J. Friedman: I think the
overt meaning of "herl" in PF is "a barb or fibre of a feather" (NSOED s.v.
"harl")... I won't dispute that there could be a secondary reference to
"Erlkönig".
JM: CK's note 109, on the Iridule:
"The term "iridule" is, I believe, Shade’s own invention.
Above it, in the Fair Copy (card 9, July 4) he has written in pencil
"peacock-herl." The peacock-herl is the body of a certain sort of artificial
fly also called 'alder'..." Will you dispute
that the reference to the Erlkönig, even if a bit loose, is more than a
"secondary" one? ( was VN familiar with the "rainbow" symbolism, as it is used
in our days?)
My comment about "why beautiful?" was a tease after I'd
read that Harold Bloom had criticized the way they were depiction in the
cartoons.
I understand that what is deemed beautiful in
once century is not always seen as being beautiful in another, ie, it
is a problem of representation, interpretation, imagination (the eye of the
beholder).
My observation also prompted a correction by
Anthony Stadlen, who mentioned Sarah,Rebecca, Rachel as having been described
as, or called, beautiful women.
Jerry Friedman: ...of course no one is hurt when a
fictional boy is turned over to fictional psychopaths...
JM: ...unless one knows that such psychopaths exist and
that mistakes, as the one that befell David, can be happen outside the
boundaries of fiction. Why do you consider that a hurt, related to fictional
boys and psychopaths, will only affect a reader who is identified with the
characters? It hurts because it indicates something real in the world we live
in. In books, even after we've been forewarned about the
tragic destiny of fictional people, we are still held captives by the
narration, we're in suspense because we hold on to a hope of a
redemption we know is unfounded (Ruth Rendell returns to her warnings
about an impending catastrophe over and over in "A Judgement in Stone", but
these previews are not "spoilers," as the word is used nowadays; there is
Cervantes's Don Quixote and those other very sincere arthurian chevaliers
whose catastrophic fate is described before the story is told). There is
something in the telling of a story, and in the words themselves, that
transforms events into memorable imprints of a shared "humanity..." But you
know that!
And yet you state, simply, that "I take people who call this "cruel" to
be saying that it appeals that side of (many of) us that likes to watch real or
televised fights, or real comedians get pies in the face, or likes to read
compendia of famous insults..."