No Telling, Beginning with Gravity’s Rainbow

Abstract

...no beginning may be necessary. But cause would be necessary for every beginning of consequence. By definition, writes Aristotle, ‘a beginning is that which is not of necessity after another, but after which something different is brought forth’. Alone, ‘bringing forth’ something ‘different’ translates to the thought that each ‘beginning’ should work as a productive, poetic or ‘efficient’ cause. And even before this sequence will be spelled out in the Poetics, the ‘praxis’ or ‘action’ (pqᾶni1) that makes up the ‘myth’ (lῦho1) of dramatic plot will be said to require a ‘syntax’ (rύrsari1) of ‘pragmatic matters’(pqacl asx ) (1450a 4; 1450b 15) – whose ultimate end is their first and final cause. In poetry as in the praxes of life, that is, ‘the telos is the greatest [component] of all’ (sὸ dὲ sέko1 lέcirso ἁpά sx ) (1450a 24).