a little more JDS

ok, i sent this awhile ago, but since i tried to send an attachment it
probably didn't go through, so if you still want the article i tried to
attach just email me...
 
-------
well, i don't know if Rilke is the main cause of Seymour's suicide.
although, definitely poetry is. take 3 quotes from Seymour's journal in
Raise High:

"A person deprived, for life, of any understanding or taste for the main
current of poetry that flows through things, all things. She might as
well be dead."

"How I love and need her undiscriminating heart."

"Much talk from him, and quite intelligent, on the virtues of living the
imperfect life, of accepting one's own and others' weaknesses. I agree
with him, but only in theory. I'll champion indiscrimination till
doomsday, on the ground that it leads to health and a kind of very real,
enviable happiness. Followed purely, it's the way of the Tao, and
undoubtedly the highest way. But for a discriminating man to achieve
this, it would mean that he would have to dispossess himself of poetry,
go beyond poetry. That is, he couldn't possibly learn or drive himself
to like bad poetry in the abstract, let alone drop poetry altogether. I
said it would be no easy thing to do."

the first quote is about Mrs. Fedder, Muriel's mom. being that Raise
High is written 7 (or is it 8?) years after Bananafish, the word "dead"
cannot just be meant flippantly or colloquially. from this quote we can
know that to Seymour, poetry is essential to all life; they are one and
the same. without it, you might as well be dead.

the second quote is about Muriel, about how he appreciates how stupid
and airheaded she is, oh, i mean how undiscriminating he is.

the third quote is about Seymour's talk with Mrs. Fedder's Jungian
analyst. variants of the word discrimination are used twice:
"indiscrimination" and "discriminating". Muriel, with her
undiscriminating heart is the epitome of what Seymour is now trying to
strive for. "in theory" he agrees that he should learn to accept his
own and everyone else's weakness; become more like Muriel. if "followed
purely" it becomes "the highest way." however, to do so, Seymour would
have to give up poetry, which before he said is essential to all life.

i'd argue that this is where the central conflict lies. a life with
poetry and a life without. we know that Seymour wrote poetry during the
last 3 years of his life, but what about during his first 3 years of
marriage with Muriel? (by the way, i've attached an absolutely fabulous
article about the significance of the number six in Bananfish: six years
of marriage, Sybil sees six bananafish, says there's six tigers in the
Sambo story when in the original there's only 8, it's old though, so
many of you have probably already read it) could Seymour have attempted
to live a life without poetry in order to become "normal" and
undiscriminating like Muriel. but of course he's ultimately unable to
do that and perhaps tries to overcompensate - that would explain his
prolific output. but then, what's the result? he asks Muriel if she
read that "book of German poems" he gave her, which is Rilke. not only
has she not read it, she doesn't even know where it is. she's lost it;
literally, but also figuratively, Muriel is dispossessed with poetry.
Seymour has chosen to live his life with this dumb bimbo and her mother
who are all "deprived of poetry for life". i don't know if it's
necessarily Rilke's standards that Seymour has failed to live up to.
isn't it Seymour's own standards?

Hester

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-bananafish@roughdraft.org
[mailto:owner-bananafish@roughdraft.org] On Behalf Of Kim Johnson
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 12:42 PM
To: bananafish@roughdraft.org
Subject: RE: a little JDS

i never thought about seymour's reference to the book
of german poems as part of the reason for his suicide;
 that the poems were 'on his mind'. but of course it
now seems natural to say so, thanks for daniel.

assuming that the poems were 'the duino elegies', and
assuming seymour is not a boddhisatva (spelling off),
then the poems could be read as an indictment of s's
failure. that in reading the poem cycle, he realizes
he is stuck, either unable to achieve angelic
consciousness, unable to take the step from sorrow to affirmation, or
unable to follow rilke's call to the transformation of life into world
inner space. this transformation really seems to be the task of the
artist, and here's a problem. if we believe buddy re s's 184 poems,
which s. wrote during the last 3 years of his life, then seymour *was*
succeeding on rilke's terms. (and the suicide doesn't necessary make
sense in regard to rilke.)

this is disjointed and sketchy. i'm becoming more
perplexed re the suicide....

kim

--- Yocum Daniel GS 21 CES/CEOE
<daniel.yocum@Peterson.af.mil> wrote:
> 'being here is glorious' was too much for Seymour.
> He is the reservoir or
> cistern of wisdom for the rest of the Glasses. Of
> course I am not
> restricting these conclusions to Bananafish. I am
> only an agent of
> provocation but Buddy's insight may need glasses.
> Seymour knows but I
> suspect he thinks he knows too much. 'glorious' is
> fenced off in a garden
> and the garden is forbidden to him. All those
> squiggles on the beaver board
> are like concertina wire on the garden wall. The
> tragedy is that hope is
> there but he wasn't where hope is. The apples
> remained ungathered because
> maybe he couldn't stoop to pick them up. He became
> the pernicious
> observer. The little doll on the plane could see
> more hope. Maybe that old
> Zen saying applies here, he was a full tea cup.
> Rilke broke the camels
> back. That German pistol was some sort of
> blackboard eraser. That little
> reset button old computers came with. The hole was
> full, or so he thought.
> He was an 18 wheeler stuck in a residential dead
> end, no room to turn and no
> stomach for reverse on the shifter. So he jumped
> the curb, or try to hit a
> tree or whatever.
>
> Daniel
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kim Johnson [mailto:haikux2@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2003 10:33 AM
> To: bananafish@roughdraft.org
> Subject: RE: a little JDS
>
>
> daniel, i don't exactly understand what is meant by
> rilke kicking out the leg of seymour's apple bin.
> that rilke , or seymour's engagement with r.'s work,
> contributed to seymour committing suicide? (that r.
> was on s.'s mind because of the question to muriel?)
>
> please amplify, and then i perhaps can dither on
> about
> rilke and/or seymour....
>
> kim
>
>
> --- Yocum Daniel GS 21 CES/CEOE <daniel.yocum@Peterson.af.mil> wrote:
> > Our posts intersect and we stand at the
> crossroads,
> > maybe we can do some
> > soul business. The mystsic Rilke (that German
> Poet
> > more precisly) kicked
> > the leg out from Seymour's apple bin and apples
> fell
> > every which way. Even
> > Seymour's 'extrodinaireness' didn't equip him with
> > picking them all back up
> > but he couldn't just stand there and watch them
> all
> > roll away either. Buddy
> > on the other hand leaves a trail of lost apples
> > everywhere he goes.
> > Hopefully none of the rest of the Glasses will
> slip
> > on the peels. Kafka on
> > the other hand reveled in scattered apples and
> > particularly bruised
> > scattered apples with worms. That last one was
> for
> > you John O.
> > Daniel
> >
> > > Only after a good dose of Rilke.
> >
> >
> > rilke, in the 'elegies', moved from despair to
> > affirmation. from a desire to emulate the
> > consciousness of the angels, to an embrace of
> > earthly
> > life. (the crowning elegies are 7 & 9.)
> >
> > and the post-elegy 'sonnets to orpheus' are even
> > more
> > overtly affirming of life and a natural death.
> > suicide was not a rilkean solution. see the
> second
> > requiem to w.v.k. (not the 'requiem to a friend').
>
> >
> > 'being here is glorious.'
> >
> > kim
> >
> >
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Received on Sat May 17 02:19:56 2003