tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post3255607009441683485..comments2024-03-28T08:37:58.136+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: Out of the mouth of the old orderRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-67852845912791837542010-05-10T20:01:15.641+02:002010-05-10T20:01:15.641+02:00I love love love that Wallace Stevens poem. That e...I love love love that Wallace Stevens poem. That eternally surprising man!Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-74761890459845828072010-05-10T03:50:14.242+02:002010-05-10T03:50:14.242+02:00The Woman That Had More Babies Than That
by Wallac...The Woman That Had More Babies Than That<br />by Wallace Stevens<br /><br />I<br />An acrobat on the border of the sea<br />Observed the waves, the rising and the swell<br />And the first line spreading up the beach; again,<br />The rising and the swell, the preparation<br />And the first line foaming over the sand; again,<br />The rising and the swell, the first line’s glitter,<br />Like a dancer’s skirt, flung round and settling down.<br />This was repeated day by day. The waves<br />Were mechanical, muscular. They never changed,<br />They never stopped, a repetition repeated<br />Continually—There is a woman has had<br />More babies than that. The merely revolving wheel<br />Returns and returns, along the dry, salt shore.<br />There is a mother whose children need more than that.<br />She is not the mother of landscapes but of those<br />That question the repetition on the shore,<br />Listening to the whole sea for a sound<br />Of more or less, ascetically sated<br />By amical tones.<br />The acrobat observed<br />The universal machine. There he perceived<br />The need for a thesis, a music constant to move.<br /><br />II<br />Berceuse, transatlantic. The children are men, old men,<br />Who, when they think and speak of the central man,<br />Of the humming of the central man, the whole sound<br />Of the sea, the central humming of the sea,<br />Are old men breathed on by a maternal voice,<br />Children and old men and philosophers,<br />Bald heads with their mother’s voice still in their ears.<br />The self is a cloister full of remembered sounds<br />And of sounds so far forgotten, like her voice,<br />That they return unrecognized. The self<br />Detects the sound of a voice that doubles its own,<br />In the images of desire, the forms that speak,<br />The ideas that come to it with a sense of speech.<br />The old men, the philosophers, are haunted by that<br />Maternal voice, the explanation at night.<br />They are more than parts of the universal machine.<br />Their need in solitude: that is the need,<br />The desire, for the fiery lullaby.<br />...<br /><br />And a couple of songs, if I may, for your trip.<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57-CU2VKijM<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqZ7HaE5KWU<br /><br />AmieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-87221602922023916432010-05-10T03:38:17.640+02:002010-05-10T03:38:17.640+02:00hey, just read the above post on your heading West...hey, just read the above post on your heading West to a secret destination and fleeing all responsibilities, way! <br />I wish I had some suggestions for the trip - could you consider a detour to the Canyon de Chelly?<br /><br />Nor do I have any great suggestions for this post, though I did mention the SK text Solomon's Dream. I thought of it because of the questions in the post of fathers and sons, servants and fairies. <br /><br />Solomon's Dream does of course refer to fathers and sons but there are lots of goings on in the short text. Inheritance(s) and generation(s), memory and forgetting, judgement and guilt, nightmare and trauma, confession and secrets, omnipotence and impotence....<br /><br />In recounting the (hi)story of Solomon and David, the narrator does not say a word of the mother. Not a word of Bathsheba.<br /><br />Soren Kierkegaard hardly mentioned his mother in all of his writing. Anne Lund Kierkegaard was apparently not well-educated and a servant in the household of the merchant Michael Pederson Kierkegaard before she became his second wife shortly after the death of the first one, and gave birth to a boy four months after their marriage.<br /><br />Elsewhere, in the famous passages of Fear and Trembling, SK writes of Abraham's terrible secret re the sacrifice of his son Isaac. He would like to tell Isaac. "First and foremost, he [Abraham] does not say anything, and in that form he says what he has to say. His response to Isaac is in the form of irony, for it is always irony when I say something and still do not say anything."<br /><br />So Abraham doesn't need to say anything, even say without saying "ironically", to Sarah. Not a word to or of the mother then. Let's not be too sure. As SK also "knew" when he wrote of repetition. Or while writing Solomon's dream.<br /><br />I'm going to cut short this comment, though let me wish you a great trip. And I'm going to quote a poem in a second comment as it wouldn't fit in this one.<br /><br />AmieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-2336692629137955352010-05-09T17:20:39.510+02:002010-05-09T17:20:39.510+02:00Amie, any suggestions you'd make are welcome! ...Amie, any suggestions you'd make are welcome! I have an idea that the thread I have in mind here is going to be particularly tortuous.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-83457756867415260302010-05-08T05:57:42.140+02:002010-05-08T05:57:42.140+02:00oops, I mean't of course SK, Kierkegaard's...oops, I mean't of course SK, Kierkegaard's text Solomon's Dream. <br /><br />AmieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-7560832678184099432010-05-08T05:54:32.443+02:002010-05-08T05:54:32.443+02:00LI, have your read SR' piece called Solomon...LI, have your read SR' piece called Solomon's Dream. If not, check it out.<br /><br />AmieAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com