Seymour Ascending

Something occurred to me today.

I was thinking about Seymour on the beach down below, colorless and
tightly swathed in his robe, and it occurred to me that he's Eurydice.

Don't discount this too quickly.

What is the phrase, repeated twice, in "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"?
Two people go away *without looking back*.

What is the key to the Orpheus and Eurydice story? Orpheus looks back,
and Eurydice is forever lost to him.

Seymour's able to exist on the beach with his pasty face and graveclothes,
but as soon as he returns to the land of the concrete -- concrete hotels,
that is -- he is violently pulled back to the underworld by his own hand.

As long as we're bringing Rilke into this, consider the following lines
from "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes":

     But now she walked beside the graceful god,
     her steps constricted by the trailing graveclothes,
     uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
     She was deep within herself, like a woman heavy
     with child, and did not see the man in front
     or the path ascending steeply into life.
     Deep within herself. Being dead
     filled her beyond fulfillment.

Here is Eurydice ascending, replete. As what? A bananafish?

And more:

     She had come into a new virginity
     and was untouchable; her sex had closed
     like a young flower at nightfall, and her hands
     had grown so unused to marriage that the god's
     infinitely gentle touch of guidance
     hurt her, like an undesired kiss.

A new virginity. And so here comes that sexual imagery again, in relation
to Death.

The poem ends with Eurydice pulled back to Hades by Hermes. She is
grateful to be returning to something she has already embraced.

Do you see?

Regards,
Cecilia.

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Received on Thu Sep 26 19:42:58 2002