Re: a little more JDS

This was great...thanks, Hester. I didn't see an attachment, though.

Jim

Hester wrote:

> 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 13:38:43 2003