Wednesday, April 27, 2005

For my enemy is dead. (A man divine as myself is dead.)

So my roommate has complained about the allusions I make in the subject line of my post.

I am sorry if anyone else can't follow my schizophrenic intertexuality. The sub. line is Walt Whitman. The next line of the poem is:

“I draw near. Bend down and touch lightly with my lips. The white face in the coffin.”

That line has always reminded me of the poem by Heine: Der Doppelgänger, in which the man wandering the street comes upon his double in the moonlight:

“Du Doppelgänger, du bleicher Geselle!” (translation: you double, you pale fellow!)

This poem has always reminded me of one thing. The thing I despise and loathe the most in the world. And when I find it in a person, I put my hand on their shoulder to turn them…and I find that it is me.

Der Mond zeigt mir meine eigne Gestalt. (The moon shows me my own form.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

damn you for involving schubert in your emocore ravings. :) (alan)

Ed Grow said...

Alan-
Does this make me an emotist? Sorry, I just couldn't help myself...

Mands-
I also remember Mrs. Cox telling us that Whitman was a ladies man. "Look at how his hat is cocked." When we told her that he was gay, she couldn't believe it. P.S. They only let prostitutes and gay men be nurses because they are the only ones comfortable with the male body? Boy, times have really changed. Not.