Eulalie | Les Symbolistes Américains | Marsyas Web Apps

Eulalie

I dwelt alone In a world of moan,

Eulalie

Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Poe

J'habitais seul un monde de plaintes, et mon âme
était une onde stagnante, avant que la claire et gentille
Eulalie devînt ma rougissante épousée - avant qu'avec
les cheveux dorés la jeune Eulalie devînt ma souriante
épousée.

Ah ! non - moins brillantes, les étoiles de la nuit
que les yeux de la radieuse fille ! et jamais flocon que
la vapeur peut faire avec les teintes pourpre et de nacre
de la lune, ne peut valoir en la modeste Eulalie la plus
négligée de ses tresses - ne peut se comparer en Eulalie
les yeux brillants à la plus humble et la plus insoucieuse
de ses tresses.

Maintenant le Doute - maintenant la Peine, ne
reviennent pas, car mon âme me donne soupir pour
soupir ; et, tout le long du jour, luit, brillante et forte,
Astarté dans le ciel, pendant que toujours sur elle la
chère Eulalie lève son oeil de jeune femme - pendant
que toujours sur elle la jeune Eulalie lève les violettes
de son oeil.

EULALIE – A SONG

I DWELT alone
In a world of moan,
And my soul was a stagnant tide,
Till the fair and gentle Eulalie became my blushing bride --
Till the yellow-haired young Eulalie became my smiling bride.

Ah, less -- less bright
The stars of the night
Than the eyes of the radiant girl!
And never a flake
That the vapor can make
With the moon-tints of purple and pearl,
Can vie with the modest Eulalie's most unregarded curl --
Can compare with the bright-eyed Eulalie's most humble and careless curl.

Now Doubt -- now Pain
Come never again,
For her soul gives me sigh for sigh,
And all day long
Shines, bright and strong,
Astarté within the sky,
While ever to her dear Eulalie upturns her matron eye --
While ever to her young Eulalie upturns her violet eye

Les Symbolistes Américains

Americans were in the middle of it from the very beginning.

Chapters

1. A Quelqu'un au Paradis

To One In Paradise
2. Un Rêve dans un Rêve

A Dream Within a Dream
3. Eulalie

I dwelt alone In a world of moan,
4. Le Palais Hanté

The Haunted Palace
5. Stuart Merrill

An American Symbolist from Hempstead, Long Island
6. Francis Vielé-Griffin

Born 1864 in Norfolk, Virginia

Here, for now, are various directions that could be developed.

Distinguish between "symbolism", which dates to the origin of language, and "Symbolisme" an intuitive form of proto-structuralism that leads to more scientific attemps at structuralism in Freud, Jung, Saussure, Levi-Strauss.

Symbolisme = intuitive, performative structuralism?

Joseph Campbell was Symbolisme's last hurrah, perhaps?

Since then it has been sprayed with post-structuralist or positivist bug spray?. It also crept into pop-psych and self help, but also into David Lynch's Twin Peaks.

This is Major Briggs’ letter to his son, from Twin Peaks:

"A vision I had in my sleep last night - as distinguished from a dream which is mere sorting and cataloguing of the day's events by the subconscious. This was a vision, fresh and clear as a mountain stream - the mind revealing itself to itself. In my vision, I was on the veranda of a vast estate, a palazzo of some fantastic proportion. There seemed to emanate from it a light from within - this gleaming radiant marble. I had known this place. I had in fact been born and raised there. This was my first return, a reunion with the deepest wellsprings of my being. Wandering about, I was happy that the house had been immaculately maintained. There had been added a number of additional rooms, but in a way it blended so seamlessly with the original construction, one would never detect any difference. Returning to the house's grand foyer, there came a knock at the door. My son was standing there. He was happy and care-free, clearly living a life of deep harmony and joy. We embraced - a warm and loving embrace, nothing withheld. We were in this moment one. My vision ended. I awoke with a tremendous of optimism and confidence in you and your future. That was my vision; it was of you. I'm so glad to have had this opportunity to share it with you. I wish you nothing but the very best, always."

Up to Campbell, it dominated, Goethe, Grimm, Wagner, Teick, Poe, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Valery, Debussy, Hemmingway....

What dominates now?

From Poe through Joyce we were happy learning what our sinews, our nervous systems, our bodies hold (structures, archetypes); now we fight that, we resist. We were happy about archetypes because we thought we found something we shared.

We now fight over the archetypes; a post-structuralist moment of pessimism regarding our ability to share anything.

We are In an age of Icarus. We've moved from Marsyas to Icarus.

Steinbeck (all his animal metaphors for human behavior), Djuna Barnes (the bestiality in Nightwood) are transitional into the Icarus phase, the moment of discontent with the realities of our bodies, openig the door to some varieties of body-dysphoria? Interesting that these two are Americans. Is body dysphoria more pronounced in the US?

Exploring here the connection between post-structuralism and body dysphoria.

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Baudelaire & Mallarme were at the center of the Symbolist movement. They both considered Poe a spiritual father. Moreover, there are two American Symbolistes who played important roles: Francis Vielé-Griffin and Francais Stuart Merrill. Our other apps curate existing music. In this one, the app will, hopefully provide a framework for a group of new works.

settings of Poe
settings of Mallarme's translations of Poe
settings of Vielé-Griffin & Stuart Merrill
whatever fits

What is Symbolisme?

It is best to assume that all who come here know nothing about Symbolism and are, moreover, entirely suspicious, assuming that Symbolism is a construct, an error that needs to be corrected, something as outmoded as religion or pantheism, something surpassed by a wiser and more essential and more modern approach to the problems of existence. This will be an ambitious *reconstruction* aimed at a Christopher Hitchens or a Richard Dawkins, or at a positivist.

One aim of positivism was to reduce all metaphysics to formal tautologies.

We might say that the first Dawkins or the first Hitchens, or the first Kahneman/Tversky was Auguste Comte.

When Baudilaire rebelled against anything "positif", he had to have Comte in mind, no?

We all know positivists who spend time in art museums. What are they doing there? The artists, the poets, the composers know something, something inspires curiosity in the otherwise reason-besotted positivists.. The positivists feel it in their bones, but they can't wrap their heads around it. There is a place for the head.

[ on a pike?-- no, no ]