Yes, Harry, but I suspect that you are yourself a meddler -- as was
Hazlitt; it's an odd passage because he cannot not know that we cannot
help meddling with the allegory, it's built into the shape of our desire,
it eats us as we try to eat it, play and plot and ploy with it. Not a toy
at all, Hazlitt knew. He was, I suspect, mocking the prissiness of those
pious English readers who didn't want to read Spenser, or to read him as
children who know the dragon error is real.
On Sun, 3 Apr 2005, Harry Berger, Jr. wrote:
> >>This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the
> >>allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them."
>
> Not to wrangle, but according to my post-Hazlittian mentors, it does
> meddle. It gropes, it seizes, it obsesses, it ruins. I've been
> tangled in, strangled by, painted dragons. When a small boy; when an
> old man. It was both terrifying and yummy.
>
>
>
> >Belatedly -- the Dylan quote about being tangled in the allegory makes me
> >think of a favorite passage from Hazlitt's "Lectures on the English
> >Poets," when he's been commending to his readers the beauties of various
> >passages in The Faerie Queene (including the caves of Mammon and Despair,
> >the Gardens and the Bower, the Mask of Cupid and Arlo Hill):
> >
> >"But some people will say that all this may be very fine, but that they
> >cannot undertake it on account of the allegory. They are afraid of the
> >allegory, as if they thought it would bite them: they look at it as a
> >child looks at a painted dragon, and think it will strangle them in its
> >shining folds. This is very idle. If they do not meddle with the
> >allegory, the allegory will not meddle with them."
> >
> >
> >
> >Ken
>
|