From jmpfund@bgnet.bgsu.edu Thu Mar 9 14:37:24 2000 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id OAA21748 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 14:37:23 -0800 Received: from sp07.notesnet.bgsu.edu (sp07.notesnet.bgsu.edu [129.1.7.7]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id OAA02072 for ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 14:37:22 -0800 Received: from [129.1.190.167] ([129.1.190.167]) by sp07.notesnet.bgsu.edu (Lotus Domino Release 5.0.2b) with ESMTP id 2000030917320786:97 ; Thu, 9 Mar 2000 17:32:07 -0500 X-Sender: jmpfund@popj.bgsu.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200003090248.LAA10327@ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp> References: <200003080653.PAA08022@ham.t.u-shizuoka-ken.ac.jp> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 17:40:53 -0500 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: "James M. Pfundstein" Subject: Re: beautiful language X-MIMETrack: Itemize by SMTP Server on MAIL03/SERVER/BGSU(Release 5.0.2b |December 16, 1999) at 03/09/2000 05:32:08 PM, Serialize by Router on MAIL03/SERVER/BGSU(Release 5.0.2b |December 16, 1999) at 03/09/2000 05:32:16 PM, Serialize complete at 03/09/2000 05:32:16 PM Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" >On 8 Mar 00, at 18:07, James M. Pfundstein wrote: > >> [context follows] >> >> I have to admire, but don't intend to imitate, the Olympian Parnassitude of >> a critic who can afford to despise Joyce as a fiction writer and Dante as a >> poet. >At 12:57 PM -0500 3/9/2000, Steven J. Willett wrote: >JMP didn't read again. I did indeed express my dislike of Joyce, >but said nothing about my personal feelings for Dante. As a matter >of fact, however, I have over the past six years expressed nothing >but reverence for him on this list. I suggested a reading of >Gombrowicz' _Diary_ essay on Dante, which some might take ill, but >is in fact a wonderful meditation on the Inferno. SJW did not endorse Dante in his posting, but rather Gombrowicz, whose essay, he said, would "anger Dante lovers." Now we have it that SJW is a Dante lover. (I take SJW's word for this, but no one but a mind-reader could tell it from his recent post, to which I was responding.) It is no long step from here to the conclusion that SJW enjoys being angry, or at any rate thinks it beneficial. No SJWologist would find this surprising, I suppose, but it is not the sort of position that every reasonable person (or, according to Seneca, any reasonable person) could be expected to take. The problem doesn't seem to be JMP's inability to read (an over-used and rather timid ploy of SJW's, when something he says comes up for criticism), but SJW's inability to write what he says he means. JMP .