Bert's groundless zones

[hankhank at ccwf.cc.utexas.edu]

On Fri, 29 Nov 1996, Joe Varo wrote:

> 5) "`Bert,' suggests the constable, trying to remember if it's right hand
>    grasps left arm above elbow or left hand grasps...."  
>    
>    Any significance in naming the Lord of the Sea "Bert"?  What's the 
>    arm-elbow-hand stuff?

One possible connection.

Bert Brecht's early poems often deal, youth-romantically, with the sea.
More precisely, to him the lords of the sea are pirates (Ballad of the
Pirates, e.g., and later: Pirate Jenny), whom are equated with desperados
of American frontiers, Rimbaudian adventurers, Villonian vagabonds, and
unsafe dwellers of modern cities (Upton Sinclair's _The Jungle_ was his
crucial influence here). _GR_'s III chapter gives an umbrella name to its
lively assemblage of piratic seas, American frontiers, Rimbaud's oceans,
Villon's Paris, and Sinclair's Chicago. (And Germany in the year Zero. LA
in late 60s and early 70s. SciFi environs. Eco-spiritual dwellings. Etc.)   

Heikki