tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post496755966572033058..comments2024-03-18T19:05:39.072-07:00Comments on Morphosis: Why is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?Adam Robertshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15803399373213872690noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-65974667231109874462018-11-22T01:39:35.628-08:002018-11-22T01:39:35.628-08:00Wow this is a great piece of writing. It makes me ...Wow this is a great piece of writing. It makes me feel oddly nostalgic. It's like reading a blog post in, say, 2009. Tychyhttp://tychy.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5401830411147364284.post-42142603618870425522018-11-02T15:40:38.017-07:002018-11-02T15:40:38.017-07:00To reinforce your argument, Dodgson had quite prot...To reinforce your argument, Dodgson had quite protracted epistolary friendships with many of his 'child friends', involving elaborate jokes and word games (he preferred 'child' to 'girl'; I think he was quoted somewhere as saying "I love all children - except boys"). So the writing desk for him really was the site of desire, or dread.<br /><br />Tangentially, watching The Witch the other night I was really struck by one feature of the Puritan mentality on display: certainty that people in general are sinful and damned, coupled with a complete lack of certainty that I myself am any better (or rather, that I myself am saved, that being the only alternative - it's not a question of degree). That conviction that there is a moral fact of the matter about me, but one which I may not have access to, seems very pre-modern. But perhaps what it is, more specifically, is pre-Freudian; what we've lost, in other words, isn't the sense that we're strangers to ourselves, but the sense that those strangers within us can and should be held to moral account. And Dodgson, on the far side of that particular divide, might well have had something of that earlier mentality. Where a modern Art Photographer might recognise that he had certain unfortunate urges and take on the work of disciplining and controlling them - confident in the knowledge that <b>he</b> was the man doing the disciplining, not the beast being controlled - the same half-knowledge presented itself to Carroll as a fear that, for all his good intentions, he might actually be a child molester <b>and he would never know</b>. Perhaps.Philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07009879034507926661noreply@blogger.com