Bottom’s Dream – Arno Schmidt (tr. John E. Woods) Pages 71-80

On the surface, it appears to have been a slow week on the “Bottoms Dream” progress charts, a mere nine pages…at this rate I should be done sometime in 2019!!!

The nine pages of narrative contain further discussions on Poe’s works and a lot more references to “Undine” by Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqué, the work I reviewed during the week, “the entire work bubbles=over with the most obfayus water symbolism”. As Arno Schmidt advises (through the narration of Dan) “For one Fouqué there are fifty Molières”.

The debate about Poe’s works contains the instruction “reread, in cold blood, the end of >ELEONORA< sometime: there’s no longer hymnic prose but rather a very culious meowing with a heavily swollen tongue<<”. So, Poe’s “Eleonora” I read:

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.

A nice early quote to align with Arno Schmidt’s references to Freud’s “Interpretation of Dreams” and to his (narrator Dan’s) theory of etyms.

A story where the narrator tells of his undying love for his cousin Eleonora, although he tells us he is made in later life we are meant to understand that he is sane in the earlier sections of his story. The tale set up for the reader to wonder, what is the source of our narrator’s madness?

The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she was a maiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among the flowers. No guile disguised the fervor of love which animated her heart, and she examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked together in the Valley of the Many Colored-Grass, and discoursed of the mighty changes which had lately taken place therein.

The valley where our narrator and Eleonora live has become stunning since they have declared their love for each other, voluminous clouds, murmurs that swell, flowers grow where none had been known before, the tints of the green carpet deepen, ruby-red asphodels spring up…the etyms are rife.

SPOLIER ALERT for this short story, another Poe one AND “Undine” – “Eleonora” is the tale of two wives, as is the other Poe references story “Ligeia”.

“Ligeia” opens with an epigraph by Joseph Glanvill, a quote which will be referenced several times throughout the story itself;

And the will therein lieth, which dieth not. Who knoweth the mysteries of the will, with its vigor? For God is but a great will pervading all things by nature of its intentness. Man doth not yield himself to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.

Very similar to the story of “Eleonora” this story tells of an undying love for Ligeia, whose physical features are described in vivid detail in the opening sections;

Those eyes! those large, those shining, those divine orbs! they became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers.

Another case of passionate writing about a woman the narrator dearly loves;

Of all the women whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Ligeia, was the most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me — by the almost magical melody, modulation, distinctness and placidity of her very low voice — and by the fierce energy (rendered doubly effective by contrast with her manner of utterance) of the wild words which she habitually uttered.

This story containing the opium infused ramblings of a man grieving through the death of both of his wives, including all the trademark horror we (incorrectly) associate with all of Poe’s works, gothic castles, moving tapestries, flickering shadows, spirits and more.

And to continue the sexual references and Dan’s obsession with the young Franziska, there is a brief discussion about her bedding, which then aligns (in the far-right column) to the following text;

A text that refers again to Fouqué’s “Undine”.

A break in the narration with a new section commenting with “>CROSSING THE BROOK,”, in the far right column there is the following reference “(WILLIAM TURNER; ɪ of my favorites)”

Source www.artrenewal.org

Other literary references abound in the section with discussions with Franziska referring to “Callistris” (which = penis in Rabelais), there’s a passing reference to “those eternally dripping moons” in Poe’s poems and the book by Oppolzer “Canon of Eclipses”, a work published in 1887, which is a compilation of 8,000 solar and 5,200 lunar eclipses between the years 1,270 BC and 2,161 CE. Of course this is a sexual reference, with Dan talking of an eclipse being the same as “>something lacking< – : impotence.”

Further Poe discussions, educational talks to Franziska, as we know our other three characters are all Poe experts, mentioning for Poe it was always summer “winter does not exist”, “even in spots where it should be coldasst, at the pole, it just keeps getting’ hotter!<<” and the fact “>That in His work children appear nowhere & never…<< and “He never assigned a >short’n’plumpy< to be a heroine” – with a reference back to Lady Ligeia again.

We then have two of Poe’s lengthier works references, the prose poem “Eureka” and the story “The Mystery of Marie Roget”, that means a fair amount of Edgar Allan Poe reading over the coming week, two stories not being enough, the other two, more substantial works, are next up on my reading agenda, hence nine pages in a week!!!