incidentally, 

the mediumistic role: the unimaginable zero of consciousness

Transgression and the individual talent
By Stan Smith
pp. 25-40
in 
T. S. Eliot and the Concept of Tradition
edited by Giovanni Cianci, Jason Harding
Cambridge University Press, 2007

http://books.google.com/books?id=kK-B5sa6WjYC&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false

an illuminating study, though some pages are not shown 

CR


fact and artifact: vis-a-vis the postulate of the fugue

"Here, said she, is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor."

Well, it may as well be the poet who is "drowned" here, vis-a-vis his nervous breakdown, passing into a fugue in which state the "unconscious" wakes up to a mode of recollection and recreation. And even though there is always a correlation between "the man who suffers and the mind which creates,"  

Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

CR


Now this fugue postulate is corroborated by what the poet himself observed vis-a-vis the wasteland that was his first marriage: "To her the marriage brought no happiness, to me it brought the state of mind out of which came The Waste Land." It correlates "the man who suffers and the mind which creates."

TWL as ground, indeed, absolutely!

CR


And yet I must compliment Peter Montgomery for this wonderful insight -- 
a state of fugue in which the 'unconscious' is free to cull up fragments
from its stock of memories and put them in an order that suits it best. 
When the poet recovers from that state he makes what he can of 
what the 'unconscious' has expressed. 

CR


No, it does not leave to the reader to make whatever he/she would make of it. There are enough signposts. 

Of course, by 'madness' I meant whatever form it takes. 

CR 

On Aug 19, 2013, at 9:43 PM, Chokh Raj <[log in to unmask]> wrote: 
There is a method to this madness, if madness it be. 
It is just not random ramshackle curiosity shop.
It is a work of art.

CR

On Aug 19, 2013, at 9:23 PM, P <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

I'm not sure how relevant mental health analysis actually is. This is more of a fragmented cultures rammed together and laid out for whatever the reader synthesises.
Cheers,
P.