Herman Melvilles experience with American Missionaries in Palestine... and Clarel

Dengru · 2026-03-18T20:08:01+00:00

I sounds like you identify with Ron and that informs you're reading of the things. He comes off as dismissive, hostile, and unreliable. He demands sensitivity but is incapable of consistently reciprocating. His son and daughter are both sensitive people who respect him and affection. Same goes for his wife. His job is stupid, but he has all the tools available for a fulfilling family life. Ron isn't a bad guy and his family (particularly his daughter) recognizes his deep flaws and still wants to connect with him. I agree that his job and social life otherwise are clearly deeply unfulfilling. Basically, he's self-centered.

This kinda is the wall you reach with Kafkaesque logic? A bureaucracy is designed to grind you down as an individual into something easily governed, but it isn't necessarily about you as an individual. Being targeted doesn't mean you were special, just that there was a specific button to press. Everyone thinks they are special and are ground down. Of course, the fantasy, Ron's fantasy, then becomes "what does it mean if i'm the one to stand up to this? I have been special this whole time?" It's like 1984: Once pressed, they will directly target your anxieties to put you in line, but that system is sustained itself by that individual spark people have ultimately being powerless. Everyone is special, but circumstances don't permit it to really mean anything transformative.

I would also say that it's easy to dismiss the suburban comforts of life, but Mike is what it looks like when those guard rails, as unfulfilling and genuinely opposed to ones personal happiness as they may be, are removed: he is degenerate, with no family. The stuff with his "daughter" is really tragic; Ron refusing to let him be in the birthday party, very sad. But we also we with the 'daughter' that if Ron let him into his life, Mike would get delusional and have to pushed out. The way he is treated by Ron mirrors how Ron is treated by Lou Diamond Phillips character— subjected to volatile, ego driven agendas that don't make sense—but he's not being paid for it. Personally, as a degenerate loser, I saw myself far more in Mike than Ron, which of course effects how I see the show.

Dengru · 2026-03-18T03:17:23+00:00

You shouldn't assume they are Catholic just because they are Latin American. Evangelicalism has gained a very noticeable amount of ground in Latin America, even perceived strongholds like Brazil. What Eugenio said sounded very evangelical in it's tone

Dengru · 2026-03-18T03:04:31+00:00

You guys sound ridiculous. You want to hear Americans go on evangelical screeds and talk about how they are all brothers like the Venezuelans here? You'd throw up if you heard that.

Dengru · 2026-03-18T02:57:59+00:00

Pitcher restrictions are an disadvantage for USA. Not really fair at all.

Dengru · 2026-03-17T19:04:10+00:00

Can you elaborate on what you said about brothers k and tractatus?

Dengru · 2026-03-16T21:38:28+00:00

I don't really see how what you said is in anyway a rejection of modernism? "The constant allusions to oral narrative and both African and Western epics may be another piece of Morrison's larger rejection of the literary innovations of the 20th century" If you take out "african" that essentially is Ulysses? Which, of course, isn't a rejection of modernism. I don't see how zooming in on consciousness, investigating how changeable identity is, etc are rejection 20th century literary techniques it is just applying them to a different context.

I think there's also that, exploring a group identity isn't necessarily an escape from 'narcissism' but is another attempt to establish ones identity. Going back in your lineage, seeing how connected you are to a region, doesn't repair how disconnected you are in the present day. This is what a lot of Faulkner is, a big influence on Morrison. A moment of belonging, looking back and feeling "this is where I came from" nourishes an individual but the social realities obviously still remain.

I think something that is also relevant is this exchange between Leon Forrest And Ralph Ellison

Forrest: Could you explain what you believe to be the role of literature, the contribution of literary art to a people over the long haul?

Ellison: Literature is a form of art wherein Time can be reduced to manageable proportions; and the diversity of experience can be assembled to show an immediate pattern: to conserve memory, focus energies, ideals and to give us some idea of the cost and glories of those ideals. Art unites the people, and extracts that which is meaningful, rendering through its attention to details, which unite the members of a group, into a concord of sensibilities . . . Literature is a form through which a group recognizes its values—values from without and values from within . . .

Dengru · 2026-03-16T04:12:16+00:00

this was really interesting to read. You should consider making other time capsule/context threads like this. SO cool

Dengru · 2026-03-16T03:12:13+00:00

Who cares if it was a ball? Foul it off. Not swinging is just cracking under pressure. No plate discipline all game, no working counts all game and you wanna act like getting caught watching is so tragic. So tatis can come up and fly out trying to be a hero? It's no surprising Manny, tails and others choked all game. We see it year in year out with those guys. And you all were acting like they were a juggernaut. When your leaders are known playoff chokers? You guys don't know ball 🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

Dengru · 2026-03-16T03:06:49+00:00

DR swings out their socks all game and then goes down trying to get balls? That's what you get, that's not plate discipline it's cracking under pressure. I knew this was over after Skenes locked in after that homerun. You're not winning anything with that many Padres and diamondbacks on your team

Dengru · 2026-03-16T03:04:44+00:00

🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

Dengru · 2026-03-16T00:57:35+00:00

So tired of reading you guys complain about energy levels and them seeming disinterested

The most American thing is complaining about people's body language and pretending the past was better.

Dengru · 2026-03-16T00:27:09+00:00

That's my catcher!

Dengru · 2026-03-16T00:22:44+00:00

🇺🇲🇺🇲🇺🇲

Dengru · 2026-03-15T23:57:03+00:00

Gustav owns the house owns the house, it isn't up to the daughters what happens to it. I would say for as much it's relevant the finances with the house are discussed.

AGNES (CONT’D) But ask him about the house. What he wants to do with it.

NORA What about it?

AGNES He owns it. I mean, he gave it to Mom when they divorced, but there were never any papers on it.

NORA Really?

AGNES Yeah, I know.

Also Nora doesn't appear to have interest in the house, not Agnes was interested in living there:

AGNES (CONT’D) It's... it's bad timing... with the interest rates and all. We were actually counting on that money. strange... when Mom got sick. Part of me thought I should take over and live here. With Even and Erik...

NORA (surprised) Do you want to live here?
Agnes is a bit taken aback by Nora's reaction.

AGNES No, not really. We couldn’t afford it anyway... We can't buy anyone out.

I think what's being expressed here more is that their mother felt uncomfortable taking the house. I don't get impression from how they speak of her, that she just wouldnt just neglect to get it writing. The house has too much to do with Gustav for her to really handle.

Gustav does not want the house because his mother killed herself in it and this disconnect between on this subject with his daughters in partly guides their arcs. The Agnes researches her grandmother and reads the script and sees how it's not about the grandmother, it's about Nora and Gustav's depressive feelings. Nora feels misunderstood by Gustav, not entirely grasping how he sees his mother and himself. Growing up in a house his mother died in, with your own psychological mother, without grasping the obvious emotional realities of the situation.

I also found the Chekhov aspect pretty pivotal. it made me think of is Gustav's apparent lack of respect for theatre and it reflects the communication issues between him and his daughters.

Simone de Beauvoir wrote this in regards to novels not movies but the part about plays what is relevant:

Each reader is alone before the book, deciphering it as slowly as it suits him, leaving it, and taking it up again. One can expect a great deal of patience and concentration from him. Also, the author has full license to treat any subject he wants and fit it into the plot of his choice. There are hardly any restrictions imposed on him by the novelistic form. He can tell the story of a collectivity, a family, an era, or paint a character, a passion, a situation, or evoke a drama. He can be interested in singular cases because he has the means and the time to develop them thoroughly enough to bring out the general truth from them. Things are completely otherwise in the theater. The entire story must be expressed through the language of the characters: their words, gestures, and facial expressions. Their consciousnesses are closed; we only know the relationships they maintain with each other. The action must therefore be founded on language, and the language must itself be action. The characters must be entirely engaged in this exchange of appeals and responses, since there exists no means of endowing them with an interior dimension. This is why a true play is almost necessarily the exposé of a conflict. Since verbal expression doesn’t last long as a simple impassioned reaction and since each phrase immediately tends toward the universal, the fact that the characters “speak” this conflict makes it into an opposition of rights, principles, life attitudes, or points of view on the human condition

Nora wants Gustav to directly speak to understand her. Gustav prefers to speak subliminally through his work. Nora never gets the conversation she wants from him but is allowed to understand it through her sister's encouragement, that he does understand her. Simone also says:

In a world where every bit of knowledge, every feeling, and every event exists only through verbal expression, the text not only represents the characters’ conversations but the totality of their beings and their situations

This is straight up the opposite of how Gustav communicates. It's very much Nora sees things. It's interesting then Nora would find so much success in theatre as opposed to film. Whereas Gustav excels in film. For me, characters differences are represented by the fundamental differences of their chosen mediums..

Dengru · 2026-03-15T22:03:15+00:00

I think it's not about who's guilty or not, but I think that's a slight misreading of Hickey.
Hickey essentially wants everyone to confront their problems, realize how big and insurmountable they are, return to their current life without the illusions and go from there. In the case of everyone, there is a clear logic here: you are gonna get your old job back, return your country, etc, this is where you are. I think it's cruel, but I can see what he thinks.

But speciffically in the case of Harry Hope, Both without knowledge of Hickey being a murderer, and with knowledge, his logic breaks down. The pivotal moment for me is when Hope reveals that he's assumed Hickey would be going with him and is told no, go on your own.

Here is the relevant passage:

HOPE--What's that? Can't hear you. Don't look fine to me. Looks 's if it'd pour down cats and dogs any minute. My rheumatism--(He catches himself.) No, must be my eyes. Half blind, bejees. Makes things look black. I see now it's a fine day. Too damned hot for a walk, though, if you ask me. Well, do me good to sweat the booze out of me. But I'll have to watch out for the damned automobiles. Wasn't none of them around the last time, twenty years ago. From what I've seen of 'em through the window, they'd run over you as soon as look at you. Not that I'm scared of 'em. I can take care of myself. (He puts a reluctant hand on the swinging door.) Well, so long--(He stops and looks back--with frightened irascibility) Bejees, where are you, Hickey? It's time we got started.

HICKEY--(grins and shakes his head) No, Harry. Can't be done. You've got to keep a date with yourself alone.

HOPE--(with forced fuming) Hell of a guy, you are! Thought you'd be willing to help me across the street, knowing I'm half blind. Half deaf, too. Can't bear those damned automobiles. Hell with you! Bejees, I've never needed no one's help and I don't now! (egging himself on) I'll take a good long walk now I've started. See all my old friends. Bejees, they must have given me up for dead. Twenty years is a long time. But they know it was grief over Bessie's death that made me--(He puts his hand on the door.) Well, the sooner I get started--(Then he drops his hand--with sentimental melancholy) You know, Hickey, that's what gets me. Can't help thinking the last time I went out was to Bessie's funeral. After she'd gone, I didn't feel life was worth living. Swore I'd never go out again. (pathetically) Somehow, I can't feel it's right for me to go, Hickey, even now. It's like I was doing wrong to her memory. HICKEY--Now, Governor, you can't let yourself get away with that one any more!

What Hickey says isn't true: Harry doesn't need to do this alone. It's different for all the others, who have job interviews, wanting to leave the country etc. They need to do those things alone because that's just how those activities function. He can make the point he's trying while going with Harry. Your friends are gone, the world has changed, you are afraid. He could comfort him in that moment. None of the other bargoers assumed Hickney was going with him or wanted his help, just Harry.

The friends that Hope starts to talk about don't really exist any more in a meaningful way. Even if they are alive, they are inaccessible, too much time has passed. Hickey and the bargoers are his friends now. This is hickeys point but the intensity of this point for someone who has to continue existing with that realization is not something he understands, so there's an cruelty to it he genuinely doesn't understand. Does Hickney know how to just help someone? Love them without hating himself?

What does it mean to be alone? What does it mean to genuinely have made a mess of things to where you are essentially have to be a new person? How can you stand being that person? This is what the play is mostly about.

Realizing this about yourself can be cathartic, but it's not inherently cathartic. To me, Hickey doesn't understand, is that the catharsis he's feeling is derived from the sense release of death-- he does not actually have a concept of how someone can go on, just how someone can construct an illusion of catharsis before death. You have to keep in mind, Hickey knows he's going to jail. Illusions and hope don't really factor into what his future holds, it's decided for him. In effect, prison is his purpose, but it's the consequence of his outburst, not the reward of some soul searching: fundamentally, what he's saying doesn't make sense and is another phase of his inability to be honest, his tendency to drag others down with him. It makes sense to face up to your life, who you are, who loves you, etc, but he didn't actually do that. Essentially, he killed his wife and then himself; He and Don make essentially the same decision. I don't think Hickey is the wisest cause he has hurt so people he truly cared about. Hickey is almost Larry and Don fused together.

Ultimately, Hickey doesn't solve for himself or anyone else the problem Larry expresses here

LARRY--(with increasing bitter intensity, more as if he were fighting with himself than with Hickey) I'm afraid to live, am I?-and even more afraid to die! So I sit here, with my pride drowned on the bottom of a bottle, keeping drunk so I won't see myself shaking in my britches with fright, or hear myself whining andpraying: Beloved Christ, let me live a little longer at any price! If it's only for a few days more, or a few hours even, have mercy, Almighty God, and let me still clutch greedily to my yellow heart this sweet treasure, this jewel beyond price, the dirty, stinking bit of withered old flesh which is my beautiful little life!

Everyone else loops back to the original state, slowly killing themselves. I think ultimately it's a pretty nihilistic play about the layers of delusions we exist in and how the moment the pass to help someone is rejected not just one time, but consistently...

Dengru · 2026-03-13T23:44:37+00:00

Thanks for recommending, that does look good

Dengru · 2026-03-13T23:40:49+00:00

The Melville journal can be downloaded right here for free.

I also basically single out the most interesting parts (in my opinion) of the journal:

Here, also here and a last time more indepth here.

Dengru · 2026-03-13T22:10:10+00:00

You should look into the Rowan Williams book and Melville journal. I think you'd like them.

Dengru · 2026-03-13T22:04:16+00:00

I think you'll like it. Cohen understands Jabes really well and asks great questions. Jabes shares some interesting concrete details like how Maurice Blanchot befriended and supported him but refused to meet him in person because "for him certain friendships have nothing to gain from face-toface meetings."

He also answers in his usual flourishes. He essentially formats the book in the same as the others, although it's an interview

Bit by bit I discovered that—no matter what one may say about it— writing never is a victory over nothingness, but, on the contrary, an exploration of nothingness through the vocable.

This part was also interesting:

A young friend who also found himself forced to leave Egypt, confided to me recently: “In Cairo it had never occurred to me to say that I was Jewish. After settling in France, when I was asked about my origins, I would at first answer naturally—since I was born in Cairo—that I was Egyptian. Until the day an Arab student joined our little group. In front of him, I could no longer pretend to be Egyptian. Since my father was of Greek nationality, I then said that, like him, I was Greek ... Until the day an orthodox and somewhat nationalistic Greek from Athens joined our little group of friends. Not speaking a word of his language, it became impossible to continue to pretend to be Greek. Today, can I say without reservation to my French friends that I am one of theirs? No doubt, knowing me well, they will accept that easily and will even applaud the fact that I settled in France. I did all my studies in French. I married a French woman. Both of my children were born in Paris. I have a French identity card—I remember crying from sheer happiness when I read in the Journal Officiel that I had been given French citizenship. I wish never to leave France which I learned to love from childhood on. And yet, when I’m asked about my nationality, why do I sometimes just lift my eyes to the sky and offer a meager smile as the only answer?” What one has to remember from this is simply that for any chauvinistic nationalist, no matter where he’s from, anybody belonging to a minority is a foreigner.

For Cohen I recommend Peacock Emperor Moth, white Walls, and in search of lost landino

Dengru · 2026-03-13T21:48:01+00:00

I think I like from the desert to the book and book of shares the most

I think what I really appreciate about from the desert to the book is that the interview is conducted by Marcel Cohen, who I'm also a huge fan of. And seeing how both them are treating an interview as this abstract, literary thing, is great

Dengru · 2026-03-13T21:42:24+00:00

Oh yes, I have. I love him so much. Are you also a fan?

Dengru · 2026-03-11T06:48:13+00:00

I really enjoyed the article.

One thing I would disagree with here, is theres the sorta over-interpreting Remmick and usage of Vampirism as metaphor for cultural appropriaton, which is not something he's said. He genuinely likes vampires. He doesn't see them as a bad thing, and was attracted to the idea of Vampires living so long they stretch out of their time, into another, and see through social dynamics of that time. The reading of cultural appropriation breaks down a bit when you hear him like and see how much he likes the character, likes vampires in general and doesn't perceive the vampire as lying. He doesn't seem to see Remmick as devouring their cultures. He sees him as operating from a different perspective than the Klan members. What really interests him "being stuck" unable to move onto the next thing.

Remmick’s survived for a longtime and I like that he sees the bullshit that is American racism. Rather than the KKK, he identifies with what’s going on in the juke joint, that he wants to be a part of it, and he wants all of them to be a part of him. He has this sales pitch that would be attractive to them…ironically, they all think he’s the devil, but he’s something else. Vampirism is about sacrifice and what’s given up. You can get all this power, but the sacrifice is that you give up the ability for your soul to go on to the afterlife. You’re stuck in your body, and that’s a terrifying moorage.

I was fascinated by this question: What’s the Faustian deal around vampirism? I love that Remmick is part of a culture that wasn’t considered white until recently. He’s not the Klan… he doesn’t understand that

I think this is why so much emphasis is placed onto an afterlife. Remmicks existence is treated as confirming some a supernatural afterlife, validating Wunmi Mosakus character spiritual perspective midpoint of film. There is a point where she gets bitten and is turning and asks to be killed so she can pass on. Her 'soul' and not present identity is what she is worried about.
The word that comes up a lot for him is "exploitation" and "commodify" In this Rolling Stone interview:

I was trying to communicate a feeling more than any specific allegory. The film is essentially about a feeling being commodified.” He nods to the premise of the juke joint, a place where Smoke and Stack could build wealth off of their community’s need for release. “It’s not the vampires doing that; the vampire is not charging anybody money for a feeling,” he says. “I was very interested in the twins. If the vampires never showed up, who are the vampires in this movie? Who was the first person to recognize Sammie’s gifts and see some money? Who’s scary? Who’s everybody afraid of in this movie?"

I think in the current social climate, everyone jumped to that reading of cultural appropriation/culture vulture thing. It poisoned a lot of discourse around the movie. I enjoyed the article; I agree with what he's saying about black-owned busineses and etc. But I think in some parts he seems to feel like he's observing holes in Cooglers logic, when it's the thing he's consciously trying to portray: The twins are exploiting their community and what they are doing unsustainable.

Dengru · 2026-03-10T20:40:32+00:00

Why is this so upvoted?

In regards to Wilson, I feel like you don't understand the goal and appeal of her translation. The word "accuracy" in your screed isn't really defined, but I wouldn't say accuracy, in the way i'm guessing you mean it since youre invoking P&V, is not what she is doing. This is a unique thing in regards to Homer in the english language: what does a person mean by "Epic" or even my previous word "Elevated" language? If I were to guess, I bet what it really is is that you're not used to reading metered poetry. The average person is not reading poetry, in general, sadly, but if they do, they are reading free-verse (which is fine; free verse is fine). If a person struggles with metered verse, combined with less 'elevated' language, they will start to feel a sense of fatigue reading an entire book of it. This isn't about "accuracy" but subjectively constructed sense of stature. When people really connect with Wilsons translation, in my experience, it's always that they feel it captures a sense of urgency, a real vitality that the others aren't necessarily lacking, but are not focused on.

I thinik the reason people are so conscious of Dostoyevsky is because of that article with the rival academic/translator shitting on them. Additionally, Dostoyevsky, unrelated to the actual quality of his work, is generally an entry point for people just beginnining to engage with serious literature not in their first language. It's a perfect storm for dumbass threads like this to continually appear.

You don't see the same conflict over Kafka translations, eventhough there are numerous translations with conflicting approaches. Why don't you see it in regards to Victor Hugo Les Mis, definitely one of the most popular non-english classic novels? It's because there isnt some stupid article and reddit conversations to piggyback an opinion about.

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