RE: bad poetry?

Luke, I think you got it.
Daniel

The search for enlightenment itself is a search for some general truth, a
general principle of happiness - for Seymour, the omnipresence of some
concept of God in all people and objects. That is a generalization, and
Seymour was no idiot. People on a similar quest for a universal principle of
happiness are not idiots, so considering this, one might conclude that Blake
was incorrect. (And if he didn't take into account the search for
enlightenment as one kind of generalization, then he was generalizing about
his own definition of it, so that makes him an "idiot" by his own standards.
If you think about it, that whole quote is a generalization!)

I know you would consider this all another "internal contradiction," Jim,
and that would be fair, if the contradictions I point out weren't
significant to understanding Seymour, and I was just trying to be a jerk
about it.

But they are very significant, because they are real in Seymour's world.
Seymour could not possibly exist in a world, where the need for
discrimination made his enlightenment impossible. Salinger almost presents
his suicide as rational, but viewed in light of "internal contradictions" to
his enlightenment philosophy, it might be considered more inevitable.

Am I way off here, or is that an understanding of Seymour some of y'all have
gotten from this discussion?

luke
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Received on Mon Jul 7 10:45:51 2003