gary lane, 'the duino elegies', death haiku

i recently read an interesting essay by gary lane
about 'a perfect day for bananafish'. in it he
submits that the book of german poems seymour sent
muriel is 'the duino elegies'. this seems right to
me. (notice that salinger nowhere refers to a german
poet; in fact rilke was born in prague, then part of
the austro-hungarian empire. as for the question of
whether it could be some other 20th century poet
writing in german prior to 1948, one would be hard
pressed to nominate someone else. besides, rilke
receives mention in 'the stranger', 'the inverted
forest', and, most importantly, for this post, in
'franny'.) gary lane attempts to illuminate parts of
'bananafish' using the 'elegies' as a torchlight. i'm
not sure i was convinced that they provide the key to
the enigmas of the story. but it was welcoming to see
someone attempt to utilize the book in question which
was obviously on seymour's mind as they drove down to
florida.

i referred to 'franny' above. the thing that struck
me is the thought that salinger himself would have
re-read 'franny' before writing 'zooey'. (there had
been a hiatus of 2 years between stories, with 'raise
high' inbetween.) in 'franny' there is a direct
reference to the fourth duino elegy. in 'zooey'
salinger adds one new piece of information regarding
seymour's suicide. he says that seymour wrote a haiku
on the blotter of the hotel desk, in japanese. he
translates it as 'the little girl on the plane/who
turned her doll's head around/to look at me'. this
elegy (which gary lane also refers to), is often
called the doll elegy in rilke criticism. in the elegy
there is some dense symbolism which critics fight
over. but the interesting thing to note is that in a
crucial passage rilke writes: 'when i feel like it, to
wait before the puppet stage,--no, rather/gaze so
intensely on it that at last,/to upweigh my gaze, an
angel has to come,/and play a part there, snatching up
the husks./angel and doll! then there's at last a
play./then there unites what we continually/part by
our being there.' my creaky post merely wants to
suggest that salinger subconsiously remembered the
fourth elegy when he wrote seymour's death poem. that
the poem's setting in a plane could denote the angelic
realm, with the little girl standing in for the angel.
angel and doll are united, and allows: 'then at
last/can spring from our own turning years the
cycle/of the whole event. over and above us/there's
then the angel playing.'

i don't think the suicide can be explained by the
poem, but i do find it gives thought that salinger
added it after the fact.
  
kim

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Received on Wed Sep 25 12:05:04 2002