The Darkness He Called Night The Darkness He Called Night
i
“L’Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire”, Camille Flammarion, Paris, 1888
Fiction

The Darkness He Called Night

Charles Bernstein
Reading
time 1 minute

Virtue’s a kind

of despair,

masquerading as care.

A bitter

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An Introduction to Charles Bernstein’s “The Darkness He Called Night” An Introduction to Charles Bernstein’s “The Darkness He Called Night”
i
“L’Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire”, Camille Flammarion, Paris, 1888
Experiences

An Introduction to Charles Bernstein’s “The Darkness He Called Night”

Julia Fiedorczuk

Charles Bernstein’s poetry is relentlessly experimental, playful, eclectic, irreverent, often humorous and sometimes uncomfortable when it is at odds with the readers’ expectations or convictions. As one of the founders of the so-called ‘Language school’ of poetry (usually spelled L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E), Bernstein explores the uses of language within diverse social contexts. His work focuses on the ways we rely on words, expressions, metaphors, and on the meanings our culture attaches to its own verbal productions. Bernstein’s poetic work often mocks the jargon of politics, popular culture, advertising, corporate culture or academia. By foregrounding the hidden workings of ideology in language, Bernstein’s work defamiliarizes our deeply held beliefs and values. As Bernstein says in an interview with Bradford Senning: “I want to engage the materials of the culture, derange them as they have deranged me, sound them out, as they sound me out.”

“The Darkness He Called Night” is, of course, a reference to the Biblical act of creation – more precisely, the moment when God divided light from darkness, creating the first dichotomy. Possibly no other pair of concepts generates as many metaphors as these two, light being associated not just with daytime but also with wisdom, virtue, happiness and hope. Darkness, on the other hand, connotes evil, ignorance and danger. These associations have become so commonplace that we are hardly aware of their metaphorical character, as of the fact that both literal and metaphorical meanings of darkness and light are mutually constructive and therefore interdependent.

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