Re: esme is me?
Pierrot65@aol.com
Thu, 18 Feb 1999 22:03:23 -0500 (EST)
Camille --
When I said "angelic muse" I didn't mean in the sense of an archetype or,
necessarily, a muse at all. So my bad for being unspecific. I meant more of a
breath of fresh air, in the "Charlotte's yellow dress" strain, one of those
percussive collisions with perfect beauty -- but a very human, earthly beauty,
an actual human being, inspiration in the sense that ah, here then is an
example of the world's capacity for beauty in character and personality and
physicality and uniqueness. I think (and hope) maybe we feel the same way, but
my own love for Esme is getting in the way of my expressing it. What do you
think?
One of the chief attractions of Seymour for me has always been the idea that
he treats people the way they deserve to be treated. Suicide an overreaction
after playing with a precocious little girl and having a (not abnormally)
unsuccessful marriage? Sure, if you have your mortgage, and your minivan, and
your quotidian odds and ends. But what if you are hypersensitive to the
world's slights, and more importantly, man's daily slights to man? Sybil does
deserve his attention (though I think maybe he is justifiably in love with his
own reaction to her, in a totally understandable narcissistic way) His suicide
is perfectly in character ... unfortunately. (In the sense that I'm sorry he's
dead.)
I think those of us honestly looking for "truth and beauty" (and not the
crappy cliched self-important "oh I'm so tortured" phony routine) see that
Esme is a transcendant human being. Sure, she's just a young girl, and she
grows to marry under pretty normal circumstances. But when was the last time
you ran into an Esme in real life?
So I guess my response to your posting is: I meant to suggest that we love
the character, not the character type.
rick