Robert Garlitz

Kenneth Burke's Logology Robert Garlitz

Logology does not set itself up as a measure against which all others are to be judged. Rather it constitutes that proscenium within which the Impresario invites The Lord and Satan to have their dialogue. And all symbols, words or images or sounds, like the Impresario, are clothed half in formal elegance and half in rags---that is, the source of value and the source of blame. That is one way the history of theology in the west "perfected" the terminology---by treating the word as perfect godhead and perfect scapegoat. In other words, every symbolic action involves one in not just a hermeneutic circle but a dramatistic-logological møbius loop! ...................... As much as you prove yourself to know about my work, you yourself cannot know how deeply your pages dig into just what I'm trying to resay somehow, ptikly as heartened by the evidence you present there of hitting at the center, as I see when seeing it thus all by itself. . . . . And let's work out somethinks. Meanwhile, I jes wanted to say: I think, I see now, that those pages of yours were (are) ideally accurate. --Kenneth Burke, Letter to the author, November 21, 1980