Hello chris, Keston et al,
Everywhere I go seems these weasels keep breakin' down on me:
"She never changed the order of these three sentences, but she sometimes
left out a word in one or other of them; never putting in another word, but
always leaving a blank and going on to the next word" cf " For/ even I
speak to her the sun was lowered.....speak to her" (TSHH)
"You are not afraid of a woman who has never seen the sun since you were
born?" Historically what the sun once never set on, it's almost entirely
gone down on, but the she of the first quote is Dickens' Miss Havisham in
"Great Expectations", a powerful after-echo of Keats' Moneta (Fall of
Hyperion), (especially as seen through a child's eyes), thought unlike her-
but like Elizabeth- only too mortal.
: Keats: " But yet I had a terror of her robes,/And chiefly of the veils,
that from her brow/ Hung pale and curtained in her mysteries/ That made my
heart too small to hold its blood ....Then I saw a wan face,/ Not pined by
human sorrows, but bright -blanched/ By an immortal sickness which kills
not;/ It works a constant change, which happy death/ Can put no end to.....
But for her eyes I should have fled away". Moneta's face "had passed/ the
lily and the snow ...and beyond these/ I must not think now, though I saw
that face". Miss Havisham's bridal white has yellowed. Keats' poem is an
affirmation of what we're still anguished by, Doug's word: a compassionate
engagement (the implications of this) with 'the miseries of the world'. Does
jhp's poem indicate a counter- principle, the holiness of the heart's
affections? , a heat shield to get us through the surface awfulness that
Alison Croggon rightly reacts to? Let me postpone that one for a second.
Re: "The stony heart of her" but not THE answer or even the first
answer: "I want... to show you that I am not all stone. But perhaps you can
never believe now, that there is anything human in my heart?" This follows
the moment when Pip realising her loneliness "stood compassionating her, and
thinking how in the progress of time I too had come to be part of the
wrecked fortunes of that house." What follows is conflagration "another fire
& pragma cape/ upon them both...with wild fiery streaks able" (TSHOH) , Love
AND War: 'and I doubt if I even knew who she was, or why we had struggled,
or that she had been in flames'...We have all seen this next image, though
it wasn't always flames..."In the next moment, I saw her running at me,
shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her"......"I had a
double-caped greatcoat on" ...pragmatism: action or policy dictated by
consideration of the immediate practical consequences rather than by theory
or dogma.. "When I saw her again..she lay indeed where I had seen her strike
her stick, and had heard her say that she would lie one day "...(Wordsworth
Classics pb. p.344):' 'speak to her: on tap here, here, here' (TSHOH) She
too, who lived in her wedding gladrags ('nearly glad rages'??), thought she
was saving an infant: 'I meant to save her from misery like my own .. but..I
gradually did worse...my praises...jewels..teaching..I stole her heart away
& put ice in its place". We can trace her as she sinks away 'she plays thus
longer a thoracic sink in fine array./Not come out to stay (OSCS)'...(boys
and girls come out..) "I am tired.. i want diversion..I have a sick fancy
that I want to see some play..Let me see you play cards with this boy "
"With this boy! Why he is a common labouring-boy?" I thought I overheard
Miss Haversham answer- only it seemed so unlikely- "Well, you can break his
heart". Forgive me John James if I misquote (I've mislaid it) that wonderful
ending "Release this boy I beg you"
Best,
John
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