Walt Whitman’s Private Anthem Exalts a Certain Breed of Liberated Man Desirous They should Together Sing His America.

‘May the glory of that pinnacle hold

free men untramelled, free and unenthralled.’

Walt Whitman by Ralph Steadman from 

Ambit 176 Spring 2004.

(With respectful acknowledgements.)

For another fugitive fragment of verse, see:

Lines rejected by Rainer Maria Rilke

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2016/02/lines-rejected-by-rainer-maria-rilke.html 

 

cf. A Man’s Man.

Compare my mother’s verdict on those self-appointed claimants to wisdom when the writer is a Man’s Man who presumes to write of the ‘qualities and tempers’ of women. In my mother’s time there were two such public men. She called them The Walt Whitmen of Women’s Weeklies. ‘Sentimentalists. They speak for womanhood yet haven’t the beginnings of a clue.’ Then she added darkly, ‘They don’t know the half ot it.’ She was referring to the two mid-20th Century longtime celebrated British columnists, Beverley Nichols of Woman’s Own magazine and his counterpart, Godfrey Winn of Woman magazine. Both men were reportedly lovers of Somerset Maugham. Both magazines are still published.

 

Moral: An omniscient narrator is an object of profound suspicion.

 

 

Co-regnant: The Coregency of British Postage Stamps.

 Yes, presently these British postage are co-regnant as to their currency and validity wihin our postal system.

The contents of a Briton’s pocketbook June 2025.

 

Royal Mail comments: To minimise the environmental and financial impact of the change of monarch, existing stocks of definitive stamps that feature Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will be distributed and issued as planned and will remain valid for use in line with our recent transition to barcodes on definitive stamps.

 

In this same period of transition, it should be remembered, we are in want of an Archbishop of Canterbury, the previous incumbent – who crowned our new monarch – having been found wanting. 

So though we are at present inconvenienced by an Anglican interregnum (lower case) it may be said that King Charles III is mercifully not troubled by an Interregnum (capitalised), that unfortunate period in the history of his forebears, which bloodied his realm between the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660.

More about a not so unrelated Charles here in my earlier post:

Frog Regnant London NW3

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2024/07/frog-regnant-london-nw3.html

Vignette 9: Twenty-five words.*

Reclusive maiden aunt requests brother to park his motorbike outside her house to deter suitors. 

Bachelor, attracted to motorbike, visits house to purchase . . . marries aunt.  

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

*THE LAW OF TWENTY-FIVE: ‘Of the quinary, or number five; that number five pertains to the Law. . . . accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the Law, because five by five — that is, five times five — make twenty-five, or the number five squared.’   

Augustine’s Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John.

AI Catastrophe! Ultimate Torment of the Species: Interrogation by Chatbot.

Once, many years ago, while studying a theatre programme, I read in a note on performers the observations of the polymathic opera director Jonathan Miller who confessed his worst fear was to be tortured for information he did not possess.

    My congenital morbidity tells me I can imagine a fate far worse.

.

Scene from Metropolis the 1927 expressionist silent film 

directed by Fritz Lang, whose Maschinenmensch is the

prototypal humanoid robot for dystopian visionaries.

.

Chatbot Torquemada.

Far worse, surely, would be if one survived the torture of a robotic intérrogatoire énergique to be condemned to the torture of the intérrogatoire prolongée by a fiendish inquisitor – a Chatbot Torquemada – to extract information one did not possess.

 

I have no doubt that such an instrument of torment for the ultimate surrender of humanity is at this moment in development at Artificial Intelligence HQ, a secret black site whose location is unknown to me . . . an example of specific information that, regardless of the consequences, I do not possess.
 

 

Vignette 8: Twenty-five words.*

Petrashevsky once wore a woman’s dress in Kazan cathedral.  

When a deacon protested, Petrashevsky replied: ‘But you are clearly a woman masquerading as a man.’

See also: 

 Dead Wife, New Hat. (Femme morte, chapeau neuf.) 

The memories of D-r Tchékhov, Detektiv, also include recollections of Petrashevsky

by Aleksey Nikolayevich Pleshcheyev, a member of the Petrashevsky Circle.

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2012/10/dead-wife-new-hat-femme-morte-chapeau.html 

.

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

*THE LAW OF TWENTY-FIVE: ‘Of the quinary, or number five; that number five pertains to the Law. . . . accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the Law, because five by five — that is, five times five — make twenty-five, or the number five squared.’   

Augustine’s Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John.

 

 

Vignette 7: Twenty-five words.*

   The younger brother grew so tall and strong

                the older brother wore 

          his hand-me-downs.

                    The kid’s
            name had been decided

                    long before.

                              Samson.

 .

.

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2015)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

*THE LAW OF TWENTY-FIVE: ‘Of the quinary, or number five; that number five pertains to the Law. . . . accordingly the number twenty-five signifies the Law, because five by five — that is, five times five — make twenty-five, or the number five squared.’ 

Augustine’s Tractate 25 on the Gospel of John.

Homage to René Magritte