“…in 1959… I stepped out alone, walked into the streets
of Lone Pine, Calif., and saw the world— the mountains,
the sky, the low scattered buildings— suddenly flame into life.
There were no visions, no prophetic voices or visits by
totemic animals, just this blazing everywhere.”
— Barbara Ehrenreich in today’s NY Times Sunday Review ,
“A Rationalist’s Mystical Moment”
A less credible account —
See as well "Merve Emre’s Vinduet Lecture,
held in the Hamsun Hall at Gyldendal Norsk
Forlag in Oslo, September 4th 2023."
“At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light,
an image of unutterable conviction,
the reason why the artist works and lives
and has his being — the reward he seeks —
the only reward he really cares about,
without which there is nothing. It is to snare
the spirits of mankind in nets of magic,
to make his life prevail through his creation,
to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful
substance of his own experience, into the congruence
of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves
the core of life, the essential pattern whence
all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity.”
— Thomas Wolfe, Of Time and the River
* Title suggested by that of a Siri Hustvedt novel.
See also Blazon in this journal.
The title is suggested by a new novel (see cover below),
and by an unwritten book by Nabokov —
Related material:
” ‘Harriet Burden has been really great to me,’
Rune says in an interview, ‘not only as a collector
of my work but as a true supporter. And I think of her
as a muse for the project … ‘ “
— In The Blazing World , the artist known as Rune
(See also Rune + Muse in this journal.)
Lily Collins in a Log24 post of Jan. 15, 2014— “Entertainment Theory“—
Related material from Trish Mayo—
On The Blazing World , a new novel —
“Hustvedt uses fragment-stories, frame narratives, and unreliable
narrators to talk about the ways in which brilliant women across
history have been silenced, forgotten, and appropriated by men.
This is a narrative suspicious of narratives, a story that
demonstrates how damaging stories can be.”
— Review by Amal El-Mohtar
The protagonist of Hustvedt’s novel is named Harriet Burden.
A midrash for Darren Aronofsky, director of The Fountain* and Noah—
Part I: The Burden of Proof —
Part II: The Story of Noam —
* See The Fountain in “The Story Theory of Truth,” Columbus Day, 2013
Two timely images for Oslo artist Josefine Lyche —
Backstory: Searches for “Blazing World” and for “Josefine + Lyche + Pink”
in this journal.
The image above is by a man, Brian Stauffer. Related material:
An image from today’s NY Times Sunday Book Review —
This image is by a non-man, Kelsey Dake.
The first image above, since it combines Lyche’s enthusiasm for the color
pink and (apparently) for fishnet stockings, seems to me the better picture,
despite its prurient nature.
(Updated through 10 AM ET)
"The Geometry of the I Ching introduces something called the Cullinane sequence
for the hexagrams, and uses a notation based on the four sides and two diagonals
in a square to indicate the yin and yang lines. The resulting rune-like symbols
are intriguing…."
— Andreas Schöter's I Ching home page
Actually, the geometry is a bit deeper than the rune-like symbols.
" 'Harriet Burden has been really great to me,'
Rune says in an interview, 'not only as a collector
of my work but as a true supporter. And I think of her
as a muse for the project … ' "
— In The Blazing World , the artist known as Rune
The front page of The New York Times Book Review
for next Sunday (March 30, 2014) is devoted to a
review of Siri Hustvedt’s new novel The Blazing World .
See two posts from St. Patrick’s day: Her and Narratives.
The review’s author is Fernanda Eberstadt.
The review is titled “Outsider Art.”
See also that phrase in this journal.
“The name Siri is Norwegian, meaning
‘beautiful woman who leads you to victory.'”
I prefer Josefine.
In memory of a Broadway star who reportedly died on Jan. 30 . . .
A Jan. 29 New Yorker story, "Life with Spider," suggests
a look at the author's earlier novel The Variations and,
after a synchronology check, a Log24 flashback —
Thursday, September 7, 2023
|
See also Fritz Leiber's rather different Spider Woman in this journal.
Barbara Ehrenreich in today's online New York Times :
"…in 1959… I stepped out alone, walked into the streets of Lone Pine, Calif., and saw the world— the mountains, the sky, the low scattered buildings— suddenly flame into life.
There were no visions, no prophetic voices or visits by totemic animals, just this blazing everywhere. Something poured into me and I poured out into it. This was not the passive beatific merger with 'the All,' as promised by the Eastern mystics. It was a furious encounter with a living substance that was coming at me through all things at once, too vast and violent to hold on to, too heartbreakingly beautiful to let go of."
Ehrenreich mentions a psychiatrists' paper, "The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered," that was published on September 1, 2012.
See also Log24 posts of September 1 and September 2, 2012.
"Constructed as a Nabokovian cat’s cradle, the novel
purports to be the work of a professor of aesthetics…."
— Fernanda Eberstadt in a book review now online
“It is said that the students of medieval Paris came to blows in the streets over the question of universals. The stakes are high, for at issue is our whole conception of our ability to describe the world truly or falsely, and the objectivity of any opinions we frame to ourselves. It is arguable that this is always the deepest, most profound problem of philosophy.”
— Simon Blackburn, Think (Oxford, 1999)
Michael Harris, mathematician at the University of Paris:
“… three ‘parts’ of tragedy identified by Aristotle that transpose to fiction of all types– plot (mythos), character (ethos), and ‘thought’ (dianoia)….”
— paper (pdf) to appear in Mathematics and Narrative, A. Doxiadis and B. Mazur, eds.
Mythos —
A visitor from France this morning viewed the entry of Jan. 23, 2006: “In Defense of Hilbert (On His Birthday).” That entry concerns a remark of Michael Harris.
A check of Harris’s website reveals a new article:
“Do Androids Prove Theorems in Their Sleep?” (slighly longer version of article to appear in Mathematics and Narrative, A. Doxiadis and B. Mazur, eds.) (pdf).
From that article:
“The word ‘key’ functions here to structure the reading of the article, to draw the reader’s attention initially to the element of the proof the author considers most important. Compare E.M. Forster in Aspects of the Novel:
[plot is] something which is measured not be minutes or hours, but by intensity, so that when we look at our past it does not stretch back evenly but piles up into a few notable pinnacles.”
Ethos —
“Forster took pains to widen and deepen the enigmatic character of his novel, to make it a puzzle insoluble within its own terms, or without. Early drafts of A Passage to India reveal a number of false starts. Forster repeatedly revised drafts of chapters thirteen through sixteen, which comprise the crux of the novel, the visit to the Marabar Caves. When he began writing the novel, his intention was to make the cave scene central and significant, but he did not yet know how:
When I began a A Passage to India, I knew something important happened in the Malabar (sic) Caves, and that it would have a central place in the novel– but I didn’t know what it would be… The Malabar Caves represented an area in which concentration can take place. They were to engender an event like an egg.”
— E. M. Forster: A Passage to India, by Betty Jay
Dianoia —
“Despite the flagrant triviality of the proof… this result is the key point in the paper.”
— Michael Harris, op. cit., quoting a mathematical paper
Online Etymology Dictionary:
flagrant c.1500, “resplendent,” from L. flagrantem (nom. flagrans) “burning,” prp. of flagrare “to burn,” from L. root *flag-, corresponding to PIE *bhleg– (cf. Gk. phlegein “to burn, scorch,” O.E. blæc “black”). Sense of “glaringly offensive” first recorded 1706, probably from common legalese phrase in flagrante delicto “red-handed,” lit. “with the crime still blazing.”
A related use of “resplendent”– applied to a Trinity, not a triviality– appears in the Liturgy of Malabar:
— The Liturgies of SS. Mark, James, Clement, Chrysostom, and Basil, and the Church of Malabar, by the Rev. J.M. Neale and the Rev. R.F. Littledale, reprinted by Gorgias Press, 2002
Judy Davis in the Marabar Caves
In mathematics
(as opposed to narrative),
somewhere between
a flagrant triviality and
a resplendent Trinity we
have what might be called
“a resplendent triviality.”
For further details, see
“A Four-Color Theorem.”
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