Jim, that's one of my favorite passages.
Mine too. Gives me chills every time.
'The Killer In Me'
Discussion of episodes currently airing in Un-American locations (anything that's aired in Australia is fair game), as well as anything else the Un-Americans feel like talking about or we feel like asking them. Please use the show discussion threads for any current-season discussion.
Add yourself to the Buffista map while you're here by updating your profile.
Jim, that's one of my favorite passages.
Mine too. Gives me chills every time.
My broad hit from reading the section that contains that phrase is that the trilling wire in the blood is the spark of life in us that connects to the world, to the past, to time, but only lives on in those external things once we are past.
I love both Yeats and Eliot, but I think Eliot just a little more. I had to write a paper on Buddhist influences in the Waste Land and found a really fascinating myth/story that seemed to relate to the "dog that's friend to men."
The story, short version, is that Buddha visited a rich man. The rich man laid out a feast, but his people were starving. A demon in the shape of a dog or wolf dug up the bones of the poor people he was supposed to be governing and howled, to inform the Buddha of the evil the rich man did.
I can't stand Yeats for some reason, I've just never "got" him despite having to teach him loads of times. Eliot is good but I like Wallace Stevens better than any of that lot. (I seem to prefer American poets for some reason. I'm not sure why; I certainly don't prefer American novelists. Anyway, Eliot gets marks for being born there.)
Angus! Come stand over here next to me with the rest of the Yeats haters! (We did him for A-Level and I loved his stuff at first, but all that calculating self-mythologising really got to me after a bit).
ee cummings is my hero
She sang beyond the genius of the sea...
Wallace Stevens is one of my favorites too.
Angus! Haven't seen you in AGES!
Hi Trudy! Mwah!
Hi, Angus!!
I love Yeats and Eliot, but Eliot a bit more, I think.
Doesn't the Mermaids singing bit come from John Donne:
Go and catch a falling star,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the Devil's foot,
Teach me to hear the mermaidssinging,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
And find
What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.