Notes

On "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction," by Wallace Stevens:

"This third section continues its play of opposing forces, introducing in the second canto a 'blue woman,' arguably a goddess- or muse-figure, who stands apart from images of fecundity and sexuality...."

-- Michael Bryson 

From a Beethoven's Birthday entry:

Moulin Bleu

Kaleidoscope turning...
Shifting pattern
within unalterable structure...
-- Roger Zelazny, Eye of Cat   

See, too, Blue Matrices, and
a link for Beethoven's birthday:

Song for the
Unification of Europe
(Blue 1)

From today's news:

PRAGUE, Czech Republic (AP) - Ushering in a bold new era, hundreds of thousands of people packed streets and city squares across Europe on Friday for festivals and fireworks marking the European Union's historic enlargement to 25 countries from 15.

The expanded EU, which takes in a broad swath of the former Soviet bloc - a region separated for decades from the West by barbed wire and Cold War ideology - was widening to 450 million citizens at midnight (6 p.m.EDT) to create a collective superpower rivalling the United States.

"All these worlds are yours
except Europa.
Attempt no landing there."

Library

These are the folios of April,
All the library of spring

— Christopher Morley

The above quotation is dedicated to Quay A. McCune, M.D., whose copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations I purchased for two dollars at a Friends of the Library sale on July 2, 1999.  Dr. McCune's copy of Bartlett was the twelfth edition, of November 1948, in a February 1952 reprint.  It was edited by Christopher Morley.

Incidentally, Morley's father Frank, a professor of mathematics, is the discoverer of Morley's theorem, which says that the angle trisectors of any triangle, of whatever shape, determine an equilateral "Morley triangle" hidden within the original triangle.

Those familiar with Dorothy Sayers's explication of the Trinity, The Mind of the Maker, will recognize that this figure represents a triumph over the heresies she so skillfully describes in the chapter "Scalene Trinities."  From another chapter:

"... this is the Idea that is put forward for our response. There is nothing mythological about Christian Trinitarian doctrine: it is analogical. It offers itself freely for meditation and discussion; but it is desirable that we should avoid the bewildered frame of mind of the apocryphal Japanese gentleman who complained:

'Honourable Father, very good;
 Honourable Son, very good; but
 Honourable Bird
     I do not understand at all.'

'Honourable Bird,' however, has certain advantages as a pictorial symbol, since, besides reminding us of those realities which it does symbolise, it also reminds us that the whole picture is a symbol and no more."

In the Morley family trinity, if Frank is the Father and Christopher is the Son, we must conclude that the Holy Spirit is Christopher's mother — whose maiden name was, appropriately, Bird.

X

Tonight on PBS:
The Jesus Factor

From Good Friday:

From Eternity:

From Holy Saturday:

"...a 'dead shepherd who brought
tremendous chords from hell
And bade the sheep carouse' "

(p. 227, The Palm at the End of the Mind: Selected Poems and a Play. Ed. Holly Stevens. New York: Vintage Books, 1990)
— Wallace Stevens
    as quoted by Michael Bryson

See also the entries of 5/12.

Example

"...the source of all great mathematics is the special case, the concrete example. It is frequent in mathematics that every instance of a concept of seemingly great generality is in essence the same as a small and concrete special case."

— Paul Halmos in
    I Want To Be a Mathematician

Last Exit:
A Meditation for Poetry Month

Click on the picture below for details.

Notes on the compiling of Only the Dead:

Today's obituary of the author of Last Exit to Brooklyn suggested I look up Wolfe's short story, "Only the Dead Know Brooklyn."  That story contained, near its end, a reference to drowning.  Thoughts of drowning and of Brooklyn suggested (this being poetry month) Hart Crane's classic The Bridge.  When I looked for material on Crane on the Web, I found, to my considerable surprise, that today is the anniversary of Crane's death.

As Wolfe says, apropos of Selby and Brooklyn,

"Red Hook! Jesus!"

As Crane says, apropos of Wolfe and the Brooklyn Bridge,

"Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry...."

Unfortunately, the bridge is not for sale.  However....

The Whisper

Two interviews by Rebecca Murray —

Interview with Sofia Coppola, who won an Oscar for the screenplay of Lost in Translation: 

Did you write that character with Bill Murray in mind?
I did. I was definitely picturing him and I definitely wrote it for him. I couldn't really think of anyone else.

Interview with Bill Murray, costar — with Scarlett Johansson — of Lost in Translation:

Your character whispers something to Scarlett’s character in a crucial scene. Can we know what you said?
You never will.

True.  But we can imagine.

Hint 1: The publication date for
Kierkegaard's Works of Love
in a sixties paperback edition:
November 7, 1964
(See Directions Out)

Hint 2: The above photo
of Scarlett Johansson
just walking down the street

Hint 3: The top 10 songs
of November 7, 1964

Final hint: It's a song title.

Answer

Outside the World

(A sequel to the previous entry)

Title: The Point Outside the World:
         Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein
         on Nonsense, Paradox, and Religion

Author: M. Jamie Ferreira
           (Love's Grateful Striving) 
           (U. of Va., Charlottesville)

Appeared in: Wittgenstein Studies 2/97,
                    also in  Religious Studies,
                    Vol. 30, March 1994,
                    pp. 29-44.

See particularly the following passage:

The second rationale for the indirection of communication of the religious is also antitheoretical and a practical re-orientation (to acquire new skills, "to be able") rather than the reception of information.

This appreciative understanding of the speaker distinguishes the austere view from that which rejects religious language, but the austere view also reveals an understanding of religious utterances as grammatical remarks, meaningful as rules of linguistic usage.  Wittgenstein points to "Theology as grammar" when he writes that "Grammar tells us what kind of object anything is" and that "The way you use the word 'God' does not show whom you mean -- but rather what you mean." ³⁰

He illustrates: "God's essence is supposed to guarantee his existence -- but what this really means is that what is here at issue is not the existence of something." ³¹

Grammatical remarks are rules for use; they are neither empirical conclusions nor attempts to offer a perspective from "outside the world."

³⁰ Philosophical Investigations, no. 373;
    Culture and Value, p. 50.

³¹ Culture and Value, p. 82.

As noted in the previous entry, the number 373 does seem to point, whether Wittgenstein meant it to or not, to "a point outside the world."

Of course, the pointing is in the eye of the beholder... As, for instance, the time of this entry, 5:24, "points" to Kali, the Dark Lady, as played (yet again -- see previous entry) by Linda Hamilton.

Directions Out

Part I: Indirections

"By indirections, find directions out."

-- Polonius in Hamlet: II, i

"Foremost among the structural similarities between Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein... is the use of indirect communication: as paradoxical as it may sound, both authors deliberately obfuscate their philosophy for the purposes of clarifying it....  let us examine more closely particular instances of indirect communication from both of the philosophers with the intention of finding similarity. 'By indirections, find directions out.' – Polonius in Hamlet: II, i"

-- WowEssays.com

On religious numerology (indirections)...

For the page number "373" as indicating "eternity," see

Zen and Language Games (5/2/03), which features Wittgenstein,

Language Game (1/14/04), also featuring Wittgenstein, and

Note 31, page 373, in Kierkegaard's Works of Love (1964 Harper Torchbook paperback, tr. by Howard and Edna Hong),