Subject: Re: Seymour's suicide
From: citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Date: Wed May 24 2000 - 11:40:13 GMT
Any connection between the little girl in Seymour's haiku and Sybil?
(Just for the record, in _Zooey_ Buddy gives the poem as quoted below. In _SAI_, he says the poem was written on the afternoon of S.'s suicide in _Japanese_ in the classical style (not his usual "double-haiku" style). (The afternoon would make it a "suicide note"; Buddy in SAI gives a prose translation of the poem along the lines of the version below.)
I have been enjoying the recent posts. The discussion re Murial did lead me to try and recall any references to a "post-Seymour" Murial in the texts. Could only come up with Murial not allowing Buddy to quote from any of S.'s poems for personal reasons, and that when Buddy flew down to get S.'s body, Murial meets him dressed all in Bergdorf Goodman black. Any others?
--Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: Tania Da Ros <rostania@tin.it>
To: bananafish@roughdraft.org <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
Date: Wednesday, May 24, 2000 8:04 AM
Subject: R: Seymour's suicide
>>Tania Da Ros wrote:
>> "The little girl on the plane/ Who turned her
doll's head around/ To look at me". I never got this poem, really. Could it
have something to do with the above? I have no idea.
>I've always been of the impression that the poem means that
>there was a little girl on the plane, that turned her dolls head
>around to look at him.
:-)
>Haiku- usually- only really reflects a moment of "direct insight"
>into nature or psychology (senryu.) For the most part they are
>supposed to be snapshots and not ripe with symbolism. Seymour
>was more Issa, say, than he was TS Eliot.
I agree. That’s why I didn’t say that I didn’t understand what it really meant, its symbolism, but rather that I don’t get it, that it doesn’t speak to me as much as I’d like it to. But that’s me.
>Granted, the poem is not five 7 five haiku and is merely "haiku-like"
>as I recall from Buddy, but nonetheless; it strikes me that Seymour's
>poetry was inspired and based on the same concept of egoless
>observation.
>Also, the poem is not, really, a "suicide note" but merely a haiku
>written as he got off the plane.
You’re right, I apologise.
Tania
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