Two Emmas

2004-08-12T12:58:00.000-07:00

Social Hygiene Sigmund Freud is a household name synonymous with sexual liberation while the name of Havelock Ellis is barely known, yet Havelock Ellis along with several liberal lady friends led the popular mode of the sexual liberation that bloomed in the Sixties and is still being fought out today, particularly in the abortion arena. Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), a physican and author,

2004-08-06T10:12:00.000-07:00

Imagination Betrayed! "The change will begin with those powers which man ascribes to himself, but which, in reality, he does not possess. This means that before a man can acquire any new powers and capacities, he must actually develop in himself those qualities he thinks he possesses, and about which he has the greatest possible illusions." P.D. Ouspensky, The Psychology of Man's Possible

2004-07-21T14:19:00.000-07:00

For future analysis Once an artist mixes with the maddening crowd and tries to prove something, neglecting the creation of art, he becomes combative, opposed to all other camps struggling over their respective truths. The artist should instead leave aside ideological analyses and syntheses, take up a fragment of existence and express its reality. The moral life of the artist is the creative

2004-06-02T08:37:00.000-07:00

On Pythiatism Jean Paul Sartre was so inordinately obsessed with Gustav Flaubert that he just had to write a multi-volumn psychoanalysis of Madame Bovary's author - The Family Idiot. Flaubert was not the idiot Sartre supposed him to be. Sartre's description and cutting analysis of the French literary realist's life is more of a subjective autobiographical projection than an objective biography.

2004-06-02T05:44:00.000-07:00

The Hysterical WomanHysterical symptoms waned as the sexual revolution and the women's liberation movement advanced. We can thank Sigmund Freud for pointing out some of the roots of hysteria in Puritan or Victorian morality and for recommending cures therefor - Havelock Ellis and his lady friends actually deserve more credit than Freud for the sexual revolution that climaxed in the Sixties. We

2004-05-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

An Exercise in Bovarysm Jules de Gaultier's Bovarysm takes advantage of Madame Emma Bovary's neurosis to prescribe a healthy response to the foolish romantic uneasiness of her time; or rather the time of her creator, Gustav Flaubert, the frustrated romantic who despised reality so much that he kept his girlfriend and muse, Louise Colet, perhaps the most beautiful woman and adulteress in France,

2003-10-27T14:53:00.000-08:00

Liberty Fried Absurdities Life in Downtown Kansas City is such an epicenter of metropolitan absurdities that I have become fond of being eccentric or off center somewhere else; for instance, at Country Club Plaza. The Plaza has something of a French fried flavor which pleases me and makes me want to visit France before I die. Hopefully the muffins in French cafes are larger than the ones at

2003-10-27T08:40:00.000-08:00

Qcounter.com Free Counters

2003-10-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

Gothism Today Gothism (1) has waned since the mass murder at Columbine High School. The evil doers were involved incidentally in contemporary Goth culture. Gothism's blatantly morbid aspect was no longer merely amusing or reluctantly tolerated by parental authority after the tragedy. Innocent young Goths were deemed guilty by association of having at least a propensity to gratuitously act out

2003-10-14T16:44:00.000-07:00

2003-10-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

Taking out the Trash "Writing is knowing what to throw away," is an old cliche. But I seldom throw away anything. If I trust my initial creative instinct, I know I can somehow salvage almost anything I originally produced, no matter how awful it may seem after I have fallen out of love with it, because I grew tired of it, thought I could do better, or was just in a bad mood. Would one end a

2003-10-13T12:28:00.000-07:00

A Note to Myself by David Arthur Walters If writing novels is your calling and you write an ideal novel, you will be not only a philosopher but an artist as well, for only a lover of wisdom and revealer of truth can write an ideal novel. The great 'poets' of old were philosophers, 'makers' not of truth but of revelations - for the truth is always there to be seen after the chisel is applied

2003-10-10T11:29:00.000-07:00

George Sand and Gustave Flaubert "Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times. Man has always been like that." Gustave Flaubert to George Sand We witness a moving dialogue between Realism and Romanticism in the 1871 correspondence between two famous friends, Gustave Flaubert and George Sand. The time was apalling. France was stunned in 1870 by Prussian victories over her forces.

2003-10-09T11:46:00.000-07:00

Bad Novels - Forbidden Love by David Arthur Walters Emma Bovary, Gustave Flaubert's anti-heroine, had read too many bad novels and was consequently infected by the overarching romantic illusion, that the ideal world can be realized on Earth despite the tragic conclusions romantic authors often write after their rebellious imaginative flights. After all, those elopements constitute a

2003-10-08T15:26:00.000-07:00

Ungodly Realism & Adultery Man created god then killed god and replaced god with himself, wherefore aesthetic Realism - a term originally used with the epithets vulgar and sordid - was an artistic movement constituting the denial or complete abandonment of transcendental values. It seems the term Realism was first used in a Paris periodical in 1826, five years after the pioneering master of

2003-10-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

C'est moi by David Arthur Walters Flaubert, the foremost apostle of realism, was too realistic for the imperial guardian of propriety. The prosecutor for the Second Empire charged him with offending religious and public morality with his portrayal of Emma Bovary in Madame Bovary - the novel was released in 1857 in serial from. More specifically, the prosecutor complained that Flaubert had

2003-10-04T17:05:00.000-07:00

Get your death song ready now. History is a mistake as far as many people are concerned. I think Albert Camus said something to the effect that losses are best known through the longing for what did not occur. That is true for many people who wish they had done more with their lives. They long for what they wanted to occur but did not occur; therefore, for them, history is a record of

2003-10-01T11:43:00.000-07:00

What ever happened to Emma Woodhouse? Jane Austen's "detractors" are mentioned in the Critical Survey of Long Fiction, English Language Series, Revised Edition, 1991. Match-making Emma Woodhouse's limitations were said to be due her parochial ignorance of the important realities of the wide world. Jane Austen's detractors have a similar conception of Austen as a writer because of her choice

2003-09-25T13:58:00.000-07:00

Jane Austen describes Emma Woodhouse I have no excuse but my prejudice to offer for favoring Emma Bovary over Emma Woodhouse. I have already given a few reasons therefor, and they all boil down to my temperament or humour. Not that I am myself an adulterous, home-breaking man; quite to the contrary: I am a rebellious thinker, but a conservative actor. Neither am I your everyday

2003-09-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

Enlightened Hothouse Intercourse Dear Madame Me: You shall find my constructive criticism directly below the text it criticizes. Since a critic once charged Flaubert with making coffins for illusions, I decided to portray an actual experience realistically in accordance with the new Southern American Realism, hoping that it might pass for good fiction notwithstanding the diction. "But of

2003-09-20T15:35:00.000-07:00

On Constructive Criticism Dear Madame Me: Reality is the death of me and I can't stand realism for long. I have taken your letters under consideration, and I'm afraid you have left me with the impression that literary Realism has become dog food because of the decadent reality that realists really represent because they live in the animal shelter. The hounds bark hysterically before meals

2003-09-19T17:35:00.000-07:00

Addendum On Adultery Dear Mr. Two Emmas: I realize your Emmas are two of the finest creatures devised according to the new Realism of their time, so please forgive me for intruding into your discourse on same yet again. I wish to add to my previous remarks on An Adultery before you come to a definite opinion on same. I do not believe I am impertinent for doing so. I was astonished to see

2003-09-18T10:38:00.000-07:00

An Adultery Dear Mr. Two Emmas: You are keeping one of the most provocative literary logs on the Internet, and I hope there will be no end to it. Thus far I have especially enjoyed Charlotte Bronte's acerbic critique: it was a resonating bong! amidst all the Austen noise. Speaking of critics and critiques, I pulled a book written by AlexanderTheroux off my shelf. I purchased it at a yard

2003-09-14T17:07:00.000-07:00

A Fool's Game by David Arthur Walters I suppose I am a foolish romantic. I know romance is a fool's game, yet I continue to play. The illusion of it all keeps me going. Everything perceived and conceived is an illusion, says the great master. So what? It is a real illusion, is it not? And what would he have me do? Jump through a plate glass window? Go home and put a plastic bag over my head

2003-09-11T17:29:00.000-07:00

Jane Austen's Critics I am not one to find out what other people say about something in order to have an opinion on it. But once I have a definite attitude about a certain subject or person, I do consider the opinions of others. Sometimes, but not often, I change my opinion as a consequence. When it comes to personal likes and dislikes, I tend to agree with those who share mine, and sometimes I

2003-09-10T17:23:00.000-07:00

The Madame Bovary Philosophy by David Arthur Walters We can certainly identify with characters who are true to life. The authors who have the perspicacity and skill necessary to artfully represent them should be gratefully applauded. Since the advent of the Internet, many aspiring novelists have emerged from obscurity to be applauded. I am myself one of the greatest authors the world will

2003-09-07T19:03:00.000-07:00

Her Husband Wasn't Good Enough "He (Rodolphe) saw no reason why there should be all this to-do about so simple a thing as love-making. But for her (Emma) there was a reason; there was a motive force that gave an impetus to her passion. Every day her love for Rodolphe was fanned by her aversion for her husband. The more completely she surrendered to the one, the more intensely did she loath

2003-09-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

The Philosophy of Fiction I seldom read literary fiction. Philosophy, another sort of fiction, led me to Madame Bovary. Ortega y Gasset had made an obscure allusion to the Doctrinaires, saying they were misunderstood and were well worth studying. He mentioned none of them by name. I will not bore the reader by recounting the tortuous path of my research, but I must make this note, that

2003-09-05T15:03:00.000-07:00

Was Emma Woodhouse clueless? by David Arthur Walters I wonder if anyone has compared Flaubert's Emma Bovary and Austen's Emma Woodhouse? I've heard both characters referred to as "self-deceived" in the pejorative sense, implying complicity of the self in conscious deception. But it seems to me that Woodhouse was much more innocent than Bovary. Woodhouse was clueless until rectified or "