Stan Kelly-Bootle:In VN’s
“indivisibly monist” world, all things are jovially inter-related and cunningly
co-relevant.
JM: Philosophy is not indivisible and,
if I remember it correctly, "monist" (contrary to "dualist", as Descartes
or "hilemorphist", as St.Thomas on Aristotle) is limited to the issue of
"body and soul."
Monism, imprecisely extended, as I see
it, necessarily denies Freud's "unconscious", gender
differences, idiosynchrasies, novelists. And poor Kinbote would be the only one to suffer, in the isolation
in his cave, because of a set of Jesuitic doubts
and religious conversions, such as T.S.Eliot's.
And I wonder, if Shade were a "monist", there could
be no wandering souls to warn him with tottering
messages.
And...would he have written PF in "Cantos"? (it
looks more and more like a Kinbotean invention)
btw: "Canto" (in Dante and Eliot)
describes a "narrative poem". This issue
reminded me of ancient :"Slovo o pulku Igoreve", where "Slovo" became,
after translational meanders, the "Song of Prince Igor." (Cf. List,
Sept.28,2008, on J.A.V.Haney, 1992)
Piers Smith [Sárdi: 'Terra
Incognita" was said to be inspired by Joseph Conrad's similar novella, "An
Outpost of Progress" (1896)]:"Does anyone know where this claim
originates?"
JM: I can only remember VN once
observed (SO) that he differs from JC "conradically" ..
.
Fran Assa (on Pushkin's
cat) ...
JM: Were this cat a bigger feline (
like Blake's Tyger burning bright) I'd certainly feel relieved should I meet it
alive and in chains...
PS: I know a girl called Nitsa. Her
mother explained it means "little flower" in
Hebrew.