Monkey's Marginalia No 17

Once again, I've collected enough random bits for another Monkey's Marginalia.

image from wikipedia.org 

1.  Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces was first published in 1949.  Before Campbell wrote the work that became an inspiration for the likes of George Lucas, he had written A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake in 1944, which, in part, was prompted by Campbell's finding parallels between Finnegans Wake and Thornton Wilder's play, The Skin of Our Teeth.  Originally Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson had written two articles for The Saturday Review about the Wilder play and Joyce's book.  The articles were originally published December 19, 1942 and February 13, 1943.
But back to Hero with a Thousand Faces.  Copyrighted by the Bollingen Foundation (which was named after the house of C.G. Jung, Bollingen Tower), the book was published by Meridian Books in 1955 which was a division of The World Publishing Company.  The Meridian edition comes with a volume number M22 with a cover designed by Alvin Lustig.  I found his covers for Summer and Smoke, The Great Gatsby, and Siddhartha in tune with the midcentury (20th century) design echoed in Ship of Theseus cover.

2.  The alternate version of chapter 10 found on Jen Heyward's tumblr blog reminded me of the Joseph Campbell book in this excerpt:

3.  Meridian Books published some other interesting titles such as: 

• Codes and Ciphers, 1939
• Secret Societies: Their Origin, History and Ultimate Fate, 1939

Additional titles from Meridian Books can be found through a Worldcat search and through the website on Lustig's work (link above).

4.  The Bollingen Foundation was set up by Paul Mellon initially to disseminate the works of Carl Jung; his wife was a great admirer of Jung.  It expanded to award fellowships to writers, artists and scientists; and it awared an annual prize for poetry.  In 1949, a firestorm errupted with the foundation when the prize was given to Ezra Pound.  The public in 1949 was well aware of Pound's political leanings and the poet, Robert Hillyer wrote a scathing rebuke of Jung, the Bollingen Foundation and Pound in the Saturday Review of Literature, as did Fredric Wertham, a pyschologist who was well known in the 1950s for his crusade against comic books, although later researchers would accuse him of cherry-picking picking his data to prove his theories.  In 1950, the prize was awarded to Wallace Stevens, but the damage was done.  The Bollingen Foundation became inactive in 1968.

5,  The Bollingen Foundation, in its initial focus to print the works of Carl Jung and disseminate them, published a large number of books before it was shuttered.  The I Ching and a second volume of essays regarding the I Ching were Bollingen series numbers 19.1 and 19.2.  Series 20 was the work of Carl Jung; volume20.19 in the series was the bibliography of Jung's written works. Series number 22 was a book of essays called The Science of Mythology.  Series number 42 was The Origins and History of Consciousness by Erich Neumann which prominently featured an ouroboros on the cover in early editions. 

What Begins at the Water, the Portugual Edition

I often have thoughts.  Recently a lot of them seem to be about S., as you may have guessed.  And the other day it occurred to me that the phrase "what begins at the water..." might be a variation of the old chestnut, "where the world ends and the sea begins..."  So I started looking.  For a phrase that seems so cliche, it was pretty hard to pin down in literature.  So far I've been only able to find two references, but one has an interesting link.

In Portugual, the westernmost point is called Cabo da Roca.  Formerly known as the Rock of Lisbon, the cape is associated with one of the most important poets in Portugual, Luis de Camoes.

Here, where the land ends and the sea begins...

De Camoes commemorates Portuguese voyages of exploration in The Lusiads from which the line above is taken. Camoes, highly revered in Portugual, spent several years traveling and living abroad.  He is said to have written The Lusiads in a grotto in the Orient.  On the return trip to Portugual, the ship he was on sank and he reputedly swam with his epic above his head to save it from destruction.  De Camoes was able to publish it two years later in 1572.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning had Camoes in mind when she titled her volume of poems, Sonnets from the Portuguese at Robert Browning's suggestion.

According to wikipedia, the Portuguese were the leaders of sea exploration and had mapped the coasts of Africa, Brazil, and Asia, eventually making it to Japan in 1542.  Columbus was probably in part inspired by Portuguese sailing successes.

Under the Mongol Empire's hegemony over Asia (the Pax Mongolica, or Mongol peace), Europeans had long enjoyed a safe land passage, the Silk Road to China and India, which were sources of valuable goods such as silk, spices, and opiates. With the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the land route to Asia became much more difficult and dangerous.

Portuguese navigators, under the leadership of King John II, sought to reach Asia by sailing around Africa. Major progress in this quest was achieved in 1488, when Bartolomeu Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope, in what is now South Africa. Meanwhile, in the 1480s, the Columbus brothers had developed a different plan to reach the Indies (then construed roughly as all of south and east Asia) by sailing west across the "Ocean Sea", i.e., the Atlantic.

So you might be wondering why I bring up Columbus at this point.  On his return from his first voyage in 1492, storms forced him to stop at Lisbon for a short period before returning home to Spain.  And if you re-arrange the numbers in 1492, you get 19 and you get 42.

De Camoes' poem was the first poem.  The second is by Algernon Charles Swinburne from his volume A Midsummer Holiday and Other Poems which brings us back again to the sea.  As I pull threads, there may be more to come on Swinburne, but for now I leave you with the verse by him.

ON THE VERGE.

Here begins the sea that ends not till the world’s end. Where we stand,

Could we know the next high sea-mark set beyond these waves that gleam,

We should know what never man hath known, nor eye of man hath scanned.

Nought beyond these coiling clouds that melt like fume of shrines that steam

Breaks or stays the strength of waters till they pass our bounds of dream.

Where the waste Land’s End leans westward, all the seas it watches roll

32 Find their border fixed beyond them, and a worldwide shore’s control:

These whereby we stand no shore beyond us limits: these are free.

Gazing hence, we see the water that grows iron round the Pole,

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

Sail on sail along the sea-line fades and flashes; here on land

Flash and fade the wheeling wings on wings of mews that plunge and scream.

Hour on hour along the line of life and time’s evasive strand

Shines and darkens, wanes and waxes, slays and dies: and scarce they seem

33 More than motes that thronged and trembled in the brief noon’s breath and beam.

Some with crying and wailing, some with notes like sound of bells that toll,

Some with sighing and laughing, some with words that blessed and made us whole,

Passed, and left us, and we know not what they were, nor what were we.

Would we know, being mortal? Never breath of answering whisper stole

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

Shadows, would we question darkness? Ere our eyes and brows be fanned

Round with airs of twilight, washed with dews from sleep’s eternal stream,

34 Would we know sleep’s guarded secret? Ere the fire consume the brand,

Would it know if yet its ashes may requicken? yet we deem

Surely man may know, or ever night unyoke her starry team,

What the dawn shall be, or if the dawn shall be not, yea, the scroll

Would we read of sleep’s dark scripture, pledge of peace or doom of dole.

Ah, but here man’s heart leaps, yearning toward the gloom with venturous glee,

Though his pilot eye behold nor bay nor harbour, rock nor shoal,

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

35 Friend, who knows if death indeed have life or life have death for goal?

Day nor night can tell us, nor may seas declare nor skies unroll

What has been from everlasting, or if aught shall always be.

Silence answering only strikes response reverberate on the soul

From the shore that hath no shore beyond it set in all the sea.

(8/17/14 edited for grammar and tags added)

Thoughts on Footnote 2, Translator's Note and Forward (page vi) Part 1

In Footnote 2, F.X. Caldeira describes Ernest Hemingway, though originally an admirer, as one of "Straka's harshest critics."  In 1935, Hemingway was reputed to have given a interview to Le Monde stating his high regard for Straka.

This is unusual as most of, if not all, the historical characters mentioned in the footnotes are purely fictional.  And according wikipedia.org, Le Monde, a Paris evening newspaper, has only been in publication since December 19, 1944.  (Here is 19 again, and a very important number in S.)

During World War I, Hemingway was in Italy as a volunteer ambulance driver.   Notably (as it perhaps relates to S.), he helped recover the remains of workers killed in a munitions factory explosion. The experience was also documented in his book Death in the Afternoon.   According to Luca Gandolfi for an article he wrote in The Hemingway Review, the June 7, 1918 explosion occurred at the Sutter and Thevenot munitions plant in Bollate, Italy.

In 1934, Hemingway was traveling extensively in his boat Pilar and in 1935 he traveled to Bimini.  It was around this time that he wrote the short story that would later become the seed for his novel, To Have and Have Not.  In 1935, Hemingway's Green Hills Of Africa was published.

But why Hemingway?  Hemingway was one of the Lost Generation, namely those who came of age during World War I and the 1920's.  Notable Lost Generation writers were Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and John Dos Passos.  (and another Lost reference?)

Sorry for such a short post, but I promise to pick the thread back up in Part 2.

(edited 7/31/14 for grammar and tags added)