Re: a little more JDS

i don't think seymour followed his musings on going
beyond poetry. those last 3 years of poems weren't
'overcompensating', i think. my impression is that
seymour wrote poetry his entire life; at least since 7
(evidence is in 'hapworth').

i do believe hester is insightful with her quotes
below.

i think seymour went blindly into the marriage. i'm
not sure it was only the failure of the marriage that
provoked the suicide. unless there is more
information about seymour's war experiences at the
front (and not in the states in '41/'42), it is going
to be hard to pin down the exact circumstances. if we
have only the reference in 'bananafish' to his stay in
a military hospital (we don't know why he's there, or
how long) to go on, well, it's difficult to say.

it seems to me seymour's two major interests in life
were poetry and 'god-seeking', for lack of a better
word. buddy (if we believe him) says that seymour was
one of the few indispensable american poets; that the
184 poems from the last three years secure seymour's
place in a select pantheon. (personally, i don't find
the poems (the little we get) that great.)

the question of the success of seymour's search for
god is even more fraught with problems.

i feel that without more glass stories it is pretty
tough to come to any consensus about our ringding
enlightened man, our full dichter.

kim

--- Hester <harvardditz@hotmail.com> 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
>
=== message truncated ===

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Received on Mon May 19 19:04:58 2003