tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post4919117954634404877..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: The Ghost of Psyche at White Rock Lake (with Wisteria and Water Lilies)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-70735393936602147752012-05-01T05:10:34.310-07:002012-05-01T05:10:34.310-07:00Vassilis,
John Keats, whose own belatedness (deri...Vassilis,<br /><br />John Keats, whose own belatedness (derivativeness) was always a sensitive issue for him, found it touching that Psyche was a late entry to the Pantheon, having got in only latterly, by way of Apuleius. And though much was made of her by the Romantic period neo-Platonists, Thomas Taylor, Peacock, Godwin, et al., I think the corporeal (mortal) aspect, as Hillman suggests, inevitably became the source of much of her attraction; the idea, that is, as Emily Vermeule, in your extremely apt citation, puts it, that she was human; and could not "be disembodied in art" -- because, of course, art works cannot be disembodied. They exist not in the spiritual but in the physical world. The American advertising uses, idealizations, phantasms & c. tend to reinforce this truth by cheapening it. Closer to the original, perhaps, was the Renaissance <a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Raffaello%2C_studio_per_gli_affreschi_della_farnesina.jpg" rel="nofollow">representation of her as an actual woman, by Raffaello</a>.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-27905906056532428422012-05-01T04:28:18.761-07:002012-05-01T04:28:18.761-07:00Emily Vermeule’s hugely informative and highly rea...Emily Vermeule’s hugely informative and highly readable <i>Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry</i> (University of California Press, 1979) has this to say—among many other things—about the psyche: "When the <i>psyche</i> was corporeally conceived, it was a miniature replica of the individual, endowed with wings to account for its swift daimonic flight, retaining some powers of memory and emotion. The <i>psyche</i> often flutters near the head from which it extracts it future qualities, or perches upon it ……..weeping and protesting with formal mourning gesture………. This <i>psyche</i> naturally cannot be disembodied in art, and is not really impalpable or witless in poetry either. The feeling that it is 'like shadow and dream' is persistent, but 'the thoughtless dead,' is a phrase more of rhetorical despair than of general community belief.” (p. 9). <br /><br />Another great post, Tom.vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-3599934785467041222012-04-30T22:22:32.781-07:002012-04-30T22:22:32.781-07:00By the by, in case anybody cares (?), Psyche the W...By the by, in case anybody cares (?), Psyche the White Rock Girl, the sketchily clad sprite on the label of the bottle of mineral water, began her "life" as a bad painting done by the German artist Paul Thumann for the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. Hanging there, her "natural purity and thoughtfulness" (!!) caught the eye of the mineral water entrepreneurs, and they bought her up as their trademark. She went through various sea-changes over the years. In 1924 she was modernized and made to look suspiciously like a hair-net ad of the period -- a sort of "American Marcel" look.<br /><br />In the ad atop this post we see her in her "classic" period. <br /><br />In 1944 the company changed hands and new White Rock President H.I. Peffer hired artist Charles Kingham to induce the ever easy to influence Psyche to step down from her bottle to appear in ads, demure but still derobed, dispensing helpful little clichés to partygoers about drinking. In one magazine ad of that epoch, for instance, we see Psyche at the kitchen drinks table serving up a highball to a handsome husband in evening dress -- while suspicious wife glares from just round the corner, "What are you two up to?" In this phase, 1945-1947, not coincidentally the sexiest phase in the history of American magazine advertising, sales of White Rock's whole line of bottled goods jumped 37%. By 1947 H.I. Peffer was pouring half a million bucks a year into Psyche. But I don't see any pockets in her flimsy little get-up, so do you suppose the poor girl was hiding her share of the earnings under a water-lily?<br /><br />This revamped 1945-1947 Psyche was shaped by ad agency execs, who wanted her smoother, slimmer, neater, more refined. They made these suggestions: lift head, for a more sprite-like look; clean up the hair-do; give the facial features a little more sharpness, make the waist slimmer, make the breasts "less earthy", pull the fanny in; make the draperies more transparent; and render the spreading ripple-rings in the pool beneath the rock with more contrast (in my uncle Harry's White Rock Girl light-box, the ripple-rings lit up wonderfully when she did her little incontinent tinkle-thing). <br /><br />In the relatively repressive cultural era that soon followed, the company decided it was best to put a few more clothes on her. And Americans were bigging up all over on the postwar superfluity of food intake. She gained three inches in height, two inches in bust, waist and thighs, three inches in the hips. But in that engrossment, it seems, she was not alone.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-28502380798941289792012-04-30T07:53:23.834-07:002012-04-30T07:53:23.834-07:00I love these intimate and local knowledges.
My ow...I love these intimate and local knowledges.<br /><br />My own personal memory interface with the White Rock Girl comes floating across the time interval canyons courtesy of my uncle Harry the war hero. Well, he wasn't really my uncle, he had merely married one of my father's sisters, the flapper, who was vivacious and tough and fast and had done the Charleston on stage. Also he wasn't exactly a war hero. The facts about that were these: he had no sooner immigrated from Italy then he was sent back the other way to serve with the American Expeditionary Force on the Western Front, where, amid one of the senseless bewildering back-and-forth offensives, he was gassed, causing terrible lung damage that required a year of hospitalization back in the US. He did not miss the opportunity to hit the books, took a law degree, became a partner in a firm on the stock exchange. When he became a partner he and my aunt moved out of the small house they'd had and into a lakeshore apartment with a view over the yacht harbour. We were given their vacated small house. In the transitional period while their unique home décor remained in place, it was possible, surreptitiously when mother wasn't aware, to pull the small chain that triggered the electrical switch on the mechanism mounted discreetly atop the basement bar and enjoy the ingenious glass light-box animated image of the White Rock Girl, in her scanty little faery costume, leaning pertly forward from her rock -- and, when the switch was pulled, peeing in a bright gliding golden arc into the water. Uncle Harry's sense of humour ran to that sort of thing. James Hillman of course would have understood.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-19364018951043527732012-04-30T07:42:11.939-07:002012-04-30T07:42:11.939-07:00Tom, That’s a beautiful and evocative picture of L...Tom, That’s a beautiful and evocative picture of Lago Nahuel Huapi. In the Sixties I made the cruzado transandino from Puerto Varas, Chile to Bariloche, Argentina. It was wintertime and the conveyances were modest: a tiny, old school bus for the overland passages, and small open launches for navigating Lake Todos los Santos and then Nahuel Huapi. Utility before comfort. This was transport, not tourism. There were maybe six people and I was the only norteamericano. We spent the first night at a rustic lodge on an island in the middle of Todos los Santos. To this day, the experience of “irresistible beauty” that Hillman notes—several days and a night of natural grandeur, of lakes that were “shining looking glass cold”—works its magic on my psyche (which I understand as the mind/body complex). I have pictures somewhere, if they haven’t disappeared into The Great Churning.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-8442076461098852792012-04-30T07:26:17.347-07:002012-04-30T07:26:17.347-07:00Tom, thanks for your wonderful post. So thrilling ...Tom, thanks for your wonderful post. So thrilling to see mentioned after so many years Ross and Gaston and Oak Cliff--streets and neighborhoods I grew up in. White Rock Lake was quite close by, and seemed to haunt many of us as a teenager in the early 80s with mysterious stories of ghosts. There was even rumor of a coven of witches in the area. Coincidentally, I've been reading Larry McMurtry's fine early essay from the 60s In a Narrow Grave about Texas and Texas cities. The presence of the ghost of psyche makes sense in that place at that time in the 1930s and 40s when so many of farm folk would have been migrating to Big D, their world disoriented by financial gain, and the inevitable loss of pastoral ways. Anyway, thanks for this....Dalehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13285558511682553411noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-88844507381740706982012-04-30T07:03:02.013-07:002012-04-30T07:03:02.013-07:00Oh my God--what an amazing story, series of paint...Oh my God--what an amazing story, series of painting, photos, lines of poetry . . . Really transcendent. <br /><br />The ghost stories of the drowned are the best. Funny thought, but true. The dead come back and walk beaches or roads for years after, looking back at us with the glassy eyes of the dead--always wearing their dated and wet clothes.Nin Andrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12643167108589844026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-19216534313864010312012-04-30T06:49:03.089-07:002012-04-30T06:49:03.089-07:00It's a lot of emotions and thoughts the way al...It's a lot of emotions and thoughts the way all of this (including Steve's poem) works together and displaces everything else that had been on my mind. Since I was trying to get down to work on more mundane matters, this should teach me a lesson (but will not because Psyche and these words and stories are still in my head). I always loved the White Rock girl. CurtisACravanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00315707533118640284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-16261149064911782852012-04-30T06:42:20.490-07:002012-04-30T06:42:20.490-07:00Tom,
"Surely I dreamt today, or did I see. ....Tom,<br /><br />"Surely I dreamt today, or did I see. . ." What a set scenes you've put together -- the photos, the girls who drowned in White Rock Lake, Monet's Wisteria, Nymphéas. . .<br /><br />4.30<br /><br />light coming into fog against invisible <br />ridge, song sparrow calling from branch<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> action on the side of, took<br /> part at the same time<br /><br /> turn, the opposite of watch,<br /> variations on a theme<br /><br />first silver of sun rising above ridge,<br />shadowed green pine on tip of sandspitSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.com