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Feb. 27th, 2004 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cleolindaThis song is totally about heroin, isn't it?
Arggghhhh. Updated the Digest. Only took me five hours, but that's what I get for getting sick/busy with school and letting the news pile up for three weeks. I wouldn't be so hard on myself except that the name of the damn site is "The Daily Digest." Sigh.
Tired. I feel like an athlete training and resting up, regarding the Oscars. Yes, that's pitiful, but remember that I spent four hours typing nonstop for the Globes--watching both the show and trying to mod the tagboard. The day after the Globes, I mentioned that I wanted to move my computer for the Oscars, and my mother was like, "Shpfff, whatever." Now we've got 50 people in the pool and she's like, "Here's the card table from the cedar closet--do you need a TV tray?"
A bit concerned--this is now the second empty email I've gotten from the Oscar pool submission form. All it has is "subject = Oscar pool" and an IP number logged. I have no idea who it belongs to or how to say, "Hey, I don't think your entry went through." Maybe I'll put up a list on Saturday that says, basically, if your name isn't on it, try again.
Reading The Blithedale Romance again--might do my paper on it. Temple read us a letter that may have inspired the chapter "A Crisis," the part where "Hollingsworth basically asks Coverdale to be his spouse," as Temple put it. Apparently Hawthorne and Melville (who was about 15 years younger but rilly, rilly intense, as I understand it) had a very intense friendship that hit the skids after Melville wrote a letter to Hawthorne regarding Hawthorne's praise of Moby Dick:
"Your letter was handed me last night on the road going to Mr. Morewood's, and I read it there. Had I been at home, I would have sat down at once and answered it. In me divine maganimities are spontaneous and instantaneous -- catch them while you can. The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then -- your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling -- no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content -- that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.
"Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips -- lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling. Now, sympathizing with the paper, my angel turns over another page. you did not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled the book -- and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough to despise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul. Once you hugged the ugly Socrates because you saw the flame in the mouth, and heard the rushing of the demon, -- the familiar, -- and recognized the sound; for you have heard it in your own solitudes.
"My dear Hawthorne, the atmospheric skepticisms steal into me now, and make me doubtful of my sanity in writing you thus. But, believe me, I am not mad, most noble Festus! But truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning."
"So, uh, Hawthorne was a little freaked out by this," Temple said. Hello, Captain Understatement! I mean, keep in mind that "My dear Hawthorne" is a completely normal phrase for the period (early 1850s). But also remember that Hawthorne was an intensely private, reserved man who was absorbedly in love with his wife (and she with him). And this wasn't the culmination of a decades-long friendship--the whole thing was barely more than two years long. So the whole your lips are my lips and your heart is in my chest and... yeah.
I'm so tired that I'm not sure I can even sleep at the moment. Hmm. Maybe I'll try to read. Poor Melville.
Arggghhhh. Updated the Digest. Only took me five hours, but that's what I get for getting sick/busy with school and letting the news pile up for three weeks. I wouldn't be so hard on myself except that the name of the damn site is "The Daily Digest." Sigh.
Tired. I feel like an athlete training and resting up, regarding the Oscars. Yes, that's pitiful, but remember that I spent four hours typing nonstop for the Globes--watching both the show and trying to mod the tagboard. The day after the Globes, I mentioned that I wanted to move my computer for the Oscars, and my mother was like, "Shpfff, whatever." Now we've got 50 people in the pool and she's like, "Here's the card table from the cedar closet--do you need a TV tray?"
A bit concerned--this is now the second empty email I've gotten from the Oscar pool submission form. All it has is "subject = Oscar pool" and an IP number logged. I have no idea who it belongs to or how to say, "Hey, I don't think your entry went through." Maybe I'll put up a list on Saturday that says, basically, if your name isn't on it, try again.
Reading The Blithedale Romance again--might do my paper on it. Temple read us a letter that may have inspired the chapter "A Crisis," the part where "Hollingsworth basically asks Coverdale to be his spouse," as Temple put it. Apparently Hawthorne and Melville (who was about 15 years younger but rilly, rilly intense, as I understand it) had a very intense friendship that hit the skids after Melville wrote a letter to Hawthorne regarding Hawthorne's praise of Moby Dick:
"Your letter was handed me last night on the road going to Mr. Morewood's, and I read it there. Had I been at home, I would have sat down at once and answered it. In me divine maganimities are spontaneous and instantaneous -- catch them while you can. The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then -- your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling -- no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content -- that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.
"Whence come you, Hawthorne? By what right do you drink from my flagon of life? And when I put it to my lips -- lo, they are yours and not mine. I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling. Now, sympathizing with the paper, my angel turns over another page. you did not care a penny for the book. But, now and then as you read, you understood the pervading thought that impelled the book -- and that you praised. Was it not so? You were archangel enough to despise the imperfect body, and embrace the soul. Once you hugged the ugly Socrates because you saw the flame in the mouth, and heard the rushing of the demon, -- the familiar, -- and recognized the sound; for you have heard it in your own solitudes.
"My dear Hawthorne, the atmospheric skepticisms steal into me now, and make me doubtful of my sanity in writing you thus. But, believe me, I am not mad, most noble Festus! But truth is ever incoherent, and when the big hearts strike together, the concussion is a little stunning."
"So, uh, Hawthorne was a little freaked out by this," Temple said. Hello, Captain Understatement! I mean, keep in mind that "My dear Hawthorne" is a completely normal phrase for the period (early 1850s). But also remember that Hawthorne was an intensely private, reserved man who was absorbedly in love with his wife (and she with him). And this wasn't the culmination of a decades-long friendship--the whole thing was barely more than two years long. So the whole your lips are my lips and your heart is in my chest and... yeah.
I'm so tired that I'm not sure I can even sleep at the moment. Hmm. Maybe I'll try to read. Poor Melville.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 09:52 pm (UTC)I have no prior awareness of Sixpence reviews/interviews pertaining to the above. How old is that song?
no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 10:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 10:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-27 10:42 pm (UTC)The really creepy part is that he calls Moby Dick "a wicked book." Say what?
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 06:57 am (UTC)I'm quite confused by that song in general, because I used to listen to Sixpence back when they were a Christian band in the early nineties. And that song does, as you've said, sound like an ode to heroin. That, or an ode to girl on girl love.
*shrug*
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 09:20 am (UTC)If you try to read it as platonic rapture, it... kinda fits into the Hawthorne-Melville story in a really weird way.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 08:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 09:16 am (UTC)See, that's what I was trying to get across. I was on IM with Vladimir this morning, who was a bit peeved at what he saw as the "Bad homosexual!" tone of my entry, and I had to explain that it wasn't that I saw Melville as being gay at all per se--it was more of a social skills deficiency. I don't know what Melville's orientation was anyway, nor does it matter for the purposes of the story. I mean, we've all had that one friend who thinks that we are SUPERCOOL and starts, you know, dressing just like us or something. It's scary. And the reason I brought up Hawthorne's marriage was that--basically, Hawthorne was already obsessed with someone, and it was his wife (also an intellectual). He didn't really have time or room for another person/obsession, and Melville should have figured that out (he wrote to Sophia Hawthorne as well) and realized he was barking up the wrong "intellectual soulmates" tree and put a chill on it.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that, in case the way I told the story came off wrong. I mean, if Melville were gay and really in love with Hawthorne, I think the story would actually have a tragic sort of cast to it. As it is, Melville just... kinda freaks me out.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 09:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 09:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 10:13 am (UTC)I haven't read any of Melville's works but I heard that Billy Bud is pretty HoYay!
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 10:29 am (UTC)Uh, the word I would be looking for here is... YES.
"So when he wrote, 'I shall leave the world, I feel, with more satisfaction for having come to know you. Knowing you persuades me more than the Bible of our immortality,' the biblical meaning of the word 'know' - to consummate sexual passion - is unmistakable."
So it seems to be sort of a combination of actual HoYay! and Melville pushing too hard. (That's an excellent article, btw--thanks!)
2. "...and Papa has trouble curling the boy’s hair in the morning..."
"...in January of that year, Elizabeth Melville was pregnant with their third child, Stanwix."
WTF? Oh, antebellum writer people, you so crazy.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-29 11:11 pm (UTC)WTF? Oh, antebellum writer people, you so crazy.
Hee! I wonder if Stanwix is Melville's generation's "Audio Science" or something like that. The hair curling line gave me pause too.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-28 05:06 pm (UTC)