From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Mon Sep 10 00:00:20 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 00:00:20 -0700 Subject: [ilds] CFP: 'AN INVESTIGATION OF MODERN LOVE', 18-23 May, Greece Message-ID: <46E4EB84.5060702@gmail.com> 'AN INVESTIGATION OF MODERN LOVE' 18-23 May 2008 Corfu, Greece The Durrell School of Corfu will host 'An Investigation of Modern Love', an international seminar, at its Library and Study Centre, 18-23 May, 2008 (Corfu, Greece). Dr. Shere Hite and Professor Joseph Boone, University of Southern California, will act as moderators. We invite submissions on all aspects of literature, psychology, cultural history, sexology, gender studies and sociology relating to 'Modern Love'. We also hope to receive submissions addressing the work of Lawrence Durrell and those who influenced him or were influenced by him. WEBSITE: http://www.durrell-school-corfu.org/ POSTER: http://www.durell-school-corfu.org/cfp2008_ml.pdf RATIONALE: Lawrence Durrell provocatively opened his prefatory note to Balthazar in the Alexandria Quartet by stating "Modern literature offers us no Unities, so I have turned to science and am trying to complete a four-decker novel whose form is based on the relativity proposition.... The central topic of the book is an investigation of modern love" From this provocation, the May seminar of the Durrell School of Corfu takes its inspiration to discuss 'Modern Love' as a notion debated across the Humanities and Social Sciences. What do we mean when we consider 'modern' and 'love'? What of Early Modern Love? To make the matter more complicated, this prefatory note originally read 'bisexual love', and bisexuality is censored from the other epigrams. What then does 'love' entail, how does it relate to gender, sexual identity, plurality, and what role does science play in discussing the matter? We aim to draw on expertise in as many areas as possible in order to elucidate the multiple ways Love and Gender Relations are experienced, described and understood in the 21st century (and in the cultural and literary context of key writers and investigators of the past). 'Durrell later came to realise... that 'modern love' was in itself an impossibility'. Richard Pine, Lawrence Durrell, The Mindscape PROVOCATIONS: Opening from the issues surrounding Durrell's views on sex, his attitudes to love and women, to the gaps between man and woman, and the problems of gender and identity, seminar participants are asked to discuss any aspect of Modern Love. How representative were Durrell's views of his period? This query may be posed equally with regard to any author or artist. What is the relationship between art or literature and sociocultural attitudes toward sexuality? In what ways have both changed over time? Do we truly have 'no unities'? Moreover, what does science offer in the 21st century, fifty years after the publication of Justine, the first volume of The Alexandria Quartet, in terms of the investigation of modern love? What has changed since Shakespeare (eg, The Sonnets), John Donne, Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy and George Meredith (Modern Love); since Sade, Freud, Jung and D.H. Lawrence; since the Kinsey reports or Alex Comfort (a poet and correspondent of Durrell's), since Judith Butler, bell hooks, Judith Jack Halberstam, and so forth? What have we learned about monogamy, polygamy, promiscuity, fidelity and the varieties of sexual experience in Humans and the Animal Kingdom? Since the Durrell School of Corfu reflects the concerns of both Durrell brothers, do Zoology or animal studies offer any new insights? What may be gleaned from Gerald Durrell's work, and that of other zoologists and conservationists, about the sexual life of primates, about breeding in captivity, and so forth? Potential topics might include (but are not limited to): * Recent research, psychological, biological, zoological and scientific, about the nature of human and animal love, sexual behaviour and preferences (male and female), the gap between man and woman; * Fictional and poetic investigations and explorations of Love and 'Modern Love' in all its aspects; * Modernism, Post-Modernism and 'Modern Love'; * Lawrence Durrell, especially The Alexandria Quartet, concepts of love, & sexual relations; * Papers on ground-breaking writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Constantine Cavafy, Sade, Olga Broumas, Doris Lessing; * Theoretical and scientific investigations of sexuality: * 'Preference' versus 'Identity'; * Eroticism and the Exotic, Intercultural relationships, the 'Female Other' as sex object/femme fatale; Postcolonial approaches; Masculinities Studies; Female/feminist perspectives on Love (and Lawrence Durrell); * Pornography, Erotica, Censorship, and Literature; * Film and Modern Love; * Gay and Lesbian studies and/or Queer Theory. MODERATORS: Dr. Shere Hite is an American born cultural historian, sex educator and feminist, an expert on psycho- sexual behaviour and gender relations. Her sexological work has focused primarily on female sexuality. Her books include The Hite Report on Female Sexuality, The Hite Report on Men and Male Sexuality, Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress, Sexual Honesty, by Women, for Women, and Oedipus Revisited. Her forthcoming books include Women Loving Women (relationships between women at work and at home), October 12, 2007 Arcadia U.K., and Questions, March 8, 2008 (International Women's Day), Seven Stories U.S. Her keynote topic at the seminar is expected to be concerned with the topic 'What is love?as women talk about it?are there special emotions related to sex?' Professor Joseph Boone is Professor of English at the University of Southern California, where he just finished a four-year term as Department Chair. A specialist in the novel as genre, gender and queer theory, and modernism, he is the author of Tradition Counter Tradition: Love and the Form of Fiction (Chicago 1987) and Libidinal Currents: Sexuality and the Shaping of Modernism (Chicago 1997). The latter includes a chapter that expands his earlier work on Durrell in a chapter titled: 'Fragmented Selves, Mythic Descents, and Third World Geographies: Fifties Writing Gone Mad in Lessing and Durrell.' Recipient of ACLS, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Huntington Library Fellowships, among others, Boone has co-edited two collections, Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism (Routledge 1990) and Queer Frontiers: Millennial Geographies, Genders, and Generations (Wisconsin 2000). He has also written a dramatic musical, with his composer-brother Benjamin, based on Herman Melville's novel The Confidence-Man, and he is currently working on a project titled The Homoerotics of Orientalism. His keynote talk at the seminar is expected to be concerned with sexuality, travel, colonialism, modernism, and gay/queer figures. Proposals: Proposals (2 pages maximum), together with the author's CV, should reach the Durrell School by 1 February 2008 . Presentations will be limited to 30 minutes each, with another 30 minutes allocated for discussion by participants including resident faculty and the moderators. Papers: Full texts of accepted presentations must be received by the DSC by 1 May 2008 in electronic form. This is to facilitate circulation of the papers to all participants in advance. The papers should not be read at the seminar, but spoken to, since they will have been read by participants before the seminar opens. In other words, participants should discuss their papers in order to engage and begin discussion with an audience already familiar with the written copy. A selection of papers will be published as part of the DSC's Proceedings. Registration: The registration fee for the seminar will be 300 euros for participants (to include costs of field classes) and 350 euros for those who wish to take part in the discussions but who do not wish to present papers. The authors of accepted proposals will be asked to give the DSC an assurance that they have secured adequate funding to enable them to take up the places offered to them. The DSC cannot be responsible for any costs associated with travel or accommodation. Intending participants should consult the DSC website for details of accommodation available in Corfu. A limited number of scholarships is available: in the first instance, contact the Administrative Director at: . From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Mon Sep 10 14:15:42 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:15:42 -0700 Subject: [ilds] Exhibition of Durrell Paintings Message-ID: <46E5B3FE.6090205@gmail.com> Hello all, The following may be of interest to listserv members in New York. Best, James ------------- Dear James Gifford, ... I also want to let you know about a very interesting exhibition that is about to open in New York in which three of Durrell's paintings will be represented. His 1957 portrait of "Justine!!!" is on "The Writer's Brush" announcement, which you can see at: http://www.anitashapolskygallery.com/ Please feel free to pass this along to anyone who might have an interest in Lawrence Durrell, or in the other writers represented in this show. Kindest regards, Tracy Tracy Boyd sacredthreads at optonline.net From slighcl at wfu.edu Mon Sep 10 16:03:52 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (Charles Sligh) Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 19:03:52 -0400 Subject: [ilds] Exhibition of Durrell Paintings In-Reply-To: <46E5B3FE.6090205@gmail.com> References: <46E5B3FE.6090205@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1189465432.46e5cd58ab8f5@squirrel.wfu.edu> Thanks, James. Any idea of the provenance for _Justine!!!_??? http://www.anitashapolskygallery.com/images/Durell_Justine_L.jpg Charles From gleannmaghair at yahoo.ca Tue Sep 11 23:23:39 2007 From: gleannmaghair at yahoo.ca (=?iso-8859-1?q?Se=FFffffe1n=20O'Connell?=) Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 02:23:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ilds] Pied Piper of Lovers In-Reply-To: <1189465432.46e5cd58ab8f5@squirrel.wfu.edu> Message-ID: <363825.77805.qm@web52006.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Hello all, I would like to read the Pied Piper of Lovers. I understand that most of the copies of this novel were destroyed in the London blitz and that it can now only be found in rare book libraries, but would anyone know how I could get a hold of a copy/microfilm/digitalized version/etc.?? Thanks and very best wishes, Sean O'Connell Vancouver, Canada D?couvrez ce qui fait jaser les gens ! Visitez les groupes de l'heure sur Yahoo! Qu?bec Groupes. http://cf.groups.yahoo.com/ From slighcl at wfu.edu Fri Sep 14 16:58:23 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:58:23 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . . Message-ID: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> Enjoy! *** * Travelling hopefully* Saturday September 15, 2007 *Guardian* http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,330743374-110738,00.html ? The Royal Society of Literature is more likely to produce gentle rumination and poetic encomium than the tension of the debating chamber. So it was something of a surprise when an event this week turned into a standoff between Rory MacLean, now working on his seventh travel book, and Rory Stewart, author of an account of walking across post-Taliban Afghanistan, about the value of truth in travel writing - about whether modern-day travel writing had, in fact, completely lost its way. Each author began by setting out his stall. For MacLean, "travel writers seek out wonders - that's our job". He argued that, since advances in knowledge and technology have freed the travel writer from the obligation of simply imparting detail about far-off lands, his writing was something different: a synthesised sense of a place, often populated by composite characters. MacLean regularly knows what he wants to find before he leaves home: "I travel in search of the story I want to tell. The real travel is at my desk." *He quoted Lawrence Durrell admiringly: "The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this - that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer, can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side." There is, he added, "much wonder in that". * ? Stewart, after a nod of collegiate friendliness, launched into his counter-argument. "From my point of view, his method represents a decadence, a falling-away in the travel-writing tradition." Stewart's own lodestar was the 19th century, when travellers wrote "records charged with the stakes of empire" for "people who needed to know what places were like". For him, this tradition reached its height at the end of the first world war, with Gertrude Bell's Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia. Compared to current writings about Iraq, hamstrung by tired tropes and "seen only through the fixed frame of liberal democracy", he found the writings of Bell and her colleagues, "with their lightfootedness and sense of irony", both "more amusing to read and much more powerful". However, referring to the work of Peter Fleming (whose Brazilian Adventure contained, according to Stewart, elements of farce), Robert Byron (who wrote of faraway places "as if he was reporting on a dinner party in Mayfair") and Wilfred Thesiger, Stewart suggested that "British travel writing [was] condemned to a move away from truth", to value tone over content. His assertion that spies make the best travel writers prompted the Sunday Times literary editor Susannah Herbert, the deft moderator, to comment: "I keep wondering when he's going to declare himself." For Stewart, the future of travel writing lies with writers such as JM Coetzee and VS Naipaul, "whose identity or racial position is challenged" and who "are therefore able to raise the stakes". ? "I don't really want to start a fight, but I think it's irresistible," said Herbert, sensing the mood from the floor, from which questions came think and fast. The economist and historian Robert Skidelsky commented: "You worry, as a reader, whether something's true. You can't help it." This was why Colin Thubron, for example, a hero of MacLean's, made him queasy. What exactly was the role of literal-minded truth, Herbert asked. Was it not "touchingly innocent" to ask writers to cleave to it so closely? Was there a kind of higher truth that was honoured in the breach? MacLean did concede, eventually, that perhaps travel writers had slightly lost their way in the new dispensation, but otherwise he stood firm. "I'm writing a different sort of truth, what I feel is a deeper truth," he said. "I'm trying to reflect as accurate a picture as I can, and to enhance the opportunity for the reader to empathise. I want the reader to understand what it's like, to feel it." To which Stewart responded: "I'm just worried that we're being pushed into a backwater of elegant but ultimately disengaged prose." AE -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070914/a7622bb0/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Fri Sep 14 18:28:04 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:28:04 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . . In-Reply-To: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070914/820b7ec4/attachment.html From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Sat Sep 15 01:16:16 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 10:16:16 +0200 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . . In-Reply-To: References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> Truth? Absolute truth? Emotional truth? Sensual truth? Other truth? Which truth??? william godshalk wrote: > At 07:58 PM 9/14/2007, you wrote:"I travel in search of the story I want > to tell. The real travel is at my desk." He quoted Lawrence Durrell > admiringly: "The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies > in this - that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer, > can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant > side." There is, he added, "much wonder in that". > > > Got it! > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Sep 15 13:14:52 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:14:52 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . . In-Reply-To: <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> On 9/15/2007 4:16 AM, Marc Piel wrote: > Truth? > Absolute truth? > Emotional truth? > Sensual truth? > Other truth? > > Which truth??? Marc asks an important question, but the full relevance cannot perhaps be understood without revisiting the /Guardian /article. I will re-deliver that piece here below my signature. CLS *** *Travelling hopefully** Saturday September 15, 2007* http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,330743374-110738,00.html *Guardian* *?* The Royal Society of Literature is more likely to produce gentle rumination and poetic encomium than the tension of the debating chamber. So it was something of a surprise when an event this week turned into a standoff between Rory MacLean, now working on his seventh travel book, and Rory Stewart, author of an account of walking across post-Taliban Afghanistan, about the value of truth in travel writing - about whether modern-day travel writing had, in fact, completely lost its way. Each author began by setting out his stall. For MacLean, "travel writers seek out wonders - that's our job". He argued that, since advances in knowledge and technology have freed the travel writer from the obligation of simply imparting detail about far-off lands, his writing was something different: a synthesised sense of a place, often populated by composite characters. MacLean regularly knows what he wants to find before he leaves home: "I travel in search of the story I want to tell. The real travel is at my desk." He quoted Lawrence Durrell admiringly: "The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this - that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer, can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side." There is, he added, "much wonder in that". *?* Stewart, after a nod of collegiate friendliness, launched into his counter-argument. "From my point of view, his method represents a decadence, a falling-away in the travel-writing tradition." Stewart's own lodestar was the 19th century, when travellers wrote "records charged with the stakes of empire" for "people who needed to know what places were like". For him, this tradition reached its height at the end of the first world war, with Gertrude Bell's Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia. Compared to current writings about Iraq, hamstrung by tired tropes and "seen only through the fixed frame of liberal democracy", he found the writings of Bell and her colleagues, "with their lightfootedness and sense of irony", both "more amusing to read and much more powerful". However, referring to the work of Peter Fleming (whose Brazilian Adventure contained, according to Stewart, elements of farce), Robert Byron (who wrote of faraway places "as if he was reporting on a dinner party in Mayfair") and Wilfred Thesiger, Stewart suggested that "British travel writing [was] condemned to a move away from truth", to value tone over content. His assertion that spies make the best travel writers prompted the Sunday Times literary editor Susannah Herbert, the deft moderator, to comment: "I keep wondering when he's going to declare himself." For Stewart, the future of travel writing lies with writers such as JM Coetzee and VS Naipaul, "whose identity or racial position is challenged" and who "are therefore able to raise the stakes". *?* "I don't really want to start a fight, but I think it's irresistible," said Herbert, sensing the mood from the floor, from which questions came think and fast. The economist and historian Robert Skidelsky commented: "You worry, as a reader, whether something's true. You can't help it." This was why Colin Thubron, for example, a hero of MacLean's, made him queasy. What exactly was the role of literal-minded truth, Herbert asked. Was it not "touchingly innocent" to ask writers to cleave to it so closely? Was there a kind of higher truth that was honoured in the breach? MacLean did concede, eventually, that perhaps travel writers had slightly lost their way in the new dispensation, but otherwise he stood firm. "I'm writing a different sort of truth, what I feel is a deeper truth," he said. "I'm trying to reflect as accurate a picture as I can, and to enhance the opportunity for the reader to empathise. I want the reader to understand what it's like, to feel it." To which Stewart responded: "I'm just worried that we're being pushed into a backwater of elegant but ultimately disengaged prose." -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070915/6e6565fc/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Sep 15 13:57:03 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 16:57:03 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070915/78787f69/attachment.html From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Sat Sep 15 14:11:57 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 23:11:57 +0200 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> Message-ID: <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> Why not try to restrict it to our relationship, our reaction, our answers, our critique on the writing of LD. That way we do two things: we stick to the initial subject matter, we implicate ourselves in our statements and observations, past and future. Marc Piel william godshalk wrote: > The Wikipedia has this opener: > > The meaning of the word > truth extends from honesty , good > faith , and sincerity > in general, to agreement with > fact or reality > in particular. [1] > The term has no single > definition about which the > majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree. Various > theories of truth, usually > involving different definitions, continue to be debated. There are > differing claims on such questions as what constitutes truth; how to > define and identify truth; the roles that revealed and acquired > knowledge play; and whether truth is subjective, relative, objective, or > absolute. This article introduces the various perspectives and claims, > both today and throughout history. > > It may be a good place to begin a discussion of "truth." What is truth? > said Jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer. > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sat Sep 15 17:24:17 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 20:24:17 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> Message-ID: <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070915/a87cdee9/attachment.html From slighcl at wfu.edu Sat Sep 15 17:45:20 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2007 20:45:20 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> Message-ID: <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> > On 9/15/2007 8:24 PM, william godshalk wrote: >> Okay, let us talk truth. I'm puzzled about the meaning of truth in >> general. But, when we talk about "truth" in literature what does that >> mean? Literature presents itself as fiction, not as the real thing. >> So in what ways can a fiction be truth? I suspect Durrell is too canny to allow us to pin him down. "/Art like life is an open secret/." If we could handle the thing itself, it would not be Truth. Durrell knew his Pilate as well as you do, Bill. > Monday escapes destruction. > Record a vernal afternoon, > Tea on the lawn with mother, > A parochial interest in love, etc. > By the deviation of a hair, > Is death so far, so far, no further. > > Tuesday: visibility good: and Wednesday. > A little thunder, some light showers. > A library book about the universe. > The absence of a definite self. > O and already by Friday hazardous, > To Saturday begins the slow reverse. > A Saturday without form. By midnight > The equinox seems forever gone: > Yet the motionless voice repeating: > 'Bless the hills in paradigms of smoke, > Manhair, Maidenhair meeting.' > > But today Sunday. The pit. > The axe and the knot. Cannot write. > The monster in its booth. > At a quarter to one *the mask *repeating: > *'Truth is what is > Truth is what is Truth?* -- "Paris Journal" > > /Empty your hearts: or fill from a purer source./ > /That what is in men can weep, having eyes:/ > /That what is in *Truth *can speak from the responsible dust/ > /And O the rose grow in the middle of the great world./ -- "In Crisis" (1943) -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070915/dc4c7164/attachment.html From sumantranag at gmail.com Sat Sep 15 22:23:34 2007 From: sumantranag at gmail.com (Sumantra Nag) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 10:53:34 +0530 Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 6, Issue 10 References: Message-ID: <000901c7f821$bdeb1d60$0501a8c0@intel> Message: 1 Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2007 19:58:23 -0400 From: slighcl Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . . Charles, I liked the article you forwarded. Interesting points: e.g., how much space should the travel writer devote to simple (as opposed to evocative) description, and on background information, when these are available to the reader on the Net through texts and photographs? Of course this raises the question: what is evocative description? I think Rory McLean has a point. With access to both photographs and information on the Net, even the traveller goes armed with so much exposure to the place he or she is visiting, that the sense of discovery can only be found in something unique which the traveller must find during his journey (travelling hopefully....) and at the destinations being visited. Widespread travel has greatly increased the chances of readers visiting many places they would not have got to in an earlier era, and the travel writer has to have something new for readers who may have been where the writer has been. Regards Sumantra From slighcl at wfu.edu Sun Sep 16 06:48:46 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (slighcl) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 09:48:46 -0400 Subject: [ilds] ILDS Digest, Vol 6, Issue 10 In-Reply-To: <000901c7f821$bdeb1d60$0501a8c0@intel> References: <000901c7f821$bdeb1d60$0501a8c0@intel> Message-ID: <46ED343E.7020602@wfu.edu> On 9/16/2007 1:23 AM, Sumantra Nag wrote: > Charles, > > I liked the article you forwarded. Interesting points: e.g., how much space > should the travel writer devote to simple (as opposed to evocative) > description, and on background information, when these are available to the > reader on the Net through texts and photographs? Of course this raises the > question: what is evocative description? I think Rory McLean has a point. > Widespread travel has greatly > increased the chances of readers visiting many places they would not have > got to in an earlier era, and the travel writer has to have something new > for readers who may have been where the writer has been. > Thanks for that outline, Sumantra. The diary account of that debate at the Royal Society of Literature caught my attention not only because the name and words of "Lawrence Durrell" were cited, but also because here in agreement and disagreement Durrell seemed to be taken as having something serious to contribute, something important for which to stand. I still would like to read the full transcript of the MacLean/Stewart exchange. I wonder if Durrell's prose elicited any other comments? If anyone attended the meeting, please share. The MacLean/Stewart debate seems to come into conversation with our listserv discussion of "real" versus "literary" in /Bitter Lemons/. For my own part, I would honor good writing as good writing and feel less urgent about declaring an emergency--i.e., travel writing /must /follow method (a) or method (b). But debates take up extreme points by nature, and something is gained by definition, even if the strictures are let go later. I will reprint the Guardian piece once more in order to encourage more response. CLS *** *** *Travelling hopefully** Saturday September 15, 2007* http://books.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,330743374-110738,00.html *Guardian* *?* The Royal Society of Literature is more likely to produce gentle rumination and poetic encomium than the tension of the debating chamber. So it was something of a surprise when an event this week turned into a standoff between Rory MacLean, now working on his seventh travel book, and Rory Stewart, author of an account of walking across post-Taliban Afghanistan, about the value of truth in travel writing - about whether modern-day travel writing had, in fact, completely lost its way. Each author began by setting out his stall. For MacLean, "travel writers seek out wonders - that's our job". He argued that, since advances in knowledge and technology have freed the travel writer from the obligation of simply imparting detail about far-off lands, his writing was something different: a synthesised sense of a place, often populated by composite characters. MacLean regularly knows what he wants to find before he leaves home: "I travel in search of the story I want to tell. The real travel is at my desk." He quoted Lawrence Durrell admiringly: "The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this - that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer, can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side." There is, he added, "much wonder in that". *?* Stewart, after a nod of collegiate friendliness, launched into his counter-argument. "From my point of view, his method represents a decadence, a falling-away in the travel-writing tradition." Stewart's own lodestar was the 19th century, when travellers wrote "records charged with the stakes of empire" for "people who needed to know what places were like". For him, this tradition reached its height at the end of the first world war, with Gertrude Bell's Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia. Compared to current writings about Iraq, hamstrung by tired tropes and "seen only through the fixed frame of liberal democracy", he found the writings of Bell and her colleagues, "with their lightfootedness and sense of irony", both "more amusing to read and much more powerful". However, referring to the work of Peter Fleming (whose Brazilian Adventure contained, according to Stewart, elements of farce), Robert Byron (who wrote of faraway places "as if he was reporting on a dinner party in Mayfair") and Wilfred Thesiger, Stewart suggested that "British travel writing [was] condemned to a move away from truth", to value tone over content. His assertion that spies make the best travel writers prompted the Sunday Times literary editor Susannah Herbert, the deft moderator, to comment: "I keep wondering when he's going to declare himself." For Stewart, the future of travel writing lies with writers such as JM Coetzee and VS Naipaul, "whose identity or racial position is challenged" and who "are therefore able to raise the stakes". *?* "I don't really want to start a fight, but I think it's irresistible," said Herbert, sensing the mood from the floor, from which questions came think and fast. The economist and historian Robert Skidelsky commented: "You worry, as a reader, whether something's true. You can't help it." This was why Colin Thubron, for example, a hero of MacLean's, made him queasy. What exactly was the role of literal-minded truth, Herbert asked. Was it not "touchingly innocent" to ask writers to cleave to it so closely? Was there a kind of higher truth that was honoured in the breach? MacLean did concede, eventually, that perhaps travel writers had slightly lost their way in the new dispensation, but otherwise he stood firm. "I'm writing a different sort of truth, what I feel is a deeper truth," he said. "I'm trying to reflect as accurate a picture as I can, and to enhance the opportunity for the reader to empathise. I want the reader to understand what it's like, to feel it." To which Stewart responded: "I'm just worried that we're being pushed into a backwater of elegant but ultimately disengaged prose." -- ********************** Charles L. Sligh Department of English Wake Forest University slighcl at wfu.edu ********************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070916/d569242b/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Sep 16 12:26:47 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 15:26:47 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070916/a2f271b9/attachment.html From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sun Sep 16 13:13:10 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 13:13:10 -0700 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46ED8E56.3060902@gmail.com> Or, rather, David Gascoyne was having a bad writing day... I'd have to double check, but "Paris Journal" is for Gascoyne's book of the same title, though I don't know when Durrell actually wrote it. I've seen one critic refer to the poem as a nasty mockery of Gascoyne, but I think it's quite the opposite when read along side the journal itself. The young Gascoyne of those journal's days was deeply indebted to Durrell, and a great deal of Gascoyne's shift away from the mainstream club of surrealists comes down to his interactions with everyone at the Villa Seurat. At any rate, Truth seems to be both "what is" and yet the question of "what it is" cannot be answered... Very Gascoyne, and very Durrell. I think they fit together as the loosely surrealist image, but with the underlying allusions that create an order (and order imposed by the reader) -- the day of rest is without the labour of writing, and cutting the Gordian knot doesn't answer it's question. The monster in the booth may be at rest, the minotaur of the unconscious, but being at rest is equally unanswered. It's just not stirring up problems on the day of rest. Perhaps best of all (I'm teaching Wilde right now, so...) is that the mask is the only thing speaking when the beast, knots, and God are at rest. Without the big trouble-makers, writing can't happen and only masks can speak rather than faces or 'real' voices. I've been dabbling in the Miller, Gascoyne, Durrell, and Robert Duncan mix lately, and Anais Nin's preoccupations might unravel some of this poem as well. Best, James william godshalk wrote: > I suppose the "axe and the knot" is a reference to Alexander's cutting > the Gordian knot. But the other images -- pit, monster in a booth, the > mask -- are they images from Poe? But wherever they come from, I can't > fit them together -- or see why they are here. I suppose Larry was > having a bad writing day: cannot write. > > Bill > >>> /But today Sunday. The pit. >>> *The axe and the knot.* Cannot write. >>> The monster in its booth. >>> At a quarter to one the mask repeating: >>> 'Truth is what is >>> Truth is what is Truth? / >> -- "Paris Journal" > > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > From slighcl at wfu.edu Sun Sep 16 14:24:47 2007 From: slighcl at wfu.edu (Charles Sligh) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 17:24:47 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <46ED8E56.3060902@gmail.com> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> <46ED8E56.3060902@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> Marc has written with a request for clarification about the "Paris Journal." Jamie can continue his reading of the poem from within that biographical context, and meanwhile here follows the entire poem for reference. Charles *** PARIS JOURNAL [from Collected Poems: 1931-1974 (1985), Faber and Faber] For David Gascoyne (1939) Monday escapes destruction. Record a vernal afternoon, Tea on the lawn with mother, A parochial interest in love, etc. By the deviation of a hair, Is death so far, so far, no further. Tuesday: visibility good: and Wednesday. A little thunder, some light showers. A library book about the universe. The absence of a definite self. O and already by Friday hazardous, To Saturday begins the slow reverse. A Saturday without form. By midnight The equinox seems forever gone: Yet the motionless voice repeating: 'Bless the hills in paradigms of smoke, Manhair, Maidenhair meeting.' But today Sunday. The pit. The axe and the knot. Cannot write. The monster in its booth. At a quarter to one the mask repeating: 'Truth is what is Truth is what is Truth?' 1943/1939 From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Sun Sep 16 14:18:54 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 23:18:54 +0200 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46ED9DBE.9000208@interdesign.fr> Can someone please inform my ignorance as to what is " "Paris Journal"? Thanks in advance, Marc Piel william godshalk wrote: > I suppose the "axe and the knot" is a reference to Alexander's cutting > the Gordian knot. But the other images -- pit, monster in a booth, the > mask -- are they images from Poe? But wherever they come from, I can't > fit them together -- or see why they are here. I suppose Larry was > having a bad writing day: cannot write. > > Bill > >>> But today Sunday. The pit. >>> The axe and the knot. Cannot write. >>> The monster in its booth. >>> At a quarter to one the mask repeating: >>> 'Truth is what is >>> Truth is what is Truth? >> >> -- "Paris Journal" >> > > *************************************** > W. L. Godshalk * > Department of English * > University of Cincinnati Stellar disorder * > Cincinnati OH 45221-0069 * > 513-281-5927 > *************************************** > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds From marcpiel at interdesign.fr Sun Sep 16 14:38:21 2007 From: marcpiel at interdesign.fr (Marc Piel) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 23:38:21 +0200 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> <46ED8E56.3060902@gmail.com> <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46EDA24D.30302@interdesign.fr> Thank you. Surely, you, all of you, forget that some of us (ha!) do not deal with this every day. I have found it in the 1962 edition of Dutton's 'The poetry of Laurence Durrell"... now I can tune in... Thanks again, Marc Charles Sligh wrote: > Marc has written with a request for clarification about the "Paris Journal." > Jamie can continue his reading of the poem from within that biographical > context, and meanwhile here follows the entire poem for reference. > > Charles > *** > > PARIS JOURNAL > > [from Collected Poems: 1931-1974 (1985), Faber and Faber] > > For David Gascoyne (1939) > > Monday escapes destruction. > Record a vernal afternoon, > Tea on the lawn with mother, > A parochial interest in love, etc. > By the deviation of a hair, > Is death so far, so far, no further. > > Tuesday: visibility good: and Wednesday. > A little thunder, some light showers. > A library book about the universe. > The absence of a definite self. > O and already by Friday hazardous, > To Saturday begins the slow reverse. > A Saturday without form. By midnight > The equinox seems forever gone: > Yet the motionless voice repeating: > 'Bless the hills in paradigms of smoke, > Manhair, Maidenhair meeting.' > > But today Sunday. The pit. > The axe and the knot. Cannot write. > The monster in its booth. > At a quarter to one the mask repeating: > 'Truth is what is > Truth is what is Truth?' > > 1943/1939 > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > > From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Sep 16 16:25:01 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 19:25:01 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> <46ED8E56.3060902@gmail.com> <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> Message-ID: <01.BB.27421.84BBDE64@gwout2> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070916/c4e88cc0/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Sep 16 17:39:31 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:39:31 -0400 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> <46ED8E56.3060902@gmail.com> <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070916/89101d62/attachment.html From godshawl at email.uc.edu Sun Sep 16 17:56:19 2007 From: godshawl at email.uc.edu (william godshalk) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:56:19 -0400 Subject: [ilds] parochial interest in love In-Reply-To: <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> <46ED8E56.3060902@gmail.com> <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> Message-ID: <7A.F7.12368.1B0DDE64@gwout1> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.uvic.ca/pipermail/ilds/attachments/20070916/d3e3cd2e/attachment.html From odos.fanourios at gmail.com Sun Sep 16 20:58:48 2007 From: odos.fanourios at gmail.com (James Gifford) Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 20:58:48 -0700 Subject: [ilds] The solace of such work. . . .and truth In-Reply-To: <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> References: <46EB201F.1000209@wfu.edu> <46EB94D0.7050009@interdesign.fr> <46EC3D3C.3080408@wfu.edu> <80.F8.27421.C174CE64@gwout2> <46EC4A9D.2010901@interdesign.fr> <23.25.27421.1C77CE64@gwout2> <46EC7CA0.50801@wfu.edu> <46ED8E56.3060902@gmail.com> <1189977887.46ed9f1fa85e6@squirrel.wfu.edu> Message-ID: <46EDFB78.8010900@gmail.com> Charles has answered my question, which is much as I suspected but didn't want to conjecture. Durrell wrote his poem "Paris Journal" in response to Gascoyne's actual _Paris Journal_ (quotation marks for the poem & underlining for the book, from now on...). Gascoyne submitted his journal about his time in Paris to Durrell & Miller for The Booster / Delta (I believe it was during the Delta stage only -- it's a journal run through the Villa Seurate, briefly but significantly). Gascoyne guest-edited the penultimate issue, which is focused on poetry. Durrell appears to have taken the lead on the Delta, while The Booster was more generalized. See Richtofan's work for the details on all of it -- don't trust the biographies, and actually don't trust any of it unless it checks out with the texts and the correspondences... This was after Gascoyne's major involvement with the Surrealists in Paris (and do note that Gascoyne has the distinction [dubious or glamorous, depending on your perspective] of being the first literary person in English who referred to Jacques Lacan), and after the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition, Gascoyne describes himself as becoming more and more attached to Durrell's works, especially his _The Black Book_. He was also deeply affected by Miller's "An Open Lette to Surrealists Everywhere." This was all in 1937, so I would suspect Durrell's poem can earlier than 1939 too -- Gascoyne wrote his letter explaining the journal *in* the journal itself when he sent it to Durrell for his examination, and that was 18 October 1937. That Durrell's poem was published only on 7 September 1939 (in the New English Weekly) does not mean that he didn't write at a time more contemporary to his reading of the journal. My approach to reading "Paris Journal" would locate it in this mix of materials, and especially the Villa Seurat's alternative approach to Surrealism, much of which shifted away from the Socialist political agenda and the dogmatic orthodoxy of approach imposed by Breton. For details on all of it (plugs...) you'll have to see the Henry Miller - Herbert Read correspondence coming out through Roger Jackson, or else the next issue of _Nexus_ (I can hear the rumble starting already). At any rate, Gascoyne's _Paris Journal_ is largely concerned with his difficulties negotiating between some of these aesthetic and political approaches (his own political adherence to Breton's orthodoxy appears to have evaporated when he met Miller and Durrell). In that vein, we have a very excited Durrell writing "Paris Journal" in response to his friend's highly engaging discussion of all these matters in evocative prose. Throw into the mix Durrell's own semi-surrealist _The Black Book_, "Asylum in the Snow," and "Zero," and a pattern begins to emerge. Note in addition Louis MacNeice's images of snow in "The Brandy Glass," Dylan Thomas' publication in _Delta_, and Robert Duncan's snow images "An Ark for Lawrence Durrell," and that pattern becomes a trend. Much of it's anticipated in Miller's interactions with Herbert Read, all of which he was sending to Durrell -- hence, Durrell's "DESTROYING TIME" letter to Miller, which is really a point by point response to Read. But, where does that leave us with the poem? Is it just a dog's breakfast with all of that heaped on it now? I hope not... Rather than a mockery of Gascoyne, as at least one critic has read the poem, I think we instead see Durrell selecting materials from among the journal's entries, which he then transforms in to the poem's mildly "super-realist" images: the "deviation of a hair" that determines everything, parochial love oddly tied to the mother, the mild insertion of the absence of a definite self, and so on. What of the "motionless voice," which must be somehow moving, otherwise he'd have no sound (by definition). If Bill's right to grab after D.H. Lawrence on that one, is allusion somehow resurrecting a voice from beyond death, which might be though of as motionless, and if so, that's a lot to put on allusion. It's especially a lot when the poem is made up of allusions to Gascoyne... Yet, if so, "Death is so far, so far, no further" -- a nice ambiguity. If this is a speaking voice giving instructions, it's distancing death as further (but not farther) than can be articulated, or else it's an injunction "no further" that death not be set so far away that it doesn't speak. So, where's Thursday? Evidently Wenesday's thunder and library book have made Thursday vanish without a trace -- at least time is without form now, despite the implication of forward motion, which may be why Saturday "begins the slow reverse" as it's running backwards, desperately avoiding the end, though the equinox cannot be regained. Which equinox, I agree with Bill, he don't know, but even running backwards we can't seem to regain it -- perhaps it was on Thursday? Somehow, however, that backwards running Saturday that cannot find "time past" of the equinox has that inability articulated as "yet." What an odd relationship... I am running backwards in time, unable to regain time past (perhaps the Equinox is tomorrow?) BUT a motionless voice blesses paradigmatically 'smokey' hills. Humm. Is this the voice that speaks through the mask at the end? I suspect that voice, articulated on that dead Sunday in which god(s) sleeps, the knot isn't untied, and the monster is safely locked away, may be the same voice that is motionless. Who else could speak on such a day? Gascoyne also lost Bent on a Sunday, "as though a lump had been torn out of me somewhere." Either way, however, the repetition of the mantra "what is Truth" as a question has been transformed by concentration into a direct statement (and this isn't the only time Durrell does this in his poetry -- it's a trick he liked): "What is Truth" becomes "Truth is what is Truth," which is something quite different. Truth is of itself and nothing else, which answers the question it is formed from -- just like the question, Truth is of itself and nothing else, just as the answer is of the question. In context, does this seem more like a poetic approach to a surrealist examinations of "Truth" (the whole reason Charles quoted the poem to us in the first place) in which "Truth" becomes something of itself rather than something of the world? More broadly, if this were commenting back on Surrealism in Paris in the late 1930s, I'd suspect (I typed "I'd" as Id the first time... Bad parapraxis) we have a rejection of the 'real world' pursuits of the Surrealists: the Surrealist political agenda comes from something other than itself (surrealism), just as the discovery of a self in the psychoanalytic introspection again draws on something other than Surrealism. If "Truth is what is Truth," then that 'self' articulated through the conscious mind must, if true, be of the conscious mind -- perhaps, then, the unconscious truth cannot be articulated or explored in that way... Maybe it must remains an inarticulate mystery. In the most general sense, how does the reader of Gascoyne's _Paris Journal_ (of which we can count Durrell) find a way of reconciling the catalogue of days and days' events with the profound introspection, agony of working through a self that cannot be known, and Gascoyne's glimpses of enlightenment that he can write from but cannot articulate. At least, that's what a few minutes of presumptive wanderings gave me... Best, Jamie Charles Sligh wrote: > Marc has written with a request for clarification about the "Paris Journal." > Jamie can continue his reading of the poem from within that biographical > context, and meanwhile here follows the entire poem for reference. > > Charles > *** > > PARIS JOURNAL > > [from Collected Poems: 1931-1974 (1985), Faber and Faber] > > For David Gascoyne (1939) > > Monday escapes destruction. > Record a vernal afternoon, > Tea on the lawn with mother, > A parochial interest in love, etc. > By the deviation of a hair, > Is death so far, so far, no further. > > Tuesday: visibility good: and Wednesday. > A little thunder, some light showers. > A library book about the universe. > The absence of a definite self. > O and already by Friday hazardous, > To Saturday begins the slow reverse. > A Saturday without form. By midnight > The equinox seems forever gone: > Yet the motionless voice repeating: > 'Bless the hills in paradigms of smoke, > Manhair, Maidenhair meeting.' > > But today Sunday. The pit. > The axe and the knot. Cannot write. > The monster in its booth. > At a quarter to one the mask repeating: > 'Truth is what is > Truth is what is Truth?' > > 1943/1939 > _______________________________________________ > ILDS mailing list > ILDS at lists.uvic.ca > https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds > >