In which urania starts for Mt. TBR but hits the Russian detour (2009)

Me Sainted Reading Year – what can I say? From where I’m sitting, this year still has twenty-one days left, and already I am gavotting my way through 2009. Yesterday, today, and all my tomorrows may be my dancing days, but 2009 shall be known in the future annals of Dead Notable Readers as my Russian year. In fact, at the moment I’m beginning to think I may be in for a Russian decade. I did not plan this detour. I did not intend it; no, my road to hell was paved otherwise (I thought) and still may be if I accomplish all my Russian reading. The road to Russia or Hell, whichever comes first, started off innocently enough in France (although I suppose that if I were Russian that path might not necessarily seem innocent) with a Proust reading group I was directing. Having finished In Search of Time Lost, we cast about for other ways to amuse ourselves (bookwise that is), occupy time and thereby lose it again, with the hopes of eventually recovering it or recovering from it. I wholeheartedly advocated remaining in France with Zola. But “zut” as one of my reading friends would say, the group vetoed him. I cast Virginia Woolf’s name on the waters. No takers. I suggested an entire year devoted to Finnegan’s Wake, which I thought would be an absolute hoot. The group muttered and cast dark, threatening glances my way. “Edith Wharton?” I asked, sure I had a winner here. Astoundingly the answer was no. P.G. Wodehouse? The Mahabharata? Nora Roberts?????? No, no, and no. “Well then,” I said confident no one would take me up on it, “what about reading everything Dostoevsky wrote.” Spontaneous applause broke out, bottles of vodka were opened, caviar was produced. Dostoevsky it would be.

I went home, threw back a few shots of purloined vodka, and said, “Self, one Russian novel a month. A little research, a couple of articles on the side, you can do this, keep seven acres of garden projects in some vague semblance of order, and still triumphantly ascend the peak of Mount TBR by the end of 2009. Alas, my hopes were soon dashed. A stray comment and Dostoevskites began to emerge from the bedrooms faster than Kafka’s Gregor. Now I am sitting underground. Dostoevsky has morphed into all of nineteenth-century Russian literature, in addition to notable appearances by Hoffman, Balzac, Dickens, and who knows what else. I have even purchased a Russian dictionary. Where will it all end?

So today, after reading a few calming poems from Mary Oliver’s collection Thirst, playing a vigorous, (and not so calming) game of sock with the resident Welsh terrorists, and taking a small hike to tire out the aforementioned terrorists, I read two essays from the Cambridge Companion to Russian Literature. Both addressed pre-Petrine Russian literature. From there, I scoured the internet for a free online translation of “Peter and Fevronia of Murom” (having spent a small fortune on secondary sources and being in need of relief), found it along with “Life of Our Blessed Father Theodosius, Abbot of the Crypt Monastery” by the Monk Nestor, and read the two – regular riots of hilarity both. This week I have also finished a collection of stories by Pushkin, The Double, and am halfway through Dead Souls. For today, however, I have drawn a line in the sand. I plan to toddle off to my comfy chair, hot cocoa in hand, and read something . . . not Russian this evening.

Well. With a description like that, I can't wait to follow your journey!

Unfortuneately I wasn't in your old group as I would have supported you on Zola--though I have read very little of Proust. Russia is a good place to go though--they've had tons of good writers whether you like epics, dystopian literature, existentialism, drama, short stories, war novels or poetry.

urania1, very courageous! On the subject of Russian literature, has anyone read Tatyana Tolstaya (Leo Tolstoy's granddaughter)? She was recommended to me and I just received a collection of her short stories, entitled White Walls.

#4
Note Cocoa, that urania1's courage, while undoubtedly great, was also helped by "a few shots of purloined vodka". LOL

With regards to Tatyana Tolstaya, I have a copy of her On the Golden Porch on my enormous TBR pile, and as soon as I have read all of Dostoevsky, Gogol, Pushkin and Tolstoy for my reading group, I will get to her book. So check with me in about 2013. LOL

#4 I picked up Tolstaya's Sleepwalker in a fog about a month ago but I'm probably not getting to it for a while.

#5: On The Golden Porch is an excellent short story collection - I recommend it. It makes a good contrast to the 19th century Russian classics, so my advice is to read a story or two in between the doorstep novels!

timjones, do you have a particular favourite amongst Tolstaya 's stories? I don't have time to read all of White Walls right now, but I wouldn't mind reading a couple of stories in case I want to include one in my CompLit course syllabus...

polutropos, ah yes, vodka - courage in a bottle - I think I may have had a swig or two when I joined the Dostoevsky group, before I realized that, no matter how many bottles I downed, I was in NO WAY going to have time to read all of Pushkin, Gogol, Bakhtin etc in order to keep up. Still, I'm enjoying being along for the ride during everyone else's sainted Russian Year... ;)

I had meant to be good and keep a daily log of my reading. Alas, the New Year has not even arrived yet and I've already fallen off of several resolution wagons, not to mention rolled several miles down Mt. TBR. It's a rough life. Nevertheless, despite the interference of those infernal, eternal holidays, during which children, relatives, other people's relatives, and assorted strangers show up at one's house expecting to be amused and fed, I have managed to read some. I finished Alfred and Guinevere by James Schuyler. Stories told from a child's point of view (in this case a brother and sister) can be quite entertaining when well done. In this case, the result is quite amusing. My favorite passages are as follows.
Guinevere fantasizing about her grown-up life

Her pensive green eyes perhaps point to a great sorrow she is unwilling to share with the world and a ruptured romance with an ex-king of one of the smaller European countries has been spoken of in this connection.

And Guinevere on Madame Bovary

Finished Madame Bovary by Flaubert last night. The part where she buys the poison and dies is very true to life. How horrible to live and die in a small town and never have anybody understand you.

Methinks Guinevere is guilty of a bit of bovarism here.

I also finished Madame de Staël: The First Modern Woman by Francine du Plessix Gray. I was not particularly impressed. Today I finished Three Men in a Boat, which I have been meaning to read ever since I read Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog several years back. Jerome K. Jerome is clearly a literary ancestor of P. G. Wodehouse. I quite enjoyed the book. Finally, I have finished Thirst. Robbie and I will probably start Mary Oliver's newest poetry collection, Red Bird, tomorrow.

Currently, I am continuing my work on all things Russian. I am reading Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia. It is well-written, albeit long, and is enabling me to put those 19th-century Russian writers in context.

And finally, I am dragging my feet unable to decide whether it is worth finishing or not - Miss Owen-Owen by Margaret Forster. She is the author of the book Georgy Girl if anyone remembers that blast from the past. Individual sections of the book are hysterically funny. Overall, the book is quite brutal. It deals with a socially clueless and rude headmistress (new to town) of an English girl's school, who gets caught up in the town politics of whether to go with grammar or comprehensive schools. I can see you are all jotting it down on your "must read" lists right now.

#8: Sorry for the delay in replying. I don't have On The Golden Porch with me right now, but the two stories that spring to mind are "Okkervil River" and "Peters". "Okkervil River" has the advantage that an indie rock band (whose music I've never heard) is named after the story.

timjones, thanks, I had considered reading "Okkervil River" just because I like the indie band. I have their 2007 album The Stage Names , which includes the lovely song "A Girl in Port" and (for any beach boys fans) the wonderful tribute to "Sloop John B" in "John Allyn Smith Sails" - a tribute to poet John Berryman. I shall give it a read...

urania1, it doesn't sound like you've fallen off too many wagons, actually. And yes, I do remember Georgy Girl , but sadly, only because I saw the film...

I feel like I'm spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere in particular with my reading. I'm still working on Natasha's Dance. I've read the introduction and chapter one of The Gentleman's Daughter, a social history by Amanda Vickery. I've finished the first of four memoirs that comprise The memoirs of Lady Hyegyŏng : the autobiographical writings of a Crown Princess of eighteenth-century Korea. I am not well-read in Korean literature at all and know virtually nothing about Korean history before the 20th century. The event on which the memoirs are based is riveting. Lady Hyegyŏng, whose personal name like that of many Korean women of the time is not known, was married at age nine to the crown prince of Korean. Her husband was also nine. In his twenties, his father ordered him to climb into a rice chest, had the door locked, and the whole court, his wife included had to listen to his screams for the eight days it took for him to die. This event forms the central core around which Lady Hyegyŏng's life takes shape and which forms the materials of the memoir. This is an excellent scholarly edition, with good explanatory notes and a useful introduction about Korean court protocol at the time. I've also begun to read A Gentle Creature and Other Stories by Dostoevsky.

The only book I've actually finished since the last post is The Old Child and Other Stories by Jenny Erpenbeck a German writer. The stories are haunting and depressing - offering commentaries on contemporary societal alienation.

The Korean book sounds fascinating. How are you liking Natasha's Dance? Its one I've often thought about picking up.

#13 fannyprice,

It is wonderful, wonderfully narrated, and packed with information.

Mary, I picked up Three Men in a Boat also after reading the Willis. It remains; however, it the extensive TBR pile.

avaland,

Three Men in a Boat is short and well worth reading. I laughed and howled the whole way through.

>16 urania1: good to remember when I'm in need of a laugh or a good howling!

The new year has begun splendidly - reading-wise that is. On New Year's day I started and finished The Tenants of Moonbloom - a lovely little gem of a book reprinted by NYRB. Moonbloom is a dreamer and a manager for slum housing. For a time, his dreams provide him with a respite from the gritty details of his work, but when the dreamer awakens with his dreams still intact, watch out. Moonbloom brings to mind the old Sufi saying, "He who knows and knows not that he knows is a dreamer. Wake him. He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man. Follow him." Yesterday, I started and finished The Gambler by Dostoevsky. Since this is my year, decade or whatever to read Dodo, I have been working my way through the minor works, reading in chronological order, more or less. My adrenalin was pumping the whole time I read this book: five stars for this one! I am also still working my way through Natasha's Dance, have read one more chapter of The Gentleman's Daughter: A Social History by Amanda Vickery. I've also been slowly reading Political and Social Issues in British Women's Fiction, 1928-1968 by Elizabeth Maslen. I'm not finding it as interesting as Nicola Humble's The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, which deals with the same group of novelists - the ones now appearing in Virago and Persephone reprints. But I shall persevere. In the spirit of the scholarship I finished Taking Chances by M. J. Farrell aka Molly Keane and started Elizabeth Taylor's Angel right before the new year. I don't think I shall bother to finish Angel. I have read the first third and skipped to the ending. Life is too short for the utterly boring book. Keane's book was not my favorite of her works. I read a few pages of The Good Soldier Svejk last night. It is hysterically funny and, in light of events over the last decade or so, prescient. So I think I will continue with this one although Elias Canetti's Auta-da-Fe arrived by post this morning along with a lovely Lapis Press edition of Julien Gracq's The Castle of Argol.

The Tenants of Moonbloom is sparking some long-forgotten memory circuit. Did I once read it? Did I read about it? Did I know someone reading it?

God knows.

I need to start a "Note to self" post on my own thread that I can update with items I

The Tenants of Moonbloom and The Gentlemen's Daughter have been aded to my 'to buy/mooch' list!

How are you finding Natasha's Dance? I read it a few years ago, but don't think I grapsed much of it, probably because I read it in bed so only got a few pages done every night. Perhaps I should revisit it.

>20 charbutton: charbutton: I'm really enjoying Natasha's Dance, but then I'm also immersed in a huge Russian reading project. Orlando Figes analysis of Russian culture is adding a lot to my understanding of the texts I'm reading.

A Japanese Detour

I have just finished Geisha in Rivalry by Kafu Nagai for the Reading Globally forum's January read. I am not quite sure what I think. The book raised far more questions than provided insights for me at least. The plot is slight (little of the so-called rivalry is discussed directly in the text); rather, what make the text fascinating (for a westerner at least) are the detailed descriptions of the geisha world. While this kind of exoticizing may be interesting to outsiders (whether it is politically correct is another matter), I found myself wondering what the book’s attraction for a Japanese audience might be. How exotic is/was this world to the average Japanese reader? Is it exotic at all? Moreover, the details contradicted much of the little I have read about Japan and geisha culture. Before I go any further, let me announce, “I have not read Memoirs of a Geisha nor do I intend to do so. Neither have I seen the movie.

But back to my topic. Let me begin with the translators’ introduction. Here the translators, Kurt Meissener and Ralph Friedrich, define key terms geisha, neisan, danna, and machiai as these terms were understood in the late Meiji period (c. 1918). They take great pains to explain that geisha are not prostitutes. So far, so good. This observation matches my limited knowledge. However, throughout the novel the translators use geisha and prostitute interchangeably. What gives here? Furthermore, I found myself puzzled by the seeming contradictions concerning the degree of agency a geisha exercised over her own life. On the one hand, geisha work to gain their freedom or to capture the attention of a wealthy danna (master), who will purchase the remainder of their contract with the particular house to which they belong. In this regard, they seem to lack agency, to function more or less as indentured servants. On the other hand, geisha decide whom they will and will not entertain. For example, the narrator comments at one point that a geisha can lose prestige if she entertains or publicly consorts with someone who is considered low class no matter how wealthy he may be. So in this sense, geisha seem to exercise quite a bit of control over their own destinies. Moreover, in the novel one sees them negotiating directly with teahouse and restaurant owners, who presumably steer patrons their way. Finally, while the author shows certain aspects of a highly stratified, hierarchal society with a complex etiquette, he does not really elaborate or explain the details. Does the author assume the audience is familiar with these details? If so, then the intended audience would hardly have read it for an inquisitive glimpse into a closed society. So why did the audience read the book? Moreover, exactly who was the intended audience? Finally, the author shows geisha and non-geisha women of good families mingling freely. At one point we are told that one of wives was often mistaken in public for a geisha (presumably because of her elaborate coiffure and perhaps colorful as opposed to conservative kimono). My other reading about Japan suggests that these two worlds are altogether separate, that no married woman would wish to be taken for a geisha although geisha enjoy (or did until recently) a certain amount of prestige. Moreover, the translators intimate this themselves. So what gives? What is lost in translation here? I do not know.

This comment is also posted on the Reading Globally Forum

After spending an inordinate length of time in highbrow country, I jumped off the wagon two days ago and went slumming so to speak . . . and I read a mystery – a genre toward which I do not generally incline. However, my good friend aluvalibri, one of LT’s shining lights, convinced me to give Sarah Caudwell a whirl. Since this group consists of quite a few avid followers of this genre, I am sure Sarah Caudwell's name is a familiar one. However, for rest of you, here’s a brief history of Sarah Caudwell. First of all, she’s dead – she’s been sick for quite a long time as we say in the south. Before she died, she hung out at the Chancery Bar, not to be confused with Chauncey’s Bar and Grill, and hobnobbed with all the Lincoln Inn nobs (i.e., barristers). She specialized in tax law and wrote four mystery novels: The Shortest Way to Hades, Thus Was Adonis Murdered, and The Sirens Sang of Murder. In counting, I find only three novels listed here, so perhaps the fourth was purloined or perhaps I have been hanging out at Chancery’s Bar a wee bit too long. I decided to take The Shortest Way to Hades since many Republican neighbors have suggested that would be a good place for me to vacation. Herewith follows my experience (with no spoilers I hope).

Based on hearsay, which appears to be reliable in this case, one Hilary Tamar narrates, investigates, and generally provides services as Johnny on the spot in all of Caudwell's novels. When Tamar is not engaged in the aforementioned, one may find Hilary teaching law or something like that at St. George’s College, Oxford. If not there, check all the pubs, bars, and restaurants in the area. Before she died, Caudwell did not see fit to reveal Professor Tamar’s gender; however, based on all available evidence it appears Tamar is either male or female. I myself tend to think of Tamar as male, so I will refer to him as such for the remainder of this epistle. If anyone wishes to take issue or umbrage with my designation, please feel free to comment. Currently, I can be found in the Virago Naughty Room eating figs and hanging out under the name of G. Saunders.

But I digress. On to The Shortest Way to Hades. The charm of Caudwell’s novel lies not in the plot (someone is murdered, a usual occurrence in mystery novels I am told), but in the wit. Professor Tamar is no prude although he does have a slight bias against Cambridge and considers all its graduates to suffer from educational deficiencies. Other than this normal fellow feeling toward a rival university, Tamar is quite likeable and disarming – a talent that serves him well in his investigations, in this case the murder of one Deidre Robinson, who lacks the good fortune of being an heiress, beautiful, or even nice. Her cousin Camilla, who possesses all three charming qualities, affectionately refers to her as Dreary, a nickname that helps remind the reader of Dreary’s shortcomings – useful since she dies shortly after a brief and unpleasant appearance in chapter one. Since no one has any motive for murdering Dreary, one might conclude that one can pack up the book and head elsewhere. Indeed, early on the wily Professor Tamar informs his less credulous colleagues that no murder has occurred. But murder will out . . . and as my dear readers have correctly surmised mysterious accidents that bear a distinct resemblance to attempted murder start popping out all over the place. Eventually everyone is nearly murdered except, of course, the murderer. And that is all I can say. Although I do not generally care for mysteries, I give this one my hearty recommendation. I shortly expect to witness the death of Adonis and even as I write I hear sirens singing of murder.

Having found life off wagon rather pleasant, I decided to stay off for a while longer. I was duly shocked to discover Our Spoons Came from Woolworths and not from Nordstroms as I had hitherto been led to believe. This was not all I had been led to believe. Indeed, certain “friends” on the Virago Forum had gone so far as to suggest that this book was amusing. The blurbs on the cover appeared to verify this suggestion, but alas for the lass, this book proved quite heartbreaking. I shall post more tomorrow when I have recovered my equanimity at the perfidy of book covers and viragoes.

Having discovered the error of my ways, I hailed the wagon, headed back to highbrow land, and at long last finished Elizabeth Maslen’s Political and Social Issues in British Women’s Fiction, 1928-1968. Touchstones resolutely refuse to work on this title and I suspect Tim Spalding of a plot. I will post more about this book tomorrow as well as I found it quite interesting and well worth discussing further (if only with myself).

In the meantime, if anyone knows of an unemployed, lonely Sanskrit scholar, please send she or he to the Mahabharata Anyone? Forum, which is desperately seeking said person. We are convinced that she or he must lurk somewhere in the murky stacks of LT, but where?

Interesting comments on all, Mary. Will be interested in your continued comments on the Masien book about British Women's Fiction. I love this kind of stuff.

As usual, Mary, reading your comments throws me into fits of hysterical laughter.
I also, for no particular reason, have the feeling that Hilary Tamar is a male.
The title you have forgotten is The Sybil in Her Grave, and it is the last she wrote....sigh....

Hmmm, Mary, Lost in the Translation? Maybe someone could use that as a title? I know that I certainly feel lost in the translation, and not even involving another language :-) Seriously, I know that in the Reading Globally Forum some of your concerns about geisha life and role, and the translation or transferrence into Western terms, were dealt with. It would be great if a native Japanese expert on LT could deal with the issue further, but perhaps those are few and far between here.

Your other journey, is as always, hilarious. You no doubt know Edmund Wilson's famous essay "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd". Shortest Way To Hades (love the title, incidentally) sounds like it would be good fodder for Wilson. With most cozies, who is killed and who is the murderer is secondary to atmosphere and mood, and if Caudwell managed to convert you on the basis of hers, she was wildly successful. I may get you reading hardboiled and noir yet.

Political and Social Issues in British Women's Fiction 1928-1968 sounds like a doorstopper, for academics working on their theses. Someone has to read those, I guess.

Back to the Russian train.

I remain convinced that Hilary is a she. My only support for this premise is that she pontificates in the manner of Amelia Peabody.

Yes, but if "she" is a "she," she certainly always notices women's legs, breasts, and other attributes. Of course, "she" could be lesbian, but wouldn't her name be spelled Hillary instead of Hilary?

Yes it would. Or should. S/he seemed to notice everyone's attributes. Ok, a he then but with antimacassars on the arms of his chairs.

tiffin,

I just don't see the antimacassars. Gay maybe, but antimacassarish gay.

Lesbian, say I.

And I'm thinking Sarah Caudwell must have been, too.

Lola,

I agree with you about Sarah Caudwell. And on second thought, I think Hilary must be lesbian as well. I had such a clear picture in my head of Hilary as a he. What do you suppose she looks like as a she? What's her style of dress, haircut, etc.? Furthermore, how has she decorated her room?

Room... decorations?

flailing

Books! Books everywhere! Covering whatever horror is stuck on the walls behind, lurks beneath the moth-eaten carpets below, or waits in ambush among the beat-up furniture!

My, that sounds oddly familiar... I wonder where I saw it?

I have no info on Caudwell past what I gleaned from "Thus was Adonis murdered" (a connection I too owe largely to Paola); I sort of pictured Prof. Tamar as Caudwell herself (in the tiny grinning bespectacled author's pic on the book I read).

Lesbians often don't care to advertise their sex, especially in the brainy professions. Just speculating.

Wikipedia said Hilary was purposely left gender-unspecified. Where Wiki got that, I have no idea. Apparently Caudwell did wear a man's suit and tie to break the barrier of a men only club but I took that as an example of activism, not a statement of sexuality. Unless it's a purposely camp novel, I never think the author's sexuality has much bearing on anything. What I meant when I said "antimacassars" was that Hilary was a bit of a fussy type, prone to overexplanation.

I agree with all of you who thought Hilary Tamar was a woman, possibly a lesbian, and I thought Caudwell might have been too. But I think the whole point was to show how we really couldn't tell.

I think her writing is, beside very witty, purposely deceiving.
Now that I think of it, yes, Hilary Tamar might be a lesbian. After all, in The Sybil in Her Grave we have not one, but two homosexual couples.

Rebecca of Sunny New York. I quite agree. Sarah Caudwell's character reveals the nature of gender construction. Jeanette Winterson's Written on the Body is a similar sort of experiment. But . . . seeing as how Caudwell writes mysteries, we cannot be blamed for doing a little sleuthing on the side. By the way, have you read Gender Trouble by Judith Butler. I love the cover. I used to give it to my students and ask them what they thought the genders of the two children in the photographs were. The exercise completely blew them away.

So glad that you fell off the wagon so successfully! I love Sarah Caudwell - and coincidentally, when I took to my bed with a cold earlier this week I thought it was a perfect excuse for another read of The Sibyl In Her Grave. Unfortunately I fell asleep before opening the book. But it's almost worth getting ill for.

By the way, I'm with Hilary being female as well. It seems quite odd to think of "her" as a man...

Wikipedia said Hilary was purposely left gender-unspecified.

That fits perfectly with the author's sense of humour, and with this sense of the type of lesbian Caudwell (and Prof. Tamar) woud have been--assuming that they are--that I have. It's... a kind of androgynous mind. One that doesn't fit the mould of traditional frilly maternal hetero femininity, or glamorous lipstick lesbians, but neither is butch, aggressively (and usually histrionically) masculine. I love that voice, but it's the most rare of all. Fran Lebowitz has it. Can't think of anyone else, really. Men never have it.

"Adonis" was published in... 1981, right?--and it has quite a few gay or "ambiguous" characters, and quite a few gayish goings-on. I thought that was remarkable, for the times. And now it seems she does that in other books too, which makes it even more remarkable.

I heart Urania's reviews too now. Amusing and witty, I totally enjoyed reading the last one. This prolly won't be the last time I say that I love the Club Read threads just to read about what everyone else is reading.

In cloudy New York, I thank you for the recommendation (and the great cover picture), Urania.

Dear Readers,

Like a stubborn school girl, procrastinating over her English theme, I have put off writing this post, principally because I’ve fallen off the troika and am wallowing in heat at the source point of global warming: my father’s house in Charlotte, NC, USA, where the indoor temperature is 90° Fahrenheit (32.22° for those of you who live in Celsius land). Dad likes to do his bit toward carbon dioxide output.

When last I left you, you were clinging desperately by your fingernails (okay and some of you by your toenails) to a cliff awaiting the promised report on Our Spoons Came from Woolworths and Political and Social Issues in British Women’s Fiction, 1928-1968 (touchstones still not working, a foul plot indeed). Unfortunately, you may have to cling a bit longer as I know not whether by the end of this missive I shall have the energy to report on the aforementioned. But I digress.

A few postings ago, I reported feeling some dissatisfaction with Kafu Nagai’s Geisha in Rivalry. The gentle readers over at the Reading Globally forum suggested various sources to which I might turn to clear up certain confusions that the book raised. I ordered said books, namely Geisha, A Life and Komomo's A Geisha’s Journey: My Life as a Kyoto Apprentice. While I waited, I intended, like the best of the hell bound, to write an epistle on the books mentioned in paragraph two and to spend the duration in Russia, which is where I am supposed to be. But after a wild gambling party during which there was much carousing and drinking of absinthe, I ate of the Virago apple and found the lair of the white worm. In short, I stumbled into chicklit hell. To be sure, the wise among you will say that the soft blue cover, the comely outline of a woman from the waist down carrying a gun in one hand and a shopping bag in the other should have been a sufficient warning that Reader, I murdered him was not the high-minded direction in which I intended to head. But under the influence of the “green fairy” as absinthe is known among the cognoscenti, I opened the book’s fell pages and within one chapter found myself in a veritable orgy of Italian designer clothing, fine wine, priceless art, and the inevitable dark, not so strange man. All I can say is “Reader do not buy this book.”

Feeling somewhat sorry for myself, I felt entitled to a break, so I stopped off in Los Angeles with Joe Keenan’s My Lucky Star. For those of you unfamiliar with Keenan, he was a former scriptwriter for Frazier. He has written three novels involving Gilbert and Phillip (on again off again lovers) and Claire, Phillip’s co-writer, a woman of the highest ethical demeanor, and as Phillip says so smart she could win a spelling bee in Czech. Gilbert, I am sorry to report, involves everyone in misadventure after misadventure. If you like P. G. Wodehouse, Joe Keenan is the 21st-century incarnation of Plum.

In the meantime the books on geisha arrived, and I had sufficiently recovered from absinthe and chicklit to reengage in semi-literate reading. Of the three books I have now read on geisha, I find Mineko Iwasaki’s memoir of her life as a geisha the most interesting. Adopted the atotori (heir) for the prominent Kyoto Iwasaki okiya, Mineko begins studying to be a geisha at age six. Her narrative maneuvers deftly between revelation and concealment. She goes into great detail about some aspects of the highly complex hierarchical structure in Gion Kobu. For example, when her iemoto (master teacher of dance) first tells her “Otome” (“Leave”), a command that quite literally means she cannot come back for lessons ever unless the iemoto gives her permission, elaborate negotiations involving the heads of several major geisha houses ensue for her readmission. At other times, Iwasaki is quite reticent. She carefully establishes the difference between geisha (women who are trained in the traditional Japanese fine arts and whose jobs are to act as harmonious hostesses at ochaya) and oiran (courtesans and prostitutes) who work in the Shimabara pleasure district. Iwasaki is quite clear: geisha are not prostitutes. Nevertheless, several times in her narrative ambiguity arises. For example, she reports numerous instances of being accosted on the streets in the Gion Kobu district where the geisha work by men who clearly mean to obtain sex willing or unwillingly from her. She also reports having her breasts fondled by a patron (an act supposedly taboo in the elaborate etiquette of the ochaya). Moreover, she clearly does not wish to discuss certain decisions made about her career, which she dismisses saying “I suspect it was for political reasons.” “What,” one wonders, “are these reasons.” Perhaps the most striking element of Iwasaki’s narrative concerns her comparative innocence about money, sex, how to operate a shower, or turn on a stove.

Overall, I found the book quite engaging. For the most part, Rande Brown her co-writer does a good job of translating difficult concepts into English. Occasionally, the narrative lapses into torrid prose: “Meanwhile I was slowly and surely falling under his spell.” But these are minor flaws, in an otherwise well-written and informative (to a degree) memoir.

A Geisha’s Journey: My Life As a Kyoto Apprentice is slight in comparison, at least regarding narrative; however, the photographs are gorgeous. One gets to see all the details of dress that Iwasaki merely describes. I now have my eye on several books concerning kimono.

And having reached this point in my own narrative, I find that I will put off for another day my discussion of Comyns’ and Maslen’s books. I will say Maslen's scholarly work inspired me to order three early science fiction novels by women: Katharine Burdekin’s The End of This Day’s Business (1935), Storm Jameson’s Then We Shall Hear Singing (1942) and Naomi Mitchison’s Solution Three. Burdekin is an entirely new name to me. Thus far, I am finding her book fascinating: it concerns a feminist dystopia set 4000 years in the future, one in which women have all the power and education and men are used merely for breeding and manual labor. I have also learned about several other early science fiction writers whose work I intend to investigate.

#42: I am intrigued by your explorations in early SF. I see that you have Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland in your library; will that form part of those explorations?

Urania, I'm distressed by the fact that I cannot help you with your current kimono obsession: Japanese silk and my claws do not a happy friendship make, as I'm sure you understand.

however, Taiwan is rich in antique fabrics from China, South East Asia and the indigenous Taiwanese tribes (HEADHUNTERS: BEWARE).

I'm enjoying your notes on geisha girls, though, and I think you should expand them. Have you read Roland Barthes on Japanese culture?
Let me see if I can get this damned touchstone to work. Hang on.
This should do it
http://www.librarything.com/work/5009

#43 timones: I have read Herland several times. I must say I don't find it one of Gilman's more impressive works plotwise or characterwise. The ending, in particular, is disappointing. However, it does mark an important juncture in the oeuvre much as Sarah Scott's Millenium Hall feminist utopia of the 18th century does.

Murrushka,

I love fabric, textiles, embroidery, and folk clothing. Atlanta, GA, has a shop (open by appointment only) featuring such items. I regularly go droll over its website. You have no idea how much I envy your being right there. If I lived in Taiwan, I would spend the small fortune I do not have purchasing said items. I understand that in Japan kimono can cost hundred of thousands of dollars. Alas, I fear owning a kimono is not in my future. I have not read the Barthes book, so I will add it to my list.

>46 urania1: I also love fabric, textiles, embroidery. . . sigh.

#47 avaland, all we have to do is become incredibly wealthy and those exquisite but expensive fabrics can be ours. Unfortunately, my life philosophy commits me to voluntary semi-simplicity and the avoidance of accumulating an embarrassing amount of money. Any suggestions?

A steady series of cocktail parties and a reliable place from which to rent exquisite fabrics?

Ah but cocoafiend, the nasty, little aquisitive consumer in me does not want to rent the fabrics, the kimono, and the saris. SHE WANTS TO OWN THEM. What I need is a patron, someone who will pay me in lovely textiles to write amusing occasional pieces. Do you know of one?

Well, Mary,

even though you now know lots about me, you obviously do not know that one of my many ancestors in the Old Country was the ruler of Salzburg, Prince-Archbishop Hieronymus Colloredo, who in 1773 was the patron of Mozart. There is a direct uninterrupted line of descent straight to me and I of course have the untold wealth you seek. You have amused me greatly already and there We decree that you may go directly to the best purveyor of silk kimonos, select a suitable one, and have the bill put on Our tab.

Become a reviewer / one-woman literary think tank for the local paper? Course that wouldn't pay very well - just enough for subpar fabrics like polyester and velveteen (à la track suit of the late 70s, early 80s)

Our tab? That phrase sounds faintly Dostoevskian and therefore unreliable. Furthermore, my limited association with royalty suggests that others are often left holding the tab. Of course, my experience is quite limited.

Now just a minute. I expected a swoon, and profuse thanks.

Are you doubting Our Royal resources? Our Royal word? I just may be forced to decree, "Off with her head."

cocoafiend,

I'm shocked at you. I'd rather run around naked than wear polyester. Of course, living in the remote wilds of Tennessee, I often do so. Recently, however, the weather has been a mite chilly for that . . . unless I can talk Robbie into building a sauna. I've been exercising all my logic and charm on that one lately. Robbie, usually finds it hard to hold out when I hit him with the double whammy of logic and charm . . . and other things.

Andrushka,

You'd miss me too much if I were gone, so I'm not worried about my head ;-)

Aaaah, you see through me so well, you sly vixen :-).

somewhere in my sibs various closets lurk 5 kimonos that my parents picked up ~ 1955 when we were living in Okinawa (2 adult, 3 kid sized). I imagine my sister has them; or i hope she does, otherwise they've disappeared into the ether. They're certainly not in Pittsboro!

polutropos, I'm impressed by your lineage - no polyester for you! As a matter of fact, I am a direct descendent of Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor. This bit of celebrity pedigree emerged from someone else's genealogical research, so I can't vouch for its accuracy... Probably, I am the direct descendent of French farmers and English paupers, as I have always suspected. No Tab for me... Mary, I must live vicariously through you and your fine fabrics.

Reading Log: 23 January 2009

Dear readers,

Alas, I have somehow, somewhere misplaced my troika, which has prevented my timely return to Russia. Instead, I have by means unbeknownst to me ended up in Japan (could it be the sake I’ve been imbibing). Currently, I am about half-way through Liza Darby’s Geisha. I will say more when I reach the conclusion; until then I shall remain discreet.

Other than that, all I have been reading are book jackets. As you all know by now, I am a woman of few words, so for the sake (not sake) of verbal economy I shall simply post a slightly modified version of my Project 1929 forum post on book jacket reading. For those of you who have suffered through it once, my apologies. For those of you suffering through it for the first time, examine your consciences. Ask yourselves, “What have I done to deserve this?” But as usual I digress, so on to the book jacket post on lamentably bad books published in 1929.

While on a little adventure to ye local used and rare book store today, I discovered and bought what I fully expect to be potboiler sentimentality at its best or worst depending upon how one feels about potboiler sentimentality. The title is a hoot: The Methodist Faun by Anne Parrish. I’ve never met any Methodist fauns. Methodists just do not seem like the sorts who turn faunlike. I have not read the book, but based on the jacket notes the novel appears to deal with the spiritual dilemmas of one Clifford Hunter and “the good women of Pine Hills” (no mention of the bad women of Pine Hills but perhaps they will show up. One can always hope). At any rate our hero has been born and bred a Methodist, but “He wanted beauty and mystery. Alone in the woods, he found comfort and satisfaction (doing what I know not), but he could never realize it in life. He could not harmonize the conflicting elements in his temperament; he was disappointed in his dream love (one of the bad women perhaps?), and bored in his conventional humdrum marriage. Torn by ambitions which he had not the capacity to fulfill, he was out of tone with prosaic commonplaces of his natural circumstances.”

The author Anne Parrish sounds a lot more interesting. According to Wikipedia, she was the author of the #8 bestseller for the years 1925, 1927, 1928. Her mother, an artist, studied with Mary Cassatt. Anne Parrish originally set out to be an artist, trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women with Thomas Eakins. She married into wealth first and later into poetry, and amassed a collection of art, which now belongs to the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. She also won a Newbery Honor for her children’s book The Dream Coach. Her 1928 best seller All Kneeling was made into a movie entitled Born to be Bad starring Joan Fontaine.

And . . . on the back of the dust jacket I discovered a veritable treasure trove of 1929 fiction including the following:

Give Me My Sin Again by Naomi Royde-Smith (whose middle name I found out was Gwladys). The book was published the same year in Great Britain under the title Summer Holiday. The basic plotline? Lovely, innocent, probably virginal young woman “comes to love before she is mentally or spiritually equipped to meet it.”

Five and Ten by Fannie Hurst, who has a Wikipedia article devoted to her. She was a feminist (fought for a woman’s right to keep her maiden name after marriage), had a torrid affair with Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, and hung out in Greenwich Village. F. Scott Fitzgerald had a low opinion of her writing and noted in This Side of Paradise that she belonged to that class of writer who will not produce “one story or novel that will last 10 years.” As for Five and Ten, young Joshua Ratrick parlays his wife’s dowry into his own position as the “Thirteenth Richest Man in the World.” Supposedly the story contains symbolism as well, but I was unable to determine what it was.

The Unwilling God by Percy Marks is a sequel to The Plastic Age (1926), “a realistic treatment of undergraduate life at Stanford, with depictions of gin and petting parties,” which became “a controversial bestseller, with some praising its frankness and others decrying its sensationalism.” Alas, The Unwilling God, which deals with the “spiritual growing pains” of the “Younger Generation” flopped.

The World’s Delight by Fulton Oursler. Printed below is a review from Time Magazine

Monday, Aug. 19, 1929, Time Magazine
THE WORLD'S DELIGHT—Fulton Oursler —Harper ($2).
Thou wert fair in the fearless old fashion,/And thy limbs are as melodies yet,/ And move to the music of passion/ With lithe/ and lascivious regret. What ailed us, O gods, to desert you/ For creeds that refuse and restrain?/ Come down and redeem us from virtue,/ Our Lady of Pain.
Called by Frenchmen "England's greatest poet," Algernon Charles Swinburne in the above lines described and addressed his friend and mistress, a U. S. woman, the late famed Adah Isaacs Menken. In her the poet was pleased to see a Pagan Virgin Mary, coming to crush the new, romantic Christianity, to revive old, lustful paganism. Novelist Oursler met the lady only spiritually and after considerable research. Noting in her written remains the kind of dour, ineffectual yearning popular in Victorian days, he endows her with a faithless first lover, from whom, as a circus horsewoman at 17, she galloped away.

An Irish-Creole girl of New Orleans, originally named Dolores McCord, she paraded down the main street of Galveston in the first crinoline that town ever saw. Her charms thus enhanced induced old Isaacs Menken, vocal teacher, to make her a Jewess and his bride. A memory of her first love drove her from Menken's hearth, but later gave morbid ardor to her acting of Lady Macbeth in New Orleans. In New York she became a poetess and the wife of Heavyweight Champion John C. Heenan. Her acting in Mazeppa brought her fame. This was the sensational play wherein, as a Tartar boy, she wore the first boyish bob on the New York stage. The place was the Bowery Theatre, lately burned down. Part of her part every night was to let herself be strapped quasi-nude to the back of a black, spirited horse. When the horse ran away, the audience gasped; their excitement, insinuates Author Oursler, for some reason of his own, being more spiritual than physical.

In Europe, after living at the seashore with the red-haired Swinburne, she took refuge in Paris at the house of that famed, fatherly quadroon, Alexandre Dumas Sr. Her poems, edited by Swinburne, were published, praised. She became the toast of Charles Dickens, Napoleon III and many another celebrity, staid and profligate. Yet for the Montparnasse tombstone, bestowed on her remains by Baron de Rothschild, the epitaph she wrote in advance was mournful, cryptic: Thou Knowest. She died in 1868, aged 33.

The Significance. There is a supposition that Nana, Naturalist Zola's novel, includes some Menken escapades. Nana, one of the realest characters of all fiction, lives and breathes lustily for present-day readers while Adah Menken, who lived just as lustily, pulsates feebly in Author Oursler's sentimental brief. Yet whether or not the "spirit" he discusses is more Oursler than Menken, Author Oursler has succeeded in writing the first book about a U.S. figurine no less famed in her day than Isadora Duncan, Aimee Semple MacPherson, Peggy Hopkins Joyce.

The Author. How much academic education does it take to be a writer earning respectable money? Charles Fulton Oursler, now 36, finished all schooling with seventh grade grammar, in Baltimore. Thereafter he studied French literature, sleight-of-hand, farm implements, music. He earned money by the last three. Real success came with his play, The Spider, a Broadway smash in 1927, now playing in Budapest and Paris. His somewhat spiritualized view of Adah Menken is partly explained by his membership in the American Society for Psychic Research.

I love the last paragraph of the review. It is so snarky.

And finally Black Sun by Aben Kandel better known for writing the screenplay of I Was a Teen-Age Werewolf. James Thurber did the illustration for the book cover described below:.

Dust jacket: front and spine on red. On front, in black, one-line quotation by Heywood Broun, title and subtitle, Thurber drawing in white outlined in black of naked seated man and woman (she is pointing at him; he is looking angry), authors, seven-line quotation by Isabel Patterson, heavy rule, publisher. Spine titled in black, with large question mark below title.

Apparently the book deals with the travails of a “good, decent” but weak young man named Michael and the “domestic, loyal, nice, but unperceiving” hussy named Louise. It was made into a film and translated into French

Hilarious as usual, and I also love your "troika envy" on another thread.

great post Urania. Im looking forward to your thoughts on Dalby's Geisha. Do i have to slink over to the Reading Globally group, or will you post them here?

The Methodist Faun. What was she thinking?

I've just read through Mt.TBR and am totally in awe of wit, energy and reading time.

Dear All,

I keep looking for me sainted troika but there seems to be a shortage of them in Japan. The closest I've come is a rickshaw; and based on my reading of Liza Dalby, only geisha get to ride in them now. I have finished reading Liza Dalby's Geisha and lack but twenty pages finishing The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman in Heian Japan. I have also begun Roland Barthes's semiotic study of Japanese culture: Empire of Signs. I am more confused than ever about Japanese culture and have been reduced to waylaying perfect strangers in the darker corners of LT land to ask for small unmarked packages containing titles of books on Japanese culture. I fear my virtue may be compromised. My confusion has not been made any easier by Anne Parrish's The Methodist Faun. I am only 10 pages into this awful book, and I am already at the point of issuing an imperial edict against any Methodist attempting faundom. For perverse reasons, which I cannot explain to myself, I have decided to finish this decidedly awful book. I have made a feeble attempt at starting Joseph's Frank's five-volume study of Dostoevsky, but when one is stuck in Japanland, bios of poor D. just don't stick . . . I must find that troika. In the meantime, if you need me for anything, I'll be hanging out in some disreputable sake bar. If I am not overcome by the combined effects of sake and Methodist fauns, I will post reviews of Geisha and Gossamer Years sometime in the next few days.

#65: I was raised a Methodist, so your views on the convergence of Methodism and faundom are keenly awaited.

Dear Readers,

Being unable to find available transportation back to the dacha, I have been swanking around Kyoto in $20,000 kimono, drinking lots of sake, and depending upon the kindness of strangers. The first two, I heartily recommend. As for the last, I do not particularly recommend it. One finds oneself in odd company (more of which later). In the meantime, I have been trying to expand my knowledge of Japanese culture and geisha. As I noted several nights ago, I remain somewhat confused. I have now read four books on geisha: Geisha in Rivalry, Geisha: A Life, A Geisha’s Journey, and Geisha. Native Japanese wrote the first three works. Liza Dalby wrote the last. I have commented on the others already so on to Dalby’s book.

Background
In 1975, Dalby (an American anthropology student) traveled to Japan to conduct research on geisha. At the suggestion of an okasan (a “mother” and manager of a teahouse), she became a geisha for a year. She worked in the Pontocho hanamachi (geisha community) in Kyoto. Kyoto has five hanamachi, each with its own distinct style. In comparison, Tokyo has 20 such communities; Tokyo geisha are also quite distinct in style from Kyoto geisha, who are the most “traditional” of all geisha. In Kyoto, women usually spend four or five years as maiko before graduating to full geisha status. Consequently, they tend to start at a much younger age than Tokyo geisha, whose apprenticeship lasts a couple of weeks. Tokyo does not have maiko. Because Dalby was older, she did not go through the traditional apprenticeship, but made her debut as full-fledged geisha. Nevertheless, the fact that she studied in Kyoto at the Pontocho hanamachi made a distinct impact on her experience. As she notes in her preface regarding the question, “What does it mean to be a geisha?”: “There are undoubtedly many possible answers. I have given my own.” She admits that the book delicately balances between ethnography and subjective experience.

Comments
Those seeking a conventional scholarly text will find this book disappointing because it is a hybrid – part first-hand account and part scholarly analysis. It would be interesting to compare this work, released by the University of California Press, with the dissertation from which it was derived. The absence of the usual inundation of footnotes (there are a few) and the inclusion of the first-person account make this a reader-friendly book. However, I did find myself occasionally wanting a bit more specificity, particularly regarding dates for reasons I will explain below. Dalby devotes a chapter to discussing geisha in an historical context: when geisha first appeared in Japanese culture, how governance of geisha has changed over the centuries, and how the profession has changed. One of the major changes in the profession was the “emancipation” of geisha and its subsequent positive effects on geisha autonomy. In the early part of the 20th century, poor parents still sold unwanted daughters as young as five to okiya. At the end of their apprenticeship (minara), geisha underwent mizu-age (sexual initiation ceremony). Such practices no longer exist. While geisha sometimes do have a danna (or patron) with whom they may or may not have sex, no geisha is subject to mizu-age. Dalby does not say when the practice stopped, although she recounts the story of teahouse guest, who in his younger days had been much in demand as a mizu-age patron (the man who initiated the young woman or girl). Exact dates would have been useful by providing context for other geisha accounts, particularly that of Mineko Iwasaki.

As I noted in an earlier post, Iwasaki clearly has several motives in writing her memoirs. One, of course, was in response to Arthur Golden who drew on interviews with her for his book Memoirs of a Geisha. Iwasaki went to great lengths to disabuse the readers of stereotypes about geisha and also to cast herself as the heroine of this memoir. In particular, she talks about her own sexual innocence. (She did not take a lover until rather late in the day.) Moreover, Iwasaki entered her okiya as the atotori (heir) by choice. Her father, however, sold her two older sisters to the same okiya during a period of financial difficulty. And herein lies the rub. Iwasaki takes great pains to present the elder of these two sisters, Yaeko, as an unworthy geisha and undutiful daughter. Yaeko first makes an appearance in chapter two as “a horrible woman” who shows up at the house with two “brats” and berates her parents for not loving her. One wonders again, what are the dates here? Did Yaeko go through mizu-age? Might this be a reason for her anger? Greater specificity in dating particular laws might shed a different light on Iwasaki’s memoir. Then, again perhaps it would not.

Some have criticized Dalby’s Geisha on the grounds that she could on the basis of one year possibly comprehend geisha culture. Dalby would not disagree. As she points out, to be a geisha is to devote one’s life to one’s gei (art). One’s “art becomes one life and one’s life becomes one’s art. And this immersion in one’s gei is total and ideally a life-commitment, although the life-commitment part has changed rapidly in the latter quarter of the 20th century. That said, total devotion to one’s gei is not for the faint-hearted. Given the rigorous demands of gei, one can legitimately say that Dalby cannot give a complete account of geisha culture. However, as Dalby points out, there is no one geisha experience; and as the profession changes, many geisha practice for only a few years before quitting. So in this sense, Dalby’s is one perspective among many. What Dalby does well is demystify the profession. As one geisha says to her: “Why are you studying geisha? Geisha are no different from anybody else.” Dalby’s answer is “yes and no.”

Several dear LT readers having suggested that, like many Westerners, I focused on the wrong things in my Japanese detour, I decided to go back to the mists of antiquity, the Heian Empire with The Gossamer Years: The Diary of a Noblewoman of Heian Japan. This was not my first trip to Heian times, but it was my most frustrating to date. I attribute this frustration to the translator, one Eric Seidensticker. This translation was not the Stick’s first go at The Gossamer Years. And based on his introduction, he is somewhat bitter about having to do another. Clearly some behind the scenes drama involving UNESCO and the mysterious, elusive, illusive, and allusive Iwanami. (Wow, how many times does one get to be elusive, illusive, and allusive all within an introduction?)

So what didn’t I like? I did like the story – the tempestuous tale of wife and a husband of roving eye. In fact I found it heartbreaking in places. I also liked the glimpses it provided into life among Heian aristocracy, which from all accounts, was highly stylized, elegantly understated, and carried off with something like Italian sprezzatura. However, given some unsympathetic introductory statements by the Stick about the central character, I found myself wondering if a translation done by a woman might differ significantly from this one. Furthermore, if Dalby’s text lacked sufficient footnotes, the Stick had about a dozen per page (okay I exaggerate, but there were a lot); unfortunately, they took the form of endnotes. So I had to read the text with one finger stuck on the current page and another glued to the endnotes page. Dreadfully awkward and distracting. Moreover, the endnotes lacked the luster I have come to expect of endnotes – that spot being the place in which the author says what she/he really thinks and makes catty asides about lesser critics. The Stick’s endnotes were boring; moreover, he did not footnote the items about which I really wanted information. For example, the characters constantly exchange poems delivered tied to various objects – a hollyhock or a moss-covered tree branch. Did each item have some particular significance? I don’t know, but I wanted to know. I highly recommend this book to all readers. Dalby’s book I recommend only to those who will not feel they have sullied themselves by gravitating toward the usual Western fetishes with Japanese culture.

All of which brings me back to the beginning of my post – not depending on the kindness of strangers. Do not, I repeat, do not let Methodist fauns buy you sake in a sake bar.

It seems like your stay in Japan has been very fruitful. I have read your post with huge interest, and have a couple of points to add.

1. It seems to me that the geisha, in expressing her dedication to her art, is in fact turning herself into a work of art. The geisha becomes a work of art, to be enjoyed by the 'viewer/consumer' as any other work of art. This is very unique to Japanese culture, and completely unlike anything found in the West.

2. Art in general in Japan, and the art of the geisha specifically, is linked to the erotic, in a way that is quite unproblematic and unabashed. Western art either usually denies the erotic, by focussing on the moral, the religious, the social, the aesthetic or the political in art, or masks it by focussing on the representation of the 'nude' or giving it mythological perspectives.

One question i have, Urania: in your reading of geisha lore, did you get the sense that this is in decline now in Japan, or is it as strong as it always was?

Murrushka,

Regarding point 2, I found it interesting, that with the exception of Nafu's book, all of the authors I read, very deliberately downplayed the erotic side of geisha. While that eroticism certainly exists, even in a gesture as small as the way one holds one fan - I was surprised to find out there is a correct and incorrect way to do this; moreover, I've been doing it incorrectly and without the least sensuality my whole life - I think the authors (who, with exception of Nafu, were all women) went to great pains to make sure their readers understood that geisha are not prostitutes, they are not for hire in that way, and that the eroticism of the gesture, the dance, the dress, the way one walks is all part of gei. I was truly impressed.

Your question "did you get the sense that this is in decline now in Japan, or is it as strong as it always was," is actually quite complex. The short answer is yes and no. A thorough answer would take me at least twenty pages . . . so I've been putting off answering your question. I think one has to view geisha as a process. Reification is a real danger here. The art has always been in process. Certainly, the three women writers all expressed fear that geisha who thoroughly understand and practice gei could become extinct. Yet given their commitment to gei, I think geisha culture has a chance. Even the narrator of the somewhat fluffy A Geisha’s Journey: My Life As a Kyoto Apprentice did not initially intend to move beyond the maiko stage. In the end, however, she came to see her work as a calling and decided to become a full-fledged geisha. She felt the profession was a worthy one for which she could continue to carry the flag. Since I am not exactly sure what Japanese culture in 2008 is like, I may be going out on a limb here. I think the respect and commitment to art as a way of being (here I'm thinking of Japanese gardens, traditional Japanese carpentry, calligraphy, etc.) is ingrained in the culture (of course the ingrained can be exterminated or lost). At any rate, from what I have read, I would be sorry to see it vanish. My closest contact will "authentic" Japanese art was in the Japanese gardens in Portland, Oregon. I was amazed at their "seemingly" effortless beauty. In fact, creating an authentic Japanese garden requires a great deal of effort. I came home full of enthusiasm to create a Japanese garden, only to conclude that I could work for the rest of my life without being able to achieve that kind of beauty. So I'm sticking with the English cottage garden (effortless tangle style), which requires quite enough work to achieve especially in a climate subject to broad temperature changes. One more note, the day I went to the Portland gardens, I was feeling quite stressed. The instant I crossed the threshold into the gardens, I could feel my body relax and my blood pressure come down. I have not experienced a sensation quite like that either before or since that visit.

can we merge this with the Reading Globally Japan thread? It's a very interesting discussion which I have been giving a lot of thought to, and I would like the input of some of our other Japanese experts.

Fancy a merge, honey?

Murrushka,

If you want to copy our exchange to the Reading Globally Thread go ahead. I do not mind. I would be curious to see what others think. But I don't feel up to undertaking such a merger myself. Right now I feel like a blunderer and a dunderhead :-)

Edited this morning: Okay I will merge the discussion. There are experts on the other Forum whose opinions I would respect.

Good on you!!!

Right, come on everyone, let's dash over to the Reading Globally Forum. Last one there's a sissy.

OMG I've gone all slanty again. Too much vodka...

Your slantiness has been eliminated via one of Jeeves' mid-morning pick-me-ups.

Netochka Nezvanova: In Which Urania Sits with a Bottle of Absinthe in Her Right Hand and Vodka in Her Left Hand and a Blunderbuss at Her Feet
. . . Just to Be on the Safe Side

Having escaped nearly scathed (but not quite) from Japan, I caught a slow boat to China and from there made my way painfully on foot back to Russia. Me sainted troika has yet to turn up. Possibly, the sake bears some responsibility for my belated return to Russia. Alternately, I may have headed back to Mother Russia in a benighted attempt to escape the Methodist Faun, who is quite a tiresome fellow. Really, he would have been much happier in a Russian novel (preferably one by Dostoevsky but any Russian novel would do). Why Anne Parrish chose to put him in New England is beyond me. I fear he will turn out to be another Miniver Cheevy . . . but more of the Faun later (much later one hopes). Having arrived at no small trouble to myself, I settled down at my dacha in what passed for a comfy chair (I do not think genuine comfy chairs exist in Russia) and read Netochka Nezvanova.

By the time I finished, I was giddy with laughter – how not in novel dominated by a mad musician (talented but a wastrel), a long-suffering wife – the recipient of his sadism and without whom he would long ago have starved, a step-daughter (the eponymous narrator) who adores him and spends much of her time despising her mother, a brief lesbian interlude between two teenagers who spend several days in ecstasy before being separated, mysterious princes and princesses, one murderous dog named Falstaff, and lots of death. Why my mother did not take me on her knee and read this one aloud to me when I was a wee tot is beyond my comprehension.

Unfortunately Dostoevsky did not finish Netochka Nezvanova. Arrest, a fake execution, and a trip to Siberia interrupted his writing for a while. One wonders whence he would have proceeded with this novel? But he didn’t proceed, so your homework dear readers is to write an ending to the book in which you answer the following questions: What happens to Netochka, who is barely 18 when the novel stops? Will she marry? Will she become a great artist? Will she turn out like her stepfather? Will she be reunited with Katya? Will she become a monster or a saint? And finally, who is S.O.? Is he S.? Does B. play a bigger role than hitherto suggested in the novel?

Netochka Nezvanova cries out to be made into a tragic opera with a musical score composed by Schoenberg, who unfortunately is dead. How inconsiderate of D. and Schoenberg to die before either Netochka Nezvanova the novel or Netochka Nezvanova the opera could be completed. Only Schoenberg could have written the brilliantly forceful violin solo that would recur throughout the opera as a thematic and musical motif (I know, I know, Schoenberg didn’t like recurring motifs). Lest my dear reader(s) doubt my choice of Schoenberg, listen to this clip while reading the following passage from Netochka Nezvanova:

. . . then the music began. But it was not music . . . I remember everything distinctly; to the end I can remember everything that caught my attention. No, this was not like the music I later came to hear. They were not the notes of a violin, but the sound of a terrible voice that was resounding through our room for the first time. Either my first impressions were incorrect or delirious, or else my senses were so thrown by all that I had witnessed that they were prepared for frightful, agonizing impressions—but I am firmly convinced that I heard groans, the cries of a human voice. Complete despair flowed forth in these chords and . . . , at the end, there resounded the last awful note, in which was expressed all that is terrible in a cry, the agony of torture and the misery of hopelessness.

But enough on Netochka. Yesterday I finished Fatou Diome’s The Belly of the Atlantic, which takes place both in Senegal and France. Although the book did not begin auspiciously - it opened with a blow-by-blow description of a soccer game – not exactly the stuff to carry a non-sports fan forward, it turned out to be a lovely commentary on questions of place, interior homelessness, and exploitation of immigrants. Yes dear readers, France both uses and abuses its illegal immigrants as we do in the US. We are not alone. I was also interested to discover that soccer functions for the impoverished of Senegal (and other African nations) much as sports do for the children of the slums here: as the preferred ticket (however unlikely) out. Large doses of the theories of Césare Aimé and Franz Fanon on issues of négritude, masks, and colonial abjection to the white other infused the texts.

Currently, I am in that half-in, half-out stage I experience upon the completion of books. I jump from one to the other for a while before settling down. My jumps at the moment include Sources of Japanese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600. I am ~50 pages into this book. At the moment, I am reading about early Shinto myths. As I have noted on another forum, my favorite honorific thus far is for the storm god Susa-no-o: His-Swift-Impetuous-Male-Augustness. I am ~one third of the way into Things I’ve Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi. author of Reading Lolita in Tehran. I’ve made a desultory start to Lullabies for Little Criminals, and I’m trying to finish volume one of Joseph Frank’s five-volume biography of Dostoevsky: Dostoevsky: The Seeds of Revolt, 1821-1849.

Damn the Netochka Nezvanova touchstone!

did you REALLY have a bottle of absinthe? They've started selling some sort of faux absinthe in our local ABC store - featuring "American wormwood??" - mostly it's 110 proof. They don't sell sample bottles, sadly, and i wasn't going to pay $25.00 for something that looks like Roo's stregthening medicine.

Excellent and highly entertaining review of Naughty Nastenka. And spot on about Schoenburg. i was originally thinking of Janucek, but Schoenburg is much more tortured. Alternatively, Alban Berg's Violin Concerto would make a good candidate as well.

Mother Russia opens you with welcome arms.

Janacek is THE choice. He had written an opera called From the House of the Dead which is of course after a novel by Dodo, and I think that his opera called Jenufa could be adapted to a libretto for Naughty Nastenka. And Urania promised she will transform me into an opera singer once we have finished reading Willa Cather, so I hope to take a leading role in this new opera.

P are you soprano, or mezzo? I think you might be too old to sing the role of Netochka, but I could see you as the mother.

I am certainly not a castrato :-)

There has to be a nice basso profundo role for me, no?

Katya?

Andruska, you will sing the part of B.
Murrushka, you will sing the part of Yefimov the demented violinist.
Lola will sing the part of Netochka of course.
Davushka will sing the part of Prince X
I will sing the part of Falstaff the murderous dog.

The rest of the casting is still up in the air.

*Stalks off in a pussy Diva Huff, tail erect, nose in the air *
I don't see why she should get all the best roles...

>85 QuentinTom: Murrushka,

To which "she" (her) do you refer? You hardly have room to complain as yours is the pivotal role in the opera . . . and so well-suited to one of your talent.

I have just finished Ann-Marie MacDonald's play Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). I shall post more tomorrow when I am not otherwise engaged.

Mother Urania's Advice for the Day

Drop EVERYTHING and read Hermann Broch's The Sleepwalkers. I have just begun, so I'm not in position to review it as yet. But thus far, it is brilliant . . . and long (648 pages).

I've read it, and I agree. Brilliant. And Long. Looking forward to your review.

Let’s see, where was I when last I left you all clinging to the cliff? Ah yes, I was sitting in the “Russian” version of a comfy chair back at the dacha diligently reading about all things Dostoevskyish. My intentions were good . . . as usual, but somehow, some way, I got derailed. I am not saying the combination of absinthe and vodka contributed to this state, although it may have played a role in the derailment. Whatever the cause, I started reading Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) at which point I began to feel distinctly Alicish after she fell down the rabbit hole. Since Alice doesn’t live at my dacha anymore, I found the whole matter distinctly odd, and on further consideration I have decided that the book, not drink, bore full responsibility for my time spent in topsy turvey land.

So on to Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) . . . a delightful if not exactly restful little play.

The setting: Queen’s University, Cyprus, and Verona
The characters: One Constance Ledbelly (lecturer at Queens), the dastardly and villainous Professor Claude Night, and various sordid characters from Othello THE Moor of Venice and Romeo and Juliet
The plotline: Change the course of Constance’s, Desdemona’s, and Juliet’s fates
The text between the lines (pay attention here; there will be a test afterward): WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT. We rock!!!

Unless one has read the two aforementioned plays and dabbled a bit in alchemy and Shakespeare’s other writing, one will be less than amused since the plot depends not only on a knowledge of the two plays but familiarity with the lines. The humor of this play chiefly arises from Ann-Marie MacDonald’s hilarious redeployment of lines from Shakespeare’s plays. The other source of humor arises from the unexpected ways in which Constance keeps losing control of the plays’ original plotlines. So, if you are an admirer of the bard, I highly recommend this book. If you read the Cliff Notes of these plays when you were supposed to be reading the plays, now is your chance to redeem yourself, after which you may read Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). And that’s all I have to say about that!

Having made my way through the rabbit hole with the help of a little sake that just happened to be in a bottle labeled “Drink Me,” I emerged to find myself, not as one might expect, in Russia, but back in Japan. There I spent an excessive amount of time lusting (really serious lusting) after The Kimono of the Geisha-Diva Ichimaru. For those of you unfamiliar with the Great Geisha Debate, I refer you to Reading Globally’s Japanese discussion thread. I have not yet posted my latest findings there. Tempests in teapots you know, which puts me right back with Alice in the rabbit hole, or in this case, the doghouse. Ichimaru, who was sold into Geisha bondage by her impoverished family, eventually became Japan’s most famous and accomplished geisha, a job that required lots of kimono. Later, she took up a singing career, another job that required lots of kimono. I would like to have lots of kimono too; unfortunately, I do not have the kind of job to support the expense. The majority of the book consists of color plates of Ichimaru’s kimono, which are truly stunning, along with brief descriptions about design, seasonal use, embroidery, and silk dye techniques – definitely chocolate for the eyes. The text also contains a good introduction with a brief biography of Ichimaru and a really interesting discussion of the various aspects of kimono design including dying and embroidery techniques. So far, so good, but after reading several books, which assured me that geisha are not prostitutes, damn it all, this book declared that they are. For reasons of prudence, I am simply going to leave that question alone for the moment. However, my appetite for knowledge about textiles and kimono having been whetted, I proceeded on to Fashioning Kimono: Art Deco and Modernism in Japan. This hefty tome (323 pages) was put together for a traveling exhibition currently making its way around the United States, but alas in no state near me. Like The Kimono of the Geisha-Diva Ichimaru, this book also provides lots of chocolate truffles (of Belgium vintage) for the eye; however, it is scholarly in tone and detail. One is treated to a history of kimono as well as a detailed history of the development of new textile techniques and their role in the culture. Fashioning a kimono, my friends, is not for the faint of heart. It also demands a small tribe to complete a kimono. This book will definitely appeal to lovers of textiles, fashion, and kimono. If you do not fall into one of those categories, go away. Read Herodotus.

After drinking a little more sake and retiring to an inn for the night, I awoke and found I was in Morocco in a disreputable hotel with a Qur'an and Tahar Ben Jelloun’s The Sand Child at my beside. Evidently, book crossers like to hang out in disreputable places. I, as you well know, am not disreputable. Neither is The Sand Child. This book is the kind that keeps on giving; should you lay hands on it do not give it away. The novel proceeds along the following lines: A father obsessed with having a son decides when the eighth daughter arrives to keep her sex secret and to raise her as boy. For the remainder of the novel, the reader wanders in a dreamlike fashion through the labyrinth of gender construction. I recommend reading some Judith Butler and a small dose of Jacques Lacan (preferably his writing on the mirror stage). Doing so will add greatly to one’s appreciation of the book. The prose is gorgeous. The tale is beautiful and sad . . . perhaps.

Since I was in Africa already, I decided to read on – this time African Love Stories: An Anthology. The best part of this book is its introduction. The editor, Ama Ata Aidoo, writes clearly and succinctly about western stereotypes of African life perpetuated, in part, by African writers. She reminds one there is more to Africa than violence, starvation, death, and war. Instead, the short stories introduce the reader to the more mundane elements of everyday life and, of course, love. That said, I found the book somewhat disappointing on two counts: (1) The stories are mediocre, and (2) only a handful of African countries are represented. So much for cultural diversity. If you want to read the book, check it out at the library or ask me to send you my copy.

All of which, brings me back to the present. Currently, I am working my way through chapter one of Wheelock’s Latin Grammar, which the vagabonds from the Free Street University, at which I am unremuneratively employed, have decided to tackle. I attribute this latest scheme to an excess of German philosophy with its emphasis on philology. As everyone knows, Latin grammar texts are invariably exciting and unputdownable. Once one starts, one forgets to eat, wash, or brush one’s teeth. Spouses die, babies arrive, but the reader remains oblivious so entranced is she by the grammar book.

The Sand Child sounds wonderful - it's been added to my wishlist.

Mine, too! Also, sadly, dropping African Love Stories. Such a great title!

Oh, dear! Sorry to have led you astray with African Love Stories. I've read about a third of the stories and enjoyed almost all of them, but I'm probably not a good judge of short stories--I generally don't care much for short stories and so don't read many of them.

urania--have you read This Blinding Absence of Light by Tahar Ben Jelloun? I just finished it, and am ready to read it all over again, I liked it so much. I will definitely read The Sand Child and anything else he has written.

There was no touchstone for the Fashioning Kimono book. Is the show coming anywhere in the NW--Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, BC?

>94 arubabookwoman: arubawoman,

I can't find a schedule for the show. Art Services International put the show together. I have e-mailed them for a schedule.

Thank you for the link. It looks like all the venues are east of the Mississippi, except for Tyler Texas.
There are several open periods, so maybe it will get out here.

>94 arubabookwoman: that is a terrific book. Amazing bleak, yet affirming of the endurance of the human spirit. It won the Impac Dublin Award a number of years ago.

avaland,

You must stop with this temptation stuff. Are you by chance related to the Devil? He does specialize in temptation ;-)

OH I love grammar books! And the Goodnight Desdemona sounds great as well. As for all the african/middle eastern stuff, well....
How are you getting on with The Sleepwalkers?

Murr,

I'm moving slowly through The Sleepwalkers. It is one of those books to be savored. I am reading African literature because that is the theme for this month's Reading Globally Forum. I thought The Sand Child was good. With a few notable exceptions, I feel underwhelmed by African fiction. I feel like many authors there are writing to a western audience, unlike Japanese literature, which is wholly itself (with some exceptions). Additionally, I feel like I'm reading the same story over and over again. Different country, different character names, a few cultural differences, but the same plot. I will probably be flagged or murdered for making such a claim. And yes dear critics, I do realize I am making generalizations, but . . .

Good, I cant wait to read your thoughts on it.

I feel the same about African literature, I'm afraid. Chinua Achebe has written one good book, and then spent the rest of his career just living off his laurels, imo. And his remarks about Conrad are simply sour grapes, the resentment of an inferior talent for an artist of collosal genius.

Urania, we will both be flagged or murdered now. But, united we stand, together we fall, one for all, all for one, etc.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2007/03/spurious-quotation-7.html

I will be unable to join you in Siberia or Africa. I am currently having a wonderful time in Rome with Marius the Epicurean.

As companion reading for Marius, I've started reading the works of Lucian of Samosata. I stayed up until 4 a.m. reading Dialogues of the Gods which is hilarious by the way. I'll be reading Dialogues of the Dead, Trips to the Moon(ancient roman sci fi, it's very Munchuesenesque), and The Syrian Goddess(a history of the worship of Astarte in the style of Herodotus).

The first part of Marius records his impressions of the old roman pagan religion and customs. Marius has great veneration for the old religion and a fervent passion to understand the lost meanings of it's rituals and customs. All of this is rendered in Pater's exquisite prose. This book could not be better and is unlike anything else. I can see a bit of Marius in Gore Vidal's Julian.

In addition I received goodies in the mail today.

First, A beautiful little 1914 edition of Goethe's Faust, parts I and II, in the Latham translation. After making a cursory examination of the classical walpurgis night scene, I do not believe this is the old translation I have been looking for. But it is a pretty translation and the book itself is really lovely. I will read this translation for my April Walpurgis Night read, to the accompaniment of Berlioz's Damnation of Faust. I always like to enhance my reading experience with apropos music and art.

Also, I received my 1920 J.M. Dent edition of Mademoiselle de Maupin by Theophile Gautier. Gautier is one of my favorite authors and I am collecting pretty old editions of the translations of his works. Of course I also picked up a paperback reading copy. I am also collecting the beautiful orientalist poetry of his daughter Judith Gautier, who was a key player in the Paris Fin de Siecle scene.

After Marius I am planning a long overdue read of Chateau d'Argol by Julien Gracq. Like Pater, Gracq wrote exquisite prose, and in the twentieth century!

As if that were not enough I will be continuing my survey of Fyodor Sologub. This does not require any effort. It is rather more of an involuntary compulsion to read Sologub. I have no choice but to read his full oeuvre. So far most of his stories seem to end in suicide. The russian decadents/symbolists were all extremely death obsessed. Sologub's writing is as poetic and beautiful as it is depraved and perverse. Hehehehehe.....

Are you talking about middle eastern literature? If so Sadegh Hedayat's The Blind Owl is a MUST READ!

Davushka,

So nice to hear from you. Are you leaving Dodo forever? As for me, I don't plan to spend any more time in Africa myself. I just checked online. Lucian is there. I may have to dip into it myself although owning the Loeb text would be so much nicer. Right now I am stuck in Illyria with a book (Illyrian Spring) neither good enough to be good nor bad enough to be bad. I think I'm sticking with it because of two scholarly texts I have recently read on British women's novels written between 1920 and 1950. From an analytical point of view, the novel is interesting and culturally revealing; however, it is not great literature, not to mention the fact that I want to smack the living daylights out of the heroine. Damn it all. She needs to stop living in the 1930s version of the genteel novel for ladies. She also needs to have an affair, not these platonic relationships in which she is currently engaged. She innocently thinks the relationships are platonic. The men . . . damn it all they're horny. Can I use that word on LT?

Let me know when you're ready to start reading Chateau d'Argol. I've been restraining myself.

P.S. And I do have The Blind Owl.
P.P.S. Heresy I know, but me sainted Pa is getting me a Kindle. I know you'll scream, but . . . I prefer to have some texts available in an easy-to-read format (but taking up little space), so I can save valuable shelf space for really beautiful books.
P.P.P.S. Will you still be my friend once I have a Kindle? I fully expect some LTers to shun me forever, so I will need good friends to see me through this trying and traumatic time.

I am reading Lucian online at this wonderful site. A huge database of works.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/index.htm

Most of his works are easy to find. The Syrian Goddess is rare however. There is a new translation. but it retails at $130. The Herbert Strong 1913 translation is posted on this site.

I wish I had a complete set of the Loeb Library too.

I am reading so much online, mostly rare books I wouldn't otherwise have access too, that I'm beginning to think getting a kindle might not be such a bad idea after all. I would never, ever give up my precious books however.

There is a new collection of Hedayat stories called Three Droops of Blood. I'm am waiting for it to become "in stock" at our vendor.

I got my editions mixed up. I have the 1914 J.M. Dent Everyman Library edition of Faust translated by Latham and the 1920 Alfred Knopf edition of Mademoiselle de Maupin. That was bothering me.

Let's go ahead and start Chateau d' Argol. I have a paperback, so I will make that my take to work with me in my book bag book, and I will save my old edition of Marius for at home reading. I've been taking it to work, bringing myself within one coffee spill of tragedy.

I will always be your friend. You will never get rid of me now.

I will return to Dodo eventually. I am having way too much fun reading other things right now however.

One more thing. To be honest, I can't imagine why you and Tom read so much criticism. Life is just too short. There, I've said it out loud. Please don't hate me.

P.S. Illyrian Spring looks good. I must make a tbr list of Virago titles.

Okay,

Off to Chateau d'Argol we go. I will start reading it tonight. Vis a vis Illyrian Spring, you were joking, weren't you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbVw7entkxg

This is me reacting to the news that Urania is getting a kindle....

Murr,
Check back on P.'s thread. I left you a message. I think perhaps you should join us at the Chateau d'Argol. I suspect you've been a baaad kitty of late; and although I am only two chapters into the CA, I suspect there will be ways of dealing with kitty cats. Vis a vis the Kindle, you response is a bit ambiguous shall we say.

#104
But I don't read lots of criticism, at least not academic criticism. I read Barthes coz he's a mighty genius and he makes me think. And I dooo like theory, I have to say, especially of the structural/semiotic kind.
Also, remember that cats have nine lives, so I have lots of time to read theory.

David, I have a question about Faust. I can only get Part 1 in the Oxford World Classics, and part 2 in the Penguin Classics. Different translators. Do you think this matters, or shall I try to acquire another one on line. Which translations would you recommend?

Murr,

Are you ignoring me? I suspected that some of my friends would turn out to have fair weather hides when I announced I was getting a Kindle. I feel deeply saddened, but I will survive. Tomorrow is another day.

no no no no
I am yours through thick and thin. I just need some time for the shock to wear off. I have just booked 25 sessions in advance with my therapist. But did you enjoy my tantrum?

I was most amused. Can you do it again?

well, I need some time to recover. That kind of tantrum takes a lot of energy, you know.

Yeah I do know.

I need 250 sessions with a non-existent therapist.

I refuse to even watch you-tube, so I have not seen the tantrum, Murr, but I will take your word for it that it is spectacular.

And Kindle? Hmmm. Whatever works.

I genuinely have a hard time reading any text of any significant length on a screen, which was a part of my PF distaste. But if the technology works for you, well, more power to you.

Andrushka,

I got to play with a friend's old Kindle a few weeks back. It is nothing like reading on a computer screen. The Ready Ink technology produces no glare, the screen is not backlit; consequently, there is no stress on the eyes at all. And the new Kindles will hold up to 1500 books. You can get books off of Project Gutenberg and put them on the Kindle. My friend mostly has PG books on her Kindle

105. Okay Mary. I was trying to sound genuinely interested in reading Virago authors. You saw right through me. I'm busted.

Julian Gracq's prose is really gorgeous for an author who died in 2005. Chateau d'Argol was published in 1938 however, which doesn't exactly make it an example of post modern literature.

His real name was Louis Poirier. His nom de plum is derived from Stendhal's Julian Sorel in The Red and the Black(I prefer Fabricio del Dongo personally) and from the Gracchi, the Roman heroes, Tiberius and Caius Sempronius. He refused the Goncourt Prize in '51.

Arnold sounds like a real heartbreaker. I got a little overheated reading Gracq's description(over and over) of his "gossamer blond hair" and his "mobile and extremely contractile nostrils", not to mention his "angelic and meditative visage", etc, etc, etc.

107. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Do it again! Do it again! Please!

109. Tom, I am rather a hypocrite regarding criticism. I profess to loath it. But I frequently find myself reading it online at 3 a.m., accidentally.

Re: Faust

I just picked up a lovely old copy of the Albert G. Latham translation(Everyman's Library) which is out of print. It's a pretty translation. Not the one I was looking for however.

I am going to pick up a copy of the Walter W. Arndt translation in the Norton Critical annotated edition(isbn 9780393972825), which is in print and includes parts I and II complete with 100 pages of notes. I think this is definitely the one to get.

110. Mary, I'm starting to wonder if I need a kindle too, or maybe a pair of combination sunglasses/reading glasses.

115. Hi Andrew. I've missed you. I know what you mean about reading text of any significant length on a screen. My eyes are bleeding right now.

David,

Gracq's Chateau D'Argol is gorgeous, but I find myself reading it rather slowly in order to let the atmosphere soak into my bones. I do not see it as a post-modern text at all; however, I am amazed by all the echoes of other writers. In places, Gracq reminds me of Poe. His concentration on the description of landscape reminds me of Ann Radcliffe, especially her novel The Mysteries of Udolpho. You really should read Radcliffe if you have not. She far surpasses the early progenitors of the Gothic both in thought and form. I would love to read it with you if you are interested. I have taught it a number of times in my eighteenth-century survey classes. The students always complain for the first 150 pages or so, and then they are are hooked. At the end of every semester I have taught the novel, I have asked the class if I should drop that one. The response has always been unanimous: "No!" Chateau d'Argol also reminds me of what Bram Stoker's Dracula could have been had Stoker been a better stylist. In fact, Werner Herzog's film Nosferatu realizes Stoker's novel better than Stoker does. If you haven't seen the film do. It is on my list of top ten films. I usually show it too my class because it visually illustrates so perfectly the concept of the Gothic sublime. You might want to read some of the commentary on the Gothic sublime. Here is a link to some of the commentary. I like the following definition, which seems to me to describe much of what Gracq is doing:

"In exploring the entanglements of lover and terror, the Gothic novel pursues a version of the sublime utterly without transcendence. It is a vertiginous and plunging--not a soaring--sublime, which takes us deep within rather than far beyond the human sphere. The eighteenth-century sublime always implied (but managed to restrain) the threat of lost control. Gothic sublimity--by releasing into fiction images and desires long suppressed, deeply hidden, forced into silence--greatly intensifies the dangers of an uncontrollable release from restraint. Such dangers no doubt help to explain why censorship and swooning were among the most common social responses to Gothic texts. Terror was a liberating--hence dangerous--force. "A god, or at least a ghost, was absolutely necessary, Walpole insisted, "to frighten us out of too much sense." In its excessive violations of excess sense, Gothic sublimity demonstrates the possibilities of terror in opening the mind to its own hidden and irrational powers. It is a version of the sublime which demands a psychology adequate to Freud's belief that the ego is not master in its own house."

The University of Virginia exhibit is useful, as well as The Dictionary of Sensibility.

>110 urania1:, Funny that you're getting a Kindle, urania. I was just informed that I've been given one for my birthday - its not yet arrived - and I don't know if I want it. Yes, it would certainly help with finding a place for all these books since I've officially run out of shelf space with my most recent purchases - only one empty shelf remains in the house, but its little Mischa-cat's favorite place to attempt to hide from her brother.... Can I steal from a kitten? - and I wouldn't have to carry 5 books with me when I can't decide what I actually want to read at a particular moment, but I'm just not sure about it.

Miss Price,

My friend Pam was initially dubious as well. However, now she keeps it with her at all times. I think I will use it more to house Project Gutenberg classics. The majority of books on my wishlist are not available on Kindle yet - I suppose because they're too esoteric and not widely in demand. The Kindle is wonderful because it is flat, it reads like a book, is searchable, and does not stress the eyes - at least that was my experience in playing with Pam's Kindle. Additionally, one can annotate the text as one goes along. Pretty cool. And space for 1500 hundred books . . .

>120 urania1:, "The majority of books on my wishlist are not available on Kindle yet." That's one of my issues, I guess. Its enough that some of the books I want are even translated into English & still in print. I have used my boyfriend's Kindle - the older version - to read some trashy young adult novels (the horror...right?) & I find it very good for that kind of stuff & also for the silly "I've GOT to know what happens next...NOW!" feeling that those books can provoke if read too obsessively. At this point, the bf is so enchanted with the new Kindle that he may keep it for himself, give me the old one, and still buy me a different gift, so I may end up with a Kindle even if I don't want one. Strange, eh?

>121 fannyprice:,

I expect that at least initially, I will use the Kindle to store Project Gutenberg versions of the classics, so I can clear out the space taken up by all my ugly paperbacks, which I do not want to throw out but to which I am not sentimentally attached to the physical text. For example, I've run through five copies of Pride and Prejudice at this point. My last copy of Villette finally disintegrated so badly (lost pages etc.) that I threw it out. My current copy of Song of the Lark is held together by a rubber band and paper clips. So . . . getting an eye-friendly e-text will enable me to free up a lot of space on my bookshelves for the books not available on Kindle or books whose physicality pleases me.

>122 urania1:, urania, you do make a compelling argument.... :)

This is terrible - You're slowly convincing me that I really, really want a Kindle. I've always liked gadgets, but this is one that I've told myself I really don't want or need. But now . . . the idea that I could get rid of some of the uglier books in my library and have them in one slim little device . . . . But I'm not working now, so I think I need to take a step back and wait until the household economic outlook improves.

>117 DavidX: Davushka,

A postscript to message 118: I find I need to read Chateau d'Argol at night or on a dark and gloomy day. Right now, the sun shines brightly here in East Tennessee. Last night, after I finally got my chatty husband to settle down to reading of his own without interrupting mine (this book cannot be read with interruptions), I listened to the following music: Chants, Hymns and Dances by Anja Lechner & Vassilis Tsabropoulos. They play these wonderfully atmospheric piano and cello duets. Listen to the first piece at the Amazon

Sacrilege! Damn heathens all of you!!!!

Murrushka,

Wherein lies the sacrilege? In the Kindle, the kitty litter, or Chateau d'Argol? Once again, you're being mysteriously ambiguous.

One attraction of the Kindle is vacations. Trying to pack two weeks worth of reading in these days of airline charging for baggage—and extra for heavy bags—can get quite expensive unless they are all slim paperbacks.

Even thought it won't be out for another year, I'm trying to wait and see what the forthcoming Plastic Logics eReader is like before spending on a Kindle. The former is rumored to have all the features of the Kindle, and to have excellent support for the PDF format, a glaring weakness in the Kindle (somewhat mind-boggling that it's still not there on Kindle 2 after all the complaints on Kindle 1). It also has the nice touchscreen interface.

In the meantime, using Stanza on an iPhone is surprisingly readable for the "I'm stuck waiting for the doctor with no book" situations, though it isn't good for long reading sessions.

I am going to post a separate thread on e-readers. I will copy the discussions from this site onto that site and we can continue discussing e-readers there and books here :-)

>128 TadAD: Tad - I thought I read on Amazon's site that the Kindle 2 had PDF support? It's listed as a supported format, but is there more to it than that?

>129 urania1:- Whoops - I didn't see your message until after I posted. I'll wait for the new thread!

Mary,

I will hunt down Chants, Hymns and Dances on imeem so I can listen to it also. Piano and cello duets sound like a lovely soundtrack for Argol.

Radcliffe is frequently mentioned as an infuence on authors I love (Charles Maturin for example). But I have not gotten to her yet. Mysteries of Udolpho sounds similar to Melmoth in form and style(A slow starter that pays off with big rewards later). I think I might have a copy around here somewhere. If not I will pick one up.

I have read Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto. He He. His name makes me giggle.

I can see some similarities with Stoker's descriptions of of Draculas castle and the surrounding forest and especially the wolves from Jonathan Harker's diary. The wolves are my favorite part of that book. Love the wolves.

I am reading each paragraph of Argol several times over in to fully appreciate it.

More later.

I will definitely have to look for Chateau d'Argol -- it sounds fascinating.

For more information on Julian Gracq check out this thread at The Chapel of the Abyss.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/26310

Thoughts on Gracq.

Gracq's prose is technically perfect, a perfectly formed spiderweb decorated with exquisite jewels of descriptive prose and interwoven with his philosophical ideas.

Gracq's prose must be read very slowly. It must be digested and savored, read and reread to savor the delicate nuances of the bouquet, much like a sipping a glass of 90+ rated Bordeaux.

In Chateau d' Argol Gracq masterfully reflects the inner emotions of the characters in his decriptions of the Chateau, the graveyard, the surrounding forests, the weather, etc. The image of a ray of light reflected by a complex arrangement of mirrors intersecting and reintersecting itself culminating in an intensely brilliant illumination is one of many metaphors Gracq has set in the story, like a master jeweler, reflecting the emotional and intellectual inner experiences of the characters in it's exquisitely cut facets.

Few things I have read could be compared to the terrible perfection of Gracq's prose.

I can see the influence of Gerard de Nerval in his beautiful hallucinagenic imagery and meandering complex digressions. Although Gracq's cold intellectualism contrasts sharply with the sweetness of Nerval which has always made him the most endearing of poets in my estimation.

Just a warmup. More later.

It is taking me forever to get through Chateau d'Argol. I have put down all other reading and given up all my LT group activities for it. It was well worth it. Gracq is rewarding me richly for my sacrifice.

I will start a new thread later for my 2009 reading beginning with Chateau d' Argol if anyone is interested.

Davushka,

Which translation did you read? My translation was absolutely sumptuous. I agree with you about Gracq's prose. I wonder though, if Gracq is truly "coldly intellectual." Look at the last paragraph of so. Additionally, does your addition include the author's afterword. I think he was striving for something much greater, for the liminal experience. The wonderful scene in which the three main characters swim out further into the ocean is an example. In the interstices of eros and thanatos, they nearly succeed.

I have to get hold of this book, it sounds fantastic.

Davushka, of course we are all interested!!!

My translation is by Louise Verese and does not include the afterword unfortunately. I doubt if it could be more sumptuous.

I think my characterization of Gracq as coldly intellectual is a misrepresentation reflecting my own difficulty in comprehending the material. It's just my intellectual laziness talking. It's so hard!(whining voice). I only began chapter V late last night.

I have been invaded by visitors the last several days. I am home alone tonight. I am going to study now.

Friends,

this is off current topic. (I know nothing about Gracq and am not about to find out, I am afraid.) But I have a most important (for me) discovery. My daughter, the incipient English scholar, has just introduced me to Gertrude Stein's Alphabets and Birthdays. Oh, someone please tell me you love it, too. Mary?

Andrew,

I had a fondness for Gertrude Stein in my youth. But honestly she doesn't do much for me anymore.

Mary,

I made more progress last night. I still have a funny taste in my mouth. I am anything but an objective reader. Albert reminds me of a handsome musician I once had a crush on in my youth before my never date a musician rule was ratified into law. I identify strongly with Heide. Albert better be good to her or I am going to drive to Brittany and kick his pretty little ass.

I had a lot of preconceived notions about Gracq's greatness going into this book. I think this is making it harder for me to be objective about a work that is already difficult enough for me to grasp.

You're perspective on the work is very helpful to me in my effort to comprehend it.

Frankly, I am anxious to finish this book and return to literature I feel more comfortable with.

I found some photos of Isle de Crozon where Chateau d'Argol is set. I thought the photos looked exactly as I had imagined the scenery from Gracq's wonderful decriptions.







I think I could fully appreciate this work if I traveled there to finish it. Mary you can have the snow leopard upholstered bedroom. I'll sleep in the library.

I am certainly down with Gracq's beautiful descriptive prose and am enjoying that aspect of the work. It is the deeper meaning of the work that is a challenge for me. Rather like a beautiful painting with allegorical symbolism I have yet to decipher.

Please don't tell me I have to read Hegel to figure this out. Gracq himself describes Hegel as being incomprehensible at times.

Question.

Is there some variation of the alchemical wedding symbolized in the relationship between Albert, Heide, and Herminien?

Oh my god!

Disregard every stupid thing I've said about this book so far.

Sometimes his thoughts took a different course. It would seem to him that he had tasted some forbidden fruit of the tree of life with sharp thorns, and that he still felt it's savour against his teeth - and he felt that over and above the bitter gift of knowledge which he had so often called on out of the depths of the disquietude of his heart, into it had descended with all it's poisonous juices, the mysterious gifts of sympathy. That he had tasted the blood of the dragon, and understood the language of birds.

WOW!

*munching herring and drinking vodka*
It's like watching porn, watching you two talk about this book. Don't stop! Huh! Huh!

judging from that quote, I obviously have to read it. is it all like that?

Every line. Sublime.

Then a veil of blood across his eyes, a quivering of his lips would announce the disconcerting approach of the atrocious and ineffable object. And lying at full length in the wet grass which he would knaw in a transport of rage, his face streaming with his own salt tears, he would evoke the white vision of Heide in the bottomless pit of that night of which nothing could ever equal the horror and the fascination.

I am blown away.

*munching and watching*

it is certainly.... how can I put this?... tumescent prose...

Of course it's tumescent prose you voyeuristic tomcat. But that tumescence is dangerous in this book. Davushka, I don't think you have to read Hegel, but I think a knowledge of Hegelian philosophy is useful here. Think in terms of thesis, antithesis, synthesis and notice, with the exception of the servant, there are only three characters in this book (what does keep that huge castle functioning)- only I am not sure synthesis occurs. I think Herminien brings Heide to Chateau d'Argol hoping to achieve synthesis. The closest the three characters get in my opinion is the ocean scene. In terms of synthesis, I think two different forms are being attempted: "eros and thanatos" and the purely intellectual versus the bodily orgasm if you will. Additionally, I am reminded a bit of the concept of the master-slave dialectic (a phrase Hegel never actually used himself). Albert is very much self-contained. He strives to be an hermetically-sealed vessel, untouchable by bodily passion. Herminien wants to break that up, to see the master mastered by his own passions. Davushka, our translators are the same. Too bad you don't have Gracq's afterward. If I'm feeling especially kind and get a few free minutes, I may type it out for you.

I found this obituary for Julien Gracq in The Independent. I found the description of his life and work quite interesting.

Thankyou Mary,

You have turned on many lightbulbs in my head. I will search for some explanations of Hegel's philosophy online.

I am still in shock. I must go to work now. More later.

I may just have to pick up your edition of Argol. I will definitely be rereading this book.

In the rabbi's cat there's a succinct and wonderful delineation of the difference between Western/Hegelian philosophy and Jewish thought:
"The rabbi tells me Jewish teaching works by analogy. He tells me I'm refusing to enter into it because my sight is clouded by Western thought. Western thought is prehensile, predatory, and it is in the final analysis a destructive machine, my master explained. It puts names to things labeled as if to say "these things are part of my system, I have understood them." But by the time you finish naming a thing, it has already changed in the name you gave it no longer defines exactly so you end up with empty words in your mouth. Westerners want to resolve the world. Turn multiplicity into oneness. That's a delusion said the rabbi. Then the cat says "but master, doesn't Judaism also try to turn multiplicity into oneness?" "Yes but not in the same way."
Western thought works by thesis, antithesis, synthesis, while Judaism goes thesis antithesis, antithesis, antithesis, antithesis..."

A very interesting article/obituary.

"Literature was the last of all the arts to make its appearance. It will be the first to disappear."

He was one of the few cool-headed appraisers of Oswald Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Decline of the West) of 1918. He saw the work as prophetic: its author believed the soul of civilisation is already defunct, victim of the natural process of growth and decay that afflicts all man-made institutions. Spengler saw the future as a soulless expansionist Caesarism a vision strikingly realised today in our all-enveloping nationalist, commercial and industrial "mondialisation" (the French term is so much more expressive than our banal "globalisation"). Therefore he warned that there would be no more poets and artists, only scientists and capitalists.

Sad but true.

Gracq saw the world in decay and the arts in decline. Something we can see all too well by just turning on the television, which is why I seldom do so. He sought to create something like unto the idealistic beauty of an age which had already vanished. He succeeded triumphantly. His work is a gift he made to us. A masterfull work of art of great beauty and rarity. Everything a great work of art aught to be.

The influence of the poets Chateaubriand and Nerval is evident in his work. Is there a Chateaubriand, Nerval, or Gracq in the world today? Such a soul cannot survive for long in our disposable age.

I should like to read Parzifal By Wolfram von Eschenbach(in my tbr pile) and Perceval: The Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes soon to better understand the graal symbolism in Chateau d'Argol.

There are extensive notes on Hegel in my Norton Critical edition of Faust. I'm hoping that will be enough to give me an understanding of that aspect of this work.

As for the thesis, antithesis, synthesis of the story. It is the synthesis which I am still struggling with. Perhaps Albert, like Parzival, decides in the end that the quest is futile. I don't know.

In short one of the greatest books I have ever read.

More later.

Both Parzifal and Perceval are wonderful, but Parzival is spectacular. It's the semi-secular equivalent of Dante's Divine Comedy. Actually, it's the best romance written in the Middle Ages -- go for it!

Ditto Parzival.

David, I agree with everything you say in your eloquent post about our disposable age.

Alas, our disposable age...(heavy sigh)

I have the Mustard/Passage translation of Parzival. It has gotten some bad press. Can anyone recommend a better translation?

Perhaps to return to bob's comment (#151), synthesis drops out of the equation; however, I do think Gracq explores the possibilities for synthesis and perhaps ultimately discards them. I don't know the answer to that question. In any case, thesis, antithesis, synthesis is a never-ending project unless one reaches Marx's hypothetical "end of history." Synthesis then becomes thesis, a new antithesis arises, new synthesis and so on and so on. We must avoid reification.

I am open to reading Parzifal and revisiting Perceval. In fact, both works were on my read next list. However, I will have to intersperse that reading with finishing up Dostoevsky's short stories, reading the next chapter of Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics, and doing Latin. All of those are real-time reading groups to which I owe commitments.

I want to read some other things in my pile and do my Faust read before getting into Parzifal and Perceval.

Urania Absconds from the Dacha . . . Again

Having tired of my Soviet-issue comfy chair and finding the serpentine chains of Wheelock’s Latin . . . well serpentine, I decided should the opportunity present itself to flee. Opportunity (or rather one David X, resident LT decadent and dandy) knocked on my dacha door and offered me “fleedom” – in the shape of a ticket (one-way or two-way depending on whether or not my name was Heide) to Chateau d’Argol, a little known retreat of those literati specializing in certain occult interests and Hegel. David, or Davushka as he is known to me, headed straight for the castle. I . . . digressed. But what’s one more digression among my many digressions? I decided to meander through Illyrian Spring (no, not Shakespeare’s Illyria), research the varieties of sexual experience in The Technology of the Orgasm, and dip into a little philosophy, Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics, lest any of my dear readers accuse me of lacking high seriousness.

So where to start? I could start in the middle or at the end, but doing so seems so post-modern and dated. So ignoring Edward Said’s warnings about the seductive ambiguities of Beginnings, I shall take a bold step forward and start at the beginning, which may be as Said would say no beginning but rather an arbitrary point marking the end of something, the middle of something else, and who knows what else. But I find myself digressing, and for those of you who eschew the rarified air of critical theory (and yes I know “rarified” is not the term some of you would choose to describe critical theory), I shall leave theory for the moment and turn to Illyrian Spring by Ann Bridge.

Setting
Illyrian Spring . . . oh to be in Illyria now that spring has sprung. Doubtless, some of you are wondering, “where the hell is Illyria?” A good question. Illyria in this particular work refers to the first “Yugo-slavia” or perhaps the Republic of Ragusa, now Croatia (the author uses both terms interchangeably). Most of the action takes place in and around the city of Ragusa or Dubrovnik as it is known now. Click here for some lovely pictures of the area.

So much for setting. On to more important issues, such as time, plot, characters, theme, and symbolism (not discussed here) and anything else inquiring minds want to know.

Time
A little vague. After WWI but before WWII. More about this issue to come

Plot
Lady Kilmartin, internationally renowned painter and unappreciated wife of Sir Walter Kilmartin an equally renowned economist, decides she has had it with her unappreciative family, kicks up her heels and heads for Greece to paint and consider whether her marriage is over. Before she reaches Greece, she meets Nicholas Humphries, a frustrated painter (his family want him to be an architect) sixteen years her junior. Things happen. They always do. The denouement is reached and the resolution . . . resolved. But . . . in the meantime, pressing questions arise: Can an attractive older woman and a much younger man with “groggy digestion” find true love? What about Professor Halther, the older sophisticated philosopher and general dispenser of wisdom? Will he become a competitor for the lovelorn Lady K.’s attention? Will Lady K. succumb to “the most insistent feelings of all, those which the body imposes on us whether we will or no”? Will Walter run off with Rose, an extremely intelligent but overweight economist? And that most pressing of all questions, will anyone make it to Greece? If I thought it would be good for you, I would answer these questions that undoubtedly keep the inquiring minds of inquiring readers in a tizzy. However, LT frowns upon spoilers, so you will either have to read the book or apply your Sherlockian powers of deduction.

At this point I must confess I initially was not a sympathetic reader. In fact for the first three hundred pages of the novel, I wanted to smack the living daylights out of Lady K. She is talented, intelligent, and kind, so why does she let people walk all over her (or snitty readers fantasize about smacking sense into her)? However, the last 100 pages redeemed the first 300 pages. Ordinarily, I do not give redemption much time. However, this book perfectly illustrates the central arguments taken up in to scholarly texts I have read recently: Nicola Humble’s The Feminine Middlebrow Novel: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism and Elizabeth Maslen’s Political and Social Issues in British Women’s Fiction, 1928-1958. Both writers deal with roughly the same time period, and both want to restore “neglected women” writers to a position of respect; however, each approaches her subject from a slightly different perspective. After WWI, Humble argues, the old categories of class and gender began to break down. The feminine middlebrow novel provided a safe, comfortable space for women to explore new possibilities about work, family, and gender relations. Additionally, as the old normative notions of class collapsed, these novels provided an education in “good taste” and allowed women a space in which to flirt safely with bohemianism and alternative lifestyles. Maslen takes a slightly different approach, arguing that these novels fall squarely with the modernist project and tackle not only the issues Humble addresses but also more serious political issues such as war and fascism. In this regard, Illyrian Spring seems strangely out of sync with the times. The book published in 1935 curiously offers no hint of the Great War recently passed and only once lightly alludes to the growing fascism in Europe. Illyrian Spring remains suspended in a different time – perhaps one that never existed – an idyllic beautiful place for upper class ladies and gentleman to pass a few pleasant weeks.

So on to the really big question, should you read this book? My answer is mixed. Illyrian Spring is a genteel novel for genteel readers. If you do not fall into this category, exit stage left. If you enjoy cozy novels that begin in flight, proceed to melodrama, and end in high comedy - didn’t someone named Shakespeare use this plot a lot? – and include much holding of febrile hands (all that groggy indigestion), passionate kissing of foreheads and tumescent prose that leaves you at the edge of “the crisis” (an old-fashioned term I will explain in a post), then you may like Illyrian Spring.

I have no time to post more at the moment. Stay tuned for the next exciting installment in which urania learns the real reason ladies in Jane Austen novels liked to take the waters at Bath. This question, which has long troubled me in the wee hours between midnight and dawn, is finally answered in The Technology of Orgasm. And if that cliff-hanger doesn’t satisfy you, let go.

P.S. If I get time I will also be posting weekly updates on Adorno: Disenchantment and Ethics. For those of you who lived in horror of being sent to philosophy school, whose parents threatened to make you read Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics if you didn’t behave, I will considerately post the following message: WARNING: PHILOSOPHY

P. P. S. I had meant to write a lengthy epistle on my stay at Chateau d’Argol; however, some of my more impatient colleagues in decadence have begun in medias res, so I may or may not post. However, I will say this. The book gets five extra-large platinum stars.

P. P. S. I have just finished reading Christa Wolf’s In the Flesh. Time permitting, I will say more later. Another great book.

Mary, You are awesome!

Please forgive the mess I've made on your thread with my foolish posts.

I hope you decide to post about Argol. I would very much like to read it. My skills are inadequate to the task of analyzing this incredible book. I greatly admire your knowledge and talent in this area.

Davushka,

You have not made a mess of my thread. The discussion has been interesting, so please keep posting.

Mary,

at the risk of making a mess of your thread (echoes of Murr's incontinence), let me begin by saying "wow".

Much to think about in your post. Not qualifying as a genteel reader interested in genteel novels I know that I will not be reading Illyrian Spring, but its connectedness with the Technology of Orgasm, and the latter's connectedness with Jane Austen is revealing and somewhat frightening.

I also need your thoughts on the damned Lark, which is now a third of the way finished and I will persist with, till its glorious conclusion by the end of the week. I will post some musings today on the appropriate thread and would appreciate your wisdom and wit.

"The damned Lark"? Sacrilege. An attitude adjustment please. You know of course the picture to which the title refers?

I bow before the Great Willa, with many apologies.

And yes, I know the Breton, whose "poetic renderings of single peasant female figures in a landscape, posed against the setting sun, remained very popular, especially in the United States".

She at least has the appropriate attitude to the truly great, such as Honore.

LOL

Jules Bréton, The Song of the Lark, 1884

Did you mean this picture?

Yes David.

Davushka,

not nearly enough decadence in Cather for you. :-)

"There was scarcely a street in the neighborhood that she had not cried up and down before that winter was over. The thing that used to lie under her cheek, that sat so warmly over her heart when she glided away from the sand hills that autumn evening, was far from her. She had come to Chicago to be with it, and it had deserted her, leaving in its place a painful longing, an unresigned despair."

THAT is as decadent as we get.

Davushka,

Ignore Andrushka :-) Here's a little decadent art to make your day.

Fabulous pic. Who is the artist?

I do have great respect for Willa Cather. But this is more my style.

Happy about everything, like children, at times
People easily live their merry lives.
Oh, let them laugh! There is no joy
In looking into my souls weary night.

I will not disturb their momentary joy.
I will not open the gates of conciousness for them,
And now, in my resigned pride,
I will take the vow of great silence.

Wordlessly I pass by, I pass by,
Covering my face, into unknown distances,
Towards which I am led inexorably
By cruel and audacious sadnesses.

Zinaida Gippius 1900

translated by Kirsten Lodge

>158 urania1:, paragraph 8

Hanging on...about...to lose...my...........

I enjoyed your summary of Illyrian Spring, I daresay more than I would have enjoyed the book itself.

I, like the dangling Marise, eagerly await further news of the orgasm. Perhaps someone should lend Marise a Kindle to play with while we are waiting. I hear it has a vibrating function.

I hope you can make time for your Adorno posts. I'm very interested in this.
Now put the Kindle down and get on with it!

Holy House of Books, what a literary stimulus package of a thread, Mary.

Murr, me thinks what you have heard about the Kindle is bit a rumor at best; however, I wonder if there is a hack that allows one to download that 'app' to it. . .

Avaland (and other interested parties): I have a team of Taiwanese hackers working on it in sweatshop conditions round the clock.

If I get any results, I will let you know asap.

Holy House of Books! lol.

Urania, I just clicked on the link you posted to Dubrovnik, and am now suffering from dire pangs of missing Europe. To make up for the grevious suffering you have inflicted on me, please post something about your Adorno researches. Nothing else will console me.

( I think I'm losing my mind: I cannot for the life of me remember how to spell grevious grivious grievious is it Alzheimer's do you think?)

>173 QuentinTom: Not Alzheimer's; more likely your preoccupation with the Taiwanese hackers' vibration application. :)

Your post reminded me of the first time I saw a dildo in my life. It was on a pedestrian overpass in downtown Taipei (near the train station; probably all rebuilt now) where a tiny, beetle-nut-chewing street vendor was displaying dozens of bouncing beige plastic things on the dirty walkway. I stepped closer to see what kind of toy they were, as most of the other vendors were selling mechanical children's toys, and lo and behold: dildos on the march!

So you may have though you were joking, but actually you may be the next Vibrating Kindle tycoon. It's what we need to boost the world economy.

With apologies to urania for contributing to more mess on her very literary thread.

This has been a hugely entertaining read, especially the thread-owner's creative posts! But the spinoff jokes are a riot, too.

Urania has run off with a mysterious stranger who calls himself Kindle. Apparently, he lights her fire because no one has seen her since. In the meantime, her two ferocious Welsh terrorists are guarding the dacha.


Don't tread on us!

They are so gorgeous - and deeply ferocious ..... You really are hooked on this Kindle bloke ?

So, Dracula and The Signifying Monkey. First off, I'll say that participating in this particular exercise was probably the beginning of the end of my academic career. This pairing seemed so very arbitrary that I started to wonder about just how arbitrary literary academia was as a whole.

You probably know this, but here's the context. In The Signifying Monkey, Gates posits that African American texts essentially riff off one another - either consciously or unconsciously. He states that the act of "signifying" - essentially the act of two (or more) people insulting or goading one another on, with the insults becoming more and more elaborate - is an ingrained part of African American culture that can be traced back to African oral traditions. In African American literature, this can be seen when an author takes a metaphor, trope or theme from another author and either expands on it or tries to tear it down (i.e., Zora Neal Hurston/Alice Walker/Toni Morrison or Richard Wright/Ralph Ellison). It's all about intertextuality.

(At this point I would argue that literary allusion is littered throughout Western literature, but I digress.)

How does this relate to Stoker's Dracula? In my personal opinion, not very well. There were two tacks I took, and since I ended up passing the test they must have been acceptable. The first was that there are several texts within Dracula, and Dracula itself refers back to other texts and oral legends. Without going into gory detail (which I seemed to have blocked out of my memory anyway), I discussed how those texts "riffed" on one another.

The other tack is to look at each character as a "text" and to discuss how they relate and allude to one another. What happens to Jonathon Harker, then to Lucy, then to Mina - all relate to one another. If you see Van Helsing as the "reader" of those texts (with Jonathon as another reader, if you like), then one can look at his interpretation of each "text." To me, this all seemed awfully "meta", but I suppose it works - especially if one is into post-structuralism and/or post-modernism. I was never a big theoritician, but I suppose I could have played one on TV.

There we go. Just so you don't think the University of Minnesota is crazy, other two-book tests were not as arbitrary as mine. My husband had Dickinson's Collected Poems and Lillian Faderman's Surpassing the Love of Men. However, I must admit bypassing the Typee/Foucault test - thankfully I read Typee before committing to the test because once I read it I knew I couldn't spend 4-5 months reading it over and over again.

Aww. Lovely dogs, urania.

Talbin (and Urania):

Every now and then I am truly thankful I did not pursue academia after all. Reading the above is one of those times. I find this kind of exercise, pulling at tangents, a surefire way of destroying love of literature.

Beautiful dogs!

I love your dogs--names?

>181 arubabookwoman: aruba: The larger dog is Wilkie (a boy - he sometimes goes under the alias Mr. Bones); the little squirt is Ceilidh (a girl and my baby - she doesn't need an alias since few people know how to pronounce her name). They are both incredibly playful and full of mischief. And the added bonus - they love to snuggle :-)

>186 DavidX: The Kindle bloke is hot!!!!.

>177 Talbin: Good job. I have read both texts, but I would never have paired those two. In any case, Gates' book strikes me as fairly culture specific. Using it with an early 19th-century novel seems odd.

I don't know P, there's often a lot to be said for a sustained application of theory to a work in that it teases new meanings out if it.

#177 I don't know the Gates book you mentioned, but it seems the remark you made in your digression hit the nail on the head: intertextuality is nothing new. In fact you could say the whole of Western literature is a tissue of intertextual references.

Just a thought: isn't Gates's book a tad racist? I mean the title, for a start, and then to say that African American writers can only interact with each others work by insulting or goading each other, as if they are still in the jungle, seems quite racist to me. And why are they only reacting other AA writers, and not other canonical writers, as Bloom posits in his anxiety of influence? Maybe I not getting the point.....

What you say about Dracula is spot on: the work is very intertextual. I did a long intertextual study of it for my degree. It's a great book to apply theory to, the madder the better.

I won't continue as I fear to mess up Urania's thread with my Dracula ramblings, given what happened over on Fanny's thread, when I tried to write about Dracula. It's the curse of the vampire!

Oh write about Dracula and I'll respond. I think the intertextuality argument is spot on although my thoughts go in other directions - e.g., Carolyn Merchant's work on The Death of Nature. I like to pair it up with Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" - a masterpiece of a short story. I won't write more now. I am on a reading binge and need to write a reading log post as well.

mmm. ok. Let me try to extract the relevant bits from my notes.

1. (Here I was thinking of the way the novel -this one and novels in general- appear to transcribe reality, but are actually mediating reality through other texts.)

This intertextual mediation of reality is implicitly and explicitly present within Dracula, especially in the first four chapters, which describe in some detail the food (pp.1,5), dress (p.3), local customs (p.8), language (p.6) and some of the history (pp.28-9) of Transylvania, giving the impression of the real life of that region. In fact, Stoker never went there, so the impressions of real life are a transference of detail from one text (possibly Boner’s Transylvania of 1865) to another. Stoker inserts a brief glimpse of his own research in the British Museum (p.1). Moreover, Harker explicitly carries out an intertextual mediation by writing assiduous notes on the region he is travelling through, complete with reminders for further research: “ (Mem., get recipe for Mina)” (p.1) “(Mem., I must ask the Count all about them.)” (p.2), a process echoed by the Count’s own textual study of England (p.24), which reverses the more familiar Orientalism of Harker’s diary. The text is full of echoes of other works: the description of the interior of Carfax (p.210) echoes Great Expectations and The Castle of Otranto and Dickens is an influence for the ‘bloofer lady’, while the mountain landscape of the Carpathians echoes descriptions of the Alps in Frankenstein.

2. (In this section I was looking at the way Dracula refers to itself all the time, as internal intertextuality)

In S/Z, Barthes outlines the notion of a cultural or reference code which he describes as: “a type of knowledge, physical, physiological, medical, psychological, literary, historical etc.” . Meaning in a literary text is enriched by a more or less covert reference to this body of knowledge. In realism, Barthes supposes this body of knowledge to be external to the text in question and the reference possibly made to “other representational codes” (such as painting or the theatre. Dracula however, locates a reference code of this kind internally by the way in which the various texts which make up the novels continually cite themselves and other texts within the novel as sources of knowledge. “The rest of us have already read everything (in Harker's diary); so when we meet in the study we shall all be informed as to facts and can arrange our plan of battle…” (Dracula p.236). Like Barthes’s reference code, this internal intertextually “affords the discourse a basis in scientific or moral authority." The more internal location of this code is in part due to the fact that Dracula is more fantasy than realist. While the representational code in much 19th century literature is painting or melodrama, in Dracula it is ‘the Book’ –the novel itself. Key scenes are repeated. The break-in at Carfax (pp.249-50) is described with reference to the break-in of Lucy’s tomb (p196); both share the same elements and repeat the same order of actions by Van Helsing: opening of the door/entrance/closing of the door/checking the lock/lighting the lamps. Mina’s ‘dream’ encounter with Dracula: “a sort of pillar” with “two red eyes” (p.259) is described with reference to Lucy’s: “something long and dark with red eyes” (p.98). The repeated scene in Chapter 21, is described a third time by Mina herself (reported by Seward) (pp.287-8) in which the details she gives exactly correspond to those given by Dr Seward’s first version: “he took my hands in one of his, holding them tight, and with the other seized my neck and pressed my mouth to the wound.” (p.288). The significance of these three repeated scenes for the internal code of reference is the self-conscious way in which each one refers to its anterior version: “It was startlingly like the image conveyed to me in Dr Seward’s diary of the opening of Lucy’s tomb.” (p.249); “…such as Lucy told me of in her momentary wandering…” (p.259); “Not a detail that I can recall must be forgotten.” (p.274).

I hope this is not too detailed.... lots of cutting and pasting from my notes.

There is a great film version of "Rappaccini's Daughter" in the movie Twice Told Tales(1963) starring Vincent Price. Three of Hawthorne's tales are adapted in the film. The other two being "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" and "The House of the Seven Gables".

Coincidently, I have just finished a short story by Fyodor Sologub that is very similar to "Rappaccini's Daughter". The story is called "The Poisoned Garden" and is included in The Dedalus Book of Russian Decadence. It is based on Pushkin's poem "Anchar"(The Upas Tree).

Link to "Anchar" by A. Pushkin(tr. Yevgeny Bonver)

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/pushkin/anchar.html

Premise of "The Poisoned Garden":

A handsome youth falls in love with the beautiful daughter of a horticulturist, a descendant of the slave in Pushkin's poem who fetches the powerful poison of the Anchar for his master and then dies. The horticulturist has a sinister garden filled with poisonous flowers to which his daughter is immune. Men who come to court the beautiful daughter all die mysteriously shortly after visiting her.

P.S. Dracula is only described by others throughout the novel and has no first person narrative, which makes his character all the more mysterious and unfathomable. Stoker's use of epistolary narrative structure is indeed brilliant and masterful, as is Tom's analysis, as usual.

Ah, Murr, you have just transported me back about 18 years. Your analysis, especially in your point #2, was the basis of my essay. I never, ever would have thought I would say this, but maybe I'll read it again. And David, your point about Dracula only being described by others - I had forgotten about that.

Tom: Back at post #183 you asked if Gates' is somewhat racist. I'm sure I didn't do a very good job in my synopsis, because this is not the case. Gates is African American himself and his book is an attempt to posit a specifically African American tradition - to elevate the work in that particular canon. The signifying - which I described as a form of insulting or goading - might be a specifically American thing that isn't known in other parts of the world. (FYI - The whole "Your mama is . . ." series of escalating insults is the primary example. It's all about word play and besting your opponent - not about actually saying something specifically bad about the other person's mother. Blues and especially jazz are musical examples.) I think there are some problematic aspects to his theory as I mentioned above, but I just wanted to make sure to set the record straight vis a vis Gates and his theories.

Thanks for clarifying, Talbin.
It's interesting that in The HOuse of The Dead Dostoevsky makes the same observation about the intercourse between the prisoners: how important baroque insult was in establishing superiority, not through the violence in the language, but through the escalation and inventiveness of invective. He gives examples, too.

There's a really interesting article here on annotating Dracula.

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2009/03/16/090316crat_atlarge_acoc...

Where do you think Urania is? Do you think she has been abducted by vampires?

Well, urania was seen dancing naked last night under the worm moon (as the Naive Americans call it). I heard she's showing a marked aversion to garlic and wooden stakes and has been bugging Robbie to build a coffin bed. Poor Robbie. He's beside himself. I think he should be worried as he is rather a tasty morsel.

urania, if you are turning into a vampire, please don't forget to come and turn me into one as well. it has always been my fantasy. Think of all the reading one could get done!

I have a very sad story to share regarding Dracula. A few years ago, I found a first edition of Dracula for sale in an antique store for $100. I didn't have $100 to spend on a book at the time. I returned with the cash in hand a week or so later and much to my disappointment it was gone.

Two days ago I found a copy of the very same book for sale for over $21,000!!! And, get this, it wasn't in nearly as good condition of the one I, almost, acquired. I am inconsolable. *Uncontrollable hysterical sobbing*

I have a somewhat similar story, Davushka,

totally over-the-top hysteria

I bought a collection of children's books handprinted and handbound from a reputable dealer for thousands of dollars, which I borrowed

The books are now worth less than $100.

Who should sob more here? Booh-hooh-hooh.

(But I am alive, and healthy, and laughing at the world including myself.)

Wise words Andrushka.

As Lao Tsu said:

"He who grows attached to things will suffer much."

and:

"He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough."

Something I learned all too painfully from the real estate market.

* muffled sounds heard offstage * Either urania is sobbing over the financial tragedies of Davushka and Andrushka or she is doing something utterly depraved with Baron von Kindle. Where is urania by the way? She's been awfully quiet for a while. Perhaps we should mount a search party.

We have mounted several, but they were never seen or heard of again.

Baron von Kindle sounds ominous. Marquis de Sade, Giacomo Casanova, Encolpius...does von Kindle fit into that list?

Scary.

But perhaps Urania is enraptured in bliss.

The men snared by the Sirens died happy, dying repeatedly first, before the final death. That may be happening to our search parties as well.

Most ominous.

Has she been buried under an avalanch of TBRs? Has she been abducted forever by the evil Count D? Has she been swallowed by the folds of a voluuuuuminous crinoline? Eaten by worms?

Where oh where is she? Uraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaniaaaaa?

>197 QuentinTom: Can one be buried (literally) under an avalanche of TBRs with a Kindle? I think not.

Somewhere, on someone's thread, but obviously not this one, Urania WAS heard from, talking about seeing four plays in ?Louisville?. But just as I thought she might be rescued, and back to us, she has clearly fallen into the clutches of the evil Baron von K. again.

Search parties are less than useless. She has lost the will to resist him and may never return to us.

R.I.P.

I am not resting in peace. I have not gone gently into that good night, nor am I slouching toward Bethlehem waiting to be reborn. And I saw seven plays, not four. Eventually I will post updates including an absolutely colossal list of books over which Baron von Kindle and I have been sharing many an intimate tête-à-tête.

>175 urania1:, Awww, those ferocious beasts almost make me want a puppy. However, I believe my cats would object.

I'm eager to hear about the plays you saw, too.

DavidX:

Bravo for your enthusiasm for Gracq.

The setting of the novel is actually an imaginary amagam inspired by various places in Brittany, including the Crozon Peninsula and the forests of Broceliande and Huelgoat. Argol itself is a disappointing little town, and there is no chateau (though I have heard that, from time to time, people visit the town in search of one). Gracq just liked the name "Argol", which he discovered while reading a bus schedule.

Gracq died in 2007, by the way,and not 2005.

Also, the Louise Varese translation is the only one available in English. Someone at Pushkin revised the translation slightly, without notice, which I found to be a little odd. Even odder is the fact that Pushkin chose not to include Gracq's "Notice to the Reader". This makes no sense to me, at all.

There's nothing coldly intellectual about Gracq's style, as a whole, although I can see how reading Argol might give that impression. The narrative at times seems "cold"--"detached" would be more accurate, I think--because of the third-person, objective voice and the complete lack of any dialogue.

Urania1:

In my reading of the book, the synthesis occurs between the thesis and antithesis of Albert and Herminien, with Heide as the catalyst, and not as part of the Hegelian dialectic, proper. The synthesis takes place upon Herminien's death.

Another reading might follow Gracq's description of the book as a "demonic inversion" of the Parsifal myth.

Most illuminating. Thankyou.

A "demonic inversion" of the Parsifal myth. - That brought Argol into focus for me. Thankyou.

I'm planning to read de Troyes and Von Eschenbach
and then go back for a reread of Chateau de Argol...eventually.

Your name means "evil spirit" and is also the name of an evil sorcerer in the Clark Ashton Smith/H.P. Lovecraft mythos.

Also, your profile has no books catalogued which is highly suspect.

If you are a malevolent spirit and are haunting Mary's thread, I must warn you that I am very well connected in the spirit world. I channel Emmanuel Swedenborg frequently and I would do anything to protect Mamushka.

If you come in peace. I must say you have a cool name there.

I wonder if you are actually Mary posting incognito because your post is absolutely brilliant.

In any case, thankyou for the information about Gracq and your astute and extremely helpful observations.

Je vous salue

Hello.

I just joined Library Thing to be able to comment on a couple of Gracq threads here. My "evil" persona appears in "The Chapel of the Abyss" thread, lol.

One day, I may get 'round to cataloging books here, and such, but I was just pleased to see some discussions of Gracq. In the meantime, I am glad that you found my brief comments to be useful.

Try A Dark Stranger next. It's superficially much more mundane than Argol, and it certainly has its problems as a novel, but it contains, in my opinion, some of Gracq's very best prose poetry, and is my favorite work of his.

It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Sir. Please allow me to say thank you once again and apologize for being suspicious. There has been a lot of clandestine activity around LT lately and the atmosphere is rather Macbethish at present.

I will pick up a copy of A Dark Stranger asap. I hope to get to all of Gracq's translated works eventually.

Carnamagos,

An interesting remark about the nature of the Hegelian dialectic in Chateau d'Argol. I need to think about it some more. I am still inclined to stick to my original comment although I do not think I have clearly worked through my argument myself, let alone on these posts.

Urania1,

Here, in a little more detail, is my reading of The Castle of Argol according to the "demonic inversion of Parsifal" theme that Gracq suggests.

Dramatis personae:

The Castle of Argol= Montsalvat.

Albert= Pure, intellectual, and chaste; an inversion of the corrupt, wounded Amfortas, the keeper of the Grail.

Herminien= Dark and scheming; Mephistophelian; an inversion of pure-hearted Parsifal.

Heide= Also pure and virginal; an inversion of the "fallen" Kundry.

Heide, like Kundry in the "Parsifal" tale, catalyzes the dialectical relations between Albert and Herminien.

With Herminien's complicity (the attack on Heide), Albert discovers his "shadow side". His parallel attack upon Heide precipitates her suicide. Albert then kills Herminien in order to assimilate Herminien's dark nature and to become more complete. By acquiring forbidden knowledge through transgression, Albert simultaneously "falls" and "rises". (See Albert's reflections on the myth of the Fall from the Hegelian perspective in Chapter One, "Argol".)

Albert then becomes "Albert raised to the second power", if you like. This more complete "Hegelian" figure is the "ange glorieux et tenebreux" to which the text refers in the chapter entitled "La Cimitiere".

Also, instead of finding the Grail, healing the Fisher-King's wound, and offering the closure of redemption, the Grail remains undiscovered, and the "wound", as it were, remains open. The quest for the Grail takes the form of endless self-overcoming and transcendence through dialectic. For Gracq, I think, possession of the Grail results in stasis and living death.

That's just one basic reading of the text's schema, of course, but it's the one that's most convincing, to me. On the other hand, Catherine Clement (and, I imagine, others) supports your reading, as Clement refers to the three characters as "les trois temps de la dialectique".

Carnamagos,

Your argument is good; however, I question your initial characterization of Albert. Albert is already aware, if only dimly, of his shadow side as he travels to the Castle of Argol. Consider, for example, his journey to the castle, his first entry into the castle. It strikes me as an example of the Gothic sublime, sublimity through awe and terror. Albert's cold intellectualism is already corrupt and frightening. It mirrors the coldness of death meted out by cold intellectuals. Human lives, their existence, their pleasures, and pain, do not move the cold intellectual.

Your perspective is interesting, certainly, but I think that I would characterize Albert differently.

First, your interpretation makes inferential leaps about Albert's character based upon what appear to be your own personal values, but I do not see much objective evidence in the text for your reading.

Rather, underlying Albert's cold surface detachment is a passionate desire to unravel a "Hegelian" mystery. I would add that Gracq finds characters who seem cold on the surface, but who underneath are highly passionate, to be quite fascinating, and they recur in his fiction. See, for instance, Allan and Christel in A Dark Stranger.

I also know from personal experience that some women, at least, find Gracq's idealized male figures, such as Albert and Allan, to be very off-putting. For instance, an ex-girlfriend of mine found the character of Allan so distasteful that, despite my enthusiastic recommendations, she would not even finish reading A Dark Stranger! Men seem to react differently to these characters. I have no idea why.

Second, "awareness" of one's shadow-side is not the same as positively integrating it into oneself, which I still argue is the "Hegelian aim" of the novel, as well as the significance of the reference to doubling and of the phrase "ange glorieux et tenebreux".

As an anti-humanist, my own bias finds your last sentence--which I gather is supposed to be an indictment--to be instead a desirable, or at least a neutral, perspective. My personal view is that we spend far too much time in the "human aquarium", in the social arena, and far too little time outside it. Argol, describing as it does an experiment in "elective affinities" by a self-selected elite, takes a step outside the normal social aquarium, in my eyes, and that is all to the good. Of course, I can also see the reasons why such a view would not appeal to the reading public at large.

Finally, the following passage from Gracq's essay on Balzac's Beatrix applies very much to Argol, as well--to the point where it appears that Argol may be Gracq's response to Balzac. Forgive my very rough English translation, but, so far as I know, there is no other English rendering of this text:

"The three characters enclose themselves at Touches. Not only do we witness here the unfolding of a naked double drama of fascination involving the woman fallen through her purity, and the fascination exercised upon the chaste hero by a dark angel, but also a passion, raised to an previously unknown temperature, that tends to strip each one of his or her individual character, and, one might say, to objectify them, to the point where a collective delirium is reached--a veritable panic--which then becomes something akin to a common milieu as indispensable to the life of the soul as air is to earthly life ...". (from "Beatrix de Bretagne", collected in Preferences, Jose Corti, 1961).

So, it is a mistake, I think, to read Argol as a conventional novel with conventional characterization, conventional character development, and as inviting conventional moralizing. One does much better to read it as a prose poem and as a surreal, philosophical allegory, Gothic in setting and tone, that is based upon an inverted reading of the Parsifal myth, and whose characters simultaneously represent individuals, ideas, and forces.

Thanks very much for the interesting thread and dialogue. I don't think that I shall have much to add to this particular debate, so feel free to take the last word, if you like.

I grant your point that one should not read Chateau d'Argol as a conventional novel. Moreover, if I read you correctly, I do approach this novel from a humanist perspective. I would, however, argue that at least one useful purpose (not the only one by any means) of thought experiments is to provide one with an opportunity for critique (not criticism) of ideologies. From critique, a person may very well move on to ethical objections to the particular philosophy/ideology. So, yes, I do think texts like those of Graqc's are important. "Stepping outside the normal social aquarium" does not preclude value judgments. It provides one with a laboratory for testing/questioning one's own ideologies. Does this mean I think all novels should be didactic? No. However, I infer from your comment - "it is a mistake, I think, to read Argol as a conventional novel with conventional characterization, conventional character development, and as inviting conventional moralizing" - that you characterize me as one who demands didacticism in art. I am committed to a hermeneutics of suspicion. I hope you return to the thread. I would be interested in continuing the conversation about humanist and anti-humanist stances - which it seems to me Chateau d'Argol has provided a useful springboard . . . that is if you care to continue the conversation.

Okay, here are my humble thoughts on Argol and this discussion of humanism vs. anti-humanism.

Albert, Herminien, and Heide all strike me as humanists(free thinkers) who have rejected conventional moral dogma and are on an inner quest to form their own moral and ethical ideas.

Gracq, I think, is using the novel to represent the dilemma of the modern human attempting to form their own ideas about ethics and morality in the new frontier beyond conventional ideas of good and evil.

The swimming scene seems like a fire test of sorts to me. Albert, Herminien, and Heide overcome fear and egoism in a moment of self transcendance. They return to shore transformed and emerge from the sea into uncharted moral territory.

From this point the three of them go different directions in their quests. Herminien chooses the dark side of human nature, Heide chooses the light side of human nature, Albert unifies the two principles and breaks the bonds of conventional morality becoming free and one with his own nature rather than choosing to be good or evil, thus transcending dualism.

I am reminded of Neitzche and Ernst Junger and even Lao Tsu, whom I have read. I must read Hegel to properly understand all this.

I have likely oversimplified or completely misunderstood. I am just thinking out loud attempting to wrap my head around all this.

I feel we have gone too far from shore, beyond the point of no return. Can we swim back to shore and will it be the same shore we left or a new unfamiliar shore?

I think there is a dichotomy of aesthetic ideas at play as well as a moral one here. I will have to think more about this.

One thing is certain. This is no conventional, or ordinary novel.

>210 Carnamagos: an Anti Humanist?! Wow, I have never seen one of those before, unless they are the clerical or fundamentalist sorts, and you seem from your posts to be far too intelligent to be one of those.

Solitude is sometimes best society.
Milton

Antihumanism on Wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antihumanism

It says Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser coined the term "antihumanism".

Interestingly it also says Roland Barthes condemned Althusser.

This subject will definitely require further study and discussion.

Davushka,

The article on wiki does not provide a good characterization of humanism or anti-humanism. It lacks nuance and exhibits gross generalizations imo. I'll see if I can find something better.

urania1:

Thank you for your invitation to continue the dialogue. I did not mean to bow out of it prematurely, but I also did not want to seem contentious.

Before addressing your most recent post, let me go back to one of my previous posts, for a moment. Looking back at it, when I wrote about Albert's "discovering" his shadow-side, that was a poor choice of words, and you were right to take me to task for it. I hope that my subsequent post expressed better what I intended.

With the phrase "anti-humanist", I have once again not expressed myself as precisely as I should have. As others here have noted, that phrase is associated with the likes of Althusser and Foucault, and my thought is, at most, a very distant third cousin to theirs.

What I really mean is that I am "anti-anthropocentric". I loathe anthropocentrism. Post-Structuralists pay lip-service to "de-centering the human subject", but I take the matter very seriously, and, for me, it is not just an intellectual or literary game. Indeed, as a "thought-experiment", it is one of the most valuable and revealing ones that I have ever undertaken. Through it, I have learned, among other things, that humans as a species must have been what Kipling intended to satirize via the Bandar-Log!

With regard to Gracq, in particular, his Argol seems to me relevant to anti-anthropocentrism in at least two ways: First, in that it creates a sort of total environment, and second, in that it de-emphasizes the importance and autonomy of the human characters. The castle and the natural surroundings seem as alive, as much a set of "characters", as Albert and the rest. Indeed, the latter are firmly embedded in, and influenced by, these non-human presences. See, again, the excerpt from Gracq's essay on Balzac that I provided, above. Gracq once used the phrase "the human plant" to designate this embeddedness and reciprocal influence.

On the other hand, when I read Argol, I am also reminded of a superb passage by the Shropshire novelist Mary Webb, which is very relevant here:

"For it does not seem that Nature, as some divines would have us think, was built to stage man's miracle plays, or created as an illustration of his various religions. Nature takes no account of man and his curious arts, his weird worships, but remains dark and unresponsive, beetling upon him as he creeps, ant-like, from his momentary past to his doubtful future, painfully carrying his tiny load of knowledge. But indifference is not hampering, as interference is; therefore those that feel within them the stir of a growing soul prefer the dour laws of earth to the drag of the herd of mankind, and fly from the house of man to the forest, where the emotionless silence always seems to be gathering, as waves mount and swell, to the disclosure of a mystery".

There is a definite tension in the novel, and in Gracq's thought, between an updated variant of the 19th-Century Romantic idea of attunement between man and nature, on the one hand, and nature's representing mysterious and incomprehensible forces that indirectly and indifferently guide human destiny, on the other.

Indeed, part of the enigma and the tragedy of the novel stems from the characters' inconsistency in the interpretation of their environment. At certain times, the latter seems attuned to and reflective of the "human characters' " desires and emotional states, and at other times it seems irremediably alien, opaque, and "other". Gracq's subsequent work, such as The Opposing Shore and Balcony in the Forest, explores the effects of larger forces upon human endeavor, and emphasizes the puniness of the latter, in comparison.

Further, as I mentioned before, one radical aspect of Gracq's book is the way that the "human characters" function simultaneously as individuals, as forces of nature, and as embodiments of abstract ideas. How well the characters succeed in balancing these three aspects remains uncertain. The implication is that Albert does so, but the matter is far from settled.

I would add that the setting of Argol, and the castle, in particular, is more like an amplifier or a hothouse for the cultivation of extreme states than it is a mere Gothic topos. (I suspect that Gracq may have distantly in mind de Sade's Château de Silling).

So, to conclude these slightly disjointed observations, I did not mean to imply that you advocated didacticism. I was just using what I had to work with, so to speak. Your focus upon Albert's character, and your negative interpretation of it, led to me to follow the line of thought that I did in my previous post.

P.S. I've been re-reading this thread in order to get my bearings again. A belated brava to you for liking The Mysteries of Udolpho, and even more so for teaching it.

DavidX:

The three characters are certainly "humanists" in the sense that you mean (i.e., free-thinkers who are not enslaved by religious ideology), but they not humanists in the sense that I mean (i.e., believers that everything is reducible to the human, that "man is the measure of all things", and that the social sphere is and must always be paramount).

As for the summary in the fifth paragraph of your last post, it is not over-simplified, at all, and, although I might quibble a bit with your specific terms (I do not believe in "human nature"), I think that you are completely correct.

tomcatMurr:

It's good to see a Hoffmann reader here. Gracq was very fond of, and much influenced by, the German Romantics. (I realize that Hoffmann's relationship to the German Romantics is complex and problematic, but we can let that fact slide, for the moment.)

Anyway, no, I am certainly not a religious fundamentalist of any kind! I hope that my brief remarks, above, in reply to urania1 have better explained my perspective.

Yes indeed they have. The anti-anthropocentric argument makes more sense than the anti humanist argument, at least to me. The Mary Webb quote (a new author for me) reminds me of this from Hoffmann's Kater Murr:

Nature is cruel, she cares only for her healthy children and abandons the sick, she even turns deadly weapons on them. Ah, you know that once Nature was nothing to me but a picture gallery set up to exercise the powers of mind and hand, but then she changed, so that now I feel and guess at nothing but her horrors. ...

I have not read the Gracq under discussion, but I am following the thread with great interest.

Urania, I am interested in knowing more about anti humanism, so I'm looking forward to reading what you come up with for us! :)

Antianthropocentricism makes sense to me as well and I'm not even a cat like Murr. We are all animals after all.

Wonderful qoute. Mary Webb is new to me also.

Human nature was a poor choice of words. I'm glad you understood what I was trying to articulate anyway.

Speaking of de Sade, Albert's liberation from the dualism of good and evil reminds me of de Sade's wonderful diatribes against conventional morality in The 120 Days of Sodom.

This conversation is certainly interesting and stimulating. Many things are racing through my mind.

Carnamagos,

Thank you for returning to thread! Your latest contribution to the Gracq discussion is insightful and thought provoking. I am sorry I did not reply sooner. I spent yesterday thinking about your post

Your clarification of your definition of anti-humanism as anti-anthropocentric helps me understand your position better. Humanism is a word thrown about so loosely these days that one is never sure exactly what others mean when they use the term or its opposite. I identify myself as a humanist in response to particular assumptions (mistaken assumptions to me) built into post-structuralism. I do, however, agree with your comment, “Post-structuralists pay lip-service to ‘de-centering the human subject,’ but I take the matter very seriously, and, for me, it is not just an intellectual or literary game.” I also share your antipathy to anthropocentrism (insofar as a human can).

Post-structuralist criticism has provided me with some useful tools for thinking about the world. However, I do think post-structuralists need to move beyond “just gaming,” toward praxis. I share your desire to break out of the anthropocentric box, which has become an iron cage of knowledge. Horkheimer and Adorno gesture in this direction in Dialectic of the Enlightenment, in their discussion of the disenchantment of the world and the problems of putting man over/against nature. However, I think their project fails (and more specifically Adorno’s project fails) because they take “man as the measure of all things” for granted. Your latest post elegantly targets this issue. While reading Chateau d’Argol I remember noting to myself how the castle and the natural surroundings seemed alive. Thank you for reminding me of this issue. I am not familiar with the de Sade text you cite (I must track it down), but I have read many of Mary Webb’s novels. Your quotation from The House in Dormer Forest is apt.

A former professor of mine and I still argue vehemently about ethical projects that fail to account for the environment/the natural world. He follows the traditional line, which makes human language necessary for ethical debate. He would argue that the natural world cannot speak; it cannot represent itself; nor can we (re)present it. Hence it only enters into ethical debates or discussions of Dasein in a peripheral way. While I agree that we cannot speak for nature, our failure to recognize it as something other than a force to be controlled is a fatally flawed stance and threatens human survival -- not that our survival in a certain sense matters other than to us). The planet will go on (at least until our sun novas) quite well (perhaps better) without us.

Finally, I will end with what is perhaps a rather mundane and overly sappy experience of my own, which occurred many years ago and illustrated rather bluntly to me some of the issues I have discussed. I was living in the country (I still do) at the time. One night/early morning (it was well after midnight), I heard something go bump in the night. I went to the back porch, which overlooked a large field and turned on the floodlights. The meadow was filled with hundreds of rabbits munching on clover and grass. They froze for an instant, the floodlight reflecting in their eyes, and then calmly continued eating. At this moment, I keenly realized that nature, communities of animals, insects, etc., functioned alongside what I thought of as “my world”; I was utterly “other” in the world, my thoughts and the personal drama of my life at the time mattered not one whit. I was truly the de-centered subject. At the same time, I experienced what I think might be a moment of re-echantment. I hope my description doesn’t come off as too mystical and “new agey” here. I am using the best words I can think of to describe the situation and the moment of insight I gained from the experience.

Urania

P. S. Are you familiar with Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis? Bacon presents his New Atlantis as utopia. Unfortunately we have, in many ways, realized his dream and it is a nightmare.

Many thanks for all your replies.

Having gotten halfway through a detailed response, I managed to make one of those magical and mysterious mis-strokes of the keyboard that accidentally deleted and eliminated my entire response. I am just too tired and dispirited to try to re-create it, today, at any rate; my apologies!

Carnamagos,

I know the feeling. The same thing has happened to me. As I result, whenever I think I am likely to write a long response, I type it in a word document first and then copy it as a message. I am sorry you are feeling dispirited. I hope tomorrow is a better day for you.

Thanks, urania1, for the kind words. Your advice about securing more detailed posts is good. I've done what you suggest before, but I ought to do it more often. Anyway, let's try again, and hope for better luck, this time!

tomcatMurr:

I am glad that my later words seemed to make a bit better sense!

The Hoffmann quotation you offer is certainly apt. It has always chafed me that so many view the Romantics as being stereotypically naive nature-worshippers. The Romantics had a much more complex view of nature than most commonly allow. Gracq, as well as others who form the "prehensile tail" of Romanticism do, as well.

DavidX:

If you like complex and poetic evocations of nature, then you might enjoy Mary Webb's works. Her embodiments of Shropshire have done more to make me want to visit that part of the world than Housman's far more famous poem!

And, yes, as I mentioned, I suspect that there is a little bit of Sadean libertinage lurking behind the walls of Argol.

urania1:

No need to apologize for your delay in replying. All of us--I hope!--have lives off line, and I am flattered that my meanderings fed your ruminations.

We certainly agree about the major points that you raise. For instance, your comment about Adorno is accurate. Adorno seemed to yearn for a counter-Enlightenment. Whenever he bumped into a 20th-Century embodiment of it, however--for instance, the Dionysian flavor of jazz, or the irrational soundings of Surrealism--his reaction was invariably hostile. Marcuse was, in this regard, much more open and radical, but he, too, was a prisoner of the "human aquarium".

My impression of Post-Structuralism is that it imposes a different set of grids, but, in the end, it shuts out just as much light. The pattern-making obsession simply takes a different form. Anti-anthropocentrists recognize these fallacies, and endeavor to escape from them. In a sense, Nietzsche is our "patron saint", and not merely because of his concept of the Superhuman, or even because his stressing of the Dionysian seems far more full-blooded, and consequently sincere, than that of his Post-Structuralist epigones and their endless toying with "texts". It is also because he lays bare so ruthlessly all the human projections onto things, and invites the rest of us to build upon his work.

So, when it comes to the Post-Structuralists, I'd much rather go to the source, as Nietzsche, for me, contains all of the essentials without any of the dross or pretentious intellectualized encrustations.

Another facet of the anti-anthropocentric, for me, is what I'd call, for lack of a better term, the cosmic perspective. Such a perspective appears in the "sidereal poetry" of George Sterling and Clark Ashton Smith (it is to Ashton Smith that I owe the phrase "the human aquarium"), as well as in the horror fiction and the letters of H.P Lovecraft.

Of course, such a perspective did not begin with the 20th Century, or even with the age of telescopes. See, for instance, some remarkable passages in Marcus Aurelius's Meditations:

"Observe the courses of the stars as if revolving with them and reflect upon the continuous changes of the elements into one another; for impressions such as these are for cleansing the filth of earth-bound life".

"You have the power to strip away many superfluous troubles located wholly in your judgment, and to possess a large room for yourself embracing in thought the whole cosmos, to consider everlasting time, to think of the rapid change in the parts of each thing, of how short it is from birth until dissolution, and how the void before birth and that after dissolution are equally infinite.

Marcus's Stoic predecessor Seneca was more succinct, but no less eloquent:

"Infinitely swift is the flight of time … Everything slips into the same abyss … The time which we spend in living is but a point, even less than a point".

"Place before your mind’s eye the vast spread of time’s abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our so-called human life with infinity".

"As the mind wanders among the very stars it delights in laughing at the mosaic floors of the rich and at the whole earth with all its gold".

Finally, this excerpt from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot, though still a bit sentimental in parts for my taste, nicely hammers home the point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M.

(Forgive me for subjecting you to the music!)

As for Gracq, his writing, while not overtly cosmic, none the less in its way beautifully de-centers the "human plant" and places it into the context of far greater forces. Through reading a poet--and I do not hesitate to label him so--such as Gracq, we can similarly expand our perceptions.

Oh, and as to your "vision": No need to apologize for "mysticism"--you're speaking to an admirer of Meister Eckhart, here! I think that the experience you describe reflects precisely the sort of expansion that I mentioned earlier. The aim, from my perspective, is to make such perceptions the rule, rather than the exception, for the evidence is all about us, if we merely awaken to it.

(P.S. I am afraid that I have only heard of The New Atlantis. All utopias are someone's nightmare, I think!)

It is a great honor and pleasure to have discourse with such brilliant people. Thank you.

Carnamagos,

The two key philosophers with whom I think all post-modern philosophers dance will they or nil they are Nietzsche and his predecessor Kant. One can be sitting quietly in a coffee shop reading philosophy, look up, and there, uninvited, stands one or the other or both - if both, then glaring at one another (although I cannot quite imagine Kant glaring – he was just too regular).

That said, I think I will take the conversation here a bit further afield – related or perhaps not to Gracq. As someone interested in questions of human agency, I find Nietzsche interesting for he at once seems to open up possibilities for human agency and simultaneously foreclose on those same possibilities. Forgive me, if I focus unduly on human agency here. Alas, I am human, all too human. I would be interested to read your thoughts on the matter.

P.S.
As for Kant (whom I would guess you do not like), I would say that human agency is such a dreary business with him, one would prefer not to have it at all.

Well, I maybe can kill the proverbial two birds with one stone by bringing Gracq into the picture, as well:

"...(P)erhaps it is only in the rut that he traces for himself to the extent that (man) feels free. What does he say to his first love? 'You were destined for me and it has happened this way. It was bound to be so'. ... Man cannot perhaps feel himself really free except in those rare moments of his life which seem to him as if they may have been the object of prophecies".

(from A Dark Stranger)

Not having read A Dark stranger (which I will certainly do), my comment must necessarily be decontextualized. The quotation you cite above presents a version of human agency so radically attenuated as to be virtually non-existent. Is this how you read the comment? Do you agree with the comment? It matches Nietzsche at his most pessimistic. However, it doesn't match Nietzsche at other moments (his more idealistic moments). Would you care to elaborate?

I think that the Gracq quotation matches Nietzsche, in that Nietzsche believes (as I do) in the existence of varying types of life, which are defined, or at least recognized, through the different values they embody. One is most free, it seems, when one is most oneself (Ipsissimus). What one is, however, is pre-determined, to some extent. By what, of course, no one knows.

There is another passage in A Dark Stranger to the effect of (I am quoting/semi-paraphrasing from memory here), "Irene was perfumed, and in the way I prefer for her: violently. The secret of real genius is the full embodiment of what our temperaments are fated to produce".

As for more general questions of "human agency", part of the problem in discussing this question is that I do not believe in a unitary species known as "the human race", and I am violently allergic to over-inclusive pronouns ("we", "our", "us"). One can discuss only individual agency, which is so varied that it cannot yield valid generalizations.

I do believe that the majority of people are mere reactive automata who have learned to mimic consciousness and other such attributes. This belief tends not to endear me to many people! :-P

A book that I have not read, but which sounds very interesting, by the way, is T.K. Seung's Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. My understanding is that Seung reads Nietzsche's book through a Spinozist lens, and that his reading reinforces the notion that Nietzsche is, indeed, a determinist.

I do believe that the majority of people are mere reactive automata who have learned to mimic consciousness and other such attributes. This belief tends not to endear me to many people! :-P

I agree, but I would call this misanthropic humanism, not anti-humanism.

I don't see the humanistic aspect, myself, and I am not really a misanthrope, since I don't care enough about people, in the main, to hate them. In any case, quibbling over terminology matters far less than agreement about the substance.

By the way, Hoffmann, as you are aware, knew a thing or two about automata!

Will post later. My modem is acting up. Stay tuned until Monday or Tuesday.

Carnamagos:

Several questions?

You write "As for more general questions of "human agency", part of the problem in discussing this question is that I do not believe in a unitary species known as 'the human race.''

1. If you do not believe “in a unitary species known as the human race,” what term would you substitute? Where would you place yourself?
2. How are you defining consciousness?
3. How close or distant is your position to that of deep ecologists (a broad characterization I’ll admit)?
4. Finally if you don’t care enough about human to hate them, is there anything about which you do care?

Some comments (but only if I am reading your argument correctly)

I am a little curious about your next statement: "I do believe that the majority of people are mere reactive automata who have learned to mimic consciousness and other such attributes.

While I would be willing to grant that many people do not seem to think about they are doing but merely do it without question, the term "automata" seems to take the argument a bit further than I would be willing to go and to open up some rather nasty cans of worms, i.e., valuing some human life more than others. If one grants that anti-anthropocentrism is a superior stance, it appears to me that a logical extension of this argument would go as follows: the human species is one among many species and as such is no more or less valuable than any other species. I would like to focus on the "no less valuable" part of my last statement. For example, just as I would argue the effective genocide of the buffalo in this country was a big mistake (ecosystems being sensitive), so I would argue that the destruction of groups of people is a mistake (for biodiversity’s sake at a bare minimum—although I would go further than the “bare minimum argument).

I would argue that a certain amount of determinism does not preclude human agency. Moreover, even a failure to act without thinking demonstrates a certain kind of agency. I may choose not to examine my own actions, or I may choose to subject them to rigorous scrutiny. Since choice is involved, then agency, however limited, occurs. Hence, it seems that your statement about automata is extreme. Does agency exist elsewhere? I would argue that other animals also exhibit agency. A lot of recent research supports this argument, which to me suggests our current relationships with other animals are disturbing at the very least.

If, on the other hand, the universe is a determinist one as you argue, then you, I, “the human automata” you disdain cannot do other than we do. And even if we could, would it matter? Of what value would thinking outside the box of anthropocentrism be in a determinist universe?

Finally, I would be interested to read an interpretation of Nietzsche read through a Spinozan lens.

Urania1:

To answer your questions briefly, and, I am sure, inadequately:

1.a. For convenience's sake, I would say "humanoid", for now, since that word, inadequate as it is, at least stresses likeness, and not complete identity.

1b. I am a minor mutation.

"Humanity", by the way, is a concept like any other. There is no indisputable proof that it reflects an empirical reality. Concepts are creations. Individuals create concepts, and individuals can destroy them.

2. I am defining consciousness simply as awareness of what one is doing, and as the consistent ability to recognize and resist stimuli. Nietzsche mentioned this last quality as the marker of a higher type of individual, and I agree with him.

I would add that mountains of scientific evidence are accumulating which document automatic behavior in individuals, albeit mostly focused for now on the Pavlovian realm of consumer behavior. I see no reason, however, to doubt that observations about such behavior are generalizable, and I look forward to the day when scientists have both the insight and the courage to conduct broader studies of the subject. For instance, we need more studies along the lines of Milgram's obedience experiments, but adapted to automatic behavior.

3. I have almost nothing in common with the deep ecologists. Geo-centrism, to me, is as silly as anthropocentrism.

4. Of course, there are things about which I care. Human beings en masse simply do not happen to be one of them.

Some lives are worth more than others, according to a given set of values. Of course, those values vary.

Of course, there are degrees of determinism. My point is exactly that we do not know how far these degrees extend, or what causes them. It is not a simple question of all-or-nothing.

For a further discussion of the "mimicry" argument, see Jurij Moskvitin's Essay on the Origin of Thought.

The difficulty with your ecological argument from my perspective is that we can never fully predict the consequences of such events. That said, there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that a significant reduction in the size of the human population would be beneficial, in the longer term. Of course, by "beneficial", I mean "beneficial according to my own values", which are very much in the minority, so much so as to be absurdly inconsequential.

Your observation that I "disdain" human automata is an inference on your part. I never made such a statement. Mine is simply an observation, one that I base upon experience. Of course, I do not think that such a state is a good thing, but again, I am not under any illusion that what I think matters at all in the larger scheme.

If, by "agency", you merely mean "capable of action, even on a simple stimulus-response basis", then of course human creatures have agency. I thought you had something in mind that involves consciousness and choice.

In conclusion, people can poke holes in others' arguments and and world-views, and raise doubts ad infinitum, especially in discussions such as these. This is because we are trying to discuss in a very limited space subjects about which entire multi-volume treatises could be, and no doubt have been, devoted--none of which, I might add, offer a satisfactory resolution.

By contrast, I just came here to talk about Gracq! Granted, I made additional observations, but I never intended to decouple them completely from Gracq's work.

Also, I have found through experience that, precisely because of their complexity and their incapability of resolution, these sorts of discussions almost always degenerate into point-scoring contests. I have better things to do with my time than that, and I have no doubt that you do, as well, so I'll leave my last word on this subject to Clark Ashton Smith:

"All human thought, all science, all religion, is the holding of a candle to the night of the universe”.

Whether it is even worthwhile to bother holding a candle is for the individual to decide, assuming that such a creature exists.

Myself, I don't mind lifting my little candle to the night, as I need no comforting philosophical illusions about my individual autonomy, about my "free will", or about the meaning or significance of my actions in order to function. Still less do I need to believe that the "race" or species to which I ostensibly "belong" has any cosmic significance. I just lift the candle because I want to do it, for whatever reason, or for no reason, at all.

In many mystic traditions it is said that people are not born with a complete soul. The goal of life is to develop that soul to completeness (i.e.enlightenment).

I would agree that we are all subject to outside influences which determine our actions, or perhaps reactions would be more accurate. I do not agree that it is impossible to act independently of these influences.

Most people are sleep walking through life reacting to outside influences selfishly and stupidly. The image of a herd of buffalo being stampeded over a cliff to their deaths comes to mind, as does the french revolution.

However, through free will it is possible, in my opinion, although rare, to break free of outside influences and act independently.

I think individuals who are able to break free of outside influences are capable of independent actions which have a profound influence on other individuals and groups of individuals.

This is nothing new. For myself, I find much more useful wisdom in ancient religion and philosophy than I do in post modern philosophy, which for my money is, for the most part, a lot of mental masturbation carried on by smug intellectuals.

I do see much that is useful in Foucault's studies of history(if he can be called post modern). perhaps the usefulness of post modern philosophy is in breaking free of the illusions wo/mankind has created for him/herself to return to a natural state in which reality is percieved directly without the filter of preconceived concepts. In Taoism this is called the stillpoint of Tao.

I think our friend Albert has achieved such a state at the end of Argol.

Carnamagos,

I hope you did not infer from my post that I wished to score points. Such a course of action is not one of my goals or joys in life.