Yeah, I think I'm with Phil here, on this element of Matthew's fascinating
post.
I find I have a multiple self-images, all of which are rather blurry, and
conveniently out of date, so I guess my imago is about half my age. Where I
live we actually have full-lenghth mirrors in the lifts, don't ask me why,
and I do meet a rather distinguished looking entity in there, but this is
countered by the human wreck I meet in the morning bathroom mirror, and has
no relation, eitherly, to the strange object I sometimes glance on the CCTV
screens in stores.
Wheras my images of others are much more stable, and recognisable. Even of
one or two close e-mail friends in distant lands whom I've never physically
met.
best
dave
----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Nicholls" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, June 04, 2001 10:10 AM
Subject: Re: Perloff intro to Luca
> Dear Matthew,
>
> No, I am not sure that we would recognise ourselves in the street. Our
> doppelganger's face is likely to be familiar, but not identical to our own
> face. This is possibly because we are familiar with our own face by
looking
> in a mirror, which distorts the image by reflecting the left half of our
> face onto the right half of the reflection, and vice versa. As you know,
> the two halves of the human face are slightly different, so the image that
> we know as our face is the mirror image of the one that everyone else
sees.
>
> This also explains why most people are made uncomfortable by seeing
> themselves in a photograph. The photographic image has the two halves of
> our face the right way around, that is reversed from our mirror image
mental
> picture of ourselves. When we look at a photograph we see ourselves as
the
> world sees us, but we are disturbed that this is not the way that we see
> ourselves.
>
> Indeed, this dual perception may apply to personality too.
>
> Cheers
>
> pHIL
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Matthew Francis" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2001 11:58 PM
> Subject: Re: Perloff intro to Luca
> > One's relationship to one's own face is interesting, don't you think?
> Would
> > you know yourself if you walked past yourself in the street, or just
think
> > haven't I seen that person somewhere before? And yet we see ourselves
> fairly
> > often - more often than most of our friends. It's just that the
> > circumstances under which we do are so different: it's never for long,
and
> > it's never socially, so to speak - we don't interact with ourselves.
> There's
> > something voyeuristic about it.
> >
> > Best wishes
> >
> > Matthew
> > Best wishes
> >
> > Matthew
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Mark Weiss <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: 02 June 2001 23:18
> > Subject: Re: Perloff intro to Luca
> >
> >
> > >Yeah, created a big splash a couple of years ago--I also can't remember
> the
> > >guy's name. He overlaid a Leonardo self-portrait drawing on the lady's
> > >face--bone structure appeared vaguely similar. Of course, the
> self-portrait
> > >was in extreme old age, many years after the Mona Lisa. Art historians
> > >didn't take it very seriously.
> > >
> > >Something like 20 years ago the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity
> > >published "The Psychoanalysis of the Dead." A very useful paper.
> Apparently
> > >the dead are unusually resistant.
> > >
> > >Mark
> > >
> > >At 11:02 PM 6/2/2001 +0100, you wrote:
> > >>I recall someone, can't remember who, claiming with all seriousness
that
> > not
> > >>only was Lisa Mona a man, but she was a _self-portrait_, to be exact,
> > >>Leonardo in drag!
> > >>
> > >>best
> > >>
> > >>Dave
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>----- Original Message -----
> > >>From: "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]>
> > >>To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > >>Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2001 8:22 PM
> > >>Subject: Perloff intro to Luca
> > >>
> > >>
> > >>In furtherance of my shameless pursuit of book sales, the following
from
> > >>Marjorie Perloff:
> > >>
> > >>INTRODUCTION to Rochelle Owens' _Luca: Discourse on Life and Death_
> > >>
> > >> In 1919 Marcel Duchamp bought on the Rue de Rivoli a cheap
> > postcard
> > >>reproduction of the Mona Lisa and decided to give Leonardo's famous
> > >>enigmatic face a black-penciled mustache, curling up at the corners,
and
> a
> > >>neat small goatee. Underneath the portrait Duchamp inscribed the
letters
> > >>LHOOQ, a sequence which, read aloud in French, equals elle a chaud au
> cul
> > >>(she has a hot ass). But his was not just a crude joke; as he
explained
> it
> > >>many years later, "The curious thing about that mustache and goatee is
> > that
> > >>when you look at the Mona Lisa it becomes a man. It is not a woman
> > >>disguised as a man; it is a real man, and that was my discovery,
without
> > >>realizing it at the time."
> > >> Here Duchamp implies playfully what Freud, in his famous study
> of
> > >>Leonardo
> > >>da Vinci, took very seriously-namely the artist's latent
homosexuality.
> In
> > >>both cases the model herself (a local merchant's wife) is seen as mere
> > >>object-"the occasion for these ruses," to use Frank O'Hara's phrase in
> "In
> > >>Memory of My Feelings." And of course art historians have taken this
> > object
> > >>status as given: Ernst Gombrich, for example, argues that the
universal
> > >>appeal of the Mona Lisa's enigmatic smile may be attributed to
> "Leonardo's
> > >>famous invention which the Italians call sfumato-the blurred outline
and
> > >>mellow colors that allow one form to merge with another and always
leave
> > >>something to the imagination."
> > >> Indeed, the painting's sfumato does leave something to the
> > >>imagination,
> > >>and in her brilliantly inventive Luca: Discourse on Life and Death
> > Rochelle
> > >>Owens has imaginatively recreated Mona Lisa from multiple
perspectives,
> > >>including Mona Lisa's own.
> > >> Owens' is a profound meditation on how Leonardo's painting-the
> > very
> > >>epitome of Renaissance art-was really produced and disseminated, and
> what
> > >>the process meant to the women (Mona and her friend Flora, who appears
> in
> > >>so many of Leonardo's works) as well as the children who served as
> models
> > >>for Jesus and St. John the Baptist in various paintings. Owens'
> > >>"narrative"-which is complexly disjunctive, weaving in and out of
> > >>Renaissance Florence, our own time, and the more distant past of
> > >>pre-Columbian cultures-circles around three characters: "Lenny"
> (Leonardo)
> > >>the artist/scientist, the artist's model Mona Lisa, referred to here
as
> > >>Mona or "La Gioconda" ("the smiling woman"), as the painting is also
> > >>called, and Siggy or Sigmund Freud, whose rationalist analysis
destroys
> > the
> > >>heart and soul of the culture it "murders to dissect." In the course
of
> > the
> > >>narrative Mona and Flora become part of a larger company of women,
> > >>especially poor women from various Indian tribes, who continue to be
> > >>oppressed in the Americas of the present:
> > >>
> > >> Leo na r do had not heard you you answer
> > >> correctly you calculate the edge reflect
> > >>
> > >> Reflect on the sketch
> > >>
> > >> of Indian women
> > >>
> > >> The conjunction of time frames and situations makes for a
> bravura
> > >>performance-that rare long poetic sequence that holds the reader's
> > >>attention from beginning to end even though it is by no means a linear
> > >>narrative.
> > >> Just as Marx will never seem the same after one reads Owens'
> Karl
> > >>Marx
> > >>Play (1973), so "Lenny" emerges as a complex character, obsessed with
> > >>anatomy and hence the dissection of cadavers, much taken with young
> boys,
> > >>alternately giggly and abstracted-and always consumed by his work.
> Sigmund
> > >>is his alter ego-hard, cold, "triumphantly smil[ing] on reading / a
> > >>pathological review of a great man." In "The First Person," for
example,
> > we
> > >>read:
> > >>
> > >> you said
> > >> the smile of Gioconda floats upon
> > >>
> > >> her features you hook your neck
> > >> pursing your lips saturate your dry
> > >> eyelids with oil and very lightly
> > >>
> > >> brush in this preherstory widening
> > >> your fibrous memory
> > >>
> > >> This passage gives us a good idea of the diction and tone that
> > >>distinguish
> > >>Luca from most poetry written today. Owens' theme, here as in The Joe
> > Poems
> > >>or Futz, is that of violation-the violation of one person's space by
> those
> > >>who want to control or absorb it, who will not let it be. Freud's
> "fibrous
> > >>memory" won't let the Leonardo story be; he has to explain childhood
> > >>memories as homosexual fantasies and find explanatory mechanisms for
the
> > >>artist's sublimation. But Owens doesn't relate these things
> > >>dispassionately: in her macabre vision Freud is seen "hook[ing] [his]
> > neck"
> > >>and, in a horrific image, "saturating [his] dry/ eyelids with oil."
> > >> Owens does not shrink from the violence and horror she finds
> > >>everywhere
> > >>around her and which she projects back, most convincingly, into what
was
> > >>supposed to be, according to Burckhardt and Berenson, the ordered and
> > >>measured world of Renaissance Florence. This poet enters her narrative
> and
> > >>calls the shots as she sees them:
> > >>
> > >> At times it seemed
> > >> to her she looked like other women
> > >> wearing a baffled look her brain
> > >> retained an image the very long
> > >> teeth due to gum deterioration her
> > >>
> > >> exhaling suddenly looking in the
> > >> middle instead holding her head to the
> > >> side.
> > >>
> > >> The sardonic suggestion that Mona Lisa's fabled smile is the
> > result
> > >>of gum
> > >>deterioration is characteristic of Owens' x-ray vision. Her packed,
> > heavily
> > >>accented free verse erupts like a volcano, as in this description,
early
> > in
> > >>the poem, of Mona's illness:
> > >>
> > >> Thin body of fiber
> > >>
> > >> Desperately sick for want
> > >> of a cleaner wound the woman followed
> > >> Mona's orders as if there is any
> > >> doubt water salt sugar protein
> > >>
> > >> potassium calcium urinate spon-
> > >>
> > >> taneously then the exposed & opened
> > >> entire lens would rupture the rule
> > >> in most cases the patient adjusts
> > >> following this three to
> > >>
> > >> seven fine sutures of silk or dog-gut.
> > >>
> > >> Notice the strange collision of highly concrete nouns as in
> lines
> > >>5-6
> > >>above, with the indeterminacy of reference produced by syntactic
> ellipsis
> > >>and a quirky absence of punctuation. In lines 8-9 one expects a period
> > >>after "rupture," and the next phrase should read, "the rule / in most
> > cases
> > >>[is that] the patient adjusts, / following this three to seven fine
> > sutures
> > >>of silk or dog-gut." And even the adjectival modifier here is
> > non-sensical.
> > >>A surgeon might say, "Give him three to seven sutures" or "He will
need
> > >>three to seven sutures," but in what situation would one say,
"following
> > >>this three to seven fine sutures?" If one knew that Y followed X one
> would
> > >>not be in the uncertainty about X that is registered here. And
> sound
> > >>repetition tells the same story. The predominant sound is that of
> > >>syllables ending with an emphatic /t/ stop: want, salt, protein,
> urinate/
> > >>potassium, rupture, patient, sutures, dog-gut. The poet's voice fairly
> > >>chokes as it vividly recounts the many threads of the Mona/Flora
> > >>story-threads that come together later in the poem when the
Renaissance
> > >>motifs are seen through an Aztec prism-words like "Aztec" and "Tlaloc"
> > >>reinforcing the sound structure of the earlier passages and ironizing
> the
> > >>claims of the conquistadores, whose plunder of American soil parallels
> > >>Lenny's earlier plunder of the very bodies and souls of his female
> models
> > >>in the interest of anatomical study as well as the art of painting.
> > >> Rochelle Owens' writing, here as elsewhere, is sui generis.
She
> > is,
> > >>in
> > >>many ways, a proto-language poet, her marked ellipses, syntactic
> oddities,
> > >>and dense and clashing verbal surfaces recalling the long poems of
Bruce
> > >>Andrews and Ron Silliman. But Owens is angrier, more energetic, and
more
> > >>assertive than most of her Language counterparts, male and female, and
> she
> > >>presents herself as curiously non-introspective. Hers is a universe of
> > >>stark gesture, lightning flash, and uncompromising judgement: it is
> > >>imperative, in her poetic world, to face up to the horror, even as the
> > >>point of view is flexible enough to avoid all dogmatism.
> > >> Immensely learned, sophisticated, and witty in its conceits,
> this
> > >>Discourse on Life and Death demands two kinds of reading. First, it
> should
> > >>be read through from beginning to end as if it were a novel; in this
> > >>instance, our concern is with character and the interchange between
> > people,
> > >>and we watch carefully as Mona and Flora and the children evolve
before
> > our
> > >>eyes.
> > >> But a second reading is required to note the poem's
> > >>microstructure-its
> > >>superb modulation of rhythms and internal rhymes, its ironies and
> > >>paradoxes. It is the layering of cultures and especially of myths,
> > >>including our own contemporary myths of the Great Creative Genius
> (always
> > >>male), creating beauty out of the detritus around him, that makes Luca
> so
> > >>distinctive. Watch out, Owens seems to be saying, for those
high-minded
> > >>claims and take another look at the evidence of actual life-"a stream
of
> > >>molten lava burning," "doses of nitrogen muscle saliva," or even "the
> > >>seams/ of a discarded wallet."
> > >> Owens has no easy answers for the pain and sorrow she presents
> for
> > >>our
> > >>contemplation, but her insistent questioning is itself a gift.
> > >> Marjorie
Perloff
> > >>
> > >
> >
>
