Literary Reference!
I stole this scan from Scipio over at The Absorbascon because I was pretty excited to find a literary reference in an old comic. Not just an old comic - an old silly comic. People always make fun of the old comics and their wacky stories - but what some people don't seem to understand is that their wackiness is what makes them so great! So I thought it was pretty neat to see a mark of fine literature in one of the old wacky books. See if you guys catch it!
posted by Gwen at 5:31 PM
7 Comments:
Hmmm....not sure about the reference but it's screaming Poe to me for some reason. Am I close??
Nope, it's not Poe. Hint: look towards poetry :)
Hmmmm......death always brings up Poe in my mind. Let's see...it's not Whitman or Emerson or Theureau or Frost. Not Shakespeare. Something Gwen is more familiar with than I am so that would suggest a woman. Female poets. Okay, I seem to recall a poem by Emily Dickenson. Something about a person hearing a fly when they died but the fly wasn't real and the person was actually the fly or somesuch. At least that's what my feeble mind digs up. It's either that or a fable from Aesop. Closer?
Actually you guessed it :) I took a class on Emily Dickinson's poetry my freshman year of college. Here's the poem:
I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed, and then
I could not see to see.
I thought it was neat that the writer used it because if the dead guy actually convinces himself that he must be alive because he heard a fly buzz.
And I thank YOU, because I did not notice the reference until you pointed it out!
anytime :)
Cshiana - very sharp - nice pick up.
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