tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post3240211816570622249..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Dry Death/Wet DeathCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-49080464534526209312012-02-18T11:57:15.077-05:002012-02-18T11:57:15.077-05:00I think I would want to use the phoenix to inflect...I think I would want to use the phoenix to inflect the notion of reproduction and the cyclical role of nature at play, as in Shakespeare's use. Individual life ends in ashes but also lives on in a generative sense through our offspring.<br /><br />At my most speculative also in a way with with worms, they are a product of the internalization of the abyss. A production of the dark parts of our mind and thrive and grow on the imbalance of our humours, they begin to consume us slowly before death. It is life that determines our corpses will not reek of the sweet ensnaring perfume of piety that will envelope the eternally fragrant saint and that the grave will not be an escape from sin and anxiety but an ongoing site for its production.Jebnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-78060408195635168022012-02-18T10:57:05.793-05:002012-02-18T10:57:05.793-05:00Thanks Jeffrey.Cuts straight to the heart of a pro...Thanks Jeffrey.Cuts straight to the heart of a problem I have had with the phoenix and barnacle. After reading Karl's piece I had to go read Thomas Browne on flesh, grass and ashes. This gives me a way to run forward I was going round in circles.<br /><br />Karl. I will cite it in full as it is short. It's geographic location is most interesting but gender and water are also key.<br /><br />“In his flight from County Armagh, Finn Mac Coul took his mother on his shoulder, holding her by the legs, but so rapidly did he travel that on reaching the shores of the lake nothing remained of his mother save the two legs, and these he threw down there. Some time later, the Fenians, while searching for Finn, passed the same spot on the lake-shore, and Cinen Moul (?), who was of their number, upon seeing the shin-bones of Finn’s mother and a worm in one, said: “If that worm could get water enough it would come to something great.” “I’ll give it water enough,” said another of the followers, and at that he flung it into the lake (later called Finn Mac Coul’s lake). Immediately the worm turned into an enormous water-monster. This water-monster it was that St. Patrick had to fight and kill; and, as the struggle went on, the lake ran red with the blood of the water-monster, and so the lake came to be called Loch Derg (Red Lake).”<br /><br /> James Ryan recorded by Walter Evan-Wentz, Autumn, 1919; pops up in his Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries. Wentz's is consumed with the idea of giving the entrance to this abyss a pagan origin, rather static and flat perspective.Jebnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-71117906712009751302012-02-17T08:26:44.654-05:002012-02-17T08:26:44.654-05:00Yes, yes, yes, Karl. That's the one. It was in...Yes, yes, yes, Karl. That's the one. It was in a volume edited by Bloch and Parry. The notion that was most helpful to me was that women came, in traditional cultures, to be associated with death as the annihilation of particular bodies and subjects, the putrefaction of decaying material; this aspect of death, Bloch argues, was split off (by way of gender) from the notion of death as a transhistorical community or life beyond the grave. In the Merina that Bloch reads, this is the splitting off of the "wet" burial of the body as "worm food" from the "dry" REburial of the dry bones, and their relocation in a common grave, one used for the entire clan community. So that women do the work of the managing the INDIVIDUAL "wet" decaying body; while men are associated with the "deme"--the communal burial, and thus, the communal life beyond the grave. It's crucial to Bloch's analysis that women--based upon their identification with individual birth--get associated with death as the putrefying end of an individual life. Whereas men get associated with death as a transcendent clan community, a life beyond the individual particularity of the material "wet" body in time. <br /><br />This was very important to my thinking about Arthurian community--obviously. But it is also astonishing how frequently one finds women's association with "wetness" AS decay. For Bloch this is true (in his structuralist way) for all "traditional" societies--by which he means hierarchical ones.<br /><br />Oh and that Marcuse essay--also HUGELY important to me. AF (then LOF) introduced me to both in my very first graduate seminar with her. Blew my hair back--and was crucial to my thinking for a very, very long time. I think I cite Bloch in a fn in my essay on "Branwen" in that astonishing volume, the Poco Middle Ages, edited by someone by the name of JJ Cohen. Heard of him?Patricia Inghamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03121127536343567140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-66857795456738388892012-02-16T15:01:28.083-05:002012-02-16T15:01:28.083-05:00Karl, I love what you're doing with eating and...Karl, I love what you're doing with eating and everything else so far. Have you come across the "sotelte" of worms, a meat dish made to look wormy? Look at Liber cur cocorum, recipe 2 (avail. from Internet Archive), and let your imagine run to the in/edible/abyssal.Allan Mitchellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05687714445553975831noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1433334957568777252012-02-16T14:36:25.601-05:002012-02-16T14:36:25.601-05:00PI, google books doesn't give me the whole Blo...PI, google books doesn't give me the whole Bloch, but what I've seen looks very interesting/useful. <a href="http://books.google.fr/books?id=GOeRwVWw9t4C&lpg=PA211&dq=%22death%2C%20women%2C%20and%20power%22&hl=fr&pg=PA224#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">223-34,</a> on the double funeral (the first part focused 'on pollution and on sorrow, something which in the end has to be removed' (which is associated with wetness and women: see p. 215) and 'another side will always assert the continuity of something else, a reassertion of the vanquishing and victorious order where authority has its legitimate place' He goes on to list a few other societies that practice what look like double funerals: "the Indonesian, Melanesian and Chinese opposition between flesh and bones and the different treatment which these should receive seems to be an example of this same ideological bifurcation which leads the the same result. The flesh, the female part, is polluting and has in these cases to be totally dispersed before the bones, the male part, can release their power of fertility and blessing to the next generation. This the explanation of the temporary burials of Borneo, on platforms away from the earth, on which the flesh of the body must first decay before the bones can be buried so that the social order can reproduce itself. This is also the explanation of the common New Guinea practice of cleaning the bones of one's ancestors of any remains of flesh before these can be used to canalise fertility and the power of the clan"<br /><br />It's probably too much, though, to think these practices alongside medieval Christian reuse of cemataries, in which bones, once the flesh rotted off, would be piled up in ossuaries?medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-6339365765244217412012-02-16T14:05:11.890-05:002012-02-16T14:05:11.890-05:00It is interesting, isn't it, that humans are c...It is interesting, isn't it, that humans are clay at the moment of creation (Gen 2:7, really the 2nd creation story) but dust at the expulsion from Eden.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-16408148589115624732012-02-16T14:03:37.178-05:002012-02-16T14:03:37.178-05:00and, PI: oh, duh. The "death, women, power&qu...and, PI: oh, duh. The "death, women, power" you cite in your comment is PRESUMABLY the same "death, women, power" I'm asking about. <br /><br />reading comprehension failure. blame it my postdinner languor. <br /><br />and Jeffrey, YES, looking forward to playing around with this wet body/dry body Genesis material a bit in my essay [and probably thinking it through even more deeply for Boston Babel]medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-84165249961797311562012-02-16T13:58:27.885-05:002012-02-16T13:58:27.885-05:00Looking forward to doing some thinking about gende...Looking forward to doing some thinking about gender in this. After all, the body in the Worms disputation is a woman. I don't think there's a tendency in medieval death poetry to turn men into dust and women into putrefaction--there's no pattern that I've discerned (heavy caveat, that)--but I don't doubt that dry vs. wet can be mapped onto/intensifies gender binaries (see also closed vs. open bodies).<br /><br />In re:<br /><i>. The Vetus Latina and Vulgate state that God forms man *de limo terrae,* "from the slime of the earth" that is, from clay (water and dirt). Human bodies are wet from the start, and into wet fecundity they return.</i><br /><br />On the other hand, there's Genesis <a href="http://www.drbo.org/x/d?b=lvb&bk=1&ch=3&l=19#x" rel="nofollow">3:19</a> [Vulgate]:<br /><br /><i>in sudore vultus tui vesceris pane donec <b>revertaris in terram de qua sumptus es quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris</b></i><br />Which has us taken out of earth and then calls us dust and destined to be dust again.<br /><br />I don't think I have ready access to the <a href="http://www.vetus-latina.de/edition_vetus_latina/vetus_latina_band.html?band=2" rel="nofollow">Vetus Latina</a> from where I am...although it would be a FASCINATING study to really lean on this dust vs. earth dynamic in Hexameral commentaries!medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-68562689698119326362012-02-16T13:47:13.028-05:002012-02-16T13:47:13.028-05:00I like this wet-dry formulation in its -- so far -...I like this wet-dry formulation in its -- so far -- three variations (you, Steve, Patty). It's especially intriguing to have gender thrown into the mix: do materiality and materialization have a gender? They do if they possess a body, and the abyss you describe is certainly enfleshed.<br /><br />Actually, the more I think about it even Steve's dry shipwrecks are implicitly gendered, as dryly masculine / rationalist. There's a humoral narrative emerging ...<br /><br />BUT having said all that, it seems to me a great deal depends upon whether humans are created from dust or clay. The Vetus Latina and Vulgate state that God forms man *de limo terrae,* "from the slime of the earth" that is, from clay (water and dirt). Human bodies are wet from the start, and into wet fecundity they return.<br /><br />Interestingly, gemstones are also created through the same admixture, indicating why they (like human bodies) are so powerful.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-5419110328737647422012-02-16T13:41:23.451-05:002012-02-16T13:41:23.451-05:00PI, is that Bloch's "Death, Women, Power&...PI, is that Bloch's "Death, Women, Power" (cited <a href="http://books.google.fr/books?id=4e2UYlzFkGcC&lpg=PP1&dq=sovereign%20fantasies&pg=PA255#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow">here</a> by you)? Incidentally, the Marcuse you cite in that note I got from AF (but indirectly, via her Knight's Tale essay), and have used it again and again. Will track the Bloch down and, knock on wood, read it tonight. Thanks!<br /><br />And Steve, <i>great</i>. Ships are bodies too, yeah? I've had <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall" rel="nofollow">whale falls</a> in mind the whole time for this project. Really enjoyed your post: it doesn't align <i>exactly</i> with what I'm doing, but we're definitely working the same field (maybe one described by Bloch?). Will cite your post in my essay and spend some time tomorrow thinking with it/incorporating it into my work. Thanks!medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-34952689578754585652012-02-16T12:30:26.252-05:002012-02-16T12:30:26.252-05:00The gendering of the dry/wet death distinction in ...The gendering of the dry/wet death distinction in "traditional cultures" has been analyzed by anthropologist Maurice Bloch. His work was really important to my Sovereign Fantasies--and thanks to Aranye Fradenburg for introducing me to Bloch's essay, "Death, Women, and Power" waaaaaaay back in 1991. Not sure if this will be helpful to you, Karl, but it's worth a look if you don't know it--though perhaps you do.Patricia Inghamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03121127536343567140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-51849549566764837162012-02-16T12:14:18.836-05:002012-02-16T12:14:18.836-05:00The wet/dry stuff is talking my language. Don'...The wet/dry stuff is talking my language. Don't know if you saw this back in 2010, but I started working out a wet/dry distinction is literary presentations of shipwreck: http://www.stevementz.com/blog/?p=520<br /><br />Shipwreck is not the same as bodily decay, but there are some interesting homologies around the human desire to avoid wetness and the pressure of universal solvents.Steve Mentzhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02927244468764583378noreply@blogger.com