----- Original Message -----
From: "Max Richards" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009 5:55 AM
Subject: Re: "The Frozen Sea"
Hi Fred,
Of course I began this thinking oh dear Fred is recovering from a serious
misadventure, and a little too slowly refocused on it as a dramatic
monologue.
Then I thought didn't Kafka use the phrase?
A detour to wikiquote found this:
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
Letter to Oskar Pollak (27 January 1904)
Which I copy just to show that there are Pollaks in Kafka's life in 1904.
'out for stars' has a pleasing old-poetical feel to it, and another
distraction
- I think of Robert Frost somewhere.
But mainly I have enjoyed your Frozen Sea for the dramatic resonances it
sets up
between the speaker and his doctor and the others thereabouts, with strong
ironies and hints of deep knowledge despite his saying 'no revelation'. The
coming universal disaster comes through with a strikingly imaginative
relish...
Max
Max, glad you liked it. We Pollaks and Pollacks are Kafka-botherers the way
other people are "god-botherers." ( --- I only recently encountered that
phrase. Brit - also Australian / New Zealand? It's a shame American
doesn't have the phrase; we have far too many more of the thing.)
I tossed in the Frost reference deliberately. ("But no, I was out for
stars. / I would not come in / Even if I were asked, / And I hadn't been.")
I know it may be a weird move. But the speaker is *very conscious of his
effect and overtones. Whatever happened to him (whether or not he sought
it) mutated him into a humanities-type. Besides being a dark visionary, he
is the only *poet among these "dear" but "gormless" scientists. So why
wouldn't he quote a colleague?
