EdgarPoe
“Edgar Poe” refers to the immense multiform and manifold contribution to world culture by the greatest writer since Homer. where to start??? how about the remark by the great composer Maurice Ravel, “As to composition, my master has certainly been Edgar Poe”. We even learn about society generally and internationally from the conflicts fostered by Edgar Poe in various and sundry minds. He is a litmus test, besides his other contributions. We see the folly of his critics, including inability even to read his works. We see the sick perverse puritanism of 19th century USA etched in his biographers. There are to be sure those who appreciate and love Poe, and i hope this domain may become also a fan-club. May i mention my favorite 20th century writer, Paul Bowles, who dedicated a book: “To my mother, who first read me the tales of Edgar Allan Poe”. But I myself do not like to include the “Allan” in Poe´s name, and this for a few reasons, including that Poe was a leader in attacking evil parents.test2651 31may2001hello. I am recently reading The Arabian Nights in Norwegian translation. Of course, Poe may be assumed to have been strongly influenced by these tales. And of course not only Poe. And they have of course been influenced themselves by lots. In spite of lots of Islamic propaganda, they are of course among the very greatest. It is nice to read them in Norwegian, instead of pretentious British(ah yes, I do not read Arab languages, in case yopu are wondering, nor do I like to learn languages; it is just that I have lived in Norway many years).
060701 A couple of Arabian Nights stories specifically relate to “The Raven” ---and they are consequtive. they are those starting nights # 691, 695.
030901 0125 The ending of a Paul Bowles story ( I won´t tell you , lest i spoil it for you) resembles the ending of Casque of Amontillado in its structure concerning the compassion question --- some asshole critics say the perpetrator in “Amontillado” lacks compassion, but obviously, when he says it is due to the damp that he feels bad, it is a dodge.
120701 20:32 THE WISDOM OF EDGAR POE is multiform.
Some of Poe´s work (e g “Berenice”) satirizes post-Kantian philosophers.
260701 04:59 In “The Fall of the House of Usher” Poe emphasizes the esthetic importance of what is loosely termed “music”.
020801 01:17 A book is a contract that the words will be there.
02:11 Dancing with words.
130901 2146 I inserted that bit here because I transfered it over from that other place, which is now used for another purpose (their is a difference between a purpose and a dolphin).
2237 I grew up with the comic-books called “Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies” --- so we have cartoons refered to as music (These are the Warner Brothers cartoons of Bugs Bunny etc).
071001 1448 The article about Poe in the 1950 Encyclopedia Britannica is like those puzzle pictures in which one is to try to find all the silly mistakes.
111001 1933 re: Bowles story “,,,Corazon”:
onsdag 17. oktober 2001 19:02 I am considering including on this page extended discussion also of Paul Bowles.
søndag 18. november 2001 02:40 Bowles is not frightening, he is appalling --- whereas Flannery O´Connor (e g “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”) is truly frightening.
111201 1404 In the Bowles story “Call at Corazon”, the male is a manipulater who grew up being perversely interrupted and now has no sense of circumspect defense of security, and instead compulsively toys with life and individuals. Maslow emphasized that we marry our mother altho we may hate her --- and I observe that I like to wash the dishes for a female friend precisely (partly) because she is not my mother: and I am spiting my mother like that. as Freud emphasized, there are always 4 in a bed. But it may be that this applies more to males v v mothers than re females re fathers: maybe (and this is all conjecture, but i think correct) females tend more to identify with father while males tend more to want to possess mother and accordingly resent her when unable to, (as Freud says) and then go on to have peer females as substitutes for mother in a play-acting eternal (perhaps women do not so much mother men as pretend to be the men´s father while the man is herself). Combine all this with my observation that people have tended thru history to imitate their parents throughout life, as that has survival value, and was all that was needed. Anyway, a main task of health is the refusing to parrot at key moments the insanities of parents etc in our heads. A main form of destructive mental illness is failure in that. The era we live in now in The West is revolutionary in going away from that ( the son of son of son of etc pattern). We tend to be surprised when we are told we are living thru a play-acting of trans-generational script, but it is what has been going on since the dawn of time. It makes clans and tribes and ethnic binds. A woman in the position of the female in the Bowles story I refer to, should see this in order to escape her predicament. The Brandeis psychology professor, James Klee, who introduced us students to the works of Bowles, emphasized that Bowles confronts the evil in people. Poe also does that, confronting the evil in family life, even if obliquely, putting John Allan in the stocks (e g in the prose-poem (my categorization) “Silence”). Of course the fact that Poe is immortal exposes the factors in his life as of classic importance. We are obliged to study with Poe and Bowles the dynamics of the people in their works. We get the tip of the iceberg and must infer down --- and in these masters we sink in an ecstasy of mental vertigo into the abyss that is the human mind we all are. We compassionate with the unfortunates in works by others also, of course, notably the nun Angelica in the short opera by Puccini (my favorite opera). And in everyday life we encounter the persistent evil, manifest thru generations by failure to reject the evil of ancesters --- altho many parents are wonderful, failure to hate a bad parent leads directly to evil acts against substitute innocents. For example, there are many fathers who fail to feel the importance they have to daughters, precisely due to experiencing their own relationship with mother as all there is, while failing to see the importance of fathers to daughters. And in dealing with anti-Americanism, remember that, altho USA has much to apologize for, USA is a prime goat (scapegoat) for anger properly to be focused elsewhere. I encourage the practice of fantasizing doing torture to the hated parent (but remember the difference between a nut and the sane, is that the sane fantasize but the nut actually does it). The point is to prevent the transmission onto the innocent (especially one´s own offspring) of the evil dead hand of the past --- this is the prime goal of cultural evolution, for beauty will express in the absence of evil. We all are beasts, but we can grow evolutionarily in reasonableness. We are unfortunately discouraged from contemplating the evil in everyday life. We need great heroes to lead us, e g the great psychologist Ronald Laing (cf his “The Politics of the Family”) and great artists like Poe and Bowles. When Ruskin said art has the function of getting us to see, I add to see psychology. Even the intellectual effort of understanding can get in the way: Poe emphasized that the sort of thinking in one field is foolishly assumed to carry over effectively into another. Today we see intellectuals protecting their turf by forcing the matter of bin Laden into extended narrations of doctrinal song and dance --- it is the usual curse of intellect: instead of seeing in a natural way, professors make Waza ships out of canoes, and pretend they have not capsized. The main thing is to be right --- but intellectual, collegian, thought community lives on vague constant ambiguous dialogue in ignorance pretending to be knowledge, instead of accepting the basic necessity to be reasonable in our universal condition of groping by the seat of our pants. Acceptance of paradox is the main key to wisdom; we must accept Freud´s dictum, that we are all governed by our unconscious --- ALL. Even as we relate with each other, we must accept the truth that we do not exist as unitary entities, we are composites in flux, defined from moment to moment by influences we need to try to comprehend in ourselves and others, including the people we love; and then we need the patience of Buddha in action, on the slippery ice-field called life. The infant needs the solidity of icon and monolith, but as we mature, we see that the devils of the non-existent hell of the vatican are actually inside each of us, and psychological survival means living in truce with them, by SALT Treaties in our minds, individually and in relationships, wheher business or love. There is no substitute for growing by improved insight --- ignorance does not work. The great artists put us strongly in the area of the dragon and teach us to negotiate peace while joyous in art.
Edgar Poe tirsdag 25. desember 2001 18:18 In Shaksper we have some characters who are unfailingly evil, and the lesson is that if you let your guard down out of naivety or scepticism or fatigue, due to your own wanting to believe that there are not such people, or a habit of underestimating the evil, you will get it in the neck. Also you may be smug in your own power, or relatively so, with regard to the specific villain. Indeed, such villains may be so willy nilly, i e, even without premeditation conscious. USSR was called by President Reagan, “The Evil Empire” and we now see the evil systematic unfolding, thru the collapse of USSR with random lost dangerous weapons hither and yon. But the current Republican Administration also uses the word “Evil” (Republicans like stark concepts), about terrorists --- while saps go about apologizing for evil activities by purporting to attempt to perceive basically benign motives of such devils.. Let us try to understand Iago, or Richard III --- it is fun to try, but do not assume that with some tender loving care, or giving them a sense that we can see what is bothering them, that they will stop doing evil deeds ever. The Maslovian notion that people are born good but are often made bad needs the corollary: once a person has become bad/evil (and that can be in early childhood) that person cannot be trusted, and his/her judgment does not signify --- I myself complain of much in Western society, but my opinions are those of a reasonable person; Bin Laden is not a reasonable person, and accordingly has nothing to say worth hearing. He is of less value than a schizophrenic. There are other sources of wisdom. He needs, however, investigation ala Quincy (so as to defend ourselves). Poe and some others, including Paul Bowles, give us this portrayal of evil in everyday life, warning us not only vs Bin Laden, but also certain bureaucrats etc, and some of our fellow parents. Indeed, R D Laing emphasizes the evil perpetrated intentionally by parents upon their own children, for the sake of power perversion. So a cultured educated person should not go about like Goody Two Shoes, denying the ubiquitousness of evil. And the ethos of theater producers should get away from the misguided obsession with showing characters as multi faceted in a moral sense --- Richard III puts on various masks so as to trick his victims, and sometimes the audience, to its horror, but he is always a devil. To say, well but he is a caricature, is to miss the point: so is everyone on Earth. Ask Freud. We always fly by the seat of our pants. One of the main virtues of great artists is their telling the truth, which is why also they are funny --- we laugh (one of our several kinds of laughter) due to relief at hearing the truth. It is sort of a reverse, or communal, schadenfreude.