Thursday, January 10, 2013

Unconscious ideals …

… destroy the diseased pigs — Elberry's Ghost.

1 comment:

  1. Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey:

    "The learned Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris,--from Paris to Rome,--and so on;--but he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he pass'd by was discoloured or distorted.--He wrote an account of them, but 'twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings.

    I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon: --he was just coming out of it.--'TIS NOTHING BUT A HUGE COCKPIT, said he: --I wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus of Medicis, replied I;--for in passing through Florence, I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common strumpet, without the least provocation in nature.

    ...

    - I'll tell it, cried Smelfungus, to the world. You had better tell it, said I, to your physician.
    "

    Are there smug, obnoxious, materialistic persons in the world? Of course. One might write of them for a number of reasons: to show them their sins and suggest that they repent as a Jeremiah or John the Baptist might; to make sport of them, as a Swift might; to set them down objectively, as a Flaubert might. I do not see in Elberry the charity of the first, the wit of the second, or the objectivity of the third. The man has talent, but needs to disentangle his resentments from his thoughts.

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