Valery on Mallarme... thought of P. & his Originality

[Alex Colter]

"We say that an author is original when we cannot trace the hidden
transformation that others underwent in his mind; we mean to say that the
dependence of *what he does* on *what others have done* is excessively
complex and irregular. There are works in the likeness of others and works
that are the reverse of others, but there are also works of which the
relation with earlier productions is so intricate that we become confused
and attribute them to the direct intervention of the gods.
(To go deeper into the subject, we should also have to discuss the
influence of a mind on itself and of a work on its author. But this is not
the place.)"

-Valery,* Leonardo. Poe. Mallarme.* trans Malcom Cowley and James R Lawler
(1972)

In other news I purchased a First Edition paperback of GR today for $7.00,
Huzzah!
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20120522/aa8e66bf/attachment.html>