and "mu" to you too

[Vaska]

Dennis, the recovering medievalist, responds with real Grace:  

>Hi Vaska,
>
[snip the bit of my previous post]
>Peace, cousin  I know what you're saying.  Been there myself.  Ever try
>arguing with a bunch of Chaucerians?  They will deny what's right before
>their manuscript blurred eyes.  

I gave up on the 14th-century many, many years ago.  Know what you mean.
But oh, that Gawain guy and his green-hued friend still make my heart beat
faster.  

>Will's original was an excellent close read--his college English profs would
>have been proud.  And, yes, TRP probably did intend at least as much as Will
>read.  Parke offered, I thought, an interesting resonance in Barthes, to
>which he unfortunately added the first dose of unnecessary critical agon:
>claiming the pun is too weak, and that TRP "knows" (talk about your amazing
>amateur psychic tricks) the "real" answer isn't mercy.  You returned fire by
>insisting upon the wrongheadedness of the Barthes reference.  Hey, Roland B
>and the mu critics are all part of our late 20th C literary
>conscientiousness, right?  They all affect the way we read TRP's references,
>whether TRP specifically intended such an affect or not.

I'm beginning to think there's a way to reconcile Will's and Parke's
readings.... That the joke is in fact be a multi-layered one, as you say, so
that neither interpretation needs to be jettisoned.  The master's answer,
"mu," also has the deliciously funny Buddhist+Barthesian twist: the question
itself is a bit of baked air, so much emptiness, just a bit of
hair-splitting you'd expect from a novice. What matters is compassion.  "Mu"
as emptiness, "mu" as mercy: as something we give or fail to extend to
ourselves and other creatures.  

>As to my accusation of agonistic criticism, I didn't mean you were trying to
>start a fight (I think that would be "antagonistic" criticism, anyway).

My mistake, Dennis: I really ought to start wearing those specs of mine....
And read the Ecclesiates a bit more often -- vanity, all is vanity.

Vaska, who really is a she