Third Day Presentations

Morgan's alphabet book was awesome! It reminded me of a project I once did on the Dance of Death in Europe and how artists rendered the different scenes from the dance in alphabet form much as Morgan was portraying Pale Fire. I think that the final product will be a much more in-depth representation of the complexities of Pale Fire than the index of the original book.

Isabel's Erlking analysis was fun, especially with the inclusion of Rowling's Tales of Beedle the Bard. That fairy tale complimented the tale of the Erlking quite nicely and made the references from Pale Fire stand out more clearly.

Dustin's analysis was as always brilliant and confusing. I think that I'm going to need a road map of all the modern philosophers so that I can better keep up. Good luck with your studies next semester!

Second day presentation

While the chemistry Nels proposed was way to complicated for me to understand, I could distinctly see its beauty. I thought that the analysis of beauty and science and how the two are intermingled, separate and in some ways halfway in between. I wonder how his scholarship application will go.

Ashley's presentation brought out all the best of Hazel and all the intricate webs Nabokov wove around her. Most, but not all the mysteries surrounding Hazel and her role in Pale Fire came through, with just enough left over that Hazel retained her perfect imperfection.

The Bizz/Jenny painting was fantastic! As was their face paints. Bizz brought out such an interesting discussion on the intricacies of the human mind in its function and dysfunction. Who would have thought that the mind can work better when it isn't working than when it is. As for Jenny, I had no idea there were so many different kinds of chess! And to think that they all can relate back to a novel is really astounding.

Response to presentations on 11/29

Madeleine's presentation was spectacular. The special effects brought out the energy of her discussion. I found the idea of drawing parallels between Kinbote and Prospero to be rather interesting. She shows an interesting perspective on the ways in which the two exiles impose their wills on their surroundings in an attempt to give their existences meaning.

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2008/05/08/eye-candy-chilean-volcanic-thunderstorm/

Michael
Insiders and outsiders. Two people playing chess from opposite sides of the window. This was absolutely awesome! The analysis of pale fire as through the eyes of the reader looking in at Nabokov and Nabokov looking out was very intriguing.

http://itschess.blogspot.com/2010_12_01_archive.html

Breanna

I enjoyed the imagery this presentation brought in. Of Icarus flying with wax wings and falling to the sea. Of the artist building the labyrinth which became the novel Pale Fire. It shows the convolutions of Nabokov's mind and Kinbotes attempts to fly too high and his fall.

http://www.blirk.net/labyrinth-wallpaper/1/

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/icarus-david-lane.html

http://www.mizozo.com/entertainment/12/2010/06/creative-mixed-media-digital-art-and-designs.html

Sarah

I wish the computer system had worked! I will have to read the analysis of how Bach and Pale Fire mix and intermingle. Although from what I heard, the idea is cool. The Fugue, as the piano player said (I apologize, I do not remember his name) was made up of a simple melody that was repeated and expanded upon throughout the piece. I want to see how this relates back to pale fire.

http://flickrhivemind.net/Tags/sibelius/Interesting

http://www.paintingsilove.com/image/show/69094/after-hearing-a-bach-fugue

The Memory Palace

The Memory Palace, also termed the Method of loci, according to wikipedia, is a method whereby a person builds up spaces within his/her mind in order to remember a list or events or anything really. The person, to recall these memories, simply 'walks' through these spaces in their mind in order to recall them. The method was used and perhaps first discovered by ancient Romans and is used by people today to win memory contests or in application of everyday life. One does not have to be particularly intelligent in order to use this technique, just disciplined. Apparently one person used this technique to memorize over 65,000 digits of pi. And Dr. Hannibal Lecter used the technique in the fictional film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

http://mnemotechnics.org/files/2011/03/Emma-Willard-1846-temple.jpg

GMOs and Pale Fire

Well, now that I'm a partial expert in the policies that have allowed France to take practically all Genetically Modified Food off their supermarket shelves, I thought I would share some of my new found expertise.

First, Genetically Modified Organisms are each created with a distinct purpose. A particular section of a plants DNA is chosen for its properties, isolated from the rest of the DNA and then removed.
Second, a piece of DNA from another organism, often a bacterium, is selected for its specific properties, isolated and then removed.
Next is a lenghty process in which the DNA pieces are modified and placed in sort of parcels that are given to a bacterium that then transports the DNA and inserts it into the rest of the plant's DNA.
Finally, individual cells are sprayed with antibiotics, those cells that survive are kept while those that don't are discarded.
The plant's immune system has been changed through human intervention. The new plants are often either Herbicide tolerant, meaning they can withstand herbicides meant to destroy other plants, or insect tolerant, meaning they are immune to the insects that once destroyed them. They sometimes contain bacteria in their pollen that kills a targeted insect species. Some plants can also kill weeds or they were meant to. Before the local population came and destroyed the field, a group of scientists were working on a type of sunflowers that would kill off the local ambrosia, a plant that can cause severe allergic reactions (ironic isn't it).

Now, GMOs are controversial in many ways. For one thing, humans are interfering in the natural evolution of plant life (one can argue that breeding has been doing the same thing for eons, but this process is a bit more invasive). The use of antibiotics in the plants makes them resistant to those antibiotics which could lead to the humans ingesting those plants to be antibiotic resistant. This, as well as the plants new found resistance to insects and herbicides, could lead to the creation of superbugs that could lead to the end of humanity as we know it (sorry this is a bit too dramatic, but superbugs are no laughing matter). There is also the possibility of GM crops infecting heirloom crops, which could lead to the loss of those rare species. And of course, there are incidences where mysterious illnesses have caused lots of deaths and injuries and they can be related back to genetically modified dietary supplements.

In short, genetic modification is the process whereby an organisms is infused with the essence of another organism so that the original organism can better survive in the world we humans have created for it and there is the possibility that these modified organisms will kill everyone eventually.

So, how does this relate to Pale Fire? Well Kinbote obviously. Nabokov has engineered this crazy character by adding on bits and pieces of mythology, literature, history and his own life experiences and then in this world that Nabokov has created, Kinbote eventually kills off his best friend and all he's worried about is the survival of Shade's poem.

So, I would like to explore all the bits and pieces that Nabokov added to Kinbote, how this modification had an effect on the other weeds and insects (characters in the novel) and how all this led to John Shade's death, if he truly existed or if any of the characters truly existed.

5 Discoveries

5 discoveries about the novel Pale Fire: Which turn out to be more questions on what was really going on in Nabokov's twisted neurons
1. Reality is not what it seems -

• Is Charles really the King of this distant land, Zembla or is he just making it up?
• Is Gradus really an assassin from Zembla out to shoot Charles or is a crazy man that just escaped form an asylum?
• If Charles isn't the King of Zembla are all the friends and acquaintances he talks about real or are they too just a figment of Charles' imagination?
• If Charles works at a University and he's crazy, how did he get there? And then again, does Charles really work at the University?
• Are the crown jewels real? Do they represent something if they are not real?
• and the list could continue indefinitely...

2. Nabokov has ready every classical or important text known to mankind.
which leads to the next discovery
3. There are references all over this book to mythology, literature, history and they are in plain sight and deeply buried
This next is a question and a discovery
4. After listening to the presentation on Nabokov's Blues and learning about Nabokov's life and work with Lepidoptery, Nabokov has included personal references among the mythological and literary within this work. Things like the butterfly in John Shade's death scene. Being as how the poem is about the death of a child and her parents' reaction to that death, why did Nabokov pick such a poignant subject on which to write a poem? Why is a mad man then interpreting it with the idea that the work revolves around him?
5. Sybil Shade is an incredibly patient woman

5 obvious facts about pale fire

I have learned, mostly through design in Architecture courses my Freshman year of College, that in order to design you have to start at the beginning and progress to the end. Without the progression you lose something along the way and your design holds up like wet tissue paper.
So, Five obvious facts about pale fire:
1. The book contains a poem called Pale Fire written by a man called John Shade
2. The poem is interpreted by a man called Charles Kinbote or Charles Xavier
3. John Shade is shot
4. John Shade and Charles Kinbote appear to work at a University
5. Charles Kinbote says he is the King of a distant northern land called Zembla

Oct. 17. 16th Century Language and Similitudes

This last spring semester, while studying in France, I got to take a course on 16th century French literature. While I cannot say that I understood more than 75% of the class, what I did gain was an interesting perspective on the French Renaissance and the evolution of pedagogy from the Middle Ages through the first thinkers of the new french era.
The Renaissance, as the professor kept explaining, was not a true 'rebirth' as the philosophers of the time period would have us, the future generations, believe. It was a time of change, but the ideas during the time period were a simple evolution; a slow progression that was a continuation of many of the ideas of the previous era. While the invention of the printing press was monuments and did indeed allow the thinkers of the time period to access the great texts of ancient Greece and Rome from within the comforts of their own nation, it took a long time for that invention to catch on and for the copies of such books to circulate up into France (as my professor in the history of media explained). Therefore, the invention of the printing press allowed the individual philosopher the chance to read more of the ancient texts without the need to travel to Egypt, or Italy, or Constantinople.
This time period was also fraught with the invention of encyclopedias and new dictionaries. Vernacular languages were gaining popularity and new dictionaries that taught how to translate from the ancient texts to the vernacular languages. Encyclopedias, written in vernacular tongues were written in order to teach about the past and present.
With this new information becoming more readily available by the decade, pedagogy became an increasingly important topic. How were the young to be educated in this new material? The previous method, deemed copia by some philosopher I cannot recall, was the most popular method. Students were expected to learn through memorization and imitation. The idea was that students would copy out the styles of the ancients and eventually learn, not a new style, but a combination of the old styles and ideas. However, during the latter part of the 16th century, thinkers such as Montaigne were encouraging original thought and analysis rather than memorization and the melange of random styles.
All of this information came to mind in Foucault's chapter on 'The Prose of the World'. He talks about 4 different kinds of similitudes, all of which humans use to make things alike so that they can be understandable. Language, the basis for understanding and knowledge, which at one time had much more significance than it does now, has been diluted, according to Foucault. The original words used to describe things were much closer to the objects they described. So I find it interesting that Foucault mentions the work of the late 16th and early 17th century thinkers in his analysis of language and its place in the way humans understand their world.
I don't pretend to understand anything of what Foucault was saying, half the time his words went in one eye and straight out the back of my head. But I find that his connection between mimesis, language and the 16th century to be very interesting. The time period was characterized by its attempts to understand the world through different epistemes. By studying and copying the texts of the ancients, these people tried to understand their world through the eyes of those who had never seen it. In order to understand these texts, publishers would write dictionaries that would take a more 'real' language and translate it into a vernacular tongue that was farther from what Foucault would describe as true language. But all this was done by making things that were non comprehensible like things that were comprehensible so that the former could be understood. This type of learning doesn't seem to have much room for originality or creativity, but perhaps that is what Foucault was getting at, there is nothing new left in this universe. 

Sept. 27. Stockman and Socrates and the consequences of saying what you believe

In my class on Classical Political Thought, we are currently reading about and discussing the life of Socrates; a man who would stand in the public market, barefoot and impoverished, and try to teach the world about the degradation of Athenian society. The most recent document we are discussing is the Appology where Socrates stands in front of the Athenian court and is tried, convicted and sentenced to death. His situation was very similar to that of Stockman's. Here are two men who simply wish to point out the vileness of society and to make people think about how their actions are affecting others and in the end their teachings are considered unwelcome and they end up being ostracized and thrown bodily out of society.
Both men could be considered guilty of the sin of pride. Socrates, after the court convicts him, tells the court that his just punishment should be to receive free food from the hall of heros and a living expense from the people. He mocks the jury and the narrow margin that convicted him turns into a vast majority who seek his death. Even in the end he continues by claiming that in the end the court will be the ones punished rather than himself. And, judged from a rational point of view and considering Socrates' arguments and teachings, his last words are not all that radical, but when you've just angered a room full of self important men, you are not likely to receive amnesty.
Stockman too argues his point to the last, over the shouts of hatred and demands for silence. Rather than letting go of his pride and working with the council to find a solution to the problem that wouldn't bankrupt the town, he continues on in an ineffective effort to fight his entire town.
Yet, Ibsen, like whatever fate determined the life of Socrates, made a sort of no win situation for Stockman. If the bath's weren't cleaned up and the technologies weren't put in place, a great many innocent travelers would become seriously ill. Especially since, as Morgan says in her blog, the bacterial infection was caused by Cholera. If Socrates truly believes that the sophists are ruining his nation, how can he stand by and let it crumble to dust, as the young are taught the art of lying rather than how to judge the world morally and virtuously.
So what are they to do? How do they recreate a sense of moral order within the community? Is martyrdom the only solution? In a real-world situation where a community is not a closed system as Ibsen describes, how could this situation be handled better so that both sides get what they want, a moral community and a way to survive in an economic slum?
Do we not have to face this question today?

Sept. 22. An enemy of the People

If Ibsen viewed his characters as bacteria, he certainly had some interesting comments to make on small town society and the role of development and science.
It is difficult to imagine that Ibsen remained completely objective in his study of human interaction as he wrote his plays. First, there is never a dull moment in the progression of events; never a lull that would reveal the everyday activities of the family. Real life is rarely as exciting as Ibsen portrays it, even in the midst of a scandal such as occured when the doctor tried to publish his discovery of the contamination of the local baths. He also does not show all the activities that occur in the house, as an anthropologist or social scientist would in order to give a full account of the progression of events that led to the town's reaction. We do not see the rocks being thrown into the window on the night that the town rejects the doctor's publication, nor the dismissal of Petra and her reaction as well as that of the woman who dismissed her. There are large pieces missing in this examination of the interaction between the citizens of the town.
Second, Ibsen's characters seem exaggerated to make them fit the situation or stereotypical. The doctor, Thomas Stockman is pompous and arrogant to the point of near insanity. For a man who has only recently been able to return to his home and just now has a stable income, it seems unlikely that a normal man would give up the comforts of a hot meal and a home in order to pursue a stubborn plan that could have been more easily handled if he had discussed his findings with the council first to try and find a reasonable and cost effective way to sole the contamination issue without creating a mass panic. He even is amazed at his current wealth, showing off the new comforts in his living room and the large amounts of good food on the table. It seems that a man who had known exile and harsher times would, at least at the end when he is faced with the loss of his position and later with the loss of an income from his father-in-law, would back off in order to provide for his family. Katherine Stockman, too seems to bee the stereotypical housewife of the time period, she goes along with her husband and while the men of the town portray her as the voice of reason, she still bends quite easily when her husband's honor is attacked rather than try to defend the future of her three children. Petra is the loving, doting daughter who follows in her father's footsteps and teaches radical ideas that he approves of throughout the town. The journalists seem to be trying to look out for the interest of informing the community, but they like the politicians look only at the monetary costs of the project and ignore the health hazards. The mayor of the town is portrayed as the stereotypical gentleman who must bow to the will of the people, even in the face of causing sickness and harm to others. He must, after all take care of the tax payers first.
Ibsen seems to have a clear agenda. If he views the world as bacteria to be studied and analyzed, he analyses with a deep-set hatred for these bacteria. He is not the objective scientist who studies his subjects for the purpose of discovering their nature and seeing how they react to one another and in certain situations. He seems to have had the objective in mind before he set out. He does not show the good in men, which most theorists agree exists on the individual level, he only shows those situations where man acts in a despicable manner in a bad situation. The play is simply a demonstration of Ibsen's views on humanity rather than a study of the real thing. This subjectivity, would lose him all credibility in the scientific community, therefore I find it hard to view him as a scientist such as Linneaus or Galton.

Sept. 20. Ibsen and Nansen

An examination of the life of Henrik Ibsen, by wikipedia, reveal a somewhat bitter childhood and an adulthood mixed with failure, exile and eventual success. Ibsen's once wealthy father became an alcoholic after he lost his company and fortune and was forced to declare bankruptcy. As an adult, Ibsen failed to enter into a university since he could not pass the entrance exams. He worked for a great deal of time at a Norwegian production company where he helped to write, direct and produce plays but he did not write any original pieces. His abandoned his marriage, enacted in 1858, six years later for a self imposed exile of nearly 30 years in Italy. His original plays were not successful until 1865 when his play Brand received critical acclaim.

The scene in the Biographer's Tale, where the son greets his father asking for help and the father refuses, seems to reflect this turbulent and dark history. The father seems to see in his son all the characteristics he loathes in himself, the alcoholism and the lack of pride and diligence. Each of Ibsen's contributions to the work reveal a critique of the morals and accepted 'myths' or ideas used to explain a cultural belief. In the case of Henrik's confrontation between father and son, according to one myth, is the father not supposed to support his son and try to help him out in this time of crisis, and according to a different myth, the father should refuse the son's request, otherwise how will the son learn to become independent? Yet if the scene is examined with the knowledge of Ibsen's childhood, it would seem that the roles of father and son have been reversed. Ibsen would be the father character while Ibsen's father would be the son. Ibsen critiques his father's alcoholism and inability to support his family while Ibsen's father asks for aid. In this case what are the 'myths' that society would use to judge the situation? A son should always support a father, no? So, in his own mind, Ibsen is going against the grain of society, essentially breaking the moral code.

In Nansen's experience such a strange role reversal occurs when he discovers that the biographer he has been studying, and who is known to write acclaimed biographies known for their truth and lack of bias, has been writing fictional tales about his three subjects, Ibsen, Galton and Linnaeus. In essence Nansen's hero/idol, Destry-Scholes has just committed what would seem to be a crime against the rules of biographers, just as Ibsen has committed a crime against his father when he refuses to support him in his time of crisis. But as Nansen discovers along his journey, the truth is very flexible and in the game of biographers it can easily be broken.

Ibsen's acclaim comes from his criticism of social morals, myths and codes. How does one know what is right and wrong and who should decide that? Why should the relationship between father and son be dictated by outside forces in society? Why should a biographer write only the facts when often even those facts are subject to interpretation? Why can a biographer not write his own view of what happened in the subjects life? As Nansen discovers, he is the writer of his own life and only he can determine the rules he should live by.

Sept. 13 Death and the Photograph

“Roland Barthes was right, in his book on photography, to say that photographs are essentially involved in death. This creature was living and will be dead, a photograph says, according to Barthes... All writing about photographs, including this writing I am at present engaged in, has something decayed (decadent) and disgusting about it. People have not understood (except Barthes to a certain extent) the horror of these snatched imprints of light and shadow on jelly (Hiroshima gave us a way, a clichéd way quickly, of seeing what it was to leave your shadow etched by brilliance when you were evaporated)... It is partly, too, as primitive peoples believe, that the identity is chipped or sucked away by the black hole in the shutter... I hate photographs (p. 164). 

To a reasonable, rational human being this argument and discussion seems irrational when considering Phineas work. After all, Phineas is studying dead men, their lives and existences. Is a biography, a collection of the actions of a man once living, not also like a photograph, in that it says “This creature was living and will be dead”? You cannot write about someone until the moments that you are writing about have passed and many biographies are written posthumously. So, why then is Phineas, who is endeavoring to write about a dead man who wrote about dead men so abhorrent of photographs?

Also, Vera, Phineas’ love interest, has a collection of x-rays that she has arranged and colored displayed as works of art in her room. Phineas found her art lovely and both agreed that the images are not displaying death but life. How is an x-ray different from a photograph? Both use a rather similar method to develop and if considered, one might say that an x-ray is more related to death than a photograph, since, more often than not, x-rays are taken at moments when someone has been injured while photographs are normally taken as someone experiences a moment in life. If looked at this way, an x-ray would be a reminder of the fragility of the human existence.

Yet perhaps Phineas’ perspective can be understood if one thinks about how people look at photographs as compared to biographies and x-rays. When a person loses a loved one, a photograph, which is a personal item that links the viewer with the deceased, can be studied and agonized over. That photograph can be a constant reminder of what you have lost. In my experience, family members will cut out a copy of a persons’ obituary, which can by said to be a miniature biography, and keep it in a book of some sort. But when they turn for a reminder of their lost loved one, they do not turn to the obituary, but to their collection of photographs. The photos act as a link between the current time and memory. An obituary reminds the person of the facts and things of the deceased person’s life, but the photo reminds them of the emotional bond. It is this bond that links photos to death. One takes a picture so that one can look at that picture and remember what was going on at the time. A biography allows the writer to pull back from the emotional side of the equation and look at the facts and things of the person’s life.

Phineas can write biographies and save himself from the horror associated with photographs by ignoring the more human aspects of his subjects life and focusing on the facts and things. As a biographer you cannot know how the person felt and guessing would probably have the unintended consequence of altering the facts and things and tainting them with your guesses.

Sept. 8. Vera, Fulla and Phineas

I wonder at the stark contrast between Phineas' two lovers Vera and Fulla and the reason for the detail that Byatt uses to describe their relationship and the nature of that relationship with Phineas.
Vera, a pale, thin young woman who works as a radiologist, lives in a dark and ordered space and who's passion is the artistic renderings of x-rays. Fulla is bright, voluptuous and fierce and passionate about insects and improving the condition of the planet through a holistic process that would incorporate the roles played by the insect population.
Vera seems to act as the voice of reason, intellect and investigation. Her passions in life, the x-rays, a relative of photographs, which Phineas discovers to be linked rather closely with death, and her investigation into the life of her dead uncle Scholes Destry-Scholes, seem to be the embodiment of Phineas' search for facts and things. Her fragility and her emotional break down after viewing the x-ray of a dying man, could possibly symbolize the frailty of an existence devoted entirely to a life of study of others.
Fulla on the other hand, is the emotional figure, full of life and vibrancy who knows who she is, what she wants and where to go to get it. She is also tied to the planet and has all the characteristics of an earthy creature. Her passion, insects and the identification of their roles in nature, and her physical appearance, a bright cap of bushy hair that seems to defy all constraints, suggest that she symbolizes man's connection to nature. Nature that is always linked to emotion, but solid and unyielding. She ties reason and intellect to nature through application of her studies on insects. 
As Phineas develops his relationship with each he begins to take in the traits of both, or rather to discover those traits within himself. He becomes fuller, and even his complexion and disposition improve. He learns to be invested both with facts and things, but also with their application in the real world. He is no longer concerned with the dead, his biographical subject and all of his biographical subjects have long since passed, but with how to improve the lives of the living, through his work with Fulla and to a certain extent, his work at Puck's Girdle where he helps people find a way to travel on strange paths.
Yet why is it necessary for Phineas to have a physical relationship with these two women at the same time? Socially such things are usually not acceptable and Phineas himself seems slightly embarrassed with the situation. In older texts, such a relationship would develop as a  friendship would result in the same intermingling of perspectives. Why can Phineas not have an intellectual relationship with the women? Is it the time period the book was written in? Such a situation is much more socially acceptable now than it would have been even fifty years ago. Did the author add the relationship in order to attract a larger audience? The subject matter is rather dry after all, perhaps she thought that such a situation would draw in more readers. Also one could argue that Phineas is using the two women in a rather horrible way and the women lose their value as intellectual beings in the process. Personally I find that it detracts from the overall story (Alfred Hitchcock's hidden violence, that your own imagination fills in, is much more frightening than the blood baths that most horror films include).
Perhaps there is a reason for Byatt's decision and I'm just not seeing it.  

Sept. 6: Lumps in Foucault, Pale Fire and the Biographer's Tale

When I was little my father once told me there were only two kinds of people in the world: Lumpers and Splitters. Lumpers, in order to make sense of their cosmos, have to take all the small details and lump them together into ideas that are easier to understand or that fit into a grander picture. Splitters take all of their daily thoughts, words and actions and split them up into more manageable forms which they constantly scrutinize so that they can further split them into smaller pieces. For the most part I'm still a little hazy on the distinction between the two but it makes perfect sense to my father.
The young biographer in the Biographer's Tale begins his story by collecting all the smallest pieces of evidence about his biographer and lumping them into categories that he can further lump together so that he can make sense of what is going on in the biographer's analysis of his subject's lives. The marbles and note cards, which he continuously examines and rearranges, represent the little details of the biographer's life which the young man is trying to lump together to make into a complete human being. The final product would have been completely different if the young biographer had taken these small pieces and analyzed and further divided them with all of the numerous literary, behavioral and psychological theories he constantly tries to avoid. The young biographer's methods of analysis and his interpretation of the biographer's notes and symbols determine the entire evolution of the young biographer's life. These strange little ways of organizing life, Foucault's very specific list of slimy, unwholesome creatures he would not eat and the gibberish of the young child in Pale Fire, are a manifestation of the character and personality of the mind's behind such random organizations. These organizational methods have do not have the same meaning from one person to the next. The biographer's marbles, for example, represent an entirely different set of thought for the young biographer than the deceased man he's studying. For the young man the marbles played a key role in his development as he found out who he was and what kind of work he wanted to do with his life. For the old biographer, the marbles represented places, times, people and all other sorts of things he encountered while studying those about whom he was going to write his interpretations of their lives. In the end the young biographer puts them in a bowl on display whereas the old man had them hidden away in a shoe box in his niece's attic. The objects are important for both characters but the details of their importance are different for each man and help to distinguish what sorts of lives they live or lived.
The lumpers and splitters theory still boggles my mind, but it explains how some people organize their lives and how they make sense of the events that unfold on a daily basis. Random lists of disgusting animals that one would not want to eat may be an important indication that Foucault did not think like the average man and helps to explain how he could ask such previously un-thought-of or at least un-voiced questions about the nature of society. Rather than looking at the world from what most people would consider a forward facing perspective, listing all the foods he would like to eat, Foucault starts from the opposite end and lists those that would probably turn most stomachs.    

Sept. 1 The Idea of Order at Key West - Wallace Stevens

            Wallace Stevens, in The idea of Order at Key West writes of a haunting and enchanted song sung by a woman as she walks alongside the melody of the sea. His vivid descriptions of the turbulent air and violent waters act to reveal his emotional response not to the sea, but to the woman's song. He explains this quite simply with his first line 'she sang beyond the genius of the sea' and he continues to reinforce his belief that the woman' song holds more sway than the sea with other phrases: 'the water never formed to mind or voice', the water held no sway over the listener, 'fluttering its empty sleeves' the sound had no substance, 'its mimic motion', try as it might to follow the woman's song the sea could not compete.

            Stevens continues his discourse by asking 'whose spirit is this?' The woman's song comes to represent the human power to create, 'For she was the maker of this song she sang'. Her song holds more power over the sea which was 'sound alone' because it was created by a human mind. And because the listener 'knew it was the spirit that we sought and knew that we should ask [whose spirit is this] often as she sang' he knew that he understood the song because there was some human element to it for which he could search. And by searching and seeking to understand that internal spirit he could understand the words she sang. This spirit 'of ourselves and our origins' is the lens through which the human mind understands and orders the world. His last image of a night sea defined by the lights of the fishing boats, reveals how the mind uses the lens of self to understand the world and without this lens many would be lost. But in this lost state is where man may find and create 'in ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.' In other words, the way man understands and sees his world is defined by his experiences or his origins. But in places where man's mind fails to see through his lens of self, true creation can occur.