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Re: QUERY: Elysian mash-up
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On Apr 21, 2010, at 10:09 AM, Jansy wrote:
> JM: Why a pastiche of Hazel's tragedy, along with other sad tales?
> Why Hazel, in particular, when, from what I gathered, Shade has been
> describing a confrontation of rival persons or conflicting
> historical or biologicl happenings?
>
I'm honestly quite surprised, if I understand you correctly, that you
don't see allusions to Hazel's story in this sequence?
Time means succession, and succession, change:
Hence timelessness is bound to disarrange
Schedules of sentiment. We give advice
To widower. He has been married twice:
He meets his wives; both loved, both loving, both
Jealous of one another. [1:Shade, Sybil & Hazel]
Time means growth,
And growth means nothing in Elysian life.
Fondling a changeless child, the flax-haired wife
Grieves on the brink of a remembered pond
Full of a dreamy sky. [2:Sybil & Hazel, pond=swamp]
And, also blond,
But with a touch of tawny in the shade,
Feet up, knees clasped, on a stone balustrade
The other sits and raises a moist gaze
Toward the blue impenetrable haze. [3:Hazel]
How to begin? Which first to kiss? What toy
To give the babe? [4:?]
Does that small solemn boy
Know of the head-on crash which on a wild
March night killed both the mother and the child?
[5:Pete Dean, Sybil and Hazel]
And she, the second love, with instep bare
In ballerina black, why does she wear
The earrings from the other’s jewel case? [6:Hazel]
And why does she avert her fierce young face?[7:Hazel]
For as we know from dreams it is so hard
To speak to our dear dead!
The writing here is I think quite remarkable, impressionistic, one
vignette eliding into another, dreamlike. Not all of the mappings can
be said to fit well, namely 1 & 5, but that's what makes the passage
so enchanting. It keeps recalling, (obsessively?) the same story, but
by twisting some details, much as time does to many tales, achieves a
differentiation that resists stasis and ennui. And sections 2, 3 & 7
map quite well.
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