It's all about the Benjamins

I have been realizing anew lately that the blog format is ideal for the type of personality exemplified by Walter Benjamin. Instead of leaving behind a few major essays and hundreds of fragments for others to bring to light in a Gesammelte Schriften, today’s Benjamins self-publish their aperçus for instantaneous appraisal and, if they are lucky, viral transmission to the readers who can make best use of them.

Though the best blog discoveries are often true surprises, we have some idea of which blogs to peruse because we already know the work of their authors, as is the case with the legendary Luc Sante, whose blog of and about “pictures” (by which he means visual images in general…book covers, snapshots, 45 rpm record labels, what have you) offers images and his musings upon their meaning, though sometimes he just makes stuff up. (Pinakothek is at http://ekotodi.blogspot.com)

Hic rosa, hic saltus

The Greco-Latin pun in the subject heading depends on the claim that the place name "Rhodos" means "rose," which it certainly does not in modern Greek. Perhaps I should substitute "The name of the Rhodes," which incorporates a joke that only select Atlanta friends will comprehend....




I have from the beginning written essays so eccentric in their combination of sources that even the published ones have sunk without a trace of further influence (“The Edenic Imagination,” in Cimarron Review—not to be confused with my dissertation of the same title—used the poems of Theodore Roethke and the song lyrics of Bob Dylan as primary texts). Since there is no profit (literally or metaphorically) in such activities, I have abandoned them in recent years.

It occurs to me, though, that there might be some enteertainment value in writing an essay, perhaps titled “Sally Go Round the Roses” (you will recall that that 1963 song’s lyrics include “Sally don’t tell your secret”), regarding the sub rosa cultural meanings of three uses of the rose, in novels of widely, wildly varying intent and literary quality.

Umberto Eco’s famed The Name of the Rose, of course, uses the rose as the symbol that is ultimately overdetermined, the symbol that has so many meanings that it is ultimately meaningless. Eco asserts the arbitrary and absurd nature of symbols, which touch our emotions and imaginations without ever guaranteeing a stable meaning.

John Crowley’s Ægypt cycle makes much of the confusion over the name of Rose and the identity of the ones who possess it. The suggestion is that amid all the muddle there is meaning, light at the end of the tunnel, but since the end of the tunnel is also the end of the world, this knowledge does not help us very much. We live in between, saddled with a task that can neither be completed nor walked away from.

Titania Hardie’s new popular novel The Rose Labyrinth flat-footedly asserts that our entanglements are actually like the labyrinth at Chartres: this rose garden has no forking paths, and it is impossible to get lost as long as you do not leave the only path there is. The rose has many petals, and comes in more than one color, but the petals belong to the same flower, and Hardie claims that the reconciliation of opposites symbolized in the rose was the attainable goal of the quest encoded in John Dee’s monas: “If we can blend the contrasted characteristics it [the rose] represents, we become godlike.”

Three books, three roses: expressing cynicism, skeptical wistfulness, and synergistic (some would say simplistic) syncretism; three labyrinthine ways with quite different structures and destinations. Contemplating the options and the means of choosing among them, we may well feeling like adding a fourth rose, and having a drink.