Benny Bunter

Well-known member
The "Rotting Kingdom" must be an oblique Hamlet reference, and WSB sees himself as the subversive Black Prince in the midst of the rotten Time, Life, Fortune media empire he so despises.
Hamlet also cuts in his own lines into the text of the Mouse Trap play-within-a-play to ensnare his rotten uncle Claudius and unveil his corruption - very Burroughsian technique
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I think you could flesh out and pursue the Hamlet/Burroughs comparison really far actually - that transcendent nihilism.

"There are no good relationships - There are no good words - I wrote silences -"

Hamlet's last words -"The rest is silence."
 

version

Well-known member
I've been puzzling over what makes The Image so powerful since starting this. Flusser, in that interview I posted the other week, says the philosophy of images has a long history and most of it negative because there's a prejudice against the image in philosophy's Greek and Jewish tradition, the image is viewed as a copy, a simulation of thought, to be either forbidden to make or to be accepted with great distrust.
 

Benny Bunter

Well-known member
I've been puzzling over what makes The Image so powerful since starting this. Flusser, in that interview I posted the other week, says the philosophy of images has a long history and most of it negative because there's a prejudice against the image in the Greek and Jewish traditions, the image is viewed as a copy, a simulation of thought, to be either forbidden to make or accepted but viewed with suspicion.

What's this Flusser interview?

You ever read this?

"An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the term “complex” rather in the technical sense employed by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we might not agree absolutely in our application.

It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art."

The freedom from time and space limits definitely fits in with Burroughs.
 

version

Well-known member
You ever read this?

"An “Image” is that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time. I use the term “complex” rather in the technical sense employed by the newer psychologists, such as Hart, though we might not agree absolutely in our application.

It is the presentation of such a “complex” instantaneously which gives that sense of sudden liberation; that sense of freedom from time limits and space limits; that sense of sudden growth, which we experience in the presence of the greatest works of art."

It's interesting Pound's conception of an image isn't restricted to something to be looked at. It's more like a moment captured in any artistic medium and which comes to life again when encountered.
 
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