Dingo the Dissident

THE BLOG OF DISQUIET : Qweir Notions, an uncommonplace-book from the Armpit of Diogenes, binge-thinker jottings since 2008 .

Wednesday 21 May 2014

Two Good Quotations and an original Mediocre Maxim from the Spermless Wonder.

“How easy it is to be ‘deep’:
all you have to do is let yourself wallow in your flaws.”
~ Emile Cioran

Human intelligence is a kind of refined taste & appetite
- for ideas.

"'Mankind cannot bear too much reality." 
~ T.S. Eliot

9 comments:

Marcus Billson said...

The first aphorism I am writing down today in my journal.

T.S. Eliot ran from reality all his life, able, artfully, to glamorize his escapes.

Karl said...

Surely being spermless is a good thing?

Wofl said...

Precisely, Karl. Which is why I append the word 'wonder' to indicate that it is a badge of pride - but not I hope 'sinful' or smug pride' in the Catholic sense, a lack of humility...

Karl said...

Ah. Although Eliot became an insufferable prig after his conversion I still stand by the early poetry. 'Rhapsody on a Windy Night' would be one of my Desert Island Poems.

Wofl said...

Most converts to any religion or sect become insufferable prigs (as I within the Church of the Mendiant Humility of Jesus Unreproductive).

Eliot's 'Four Quartets' are self-serving mumblings, but 'The Waste Land' (whence the quotation came)is terrific, and was the poem which converted me to liking English, as opposed to French, poesy. It was some time before I discovered FitzGerald's 'Rubaiyât of Omar Khayyâm' which remains my favourite poem in English with 'The Waste Land' and 'Cynara' as second and third.

see www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk/cynara.htm

Marcus Billson said...

Remember before another pean is added to this blog that poor Ezra Pound sifted through incredible clutter and extracted, pruned, and cleaned up, then made many original line substitutions to the lines we know as the "Wasteland" today. In many ways, the poem is not Eliot's at all. Poor Ezra is a perfect example of categories, one in particular, destroying a man, much of it due to the American government.

Wofl said...

Well, who would have thought that this 'filler' blog would attract such comment ?

Granted that Pound edited 'The Waste Land'. But Pound's own poetry is unreadable, whereas Eliot's Prufrock and Sweeney poems have humour and acerbic wit. So I would be inclined to say that 'The Waste Land' is Eliot's poem - PRUNED. Eliot's supreme poem, on a par with Yeats' 'Byzantium' and 'Sailing to Byzantium', and almost on the level of FitzGerald's 'Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam'.

Karl said...

The movie 'Tom and Viv' based on the play of the same name by Michael Hastings is a damned good watch, with Willem Dafoe turning in an amazing performance as Eliot.

Marcus Billson said...

Yes, "mein irisches Kind," and I quote the poem and Wagner in affection and in honor of your green Green Man youth, I love this pruned, many lines-lifted, stolen, paraphrased from elsewhere (yes, yes, with insider esoteric intent), partially co-authored poem as much as you do. Yes, I enjoyed "Tom and Viv," and Willem Dafoe, who had none of the erect patrician severe public persona of the real Eliot, brought it off well in that he was convincing.