boggarts, centaurs, list surrealism, hippie chick, tarot

[Dan Feeney]

No: HPFGUIDX 72988

I would assume Lupin's boggart, if it's a full moon, as it were, 
couldn't make him transform because his transformation is governed by 
the real moon's cycle, not by what he might think or see. The 
dementors ability to surface horrible memories, for instance, and rid 
the victim of pleasant memories, darken the stars etc., is how they 
are identified as dementors. I suspect some unfortunate magic 
practicianers might think they'd been soul-sucked, if the dementor 
boggart ever kissed them, and said magic practicioner might never 
live it down, if they don't have a coronary...

The centaur leaving the group, firenze, is making a decision not 
unlike sirius to leave his family, as it were, or Dobby's sneaking 
around behind Sr Malfoy's back, etc. If the statue at the MoM is to 
be set right, then all creatures involved should certainly be given 
the liberty to choose whatever they want to choose, including not 
being segregated. Otherwise, if centaur-being  or elf-being is 
forever separate from human-being, say, then just put humpty back 
together and change nothing. That is, firenze's act is laudable, and 
I don't see why one would question it or his motivations.

Regarding new critics, I would just point out Walter Benjamin as 
possibly illuminating in "close reading" Rowling. Rereading a bit of 
Breton, too, I was rather interested to hear how he seems to have had 
an experience like Rowling's on the Hogwarts train, i mean the train 
from manchester to london. I reproduce the quote and leave it to the 
individual list members whether or not this seems at all similar to 
the implications of "in essense divided"

Andre Breton
"It was in 1919, in complete solitude and at the approach of sleep, 
that my attention was arrested by sentences more or less complete, 
which became perceptible to my mind without my being able to discover 
(even by very meticulous analysis) any possible previous volitional 
effort..... I was really bewildered. Unfortunately, I am unable to 
remember the exact sentence at this distance, but it ran 
approximately like this: "A man is cut in half by the window."

Now, even Duchamp seems to have gained a little respect for T. S. 
Eliot in later years, so there is evidence of some connection between 
dada/surrealism and the theories of artisto-cultural "channeling", as 
it were. I think Rowling has a touch of both. So, I thought, is there 
something to the list that's close as well. Here's Breton again, 
later.

"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain 
point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined, 
past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and 
low, cease to be perceived as contradictions. Now, search as one may 
one will never find any other motivating force in the activities of 
the Surrealists than the hope of finding and fixing this point."

That is, there is ample room to describe Rowling's writing, or even 
better, our scrounging of HP canon, as surrealist acts in themselves, 
as defined by Breton.

Now, I have a confession to make. Perhaps too easily, I have become a 
total Luna fan. Not the "Rosemary" song quite, though that thing was  
certainly about a "hippie chick", or the "her name was JOANNE, and 
she lived in a meadow by a pond..." so-called song, quite. At any 
rate, if Luna had lived a few decades earlier, she'd have been a 
hippie. That's all. Which is cool by me.

Finally, regarding tarot interps

"The Hanged Man, in similar fashion, is a card about suspension, not 
life or death. This is a time of trial or meditation, selflessness, 
sacrifice, prophecy. The Querent stops resisting; instead he makes 
himself vulnerable, SACRIFICES HIS POSITION or opposition, and in 
doing so, gains illumination." (emphasis mine)

Well, let me confess something else - I half (or slightly more) 
believe HP will run away this summer, and will NOT be intending to go 
to Hogwarts. Maybe I just feel this way tonight... I am going to 
reread a few later passages in OOP with this potential in mind. 

~reading last bit quickly~ HP smiles, HG and RW reiterate "see you 
soon", hmm... will get back to you

dan

"I do/as I dance/What people did, what they're going to do"
Andre Breton