Class Notes 3/29

Homework: be generating paper topics....

Christina's blog......anyone who has blogged has contributed to the uniqueness of the class....

More Homework, same homework: blog about the blogs of others, and although Christina's blog was superb, Dr. Sexson asked the rest of us to be more specific.

Wizard of Oz clip - audience, largely children, needs to have lessons and messages...

The Alchemist, young adult level

Erin has loves The Alchemist, see her blog.

The Following Story, which should all be reading, quotes mysterious mental maneuver from Transparent Things by Nabokov.

We need to give up intellectual pretentiousness, anger, superiority, etc. in order to read The Alchemist. It is all part of the great ocean of the sea of stories!

We heard Joan's thesis idea.....Joan I have some books for you and some sources if you need any! See her blog.

simple definition of Alchemy: purification of the soul

to purify, to simplify, burn out impurities
we start with "yuck" or base matter, get rid of all the yuck, Purify to get pure essence.

Finnegans Wake alchemist.....Shem see pages 183-5

Eliot, Four Quartets, Little Gidding
"Since our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe"

Heraclitus.....quotes at the beginning and throughout.....Eliot stealing from him

Job in life, to purify ourselves, but there are so many distractions ...... David Bowie gets distracted from saving his home planet....in the movie The Man Who Fell to Earth



where the rose and fire become one, the rose is a central symbol in the Four Quartets,

http://www.wisdomportal.com/Poems2008/RoseInAlchemy.html

also see page 80 in The Alchemist

Carl Jung, archetypal patterns in literature

pg 183 in Finnegans Wake, Joyce working with the notion of muck not alien because when we read Dante's The Divine Comedy we see people swimming in excrement......

wikipedia -The Shirt of Nessus, Tunic of Nessus, Nessus-robe, or Nessus' shirt in Greek mythology was the poisoned shirt that killed Heracles. It was once a popular reference in literature. In folkloristics, it is considered an instance of the "poison dress" motif

page. 83 in The Alchemist, "Did you learn anything?"
reminds us of The Wizard of Oz
surface of the emerald, last lines of the Four Quartets....

"Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one."

condition of complete simplicity, kenosis is missing in The Alchemist....it is missing Samuel Beckett

At the FW meeting, Queen of Underworld, gives up everything...

page 185, the question and answer section, Laurence Fishburne, who played Morpheus in The Matrix, is going to play the alchemist in The Alchemist.