A Jung Tale


Ellen Stuttle

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Picking up a post from another thread (the one titled "Diana Mertz Hsieh Meets the Wall of Hypocrisy"):

Ellen:

Have you expanded on your points regarding Jung in other places?

I am fascinated by the above tidbits [post #138], as they have rough parallels to my own experience with Jung.

I did some expanding on Old Atlantis, the files of which are no longer publicly available. I don't think I've said much of anything about the subject here. I have personal files from Old Atlantis, but not where they're easy to search. Maybe, the subject having come up, memories will start to percolate and I can write something from scratch. It was 30 years ago that the Jung cataclysm in my life happened, so it isn't exactly "fresh" to current consciousness.

Stay tuned. I'll start a separate thread if the muse complies (but never count on the muse, a tricky creature).

Ellen

If I try to tell this well, I'll likely not tell it, since I haven't much strength or time for sitting at a computer.

So I'll just get on with it, more or less as the story comes.

The subject of Jung has much relevance to an issue which keeps coming up here -- concerning Rand on "tabula rasa."

Man is born tabula rasa, Rand said. Man is not born tabula rasa, Jung said.

They didn't mean the same thing, at least if one takes Rand's earlier formulation which focused on the lack of innate ideas. Jung was not proposing a theory of innate ideas, and he became irritated by people's confusing his archetypal theory with a theory of innate ideas. He was talking about native dispositions and themes of the psyche. Jung, not Freud, was the clinical ancestor of evolutionary psychology.

--

Possibly the earliest of the observations which eventually led to my interest in Jung was that of the respective characteristics of different infants, starting with human ones, my brothers and sisters.

I was the oldest of six children. The susequent line-up was a sister about 5-1/2 years younger, two brothers, born almost a year apart to the day, one on August 3rd, the other on August 4th, about 6-3/4 and 7-3/4 years younger, then a gap before the second sister, about 10-1/2 years younger, then the last brother, about 12-3/4 years younger, born in mid-August.

The two intermediate brothers, in the early '70s, almost a year apart, committed suicide. The family drama leading to that result was relevant to my views on psychology, and I had intimations of troubles, a sense of danger to my brothers and sisters, from not long after the oldest of my three brothers was born.

Meanwhile, I'd already noticed that each of the three siblings born by them -- and I -- seemed to practically "come out of the chute" with personality characteristics. I thought the same about the two subsequent babies, and by then I had some amount of experience with neonate pets. I had more of that when I was in high school, horse and kitten births, and again noticed that each foal or kitten had what seemed to me from-birth "personality" characteristics.

In my own case, I had a sunny disposition -- I was a very happy child -- and an enormous sense of curiosity. And a big desire for a horse.

I seemed to myself to have been born wanting a horse. I'm joking a bit there. I must have acquired the desire at some early point, but I don't remember when, and my mother wasn't helpful upon my questioning her, in my high school years, about the onset of the horse desire.

"I think your first word was 'Horse?,'" she said. "As in, 'Can I have a horse now?'"

I was definitely already asking for a horse by the time I could manage beginning reading. My earliest reading included stories and informational books about horses -- while I awaited the day, which didn't come until my freshman year of high school, when I got a horse (the first of what ended up being several horses).

To be continued.

Ellen

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Ellen.

I am entranced already. All I know of Karl J is from Robertson Davies later novels (said to be infused) yyet somewere a bell reverberates.

Please continue as you can. X and I will let you off discussion of Eliots masterwork and Rosamundian existential evil for summer!

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A Jungian idea is that there are archetypal dramas which seem to enact in life storylines as if to a pre-set plot. This is another idea to which I was climatized by personal observation.

By "life storylines" I don't mean simply the basic life story -- childhood->youth, finding a mate and settling down into middle age (or alternately not being content to settle down), growing old gracefully or otherwise if one lives long enough to do so.

I mean more specific plots such that one might say of person X, he's a Don Juan or a Hamlet or she's a Cinderella, etc.

The Cinderella story might have been a factor in my explicity thinking of people's lives drawing literary parallels. There was a terrible event which happened when I was a junior in high school. A classmate, who was beutiful, talented, and deservedly popular -- she was a genuinely nice person as well as "having it all" in terms of star attraction -- was fatally shot by her boyfriend, a quick-draw contestent who made the mistake of drawing, pointing, and firing with a gun which he thought was empty but which wasn't.

The girl had a sister who was older by about two or three years. The older sister was somewhat dowdy in appearance, and a bit overweight, and rather shy and diffident. Although she had some talents as an actress, she'd not made much of an attempt to develop her abilities but had been like a figure offstage to her younger sister's stardom.

Upon the younger sister's death, the older sister blossomed and became a popular local actress in the "Cornstalk Theater" productions. I don't know what she went on to do afterward.

My high school English teacher, whom I adored, often talked with, and later became personal friends with, commented in her wry fashion that ___, the older sister, was a Cinderella story.

I could see the underlying parallels -- along with the differences of detail -- and the analogy might have gotten me thinking of other people whose stories paralled with different details those of fairy tale, or general literature, figures.

A particular story type which I know I'd already been thinking about -- a lot -- in terms of real-life parallels was the "woman's romance." I include in the category literary classics which are read by men too -- Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Rebecca. Along with those books, I'd read a number of the class of woman's romance which aren't often read by men (unless there are a lot of male closet "Gothic" fans).

One which my fancies kept returning to was Victoria Holt's Bride of Pendorric.

Here's an "Overview" from Barnes & Noble (you have to scroll about half down the screen to find this):

Favel Farrington meets Roc Pendorric on the idyllic Mediterranean island of Capri, where she was raised and lives with her father. Roc sweeps her off her feet, taking her from her home by an emerald sea to the ancient family home of the Pendorrics, in Cornwall. His sister and her family await them with open arms, welcoming young Favel. She is the much anticipated Bride of Pendorric, a name that amuses and flatters her.

The castle is beautiful in its way, but the atmosphere is foreboding. Roc’s twin nieces begin watching her carefully; even the stones in the courtyard seem to have eyes. On the walls hang portraits of two other Brides of Pendorric—one of them Roc’s mother—who died both young and tragically. Favel’s fear increases as Roc seems to be growing more and more distant. Has her courtship and marriage been just a deception?

Soon Favel can no longer dismiss as accidents the strange things happening to her. Someone is trying to kill her and she must confront the very real dangers that surround her.

"Has her courtship and marriage been just a deception?"

Did my mother's marriage parallel Favel's, albeit not with a literal threat of someone's trying to kill her?

To hear my mother talk -- and she did talk to me frequently -- one might think so. I doubted that the story was as she presented it. I was sure, however, that the marriage was ill-fated, that mother and Dr. Stuttle weren't compatible, and that the dynamics were resulting in dangerous stress especially via the route of my mother's dislike of my oldest younger brother -- who resembled his father both tempermentally and in appearance and, as "Fred Junior," was his father's namesake.

Another story to which my thoughts returned was "The Fall of the House of Usher."

Ellen

Clarifying note: Dr. Stuttle wasn't my biological father. Mother divorced my father, Ed Hughes, no relationship to Howard Hughes, when I was in my first year. I have no memories of my real father, though I saw many photos of him.

Mother moved to the midwest from Walla Walla, Washington, where I was born at the army camp -- my biological father was an orthopedic surgeon stationed there. My maternal grandmother lived in a small town near Peoria and could take care of me while mother worked at a Peoria hospital.

There she met Dr. Stuttle, like my biological father an orthopedic surgeon -- an extremely good one, some of whose surgical innovations have become standard. "Father," as I think of Dr. Stuttle (I was legally adopted by him), hired mother as his private nurse and then married her. Mother alwasy later described the situation as "Jekyll and Hyde," the wonderful man she'd thought she'd married and then the reality. I didn't buy it.

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X and I will let you off discussion of Eliots masterwork and Rosamundian existential evil for summer!

I was wondering when you'd remind me about "Eliots masterwork." Truth to tell, I haven't ordered it yet. Too much else going on, including that for about a week we were without a modem, our old one having ceased functioning.

Verily, I was planning to order the book today, along with some others. I don't expect to have time to read it just yet -- though maybe when I have a copy in my hands I won't be able to resist.

The reference to "Rosamundian existential evil" eludes me. Explanation, please.

About Robertson Davies, I've heard that he was strongly Jung influenced, but I haven't read any of his books. They are on my "I wish" list.

Ellen

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Rosamund Vincy, an ideal Victorian femme and perfect narcissist,marries an idealistic scientist and destruction ensues (I wont spoil in case you find time to read). A most memorable creation of immortal Eliot.

Vincy is a nice evocative name too.

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First some samples. Commentary on the relevance to "A Jung Tale" to follow in a later post.

The House of Usher site

The Raven

by Edgar Allan Poe

Here I opened wide the door;---

Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;

But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,

And the only word there spoken was the whispered word,

Lenore?, This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,

"Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more.

link

Alfred Noyes (1880-1958)

The Highwayman

PART ONE

I

THE wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding—

Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

link

Silver

Slowly, silently, now the moon

Walks the night in her silver shoon;

This way, and that, she peers, and sees

Silver fruit upon silver trees;

One by one the casements catch

Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;

Couched in his kennel, like a log,

With paws of silver sleeps the dog;

From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep

Of doves in silver feathered sleep

A harvest mouse goes scampering by,

With silver claws, and silver eye;

And moveless fish in the water gleam,

By silver reeds in a silver stream.

Walter de la Mare

I copied the de la Mare poem from a site called "Musings On A Small Life."

The blogger -- Kea -- writes:

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

"Slowly, silently, now the moon..."

I had to pick a poem to memorize in grade 5, and for whatever reason, it was Walter de la Mare's "Silver." I don't think we had much from which to choose.

I've never forgotten the poem, can still recite it. It doesn't strike my adult self as "great" poetry, frankly, but the images it conjured in my child's mind have stayed with me all these decades. Maybe that's enough to make it "great," from a certain perspective. :-)

Between those paragraphs is a lovely photo of the waxing half moon at twilight. There's also a photo of the sunset, and many photos of cats -- here's the link again.

-

Carol, since I know you're reading this thread...

I bet you'd enjoyed the blogger's self-description - see.

I ordered Middlemarch.

Ellen

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O Ellen! iwayman was required memorisation in my 7 class...maybe Davies was in same system... it aderes I can tell you. I can still recite it and many more.

O I detested I must be up and doin every minute, (Cemetery allows)time for rest wen we are in it... times miserable old jalopy revs its motor near...tow it away I say.

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O my lord , Kea is a real find, I would alter one word from trouble to....a more positive one, but all else is so fine. I am on Team Persuasion forever and infact wrote a fanfic continuation, I love Anne and Fred so. (Was forced to kill off for plot reasons, but)

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So what was it about "The Raven" that sent chills -- delighted chills -- down my spine?

Why did "The Highwayman" seem to me then -- as it seems to me still -- the epitome of romance?

Why did I love, love, love the moon, and imagery evocative of the moon and the mysteries of its light?

I haven't anything nearly like complete answers to the questions, but I know that they're important to the attraction for me of Jung's work.

A repeating scene from my current life:

Larry and I live in an area of Connecticut which has history going back to the Revolutionary War days and before.

A few miles from us is an old inn, originally owned by the Pettibone family, granted to an ancestor of that family for his services in the Revolutionary War.

Some miles from that old inn is another, part of which was built as a forge and hostel on the post road between New Haven and Boston.

The road went along a tributary of the Connecticut River.

To this day, there's a road, a narrow two-lane one, along the old route. It's called "Nod Road" -- the name itself having evocative effect.

To the other side of Nod Road from the river tributary are fields, a police firing-range station, a golf club, bordered by a long ridge (called a "mountain" in these parts) situated upon which is a tower, the Heublein tower.

(Here is a Google search page about the tower and vicinity with photos and a map.)

Marvelous old trees line much of the roadway. There are no street lights. At one end, on a turn-off to the left, is a bridge which, though made of steel, has an appearance reminiscent of the bridge in "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

When the moon is full it produces a sheen upon the pavement -- "The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor" -- and the surrounding fields.

Sometimes when we drive down Nod Road at night, as we do fairly often, we start reciting poetry and pondering its effect. If we're driving toward the bridge and there's a car coming from behind -- we can see approaching headlights for quite a distance -- we start playing the game, can we make it to the bridge before the headless horseman.....?

Ellen

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X and I will let you off discussion of Eliots masterwork and Rosamundian existential evil for summer!

I was wondering when you'd remind me about "Eliots masterwork." Truth to tell, I haven't ordered it yet. Too much else going on, including that for about a week we were without a modem, our old one having ceased functioning.

Verily, I was planning to order the book today, along with some others. I don't expect to have time to read it just yet -- though maybe when I have a copy in my hands I won't be able to resist.

The reference to "Rosamundian existential evil" eludes me. Explanation, please.

About Robertson Davies, I've heard that he was strongly Jung influenced, but I haven't read any of his books. They are on my "I wish" list.

Ellen

X and I will let you off discussion of Eliots masterwork and Rosamundian existential evil for summer!

I was wondering when you'd remind me about "Eliots masterwork." Truth to tell, I haven't ordered it yet. Too much else going on, including that for about a week we were without a modem, our old one having ceased functioning.

Verily, I was planning to order the book today, along with some others. I don't expect to have time to read it just yet -- though maybe when I have a copy in my hands I won't be able to resist.

The reference to "Rosamundian existential evil" eludes me. Explanation, please.

About Robertson Davies, I've heard that he was strongly Jung influenced, but I haven't read any of his books. They are on my "I wish" list.

Ellen

Ellen and Carol,

I read I think most of Davies several years back. Jungian-influenced? That could

be right. If you can get past his mystical bent, he was a writer straight out of the top drawer. He created fables set within modern reality(quite reminiscent of Rushdie, I'm thinking now) full of light and darkness. I will read him again.

Oh, and Canadian too - like another favorite of mine: Mordechai Richler.)

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"[...] dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before[.]"

What were the "dreams"?, I wondered. They wouldn't have been precisely "dreams." The poet was awake peering into the darkness. Waking visual experiences. I was familiar with those already by the time I first read "The Raven" when I was in eighth grade.

And I loved dreams. Often, I'd ask, as my bedtime prayer -- before I decided when I was in seventh grade that the idea of "God" was unnecessary and I stopped praying -- "Please, could I dream 'The Wizard of Oz'?"

For awhile, in first or second grade, I'd prayed -- in the daytime -- if I could please grow wings. This prayer was a collaborative effort with a Catholic girl who was a neighbor. I don't recall which of us thought of the request. We prayed, in the afternoons after school, weather permitting, on a Jewish neighbor's front porch, the porch providing a good kneeling surface. We even briefly almost convinced ourselves that small white spots -- the tips of growing wings -- were forming on our shoulders. But soon we gave up. No luck.

Undaunted by that experience, I persisted for years with the request to dream "The Wizard of Oz."

I meant the movie, which I'd seen before I read the book and had been utterly captivated by. I identified strongly with Dorothy. Maybe it was partly the braids. I had braids, and basically in the same style as Dorothy's, until I was a sophomore in high school. I think that even more, though, it was Dorothy's attitude -- her combination of imaginativeness and good sense. Plus there was the battle of wits with the witch.

My mother did not look at all like the Wicked Witch of the West. Mother was beautiful. And she didn't, really, act like the Wicked Witch of the West. I don't think she even had malevolent intent. But I sensed that, nontheless, she was dangerous.

One kind of dream which I had recurrently was a nightmare sequence. In those dreams, I was trying to escape on foot, running, carrying or dragging along my brothers and sisters, fleeing evil pursuers. Sometimes the pursuers were Nazis. Or they might not be identifiable, just felt to be evil. The dreams started after Fred Junior was born and continued, with the addition of each new child to the escape attempt, until I was maybe 15 or so.

Mostly, however, my dreams were what I called "neat!" (my favorite accolade then). I dreamt in vivid color and detail, and often remebered sizable snatches of a dream. The whole phenomenon of dreaming fascinated me.

I was also fascinated by the ability to make and enact vivid waking storygames. I wrote down a few stories, but what I liked much better than writing a story was acting out ongoing scenes from imaginary "kingdoms," as I christened them.

I got the name "kingdoms" from a Shakespeare line I'd heard and completely misunderstood: "A horse, a horse; my kingdom for a horse!"

I thought, Oh, how neat!, someone wants to make a kingdom for a horse. So I proceeded to imagine a kingdom for a whole lineage of horses -- Arab horses; I'd decided that the Arab horse was the best horse (I had never been on a horse by this point, only a couple of the ponies which went round a circle at the zoo). I kept careful records of the descent lines in a little notebook, and I traded off "riding" different horses on different days. In actuality, I'd be either riding my bicycle or skipping/galloping about on foot.

Another kingdom was, guess what, The Wizard of Oz kingdom, which I played with a childhood friend. We once got ourselves so worked into it as to scare ourselves silly. We'd been sneaking up on a lillypond where an evil minion of the witch was hiding. Upon hearing the "plop" of a frog jumping from a lilly leaf into the pond, we screamed and ran -- then looked at each other and burst out laughing at our foolishness.

Another kingdom was the doll kingdom. Again, I played that with others, mostly the friend who had gotten me attracted to "Ginny" dolls. These were small dolls, about eight inches in height, which had a childlike build -- not like "Barbie" dolls, which I didn't like at all. My friend had started her own imaginary gamestory about her "Ginny" doll being a fairy (original meaning, folks) hiding out from a sorceress which had her -- the doll's -- parents enspelled. The doll played mischievous pranks on humans. I got into this, and soon we had a collection of the little dolls and an elaborate story to which we kept adding.

There were other kingdoms -- a lion kingdom, an imaginary playmates kingdom, an Indian (American Indian) kingdom.

You get the idea. I had a big imagination.

Withal, I had as big a sense of curiosity about the real world. I wasn't what I'd call "dreamy." Instead, I was very interested in learning things.

Along with horses, another favorite subject to learn things about was biological evolution.

Ellen

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Editorial note about "The Raven."

In post #6, I picked up text for "The Raven" from a website:

The House of Usher site

The Raven

by Edgar Allan Poe

Here I opened wide the door;---

Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;

[....]

When I read that while copying it, my eyebrows rose at the "mortals." Huh? The word should be "mortal," I thought. Or could I possibly have misread and misremembered that word all these years?

I checked and found "mortals" on several other websites as well, and wanting to get the post posted, left it.

Today I got around to checking the numerous complete editions of Poe I have around the place. Without exception, they say "mortal."

On the other hand, I have a supposedly ultra-scholarly Knopf edition which leaves out the word "wide" from "Here I opened wide the door".

I wonder if the folks who produced that volume ever noticed the error and felt like slitting their wrists. (The hazards of typesetting.)

Ellen

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I'll start the subject of evolution, but then I need to take a break for several days -- apointments followed by Larry's return from a conference (re the "global-warming" issue).

The subject of evolution is crucial to understanding Jung. His theory is an evolutionist theory -- of the psyche but continuing from instinct, a term he used. "Instinct" was falling out of favor toward the later half of Jung's career, though it was making an initially-off-the-radar-of psychology reappearance through, for instance, Lorenz's idea of the "open instinct" and "imprinting."

--

As best I recall, I first heard of "evolution" in the biological sense from a horse book which I was given as a Christmas present in 1951, when I was in fourth grade. I think that I might have heard about the Darwinian theory before from things Father said which I didn't register, but the first I became aware of the idea of life forms evolving was from the book Essentials of Horsemanship by Dorothy Ford Montgomery, published in 1949 -- to this day the best compendious book on its subject I know of.

On pages 33-34, Montgomery writes:

Legs--In order to understand the way a horse's legs work, it may be useful to consider briefly the evolution of the horse. Scientists believe that the original horse was about sixteen inches high--about the size of a fox--and ran on three toes. Through millions of years of development, as the horse learned to survive by running ever faster and more efficiently, he stood up more and more on one toe until the other toes practically disappeared.

Following is a description of the "chestnut," vestigal of the "sloughed-off" toes, plus an illustration comparing the modern horse's skeleton to that of a man in a bent-over-onto-all-fours posture.

Never mind what I later recognized as the Lamarckian cast of the description, I became SO curious as to what she was talking about--"the original horse was about sixteen inches high"?

I went searching and found pictures, I suppose in an encyclopedia--and fell wildly in love with the whole subject of evolution.

Ellen

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I'll start the subject of evolution, but then I need to take a break for several days -- apointments followed by Larry's return from a conference (re the "global-warming" issue).

The subject of evolution is crucial to understanding Jung. His theory is an evolutionist theory -- of the psyche but continuing from instinct, a term he used. "Instinct" was falling out of favor toward the later half of Jung's career, though it was making an initially-off-the-radar-of psychology reappearance through, for instance, Lorenz's idea of the "open instinct" and "imprinting."

--

As best I recall, I first heard of "evolution" in the biological sense from a horse book which I was given as a Christmas present in 1951, when I was in fourth grade. I think that I might have heard about the Darwinian theory before from things Father said which I didn't register, but the first I became aware of the idea of life forms evolving was from the book Essentials of Horsemanship by Dorothy Ford Montgomery, published in 1949 -- to this day the best compendious book on its subject I know of.

On pages 33-34, Montgomery writes:

Legs--In order to understand the way a horse's legs work, it may be useful to consider briefly the evolution of the horse. Scientists believe that the original horse was about sixteen inches high--about the size of a fox--and ran on three toes. Through millions of years of development, as the horse learned to survive by running ever faster and more efficiently, he stood up more and more on one toe until the other toes practically disappeared.

Following is a description of the "chestnut," vestigal of the "sloughed-off" toes, plus an illustration comparing the modern horse's skeleton to that of a man in a bent-over-onto-all-fours posture.

Never mind what I later recognized as the Lamarckian cast of the description, I became SO curious as to what she was talking about--"the original horse was about sixteen inches high"?

I went searching and found pictures, I suppose in an encyclopedia--and fell wildly in love with the whole subject of evolution.

Ellen

Girls and horses, an old story I don't understand. One of my sisters was afflicted. She kept dragging me off to ride them here in Tucson. Waiting for the damn bus to come to take us home was hell in the heat.

--Brant

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Girls and horses, an old story I don't understand.

LOL. Maybe you would understand it if you studied Jung.

There's also man and horse, you know. That's an old one, though not as old as man and dog, with which you're "afflicted."

Ellen

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Carol,

I signed on to tell you that Middlemarch arrived. And to ask while I remember to: Are you aware that Shoshana Milgrim, who is rumored to be writing a biography of Rand's literary development, has published academic papers on George Eliot's work? That's another reason -- Milgram's interest in both Rand and Eliot -- why I'm curious to read Eliot. I did read Silas Marner in high school and liked it, but I only remember snatches of it.

I Googled trying to find a list of Milgram's publications and didn't find one on a quick search. However, here's Milgram's faculty description at Virginia Tech:

(The link doesn't go directly to the profile, but you can scroll down and click the name on the right sidebar.)

Shoshana Milgram Knapp

Associate Professor

227

231-8462

dashiell@vt.edu

My main research focus has been nineteenth-century fiction—American, British, French, and Russian—with some attention to related twentieth-century writers. I also work with the Hebrew Bible, film, and non-fictional prose. In studying the responses of one writer to another, I have published on such subjects as Leo Tolstoy’s reading of George Eliot, George Eliot’s reading of Victor Hugo, Chekhov’s reading of Herbert Spencer, Pinter’s cinematic adaptation of a novel by John Fowles, and the impact of William James and Fyodor Dostoevsky on Ursula K. LeGuin. Some of my research is a kind of literary detection. I wrote the first scholarly articles about the mysterious “Victoria Cross” (whose dates—1868-1952—and actual name had never before been documented). I am currently writing a study of the life of Ayn Rand up to 1957 (i.e., from her birth in St. Petersburg, Russia, to the publication of her final novel, Atlas Shrugged); my project, which is based on access to primary sources, presents her vision of the human ideal—the individual, rational mind in triumphant action—as the integrating principle of her public and private life.

Ellen

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No I was not aware,Milram is new to me. TY Ellen. I also did not know Tolstoy read Eliot - did you see my speculation about Rand /Tolstoy in Written Restrictedly?

All is interwoven...wooo...ooo

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Ellen, I predict MM will interest you. Value and definition of productive work are major preoccupations of Eliot, and of course as in a masterpiece, all of life is in it. Well, not a lot of sex, but it is well implied.

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No I was not aware,Milram is new to me. TY Ellen. I also did not know Tolstoy read Eliot - did you see my speculation about Rand /Tolstoy in Written Restrictedly?

All is interwoven...wooo...ooo

I didn't see that thread until you mentioned it and I searched - link.

I think Rand wouldn't have written WTL in Russia. I think she'd have been dead before age 25 in Russia. She thought so, too.

There's a very poignant thing she said to Barbara in the interviews, that it was fortunate Leo didn't ask her to marry him. (Quoting from memory.) "Because," Rand said, "if he had, I would have stayed in Russia. And I would have died there."

I didn't know about Tolstoy reading Eliot, either. Funny, Shosh talking about one author reading another reminds me of our departed Janet, only I expect Shosh makes a hell of a lot better sense. :D

What I thought you were going to speculate about was why Rand detested Tolstoy. I think someone her age with her drives and yearnings reading Anna Karenina could easily have interpreted the book as she did. But I think she misinterpreted it. I think that Tolstoy was in love with Anna himself and was on her side and showing what would happen to her not what should happen to her. I think it was the society not Anna he was criticizing. As to Rand's finding Tolstoy boring, I haven't read War and Peace. (Anticipated response: "Gasp, you haven't?!") Yes, I know, but. From what I hear of it, I'd expect Rand to be bored by it and me to be interested.

Yeah, all is interwoven. That's a Jungian theme, too.

Ellen

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I know Rand probably wouldve died , but I am cannot resist my speculations, --if Rand lived and still wrote?

I did not really read War and Peace myself, I skimmed it and found Pierre tiresome, I probably read it too early .I persevered fitfully to Finis but remember little. I do not plan to retry it anytime soon.

I am of your mind about Anna Karenina,so painful and real. Maybe Rand was also a small, very small bit envious of a novelistic skill so powerful?

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I am of your mind about Anna Karenina,so painful and real. Maybe Rand was also a small, very small bit envious of a novelistic skill so powerful?

I doubt envy was an issue. She read Anna K. in highschool and from the sound of her comments never reread it. Also, she acknowledged Tolstoy's skill -- and displayed no envy I can detect toward Hugo or Dostoevsky. Or Isak Dinesen, whom she also praised as a stylist.

Anyhoo......nighty night. Gotta get up for a meeting tomorrow.

Ellen

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I am of your mind about Anna Karenina,so painful and real. Maybe Rand was also a small, very small bit envious of a novelistic skill so powerful?

I doubt envy was an issue. She read Anna K. in highschool and from the sound of her comments never reread it. Also, she acknowledged Tolstoy's skill -- and displayed no envy I can detect toward Hugo or Dostoevsky. Or Isak Dinesen, whom she also praised as a stylist.

Anyhoo......nighty night. Gotta get up for a meeting tomorrow.

Ellen

I don't think Ayn Rand had any envy bones in her. Of course she had to have experienced it to know it just like everybody does. Her heroines did not look like her, which is most telling.

--Brant

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