Re: Seymour Ascending

Nice work...it's almost poetic, what you've done, and would be without even
quoting the poetry. If the people went away "without looking back," though,
wouldn't that have allowed Seymour to enter into life, since it was Orpheus'
turning toward Eurydice prematurely that caused Eurydice to be dragged back
down into Hades. You need to account for this reversal.

But the end of what you wrote sounds really good...tell me more.

Jim

Cecilia Baader wrote:

> 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 21:11:27 2002