Today I was pacing around my study thinking, as I often do. I was thinking of all the recent syncs relating to Galahad Eridanus videos and trying to figure out any reason why I would need to have his work brought to my attention at this time. A sentence popped into my mind as if from elsewhere: "It's because you need to assimilate his thoughts on Eros vs. Logos." Just as I thought this, my eyes fell on Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and I remembered that in 2022 I had seen that book in a half-dreaming state and then, fully awake, thought, "rose is literally 'disordered' (anagrammed) eros."
Then I noticed that on that shelf I had three books, all shelved together, each of which had an anagram of eros on its spine: next to the Eco, a book by Roger Penrose and then one by Emerson.
Well, how improbable is that? There must be lots of books that have those four letters together, what with so many common surnames ending in -erson. So I started looking at every shelf, trying to find other instances. For a long time I couldn't find any at all, but finally I found a book I'd forgotten I even owned: Marcuse's Eros and Civilization.
No other instances nearby, though I suppose The Flowers of Evil is rose-adjacent, as is the name Roth (meaning "red"). (Philip is a link to the "decapitation" theme, via "Philip, the headless horseman.") One of the other books on the shelf caught my eye, though: The Philosopher's Pupil, a book I bought right around the time I was outgrowing Iris Murdoch and never ended up reading. It made me think of the ending of a poem that features in the Eridanus videos:
Ascend, O moon
Into the sun
Eclipse's eye
Thy will be done.
Lo, Abraxas!
To thy pupil cometh sight,
For from thy shadow shineth light!
It's a little surprising, given that the author's name is Iris and all, that I'd never thought of the ocular sense of pupil in connection with Murdoch's book; I'd always assumed it referred to a philosopher's student and never considered any other possible meaning. Seeing the title printed on a black background, though, with that poem in the back of my mind, I made the connection. Now I suppose I'll have to read it to see if Murdoch does the same.
I suppose it's a coincidence that each of the above shelves has a Nietzsche book and a copy of the Iliad, but that's not really very improbable in my library.
2 comments:
I enjoyed the photos of your library - other people's books are always interesting (and often misleading! - at least mine are.) I'm one of those people at parties who likes looking at the host's bookshelf.
Yes, my shelves are misleading. I rarely bother to have physical books shipped from overseas, so English books readily available in Taiwan -- meaning (1) normie classics and (2) odds and ends I pick up at secondhand shops -- are overrepresented. Almost half of what I read now is in ebook format and thus invisible to party guests.
I've occasionally been tempted to buy books just for the sake of confusing people who look at my shelves. Fortunately, The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-Milligram Containers of Fromage Frais doesn't ship to Taiwan, or I'm afraid I would have sprung for it.
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