A simple study on what it means to see a ghost in the time when ghosts no longer exist. A viable alternative--albeit long archaic--to Postmodernism, one should explore, is ghostmodernism. How does ghostliness and all of its baggage affect the way we read, listen, see, think, and be? I suspect more than we [can] know.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
A man of no fortune, and with a name to come
Also from Canto 1 (Pound):
Unsheathed the narrow sword,
I sat to keep off the impetuous impotent dead,
Till I should hear Tiresias.
But first Elpenor came, our friend Elpenor,
Unburied, cast on the wide earth,
Limbs that we left in the house of Circe,
Unwept, unwrapped in the sepulchre, since toils urged other.
Pitiful spirit. And I cried in hurried speech:
"Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast?
"Cam'st thou afoot, outstripping seamen?"
And he in heavy speech:
"Ill fate and abundant wine. I slept in Crice's ingle.
"Going down the long ladder unguarded,
"I fell against the buttress,
"Shattered the nape-nerve, the soul sought Avernus.
"But thou, O King, I bid remember me, unwept, unburied,
"Heap up mine arms, be tomb by sea-bord, and inscribed:
"A man of no fortune, and with a name to come.
"And set my oar up, that I swung mid fellows."
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