LPPM MMV "Cleanth"

[Dave Monroe]

"'Hi,' Siegel said. 'My name is Cleanth but my friends
call me Siegel, out of pity.'" (MMV, p. 4)


Cleanth

Cleanth Brooks (1906-1994)
Biography

Cleanth Brooks was born in Kentucky in 1906. He
attended college at Vanderbilt, where he befriended
and later wrote with with fellow Tennessee author
Robert Penn Warren. Transferring to Tulane University,
Brooks received a Rhodes scholarship which led him to
England to continue his research in language. He began
his teaching career in 1932 at Louisiana State
University. In 1947, Brooks published his most famous
book of criticism, The Well Wrought Urn, and also
moved to Yale where he became a professor of rhetoric
thirteen years later. In 1950, he and Warren published
the classic Understanding Poetry: An Anthology for
College Students. Though he wrote several critical
studies on William Faulkner, Brooks was most widely
known as the quintessential New Critic: his ideas,
critical studies, and textbooks embodied everything
that New Criticism stood for in practice and pedagogy.

http://oneweb.utc.edu/~tnwriter/authors/brooks.c.html

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/litlinks/critical/brooks.htm

http://cc.cumberlandcollege.edu/acad/english/litcritweb/bios/cbrooks.htm

Cleanthes (331-232 BCE)

Cleanthes was a Stoic philosopher of Assus in Lydia,
and a disciple of Zeno of Citium. After the death of
Zeno he presided over his school. He was originally a
wrestler, and in this capacity he visited Athens,
where he became acquainted with philosophy. Although
he possessed no more than four drachma, he was
determined to put himself under the an eminent
philosopher. His first master was Crates, the
Academic. He afterward became Zeno's disciple and an
advocate of his doctrines. By night he drew water as a
common laborer in the public gardens so that he would
have leisure to attend lectures in the daytime. The
Athenian citizens observed that, although he appeared
strong and healthy, he had no visible means of
subsistence; they then summoned him before the
Areopagas, according to the custom of the city, to
give an account of his manner of living. He then
produced the gardener for whom he drew water, and a
woman for whom he ground meal, as witnesses to prove
that he lived by the labor of his hands. The judges of
the court were struck with such admiration of his
conduct, that they ordered ten minae to be paid him
out of the public treasury. Zeno, however, did not
allow him to accept it. Antigonus afterward presented
him with three thousand minae. From the manner in
which this philosopher supported himself, he was
called "the well drawer." For many years he was so
poor that he was compelled to take notes on Zeno's
lectures on shells and bones, since he could not
afford to buy better materials. He remained, however,
a pupil of Zeno for nineteen years. 

His natural faculties were slow. But resolution and
perseverance enabled him to overcome all difficulties.
At last he became so complete a master of Stoicism
that he was perfectly qualified to succeed Zeno. His
fellow disciples often ridiculed him for his dullness
by calling him an ass. However, his answer was, that
if he were an ass he was the better able to bear the
weight of Zeno's doctrine. He wrote much, but none of
his writings remain except a hymn to Jupiter. After
his death, the Roman senate erected a statue in honor
of him at Assus. It is said that he starved himself to
death in his 99th year.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/c/cleanthe.htm

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://www.archaeonia.com/philosophy/stoicism/cleanthes.htm

Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus

http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Heights/4617/stoic/zeus.html

“Cleanth Siegel” – “Siegel's passivity in this story
suggests the Greek stoic Cleanthes, Zeno's disciple.”
Says Charles Hollander in Pynchon's Politics: The
Presence of an Absence. “Siegel” is German for “seal”,
and similar to “sigil” as well. Or it could be, you
know, someone he knew.

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0303&msg=77296

Pynchon takes the title of his next story from
Shakespeare's Measure for Measure....

It is the beginning of his second story, and Pynchon
is again alluding to something (a hint, a clue)
outside the text.

The second clue is the name of the central character,
who is identified only as Siegel for the first third
of the story, until he finally introduces himself:
"'My name is Cleanth but my friends call me Siegel,
out of pity.'" The device of withholding the name
creates suspense and calls attention to Cleanth as
name; and Siegel's passivity in this story suggests
the Greek stoic Cleanthes, Zeno's disciple. (Come to
think of it, "Lardass" Levine was pretty stoical, and
submissive, too). Pynchon could have named Siegel
Angelo after his Shakespearean counterpart; but
Cleanth weaves the thread of Stoicism into the
tapestry. Stoicism is characterized by a belief in
happiness through knowledge, a striving to regulate
the passions, a seeking to remain equally unmoved by
apparently joyful or calamitous events, a
submissiveness to natural law, and a belief in an
irresistible Providence.

http://www.vheissu.org/art/art_eng_SL_hollander.htm#chap_7

http://www.vheissu.org/art/art_eng_SL_hollander.htm

But why "out of pity"?  Let me know ...


		
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