I set up this blog to make it possible to discuss books after the NYT forums closed, but another forums poster has set up a site called Exiles of the New York Times which is wonderful and extremely easy to post on. Of course, if anyone wants to post here, I'm up for that, too.
I've gotten hooked on Nabokov as a result of this month's discussion over at the NYT. I'm currently reading "The Defense," "The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov" and "Strong Opinions." I hope to read as much of Nabokov's stuff as I can get my hands on. I love Nabokov's awareness and skill at observing every aspect of his surroundings, his sense of humor and the puzzling games he plays with reality.
Also reading "Lover of Unreason," by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev; a biography of Assia Wevill. Hopefully next month's NYT selection. Very interesting perspective on life in Israel for the European emigres. Really like this image: "...the social ethos of the pioneers was one of ascetism and austerity, khaki shorts and sandals, and of denouncing the bourgeoisie with their tailored suits and bow ties." Tough times for little Assia, even moreso for her Gentile mother.
Started Joseph Campbell's "Masks of God" and alongside it, "The History of the Ancient World" by Susan Wise Bauer. Don't know if you read this blog, Johnr, but couple of things you might find interesting. First, Bauer describes the Sumerian King's List which tells of the Sumerian kingship as having "descended from heaven " and records the first king Alulim as reigning for 28,000 years. His heir (not his son) reined for 36,000. Also tells of the appearance of Sargon, who according to his own telling, appeared from across the water....ala the Danish King Sheaf (and his son Shield Sheafson) as related in Beowulf.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
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Didn't know this at the time of posting, but if you click on the sidebar title for this post, you will be able to read and post on my blog. If you click on the headline of this post (at the top) it will take you to the Exiles forum.
http://theabysmal.wordpress.com/tag/theabysmal-mythology/
just discovered this link while looking for something else. If search results are not there search "campbell mystery number goddess"
This from my old friend and ex forumite, Gunnar (finally driven away with his unorthodox notions):
According to Einar Pálsson (d. 1996), a good friend and arguably the foremost contemporary student of related issues in the second half of the 20th century, these numbers are central to the world-view of the ancients and, as such, manifest multiple aspects of Microcosmic Man. Here are selected extracts from Einar's English-language book The Sacred Triangle of Pagan Iceland:
What exactly is meant by "cubus perfectus" is not explained [in a key 13th century Icelandic manuscript]; the original illustration has been lost in later manuscripts. My conclusion is that the perfect cube was the cube of 6, the dimensions of which are 6x6x6=216. The sage Iamblichus states that the hexad was "the first perfect number..."; the body which has six sides based on the unit 6M, was thus the perfect cube.
Even the reincarnation theory of the Pythagoreans seems to fit - the Pythagoreans believed in reincarnation every 216 years. We have a clear record of reincarnation at the end of the Eddic poem Völsungarkviða in forna. The mythical Sigrún dies young from grief. She is reborn, and then her name becomes Kára. Her hero's name is Helgi. This is interesting in the circumstances because we are here dealing with the same names as in Njáls Saga. There Kári [male - time personified] is married to Helga [daughter of Njáll - Pythagorean Monad personified], i.e. the names are the same, only reversed: you seem to change sex at every reincarnation. The most important part, however, is that Kári is here the embodiment of Time who runs the precise measure 216 M from sunset in midwinter to sunrise in midsummer. The number, in other words, is the same as the number of reincarnation with the Pythagoreans.
Finally, there is the correspondence with the ideology of the Priest-Chieftainship named Goðaveldi. According to [Einar's 11-volume opus 'Roots of Icelandic Culture'] the nature of Man as Microcosm is the number 6, the nature of Society as the middle ground (Miðgarðr), mirroring Man, is the Mesocosm 6x6=36 (the number of the goðar who together formed one state), and the nature of the universe, the Macrocosm which mirrors Man and Society is 6x6x6=216 M (the third power of a number stood for volume in the created physical world).
A great many things point to the unique position of the number 216 in early pagan Iceland.
Triangle 3:4:5, the everlasting memorial connected with the name of Pythagoras, is "one version" of the unique number 216. [...] If you cube this famous triangle you get 3x3x3=27, 4x4x4=64 and 5x5x5=125. Together the 27+64+125 equal 216.
As for the number 432,000, Einar reports that it was key to the "measurement of space" in pagan Iceland, with the ancient Althing or Parliament located at the center of a line measuring 432,000 feet whereby two "wheels" (circular layouts of settlements and landmarks in the southern part of Iceland) were connected to one another. This accords with Einar Pálsson's findings - here, in my translation, is part thereof as reported on pp. 251-255 of his book (1995) Kristnitakan og Kirkja Péturs í Skálaholti ('Advent of Christianity and the Church of Peter in Skálaholt')
In turn, the diameter of each "wheel" was 216,000 feet.
In this scheme of things, Triangle 3:4:5 had multiple symbolic meanings - it was "foundation of the universe"; it concerned "sacrifice and justice", the process of "birth", "change", and Time.
Time has a point of departure. That point is the Primeval Hill. From the interconnection between the physical universe and the universe of man, we can deduce that the time of man is the same as the time of the Universe.
At the moment of creation Time starts running. Thus Time as the numbers 216M and 432M is part of man's real world.... (ISBN 9979-60-046-2, Mímir, Reykjavík, 1993, pp. 29-33, p. 41, p. 47, p. 49, and p.
My reflections on various aspects thereof over a long life have led me to conclude that both Greeks and Hebrews construed the number 666 in three distinct ways. While this is an educated guess, it is one that appears to accord with that of other researchers - presumably on like premises. In Greek the 6th letter of the alphabet is zeta and vav in Hebrew. If my construction is correct, the Greek and Hebrew letter forms of zzz and vvv would have denoted 18 (3x6), 216 (6x6x6), and 666 (three 6's as the number 666)....
The number 666 is encountered with striking frequency by architects in their study of ancient churches.... And in the catholic publication Cielo, which [a Roman Catholic priest in Iceland] was kind enough to forward to me from the Vatican, "Christ. Jesus saviour" is said to reside in the numbers 666, which are said to represent the number 18 (that is, 6.6.6).
Which is basically what I had concluded...
Of course, it is not a given that a number which can denote 18, 216 and 666 is correctly defined as the last of the three....
"Christ. Jesus saviour" was symbolized by 666 (as in 6.6.6), which modern scholars construe to mean 18. This would accord with use of the number 18 in Osiris myth...
Did Christ then embody EVIL in the world, some may ask in astonishment. No, Christ was perfection in the world, perfect man and what the ancients viewed as perfect "Cube". My hypothesis, therefore, is that the Good had its opposite in Evil as symbolized by numbers. This construction fits perfectly in the context of Njáls Saga, where Man perfected is shown as perfect Jesus. My interpretation of the number of the Beast in the Book of Revelations is therefore that the Beast was represented through numbers as Jesus. Hence, the Evil is Anti-Christ, that is the perfect opposite. In other words, Anti-Christ is represented as Christ himself. This interpretation accords with the role of Mörðr, the rumor-monger in Njáls Saga, and Satan, the rumor-monger in Christianity.
I think it was Campbell I read a few years back who explained that the Sumerians developed two numbering systems. The first was a decimal system and was used for keeping track of property and money mostly for business transactions and taxes. The second was sexigesmal and was used for things involving the more ritualistic aspects of life. The sexigesmal was used to measure space and time. A year was three hundred sixty days, plus five...the five were holy days and had something to do with the flow of sacred energy between the world of the creator and the created. A circle had three hundred-sixty degrees. The Sumerian kings list is full of multiples of six.
One number I come upon that doesn't reconcile with sixes is the 22,985 years, 3 months, 3 days Bauer calculates between the flood and the kingship of Enmebaragesi. Bauer interprets this as signifying the end of mythological kingship and the beginning of the historical.
The kings list cites Enmebaragesi as ruling for a mythical 900 years, but there is archeologists have found relics referring to him in Nippor, and he is mentioned in the Gilgamesh Epic.
I've checked out 'Exiles of the NYT' but that site seems to be more of a chat type of site. I saw little to no real discussion of books over there, at least not of the quality that I've noticed at the NYT Lolita discussion thread.
I've finished Lolita and Pale Fire. I am reading Speak, Memory now. I will read Pnin next.
I've recently purchased a couple Joseph Campbell's. I also recently (today) purchased the Grigsby book on Beowulf and the Graves book (The White Goddess).
Don't know if that qualifies me for membership, but I hope so.
I must say that I have enjoyed the posts the two of you have put up (at the Lolita thread and for several months, even years, past).
Reader5332
I was taken with the language Nabokov uses in "Speak, Memory." He says over and again that he doesn't like (or understand?) music, but his language has a very lyrical quality. Very beautiful. I won't comment on the book in case I spoil your reading.
On "Pale Fire," what do you make of Kinbote/Shade? One character? Two? I haven't quite made up my mind yet, but I have a feeling the answer is to be found in the very first line of the poem:
"I was the shadow of a waxwing slain/by the false azure in the windowpane"...(hope I got the quote right, I'm painting three rooms of my house and can't quite reach the book at this moment.)
There is also the problem of the assassin Grey and the Grey/Gradus/Shade connection. Does Grey exist? How to link Shade-Shadow-Ghost to Gradus-Grey-Shadow?
Johnr has mentioned "The White Goddess" to me a few times. I don't have it, but I'm thinking I'll put it next on my list. Which Campbell's do you have?
I have Primitive Mythology and Creative Mythology. I think I have Masks of God lying around somewhere too.
And I recently picked up a copy of Oedipus Tyrannus, complete with essays (hopefully scholarly).
I think what I like best about Oedipus is the timing in the play, and how carefully Sophocles builds a sense of foreboding as Oedipus searches for the truth about his father's murder.
I have the opera on DVD of this, filmed for Japanese television in the nineties. Until I saw this, I never understood what all the fuss was about Jessie Norman.
'Oedipus Rex' was -- for me -- exactly what (I think) Johnr60 speaks to in the 'Lolita' thread.
It lived and breathed, filled and fueled me. It seemed to bring purpose and meaning where (at age 16 or 17) I hadn't exactly thought of those things before.
I re-read it, but the experience was nothing like the first one. I've re-read the play five or six times now, and although I learn a bit about things here and there, it never pours over me like it did that first time, when it seemed almost like I was remembering it and not just reading it.
In that sense, JohnR60, you are right on the money.
Have either of you started "History of the Ancient World"? Do you recommend it?
Of all the books mentioned recently (here and at the NYT Lolita thread) that is the only one I do not have. I don't think I'll get to it until mid to late May.
I am going on a five day trip to D.C. There will be a good bit of flight time. I expect I will finish 'Speak Memory' and 'Pnin' over the course of this trip (maybe).
I am anxious to start Campbell on my return here. Which should we start with?
I think Johnr and McGrail will also discuss Campbell, so maybe we could start that. But I'm up for any of those books.
I like History of the Ancient World quite a bit. I may not be a good judge there, though, because I'm not very knowledgeable about Ancient history and wanted something to get a basic picture of how it all fit together. Bauer starts at the rise of Sumer, then goes on to Egypt, India and China. She writes in very short chapters and discusses events mainly as related to rulers, wars and natural disasters...at least so far as I've read. There are many maps and timelines, but I would say it's more informative than scholarly. I have come across one assertion that I find a little weird relating to the book of Joshua and the establishment of Israel. My advice would be to give it a good looking-over before buying.
I now hold in my hand -- thanks to Amazon expedited shipping -- Beowulf & Grendel by John Grigsby.
The cover, in shades of blue and grey, argent and violet, depicts sunrays that run through the gaps in a forest down into a blackness that may as well be the hall of grendel's mother, and beneath that blackness -- "a portal relief showing Siegfried slaying the dragon Fafnir with the Sword of Nothung ..."
'Speak, Mnemosyne' now has a competitor for my afternoon train-ride reading.
Reader5232...I don't know whether to wish you have long commutes or very short ones. But I do wish you a pleasant (or at least successful) trip to D.C.
On the Campbell, I have Primitive Mythology (vol I) and Creative Mythology (vol IV) I'd be up for either.
McGrail, Johnr...do you still want to read Campbell?
The commutes are just right in terms of length: 50 minutes. Enough time to focus but not enough to get tired.
The plane trip will be much longer, but should be fruitful because I will mix up the activities.
My wife will force me to look out the window every now and then at some beutiful wonder I would otherwise have blythely missed.
She will have some pocket electronic game or other that she will casually leave lying about with a conspciuously high score on the screen, not as a challenge mind you, oh no, not that.
She will, after just about one hour, ask me the perfect question about what I am reading and thereby lead me into a conversation that will inevitably tell me more about what I am reading than any reading of it possibly could.
She will harangue me with food she has secreted away and which she knows will be far more tempting than any airline fare.
So, there will be breaks, plenty of them. The most difficult part really is in picking out which books to bring.
McGrail, Johnr...do you still want to read Campbell?
I would be happy to go forward with Campbell or the book by John Grigsby.
I do not know the other book mentioned (White Goddess), though I will give it a try if that is the consensus of the group.
I dont care about Grigsby. I'll do the others anytime. Just picked up Eco's On Literature for two weeks.
johnr
JRClark, Reader5232, McGrail
I would definitely like to read Campbell's "Creative Mythology (Book IV of the Masks of God). I also have "Primitive Mythology" if you would prefer. When can we start?
JRClark, Is that Eco any good? I think Reader5232 mentioned it also.
It's a selection of short (so far) essays, articles and speeches on the general subject. Eco's always good. Because of the general audience these seem to be more accessible, less technical.
johnr60,
I have read the first two chapters of The White Goddess.
It has been many, many years since I found a subject matter as compelling as this one. The only examples that come to mind are all books I read when I first discovered literature.
Thank you very much for this recommendation. As always, and I have been following your recommendations now for several years, this one is impeccable.
I have read only a very small portion of the Eco book (as much as the Amazon search feature will allow ;)
I will probably pick it up this weekend though and welcome any discussion on this book too.
lhoffman12 -- I find that the more I discuss these books, the more I gravitate toward your penchant for reading several books at once. I can't remember a time where I have been so engrossed in so many books simultaneously.
Sometimes you get some lovely moments of synchronicity when reading multiple books.
In the first chapter of "Creative Mythology" there is an illustration of a Christian painting found on the ceiling of a Roman Catacomb. The painting is a blend of Christian and Pagan symbolism. This could almost be used as an illustration of what the poet in "Beowulf" is doing as he tells a story from Pagan mythology and infuses it with the symbolism of the Christian.
Christ as Orpheus with the animals. The consort of the goddess taking her role, as Medusa with the beasts, in a patriarchal society, only to be replaced by Christ, reversed again at Chartres.
You mention Medusa at practically the same time I'm pondering the use of Edusa as a name in Lolita.
There's that synchro-serendip-icity again.
I started looking at "The White Goddess," too.
Graves writes: "The test of a poet's vision, one might say, is the accuaracy of his portrayal of the White Goddess and the island over which she rules. The reason why the hairs stand on end, the skin crawls and a shiver runs down the spine when one writes or reads a true poem is that a true poem is necessarily an invocation of the White Goddess, or Muse, the Mother of All Living, the ancient power of fright and lust---the female spider or the queen-bee whose embrace is death."
Think this is always so?
I'm having trouble finding recent posts. Can we stay in one place?
Search spiral in that Rolleston link. Unfortuneately the e-book doesnt have the pictures.
Grigsby's ideas certainly are not original. The nicest place to look for the end of kingly sacrifice is in Mary Renault-The King Must Die. Orpheus --Bran is discussed at length in twg
and the most ingenious answer to the talking heads is in Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness.
Graves wasnt being metaphorical when he identified the goddess with poetry--I guess you get a little squirrely in those love triangles.
May I suggest that you not plod through either of these books.
Let these guys make their case and sort it out later. The scholarly quality of Campbell--detailed footnotes and outline especially lends itself to that.
Johnr...I do tend to plod when faced with a lot of new material.
I was reminded when reading Chapter 2 of Campbell of a couple of scenes from the movie, "Tristan and Isolde." Very first scene of the movie...the death of a hare. Later, a Briton rebel is hanged along side a sow. But the most interesting scene is when Tristan is believed to be dead and is sent out to sea in a burial ship. He eventually is "resurrected" and returns back to his home by way of the sea.
As the Britons still await Arthur's return from the land of fairy, the goddess, below the waves, the waters of Genesis.
Watch how Melville keeps the symbol, reverses it, and makes it all one:
> cxxxii THE SYMPHONY
> It was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were hardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was transparently pure and soft, with a woman's look, and the robust and man-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson's chest in his sleep. Hither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small, unspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air; but to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed mighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong, troubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea. But though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and shadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were, that distinguished them.
(how do I dsitinguish quoted text? > doesnt work)
Johnr...
http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=42064&query=HTML%20for%20comments&topic=&type=
Maybe italics would work?
Melville is a good example of the point Campbell makes in Chapter 3, about the difficulty of reconciling one's own truth and depth to the depth and truth of others. MOBY DICK was seen as having Biblical symbolism and Melville's knowledge of mythologies has often been overlooked.
Melville's, "The Haglets" is a more overt demonstration of his knowledge of mythology and the idea of the triple goddess.
The Haglets
Herman Melville
By chapel bare, with walls sea-beat
The lichened urns in wilds are lost
About a carved memorial stone
That shows, decayed and coral-mossed,
A form recumbent, swords at feet,
Trophies at head, and kelp for a
winding-sheet.
I invoke thy ghost, neglected fane,
Washed by the waters’ long lament;
I adjure the recumbent effigy
To tell the cenotaph’s intent—
Reveal why fagotted swords are at feet,
Why trophies appear and weeds are the
winding-sheet.
By open ports the Admiral sits,
And shares repose with guns that tell
Of power that smote the arm’d Plate Fleet
Whose sinking flag-ship’s colors fell;
But over the Admiral floats in light
His squadron’s flag, the red-cross Flag
of the White.
The eddying waters whirl astern,
The prow, a seedsman, sows the spray;
With bellying sails and buckling spars
The black hull leaves a Milky Way;
Her timbers thrill, her batteries roll,
She revelling speeds exulting with pennon
at pole,
But ah, for standards captive trailed
For all their scutcheoned castles’ pride—
Castilian towers that dominate Spain,
Naples, and either Ind beside;
Those haughty towers, armorial ones,
Rue the salute from the Admiral’s dens
of guns.
Ensigns and arms in trophy brave,
Braver for many a rent and scar,
The captor’s naval hall bedeck,
Spoil that insures an earldom’s star—
Toledoes great, grand draperies, too,
Spain’s steel and silk, and splendors from
Peru.
But crippled part in splintering fight,
The vanquished flying the victor’s flags,
With prize-crews, under convoy-guns,
Heavy the fleet from Opher drags—
The Admiral crowding sail ahead,
Foremost with news who foremost in conflict
sped.
But out from cloistral gallery dim,
In early night his glance is thrown;
He marks the vague reserve of heaven,
He feels the touch of ocean lone;
Then turns, in frame part undermined,
Nor notes the shadowing wings that fan
behind.
There, peaked and gray, three haglets fly,
And follow, follow fast in wake
Where slides the cabin-lustre shy,
And sharks from man a glamour take,
Seething along the line of light
In lane that endless rules the war-ship’s flight.
The sea-fowl here, whose hearts none know,
They followed late the flag-ship quelled,
(As now the victor one) and long
Above her gurgling grave, shrill held
With screams their wheeling rites—then sped
Direct in silence where the victor led.
Now winds less fleet, but fairer, blow,
A ripple laps the coppered side,
While phosphor sparks make ocean gleam,
Like camps lit up in triumph wide;
With lights and tinkling cymbals meet
Acclaiming seas the advancing conqueror
greet.
But who a flattering tide may trust,
Or favoring breeze, or aught in end?—
Careening under startling blasts
The sheeted towers of sails impend;
While, gathering bale, behind is bred
A livid storm-bow, like a rainbow dead.
At trumpet-call the topmen spring;
And, urged by after-call in stress,
Yet other tribes of tars ascend
The rigging’s howling wilderness;
But ere yard-ends alert they win,
Hell rules in heaven with hurricane-fire
and din.
The spars, athwart at spiry height,
Like quaking Lima’s crosses rock;
Like bees the clustering sailors cling
Against the shrouds, or take the shock
Flat on the swept yard-arms aslant,
Dipped like the wheeling condor’s pinions
gaunt.
A LULL! and tongues of languid flame
Lick every boom, and lambent show
Electric ‘gainst each face aloft;
The herds of clouds with bellowings go:
The black ship rears—beset—harassed,
Then plunges far with luminous antlers vast.
In trim betimes they turn from land,
Some shivered sails and spars they stow;
One watch, dismissed, they troll the can,
While loud the billow thumps the bow—
Vies with the fist that smites the board,
Obstreperous at each reveller’s jovial word.
Of royal oak by storms confirmed,
The tested hull her lineage shows:
Vainly the plungings whelm her prow—
She rallies, rears, she sturdier grows:
Each shot-hole plugged, each storm-sail home,
With batteries housed she rams the watery
dome.
DIM seen adrift through driving scud,
The wan moon shows in plight forlorn;
Then, pinched in visage, fades and fades
Like to the faces drowned at morn,
When deeps engulfed the flag-ship’s crew,
And, shrilling round, the inscrutable haglets
flew.
And still they fly, nor now they cry,
But constant fan a second wake,
Unflagging pinions ply and ply,
Abreast their course intent they take;
Their silence marks a stable mood,
They patient keep their eager neighborhood.
Plumed with a smoke, a confluent sea,
Heaved in a combing pyramid full,
Spent at its climax, in collapse
Down headlong thundering stuns the hull:
The trophy drops; but, reared again,
Shows Mars’ high-altar and contemns the
main.
REBUILT it stands, the brag of arms,
Transferred in site—no thought of where
The sensitive needle keeps its place,
And starts, disturbed, a quiverer there;
The helmsman rubs the clouded glass—
Peers in, but lets the trembling portent pass.
Let pass as well his shipmates do
(Whose dream of power no tremors jar)
Fears for the fleet convoyed astern:
“Our flag they fly, they share our star;
Spain’s galleons great in hull are stout:
Manned by our men—like us they’ll ride it
out.”
Tonight’s the night that ends the week—
Ends day and week and month and year:
A fourfold imminent flickering time,
For now the midnight draws anear:
Eight bells! and passing-bells they be—
The Old year fades, the Old Year dies at sea.
He launched them well. But shall the New
Redeem the pledge the Old Year made,
Or prove a self-asserting heir?
But healthy hearts few qualms invade:
By shot-chests grouped in bays ‘tween guns
The gossips chat, the grizzled, sea-beat ones.
And boyish dreams some graybeards blab:
“To sea, my lads, we go no more
Who share the Acapulco prize;
We’ll all night in, and bang the door;
Our ingots red shall yield us bliss:
Lads, golden years begin to-night with this!”
Released from deck, yet waiting call,
Glazed caps and coats baptized in storm,
A watch of Laced Sleeves round the board
Draw near in heart to keep them warm:
“Sweethearts and wives!” clink, clink, they
meet,
And, quaffing, dip in wine their beards of
sleet.
“Ay, let the star-light stay withdrawn,
So here her hearth-light memory fling,
So in this wine-light cheer be born,
And honor’s fellowship weld our ring—
Honor! our Admiral’s aim foretold:
A tomb or a trophy, and lo, ‘t is a trophy and
gold!”
But he, a unit, sole in rank,
Apart needs keep his lonely state,
The sentry at his guarded door
Mute as by vault the sculptured Fate;
Belted he sits in drowsy light,
And, hatted, nods—the Admiral of the White.
He dozes, aged with watches passed—
Years, years of pacing to and fro;
He dozes, nor attends the stir
In bullioned standards rustling low,
Nor minds the blades whose secret thrill
Perverts overhead the magnet’s Polar will:—
LESS heeds the shadowing three that play
And follow, follow fast in wake,
Untiring wing and lidless eye—
Abreast their course intent they take;
Or sigh or sing, they hold for good
The unvarying flight and fixed inveterate
mood.
In dream at last his dozings merge,
In dream he reaps his victor’s fruit;
The Flags-o’-the-Blue, the Flags-o’-the-Red,
Dipped flags of his country’s fleets salute
His Flag-o’-the-White in harbor proud—
But why should it blench? Why turn to a
painted shroud?
The hungry seas they hound the hull,
The sharks they dog the haglets’ flight;
With one consent the winds, the waves
In hunt with fins and wings unite,
While drear the harps in cordage sound
Remindful wails for old Armadas drowned.
Ha—yonder! are they Northern Lights?
Or signals flashed to warn or ward?
Yea, signals lanced in breakers high;
But doom on warning follows hard:
While yet they veer in hope to shun,
They strike! and thumps of hull and heart are
one.
But beating hearts a drum-beat calls
And prompt the men to quarters go;
Discipline, curbing nature, rules—
Heroic makes who duty know:
They execute the trump’s command,
Or in peremptory places wait and stand.
Yet cast about in blind amaze—
As through their watery shroud they peer:
“We tacked from land: then how betrayed?
Have currents swerved us—snared us here?”
None heed the blades that clash in place
Under lamps dashed down that lit the
magnet’s case.
Ah, what may live, who mighty swim,
Or boat-crew reach that shore forbid,
Or cable span? Must victors drown—
Perish, even as the vanquished did?
Man keeps from man the stifled moan;
They shouldering stand, yet each in heart
how lone.
Some heaven invoke; but rings of reefs
Prayer and despair alike deride
In dance of breakers forked or peaked,
Pale maniacs of the maddened tide;
While, strenuous yet some end to earn,
The haglets spin, though now no more astern.
Like shuttles hurrying in the looms
Aloft through rigging frayed they ply—
Cross and recross—weave and inweave,
Then lock the web with clinching cry
Over the seas on seas that clasp
The weltering wreck where gurgling ends the
gasp.
Ah, for the Plate-Fleet trophy now,
The victor’s voucher, flags and arms;
Never they’ll hang in Abbey old
And take Time’s dust with holier palms;
Nor less content, in liquid night,
Their captor sleeps—the Admiral of the
White.
Imbedded deep with shells
And drifted treasure deep,
Forever he sinks deeper in
Unfathomable sleep—
His cannon round him thrown,
His sailors at his feet,
The wizard sea enchanting them
Where never haglets beat.
On nights when meteors play
And light the breakers dance,
The Oreads from the caves
With silvery elves advance;
And up from ocean stream,
And down from heaven far,
The rays that blend in dream
The abysm and the star.
Graves writes about a "bronze-weaponed, broad-headed, beaker-making, avenue-building people from Spain who lived in Britain from 2000-1500 BC." (emphasis added)
Grigsby wrote about beakers too, but I do not have his text with me today.
Who were the people that Graves is talking about here?
A possible solution to the quotation problem: the html 'a' makes the text blue like this
Perhaps we can agree to make quotes blue.
A Pale Fire question: Is it a stretch to suggest that a waxwing is Nabokov's reference to the lapwing.
Graves writes: "The lapwing's poetic meaning is 'Disquise the Secret' and it is her extraordinary discretion which gives her the claim to sanctity.
I find the possibilities of interpretation -- given this assumption -- to be intriguing both in terms of knowing a bit more about the extent of Nabokov's knowledge of myth and ancient poetry and in terms of the symbolic/allusive meanings that might be derived from the text of the poem and novel.
The Wevill book makes me think that until both participants in a relationship love, the relationship is essentially about power; whether it be the power to attract or the power to control. I do not know of a force, emotional or otherwise, that can truly erase the power aspect in this context. Apathy maybe, but apathy seems more to be a surrender to the power of another. Love on the other hand has a freeing -- rather than a merely ameliorative -- affect.
I continue to read Nabokov.
My copy of Lolita has a quote by Updike that says something about how Nabokov writes ecstatically.
That made me think of something along similar lines. It seems to me that to write a story one must write a poem. The body of that poem may be absent of stanzas and rhymes and syllable counts and instead full of paragraphs and chapters and characters and events, but from its heart and soul to the dendrites at the end of the nerves at the end of its sinews it must be poetry.
There might be a bit of that in Pale Fire.
(Sorry to be all over the board like this, but I agree that it seems to make sense to keep all the posts in one thread. We can pick up wherever we want and ignore what we want without having to jump around and try to keep track of what was posted where, and when. If I start to go on too long, just slap me -- verbally -- and I'll bring things back around to the discussion at hand.)
And gosh but isn't it great to never get those "unavailable" messages, and to have to sit through that interminable period that takes the NYT engine to process, translate and display messages?
There is one thing though, and pugetopolis is the one who came up with the idea, not me.
There is something to knowing that anyone in the world can read a post at the NYT; read it, comment on it, add to it, like some giant, ever growing gene pool. That feeling is absent here, though it may grow if the site grows.
I note that the feeling is far more advanced at the Exiles site. They have many more people, but so much less said. It feels like a lonely corner over there, without enough light.
This place feels like a cave by contrast. It too is a bit lonely, a bit cold, but there are torches moving through the caverns, finding things.
And there are people out there in the shadows, hiding behind the stalagmites, peeking around the corners of rocks and columns -- aren't there pugetopolis.
I hinted at this, but let me make the idea explicit. I think this site should be grown. There are a lot of sites out there that sort of, kind of talk about literature but not with the quality of focus and erudition that I seem to see among the participants here. How wonderful it would be to take this foundling project and turn it into something of the caliber of the NYT (well, hopefully better than certain parts of the NYT).
Think of the value of being able to attract new strains of knowledge, creativity, insight and experience: people like martinbeck3, bocajuniors, blackvegetable, philostrate, marvel, bdhpoet and other first class participants. That seems to be a worthy challege and a fun (lifetime?) project.
In my third readiing of the poem, I discovered that it was "wax" and not "lap".
Sometimes we see what we want to see. ;)
Maybe there is a way to go at it from the other end. What is it that makes Graves say 'lapwing' instead of 'waxwing'. Perhaps the source for 'lapwing' can be interpreted or translated to mean 'waxwing' and maybe Nabokov was aware of that alternative. A long shot, a very long shot, but still a shot.
Re: The Beaker-making Spaniards...During the neolithic age, there was an influx of people from the Mediteranian trade routes who settled in what we now know as Britain. Apparently, this was not related to wars, but instead, the immigrants began to make their lives among the Britons.
I'm guessing from reading Graves and Grigsby, that historians have traced these peoples trade paths and settlements from their beakers (pottery?) and other artifacts.
Avenue-building seems a bit misleading. The early Britons built barrows rather than roads. Well-used pathways tended to spring up around the barrows when the people would go to visit their dead. Roads came with the Romans.
Lapwings---waxwings...
A lapwing is a shorebird. It looks similar to a plover.
Waxwings are tree birds. They perch. Many have crests that make them look similar to cardinals or bluejays (different coloring though). Waxwings are called that because the tips of their wings look like they've been dipped in wax.
I've never seen a Lapwing, but I wonder if the tips of their wings look like they've been lapped in water?
In "Pale Fire," do you make anything of this?
page 5: "our shadows still walk without us" Kinbote
Line 1: "I was the shadow of a waxwing slain" Shade
Page 73-74: "Incidentally, it is curious to note that a crested bird called in Zemblan sampel (silktail), closely resembling a waxwing in shape and shade, is the model of one of the three heraldic creatures....in the armorial bearings of the Zemblan King, Charles the Beloved....." Kinbote
Kinbote tells us that he/King Charles was born in 1915. Do we know when Shade was born, or when he had his first "seizure??
Capote made a novel out of the events surrounding the murder of the Clutter family.
By contrast, Assia (and many around her) seemed to think they were making a novel that had but to wait for the appropriate person (or persons) to happen along and write it down.
[Posting this here because the NYT has once again gone down. I will put it up over at that site too in the hope that it might start a conversation that might go beyond: I don't like [fill in the blank].
It seems to me that we are capable of more over there at the NYT. More than cut and paste, more than begging people to know us, more than pretending to read when what we really do is run our eyes over words that we fit into the most tired of themes and the tritest of contemporary events.
There seems, seems, seems to be potential. Am I wrong? I print this here out of courtesy and a feigned interest in not derailing the conversation, but what I am really hoping for is that someone will look a bit, find this silly, little coffee-inspired rant and think 'Yes I am.'
Reader...Coffee-inspired rants are the best kind....There have been quite a few great discussions over at the Books Forum. I think the problem with the biography we are reading is that Wevill really didn't seem to have much substance on her own. Maybe it was the times and the prevailing attitudes toward women; maybe it was the way she was raised. She had great potential, but seemed to want to do nothing more with it than throw it into the wind.
Who would she have "been" if she hadn't met Hughes and Plath?
I agree. There have been some great discussions, but boy oh boy have there ever been some not so great ones.
Negev and Koren missed the boat. Some would not have. I have a hunch that Assia was exactly who she should have been; exactly the right person at exactly the right time to exactly the right people.
Here's a question I have. This is a real question. I'll phrase it wrong and then become peeved when I don't get the answer I expect, but here's a shot at it:
Can art be evil?
No, no. That's not it. How about this one?
Can evil create?
Not quite there yet. Hmmmmmm, can one create art not merely out of evil but with evil intent?
Like if Lucifer played the piano, or Beelzebub painted in watercolors or Uzeal carved birdhouses out of whole pine?
My question is not about the artist alone but about the forces that made it/him/her. Would Lucifer put his loss into the concerto? Would Beelzebub without intending to cry in those watercolors about his banishment and eternal relegation to 'second best'? Would Uzeal ... well, you get the picture.
Ever spend any time with the paintings of Bosch or the engravings of Brueghel?
I think I see what you're getting at...can evil create? can art be evil?
It seems to me that art and science are morally neutral. Neither would exist in utopia. If you look back through history, every big idea came about in response to evil or pain. And if you look back through history, many artists were not folks you might have enjoyed having over for dinner. But their creations came from their human experience (although some would say it sprung from their experience with the Divine)...and no human I can think of has lived an unflawed existence.
What would Bosch have painted if he hadn't lived in a society ruled by Chruch and steeped in the concepts of sin and evil? Would he have even felt driven to create?
Another question might be Can Art create evil? (The works of Wagner and Nietzsche come to mind, and their manipulation at the hands of Hitler.)
Reader...you write, "I have a hunch that Assia was exactly who she should have been; exactly the right person at exactly the right time to exactly the right people."
Campbell has a good discussion of this idea and the concept of wyrd in his fourth chapter of Creative Mythology. He spends a lot of ink on Schopenhaur and his ideas on character:
Is a complete misadjustment possible, between the character and the fate of the individual? Or is every destiny on the whole appropriate to the character that bears it? Or finally, is there some inexplicable, secret determinator, comparable to the author of a drama, that always joins the two appropriately, one to the other?
But this is exactly the point at which we are in the dark. And in the meantime we go on imagining ourselves to be, at every moment, the masters of our own deeds. It is only when we look back over the conpleted portions of our lives and review the unluckier steps together with their consequences that we marvel at how we could have done this, or have failed to do that; and it then may seem to us that an alien power must have guided our steps. AS Shakespeare says:
"Fate, show thy force; ourselves we do not owe;
What is decreed must be, and be this so!" (Campbell quoting Schopenhauer)
hoffman,
Good stuff. I will ponder it.
I spent the day today listening to a good man try to make sense of his mother's death, who herself appeared to be quite a good woman.
Somehow through all that this question came to me. It might be a better phrasing than my earlier stumbling:
Can one create great art in the absence of love?
Now, off to see what offerings there might be at the NYT.
Oh, and you
did
get the answer to my little 'question' post, right?
johnr60 got it, like he always does -- (excellent job answering the Nabokov question re metamorphosis by the way JR60)
Our plates appear to be full right now. Campbell, Graves, Nabokov, Eco, others, (though not Ovid apparently), but enough to feed us for May, June, even July.
I have a humble suggestion, a request even.
(Note: that's 'humble' not 'Humbert'.)
It's a personal one, an imposing one. I have no right to make it, and I'm not the assertive type, but I thought maybe I would mention it this one time and see if there is any interest in maybe, perhaps, by chance, possibly reading and being prepared to discuss Light in August in this -- our -- August.
Reader...Your job sounds tough. And I wonder how often you find that there is no answer to be given. You must be very tired at the end of the day...it's a wonder you have any time to read anything at all.
I didn't vote for Ovid for June because I was hoping that there would be a large group. Personally, I'd like to read it.
I would definitely be up for "Light in August." I've never read it, and I sort of find Faulkner intimidating. If you suggest it over at the forums, I'd definitely vote for it....and I think it might get lots of votes. Or I'll read it here..Whichever you prefer.
I don't necessarily think bigger is always better, but I wonder if the forums might eventually be shut down altogether for lack of participation.
I did get your egg/Easter/metamorphosis question, but I have to admit, it took a while. I was curious about what Wugglyump would come up with. I find her(?) comments interesting, but she doesn't seem interested in reading along with the group.
Campbell's Creative mythology is as much about the mythology required to create art as anything and that, in this western culture is no longer a social issue but an individual one. The problem of evil is extremely overrated in making individual choices.
A link sent to me today has comments pertinent to recent VN discussions and a new look at buckets and mirrors:
",,,some aestheticians and philosophers would say that the goal of art is to get you in the same mind-set or heart-set as the artist was in when they created the work. They're trying to create a mirror emotion experience."
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/04/david_byrne_daniel_levitin.php
Johnr...Great article. And it speaks to the reason why people prefer a certain work of art or a song or a poem over others, why we sometimes feel an emotional or intellectual connection...almost a sense of homecoming or deja vu...upon discovering a new work. You can observe this in very young children who, when exposed to a fairy story or a lullabye for the very first time, fall in love with it. They insist on rehearings almost to the point of obsession. And I think it's because something in the story or the melody strikes a resonant chord within them, perhaps helps them to interpret the world by referencing some bit of ancestral knowledge.
There is also related to music, an interesting discovery. Apparently the act of creating music and of performing music creates new pathways between the right and left half of the brain. Musicians are often able to solve problems using both halves of their brains to a greater extent than normal people. It makes sense. To write and perform music, one must use verbal, mathematical and analytical skills at once. I wonder, though, whether listening to music has any effect on neurological pathways.
One other point, concerning evil. Johnr wrote, "The problem of evil is extremely overrated in making individual choices."
I think it's not so much a conscious choice as in "hey, I've had this problem, I'll write about it and get it done with..." It seems more an instinct or something at work in the subconscious. Pugetopolis' last posts over in Books speak to this. But there is a quote from Ted Hughes in the Wevill biography that I think puts it quite nicely.
When tragedy strikes, people struggle with it and incorporate it into their lives. But being a writer, these things are chewed all the time, because you write about them and they disturb you, and they keep appearing and disappearing. They keep hanging on your neck and you deal with the emotions again and again, as if it's a broken record, struck in the same monumental groove. And instead of letting go of the past and living for the future, you find your past in front of you. A monument, sitting on your head.
The idea is that a writer cannot write apart from himself and art cannot spring forth in a vacuum. Campbell quotes Ortega y Gasset, "It is not in man's power to think and believe as he pleases." And there is a verse, (by Campbell, I think..correct me if you recognize it, but I can't find the page in the Campbell...
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the creation
And the response
Falls the Shadow.
ts eliot-- the hollow men
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html
Thank you...no wonder it stood out for me. One fine poem.
Still reading everything. Campbell, which I will have something to say about maybe in a few hours, Wevill (almost done), Nabokov (which I am more or less going to read until I've gone through everything once), Graves (which I try to save but can't).
Will read the Tempest soon too. There is an open air theater where I live. It's set in a forest of oak trees. They are doing Tempest this summer and also a Midsummer Night's Dream. I'll see both, even though I think they make mistakes with MND.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if for once a theater troupe could make Titania and Oberon and all those faeries and elves not the prancing cherubs of Elizabethan England but instead dark spirits and shadows like we might find perhaps in the dreams of the Welsh bards and druids.
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the creation
And the response
Falls the Shadow.
What is 'the response' within the context of this quote?
And what is the shadow (which I seem to want to see as 'grey' rather than black).
Is the shadow the force of uncreation?
I've only started studying this poem. I know that Eliot was trying to work out his spirituality at the time of this writing (he made a public confession of his Christianity two years later). I think perhaps Eliot is writing about man's fear of emptiness or purposelessness and his need for spirituality.
He opens with a reference to Kurtz...Heart of Darkness? Kurtz, truly a hollow man, lacking the spiritual side descended into barbarianism.
The quote Campbell references reminds me of this, from Shakespeare.
74-75. Cf Julius Caesar, II i 63 ff.: "Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream."
Canto V seems to be a picture of life, from conception to death. Is the shadow representative of evil? or of the emptiness of a soul who neglects his spiritual side? Perhaps he is thinking that the "shadow" is there, even from conception, and everything we are, write, or become will fall under the influence of this shadow.
Let's try this way. Saul Bellow's last book describes his 75 year old hero being caught observing a black pickpocket in action. The perpetrator follows him home backs him against a wall and, without speaking a word, unzips and pulls out his more than adequate genitals, allows viewing for a time, then, still silent, puts everything away and walks away.
There is no shadow there.
Do either of you compose? Whether poetry, music, prose, or scholarly articles, I imagine there is a big danger between the moment of conception and the time in which that conception is concretized in the form of art.
Thus, the time between the response and the creation might be this period of time. The seconds or minutes or years that fit in between the moment the muse inspires and the moment the artist finalizes, perfects, completes the work of art.
Another idea: the time in between creation and response might be the time that exists between the moment the artwork is completed and the time in which another (the viewer, the audience, the student) perceives the work and in that perception creates a new thing (the idea, the emotion, the growth that occurs when great art is received).
empathy and mirror neurons
There was a monkey who was just sitting aside waiting his turn, watching another monkey reach for a banana and then peel it and eat it. And a clever technician noticed the cell recordings from this monkey and that his motor cortex was going crazy—the part of his brain that would be active if he were actually reaching for something and peeling it back.
from the Seed article
This is how writing and reading works sometimes. Marlowe stands in a room before a women that harkens him back to the words of Kurtz. He lies to her, or maybe he doesn't. He tells her that Kurtz' last words were her name when his last words were actually "The Horror. The Horror." Maybe that wasn't a lie, maybe she was the horror.
There are two things going on here. At one level, when the writing is exceptionally good, we are no longer in our own skins thinking about our own bills and schedules and the temperature around us. We are Marlowe standing there in this room he doesn't want to be in, wearing clothes that perhaps he doesn't feel comfortable in. That's the atmosphere, setting, tone, level. The writing that can achieve this is good because it takes us out of a physical state, to a degree.
Marlowe doesn't exist. He's just words. But we see him, here him, feel him until maybe sometimes we are him. Our brains are firing like Marlowe's even though we aren't Marlowe and even though Marlowe isn't Marlowe either.
But, there is another level that I would love to measure. That's the level that goes a bit past atmosphere and setting and tone. What about when we come up with the idea that Marlowe came up with? I mean, lets suppose M thought up this lie. Just take that as a given. Conrad does not present the lie in an obvious manner. We have to jump to it. We can figure it out through study too, I suppose. But the jump is better. The jump is solving the riddle. It is the great leap out of that displacing vat of water back there in what? Athens, was it? Syracuse? Where was Archimedes when he made that discovery?
That second level is a product of cerebral structuring. Faulkner excels at it. Haven't you noticed it yet yourselves? Don't you see that you write like the authors you read? That you start to think, if not like them, then like their characters?
Of what order is the measure when we think not merely in a way that mirrors the sensual surroundings of a character but which replicates -- AND ANTICIPATES -- the deeper thinking that the character performs?
Monkeys who think like monkeys reaching for bananas when they ain't the ones doin' the reaching. That's reading!
It is writing too, but at a whole different level.
What do you think? Is this comic nonsense? Do you have similar experiences? Haven't you been there, perhaps when you were very young? Music does not ever do this to me. Music is too fast and too short, unless we're talking about the music trees make and the music rivers make, then, well, maybe.
I need the pace of books, or forests.
Yeah, and I think, ultimately, some aestheticians and philosophers would say that the goal of art is to get you in the same mind-set or heart-set as the artist was in when they created the work. They're trying to create a mirror emotion experience.
Maybe, but that's a first step I think.
It recognizes the pattern. The brain's looking for order and form. It's a fabulous pattern detector.
from the Seed article
Ever read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson?
Campbell and Eliot are both talking about art as the attempt to return to the One from the Many. Since the identification can not take place in fact, it must take place by imitation.
Thus the transaction is shadowed by the accident of culture; the way each of us is conditioned to present and recieve: language, medium, world view.
Campbell makes a point that we now have individual mythologies and meanings, but he also says that ideas don't spring from nothing, and that for a poem or writing to be have meaning, it has to open to the back.
I don't know how far you've got in the Campbell, Reader, but Chapter 5 was a real eye-opener for me. I never quite understood why the Church should have been against alchemy. I associated it with greed, and the process of turning something worthless into gold. But apparently it was more related to bringing for the divine from even the lowly. The alchemists saw the divine as more in need of redemption then themselves. But behind it all seems to be the idea of a joining of the physical with the soul.
I am still swimming in chapter one.
I keep thinking of Nabokov's synesthesia, and the synesthesia mentioned in the Seed article, and the poetry of William Blake and William Blake himself, and this concept of returning and simplifying through art and other acitivities.
They seem so connected to me.
Nabokov is very good at this sort of thing, especially toward the end of Speak, Memory.
johnr60, have you read Speak, Memory? Are you going to continue with the Nabokov novels?
lhoffman12, on completing Speak, Memory I will want to go into the next novel and discuss it as I go along. Do you recommend Pnin or The Gift for this?
pugetopolis, will you come out of hiding and participate here?
lhoffman12, perhaps a thread dedicated to creative writing might lure him.
Are there others among you out there?
lhoffman12, I agree re getting a good crowd over at NYT. I would gladly give up Ovid for a lively discussion of a worthy novel.
I underline as I read. Sometimes, I highlight. I do this with everything I read regardless of whether it is the toxicology addenda to an autopsy report or a work of fiction or a newspaper or even (gasp!) a hardcover book.
The problem with Campbell is that I find myself wanting to underline all of the lines.
Everything seems so important. Yet, if I put the book down, I couldn't tell you what theme or idea I might be working toward. That's one reason why Campbell has always been difficult for me.
Another reason is that I don't always buy his so-called connections. He's a darn sight better than Grigsby, but sometimes he stretches it a bit too.
Feel free to divulge. What is the eye opener in Chapter 5?
My first contact with Campbell's work came as a college sophomore. He had just written an article on the Mysteries in the Eranos Yearbooks and I proudly brought it to my Jesuit instructor for discussion. He opened the marked place, promptly closed it, and gave me a 15 minute lecture on defacing a book--I had underlined everything for two pages.
I have not since engaged in the practice and believe I am a better man for it.
I have read all of VN's work in English. In my mind discussion of his stuff only remains meaningful briefly and seldom reaches sustainable conclusions. The puzzle soon overrides the literature--as such it interests me only as a game once in a while.
A novel for consideration: Raintree County.
I never underlined until recently. But lately, I find I can remember things word for word, but can't remember exactly where I saw them. But I haven't underlined so much in Campbell, because it is sometimes hard to know what he's getting at. I'm taking Johnr's word for it, and reading through to take it all in. The first chapter was very difficult for me. As it went on, Campbell discussed ideas that I was a little bit more familiar with.
The eye-opener for me that I mentioned in Chapter 5 is that alchemy had as much a spiritual dimension as a physical one. I'd always thought the church was against the practice because it fostered greed. But apparently, some of the alchemists were trying to make chemicals re-creations of creation. They also seemed to follow the Gnostic belief that God is in everything, and they were using alchemy to free the divine substance from the physical. If successful, they would have achieved power over God...quite a bit worse from the point of view of the church than simple greed.
The other thing about chapter 5...it really made me want to read "Finnegan's Wake."
Reader, if you want to continue Nabokov, Pnin is my favorite, but maybe you would like to read "The Gift" instead since I've just started that one. Or, if you'd like to read "Raintree County" along with Johnr, and come back to Nabokov later, that's good for me. (I would definitely like to read "Light in August." I've read most of Faulkner's short stories, but none of his novels.)
Reader, I'm not clear on an idea for a Creative Writing post, but maybe you'd like to write one? You can write it here, and I can copy and paste as a post. Or, I can add my e-mail to my profile, and you could e-mail me a post and I'll put it up.
I can't do it johnr60. I tried for years. I too had a Jesuit education. I too had that talk with one of the brothers, though it came probably as a lecture.
But I can't do it. I do not have the intellect for it. My memory is practically nonexistent and my capacity to take in the reading seems impaired too if there isn't a physical component attached to it.
I seem to read best when I am in transit. The very best is when I'm walking, the second best is on a train or a bus. Planes don't work that well. But the underlining and highlighting is part of that weakness, I think.
I do draw the line in some circumstances though. I do not mark up the Encyclopaedia Britannica or certain books of poems. I do not mark up any Yeats. And with Faulkner, I find that marking it up backfires.
How about Juan Rulfo? Do you mark him up? Don't tell me you follow that sort of writing without some sort of highlighting.
And appropos of nothing, here is one of the great lines that came out of my Jesuit education:
"Not today, but soon, maybe in a week, or a couple of weeks, it is going to occur to you to ask me why we study the Calculus. I will answer the question now, but I will not tolerate it at any other time."
A long pause ensues before the brother continues. All the High School juniors in that room who were made uncomfortable by practically everything were especially uncomfortable at that moment.
Then, hands clasped together over his solar plexus, the brother said:
"We study the Calculus because it is beautiful."
I have lots of stuff to finish, but as far as the next Nabokov I will go Pnin and then The Gift and then The Defense. I am not saying what year it might be that I will be able to get to those, however.
JRC: I will check out the book you suggest. Did you finish Eco already? Any thoughts on it?
But apparently, some of the alchemists were trying to make chemicals re-creations of creation.
That reminds me of the discussion that was going on in the NYT fiction thread about Golii. There are shades of Shelley in that thought (Mary Shelley) and Philip K. Dick, and a lots of others; the idea that we are driven to create and the threat of that drive to those driven to (by?)other things.
As you pointed out earlier the brain see what it wants to see and it wants to see something familiar, Highlighting predisposes the reader of the future to his thoughts of the past.
I've only read one Rulfo and each phase of the discussion in LAL was stymied for me by problems in translation.
"Highlighting predisposes the reader of the future to his thoughts of the past." JRC
I will read Raintree County without marking it and see if I can -- for once -- stay in the present.
Ok, I've finished chapter one of Campbell's Creative Mythology.
I have questions. Have you read Thomas Mann? Do you recommend him? What can you say about him?
Second, Campbell notes that "Societies throughout history have mistrusted and suppressed these towering sirits. Even the noble city of Athens condemned Socrates to death, and Aristotle, in the end, had to flee its indignation."
Why is that? Does Campbell go on to explain it? The Nietszche quote at the end certainly does not.
"Campbell notes that "Societies throughout history have mistrusted and suppressed these towering sirits. Even the noble city of Athens condemned Socrates to death, and Aristotle, in the end, had to flee its indignation."
The quote above the final one on page 41, also from Nietzsche explains a bit better, I think. "The aim of institutions---whether scientific, artistic, political, or religious---never is to produce and foster exceptional examples; institutions are concerned, rather, for the usual, the normal, the mediocre."
In other words, institutions exist to maintin the status quo. Why this should be, I don't know. But if you've ever sat on a committee or board and you suggest change, the first words you will hear will be "But we've always done it this way." Perhaps people innately fear change. Perhaps they are too small-minded to visualize the good that change can bring. I would disagree with Nietzsche about art, though. Artists are very good at visualizing change. Stagnant art is a sign of a dead civilization.
I've only read two novels by Mann. The first, Joseph and his Brothers is wonderful. It really sort of fleshes out the Joseph saga from Genesis. I think Johnr has a link to this text.
The other novel was Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend . I was interested in this because I had read that Mann based Leverkuhn on Arnold Schoenberg. Lots of symbolism to work out, lots of anti-Nazi sentiment. In some aspects, it reminded me of Dostoevsky.
I would like to doe a dissertation on that but I'm in the woods right now. Think--marking on a curve produces the choices available in our elections.
Magic Mountain is Mann's classic (and Martin's ravorite) Campbell will have a lot to say about it, but to get a feel for Mann try some of the tales in Stories from Three Decades, especially Tonio Kruger, Death in Venice and one I can't remember the name of about a musician in a sanatorium--precursor to Magic Mountain.
Woods
Don't want to stray too far from the literary discussion, but I go into the woods quite a bit too. My closest favorite is the back country in the Sequoia National Forest. I was delighted to find that Nabokov went there as well.
I am amazed at Nabokov's ability to remember the smallest details of his surroundings...both indoors and out.
JohnR...are you grading final exams or papers? My son absolutely hates grading. I haven't talked to him all week as he seems to take his phone off the hook during exam week.
I am going to see 'The Tempest' in a few weeks. In preparation, I will read the play. Hopefully, a post or two about it will be tolerated here. Your comments would, of course, be much appreciated. (I will probably do the same with 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' in July.)
Oh, and I'll stop ranting about Campbell and try to put down something useful. I'm well into Chapter 3 now.
Do you know, sometimes rants are more enlightening than accord...rants help you to assess.
Reader, You're lucky to see "The Tempest." I've never seen it. I hope the performance is as magical as the reading.
Hoffman, you're last post at the NYT sounded so depressing. I've made an attempt or two to get a couple of luminaries to show up here (one of whom is a favorite of yours). We'll see if the efforts yield results.
In the meantime, I will go full steam ahead with Nabokov, Campbell and Graves.
I thought we might intrigue a few others over at Exiles too, but no bites yet. Perhaps another author?
I don't want to add anything to my reading list just now, but maybe we can discuss something we've already read and in that way get a some other readers started.
Newkid at Exiles seems interested, though only in Turtledove for the moment.
So, let me know if you want to discuss a book we both have already read but which has not seen discussion at the NYT.
Have you read The Third Man?
How about some poetry, maybe Roethke?
How about The Metamorphosis? I hear that's a good one!
Okay, fair warning. I am going to stick with Campbell, but the going is slow and it will be interrupted because I seem to need to read fiction on a more or less ongoing basis.
I'm up to page 104. Part of my problem with Campbell is that I don't always believe his interpretations. That means I have to check things and look at the notes. Believe it or not, that gets emotional for me.
Still, I am making progress and learning at a rate higher than I can remember going through in the past. That doesn't necessarily equate to growth, but it looks promising.
I seem to learn this stuff only by writing it. So, I'll try that for a while and I invite corrections, which I expect will be frequent.
No Campbell after today though until Monday. Saturday and Sunday will be mountains and woods. Any reading done up there will be Graves, Nabokov and maybe some other poetry.
Reader, Your approach seems sensible to me, and there was so much new here that I plan on revisiting it. I hope you'll comment on the material as it arises. I wish I'd taken notes as I went along.
I have a question regarding the Wolfram Eisenbach/Grail. I'm assuming the translation is Campbell's own? Campbell quotes a passage from Yeats "A Vision" on the entire Grail epic having no mention of Christian rites...weddings, baptisms, mass. But on page 466, we read of Sir Gawain in King Vergulaht...."So when Mass (capitalized) had been said...." Is this perhaps related to an error in translation?
I have always presumed the translation to be Campbell's as well as that of Tristan. A new Wolfram is just out but they want 25 bucks to borrow it.
Campbell makes the point that the Christian emphasis is downplayed in Wolfram and , of course, overplayed in others.
The Vision quote does seem contradictory--I suppose we could stretch it by saying GTawain dont count.
I suppose I must comment on Reader's difficulties with JC. It certainly is unfair to compare him stylistically with a accomplished poets.
When I went back to Campbell, at least 20 years later, in this dumbed down world of docudrama, I felt home again in that no-nonsense, syllogistic and scholarly treatment of issues that says these are not my ideas in most cases, many great thinkers seemed to have them, here is the context in which they spoke them and here are the conclusions I draw. Sometimes such an approach can be tedious and I admit to having skipped at one time or another individual presentations such as the conflict of St. Thomas and Averroes and Mann's ideas in Magic Mountain.
That said, I have not seen anyone capable of telling the stories bewtter than Campbell tells them and Tristan and Parsifal are alone worth the read. The outline, bibliography and notes are priceless and as I have said before, I've used them more than any book I own. When all is said and done I suppose you will be happier having read Graves and Nabokov, you will know a hell of a lot more having read Campbell.
JRC,
You are correct. My real problem with Campbell is that I do not have the vocabulary or the educational experience to assimilate him quickly. He requires study and not just reading. His style assumes a sophisticated reader and frankly that is to be preferred.
My rant at the NYT is ridiculous, borne of frustration, and ... well, enough said. On to the consuming and taxing task of learning.
reader
John, There is some merit to the idea that Gawain doesn't count.
The interesting thing about the idea of the grail and the lance in Wolfram is that the two take on the characteristics of male and female reproductive organs. This idea, along with the romantic "The One" makes Percival a very interesting read and speaks directly to the development of a natural spirituality (without taking it as far as the Gnostics.)
The idea of "The One" in this sort of literature seems interchangeble with the thunder clap/lightening bolt in later works.
I am reading this version: The Masks of God: Creative Mythology by Joseph Campbell (1968) (Penguin Compass in paperback) ISBN 0 14 01.9440 1.
By the time I reached page 83 (Chapter 3: The Word Behind Words; Section I: Symbolic Speech), I realized I would need a more rigid approach to this reading. So, I came up with this approach:
Step 1: I numbered the paragraphs. There are 23 of them, by my count, in this section. I started the numbering over again for section II (The Classical Heritage).
Step 2: I read the material.
Step 3: I made notes. I resolved to devote a single sentence to capture the points made in each of the paragraphs - one per paragraph.
Then, by paragraph 2, I broke my resolution. But, for the most part I have attempted to synopsize the paragraphs one at a time.
Step 4: I try to piece my notes back together in a coherent (hopefully correct) format. I need this re-synthesis to assimilate the material. I can not simply read it.
The following is the Step 4 result for pages 84 thru 95. Slow, I know, but I don't see another option at present.
"The best things can not be told." I have no qualms with that sentence, either for the truth of the matter or for its style. For me, the statement finds application in all things, not just reading. Discovered truths -- as opposed to truths that are told, taught, handed out on a silver platter -- are the ones that last.
That's why I can't, and won't, read the Lolita annotations until I feel I have exhausted what I can do with the text on my own. Knowledge is secondarily important to me. Discovery is of primary importance. Campbell, it appears, was of like mind.
This book is about faith, certainly, but more particularly about faith in one's own experience and not in the experiences that are handed down (or across or in any other way told.)
Campbell makes the point that socially authorized myths inculcate belief and determine the form of personal (artistic) experience. And again (despite my hysterics to the contrary), he sums the point up nicely: Nuns don't see the Buddha.
So, in the very old days, myths integrated individuals into groups. In modern times, mass indoctrination influences/determines not merely the thoughts, deeds and beliefs of the individual but the capacity for certain experiences.
How horrified he would be if he could see insidious affect of consumerism today, more pervasive, more enduring, more effective than any political mass indoctrination.
I am not sure I can agree with Campbell's intepretation of Eliot's poem because I haven't quite lived with it enough yet. I am glad to have found it here though and it makes me realize I need some kind of primer on the history and development of poetry.
I am not sure I understand Campbell's point about how the social order in ancient cultures was considered a product of cosmic law. Considered by who? By the citizens of those cultures?
Wouldn't the lawmakers know what they were doing?
Is he referring to ancient cultures that were themselves looking back to ancient laws in situations where the ones who composed those laws were long dead?
Maybe, I am not understanding what he means by social order. Any help with this one?
Campbell says it took later civilizations (Greeks, Romans) to realize the order was made by humans. Why would they realize it where earlier civilizations did not?
He identifies a problem: How does one transcent eh language, signs and symbols of one's culture to communicate one's experience in a way that has life and in terms not of a collective faith but a faith of one's own.
I am missing the link between the discussion about ancient cosmic law and the need to communicate experiences in a language of one's own.
Is Campbell talking about the problem of finding words and structures that can ring from the reader the same experience with the same impact and immediacy with which the artist original felt that experience?
If so, he's talking about more than getting past cliche and tired themes, right?
He's talking about more than searching for symbols and images that will harken the reader to the experience and not just to an intellectual romp down the path of allusion and reference, right?
He's talking about more than just the artist's search for tools not merely to communicate that experience, but to know it in the first place, isn't he?
And what is 'the experience' anyway unless it is the one that Graves speaks to in the first few chapter of TWG.
Lanaguage learned in infancy determines the manner of expression and the pattern of thinking and feeling.
The world is peculiar and private to each soul.
One must transcend the collective 'categories' to get to the 'experience'.
Then, one must communicate the experience without being dragged back into the mold.
The experience is the essential experience, the one that glimpses that joined time, god essentially.
The categories are the forms of communication that have been told and not discovered
Proper communication is important because that is how the experience is known, grown, continued.
Am I getting off base here?
The mythogenetic zone used to be a time and place in an ancient civilization where a given myth had roughly the same immediate impact upon all its adherents/practitioners/listeners.
But, in modern times the mythogenetic zone is in the individual, partly because time has eroded the depth, sense and heart of the myth but also because very large forces make such zones impossible (global commerce in particular).
We (artists) can not communicate the shock of experience effectively through mythic elements that have so eroded. As tools, they will not wake man to the consciousness of being.
Communicative signs must be employed: signs that will let the word resound behind the words.
The word is the 'essential experience.'
Campbell again turns a nice phrase when he says that the art is in making words open out in back to eternity.
He's talking about putting together word hoards. That's how I think of it. The old hoards are rusted, decayed, too used to function any more. And it is a cyclical thing isn't it, an activity that shores and fuels itself as it is practiced. The new word hoard leads to better, more frequent, more clear, experiences of the Beloved which in turn requires the sharpened, newly stored, developed, fashioned, word hoard to communicate. Requires. But does the experience also give.
Campbell concludes this section by previewing the next, which appears to be a considered analysis of several works of art that demonstrate the points he makes in this introduction.
And pages would be helpful in moving about through these posts.
"I am not sure I understand Campbell's point about how the social order in ancient cultures was considered a product of cosmic law. Considered by who? By the citizens of those cultures?"
I've thought that this is so because kingship in many ancient cultures was considered divine. Stories similar to the king in Beowulf, where Sheaf appeared on the ocean at sunrise...clearly a gift of the gods, if not a god. Sargon put forth a similar story about his origins. If the king is divine, then his pronouncements take on on a cosmic importance.
You see this idea in the first five books of the Bible. Moses was the divinely chosen leader of the Israelites, Saul was the divinely chosen king. Even today, there is debate as to whether the pronouncements of Moses were universal or meant only for the Israelites. The Israelites certainly saw them as universal.
It's possible the Greeks took a different view of things...at least at the height of its civilization. By this time, the Greeks were in awe of heroes and personal glory was much celebrated. (Although some of the heroes thought themselves divine....Alexander). This would have changed the attitude and aspect of governance.
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