RE: After Reading 200+ Posts

Paul Kennedy (kennedyp@toronto.cbc.ca)
Tue, 07 Dec 1999 09:23:39 -0500 (EST)

I'm WAY to busy to plow back through what's obviously been a VERY FERTILE
FIELD here, so I'll unashamedly offer this single utterly irrelevant sidebar:

When I was about the average age of most bananafishes (way back before the
Punic Wars!), one of my favourite 'literary theorists' was an obscure
classics professor from UC Santa Clara named Norman O. Brown.  He "wrote"
(compiled?) a book called LOVE's BODY that virtually clinched him cult
status in certain circles.  (More nerdy folks tended to prefer the more
conventional psychoanalytic--sorry Scottie--insights of LIFE AGAINST DEATH.)
But MY favourite Brown book was a much earlier tome (in fact, it's VERY
thin) called HERMES, THE THIEF.  Anybody read it?


Cheers,

Paul





>> On Sunday, December 05, 1999 5:09 PM citycabn [citycabn@gateway.net]
>wrote:
>> >From the sidelines:
>>
>Bruce!  It's so nice to hear your voice.  I hope that all is well in San
>Francisco.
>
>> 1.  Bravo to The Laughing Man and Cecilia Baader on their "Orpheus.
>> Eurydice. Hermes" exchange.
>> 
>Thanks so much.  And please feel free to join in...  you're far more
>qualified than I to offer an opinion on the matter.
>
>> 4.  Re Jens Peter Jacobsen:  Am most interested to hear how his short
>> stories turn out.  About 25 lifetimes ago I came across a 
>> copy of Jacobsen's
>> novel _Niels Lyhne_, beloved by RMR, but read it without Rilke's eyes.
>> 
>I've been working my way through _Mogens and Other Stories_.  It's really
>beyond description, so I don't know what I can report, except that his
>writing reminds me of Kafka with a touch of the romance of Blake and the
>imagination of Poe.  It's the kind of collection that I know that I will
>need to return to again and again in order to get a more coherent reading of
>each of the stories.  
>
>Layers upon layers, you understand. I found myself thinking about one of the
>stories all day at work today.  Jacobsen has a gift of seeing the mind of
>the troubled soul.  Yes, I like it.  A great deal.  And it's interesting
>that you should say "read it without Rilke's eyes." Perhaps knowing that
>Rilke loved something would color what you think about it, so maybe your
>earlier reactions to _Niels Lyhne_ are truer than my own to _Mogens_.  
>
>Would that then, make me an unreliable reader?  Predisposed to like what I
>read?  Possibly, but I think that Jacobsen stands true despite me. (I'm a
>little hesitant to pursue this topic on-list, as I'm not altogether sure
>that more than three people are interested.  Digression!)
>
>> 
>> 7.  Lastly, a belated happy 124th birthday to Rene Karl 
>> Wilhelm Johann Josef
>> Maria Rilke, born December 4, 1875 in Prague.
>And an early Birthday wish to Jerome David Salinger...
>
>Regards,
>Cecilia.
>
>