'about' 'understanding' 'limits'

2005, 2006, etc
Top lines: ...
From Greek, via Latin, to medieval Italian ... and into English ...
'Your speech.'
Dante, Inferno, 26, is 'about' understanding 'limits' ...
Fraudulent counsellors, including Odysseus/Ulysses, spout forth opinions in an intemperate manner.
Ulysses/Odysseus tells a tale [put into his mouth by Dante, with Virgil as intermediary] of a voyage 'beyond limits' into an unknown ocean.
The story does not tally with classical tradition - goes beyond its limits, as it were - and is thought to be Dante's invention.
It suggested/influenced Tennyson's later Ulysees poem, among other matters.
Revisions and Reviews.
Begin again.
[As if once were not enough!]
In all those letters she wrote, the one line of poetry she quoted was from Tennyson's Ulysses.
Going beyond limits ...
Ms Unreliable Counsellor [not her real name] actually slightly misquoted Tennyson's Ulysses - actually she could not quite remember the lines - to make what seemed to be quite an egotistical point really:
'I am a part of all I have met.'
She almost certainly had not carefully considered the idea from other perspectives - for example that something like the reverse was also true:
'All I have met are parts of me.'
Revisions and Reviews.
Reverses.
Off-parallel flows.
Complex inter-plays.
'Dialectics'.
Fluxes/flows hither and thither and ...
Inferno 26 is a dangerous realm for Dante - and even for his 'mentor' Virgil.
Telling tales.
Over-stepping limits.
Truth and illusion.
Anything a deceptive counsellor tells you might be dubious.
Myriad-minded Odysseus/Ulysses is in hell because - for amongst other reasons - he went beyond limts - into realms beyond his scope, and which he pretended to comprehend but did not.
Truth and illusion.
The person with a strong imagination sometimes/often oversteps the limits of truth ... goes into realms of illusion [outright falsehood, even].
As a matter of fact, Dante himself was in part by worldly profession a 'counsellor'.
Dante by a nature-nurture blend was an intellectual and a poet and an advizer to the powerful.
Without humility - and/or the assistance of 'divine grace', or something like it - he might have over-stepped 'limits' - and told falsehoods, and advized badly, and led astray [misled].
A lesson for him in the 'vision' of the hellish pit he 'represented' in Inferno 26 was that he had to keep his powers within the bounds of virtue and within the proper limits of the naturally questing and questioning human mind.
[Presume not god-or-nature to scan too much ... the proper study of present humanity is more humanity ... (after Pope, sort of)]
Meanwhile, in the real world, Dante was exiled from his home area, perhaps because he made people uncomfortable with his reasonably reliable 'honest counsel'.
That is just speculation - in ignorance of the full historical facts.
There are so many these days who do not seem to respect 'limits'.
I am troubled by the American state / corporate capitalist 'schemes' for 'full spectrum dominance'.
They do suggest some absence of humility ... a certain vanity ... and a failure to respect 'limits' ...
But that is a huge issue ...
Meanwhile ... Vanity ... vanity ...
... I can actually quite clearly imagine how vanity could possibly/actually undo so many ...
Dante and Virgil, by the way were great poets who stretched the limits ... but respected limits too ... so ...
... did not go too far ...
All of which goes to 'prove' ... ? ...
I have no idea really ...
But ...
Tall tale tellers do overstep limits sometimes ...
And ...
Further Ref: Read Dante, Purgatory 6.
The invective against the [then] present state of his contemporary 'body politic' - including the simile of the tossing and
turning sick woman.
Off-parallels ...
'Playing' with associations - with suggestions of 'ideas of reference', but ...
Talbot Road. Talbot News. Opposite, a female [primarily] hair-dressing shop: named 'No Limits'.
Dangers of that 'idea or reference' - when there are 'no limits', you lose all points of reference ... 'it' is only a formless mess ...
But ...
In the infinite possibility of 'it all' there are, indeed, perhaps, 'no limits'.
But ...
In the 'human condition', in the 'everyday', there always are 'limits'.
Freedoms within frameworks of agreed conventions - relative 'safety' within / through / of that 'approach'.
My imagination does seems to have 'no limits' though - and perhaps 'sees' more possibilities than most.
Despite that 'limitlessness' of imagination, I recognize - and respect - limits of the actual.
Sometimes it seems to me that others do not - and I feel 'pressurized', or otherwise manipulated, by 'them' to 'test the
limits' more than it is 'healthy' for me to do.
My 'limitless' imagination actually makes me quite cautious in actuality - not least because I am aware of the potential 'dangers' of 'going beyond limits'.
In actuality, most of the time, I accept limits - relative 'freedoms within frameworks'.
I am actually quite self-'restrained' - more so than many, I suspect.
This is sometimes taken advantage of.
E.g. external pressures, from others, to go 'further' - beyond limits - and/or to explore the 'boundary conditions' ... in ways they are not prepared to do themselves ...
... and when I do, 'they' lock me up, or otherwise overdo the 'external' restraints - 'taking liberties' from/with me, one way or another.
Meanwhile ...
A 'prisoner' writes:
Dear private diary ...
Everyone seems to be writing a public one now ... but who is reading them ... ? I wonder ...
Blag me a free blog reader please ...
One suggested to me, as regards another blither blather bloggy blow-out elsewhere, that although I wrote sometimes amazingly well about 'love', from time to time, there was a likelihood that however well I wrote I would not be much 'understood', because I was writing about something that some/many/most had not really experienced.
That suggestion surprized me greatly, and I did not pay much attention to it at the time, but ...
And also the careful reader suggested that there was a fascination in what I wrote because it was about 'love', and people did want to believe in that, and there was little doubt that I was not faking it when I wrote about my experiences of it, but ... it was not likely that I would get much recognition for it ... because ...
So ...
Failing to be comprehended or 'recognized' [fuck 'fame', I would not want that ... it is shallow and vacant ... but 'recognition' is something different ...] when I wrote in relatively simple terms about something that seemed to me relatively simple ...
I became more obscure ... for the hell of it ... perhaps ...
Vanity, vanity, O' I did not imagine vanity had undone so many.
I am a democrat politically speaking.
But there are the problematical issues of 'quality' and 'quantity' that make one doubt one's democratic credentials sometimes.
I am a classicist poetically speaking.
That can make me seem like an elitist.
Some are greater writers than others, no doubt about that, and there is an identifiable group of really 'high class acts' that stands way above the rest in poetical achievement/merit.
Dante and Virgil were/are among the relatively small group of truly great 'timeless' bardic poets - a class apart from the mere scribbler self-celebrants of the subjective moment.
They were humble fellows too, in many ways - some certain humility does seem to go hand-in-hand with greatness.
Yet they are not without their prides.
They must have known they were better than most/many poets.
E.g. Dante's pride in his own work - e.g. Inf. 25, 94ff, in which he claims to have bettered Lucan and Ovid in metamorphic tale-telling, and it was no idle boast.
Words of praise for a recognized equal talent, put into the mouth of Virgil by Dante, Inf. 26, 82f, 'my noble lines' - which
had 'immortalized' Odysseus/Ulysess.
Tall tale-tellers do over-step limits in ways that make you wonder whether they have gone too far.
But sometimes the apparent excesses are for instructive purposes.
Transitions.
Translations.
From Greek to medieval Italian ... and into English ...
'Your speech.'
Dante's vulgar Italian speech was descended from vulgar Latin, which was descended from classical Latin, which had some Greek roots, which ...
Speaking with the dead and/or gone.
In Inf. 26, Dante requires Virgil as 'intermediary' in order that he can understand what Ulysses/Odysseus says.
Dante knew of Odysseus/Ulysses only indirectly mostly through the pages of Virgil.
He did not have direct access to the Homeric sources - whether in the original Greek or in translation.
He knew no Greek apparently.
Please kindly excuze me, as I labour this point, because I have little Greek myself and my Latin is vulgar and framentary.
All that I know of these classical languages really is what is buried in my own vulgar tongue, which is yer actual English vernacular.
There is quite of lot of the old tongues in the old modern English actually, but I often don't recognize it.
The more I learn, the more I become aware of the scale of my own ignorance.
Wisdom in that, I think.
'Fragments In A Vulgar Script'.
Nods to Petrarch for the borrowing.
Winks to a letter to Miss O'Kyclops, of some certain authenticity - though I burnt a near original copy just before the cops arrived to arrest me for 'criminal damage' a while back - dated 12.05.2003, notes suggest, accurately, I think.
In said letter, said I, I said - in writing - the phrase 'fragments in a vulgar script' to point out more than one point to her, whether she got them or not is uncertain, readers like her being somewhat unreliable.
I also suggested more prosaically and directly possibilities of 'presumptuousness' on her part, and also on my part, most likely, now I think of it.
Going beyond limits as you examine 'phase boundary' conditions.
Inf. 26, 125f.
'wild flight'
A rash and presumptuous voyage - such as the one described/imagined for Odysseus/Ulysses by Dante ...
Anyway ... that is another tale too long to tell within the available limits of time and energy available to me today ...
In summary ... one point being, to repeat, that people of imagination can over-step limits ...
... another point being that 'unreliable counsellors' [remember Inf. 26 is 'about' the realm of the 'unreliable counsellors' as well as being 'about' the theme of 'over-stepping limits'] who have proven themselves 'unreliable', can justifiably be suspected of being generally 'unreliable' ... so anything they say might be ... [the point is obvious and does not have to be spelled out directly] ...
O' Oh ... the tedium of this little 'lesson' ... but sometimes one 'just' has do this sort of thing ...
And ...
Another point being that transitions are complex ... and require translators and interpreters ... etc ...
Another point being that 'the detail of the pattern is motion' [TSE B.N. 5] ...
And what she said was 'I have a busy life now and have moved on' ...
And that was such a cheap ill-thought-out slap-dash cliched phrase that she knew it would 'get to me' ...
Another point being that the tale Dante tells in Inf. 26 goes beyond the limits of the classical tradition of the life-and-death of Odysseus/Ulysses ... effectively extending his life beyond the grave ...
There is always more, of course ...
Consider, for example, Ulysses's reported speech to his crew, Inf. 26, 120ff ...
He states, in effect, that virtue and knowledge working together 'perfect' the faculties - specifically will and intellect -
that distinguish humans from brute animals. He presents the proposed voyage as an 'ultimate' moral and intellectual goal. Dante might have accepted this view himself - and indeed it is he who puts the words into his version of Ulysses's mouth - not least because his own journey of discovery - the comical poetical epic [which is far from being a laugh-out-loud foolish farce] is inspired, partly, by similar aims.
But there are dangers of over-stepping limits ... [...]
... as Ulysses is shown to do in Inf. 26 ... travelling beyond limits set by god-or nature on the human nature of his time and place [human nature itself is potentially limitless, but limited in any particular human life by physical facts, cultural contraints, environmental factors, moral issues, etc, etc, etc ... ] ...
Eventually, Dante's Ulysses sinks before Purgatory - since as a pre-Christian this realm is not 'available' to him ...
It would seem that Ulysses's voyage stands as both an off-parallel simile and a warning in relations to Dante's own audacious enterprize - the epic journey poem that is Dante's own epic voyage of exploration, but which, unlike Ulysses's, is made within the Christian cultural tradition - opening up realms to Dante not available to Ulysses, but also closing other realms - from outside his cultural tradition - to him ... in some ways ...
The cosmopolitan brat resisted contraint in the vernacular: '... me ... I can do anything  and go anywhere I fucking like! ...'
It was a somewhat rash statement [to understate it].
It was also, however, a telling point, indicative of the culture of his age - but it did not help him much in the here and now.
Contemplating the limitless freedoms available to his imagination and the actual restraints on him in everyday reality only seemed to frustrate - rather than 'liberate' - him actually.
So anyway ... and by the way ... and in case I forget to mention this again ... Miss Misleading Unreliable Consellor [but aren't we all that?!] further suggested in another letter a back-reference to a passage from Sartre.
This she had read in translation [in part-directly-quoted-part-summarized-part-paraphrased form] in one of his notebooks - slightly stealthily, given that she had read the private notebook without his permission [even though he had left it lying around knowing she might open it without asking him] ...
[But that is another distracting story entirely, perhaps.]
Anyway ...
It was really 'hard core' existentialist stuff, as I recall, about there being no real limits, and about free-form, so essentially formless, epistemology, and about 'unfixed laws of nature', which might change in an instant and ... how either/or being/non-being transition moments might open up infinite possibility ... and more and more of that sort of 'unlimited' stuff ...
It was certainly suggestive of 'infinite possibility' without actually spelling it out how to achieve it ...
It possibly better treated with some scepticism, or at least wariness ... because it was a dangerous kind of thinking, when he thought about it ... that way madness/chaos might lie ... possibly ...
Anyway ...
Naturally ... he imagined her ... inspired by that sort of stuff ... 'moving on' to experiment with that sort of idea ... which is exactly what she did in a sense ... because it was not long after she sneakily read that stuff in my notebook that she dumped him ... and ... got her existential liberation ... and all that ...
She got her freedom from me ... sure enough ... and fucked off to what seemed [by her own reports back] to be essentially unsatisfying and banal and frustrating often self-indulgent pursuits ... and did not seem to be particularly happy in her 'liberated state' ... and some-times was terribly unhappy [but aren't we all?] ...
I got the blame, of course, I had 'twisted' her, or otherwise 'fucked her up', and everything she did wrong was somehow a consequence of having known me, etc ...
Always easier to avoid reality in that sort of other-scape-goating way though isn't ... ? ...
Done it often enough myself ...
That will not be a full story of course ...
Wonder if she ever learned how to voyage better ... ? ...
Anyway ...
That is past ... and no real concern of mine ...
Her significant others were not there for her when she needed them - when, having voyaged beyond limits, she 'lost it' ...
and 'crashed'  ... but I was not there guv ... don't blame me guys and gals ... because I always would have been there for her ... even if she did not recognize it ... it was all rather a shame really ...
but nevermind ... others' issues ... not mine ...
'There there ...'
[Ref. Heller, Catch 22]
... move on ...
Trite conclusion is to repeat the obvious that there are dangers in
going beyond limts.
Dante, Inf. 26 is a 'touchstone' of literary brilliance for me  -
exemplary example of how the best of the compressed is so much better
than rest of the spread-out rest.
That guy sure can write a bit, in the vernacular.
So much in so little.
Bottom line: Dante, Inf. 26. Reference text/point.
+++++
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Top lines: ...
From Greek, via Latin, to medieval Italian ... and
into English ...
'Your speech.'
Dante, Inferno, 26, is 'about' understanding 'limits'
...
Fraudulent counsellors, including Odysseus/Ulysses,
spout forth opinions in an intemperate manner.
Ulysses/Odysseus tells a tale [put into his mouth by
Dante, with Virgil as intermediary] of a voyage
'beyond limits' into an
unknown ocean.
The story does not tally with classical tradition -
goes beyond its limits, as it were - and is thought to
be Dante's
invention.
It suggested/influenced Tennyson's later Ulysees poem,
among other matters.
Revisions and Reviews.
Begin again.
[As if once were not enough!]
In all those letters she wrote, the one line of poetry
she quoted was from Tennyson's Ulysses.
Going beyond limits ...
Ms Unreliable Counsellor [not her real name] actually
slightly misquoted Tennyson's Ulysses - actually she
could not quite
remember the lines - to make what seemed to be quite
an egotistical point really:
'I am a part of all I have met.'
She almost certainly had not carefully considered the
idea from other perspectives - for example that
something like the
reverse was also true:
'All I have met are parts of me.'
Revisions and Reviews.
Reverses.
Off-parallel flows.
Complex inter-plays.
'Dialectics'.
Fluxes/flows hither and thither and ...
Inferno 26 is a dangerous realm for Dante - and even
for his 'mentor' Virgil.
Telling tales.
Over-stepping limits.
Truth and illusion.
Anything a deceptive counsellor tells you might be
dubious.
Myriad-minded Odysseus/Ulysses is in hell because -
for amongst other reasons - he went beyond limts -
into realms beyond his
scope, and which he pretended to comprehend but did
not.
Truth and illusion.
The person with a strong imagination sometimes/often
oversteps the limits of truth ... goes into realms of
illusion [outright
falsehood, even].
As a matter of fact, Dante himself was in part by
worldly profession a 'counsellor'.
Dante by a nature-nurture blend was an intellectual
and a poet and an advizer to the powerful.
Without humility - and/or the assistance of 'divine
grace', or something like it - he might have
over-stepped 'limits' - and
told falsehoods, and advized badly, and led astray
[misled].
A lesson for him in the 'vision' of the hellish pit
his represented in Inferno 26 was that he had to keep
his powers within
the bounds of virtue and within the proper limits of
the naturally questing and questioning human mind.
[Presume not god-or-nature to scan too much ... the
proper study of present humanity is more humanity ...
(after Pope, sort
of)]
Meanwhile, in the real world, Dante was exiled from
his home area, perhaps because he made people
uncomfortable with his
reasonably reliable 'honest counsel'.
That is just speculation - in ignorance of the full
historical facts.
There are so many these days who do not seem to
respect 'limits'.
I am troubled by the American state / corporate
capitalist 'schemes' for 'full spectrum dominance'.
They do suggest some absence of humility ... a certain
vanity ... and a failure to respect 'limits' ...
But that is a huge issue ...
Meanwhile ... Vanity ... vanity ...
... I can actually quite clearly imagine how vanity
could actually undo so many ...
Dante and Virgil, by the way were great poets who
stretched the limits ... but respected limits too ...
so ...
... did not go too far ...
All of which goes to 'prove' ... ? ...
I have no idea really ...
But ...
Tall tale tellers do overstep limits sometimes ...
And ...
Further Ref: Read Dante, Purgatory 6.
The invective against the [then] present state of his
contemporary 'body politic' - including the simile of
the tossing and
turning sick woman.
Off-parallels ...
'Playing' with associations - with suggestions of
'ideas of reference', but ...
Talbot Road. Talbot News. Opposite, a female
[primarily] hair-dressing shop: named 'No Limits'.
Dangers of that 'idea or reference' - when there are
'no limits', you lose all points of reference ... 'it'
is only a
formless mess ...
But ...
In the infinite possibility of 'it all' there are,
indeed, perhaps, 'no limits'.
But ...
In the 'human condition', in the 'everyday', there
always are 'limits'.
Freedoms within frameworks of agreed conventions -
relative 'safety' within / through / of that
'approach'.
My imagination does seems to have 'no limits' though -
and perhaps 'sees' more possibilities than most.
Despite that 'limitlessness' of imagination, I
recognize - and respect - limits of the actual.
Sometimes it seems to me that others do not - and I
feel 'pressurized', or otherwise manipulated, by
'them' to 'test the
limits' more than it is 'healthy' for me to do.
My 'limitless' imagination actually makes me quite
cautious in actuality - not least because I am aware
of the potential
'dangers' of 'going beyond limits'.
In actuality, most of the time, I accept limits -
relative 'freedoms within frameworks'.
I am actually quite self-'restrained' - more so than
many, I suspect.
This is sometimes taken advantage of.
E.g. external pressures, from others, to go 'further'
- beyond limits - and/or to explore the 'boundary
conditions' ... in
ways they are not prepared to do themselves ...
... and when I do, 'they' lock me up, or otherwise
overdo the 'external' restraints - 'taking liberties'
from/with me, one
way or another.
Meanwhile ...
A 'prisoner' writes:
Dear private diary ...
Everyone seems to be writing a public one now ... but
who is reading them ... ? I wonder ...
Blag me a free blog reader please ...
One suggested to me, as regards another blither
blather bloggy blow-out elsewhere, that although I
wrote sometimes amazingly
well about 'love', from time to time, there was a
likelihood that however well I wrote I would not be
much 'understood',
because I was writing about something that
some/many/most had not really experienced.
That suggestion surprized me greatly, and I did not
pay much attention to it at the time, but ...
And also the careful reader suggested that there was a
fascination in what I wrote because it was about
'love', and people
did want to believe in that, and there was little
doubt that I was not faking it when I wrote about my
experiences of it, but
... it was not likely that I would get much
recognition for it ... because ...
So ...
Failing to be comprehended or 'recognized' [fuck
'fame', I would not want that ... it is shallow and
vacant ... but
'recognition' is something different ...] when I wrote
in relatively simple terms about something that seemed
to me
relatively simple ...
I became more obscure ... for the hell of it ...
perhaps ...
Vanity, vanity, O' I did not imagine vanity had undone
so many.
I am a democrat politically speaking.
But there are the problematical issues of 'quality'
and 'quantity' that make one doubt one's democratic
credentials
sometimes.
I am a classicist poetically speaking.
That can make me seem like an elitist.
Some are greater writers than others, no doubt about
that, and there is an identifiable group of really
'high class acts'
that stands way above the rest in poetical
achievement/merit.
Dante and Virgil were/are among the relatively small
group of truly great 'timeless' bardic poets - a class
apart from the
mere scribbler self-celebrants of the subjective
moment.
They were humble fellows too, in many ways - some
certain humility does seem to go hand-in-hand with
greatness.
Yet they are not without their prides.
They must have known they were better than most/many
poets.
E.g. Dante's pride in his own work - e.g. Inf. 25,
94ff, in which he claims to have bettered Lucan and
Ovid in metamorphic
tale-telling, and it was no idle boast.
Words of praise for a recognized equal talent, put
into the mouth of Virgil by Dante, Inf. 26, 82f, 'my
noble lines' - which
had 'immortalized' Odysseus/Ulysess.
Tall tale-tellers do over-step limits in ways that
make you wonder whether they have gone too far.
But sometimes the apparent excesses are for
instructive purposes.
Transitions.
Translations.
From Greek to medieval Italian ... and into English
...
'Your speech.'
Dante's vulgar Italian speech was descended from
vulgar Latin, which was descended from classical
Latin, which had some Greek
roots, which ...
Speaking with the dead and/or gone.
In Inf. 26, Dante requires Virgil as 'intermediary' in
order that he can understand what Ulysses/Odysseus
says.
Dante knew of Odysseus/Ulysses only indirectly mostly
through the pages of Virgil.
He did not have direct access to the Homeric sources -
whether in the original Greek or in translation.
He knew no Greek apparently.
Please kindly excuze me, as I labour this point,
because I have little Greek myself and my Latin is
vulgar and framentary.
All that I know of these classical languages really is
what is buried in my own vulgar tongue, which is yer
actual English
vernacular.
There is quite of lot of the old tongues in the old
modern English actually, but I often don't recognize
it.
The more I learn, the more I become aware of the scale
of my own ignorance.
Wisdom in that, I think.
'Fragments In A Vulgar Script'.
Nods to Petrarch for the borrowing.
Winks to a letter to Miss O'Kyclops, of some certain
authenticity - though I burnt a near original copy
just before the cops
arrived to arrest me for 'criminal damage' a while
back - dated 12.05.2003, notes suggest, accurately, I
think.
In said letter, said I, I said - in writing - the
phrase 'fragments in a vulgar script' to point out
more than one point to
her, whether she got them or not is uncertain, readers
like her being somewhat unreliable.
I also suggested more prosaically and directly
possibilities of 'presumptuousness' on her part, and
also on my part, most
likely, now I think of it.
Going beyond limits as you examine 'phase boundary'
conditions.
Inf. 26, 125f.
'wild flight'
A rash and presumptuos voyage - such as the one
described/imagined for Odysseus/Ulysses by Dante ...
Anyway ... that is another tale too long to tell
within the available limits of time and energy
available to me today ...
In summary ... one point being, to repeat, that people
of imagination can over-step limits ...
... another point being that 'unreliable counsellors'
[remember Inf. 26 is 'about' the realm of the
'unreliable counsellors'
as well as being 'about' the theme of 'over-stepping
limits'] who have proven themselves 'unreliable', can
justifiably be
suspected of being generally 'unreliable' ... so
anything they say might be ... [the point is obvious
and does not have to be
spelled out directly] ...
O' Oh ... the tedium of this little 'lesson' ... but
sometimes one 'just' has do this sort of thing ...
And ...
Another point being that transitions are complex ...
and require translators and interpreters ... etc ...
Another point being that 'the detail of the pattern is
motion' [TSE B.N. 5] ...
And what she said was 'I have a busy life now and have
moved on' ...
And that was such a cheap ill-thought-out slap-dash
cliched phrase that she knew it would 'get to me' ...
Another point being that the tale Dante tells in Inf.
26 goes beyond the limits of the classical tradition
of the
life-and-death of Odysseus/Ulysses ... effectively
extending his life beyond the grave ...
There is always more, of course ...
Consider, for example, Ulysses's reported speech to
his crew, Inf. 26, 120ff ...
He states, in effect, that virtue and knowledge
working together 'perfect' the faculties -
specifically will and intellect -
that distinguish humans from brute animals. He
presents the proposed voyage as an 'ultimate; moral
and intellectual goal.
Dante might have accepted this view himself - and
indeed it is he who puts the words into his version of
Ulysses's mouth -
not least because his own journey of discovery - the
comical poetical epic [which is far from being a
laugh-out-loud foolish
farce] is inspired, partly, by similar aims.
But there are dangers of over-stepping limits ...
[...]
... as Ulysses is shown to do in Inf. 26 ...
travelling beyond limits set by god-or nature on the
human nature of his time
and place [human nature itself is potentially
limitless, but limited in any particular human life by
physical facts, cultural
contraints, environmental factors, moral issues, etc,
etc, etc ... ] ...
Eventually, Dante's Ulysses sinks before Purgatory -
since as a pre-Christian this realm is not 'available'
to him ...
It would seem that Ulysses's voyage stands as both an
off-parallel simile and a warning in relations to
Dante's own audacious
enterprize - the epic journey poem that is Dante's own
epic voyage of exploration, but which, unlike
Ulysses's, is made
within the Christian cultural tradition - opening up
realms to Dante not available to Ulysses, but also
closing other realms
- from outside his cultural tradition - to him ... in
some ways ...
The cosmopolitan brat resisted contraint in the
vernacular: '... me ... I can do anything and go
anywhere I fucking
like! ...'
It was a somewhat rash statement [to understate it].
It was also, however, a telling point, indicative of
the culture of his age - but it did not help him much
in the here and
now.
Contemplating the limitless freedoms available to his
imagination and the actual restraints on him in
everyday reality only
seemed to frustrate - rather than 'liberate' - him
actually.
So anyway ... and by the way ... and in case I forget
to mention this again ... Miss Misleading Unreliable
Consellor [but
aren't we all that?!] further suggested in another
letter a back-reference to a passage from Sartre.
This she had read in translation [in part directly
quoted part summarized part paraphrased form] in one
of his notebooks -
slightly stealthily, given that she had read the
private notebook without his permission even though he
had left it lying
around knowing she might open it without asking him
...
[But that is another distracting story entirely,
perhaps.]
Anyway ...
It was really 'hard core' existentialist stuff, as I
recall, about there being no real limits, and about
free-form, so
essentially formless, epistemology, and about 'unfixed
laws of nature', which might change in an instant and
... how
either/or being/non-being transition moments might
open up infinite possibility ... and more and more of
that sort of
'unlimited' stuff ...
It was certainly suggestive of 'infinite possibility'
without actually spelling it out how to achieve it ...
It possibly better treated with some scepticism, or at
least wariness ... because it was a dangerous kind of
thinking, when
he thought about it ... that way madness/chaos might
lie ... possibly ...
Anyway ...
Naturally ... he imagined her ... inspired by that
sort of stuff ... 'moving on' to experiment with that
sort of idea ...
which is exactly what she did in a sense ... because
it was not long after she sneakily read that stuff in
my notebook that
she dumped him ... and ... got her existential
liberation ... and all that ...
She got her freedom from me ... sure enough ... and
fucked off to what seemed [by her own reports back] to
be essentially
unsatisfying and banal and frustrating often
self-indulgent pursuits ... and did not seem to be
particularly happy in her
'liberated state' ... and some-times was terribly
unhappy [but aren't we all?] ...
I got the blame, of course, I had 'twisted' her, or
otherwise 'fucked her up', and everything she did
wrong was somehow a
consequence of having known me, etc ...
Always easier to avoid reality in that sort of
other-scape-goating way though isn't ... ? ...
Done it often enough myself ...
That will not be a full story of course ...
Wonder if she ever learned how to voyage better ... ?
...
Anyway ...
That is past ... and no real concern of mine ...
Her significant others were not there for her when she
needed them - when, having voyaged beyond limits, she
'lost it' ...
and 'crashed' ... but I was not there guv ... don't
blame me guys and gals ... because I always would have
been there for
her ... even if she did not recognize it ... it was
all rather a shame really ...
but nevermind ... others' issues ... not mine ...
'There there ...'
[Ref. Heller, Catch 22]
... move on ...
Trite conclusion is to repeat the obvious that there
are dangers in
going beyond limts.
Dante, Inf. 26 is a 'touchstone' of literary
brilliance for me -
exemplary example of how the best of the compressed is
so much better
than rest of the spread-out rest.
That guy sure can write a bit, in the vernacular.
So much in so little.
Bottom line: Dante, Inf. 26. Reference text/point.

--- Philip Talbot <philtal_uk@yahoo.com> wrote:
> H A W A I I A N A V I G A T I O N
>
> H A W A I I A N A V I G A T I O N Internet
> Consulting and Web Design
> Ho`okele means Navigate in `olelo Hawai`i
> makuahine, the mother
> tongue of Hawai`i. Na po`e ho`okele moku are the
> wayfinders or
> navigators of the Polynesian voyagers, who use
> elemental signs to
> guide their ships safely to their destinations
> across thousands of
> miles of ocean. Positions of certain stars are used
> to navigate to
> island groups, and subtle changes in the colors of
> the sky on the
> horizon indicate the presence of land before it
> comes into view.
> Knowledge of currents, winds, planets, birds and
> ocean life also help
> the voyagers find their way.
> Today, people of Hawai`i are learning to navigate a
> new ocean of
> information on the Internet and the World Wide Web.
>
> Ho`okele Hawai`i is accomplished at Internet
> navigation, knowing
> well the elements of the virtual world, to help you
> voyage
> successfully in these vast new currents.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>