(no subject)

[proximoception]

Another one: "House of Asterion" is Borges' rewrite of Kafka's Metamorphosis, the great masterpiece of self-pity.

Comments

[grashupfer.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Maybe Kafka + astrology.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Hadn't thought of that - fits the outside/sun/fate/death/Theseus connection. His 'house' is just an abyss through which something real passes. A much darker version of Eliot's sweller of a scene or two. And theology exposed as merely a one-sided game with fate, which is merely death. The irony of astrology being only astronomy, but with a fate readable in astronomy as well, from how things are, and 'influences' raining down on us from our awareness of that. Different personalities as different reactions to death? That path isn't followed here - he explored it pretty thoroughly in the first few Ficciones stories, among other places.

"Caliban Upon Setebos"! Kafka plus Browning - the most Borgesian of linkages.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

And "The Burrow" is at the root of this perhaps even more than the bug story. And maybe crossed with "Investigations of a Dog" - the denialism, the worship of a hero that won't save you? Kafka, too, had that strange worship from afar of valor and/or brute, fascistic health.

The petulant arrogance, desperate arrogance is the new element here - very un-Kafkan, un-Browningian. Sounds more like the speaker of Ozymandias. I wonder if this story might plug into Borges' theory of a secretly suicidal Hitler, dramatized also in "Deutsches Requiem". Can't remember the date - must be sometime mid-'40s though.

Might even work as a reversal of "Before the Law" - someone whose only purpose is to be defeated.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Me to me: Nothing is more Browning-y than a speaker's bluster, moron.