Month: April 2007
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Eleven
Today's sermon
Samuel Beckett on Dante and Joyce:
"Another point of comparison is the preoccupation with the significance
of numbers. The death of Beatrice inspired nothing less than a highly
complicated poem dealing with the importance of the number 3 in her
life. Dante never ceased to be obsessed by this number. Thus the poem
is divided into three Cantiche, each composed of 33 Canti....
Why, Mr. Joyce seems to say, should.... the Armistice be celebrated at
the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month? He cannot
tell you because he is not God Almighty, but in a thousand years he
will tell you... He is conscious that things with a common numerical
characteristic tend towards a very significant interrelationship. This
preoccupation is freely translated in his present work...."-- "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce," in James Joyce/Finnegans Wake: A Symposium (1929), New Directions paperback, 1972
See also Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.
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Hollywood Easter (again):
Midnight in the Gardencontinued from Sept. 30, 2004
Tonight this journal had two Xanga footprints from Italy....
At 11:34 PM ET a visitor from Italy viewed a page containing an entry from Jan. 8, 2005, Splendor of the Light, which offers the following quotation--
From an essay on Guy Davenport--
"A disciple of Ezra Pound, he adapts to the short
story the ideogrammatic method of The Cantos, where a grammar of
images, emblems, and symbols replaces that of logical sequence. This
grammar allows for the grafting of particulars into a congeries of
implied relation without subordination. In contrast to postmodernists,
Davenport does not omit causal connection and linear narrative
continuity for the sake of an aleatory play of signification but in
order to intimate by combinational logic kinships and correspondences
among eras, ideas and forces."-- "When Novelists Become Cubists: The Prose Ideograms of Guy Davenport," by Andre Furlani
The visitor from Italy may, of course, have instead intended to view
one of the four earlier entries on the page. In particular, the visitor may have seen
The Star
of Venus"He looked at the fading light
in the western sky and saw Mercury,
or perhaps it was Venus,
gleaming at him as the evening star.
Darkness and light,
the old man thought.
It is what every hero legend is about.
The darkness which is more than death,
the light which is love, like our friend
Venus here, or perhaps this star is
Mercury, the messenger of Olympus,
the bringer of hope."-- Roderick MacLeish, Prince Ombra.
At 11:38 PM ET, a visitor from Italy (very likely the 11:34 visitor returning) viewed the five Log24 entries ending at 12:06 AM ET on Sept. 30, 2004.
These entries included Midnight in the Garden and...
A Tune for Michaelmas
The entries on this second visited page also included some remarks on Dante, on time, and on Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano that are relevant to Log24 entries earlier this week on Maundy Thursday and on Holy Saturday.
Here's wishing a happy Easter to Italy, to Francis Ford Coppola and Russell Crowe (see yesterday's entry), and to Steven Spielberg (see the Easter page of April 20, 2003).
Image courtesy of
Hollywood Jesus:When you wish
upon a star... -
From the Workshop
Today's birthdays:
Francis Ford Coppola
and Russell CroweGift of the Third Kind
Background:Art Wars and
Russell Crowe as
Santa's Helper.
From Friedrich Froebel,
who invented kindergarten:
From Christmas 2005:
Related material from
Pittsburgh:
... and from Grand Rapids:
Click on pictures for details.Related material
for Holy Saturday: -
Poetry Month continues...
The Annual
Maundy Thursday
Dante's Inferno Reading"The reading occurs during the Maundy Thursday vigil, the very hours Dante intended the events in the epic poem to take place."
Featured poets:Rachel
Hadas, Wyatt Prunty, Rachel Wetzsteon, Rika Lesser, David Yezzi, Annie
Finch, Honor Moore, Lynn Emanuel, Paul Watsky, Kate Light, Phillis
Levin, Michael Palma, Charles MartinThursday, April 5, 2007, 9 p.m. to midnight, The Cathedral Church of
St. John the Divine, 1047 Amsterdam Avenue at 112th St., NYC, NYRelated material -Dante Alighieri Academy
continues Dante's Christian
philosophy of education....
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Phrase and Fable
Phrase:
Spy Wednesday --"The Wednesday before Good Friday, when Judas bargained to become the spy of the Jewish Sanhedrim. (Matt. xxvi. 3–5, 14–16.)"
-- E. Cobham Brewer, 1810–1897, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898
Fable:
Nature morte à l'échiquier (les cinq sens),
vers 1655, une narration
à valeur symbolique...Huile sur bois, 73 x 55 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Related material:
April 4, 2001,
The Black Queen -
ART WARS continued:
Our Judeo-Christian
Heritage -
Lottery
Hermeneutics
Part I: JudeoThe Lottery 12/9/06 Mid-day Evening New York 036 See
331 See 3/31--
"square crystal" and "the symbolism could not have been more perfect."
Pennsylvania 602 See 6/02--
Walter Benjamin
on
"Adamic language."111 See 1/11--
"Related material:
Jung's Imago and Solomon's Cube."Part II: Christian
The Lottery 4/3/07 Mid-day Evening New York 115 See 1/15--
017 See
Pennsylvania 604 See
6/04--714 See
7/14--It is perhaps relevant to
this Holy Week that the
date 6/04 (2006) above
refers to both the Christian
holy day of Pentecost and
to the day of the
facetious baccalaureate
of the Class of 2006 in
the University Chapel
at Princeton.For further context for the
Log24 remarks of that same
date, see June 1-15, 2006. -
One Story
Related material:
"But what is it?"
Calvin demanded.
"We know that it's evil,
but what is it?""Yyouu hhave ssaidd itt!"
Mrs. Which's voice rang out.
"Itt iss Eevill. Itt iss thee
Ppowers of Ddarrkknesss!"
"After A Wrinkle in Time was
finally published, it was pointed out to me that the villain, a naked
disembodied brain, was called 'It' because It stands for Intellectual
truth as opposed to a truth which involves the whole of us, heart as
well as mind. That acronym had never occurred to me. I
chose the name It intuitively, because an IT does not have a heart or
soul. And I did not understand consciously at the time of writing
that the intellect, when it is not informed by the heart, is evil.""When all is said and done,science is about things andtheology is about words."
-- Freeman Dyson,
New York Review of Books,
issue dated May 28, 1998
"Does the word 'tesseract'
mean anything to you?"
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