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Subject: shindell-list-digest V3 #129
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shindell-list-digest     Saturday, April 14 2001     Volume 03 : Number 129



                               Today's Subjects:
                               -----------------
  [RS] Re: Memory of You                                     [Tom926@aol.com]
  [RS] ghosts upon the roa...whoops, wrong folk singer  [jcolb <jcolb@barash]

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Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 07:22:12 EDT
From: Tom926@aol.com
Subject: [RS] Re: Memory of You

Hey I love this lyric. It's evocative in the best sense of the word, 
primarily because it doesn't tell everything. And thank you Carol, et al, for 
the information about Hamlet and Gertrude: it makes perfect sense.That last 
stanza! It reminds me of three things. First, the story of Mary and Elizabeth 
and Christ with Christ saying to Mary "you have chosen the better part" by 
NOT working in the kitchen (oh the boring mundanity of day to day chores) and 
enjoying the beauty of the moment. Second, some Japanese poetry from around 
the same time as The Tale of Genji. It has that spareness and what the 
Japanese call "aware": the sense that the beautiful is temporal and more 
touching because of it. And the vase always reminds me of one of my favorite 
Marge PIercey poems called "To be of use," which ends with a beautiful image 
of a Grecian urn in the museum crying out for water, "to be of use." 
So Jim C, the three lines do not, if I remember "Hamlet," actually appear in 
the play. But the idea of Gertrude chosing the thing over the feeling is what 
drives the action in a sense. By chosing to murder her husband and marry 
Claudius to put him on the throne, she has chosen the lesser of two ideals: 
the thing (vase) and not the love (flower). Everything else that happens in 
"Hamlet" (and we used to call it the body count play in college: almost every 
one of the main characters dies) is a consequence of that  choice.

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Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 08:00:51 +0000
From: jcolb <jcolb@barashgroup.com>
Subject: [RS] ghosts upon the roa...whoops, wrong folk singer

> This song became more meaningful to me after I heard Richard both explain it
> and play it live.
>
> He says he wrote it from the perspective of Gertrude (as in Shakespeare's
> Hamlet) speaking to Hamlet, Sr.'s ghost.  I guess the English major in me
> couldn't help but like it after that. . . <g>

I can buy that, but what ARE the three blue lines?

Anyone?

jim
more into, say, arthur miller or mamet

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End of shindell-list-digest V3 #129
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