Class Notes 1/15

Notes from Friday the 15th of January

Ever waited for someone? Ever waited for someone who didn't show up?

via negativa - pessimistic, dark

possibly coming to know something through negation, talk about something based upon what it is not

Beckett, 'every word is a stain on silence,' now we know a bit more about who we are dealing with.

Beckett, highbrow, off putting, repellent, literature of futility, (don't play into his hands, don't be repelled, keep reading!)
Frye - the World of Literature is divided into a filling up and an emptying out.

Plenosis is a filling up, comedy and romance, springtime/hero, forces of darkness are over come and the world fills up, night becomes day, boy gets girl.

Kenosis - Beckett wants to take everything out.

Plurosis(I couldn't read my handwriting) or rather Plenosis - Joyce wants to put everything in. , Finnegans Wake is a great novel of Plenosis, filling up.

In Haroun and the Sea of Stories on page 72 there is a description of Finnegans Wake.

"So Iff the Water Genie told Haroun about the Ocean of the Streams of Story, and
even though he was full of a sense of hopelessness and failure the magic of the
Ocean began to have an effect on Haroun. He looked into the water and saw that
it was made up of a thousand thousand thousand and one different currents, each
one a different colour, weaving in and out of one another like a liquid tapestry
of breathtaking complexity.............the Ocean of the Streams of Story was in
fact the biggest library in the universe." (Rushdie 71-72)

Here we have in both books an attempt to include every story that has even been told.

Note the reference to Thousand and One Nights.

We also talked about Katha-sarit-sagara, or Kathasaritsagara, कथासरितसागर, "ocean of the streams of stories" Wikipedia describes this as "a famous 11th century collection of Indian legends, fairy tales and folk tales as retold by a Saivite Brahmin named Somadeva.
Nothing is known about the author other than that his father's name was Ramadevabatta. The work was compiled for the entertainment of the queen Suryamati, wife of king Anantadeva of Kashmir (r. 1063-81). It consists of 18 books of 124 chapters and more than 21,000 verses in addition to prose sections. The principal tale is the narrative of the adventures of Naravahanadatta, son of the legendary king Udayana. A large number of tales are built around this central story, making it the largest collection of Indian tales."

Things to do, not necessarily due:

• Take one page (at random) of Finnegans Wake & own that page
• read intro by J. Bishop to Finnegans Wake.
• extra credit to anyone who laughs (out loud) while reading Beckett. Blog about it
• read 'Haroun' over the weekend
• also read Finnegans Wake over the weekend....haha
  

give a high brew to the high brows