![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 11 of 11. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 17:53:56
I have always been interested in Walter Benjamin and Kafka and wanted to read them. In this Guy Davenport essay I was reminded that Gregor Samsa is more properly turned into vermin, rather than an insect, as is normally rendered, and you know, about how Kafka was a seer and a prophet (I would say).
But the quote that grabbed me was this from Benjamin.....
My boat is rudderless, it is driven by the wind that blows in the deepest regions of death.
(Good quote for my funeral. Should improve the overall intellectual average.)
I must make the bloody effort and read these people.
Posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 17:59:18
In reply to Benjamin, Kafka, posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 17:53:56
> Should improve the overall intellectual average
And the poetic.
Posted by floatingbridge on September 12, 2011, at 20:33:06
In reply to Re: Benjamin, Kafka, posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 17:59:18
> > Should improve the overall intellectual average
>
> And the poetic.I only read a few paragraphs or maybe an essay by Benjamin. My instructor kept pronouncing his name Ben-ha-mean with such insistence that I felt like an idiot. The students quickly learned to copy the instructor or avoid talking at all.
I really only remember the Angel of History reference which i refound in wiki. I think about this angel quite a bit. Why did you have to bring up something interesting? I stopped reading Kafka years ago because his writing was both like as someone once said an axe breaking the surface and an attempt to throw a ladder down into the basement of frozen
earth. I read some recently. I would need lots more therapy or drugs in order to truly withstand it.The Benjamin:
"A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."
You have probably read this.
Posted by floatingbridge on September 12, 2011, at 20:38:52
In reply to Benjamin, Kafka, posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 17:53:56
I remember liking guy davenport. I found his essays, as I remeber them, islands of lucidity for me. He is legible.
Which essay?
Posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 21:20:48
In reply to Re: Benjamin, Kafka » sigismund, posted by floatingbridge on September 12, 2011, at 20:33:06
> I read some recently.
What you need is a couple of people to take turns reading it out so you can listen.
It is actually a kind of comedy, like Beckett.
That is what Kafka and his friends did, falling off their chairs laughing.
Posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 21:26:59
In reply to Re: Benjamin, Kafka » sigismund, posted by floatingbridge on September 12, 2011, at 20:38:52
He's good, isn't he? It's in The Death of Picasso and is called The Hunter Gracchus. He takes you into a whole world of interconnectedness. A humane world too.
Posted by Phillipa on September 13, 2011, at 11:33:18
In reply to Re: Benjamin, Kafka » floatingbridge, posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 21:26:59
Sigi wrote to you. PJ checking on my old friend not literally!!!!
Posted by floatingbridge on September 19, 2011, at 21:34:02
In reply to Re: Benjamin, Kafka » floatingbridge, posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 21:26:59
> He's good, isn't he? It's in The Death of Picasso and is called The Hunter Gracchus. He takes you into a whole world of interconnectedness. A humane world too.
It came in the mail today. I opened to the essay you mention and found on the very first page a reference to Moby Dick.
It was near supper. Had to put it down.
I had forgotten about Guy Daveport. (So thanks.) He wrote a beautiful introduction for a little known US photgrapher, Ralph Eugene Meatyard. His pics are similar to Arbus, but spontaneous and less about surface if that makes sense at all. He was an optometrist by day. His family figures in his
pics. Friends with Thomas Merton, who I gather was quite the maverick. One picture all blurry of him playing bongos.
Posted by floatingbridge on September 19, 2011, at 21:36:29
In reply to Benjamin, Kafka, posted by sigismund on September 12, 2011, at 17:53:56
Did Kafka and his friends really fall out of their chairs laughing?
I always saw him as such a haunted person. Guess one doesn't exclude the other.
Posted by sigismund on September 21, 2011, at 1:51:25
In reply to Re: Benjamin, Kafka » sigismund, posted by floatingbridge on September 19, 2011, at 21:36:29
>Did Kafka and his friends really fall out of their chairs laughing?
Yes. Where did I read that? Max Brod? A literary magazine?
>I always saw him as such a haunted person. Guess one doesn't exclude the other.
Of course not. Having presentiments about the future must have been hard work.
Posted by sigismund on September 21, 2011, at 1:53:53
In reply to Re: Benjamin, Kafka, posted by floatingbridge on September 19, 2011, at 21:34:02
> Friends with Thomas Merton,
A monk and poet who did a well thought of translation of the Chuang Tzu with a foreword by the Dalai Lama
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Social | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.