archetypal dyads

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
That's an interesting one, what with Beckett being Joyce's worshipful disciple

"ACCORDING TO one of his biographers, the young Samuel Beckett hero-worshipped James Joyce to an extent that would have worried a chiropodist. “Beckett even wore pointed-toe patent leather pumps that were too small,” wrote Deirdre Bair, “because he wanted to [have] the same shoe in the same size as Joyce, who was very proud of his small, neatly shod feet.”
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy

master-and-commander.jpg

Don Quixote has one additional claim to fame: it was, in the view of many people, the first modern novel. Adventurous novels like Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn proclaim their debt to it, and countless others could never have existed without its innovations. Mundane, democratic, comical, ironic, skeptical, subjective, perspectival, dialogic: this work saw where epic tales would go in an era when ordinary people were grabbing the spotlight from hereditary elites, prose was displacing verse, and individual perceptions were starting to seem more real than universal teachings. It also pioneered a particular narrative pattern that later novelists would return to again and again. Two male protagonists who are polar opposites in most obvious ways, but whose minds somehow mesh, undertake a series of episodic adventures that highlight both their differences and their similarities. (One example that rivals Cervantes' stories for length and readability are the twenty sea novels of Patrick O'Brian.)
 

luka

Well-known member
quixote and panza is the foundation. tall and lean, short and fat. the ideal and the imagination squabbling and bickering with the animal appetites, but ultimately conjoined and co-dependent.
 

sus

Moderator
But this is broadly how I read their rivalry. They seem, superficially at least, dissimilar - which is what makes their rivalry so compelling
Youre not just rooting for a person youre rooting for a philosophy, a way of being and moving through the world. The people are stand ins, synecdoches
 

luka

Well-known member
theres a thing about partnerships that pushes each member towards being a kind of caricature of themselves, to emphasise certain aspects of themselves and to hive off other characteristics onto the other partner. you become one sided in relationships i think. you amplify what is 'yours' i.e. those characteristics of yous the other doesnt share, and you disavow those aspects of yourself that are manifested more strongly and perfectly in the other.

dose that make sense? that's what ive found. it's a way to preserve distance and independence but it makes you a cardboard cut out.
 
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sus

Moderator
Yes and you grow to hate your cardboard self. "Why wont you let me be whole." When you break free its like being born all over again finding your lost wholeness
 

luka

Well-known member
you mutuilate yourseld to form a team or partnership. and become whole agin when you split. all the old friends come fluttering back to join you.
 
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sus

Moderator
Someone must have said Kirk Spock did no one say Kirk Spock? I dont even watch Star Trek but it's low hanging fruit. Mind vs body. Brain vs heart. Calculation / rationality vs bravery (i.e. "I make my own odds"). Repression vs exuberance.
 

luka

Well-known member
luka-dreamer, pure of heart, mystic, kind, encouraging
craner-worldly, grounded, black of heart, critical
 
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