"You have no conception what an amount of harm you do yourself by your impetuosity."
"But what else can such a cantankerous man as you expect?"
These are strong statements spoken from Dr. Stockman's own brother Peter but are they true accusations or just spiteful banter in the heat of argument.
It is hard to find fabrication in what Peter Stockman says when his brother is so blind to what others are saying.
For instance in Act III when Mr Hovstad says "Yes But doctor-" Dr. Stockman cuts him off saying I know what you are going to say. You don't see how on earth it was any more than my duty--my obvious duty as a citizen. Of course it wasn't; I know that as well as you. But my fellow citizens, you know--! Good Lord, think of all the good souls who think so highly of me--!" For one this statement was far from the truth of what Hovstad was thinking or about to say and two it demonstrates Stockman's pigheadedness and overwhelming arrogance.
The forth Act was where things got interesting when Dr. Stockman claims that he would like to do nothing but do for the community he loves. But he states in front of everyone at the town meeting that the current leadership is poisoned and relates them to vermin. Then if there was not enough insult to injury he goes out and states that worst of all is the liberal majority. In the end it is himself that places him against the community he says he loves rather than everyone else doing it to him.
The ending lines of the play that we will most likely talk about in class are another one of Dr. Stockmans brilliant ideas "It is this, let me tell you--that the strongest man in the world is he who stands most alone."
Stockman is blind to reality and towards the end of the play has completely lost his mind for what he says is the strongest man in the world is a homeless beggar for they are the ones who stand most alone. For no great man in history has changed the world without the support of others. Now if Stockman had just stuck to defending his discovery of the baths being polluted then maybe he would have had the support. But it is because he turned his argument against the human society itself as a system that he know stands alone for every human must use the system to thrive, no one will follow one who wants to destroy it. But if Stockman wants to find followers then he might as well turn to actual vermin for I am sure they agree with Dr. Stockman's dislike of the human race, but even a rat or mouse may think that he is too proud for the likes of vermin.
So I will ask two questions: the first is does it matter if the strongest main in the world is he who stands most alone. The second is if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, did the event actually happen.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Michael Scheibel on Trying to figure out
Who is Maurice Bossey the Strange Customer?
I had a constant thought that this character had some more importance then a strange pervert that brings comic relief and chaos. I kept coming back to the line in Wallace Stevens poem "Oh! Blessed rage for order" All the parts with Maurice Bossey, Nanson shows his rage for order. The two fit together as a puzzle piece in some way where Bossey is rage or chaos to Nanson who is order or organization. But when the two come together after a period of time Nanson seems to loose is organization to a point of chaos which leads to his rage once Christophe and Eric return.
What intrigues me about Nanson's reaction to Bossey is how he keeps mum about it until the scene with Eric and Christophe. It's almost like Maurice is a second side to Nanson or an anti Nanson that is trying to get out. Also it is weird that Bossey doesn't come into the picture until Fulla and soon after Vera come into Nanson life. This is the place in the story when Phineaus Nanson seems to make no progress in his research even though he finds all Destry-Scholes "suitcase full of authentic things." It is organized chaos.
Another funny thing that I notice reading the book a second time is that even though Maurice Bossey and the Strange Customer are the same person, Nanson treats the two completely different. Because Maurice Bossey is labeled as a pervert and Nanson despises him for it. But the Strange Customer he is intrigued and looks up to the same man. It is something about the mystery or not knowing all the facts that creates an interest in Bossey. So I decided to find a little more about their first meeting in Puck's Girdle on page 150.
Nanson even says "there was a certain reverence about my Strange Customer," and then he approached Nanson and asks about Pim or Pym. This made no sense to me because the book seems to never explain who Pim or Pym is. But after some research I found a wikipedia biography on a marvel superhero named Henry Pym who at first glance I would have thought it unrelated but looking at his powers changed my mind. Henry Pym is a biochemistry genius who transfers the size of objects including himself and he is often related to an ant in most of his comics. This made me think about Ibsen and how he got to know people on a third level that he compared people to ants.
I kept reading on to the next page and I came upon another statement of Nansons deep respect for the Strange Customer. "I could hardly believe I was living in a real world, where Englishmen in suits with buttonholes came in and chatted knowledgeably about Fourier." I looked up the word Fourier and found it meant transform or decomposes a function into and oscillatory functions. I found it is often the process of transforming finite groups for wave motion and optics. All this seemed to explain to me that the meeting with the Strange Customer or Bossey seemed to change Nansons way of looking at things and people.
I have no clue if these things tie into each other, or maybe I am just making crass assumptions but if anyone has some outside knowledge on the topic I would like some help
I had a constant thought that this character had some more importance then a strange pervert that brings comic relief and chaos. I kept coming back to the line in Wallace Stevens poem "Oh! Blessed rage for order" All the parts with Maurice Bossey, Nanson shows his rage for order. The two fit together as a puzzle piece in some way where Bossey is rage or chaos to Nanson who is order or organization. But when the two come together after a period of time Nanson seems to loose is organization to a point of chaos which leads to his rage once Christophe and Eric return.
What intrigues me about Nanson's reaction to Bossey is how he keeps mum about it until the scene with Eric and Christophe. It's almost like Maurice is a second side to Nanson or an anti Nanson that is trying to get out. Also it is weird that Bossey doesn't come into the picture until Fulla and soon after Vera come into Nanson life. This is the place in the story when Phineaus Nanson seems to make no progress in his research even though he finds all Destry-Scholes "suitcase full of authentic things." It is organized chaos.
Another funny thing that I notice reading the book a second time is that even though Maurice Bossey and the Strange Customer are the same person, Nanson treats the two completely different. Because Maurice Bossey is labeled as a pervert and Nanson despises him for it. But the Strange Customer he is intrigued and looks up to the same man. It is something about the mystery or not knowing all the facts that creates an interest in Bossey. So I decided to find a little more about their first meeting in Puck's Girdle on page 150.
Nanson even says "there was a certain reverence about my Strange Customer," and then he approached Nanson and asks about Pim or Pym. This made no sense to me because the book seems to never explain who Pim or Pym is. But after some research I found a wikipedia biography on a marvel superhero named Henry Pym who at first glance I would have thought it unrelated but looking at his powers changed my mind. Henry Pym is a biochemistry genius who transfers the size of objects including himself and he is often related to an ant in most of his comics. This made me think about Ibsen and how he got to know people on a third level that he compared people to ants.
I kept reading on to the next page and I came upon another statement of Nansons deep respect for the Strange Customer. "I could hardly believe I was living in a real world, where Englishmen in suits with buttonholes came in and chatted knowledgeably about Fourier." I looked up the word Fourier and found it meant transform or decomposes a function into and oscillatory functions. I found it is often the process of transforming finite groups for wave motion and optics. All this seemed to explain to me that the meeting with the Strange Customer or Bossey seemed to change Nansons way of looking at things and people.
I have no clue if these things tie into each other, or maybe I am just making crass assumptions but if anyone has some outside knowledge on the topic I would like some help
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Michael Scheibel on "Biographers Tale" Continued
Continuing about my thesis on the romance of research which is brought up more in the end of Byatt's novel. To me I came to the conclusion that A.S. Byatt despises google to a point. If we go back to page 277 towards the end where Nanson discovers that Destry-Scholes was more interested in what was the same about the three people instead of unique as she puts it. The end of the first paragraph after explaining the type of person Bole is states: "We are held together by threads of dependence as much as the ants. Mechanics and pilots, air traffic controllers and clerks etc. -- we're all part of each other. Maybe your Destry-Scholes was trying to describe that. Without the Internet, before the Internet, we were a super-organism." That was Fulla Biefeld that said that to Nanson and after that she states "I like oddities and rarities." I felt like the author came out in Fulla at this point and that Byatt likes the rare human being that yearns to learn and do everything like Bole or just research things until they find their passion like Nanson does in the end, and to me that is the romance of research.
There is a dark side to the romance of research that we talked about a little in class especially in the poem "The Idea of Order at Key West." Romance becomes obsession and then becoming completely unrelated with the your surroundings. Destry-Scholes had disappeared completely and Nanson to the point where he snapped on his two bosses. Card no. 26 on page 175 that starts "I amused myself very frequently with this new hobby, and being most interested in the act of reading, constantly forgot that I was nearly suffocating myself," The book does not tell use who this passage is about although I believe that it is Sir Francis Galton because through process of elimination with the phrase "I described at the British Association in 1865" it could not be Lennaeus for he did not live that long and I am just guessing it was not Ibsen because he was Norwegian where Galton was British. But back to the importance of the quote, it describes the similarities of all three of these men and Nanson and Destry-Scholes, because all of them were emerged in their research to the point where it nearly killed them or at the very least separated them from society. If we go back to Stevens poem "The Idea of Order at Key West" and the line "The maker's rage to order words of sea" we see that it plays a part in this place in the book. The maker who ever it may be in the novel (because many characters fit this role) tries to find order in what they see (or the sounds of the sea) through research and discovery. But with this process comes the rage or destructiveness of ones self (body or mind) to find order. For Nanson this order in what he saw lead to his epiphany of becoming a Writer for writers sake. This is said on page 290 "But I feel a kind of nausea at this fate for my hero, myself. It doesn't seem very much of an anything. To be addicted to writing is not to want to be, to become, a Writer."
Phineas G. Nanson found himself through finding order in what he was doing. This was not order that others could easily recognize but chaos that made sense to himself. A.S. Byatt seems to emerse he own personality in the characters and show an obvious preference for those that search and refereeing back to Stevens create their own song for what they feel. Organized chaos as we talked about in class defines this book and defines Byatt and Nanson. They are artist, they are writers that find facts and organize them. Their organized chaos may not make sense to us but it is our job to be detectives to find the facts and organize them, being an artist is never easy.
There is a dark side to the romance of research that we talked about a little in class especially in the poem "The Idea of Order at Key West." Romance becomes obsession and then becoming completely unrelated with the your surroundings. Destry-Scholes had disappeared completely and Nanson to the point where he snapped on his two bosses. Card no. 26 on page 175 that starts "I amused myself very frequently with this new hobby, and being most interested in the act of reading, constantly forgot that I was nearly suffocating myself," The book does not tell use who this passage is about although I believe that it is Sir Francis Galton because through process of elimination with the phrase "I described at the British Association in 1865" it could not be Lennaeus for he did not live that long and I am just guessing it was not Ibsen because he was Norwegian where Galton was British. But back to the importance of the quote, it describes the similarities of all three of these men and Nanson and Destry-Scholes, because all of them were emerged in their research to the point where it nearly killed them or at the very least separated them from society. If we go back to Stevens poem "The Idea of Order at Key West" and the line "The maker's rage to order words of sea" we see that it plays a part in this place in the book. The maker who ever it may be in the novel (because many characters fit this role) tries to find order in what they see (or the sounds of the sea) through research and discovery. But with this process comes the rage or destructiveness of ones self (body or mind) to find order. For Nanson this order in what he saw lead to his epiphany of becoming a Writer for writers sake. This is said on page 290 "But I feel a kind of nausea at this fate for my hero, myself. It doesn't seem very much of an anything. To be addicted to writing is not to want to be, to become, a Writer."
Phineas G. Nanson found himself through finding order in what he was doing. This was not order that others could easily recognize but chaos that made sense to himself. A.S. Byatt seems to emerse he own personality in the characters and show an obvious preference for those that search and refereeing back to Stevens create their own song for what they feel. Organized chaos as we talked about in class defines this book and defines Byatt and Nanson. They are artist, they are writers that find facts and organize them. Their organized chaos may not make sense to us but it is our job to be detectives to find the facts and organize them, being an artist is never easy.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Michael Scheibel - Thinking on "The Biographer's Tale" by A.S. Byatt
Epiphany: a moment of sudden revelation or insight.
To me when i saw this word on page 291 very close to the end of the book I had my own sort of realization or revelation that brought order to this story of random facts and thoughts.
At the beginning of reading this book I was very close to throwing it in the trash and giving up barely twenty pages. I would have defiantly agreed with the amazon critics saying that this was a dull read filled with pointless facts. On page twenty there was a section that read "I have hardly mentioned Bole's personal life. His loves, hatreds etc. for these are what readers would look for skipping his speculations etc.. This is what a reader looks for to keep reading and so far there was a lack of it. But that is unfair of me to say for It was not until the end that I formed a completely different opinion.
Nanson had an obsession or obsessions, obsessed with facts and obsessed with a man that he did not quite understand fully and latter on finds out that his obsession is writing.
On page 98 and 99 Ibsen describe his process of obsession and how he creates a final work. Although Nanson would like to be a man who can dig as deep as Ibsen to find the facts, his own process is less successful but ultimately leads to his epiphany.
Another topic that fits into Nanson's epiphany was that of the romance of research. This phrase did not become clear until page 221 in the book. "So what did we talk about? She had become wholly engrossed in the problem of the marble connection. She would report minor triumphs -- and so on...." So was it the romance of research that Nanson made love to Vera after they found out what a few marbles names were or latter on when the research of Bees produced the same effect of Nanson and Fulla. NO
To me when i saw this word on page 291 very close to the end of the book I had my own sort of realization or revelation that brought order to this story of random facts and thoughts.
At the beginning of reading this book I was very close to throwing it in the trash and giving up barely twenty pages. I would have defiantly agreed with the amazon critics saying that this was a dull read filled with pointless facts. On page twenty there was a section that read "I have hardly mentioned Bole's personal life. His loves, hatreds etc. for these are what readers would look for skipping his speculations etc.. This is what a reader looks for to keep reading and so far there was a lack of it. But that is unfair of me to say for It was not until the end that I formed a completely different opinion.
Nanson had an obsession or obsessions, obsessed with facts and obsessed with a man that he did not quite understand fully and latter on finds out that his obsession is writing.
On page 98 and 99 Ibsen describe his process of obsession and how he creates a final work. Although Nanson would like to be a man who can dig as deep as Ibsen to find the facts, his own process is less successful but ultimately leads to his epiphany.
Another topic that fits into Nanson's epiphany was that of the romance of research. This phrase did not become clear until page 221 in the book. "So what did we talk about? She had become wholly engrossed in the problem of the marble connection. She would report minor triumphs -- and so on...." So was it the romance of research that Nanson made love to Vera after they found out what a few marbles names were or latter on when the research of Bees produced the same effect of Nanson and Fulla. NO
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Thinking on Wallace Stevens "The Idead of Order at Key West" by Mike Scheibel
I had one of many questions that troubled me in this poem and it was in the first line of the second stanza. "The sea was not a mask, No more was she." i wasn't sure if this ment that this was not an imaginative world. But the latter on in the poem the line "She was the single artificer of the world in which she sang." suggests that the world she exists in is of her imagination. So the battle between imagination and the external reality that the narrator see's is somewhat unclear throughout the poem. It made me think that it did not matter if the seen was an imagination or reality, it did not matter who the woman was that created this world. It is the narrators imaginative reaction to the woman's voice that was the important theme. And at the very end the last stanza which I will not write out completely because you know it by heart "And of ourselves and our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds." It seems that the narrator, who is trying to effect the reader as well, finally finds personal meaning to the sounds that he is hearing and partly images he is seeing to create order to his own imaginative thought. What i got from this poem is that our senses of either the real or imaginative world should be allowed to effect us to the point were we find meaning and order in what we sense. It is for us not to walk through life blind to our surroundings but to investigate and create our own reflection that demarcates the world we live in or present in.
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