Log24

Thursday, August 24, 2023

Fresh-Cull Vermilion

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 6:21 pm

"It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.
We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground
Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.
And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,
If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit,

And if we ate the incipient colorings
Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground."

— "The Rock," a poem by Wallace Stevens from
a section with the same title in the Collected Poems .

The red of the watermelon eaten on the cover of the
August 28, 2023, New Yorker  is  RGB (240, 57, 53) — 
Cinnabar Red, also known as Vermilion.

For related poetic remarks, see a post of Leap Day 2004 .

Sunday, July 23, 2023

Fresh Culls

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 10:28 am

"It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.
We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground
Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.
And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,
If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit,

And if we ate the incipient colorings
Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground."

— "The Rock," a poem by Wallace Stevens from
a section with the same title in the Collected Poems .

Friday, July 21, 2023

Lyric Philosophy

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 pm
 

Friday, May 27, 2011

Rock Concert

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:01 PM Edit This

It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.
We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground
Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.
And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,
If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit,

And if we ate the incipient colorings
Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground.

— "The Rock," a poem by Wallace Stevens from
a section with the same title in the Collected Poems .

"A little bit of Las Vegas in the 1960s has
splashed down Off Broadway…. Actually,
the show as a whole could benefit from a softer sell."

— Charles Isherwood's review of
    "The Best Is Yet to Come"
    on page C1, NY edition, today's NY Times

"Out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum…"

Friday, May 27, 2011

Rock Concert

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:01 pm

It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.
We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground
Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.
And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,
If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit,

And if we ate the incipient colorings
Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground.

— "The Rock," a poem by Wallace Stevens from
a section with the same title in the Collected Poems .

"A little bit of Las Vegas in the 1960s has
splashed down Off Broadway…. Actually,
the show as a whole could benefit from a softer sell."

Charles Isherwood's review of
    "The Best Is Yet to Come"
    on page C1, NY edition, today's NY Times

"Out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum…"

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Bedrock

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 11:32 am

Today's previous post suggests the following—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110519-PhaneSense.jpg

Bester on bedrock and "the bottom line of all existence" suggests
a review of Wallace Stevens's "The Rock." Some background:
See Succor, May 11, and But Seriously, May 12.
See also Waiting for Benjamin, May 15.

Larry McMurtry famously wrote of reading Walter Benjamin
at the Dairy Queen. I never read Benjamin there, but I did
read at least some of the Bester book quoted above.

The bottom lines of this peculiar meditation—

It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.
We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground
Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.
And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,
If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit,

And if we ate the incipient colorings
Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground.

— "The Rock," a poem by Wallace Stevens from
a section with the same title in the Collected Poems .

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Waiting for Benjamin

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:07 pm

Walter Benjamin, that is…  At the Dairy Queen.
    (With apologies to Parker Posey.)

"One of Benjamin's many unrealised projects was a book
that would consist only of culls from already existing material;
he would do no more than arrange and edit."
— Screenwriter Frederic Raphael, May 2011 Literary Review

Raphael is clever, but I prefer Wallace Stevens on culls—

It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.
We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground
Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.
And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,
If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit,

And if we ate the incipient colorings
Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground.

Dairy Queen — Click to enlarge

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110515-DairyQueen400w.jpg

See also Stevens and "The Rock" in this journal and today's "Shoe."

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Beyond Forgetfulness

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , , — m759 @ 10:10 am

From this journal on July 23, 2007

It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.
We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground
Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.
And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,
If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit
,

And if we ate the incipient colorings
Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground.

– Wallace Stevens, "The Rock"

This quotation from Stevens (Harvard class of 1901) was posted here on when Daniel Radcliffe (i.e., Harry Potter) turned 18 in July 2007.

Other material from that post suggests it is time for a review of magic at Harvard.

On September 9, 2007, President Faust of Harvard

"encouraged the incoming class to explore Harvard’s many opportunities.

'Think of it as a treasure room of hidden objects Harry discovers at Hogwarts,' Faust said."

That class is now about to graduate.

It is not clear what "hidden objects" it will take from four years in the Harvard treasure room.

Perhaps the following from a book published in 1985 will help…

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-MetamagicalIntro.gif

The March 8, 2011, Harvard Crimson  illustrates a central topic of Metamagical Themas , the Rubik's Cube—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110427-CrimsonAtlas300w.jpg

Hofstadter in 1985 offered a similar picture—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-RubikGlobe.gif

Hofstadter asks in his Metamagical  introduction, "How can both Rubik's Cube and nuclear Armageddon be discussed at equal length in one book by one author?"

For a different approach to such a discussion, see Paradigms Lost, a post made here a few hours before the March 11, 2011, Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110427-ParadigmsLost.jpg

Whether Paradigms Lost is beyond forgetfulness is open to question.

Perhaps a later post, in the lighthearted spirit of Faust, will help. See April 20th's "Ready When You Are, C.B."

Sunday, November 15, 2009

A Sermon for Hogwarts

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:00 am

Part I: The Search

Part II: The Rock

Related metaphors–

Three Tales

Related illustration–

The Dome of the Rock:

Dome of the Rock on NY Times online front page, 7:10 AM ET Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Tuesday July 24, 2007

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:11 am
The Church of St. Frank

See yesterday’s entries for
some relevant quotations
from Wallace Stevens.

Further quotations for what
Marjorie Garber, replying to
a book review by
Frank Kermode, has called
the Church of St. Frank“–

Frank Kermode on

Harold Bloom:

“He has… a great, almost
selfish passion for poetry,
and he interprets difficult
texts as if there were no
more important activity
in the world, which may
be right.”

Page 348 of Wallace Stevens:
The Poems of Our Climate
,
by Harold Bloom
(1977, Cornell U. Press):

“The fiction of the leaves is now Stevens’ fiction…. Spring, summer, and autumn adorn the rock of reality even as a woman is adorned, the principle being the Platonic one of copying the sun as source of all images….

… They are more than leaves
              that cover the barren rock….

They bear their fruit    
             so that the year is known….

If they are more than leaves, then they are no longer language, and the leaves have ceased to be tropes or poems and have become magic or mysticism, a Will-to-Power over nature rather than over the anteriority of poetic imagery.”

For more on magic, mysticism, and the Platonic “source of all images,” see Scott McLaren on “Hermeticism and the Metaphysics of Goodness in the Novels of Charles Williams.” McLaren quotes Evelyn Underhill on magic vs. mysticism:

The fundamental difference between the two is this: magic wants to get, mysticism wants to give […] In mysticism the will is united with the emotions in an impassioned desire to transcend the sense-world in order that the self may be joined by love to the one eternal and ultimate Object of love […] In magic, the will unites with the intellect in an impassioned desire for supersensible knowledge. This is the intellectual, aggressive, and scientific temperament trying to extend its field of consciousness […] (Underhill 84; see also 178ff.)

— Underhill, Evelyn. Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man’s Spiritual Consciousness. New York: Dutton, 1911.

For more on what Bloom calls the “Will-to-Power over nature,” see Faust in Copenhagen and the recent (20th- and 21st-century) history of Harvard University. These matters are also discussed in “Log24 – Juneteenth through Midsummer Night.”

For more on what Underhill calls “the intellectual, aggressive, and scientific temperament trying to extend its field of consciousness,” see the review, in the August 2007 Notices of the American Mathematical Society, of a book by Douglas Hofstadter– a writer on the nature of consciousness— by magician Martin Gardner.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Monday July 23, 2007

 
Daniel Radcliffe
is 18 today.
 
Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter
 

Greetings.

“The greatest sorcerer (writes Novalis memorably)
would be the one who bewitched himself to the point of
taking his own phantasmagorias for autonomous apparitions.
Would not this be true of us?”

Jorge Luis Borges, “Avatars of the Tortoise”

El mayor hechicero (escribe memorablemente Novalis)
sería el que se hechizara hasta el punto de
tomar sus propias fantasmagorías por apariciones autónomas.
¿No sería este nuestro caso?”

Jorge Luis Borges, “Los Avatares de la Tortuga

Autonomous Apparition
 
 

At Midsummer Noon:

 
“In Many Dimensions (1931)
Williams sets before his reader the
mysterious Stone of King Solomon,
an image he probably drew from
a brief description in Waite’s
The Holy Kabbalah (1929) of
a supernatural cubic stone
on which was inscribed
‘the Divine Name.’”
 
The image “http://www.log24.com/log/pix07/070624-Waite.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.
 
Related material:
 
It is not enough to cover the rock with leaves.
We must be cured of it by a cure of the ground
Or a cure of ourselves, that is equal to a cure

Of the ground, a cure beyond forgetfulness.
And yet the leaves, if they broke into bud,
If they broke into bloom, if they bore fruit,

And if we ate the incipient colorings
Of their fresh culls might be a cure of the ground.

– Wallace Stevens, “The Rock”

 
See also
 
as well as
Hofstadter on
his magnum opus:
 
“… I realized that to me,
Gödel and Escher and Bach
were only shadows
cast in different directions by
some central solid essence.
I tried to reconstruct
the central object, and
came up with this book.”
 
Goedel Escher Bach cover
Hofstadter’s cover.

 

 
Here are three patterns,
“shadows” of a sort,
derived from a different
“central object”:
 
Faces of Solomon's Cube, related to Escher's 'Verbum'

Click on image for details.

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