Re: gary lane, 'the duino elegies', death haiku

--- Will Hochman <hochmanw1@southernct.edu> wrote:
 
> I think Salinger has a deep respect for poetry
> (though he really
> isn't known to write any) and imagine that a poetic
> explanation
> yields insight.

it's at least documented that he wrote and sent poems
to louise bogan of 'the new yorker' during the war. i
can't help but imagine that the prose synopses of some
of seymour's poems might now exist in double-haiku
form. but there are only three actual examples of
verse that i can think of: seymour's suicide haiku,
the john keats poem, and the couplet in 'the inverted
forest.'

> I think Jim is right to note varying
> interpretations
> and that's where Lane loses me...his points rest on
> his
> interpretations of Rilke as much as possible
> allusions to the 4th
> elegy...

i would agree that lane doesn't produce an airtight
thesis. but i did like his pronouncement that the
book in question was 'the duino elegies'.

> but yes, I think going to Rilke to unravel
> more of Salinger
> makes sense...

i think rilke's sensibility, his experience at the
military academy, his praise of childhood, his
eschewing of the public role of the writer, his
hermitage at muzot and his hatred of photographs of
himself appealed to salinger and probably outweigh any
specific rilkean keys to salinger's locked doors of
meaning section men might say they have discovered.

> but then again, I think reading Rilke
> to read Rilke
> makes sense anyway,

i certainly agree with you there. am personally
indebted to a friend who years ago gave me a copy of
'the notebooks of malte laurids brigge' and said,
'read this!' only then did i realize, upon my next
reading of 'franny', that the author of 'malte brigge'
was 'that bastard rilke'.--kim

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Received on Thu Sep 26 11:41:22 2002