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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=dstockhoff@verizon.net
href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net">David Stockhoff</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, November 13, 2011 2:22 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=urth@lists.urth.net
href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net">The Urth Mailing List</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> (urth) Hunter of the East</DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">On
11/12/2011 2:32 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:<BR>> *From:* David Stockhoff
<mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net><BR>> **<BR>> > > > > And
where is the rising sun in the poem? </DIV></DIV>
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<DIV
style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">><BR>>
> > > Come on – you are not seriously making such an argument? The Sun
is<BR>> > > > not yet visible, but its rays shining on the top of a
tower are.<BR>><BR>> > > "The Sun is not yet visible." Thank
you.</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><BR>> > You asked “where is the rising sun”? It is just below the
horizon. In <BR>> > a moment we will see it. Already we see its light
shining on the <BR>> > tower. It is Orion that is nowhere mentioned,
nowhere visible, and <BR>> > nowhere implied except for your invalid
paint-by-numbers insistence <BR>> > that any hunter must somehow be
Orion.<BR><BR>> Now you claim illiteracy as an advantage of your argument? I
suppose you <BR>> have no choice. But at least we agree that the sun is not
yet risen, but <BR>> rather implied. Its rising is imminent.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Actually, there is a real sense in which we do see it. Can’t you see
someone in your rear-view mirror while driving? When you do, what you are
actually seeing a pattern of reflected light that is uniquely characteristic of
the person you see. That’s exactly what’s happening in the poem – we are
seeing light reflected from the turret that is recognisable and uniquely
characteristic (in colour and position and time) of the
rising-but-still-under-the horizon Sun. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It is Orion that is nowhere visible, nowhere present, nowhere
implied.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>> > > > I found two interpretations. Both agreed with me that
the hunter is<BR>> > > > the Sun.<BR><BR>> > > No they
don't.</DIV>
<DIV><BR>> > Yes they do. One says: “The stanza presents two arresting
<BR>> > personifications, the first when/Morning/chases the stars away and
the <BR>> > second when the sun,/the Hunter of the East/, lassoes
the/Sultan's <BR>> > Turret/with a rope of light.” The second (speaking of
a third) says <BR>> > “/Hunter of the East/somewhat arbitrarily taken to
mean "Eastern <BR>> > wisdom, a mighty slayer of delusion" where 'the Sun'
would suffice“. <BR>> > Neither mentions Orion anywhere.<BR><BR>>
Gerry, those are not exactly full explications.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>So? They identify the Hunter as the Sun. They don’t mention
Orion. I reckon they think it’s so obvious that the Hunter is the Sun that
no further explication is needed. </DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR>> But the personifications are completely correct. I told you
this twice <BR>> and I say it again: the Hunter of the East is, in a way, the
sun. Why do <BR>> you keep arguing about what we agree on? Do you think this
strengthens <BR>> your argument about what we DON'T agree on?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>You originally denied the Hunter was the Sun. Now you’re admitting
that it is, but you’re trying to insist that somehow you are right too and he is
still somehow Orion.<BR><BR>> These comments only support our agreement that
the Hunter is the Sun. <BR>> They don't support your contention that the
Hunter is NOT Orion. For <BR>> that you're on your own.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>You have no case for Orion except an insistence that the classical allusion
to Orion as Hunter must be significant. All the other arguments that have
been put forward for Orion are utterly strained and unbelievable. What
exactly would be the *point* of such a content-free allusion?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>> > I told you the sun is the Hunter of the East. I told
you<BR>> > HOW he is the Hunter of the East and how it derives from
the<BR>> > just-vanished Orion, who is the original Hunter of the
East.<BR><BR><BR>> And I won't hold my breath to hear your theory of how the
poem shuts off <BR>> the obvious Hunter-Orion association so that the sun
personification is <BR>> clear as glass and as meaningless.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>It doesn’t have to shut off anything. It doesn’t have to shut off the
association between hunters and Orion, any more than it has to shut off the
association between the bowl of night (now the bowl of morning) and breakfast
cereal. The reader is supposed to pick up on the metaphors and allusions
that are there, and not chase ones that aren’t there. (It could very well
be that Fitzgerald worried a little about people getting hung up on irrelevant
Orion associations, but decided that the vivid description of the “noose of
light” and the specific denotation of the Hunter “of the East” would be enough
that attentive readers would not be drawn towards that trap. Maybe he
underestimated the attraction of certain readers for such traps.)</DIV>
<DIV><BR><BR>> For the record, I don't necessarily argue that FitzGerald
meant to put <BR>> into the poem a handoff from vanishing Orion to rising Sun
(even by way <BR>> of Apollo) that creates the delicate image of vanishing
that I see and <BR>> have described. I don't think he was a great poet but
rather a clumsy <BR>> and an almost accidental one. His allusions were both
classical and <BR>> commonplace, and his poems were about as deep as a New
Age paperback.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Haha. Will you abandon Wolfe too, when Hyacinth fails to develop a
dick, when Silk-as-faun has run its course into emptiness, when Echidna as
Typhon’s sister is finally seen to lead nowhere...?</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><BR>> But he wouldn't have put a sobriquet of a famous summer-dawn
<BR>> constellation in a poem about stars before dawn and expected his
readers <BR>> to just ignore it in favor of an almost literal
description---one that <BR>> isn't even very evocative when it is read that
way.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I think you underestimate him, in at least two ways. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
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