetry / art
The art of poetry lies in a surprising and essential competence: the ability to spread a truth our five senses can't reach.
Poetic language arises each time we break free from the tyranny of the senses, each time we go beyond what’s familiar to us, hence each time we become less self-centered. In such cases, only immoderate or impersonal speech can do us justice. In such cases, you think you are a poet, but the truth is Poetry is busy being you.
Knowing nature and our own nature
Our inspiration for creating a literary magazine where all art forms meet and unmask poetry comes from the observation of life and Samkhya, a Hindu metaphysical system that supports the many traditions of Yoga, a famous Sanskrit word meaning ''union''. This review acknowledges unity of all phenomena, mirroring Yoga--without physical exercise.
Samkhya describes nature, consciousness or the manifested (prakriti, which also means ''Earth'') as the interplay of three strings named "gunas." These forces shape animate or inanimate beings' experience, leaving us with no choice but to exist: Inertia or Tamas, Passion or Rajas and Harmony, Sattva.
The threefold method to creating Poetry and Art exposed here reflects them.
Perception of a certain set of circumstances is possible only because witnesses cannot doubt these circumstances apparent motionlessness. That's inertia. Inertia requires attention: philosophical observation.
Fortunately, nothing stays still forever, except death, a peak manifestation of inertia, the triumph of ignorance. Regression (the outcome of ignorance) is highly unpleasant for perceptive, knowledge-oriented beings such as humans. So, transforming what's inert becomes a necessity. There, motivated action is required. That's passion, a desire to control circumstances manifested in artistic expression.
Transformation is life-affirming, although devolution is also a probable outcome. From the effort to escape inertia with passion, Beauty, satisfaction and clarity arise. Transformed into experience, action matures into Wisdom, transcendental perception is born, and duality recedes. That's Sattva, Harmony, without which there is no poetry, no art, no Knowledge, no inspiration.
Revue {R}évolution is a sattvic review of poetry, art, philosophy, and mythology. We are a polymaths, obviously.
{R} is dense and delightful. Read slowly.
