Do you guys go to the MLA convention?
-LLC
-----Original Message-----
From: Rickard Parker <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Sat, 4 Apr 2009 11:34 am
Subject: Various
The last few days I've had a series of annoying computer related problems keeping me from getting and responding to posts. I'm going to reply now but with a bunch of replies in this one post (as tracking down the originals will be a real problem.) Mainly for Tim, Once again an excellent April Fools prank. I caught on right away though as this is about the only time you post. Please let us hear from you during the year. Personally I would like it if nobody gave away the joke until the 2nd. As for Ken's request to get the website back online -- I second that. Mainly for Carroll: Thanks for taking the time to go in depth with Antigone. I see Eliot using Antigone elsewhere and you post will help me develop the point. I hope the doctors found nothing and that you'll have fun filling up again. Mainly for Peter: Quite awhile back you sent in a quote by Eliot about drama. I've been thinking about it a fair bit but I can't get beyond my cynical first thought. That is that money is really behind the restriction on not giving the audience the full art. The play, unlike a poem, has production costs that must be recouped. Then the audience needs to enjoy the play to recommend it to others and thus make the play make money. If the playwright make the audience do too much pondering they will lose their place in the play. Unlike the written word they can't stop and think. Mainly for CR: Be careful about Eliot's use of rocks and stones. These materials are not the same things and the symbolism will be different. Rocks are the raw material and stones are rocks that are manipulated, modified or put to use. Think of a pile of rocks being used to make a stone wall or a rock being chipped away at to make a stone spearhead or quarried rock being sculpted into a gravestone. Mainly for CR: On the web very recently I came across an essay about "Ash Wednesday" being about Eliot's relationship with Vivien (the poem was originally dedicated to her.) If so then Belladonna, the lady of the rocks, could also be making an appearance there. I don't have the URL to the webpage and I only skimmed the beginning of it so I can't really say more about it. Mainly for Diana: Eva Hesse probably has made the same mistake regarding Eliot and homosexuality as others have. One way of looking at the hyacinth girl incident is that nothing happened and that TWL centers around regret. Another view is that something did and that this was the moment's surrender mentioned in Part V. This view was put forward pre-Peter but post-Peter this was sometimes seen as a homoerotic or homosexual act. I see this as a fair way of reading the poem but it should be noticed that this was a _MOMENT_ of surrender, not a giving of a lifetime to it. Regards, Rick Parker