Class Notes 1/25

Jan. 25th Notes, Monday

Blog assignment: What book couldn't you put down?

Dr. Sexson named too many blogs to list on here that we need to read. So read every one's blogs!!!

So there is a slight divergence of the class in terms of whether or not one should forget an epiphany. It is not that you or anyone else is asked to forget an epiphany, however, because epiphanies are too overwhelming, devastating, engulfing, overcoming, overpowering, P2C2E, you have to look at other ways that the epiphany can be revealed, after the initial impact. How do you continue life after an epiphany? Ratty and Mole are only given a sense of their epiphany because to live with the full memory of the epiphany would just be too much. Willows page 129, Mole, "I feel strangely tired, Rat...."
This is how I thought of the idea of forgetfulness: Think if you had the best meal ever on Mount Olympus (since we've been talking about food epiphanies) and the food you eat is the food of the gods and nothing on earth will ever compare to what you have eaten, and you will never get it again. To know that such a food exists would overwhelm you and when you were forced to live off of earthly food again, your life would be ruined, because compared to the foods of the gods earth food would forever taste like sand. So in order to not ruin your life, the gods might bless you with a forgetfulness so that you are vaguely aware of something divine, but you can still comfortably live your life eating tasty earthly food.
However talking about it in terms of food may be simplifying the Piper at the Gates of Dawn idea of epiphany. Ratty and Mole don't need to forget, rather they need to learn to rememeber to listen to the music in the reeds, in the willows, on the wind. Ratty is listening to what is already there, we need to train our ears to hear.

Finnegans Wake 614 -
"Begin to forget it. It will remember itself from every sides, with all gestures, in each our word. Today's truth, tomorrow's trend.
Forget, remember!
Have we cherished expectations? Are we for liberty of persuasiveness? Whyafter what forewhere? A plainplanned liffeyism assemblements Eblania's conglomerate horde. By dim delty Deva.
Forget!"

van Gogh - he was so overwhelmed by colors.....it drove him mad, cut off his ear and eventually had to exit stage left.

Wikipedia: quiddity (Latin quidditas) was another term for the essence of an object, literally its "whatness," or "what it is." The term derives from the Latin word "quidditas," which was used by the medieval Scholastics as a literal translation of the equivalent term in Aristotle's Greek.

Ch. 7 Piper at the Gates of Dawn, repitition of the word imperious, defined as intensely compelling or dominant

via negativa
when we recognize what is wrong in us, we recognize ourselves

Epiphany is the theological equivilent of what in literature is called anagnorsis or "recognition." - Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on Milton and Blake page 130

Dr. Sexson mentioned Dubliners by James Joyce (something we should be reading this week!!) the form of the story is that it starts with the details, which shrink and come together into an epiphany.

No worst, there is none
NO worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-
woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing --
Then lull then leave off. Fury had shrieked "No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief".
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.
Gerard Manley Hopkins