Hunter of the East

David Stockhoff · 13 Nov 2011, 02:22 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:22:05 -0500
Subject: (urth) Hunter of the East
In-Reply-To: <DA05C17DE35C4F638CEB050D36149089@Rover>
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On 11/12/2011 2:32 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> *From:* David Stockhoff <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net>
> **
> > > > And where is the rising sun in the poem? It is not
> > > > mentioned anywhere---there is no "rising" depicted whatsoever. 
> You have
> > > > inferred it without realizing it. Where is the sun itself? 
> Nowhere in
> > > > the poem at all. If it is there, what does it look like? Does it 
> have a
> > > > disk? A color? A mien? It might be like a stone in one way, but
> > > > otherwise there are no answers. It's not there.
>
> > > Come on ? you are not seriously making such an argument? The Sun is
> > > not yet visible, but its rays shining on the top of a tower are.
>
> > "The Sun is not yet visible." Thank you.
> You asked ?where is the rising sun?? It is just below the horizon. In 
> a moment we will see it. Already we see its light shining on the 
> tower. It is Orion that is nowhere mentioned, nowhere visible, and 
> nowhere implied except for your invalid paint-by-numbers insistence 
> that any hunter must somehow be Orion.

Now you claim illiteracy as an advantage of your argument? I suppose you 
have no choice. But at least we agree that the sun is not yet risen, but 
rather implied. Its rising is imminent.
>
> > > By the way, I looked up ?hunter of the east interpretation? in 
> Google.
> > > I found two interpretations. Both agreed with me that the hunter is
> > > the Sun.
>
> > No they don't.
> Yes they do. One says: ?The stanza presents two arresting 
> personifications, the first when/Morning/chases the stars away and the 
> second when the sun,/the Hunter of the East/, lassoes the/Sultan's 
> Turret/with a rope of light.? The second (speaking of a third) says 
> ?/Hunter of the East/somewhat arbitrarily taken to mean "Eastern 
> wisdom, a mighty slayer of delusion" where 'the Sun' would suffice?. 
> Neither mentions Orion anywhere.

Gerry, those are not exactly full explications.

But the personifications are completely correct. I told you this twice 
and I say it again: the Hunter of the East is, in a way, the sun. Why do 
you keep arguing about what we agree on? Do you think this strengthens 
your argument about what we DON'T agree on?

These comments only support our agreement that the Hunter is the Sun. 
They don't support your contention that the Hunter is NOT Orion. For 
that you're on your own.
> > I told you the sun is the Hunter of the East. I told you
> > HOW he is the Hunter of the East and how it derives from the
> > just-vanished Orion, who is the original Hunter of the East.
> This is turning into gibberish. You started off by insisting that the 
> Hunter is Orion, and I told you that the Hunter is the Sun. Now you 
> are trying to make out that yes, okay, the Hunter is the Sun, but the 
> Sun is somehow really Orion. The Hunter is the Sun, period. Orion is 
> not involved here anywhere.

If you're not going to read my posts, just stop talking to me. I have a 
life outside talking to people who don't listen. Just say "I refuse to 
explain myself because I don't need to."

And I won't hold my breath to hear your theory of how the poem shuts off 
the obvious Hunter-Orion association so that the sun personification is 
clear as glass and as meaningless.
> > The night
> > hunter becomes the day hunter. Do you read posts in their entirety? Do
> > you have an explanation for how the sun is the hunter? No, it's 
> "just so."
> I did explain it, though it barely needs an explanation. the Sun has 
> thrown a noose of light around the tower. The poet sees it as 
> capturing the tower, i.e, hunting it. The Hunter of the East, in fact, 
> as distinct from any other hunter such as Orion.

Aha, so the Sun typically hunts towers with a lasso! At last an answer. 
Why, it must be so. I would have called him the Cowboy of the East, but 
I'm not FitzGerald.

For the record, I don't necessarily argue that FitzGerald meant to put 
into the poem a handoff from vanishing Orion to rising Sun (even by way 
of Apollo) that creates the delicate image of vanishing that I see and 
have described. I don't think he was a great poet but rather a clumsy 
and an almost accidental one. His allusions were both classical and 
commonplace, and his poems were about as deep as a New Age paperback.

But he wouldn't have put a sobriquet of a famous summer-dawn 
constellation in a poem about stars before dawn and expected his readers 
to just ignore it in favor of an almost literal description---one that 
isn't even very evocative when it is read that way.

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