Benny Bunter
Well-known member
very similar aren't they?
American Artlessness
- Thread starter sus
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Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Made me think of the whiteness of the whale chapter in moby dick too
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
"This elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when divorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object terrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds."
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
One thing whitman, melville and frost all have in common is they take the essential part that cruelty has in the world in their stride, they don't agonise over it, though they ask questions, but they accept it as part of life and nature.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
This is a decent article comparing frost and wordsworth
www.thedailystar.net
Frost and Wordsworth: a comparative overview
Robert Frost (L) and William Wordsworth (R)Robert Frost is often designated by students and critics as the American poetical parallel of William Wordsworth, the forerunner of the Romantic Movement in England. It is widely believed that Wordsworth exerted profound influence on Frost in writing...
sus
Moderator
I'm very sympathetic to this because I spent my college years first buying into all these notions of metamodern sincerity and indie authenticity, then problematizing and rejecting them
But it also seems like I've met people who are fake as fuck and put on airs? And also people who humbly share of themselves and their experience and internal life? So that while yes we all know The Mask Is The Face, there is no Unposed Pose, there are also differences in the qualities of masks and poses?
sus
Moderator
The white glint in wellcurbs poem made me think of Melville. Elusive glimpse of the infinite in dark deep
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
white stones is a potent image that's in the Bible, Ovid, Prynne, never gotten round to investigating what it really means or to see if they're all connected
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
The more I read of frost, the more I like him
sus
Moderator
That’s a great instinct — “white stones” really is one of those archetypal images that surfaces across time and texts, almost like a fossil of meaning sedimented across languages. Let's dig into some of those appearances:
1. In the Bible
The key biblical reference comes from Revelation 2:17 (King James Version):This is rich with symbolism. The white stone has been variously interpreted as:
- An acquittal token (in ancient Greek courts, jurors cast white stones to vote for acquittal, black for guilt)
- A symbol of purity or victory
- A secret name: Suggests esoteric knowledge or divine intimacy—something intensely personal, unknowable to others.
2. In Ovid
Ovid's Metamorphoses (Book 1) includes the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, who repopulate the earth after a great flood by throwing stones over their shoulders—the stones become people. Ovid writes:They're not specifically "white" in Ovid’s text, but the idea of stones becoming alive, becoming human, is potent—stones as latent vessels of transformation, memory, or rebirth.
3. In J.H. Prynne
Prynne invokes "white stones" in several places, often with a kind of austere materiality. In Brass, for example:Or elsewhere (like in The White Stones collection, 1969), he seems to draw on the Revelation allusion, but filtered through a more fractured, modernist lens—meaning is withheld, encrypted. The stones seem to function as tokens of difficult knowledge, thresholds, or “silent” signifiers. They don’t speak, but they mark.
Connecting Threads
So what's consistent across all these?- Judgment / Grace (Biblical)
- Transformation / Rebirth (Ovid)
- Silence / Naming (Prynne)
- Secret meaning / Personal intimacy (in all of them)
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
There's this mad essay, but it's all a bit too much for me tbh
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
It's a great flood myth. In Ovid the white stones are really the bones of Deucalion and Pyrrha's mothers, which the goddess Themis instructs them to throw over their shoulder, and which repopulate the earth after the flood, as if they were seeds.
I've got Golding's translation here and it's brilliant, I'd type it out but it's a bit long. Maybe I will another time.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
The Goddesse moved with their sute, this answere did them make:
'Depart you hence. Go hille your heads, and let your garmentes slake,
And both of you your Graundames bones behind your shoulders cast.'
They stoode amazed at these wordes, tyll Pyrrha at the last,
Refusing too obey the hest the whych the Goddesse gave,
Brake silence, and with trembling cheere did meekely pardon crave.
For sure she said she was afraid hir Graundames ghost to hurt
By taking up hir buried bones to throw them in the durt.
And with the aunswere here upon eftsoones in hand they go,
The doubtful woordes wherof they scan and canvas to and fro.
Which done, Prometheus sonne began by counsell wise and sage
His cousin germanes fearfulnesse thus gently too asswage:
'Well, eyther in these doubtful words is hid some misterie,
Whereof the Gods permit us not the meaning to espie.
Or questionlesse and if the sence of inward sentence deeme
Like as the tenour of the words apparantly doe seeme.
It is no breach of godlynesse to doe as God doth bid.
I take our Graundame for the earth, the stones within hir hid
I take for bones, these are the bones the which are meanéd heere.'
Though Titans daughter at this wise conjecture of hir fere
Were somewhat moved : yet none of both did stedfast credit geve.
So hardly could they in their hartes the heavenly hestes beleve.
But what and if they made a proof. What harme could come therby?
They went their wayes, and veild their heades, and did their cotes untie.
And at their backes did throw the stones by name of bones foretolde.
The stones (who would beleve the thing, but that the time of olde
Reportes it for a stedfast truth? ), of nature tough and harde.
Began too warre both soft and smoothe and shortly afterwarde
Too winne therwith a better shape; and as they did encrease,
A mylder nature in them grew, and rudenesse gan to cease.
For at the first their shape was such, as in a certaine sort
Resembled man, but of the right and perfect shape came short.
Even like to Marble ymages new drawne and roughly wrought.
Before the Carver by his Arte to purpose hath them brought.
Such partes of them where any juice or moysture did abound,
Or else were earthie, turnd too flesh; and such as were so sound
And harde as would not bow nor bende did turne too bones; againe,
The part that was a veyne before, doth still his name retaine.
Thus by the mightie powre of Gods ere longer time was past,
The mankinde was restorde by stones the which a man did cast.
And likewise also by the stones the which a woman threw.
The womankinde repayred was and made againe of new.
Of these are we the crooked ympes, and stonie race in deede,
Bewraying by our toyling life, from whence we doe proceede.
'Depart you hence. Go hille your heads, and let your garmentes slake,
And both of you your Graundames bones behind your shoulders cast.'
They stoode amazed at these wordes, tyll Pyrrha at the last,
Refusing too obey the hest the whych the Goddesse gave,
Brake silence, and with trembling cheere did meekely pardon crave.
For sure she said she was afraid hir Graundames ghost to hurt
By taking up hir buried bones to throw them in the durt.
And with the aunswere here upon eftsoones in hand they go,
The doubtful woordes wherof they scan and canvas to and fro.
Which done, Prometheus sonne began by counsell wise and sage
His cousin germanes fearfulnesse thus gently too asswage:
'Well, eyther in these doubtful words is hid some misterie,
Whereof the Gods permit us not the meaning to espie.
Or questionlesse and if the sence of inward sentence deeme
Like as the tenour of the words apparantly doe seeme.
It is no breach of godlynesse to doe as God doth bid.
I take our Graundame for the earth, the stones within hir hid
I take for bones, these are the bones the which are meanéd heere.'
Though Titans daughter at this wise conjecture of hir fere
Were somewhat moved : yet none of both did stedfast credit geve.
So hardly could they in their hartes the heavenly hestes beleve.
But what and if they made a proof. What harme could come therby?
They went their wayes, and veild their heades, and did their cotes untie.
And at their backes did throw the stones by name of bones foretolde.
The stones (who would beleve the thing, but that the time of olde
Reportes it for a stedfast truth? ), of nature tough and harde.
Began too warre both soft and smoothe and shortly afterwarde
Too winne therwith a better shape; and as they did encrease,
A mylder nature in them grew, and rudenesse gan to cease.
For at the first their shape was such, as in a certaine sort
Resembled man, but of the right and perfect shape came short.
Even like to Marble ymages new drawne and roughly wrought.
Before the Carver by his Arte to purpose hath them brought.
Such partes of them where any juice or moysture did abound,
Or else were earthie, turnd too flesh; and such as were so sound
And harde as would not bow nor bende did turne too bones; againe,
The part that was a veyne before, doth still his name retaine.
Thus by the mightie powre of Gods ere longer time was past,
The mankinde was restorde by stones the which a man did cast.
And likewise also by the stones the which a woman threw.
The womankinde repayred was and made againe of new.
Of these are we the crooked ympes, and stonie race in deede,
Bewraying by our toyling life, from whence we doe proceede.
entertainment
Well-known member
I agree that some criterion of honesty is necessary, especially in a market economy. Don't know this can be conceptually rescued from the theory but yeah surely it's delusion to claim that it's not there playing a part in any reading of any text.
If we're good marxists the interesting question is of course whether authenticity is more salient in american literature because american literature has evolved in greater part under a capitalist economy. Sincerety then as a sort of necessary crudeness to keep at bay the corrupting temptations of the market.