[ilds] Revenge and the Persian Lady

[Bruce Redwine]

Of course, all these meanings are possible but none are provable because that's the way Durrell constructed (and deliberately intended, I think) his poem.  I don't see a way to define the poem's situation without bringing in one's one prejudices and predispositions.  And mine are upfront -- I read the hints and suggestions in terms of biography.  To misuse a scientific analogy, in the way Durrell misuses Einstein, I'm interested in the poem's "Dark Matter," i.e., what is not observable with the naked eye in the universe (or the literary text, as I misappropriate it) but what must exist and must or ought to be inferred.  I think, when analyzing his poetry, a lot of attention should be paid to the discontinuities, the quantum jumps, the breaks in thought, the use of anacoluthon, the unanchored pronoun usage, etc. -- all that makes it so difficult to tie down and understand.  Or so I think.  I am not advocating Deconstruction.


Bruce

-----Original Message-----
>From: william godshalk <godshawl at email.uc.edu>
>Sent: Feb 28, 2008 4:14 PM
>To: Bruce Redwine <bredwine1968 at earthlink.net>, ilds at lists.uvic.ca
>Subject: Re: [ilds] Revenge and the Persian Lady
>
>Bruce writes:
>
> I suggest, "It wouldhave been simple" has the common, colloquial meaning of crimefiction, i.e., "It would have been simple" [to have hit her,stabbed her, strangled her, shot her, etc.]  I.e., some actappropriate to the man's feeling that he's been "dis-figured"by her gaze.  This is a dueling pair, three pacesapart.
>But why not "it would have been simple to have moved to her side,only three paces away, and introduced myself"? This reading supposesthat "he" and the Persian lady have not met -- and never will.
>
>The mind recoiling as from a branding-iron:
>
>May this line suggest thathe recoils from being branded as hers, as her animal? Of course, thebranding is here mental. The heat image is picked up in "How wouldone say 'to enflame' in her tongue?"
>
>Billthe