Althouse: "I cannot play with you. I am not tamed."

April 6, 2009

"I cannot play with you. I am not tamed."

Link by Meade.

23 comments:

Peter V. Bella said...: Foxes, chickens; rhhardin will have to explain this. It has to be an Ohio kind of thing. :); 4/6/09, 6:28 PM
amba said...: Ah, Meade.; 4/6/09, 6:32 PM
rhhardin said...: One's duty regarding the other who makes an appeal to one's responsibility is an investing of one's own freedom. In responsibility, which is, as such, irrecusable and non-transferable, I am instituted as non-interchangeable: I am chosen as unique and incomparable. My freedom and rights, before manifesting themselves in my opposition to the freedom and rights of the other person, will manifest themselves precisely in the form of responsibility

Levinas Outside the Subject p.125

Before being addressed you're interchangeable with any other.; 4/6/09, 6:57 PM
Trooper York said...: Buckwheat: Hey, Spanky, me and Porky have an idea.
George "Spanky" McFarland: Keep it, you might need it when you grow up!
Buckwheat: Oh-tay.
George "Spanky" McFarland: Stymie why are you hanging around with Darla all the time. I mean she rides her bike twenty blocks just to see you and you moon around all day like a big moon pie
Stymie: I do not!
George "Spanky" McFarland: You do too. You are not a real member of the He-Man Woman Haters Club. I am gonna tell that nice Mr. Sullivan who gives us candy and lets us sit on his lap. I sure hope he doesn’t have a pencil in his pocket again.
Stymie: I am too, I don’t like girls. They are icky. And smelly.
George "Spanky" McFarland: Well if you still a member then recite the oath.
Stymie: I... Stymie... Member in good standing of the He-Man Woman Haters Club... Do solemnly swear to be a he-man and hate women and not play with them or talk to them unless I have to. And especially: never fall in love, and if I do may I die slowly and painfully and suffer for hours - or until I scream bloody murder.
Buckwheat: Hey can I be a member of the club too?
George "Spanky" McFarland: No!
Buckwheat: Racist.
(The Little Rascals, 2008); 4/6/09, 7:01 PM
kjbe said...: That was very sweet. And to think that in my almost 50 yrs., I had never read it. Thanks.; 4/6/09, 7:14 PM
srfwotb said...: Is this what Carla Bruni has in mind when she refers to herself as a man-tamer?; 4/6/09, 7:35 PM
IgnatzEsq said...: I actually want to go to Russia sometime to get one of these.; 4/6/09, 7:35 PM
Ernesto Ariel Suárez said...: It's a beautiful book. My best friend hates it. She thinks that it's cruel. I have read it many time throughout my life, in Spanish, English and French. We now own three copies of it. One English, one bi-lingual and one French.; 4/6/09, 7:39 PM
Kirk Parker said...: Hey, maybe I could sneak in a few of my favorite Saint-Exupery quotes, and they wouldn't be totally off-topic!

* The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.

* A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

Last, and certainly not least:

* A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.; 4/6/09, 7:42 PM
Ernesto Ariel Suárez said...: "It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."; 4/6/09, 7:55 PM
Peter Hoh said...: OT -- The Daily Dish is causing my browser to crash. Repeatedly.; 4/6/09, 8:04 PM
AllenS said...: God, I hope he's housebroken.; 4/6/09, 8:07 PM
Kirk Parker said...: peter,

"The Daily Dish is causing my browser to crash. Repeatedly."

You upgraded Firefox, I take it? This is one of the new security features...; 4/6/09, 8:08 PM
traditionalguy said...: Is the message that love is an act of one willing to give away one's love time to another from which there will be built an eternal connection. That belief takes a courageous faith that the taming of the Fox will be a miracle resulting from a giving of love time to a Fox. Selah.; 4/6/09, 8:13 PM
Peter Hoh said...: Good one, Kirk. Yes, I'm using Firefox.; 4/6/09, 8:32 PM
The River Otter said...: You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.; 4/6/09, 10:27 PM
BJM said...: So Meade, who tamed whom?; 4/6/09, 11:52 PM
Unknown said...: One of my favorite books since kidhood. A note about the translation: in the original French the word translated in your quote as "tamed" is "apprivoisé". Indeed, one would say tamed when speaking of an animal like the fox. However, apprivoiser has other meanings in French too: get accustomed to, befriend, make friends with, get to know. It is to these other meanings that Saint-Ex shifts as the conversation sheds the differences between boy and fox, and becomes a more intimate one. A French nuance of sentiment perhaps, but a lovely one, n'est-ce pas?; 4/7/09, 12:01 AM
amba said...: rhhardin: all props to Levinas, but St.-Ex. said it better.; 4/7/09, 12:28 AM
amba said...: To paraphrase William Carlos Williams: No ideas but in stories.; 4/7/09, 12:28 AM
DaLawGiver said...: From Tales of Saphhrion by Saint-Arthas:

A frog that lives in Alaska will freeze solid like a rock. There are no snakes in Alaska to eat the frog because they would freeze also. The frog who lives in Alaska is safe yet frozen.; 4/7/09, 12:36 AM
amba said...: Indeed, one would say tamed when speaking of an animal like the fox. However, apprivoiser has other meanings in French too: get accustomed to, befriend, make friends with, get to know.

A good synonym in English is "to gentle." (As opposed to: "to break.")

That book is a source of so many useful and consoling metaphors. The hat that is really an elephant swallowed by a boa constrictor. The sheep inside the box, that comes alive when left to the imagination. (The sheep he tried to draw are like the shark in "Jaws" -- the more explicit, the less convincing.) The little planets for one, with their many sunsets. "I am concerned with matters of consequence!" Baobabs. The sound of a well in the stars. And the fox saying "Tame me!" These things come to my aid quite frequently.; 4/7/09, 12:38 AM
Hazy Dave said...: There was a photo in the paper yesterday that ties this fox concept in with the recurring squirrel theme...; 4/7/09, 2:03 PM