M&D p. 10: you know the sort of thing I mean

[Joseph Tracy]

Interesting thoughts from Monte's "bathetic" to the word "deflation" concerning this mystic experience. Just to offer a note of counterpoint, there is a very large difference between the transformative power of such experiences on the life  of the experiencer and how it translates as something one describes. One can easily imagine and with textual evidence that the experience was more important to Cherrycoke than he is willing or interested in going into. His tale is about M&D.  If you tell someone about your cosmic experience you know immediately that the power doesn't translate, so a kind of pre-emptive sense of humor or deflation or toning down is a good strategy for opening a conversation rather than introducing a disconnect. 

 But P also has very powerful descriptions where he places such experiences into more powerful language. Sometimes such awareness seems to occupy a central place in P's sensibilities. The reader comes away with what is meaningful  and useful to him or herself. This take it or leave it game is repeated with the variations on the interpretation of the  Talking Dog. 

For me all of his playfulness  and mulltiple valences and detail and grunge add up to the sense of immersion, not in a controlled and novelized universe, but the weird largeness flavor and inscrutability of an ever changing and ever the same real one. And M&D is particularly good at it.


On Jan 14, 2015, at 3:04 PM, Thomas Eckhardt wrote:

> Am 14.01.2015 um 17:18 schrieb Monte Davis:
>> ​"​
>> One of those moments Hindoos and
>> Chinamen are ever said to be having, entire loss of Self, perfect union
>> with All, sort of thing.
> 
> Wonderful. I seem to remember that during the first group read of M&D we termed this technique "deflation."
> 
>> "(...)flammivomous peaks everywhere sort of thing. . .
>> .” (AtD 407)
> 
> Somehow reminds me of:
> 
> "(...) No, this my hand will rather
> The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
> Making the green one red."
> 
> Macbeth, II, ii
> 
> 
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