Re: gary lane, 'the duino elegies', death haiku

well, i was probably just hedging my bet with
'subconscious'. it might have been much more. though
buddy lumps the death poem in with that fey lamb-chop
division of truth tale about 2 boyfriends: dorothy and
bobby. and then goes on to talk of seymour's
insistence that we must unlearn the differences
between things. but to me the poem points in a
different direction from that.

and as gary lane says in his article, the fourth elegy
ends with the proximity of the child with death, which
links the poem even moreso. (lane does not mention
the death haiku in his exegesis of the story.) the
haiku poem merits a lot of attention, i think, since
it is the only fact that salinger adds to the events
of 'a perfect day'. but i readily admit i couldn't
explain in a coherent manner what the poem 'means'.

i do think salinger's love of poetry is crucial to an
understanding of his work. over and over again he
injects praise for poetry and poets: from that simple
blake lyric in 'raise high' once providing physical
medicinal help to buddy to seymour's mentioning of the
current of poetry that runs through all things.
and rilke seems to be rather a central poet for
salinger.

kim
--- Jim Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu> wrote:
> um, excuse me, Kim, but what are you doing talking
> about Salinger Here?
>
> Seriously, that's pretty interesting. I don't think
> it necessarily had to
> be a subconscious borrowing on Salinger's part,
> though, do you?
>
> Jim
>
> Kim Johnson wrote:
>
> > 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 13:52:02 2002