notion that men have access to mastery through language is shown to
be incorrect since in her poem language has little to do with the
containable and, like love, it has everything to do with loss of control
in the face of alterity.
The womanís diction also reflects a cartographic insistence on
measuring as she conjures a mile of green grass. In the final stanza the
woman adopts the manís terms of navigation as she awakens at sea
and she dreams her way back to land with the words the man wrote for
her: ëAcre, arpent, section, square,/ League, light-year, township, air.í
As she mimics his writing and speech rhythms the question arises
whether she is master or mistress of the flood. Her words become less
and less specific as she imagines a ëlight-yearí, and ends the poem
appropriately with the word ëairí. Questioning whether the writing in
the sand can hold, since although the woman attempts to return to dry
land her diction takes to the air, Berkeleyís poem enacts a tension
between foundational and anti-foundational modes of writing, the
temptation of facts and the dissolution of them.
ëFacts About Waterí contemplates the potential for flood or the
immensity of water and air both of which are usually imagined as
infinite elements bearing the mark of limitlessness. Berkeleyís other
poems move between desert and sea; these are landscapes that pro-
voke philosophies of excess, the sublime and disappearing horizons.
The poem describes a relationship between male and female figures,
whereby the man attempts to gain control by mastering and inscribing
the oceanic. The woman mimics his inscription or writing in the sand;
but towards the end of the poem her words become less grounded,
accurate and substantial.
Echoing Levinasian concerns with the relationship between
being and alterity, being and language, and being and knowledge,
ëFacts About Waterí bears an uncanny resemblance to issues raised by
Irigaray in Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche (1991). In making
this connection it is not claimed that Irigaray has influenced Berkeley;
neither is there a claim that Levinas has influenced Berkeley since she
has not mentioned reading his work. Instead, the way in which their
writing informs readings of Berkeleyís representation of identity,
autonomy and knowledge in relation to the politics of the nation-state
is of prime interest. In Marine Lover Irigaray sets up a dichotomy
whereby there are two modes of thinking: that which relies on
grace
(Grace)
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