A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter T

Thing in itself

Philosophy
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The thing in itself is the reality of an object as it exists independently of human perception. It is the noumenal world, as opposed to the phenomenal world of appearances.

Detailed Definition
Kant's distinction limits knowledge to phenomena. In poetry, the thing in itself represents the world beyond language and concepts. Poets often try to access this realm through intense sensory imagery, attempting to capture the essence of things. This concept gives poetry a transcendental aspiration, a reach for the unmediated truth of existence that lies beyond our categories of thought.
Example
Example in poetry:
A poem like "Ode on a Grecian Urn" strives for the thing in itself, the eternal, ideal form of beauty; The pure, unconceptualized image in an Imagist poem is an attempt to capture the thing in itself; The poet's desire for a direct, unmediated experience of the world is a pursuit of the thing in itself; The great, unapproachable "Other" in a poem by Wallace Stevens is a version of the thing in itself.
Additional Notes
Thing in itself (or "noumenon") is a term from Immanuel Kant's philosophy, referring to the reality of an object as it exists independently of human perception and cognition. It is the object as it is in itself, not as it appears to us (the "phenomenon"). Kant argued that we can never know the thing in itself, only the appearances filtered through our categories of understanding. In poetry, the thing in itself represents the world beyond language and concepts, the unmediated reality that poets often strive to reach. Poets try to access this through intense sensory imagery, attempting to capture the essence of things. This concept gives poetry a transcendental aspiration, a reach for the unmediated truth of existence.
Also Known As
Noumenon Ding an sich Reality-in-itself
Skip to main content