[ilds] Mirrors and Selves

[Bruce Redwine]

Marc,

Durrell would probably say each image a person projects onto multiple  
mirrors is not the same image but a different view with a different  
significance.  But again, this is not the heart of the problem.  The  
crux is what Bill Godshalk alludes to, i.e., the idea of a person's  
"core self," fairly constant through time.   As I see it, Durrell  
started off in his career by rejecting that notion.  Perhaps he  
actually believed that, I don't know.  It was, however, a fashionable  
notion of the time, the era of Freud, Jung, Groddeck, et al. -- those  
who posit an inner self with multiple components.  I see that idea  
being explored in Monsieur, to perhaps disastrous effects, where the  
narrator's personality disintegrates before the reader's eyes.

Bruce


On Oct 4, 2009, at 4:40 AM, Marc Piel wrote:

> You see the same image in each mirror, but the others each see a  
> different image....
> @+
> Marc
>
> Bruce Redwine a écrit :
>> Marc,
>> I don't see the difference.  I stand in front of three mirrors and   
>> project three images.  My wife looks at one and sees a husband, my  
>> son  a father, someone else a sonuvabitch.  They're all me,  
>> multiple me's.   It's easy to get lost in Keats's notion about  
>> "negative  capability" (see Keats's letters to George and Thomas  
>> Keats, 21  December 1817 and to Richard Woodhouse, 27 October  
>> 1818), just as it's  hard to grasp Durrell's "many  
>> negatives" (which may be a play on or  allusion to Keats).  Read  
>> their poetry instead.
>> Bruce
>> On Oct 3, 2009, at 2:24 PM, Marc Piel wrote:
>>> Perhaps you should look up Enneagram on Google.
>>>
>>> Surely there is a difference in an "image" in a mirror and an  
>>> image  that one projects consciously or unconsciously to others.  
>>> The image  in the mirror can only fool oneself but not others  
>>> whereas tha other  image fools oneself and not the others
>>>

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