Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Summery Metempsycosis

“And therefore though this soule could not move when it was a Melon, yet it may remember, and now tell mee, at what lascivious banquet it was serv’d.”
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7 comments:

Philip Metres said...

hey Rodney,

I believe you're missing the "h" in psychosis. That could be a good thing.

Hey, I erred in sending you stuff without asking whether you wanted to read anything, or offering a trade or something.

Hope you're doing well. Phil

10:56 AM
rodney k said...

Hi Phil,

It's Donne's spelling.

11:27 AM
konrad said...

You donne spelled it.

11:42 AM
Philip Metres said...

That sorte of spelling alwayes dryves me slitely psyco.

fyl

4:25 PM
Nada Gordon: 2 ludic 4 U said...

The Donne site is so great! Rodney, thank you for this.

4:45 AM
rodney k said...

Hi Nada,

Glad you liked the link. The syntax in Metempsycosis is brainbusting--I have a hard time believing even Jacobeans enjoyed it-- but it's, you know, "brilliant."

I'm reading the Satyres(sorry for the 'y', Phil!), where you get lines like this:

"But these do mee no harme, nor they which use
To out-doe Dildoes, and out-usure Jews"

Less entranced by the Jews than the Dildoes; either way, it's a "Donne after dark" sort of moment.Take that, three-person'd God.

Am reading Donne for the tonal shifts, like everyone else. To move from Dildoes into the Dean-of-St. Paul's-mystic is some serious amplitude. Wondering how to keep dildoes in with the mystic, so that one doesn't top the other. Unserious amplitude.

3:09 PM
Nada Gordon: 2 ludic 4 U said...

The endnotes in my college Penguin edition of Donne say, "dildoes were artificial phalluses [what are they now?] and to outdo – or outswive [outswive?]- them might in the poet's view be a prodigious feat indeed." Indeed!

and in a related news item:

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/10877.html

Hmm... more on Donne, less on dildoes, later, if only to praise his wacked out syntax.

9:51 PM

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