Julian Scutts

This study traces the embryonic beginnings of Goethe's major works to  his early pre-Weimar years. It argues against any notion  that the word 'Wanderer' is a convenient tag or blanket term for it became the center of contention and debate once the Romantic movement had arisen. It follows L. A. Willoughby's thesis, put forward in his article 'The Image of 'the "Wanderer" and the "Hut" in Goethe's Poetry,' that the Wanderer represents the quest of the libido to be at one with the anima in a search that is reflected both in Goethe's letters and his life in accord with the principle of 'Wiederspiegelung.'

First we take a broad view of three areas in which 'Wanderer' is a key word, namely in the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,  in the German Romantic movement and in English Romantic poetry, noting obvious and less obvious connections between them. Next we will ascertain to what extent literary scholarship has covered  the areas already mentioned and note wide gaps in this coverage. We then explore possibie ways to redress exposed deficits  and consult  linguists who have relevant approaches to the questions before us.
Words derived from the verb 'to wander, most notably 'wanderer' were a prime feature of English literature long before the rise of Romanticism and anticipated its chief range of associations, with the night, the status of poetry and the borderline between life and death. The English Romantics were particularly sensitive to occurrences of words based on the verb 'to wander' in Milton's poetic works  as this article shows in the case of Byron's Don Juan. . Via the 1805 version of THE PRELUDE we might even be able to trace the path from 'I wandered lonely as a cloud' back  to the Muse of Horeb in PARADISE LOST.

https://www.academia.edu/34998977/Putting_two_and_two_together_Connections_between_Wordsworths_daffodils_and_the_opening_lines_of_The_Prelude

A picture condenses whatever it shows to the eye in a timeless single moment. In poetry an image' cannot do the same as a narrative ncludes perhaps many notable incidents any of which could be captured visually in a single picture. Perhaps, though, a well chosen image can subsume a poetic theme by the scope and power of its implicit associations and intimations, in oour case, with beauty and transience.

This paper combines a short story and a discussion of the implications of the word 'trump' within the context of Robert Browning's "The Pied Piper of Hamelin."  Taken together, the story and the discussion pose questions concerning the possible merits or demerits of rival approaches to literature and critical theory which may be variously designated as ''objective,,' 'internal,' 'logocentric' or 'historicist.'

TOPICS:
Robert Blum, Martyr in the Cause of Establishing a Unified andDemocratic German Nation
From November the Ninth to November the Eleventh in 1918: TheThree Days that Changed Germany and the World Forever
.And What Part did November the Eighth Play in German History since 1918?
Why didn't Hitler's hostility towards Jews and Communists fully surface before the fall of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May1919 ?
From Rose Monday to Ash Wednesday in 1933
And What about Von Hindenburg’s Part in the Fall of the WeimarRepublic?
With the Kristallnacht on November the Ninth in Mind - a Review of the Course of Anti-Semitism Since this Term was Coined by Wilhelm Marr
Konrad Adenauer – ‘Der Alte’
Back to the Ninth of November: 1989, the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Remaining Questions about the State of Germany and theWorld“…
And the Message?

Does the following narrative amount to no more than an imaginary foray into the world of dissertation committees that implies a critique of the way students are sometimes examined not on their academic achievements but their on  their philosophical standpoint  on literary critcism ? For all its betrayal of a satiriical intent, this depiction of a  trial that conflates the legal with the metaphysical touches on a  controversy at the heart of literary criiticism. Must a strict regard of the intrinsic unity of a literary work  deny it the  ability to convey 'a message' in the 'old fashioned' sense of that word and therefore to be relevant in  the wide world outside the formal literary domain?

According to The Washington Post. In 1909, Twain told his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, "I came in with Halley's Comet ... It is coming again ... and I expect to go out with it ... The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together." Could ever wider connections between the comet and matters of historic moment come under consideration.

The first question that arises in this study has to do with a minor point of interest, or so it may seem.. It concerns 'the Wanderer who enters the stage at the beginning of Act V in Faust Part II, not that any member of the audience would be able to connect  this stage character with the term 'Wanderer,' confined as it  to the margin of the play's script. Only the reader of this script could make the said connection. So is Faust Part II primarily a play or a written text like a novel or long poem? It is this question that is paramount over and above any issue of plot or narrative.

was Hitler a socialist/? Until recently such a question was hardly ever aired outside the lunatic fringe of ranters and fanatics. Now social media and the radical polarization of political positions  have fuelled debates of the kind we have to consider. Is the question under review so outrageous in view of the fact that Hitler incorporated the term 'socialist' in the  title of the party he created and led/ When Hitler returned to Munich  in 1918  he did not immediately adopt a hostile stance against Jews and Communists and did not do so as long as the Bavarian Socialist Republic under the leadership of Kurt Eisner and other socialists  were  in government.. Did the rootless Austrian expatriot throw himself into the arms of  reactionary  forces in the army  that were  responsible for his 'political reeducation' with its promise  of a secure place and the opportunity for advancement within a  renascent and self-assertive  future Germany? It was the petit-bourgeois, not the social-revolutionary , element in Hitler's soul that drove him to achieve 'respectability. He sacrificed the disreputable S.A. once it had served its purpose  to gain the loyalty of the Prussian army for much the same reason.

Literary scholars and critics occasionally refer to 'verbal clues'. one such case being Barbara Melchiori's references to such indications found in the body of Robert Browning's literary works. IThe critic argues that individual words, irrespective of their immediately recognizable meaning within the terms of a narrative, signal trains of associations of which the poet is unaware or which he may wish to suppress. Thus words would reveal allegories produced with the cooperation of subconscious as well as conscious motions of the mind. Does Melchiori's theory of artistic 'reticence' have a wide and universal applicability?

In print:  (view by pasting and copying)

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/in-pursuit-of-verbal-clues-detected-in-the-body-of-literature-julian-scutts/1129317326

Here you will find several articles I have already contributed to this website and thest have to do with the issue of persecution against Jews in the Middle Ages and the Modern Age in which new forms of antisemitism have emerged. This I have done in response to the controversy that now rages over the conflict between Hamas and Israel after the terrorist atrocities along the Israel-Gazan border.

On the 19th of October this year the Conservative Party suffered the most severe loss but one in any by-election in its history. This humiliating defeat took place in Tamworth in the British Midlands. It was all the more bitter in the light of the fact that the so-called Tamworth Manifesto written by Sir Robert Peel on the occasion of his elevation to the office of Prime Minister is widely regarded as the foundation stone of the Conservative party after the political demise of of the Duke of Wellington and the Tory old guard of an era that had passed. Let us trace developments between the year 1834 and the present disarray of a party in need of a new orientation and assessment of what it stands for.

This report is based on my  personal experience of how people in Jerusalem were made aware of the attack that took place on the seventh of October only a few days ago.  It includes ruminations on the part of religious festivals in the course of history with particular reference to October the 14th.

Thiis collection of articles probes questions at the heart of the tragic course of German history from the founding of the Weimar Republic unti the end of the Second World War. The closing discussions in this collection concern ongoing debates on topics that the present world siuation  have made  even more relevant and urgent than they may have been before., particularly in relation to the issue of Germany's place in the emerging new world order. Has the German 'Sonderweg" (exceptional path)' finally come to  a close? Is the counry becoming a compliant member of 'the West' now that it has cut its dependance on the Russian Federation as the supplier of natural gas? We note a growing trend to shy away from discussions as to whether Germany was chiefly responsible for initiating the First World War, We also note a tendency to  deny or at least question the 'uniqueness of the Holocaust amid claims that Stalin was the greatest perpetrator of genocide in history, a claim whose appeal  was  limited to extreme rght circles  until only a few years ago.

November the Ninth is widely known as Germany's 'Day of Destiny" being associated with the abdication of the Kaiser, the so-called 'beer hall putsch,' the Reichs-Kristallnacht and the fall of the Berlin wall. Has its prominence clouded out significant events that occurred on November the eighth? In the falling dynasty stakes the House of the Wittelsbachs in Munich pipped the House of Hohenzollern at the post.

Like so many other people these days I follow the latest news reports on developments in the war between the Ukraine and Russia. Yesterday I learned that Ukrainian drones had struck an airbase near the Russian city of Pskov inflicting serious damage on two or more bomber aircraft transport. Drone attacks are becoming increasingly common in the present conflict but what was unusual in this case lay in the fact that Pskov is much further away from the Ukrainian border than are other target areas in Russia, in fact way up north in close proximity to the Russo-Estonian border. The success of this Ukrainian strike must have relied on guidance supplied by NATO's intelligence network, some experts in military affair then surmised.

The connent of two articles submitted in this document may prompt readers to inquire into matters that await a full satisfactory explanation, particularly with reqard to certain discrepances. Attitudes to the the cause of the Fire vacilated between hostility to assumed perpetratores of arson and the King's tendency to diffuse tensions by treating the fire as the result of an accident. Professor Gloria Moss argues that the fire was really the result of 'an inside job' with suspician fally on the Kind himself or others within the  royal establishment. Were the sponsors of the fire motivated by enlightened concepts  of public health and environmental improvement? Two proponents of a new age may have had a part to plaqce in events that took place in the first week in September 1666. Sir Christopher Wrend and Sir John Evelyn.

For many years now I have been fascinated by the history of the Great Fire of London in 1666, not least on account of the apparent discrepancies and anomalies associated with the story. For example, it has always struck me as odd that a conflagration that drove about a hundred thousand residents of the City of London out of their homes suffered a death toll on only six victims according to official records. A Frenchman by the name of Robert Hubert was condemned to death for the alleged act of arson that started the fire though a royal proclamation had attributed the fire to an accident or 'act of God.' Indeed, the death sentence imposed on Hubert was based solely on his own confession of guilt and on evidence that even the judge and jury in this case found unconvincing and at variance with known facts. Hubert further alleged that he was not alone when committing his deed and that he and his accomplices acted on behalf of foreign powers and even the Pope. His utterance nicely fitted the narrative of those who wished to distract speculations that home authorities had a part to play in the fire saga. Roman Catholics were still an easy prey to victimization in a tradition that began with Guy Fawkes and continued in later outbreaks of mass violence. Charles and his brother James, the Duke of York, must have been somewhat uneasy about anti-Catholic invectives in view of their covert or overt sympathies for the Roman Catholic faith. Maybe they saw a need to 'cast a sop to Cerberus' at the entrance of Hades out of pure self-interest.

Some theorists in the field of literary criticism look askance at any claim that one author was influenced by another.  Can we pursue arguable trails of influence if we concede that influence is the product of underlying affinities and the indubitable pull of tradiion?

In Jewish mystical thought  dates are revealing as in the cse of the ninth of Av, on July 26th this year. According to a line of orthodox teaching the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem occurred on this date, surely a 'coincidence' by any rational standard. In my view there are far too many of such 'coincidences in history, one being the fact that of the first five presidents of the United States three of them died on July the Fourth (Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Monroe) with Adams and Jefferson leaving this world on the same day in 1826, united in death as they had not been in life.

This document covers the first segment of a book entitled DATES AND SEASONS, which explores among other subjects attempts by leading theorists such as C. G Jung to explore the phenomenonon of synchronicity or 'meaningful coincidences.'

Secondary literature.Erich Auerbach fled  to Istanbul to escape Nazi-occupied Europe and has no time to take tomes of secondary literature with him. For this fact he was eternally grateful as his great work Mimesis turned out o be free of the hot air and waffle one so often encounters in theories  of literary criticism. I have long been concerned with the implications of words derived from the verbs to wander and wander in literary texts but found that attempts to justify my interest in terms of heavy literary and linguistic theories got in the way of inspecting primary texts and explaining findings in a clear uncomplicated way. Recourse to theoretic propositions is necessary in any such piece of research, but one can apply theories practically without distracting readers with profuse abstractions.

Ce que nous discernons en poésie dépend en grande partie de ce que nous considérons que le langage et l'esprit sont capables de réaliser La confusion babylonienne dont nous sommes témoins dans la critique littéraire contemporaine trouve ses racines dans les profondes controverses concernant le langage qui ont éclaté dans le dix-huitième siècle. D'une part, les protagonistes de la raison ne voyaient dans la prose lucide que la forme de langage la mieux adaptée au nouvel âge de la raison. La poésie a été rejetée comme un retour à une étape infantile du développement humain. Ce défi a été traumatisant. Les poètes ont commencé à se méfier des mots et se sont retrouvés dans un état d'isolement terrible. Il ne peut y avoir aucune belle division entre leur angoisse de poètes maudits et leurs sensibilités personnelles comme le montre le roman de Goethe avec le titre " Die Leiden des jungen Werthers " Les Souffrances du jeune Werther). Cependant, il y avait des défenseurs d'une vision du langage qui posait le revers des rationalistes. Schleiermacher et Herder voyaient le langage dans toute sa plénitude dans la poésie, tandis que la prose logique n'était que l'apparition superficielle du corpus profond du langage. Schleiermacher a découvert une compréhension de la psychologie qui accommodait ce que nous appelons maintenant l'inconscient.

The second installment under the general heading of It all looked so rosy in 1989. What Happened. This focuses on the central role of Hans-Dietrich Genscher in Germany politics both before and after the fall of the Berlin all. We ponder whether even in the year 1991 the seeds of our present troubles were sown.

This lies somewhere between a historian's analysis and a journalistic essay and expression of opinion. The discrepancy between the high hopes that attended the fall of the Berlin wall and the present mood of disuiet and gloom  gives cause for reflection on anybody's part as everybody is involved. Fundamentl questions arise. What should be learn from history/ What is Europe? Who knows what's going on, apart from Donald Trump?

A certain well known polical figure does receive a brief mention in this introduction but my concern is more with words and their universal imlications. To the religious mind the last trump certainly has that, and to fan's of "the LOng Horns" in Austin Texas Gabriel's Horn is not without significance either.- till Gabriel blos his horn..

To my knowledge L. A. Willoughby's article above published in Etudes Germaniques, is to this day the onlt well know article on the so-called "image" of the Wanderer in Goete's enire set of works. My artcle buids on this foundation and widens the scope of discussion to the domain of German and English Romantic poetry. References will be added in a published version.

This preview explains such terms as "contexts" and the "poet's word." It makes clear why the author rejects a basic premise of assumptions that literature and poetic language are radically detached from the realities with which most people are concerned in the course of their lives.

https://www.amazon.com/Word-Poetry-Its-Contexts/dp/1326470590