Waterlings Among Us: Poetry, Intractability, and the Possibilities of Democratic Politics

Abstract

When the Slovenian poet Veno Taufer endeavors in his ekphrastic book of poetry Vodenjaki (1986; Waterlings, 2000) to explore the work of Neolithic sculptors along the Danube River in Lepenski Vir, he excavates and animates for his readership the crucial figure of the Waterling. Carved artfully from stone some 9,000 years ago, these statues, termed “Waterlings” by Taufer, represent hybrid humanoid figures. This hybridity is fundamentally important to the statues because it imbues them with their aesthetic vitality. That is, their affective energy as made material objects derives from the tension between the distinct figurative forms combining to comprise each statue. More deeply, that carefully crafted hybridity also signals the makers’ understanding of the importance of art to mind. These physical renderings of hybridity inspire metaphysical reflection on it. They compel the audience to consider the limits of form(s) and the power of artifice, with each statue encouraging its viewer to reckon how she, too, is a hybrid creature in and of a hybrid world. In other words, the Waterling becomes a metonym for a phenomenology, which this article explores.