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Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 493
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, September 17, 2004 - 1:23 pm: |       |
Jenni
Well, if you want to call that (3), I agree it's orders of magnitude more likely than (1), but still - I think - a lot less likely than (2).
The main point is that it's so much more likely that the forger pulled the quotation out of the Sphere book, than that Maybrick used that quotation, and then in the following century the Sphere book picked the self-same quotation.
Chris Phillips
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 795
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, September 17, 2004 - 3:16 pm: | |
Hi All,
Watch and see if the "results" of the miracle can be reproduced.
Of course, the point here is that one explanation is far and away more believable, more rational, more likely, more understandable, more logical, and more in line with common sense than the other.
And, having spent about half my life in libraries, I can tell you that one of these explanations is downright staggering and miraculous in nature.
Add all this to the fact that it's the explanation offered to us by a known and repeated liar, and...
Mike lied.
All his other behavior tells us this, the odds tell us this, the desperate reliance on a positive miracle tells us this. And the fact that anyone would choose to believe him (only, of course, because they need to in order to keep hope alive), tells us something as well.
I won't say what.
This all reminds me of a passage I re-read from Shirley's book not long ago. I offer it here as an example of what so often takes place on these threads as well.
She writes:
As I combed the newspapers of 1888 and 1889 I found they were full of facts about the Ripper murders and the Maybrick case. If there had been a skilled forger at work on the diary, he would have found it irresistible to draw on the immense amount of material on both cases from which to fabricate his entries. Yet there are no dates, few details of family occasions and little of what was widely known or surmised about either the Ripper or Maybrick. What was left out is as telling as what is included. No forger would have dared be so miserly with the readily available facts."
Do you see what has happened here?
Shirley notes that the diary is "miserly" with historical facts and dates and details and she reads this lack of information as evidence against a forgery, because surely a forger would have put a lot of these in.
Of course, there's a much simpler and more obvious explanation, isn't there? You have all already figured it out.
It's like the book naming the Poste House in Liverpool.
What the simplest and most obvious explanation?
Its like the book containing the same uniquely worded line as a police list that only a modern forger could have seen.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
It's like the book getting the details of the murders wrong.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
It's like the book not being in anything like the real James Maybrick's handwriting.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
It's like the book not having any real provenance.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
It's like there only being two books in the whole history of the world that have this one line from this one poem excerpted and cited in them.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
You know, don't you?
Thanks for playing, everyone. Stay tuned and watch what happens.
--John
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1050
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, September 17, 2004 - 4:01 pm: | |
Chris,
yes I agree, much more likely than Maybrick having heard it
Jenni
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1245
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, September 18, 2004 - 7:02 am: | |
It's no good straying from the point.
The fact is, John originally tried to support his 'miracle' argument with the claim that Mike is 'a pathalogical liar - he lies all the time'. These were John's own words, which I picked up on to illustrate that, by his own admission, Mike could equally have lied about owning his own volume 2 before the so-called library 'miracle'.
Now, as I have patiently explained to Chris P, Mike was only able to come up with his library tale (true or not), because, despite the apparently incredible odds against it, there were already three examples of the diary quotation available on the Liverpool library shelves when Shirley told him, in 1994, to do something useful such as look for it.
Mike didn't engineer Shirley's request, nor did he engineer those particular volumes' availability. Therefore, Chris P's staggering odds against these circumstances being in place do not make the odds against Mike finding one of the examples even greater; the circumstances were real, not imagined, despite the odds. This substantially diminishes Chris P's imagined odds against Mike finding the quotation, and they can only finally be estimated with any degree of accuracy by someone who has actually counted the books on the shelves that anyone (not just Mike) would have been faced with, if asked to find two lines, consisting of five words, which look like part of a pre-20th century poem.
I have always agreed with John that we can't accept anything Mike gives us at face value, without full supporting evidence. But the claim that Mike lied about the library 'miracle' is ultimately meaningless while the person doing the claiming has no idea of the maximum number of books that anyone would reasonably have had to look at in the main Liverpool library before opening one of the volume 2s and coming across the quotation. Relying on the 'safe' argument that Mike 'lies all the time' is a poor substitute for doing the relevant research.
Why? Because common sense tells us that the 'Mike lies all the time' line is a device that cannot literally be true.
"I forged the diary by myself."
"I wrote the diary with a little help from my friends."
"I had nothing to do with writing the diary."
"I know who wrote the diary."
"I don't know who wrote the diary."
"I don't believe the diary is a forgery."
"I believe the diary is genuine."
One or more of these statements must be true.
Until the research-based evidence can tell us which, I will leave you to speculate and reach your own conclusions.
And as for choosing to believe Mike when it suits, I will leave others to do that too - KFC, naturally.
Love,
Caz
X
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 797
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, September 18, 2004 - 8:12 am: | |
Caroline points out, quite correctly, that Mike has told contradictory lies.
He has.
So why she chooses to argue for the most fantastic and unbelievable and odds-defying one of them all remains a complete mystery.
But there is a question one can ask when faced with deliberate and contradictory lies.
I'll ask it again.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
Only two books in the whole history of the world have this line excerpted an cited in them. One was first given to the public in the 1970s. Mike Barrett, who owned a copy of it, gave us the second one in the 1990s.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
It's sure as hell not the "miraculous" one.
But she needs that one to KHA, so that one remains "possible."
Well, we'll see if it can be repeated. We'll see what happens when we try to reproduce the phenomenon. Just for fun.
In the meantime, here's the list again, so you can all play at home:
The diary names a pub called the Poste House in Liverpool. There is one there.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
The diary has a line from a document publicly available only in modern times.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
The diary gets the details of the murders wrong in the same way modern sources do.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
The diary is not in anything like the real James Maybrick's handwriting?
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
The diary has no real provenance and there is no material evidence that it ever existed before the 20th century.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
There are only two book in the entire history of the written word that have this line excerpted and cited in them and Mike, who brought forward the diary, owned both of them.
What's the simplest and most obvious explanation?
And why is it that the answer to each and every one of these questions is the same?
--John (channeling his hero's PF's spirit of rhetorical questioning)
(Message edited by omlor on September 18, 2004) |
Chris Phillips
Inspector
Username: Cgp100
Post Number: 495
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, September 18, 2004 - 1:06 pm: | |
OK
I do give up now on trying to explain this to Mrs Morris.
If she really can't understand the point I'm making, I think in kindness to her I'd better not pursue it further. (I suspect she's the only one who can't - or won't.)
Chris Phillips
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1057
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 19, 2004 - 12:11 pm: | |
Actually Robert,
I accept that the Liverpool library was probably where Barrett found the quote.
Even if it wasn't it is still possible to be true.
According to you there were three copies of the crawshaw poem in print at the time, therefore we can argue it is possible for Maybrick to have heard the quote because he and the poem co existed.
We might even say it was logically possible, but we wouldn't want to push our luck too much!
Incidentialy yes i do think the diary is a forgery, I do not need all 12 odd points of contention to be true to think this, all i need is for one point to be true, because one slip up is all it takes, now if there were no slip ups, we'd have a serious problem!
Anyway, I haven't given up, I was just taking a break on this thread until i could prove the miracle was possible (ha ha!!!)
Yes that is a good coincidence like the miracle in Liverpool library and other stuff!
Cheers
Jenni
ps further research is always good, poste house anyone! (opps i mentioned the post house - maybe i got away with it)
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 803
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 19, 2004 - 2:23 pm: | |
Oh good,
Facts.
Let's look at them closely, shall we?
Robert cites two editions of Crashaw's Complete Works printed in time for the real James to have read the line somehow in one of them.
In case you missed it, numbers 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 in his list are all published too late for the real James to have seen them, what with his being dead and all.
What Robert does not tell you is that one of the two editions he cites was an extremely limited run for a specific religious organization.
That leaves one, count them, one single edition of Crashaw's Complete Works even somewhat readily available at the time.
And as you can tell from his list, the poem does not appear in any anthology or collection or chapbook or any other volume of verse that anyone has ever found other than Crashaw's Complete Works.
Incidentally, the individual works Robert lists, covering a period of nearly thirty years, hardly constitutes evidence that Crashaw was read widely or was even all that popular. 8 or 9 works in thirty years on a guy? That makes him just not much better than remote and obscure. Look in any recent edition of the MLA Bibliography. Even the most obscure and minor authors have at least that many works published on them in a single year. And more major figures (including Crashaw -- Robert's just woefully and wonderfully wrong about the current state of critical publication on him) have a far greater number every year than Crashaw did for these thirty.
So Robert actually proves my point with his little review of what was published and available on this poet.
Crashaw was a very minor figure and this poem was a minor work of that minor figure at the time the diary was supposedly written. And, as even Robert's list show us, he was almost exclusively the province of a very specific audience. And the real James Maybrick was not reading him or citing him in his personal diary.
But let's talk about miracles and coincidences, shall we?
There's still nothing but desperation and wishing behind the dream that Mike walked into a library filled with books and out of the whole library found the one single page in the one single book that has those very same five words excerpted and cited in it just like it is in the diary. It's a fairy-tale, and the only reason we even think about it being possible is that Mike said it happened.
Of course, we all know what we deserve if we start believing Mike, don't we?
But this one time, in the case of this one amazing and irrational and miraculous story, Robert chooses to believe Mike Barrett. Why? Just because he needs to.
That not research, that's not logical, that's not rational. That's just the willing suspension of disbelief in the name of desire. And there is no arguing with that. It's like arguing with a dream.
But we'll try and reproduce the miracle, to see if it's as "possible" as Robert claims, to see if it is indeed anything other than a fairy-tale or an outright miracle. We'll try it, it the name of "All Mike had to do..." Watch to see what happens.
And then, as if it made any of this somehow more explainable, Robert cites the line after the quoted line from Crashaw's poem, even though it doesn't appear anywhere in the diary and there is no evidence whatsoever that the diarist even ever read or knew it.
And because the Virgin Mary is weeping and Jesus is bleeding, he assumes this is somehow related to or even coincidentally like a line in the diary that also has the words "eyes" and "blood."
WELL!
With research and reading and convincing logic like this, it's no wonder we are all wasting our time. Clearly the diary must be real, since it has a line with the words "blood" and the word "eyes" in the same line. Especially a diary by jack the Ripper. Yup. No one could have forged that, could they? The only way they could write a line that had the words "blood" and "eyes" in it in a Ripper diary is if they had read Crashaw's line about Jesus and Mary, right?
What desperate and pathetic drivel.
This is the sort of awkwardly forced reading that my Freshmen do when they are trying to impress wme with a point they think they have "discovered" and they don't realize they are just reaching to an embarrassing degree.
Robert may be trained in many things, but clearly literary analysis isn't one of them.
Let's remember the facts. There are, apparently, only two books in the entire world that have this line excerpted and cited this way in them.
One is the Sphere Guide.
The other is the diary.
Mike owned the first one.
Mike brought forward the second one.
Two books in the whole world that have this line excerpted and cited this way. And Mike had them both.
And the first one appeared in 1970s.
And the second one appeared in the 1990s, brought to us by a guy who owned the first one.
And when he was asked for the origin of the quote, he told us all and showed us all the first book that had the same line excerpted and cited in it -- the only other one there is.
And he told a miraculous tale of a staggering and odds-defying event. One page. From one title. Out of all the pages in all the books in the entire library. And knowing nothing about the words in his hand, Mike says he found that one page in that one book, on that one shelf.
Yeah. Right.
Remember, only The Sphere Guide contains this one line excerpted and cited in it, out of all the books in the world.
Mike had a copy of the Sphere Guide.
The diary has the very same line excerpted and cited in it just like in the Sphere Guide.
Mike brought us the diary.
Ask yourself a single question.
What is the simplest and most logical explanation?
We know some people here won't answer that one. They don't want to. Perhaps they can't afford to, for whatever reason.
But the rest of us can. We have that luxury.
We're the lucky ones.
All the best,
--John
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 805
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 19, 2004 - 3:46 pm: | |
Just a fun little anecdote, since Robert offered us his expert opinion that Crashaw is "obscure today" and "Crashaw receives only scant recognition in modern books of criticism on seventeeth century literature."
I just turned around.
Behind me, here at home, on the shelves in my work room, I have five different anthologies of literature from the appropriate time, including two Norton Anthologies, the Witherspoon and Warnke, and two different "Intro to Lit." textbooks. Every one of them contains works by Crashaw. I checked.
Not a single one of them, of course, includes this line from this poem. But the Sphere Guide does. Excerpted and conveniently cited amidst prose. Just like in the diary.
Also, without even checking the program, I'm willing to bet that there was at least one session on Crashaw at last year's MLA Convention. And the year before that. And the year before that. If anyone cares, I'll check at work tomorrow.
I'll also check the MLA bibliography and tell you just how many critical articles (let alone books and dissertations and theses) were written on Crashaw during the last thirty years. I'll also bet my literary friend Robert that the number is a lot higher than 8.
Oh wait. I just did that online. The MLA Online Bibliography lists One Hundred and Twenty Two critical articles on Crashaw in the last thirty years. 122. And those are just the ones that made into the MLA bib. There's no telling how many more were out there.
I realize that the Complete Works is currently out of print. But let's get our facts really straight, shall we?
Just for fun.
--John
PS: Here's another interesting anecdote. I can list two titles of critical articles on Crashaw published in the last 30 years right off the top of my head, without even searching. Frank J. Fabry's "Crashaw's 'On the Wounds of Our Crucified Lord'." Concerning Poetry 10, no. 1 (1977): 51-58." and Lisa S. Starks' "'Batter My [Flaming] Heart': Male Masochism in the Religious Lyrics of Donne and Crashaw" Enculturation, Vol. 1, No. 2, Fall 1997.
Why am I mentioning these two, since two essays in 30 years is no big deal (unlike, say 122)?
Because these are two written by people I know personally. People I have been friends with. One of whom I was even married to!
Imagine how many there might be by people I don't know personally. 
Seriously, this is all a silly argument and its made even more silly because much of it is being offered out of sheer desperation, in a sad attempt to deny the simpler and more obvious explanation for this one single line, from the whole history of the written language, being excerpted and cited only in two books, both owned by Mike Barrett.
PPS: When Robert writes, "the Victorians and the Edwardians liked Crashaw a lot," he is just making up a conclusion he has arrived at from purely spotty anecdotal evidence and it's meaningless, because it is not supported by the proper breadth of evidence necessary for such a literary-historical conclusion.
PPPS: When Robert says, "Crashaw receives only scant recognition in modern books of criticism on seventeeth century literature," it's obvious that he hasn't been reading much contemporary literary criticism on the period, especially recent "queer theory," which has taken a serous and renewed interest in Crashaw and his images.
PPPPS: My math is bad. Robert's list above actually covers the years 1858 (written incorrectly in his post) to 1907. That's almost fifty years, not thirty! But I'll restrict the current numbers of works to the past thirty years anyway, just to make my point all the more conclusive.
PPPPS: I'm having fun with this, obviously. But it doesn't mean anything. There's still no evidence whatsoever, of any sort, anywhere on the planet, that even suggests that this diary is actually real or that the real James Maybrick ever saw it or even that it existed in the proper century. |
Ally
Chief Inspector
Username: Ally
Post Number: 744
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 19, 2004 - 4:49 pm: | |
So John,
Why did you and Frank break up?
 |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 806
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, September 19, 2004 - 4:57 pm: | |
Ally,
It was all that gory religious imagery. Too many wounds for me.
So I started hanging out with people interested in serial killers instead.
--John
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1059
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 3:44 am: | |
You know,
it's true Mike could have found the quote in the library (at some point!).
He could have gone in the library picked up the big old book and found the quote,
he could have, he could have, he could have!!!
Jenni
ps he could have!
pps he could have!
ppps he could have!
pppps he could have!
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 807
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 7:44 am: | |
Jenni,
Are we going to have to talk about space aliens again? 
I'll be happy to postpone that conversation until after you've spent some time in the library.
What's the simplest and most logical explanation?
I know you know,
--John
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1064
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 9:24 am: | |
John,
assuming it's forged a second, the person who forged the diary (whoever they may have been, i don't know who they were!) where did they get the quote from?
I found the answer to an earlier point it took Mike a week to find the quote (that's quite tight)
Am I allowed to ask people in the library for help?
who cares what the simplest explanation is John, have you forgoten where you are? No. I didn't think so, facts remain facts, he could have done what he said he did.
whether or not he did is an entirely different matter!
I look forward to a luck visit to the library (like the one Mike had!)
Jenni
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 811
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 10:00 am: | |
Hi Jenni,
Your first question is interesting. Of course, it's also worth thinking about a possible answer in the case of our man Mike.
Yes, you can ask anyone you want in the library.
No, I have not forgotten where I am. And I know that is the only reason we're even considering Mike's fairy tale. I work with academics who do research for a living. And everyone I have told this story to tells me its simply incredible, unbelievable, and against all odds. That's after they finish laughing.
But not here.
Because here some of us are desperate enough to believe in Mike's miracle.
Talk to you later,
--John |
Simon Owen
Inspector
Username: Simonowen
Post Number: 169
Registered: 8-2004
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 11:30 am: | |
Jenny , thats a good point. You can ask people for help , maybe this is what Mike did as well ? Maybe somebody pointed him to the Sphere books.
I do think its possible that Mike could have sourced the quote through the Sphere guide , but I feel its unlikely he spent 7 weeks looking for a copy to give to Alan Gray when he had the books in his attic ( and he lent some to JM that year , so I'm pretty sure he would remember about them ).
Miracle of Liverpool Library ? I don't think it was so miraculous after all , really. |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 813
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 12:24 pm: | |
Simon,
Wait and see what happens when Jenni is allowed to ask for help.
Take only five words into a library, five words you don't recognize and have never seen before. And go find the one line on the one page in the one title that exists where it is cited from all the lines on all the pages in all the books on all the shelves in a library, with or without help.
Then tell me that just finding that very same single line excerpted and cited in the middle of a single page in the middle of a single title in the library is not an out and out miracle.
Or, if told to us by someone like Mike, simply and obviously a lie.
Oh, and he just happened to have a copy of that book, too.
And this very same line from this very same book appears also excerpted and cited in this mysterious diary that he just happens to have as well.
Heh heh,
--John |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1068
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 12:29 pm: | |
Oh brother,
no pressure then John?
Jenni
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 814
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 12:41 pm: | |
Nah, not really Jenni.
Have fun with it. 
Happy hunting,
--John (who wants to believe in miracles, really, but who has spent too many hours in real libraries and knows what's involved here) |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1069
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 12:48 pm: | |
John,
Oh fun is not the word. Its a shame i can't smuggle me some sandwiches and caffine in, yes that's how long it's going to take.
though id laugh if i picked the right book first time by chance!
Jenni
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 815
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, September 20, 2004 - 1:03 pm: | |
Hi Jenni,
Me, too.
Let's see,
--John |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1251
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 5:07 am: | |
Hi Jenni,
Well, you can only pick the right book if it's there.
Of course, if the words you have been told to look for are not in three out of a limited selection of available volumes on the subject matter evident from those words; if the 'right' book doesn't tend to open at the page where the words are to be found; and if those words don't stand out on the page because they are indented and isolated in a sea of surrounding prose - then best of luck, you'll need the caffeine, or a tin box full of matchsticks to keep your eyes open.
Hundreds of people could be sent on hundreds of similar fools' errands, and it would indeed be a miracle if any of them succeeded - unless the conditions that anyone would have faced, on being sent to the library by Shirley in 1994, even if they had no more idea than she had where the words came from or if the library could provide the answer, are faithfully reproduced for the experiment.
Love,
Caz
X
|
Simon Owen
Inspector
Username: Simonowen
Post Number: 171
Registered: 8-2004
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 7:27 am: | |
I think its worth doing the experiment though , for these reasons :
i) to see what happens when an ordinary person tries to find a line of verse of unknown origin in a large library.
ii) if Jenni does not succeed then it shows the difficulty of the task , and it MUST have been a miracle for Mike to find the line (ho hum...
iii) BUT ! If Jenni does succeed it shows Mike could have sourced the quote after all , which surely is a good thing for the pro-Diary camp no ? |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 816
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 7:34 am: | |
Awww, how cute.
More preemptory strikes from the worried.
Yes, of course Jenni can only pick the right book if it's there, and if there are three copies there. Of course, as to the "tendencies" of the book to open at that page -- that's still undecided, but I have received at least one first hand report that the book in question "tends" to open onto a number of pages. But, to be fair, I'll declare Jenni successful if she just pulls the right book off the shelf.
Of course, this is STILL a fool's errand and it is still going to take a miracle. Just like in Mike's case.
I think it's charming how quickly Caroline is trying to discredit anything that might happen even before our little game starts.
You don't suppose that it's because she already knows the likely outcome, do you?
You don't suppose that it's because she knows how impossible it is to ask one person to take five unidentified words into a library and pull the one title off the shelf from all the books in the library that has those five words in the middle of it, do you?
You don't suppose that she realizes she's been desperately arguing for a miracle here, one that it will be impossible to reproduce, because it never happened in the first place, do you?
You don't suppose that she realizes that odds against Mike's little tale of miraculous discovery are astronomical, no matter how she tries to spin the narrative to make it look believable, do you?
It's precious that she wants to criticize all of this before anything even happens, out of sheer desperation of course.
But why not give Jenni a chance and see what happens first?
There'll be plenty of opportunity to discuss just how similar the two situations were and how carefully the experiment was set up after the results are in.
But of course, we know how some people feel about the unpleasant possibility of "results," don't we?
After all, we have the DiTA thread.
Delighted at the care and concern I see expressed for poor little Jenni's welfare,
--John
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 819
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 8:10 am: | |
Hi Simon,
We posted simultaneously. I was addressing Caroline's little advance strike, of course.
Thanks for the thoughts, though. Needless to say, I agree with them.
Enjoy the day,
--John
PS: We know why the criticism has started even before the game, don't we?
PPS: In my earlier post, I should have made it clear that the book I was discussing that some say "opens" onto a number of different pages was, of course, the The Sphere Guide.
PPPS: I don't want to give Jenni any more hints than Mike allegedly had, so I'm deliberately not saying in advance that this is a line of verse or that it's not. Although it looks like it might be, it also might not be.
(Message edited by omlor on September 21, 2004) |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 820
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 8:41 am: | |
While I'm here,
Caroline Morris said something very interesting in her post above, which I'd like to call everyone's attention to.
In speaking of the five words, "Oh costly intercourse of death," she writes about "the subject matter evident from those words."
Now, I'm curious.
What exactly IS "the subject matter" evident from just those five words?
How would one determine it?
It's easy now to say, because we know the source of the words.
But imagine for a moment that you didn't. Imagine you had never seen those five words anywhere ever before.
And someone just handed them to you.
Oh costly intercourse of death
No punctuation.
No way of knowing if this was even an entire line or just part of a line or just a phrase within a passage or what.
No way of knowing if it was just an opening clause even.
And with the "oh" written that way, it could just as easily be the beginning of an old prose sentence in a novel as a verse one in a poem.
As for "subject matter," all you know (supposedly) was that the words were found in a Jack the Ripper diary.
So what would that lead you to think "the subject matter" might be?
Is there anything at all about the words "oh" and "costly" and "intercourse" and "of" and "death", when put together, that makes you think of a hymn to the Virgin Mary or Christ's crucifixion?
Or even anything in those five specific words that would make you think of the 17th Century?
Or even anything that would allow you to decide it was verse?
And if you're going to say "because it starts with the word "Oh"," think again -- because there are lots and lots of sentences in both prose and verse from literature going way way back and through even to Jack's own time that start with the word "Oh," and because it turns out the actual line you are looking for DOES NOT start with the word "Oh."
But you find it anyway?
Oh man, are you kidding?
Anyway, back to the question at hand.
Just what is "the subject matter evident from these five words?"
I think we're being sold a slippery bit of snake oil here. I think we're having the miracle story spun to make it sound far more plausible than it really is by suggesting that Mike could have known far more than he could have actually known if he had never seen these five specific words before.
I think that if you're honest, and stop and think about it, and I gave you just the words "Oh costly intercourse of death" and you knew nothing at all about them, you wouldn't know what subject matter they were referring to and you wouldn't know for sure if they were verse or prose and what you would know about where they came from (an old Ripper diary) and about how the line starts (with the wrong word actually) would in fact mislead you about "the subject matter evident from those words."
That would make finding them even MORE of a miracle, not less of one.
I think we need to think much more carefully about what we're really dealing with here.
Oh my aching head,
--John
|
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1070
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 10:09 am: | |
By the way,
I so glad of your confidence in me to find five words.
I bet you all ten pounds i can do it!!! (joke!!)
Jenni
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 941
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 10:20 am: | |
Hi Jenn & John et al.
I have been hearing about Jenn's experiment for some time now and I wish her well with it. Just to clarify, is Jenn being sent to the library to find those words we know and love, cold, in the library, asking an unsuspecting librarian, or is it another set of words entirely? Thanks for the clarification.
All the best
Chris
Christopher T. George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 821
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 10:32 am: | |
Hi Jenni,
Glad you added the parenthetical comment there. 
Contrary to all of Caroline's predictable kvetching, I don't want this to be considered as some sort of serious scientific experiment. This is a game we agreed to play. It should be fun. Of course, we are not in a lab and we are not reproducing the original conditions exactly (that would be stupid anyway, since that would tell you in advance what to look for). This is simply something worth trying, to see what happens.
There will be similarities to the Miracle of the Liverpool Library situation and, I hope, a few small differences, to make the thing fair.
But I have made sure of at least a couple things. You don't know anything about the five words beforehand (other than what they are). There are multiple copies of the book available in the library you are using. And the line and the source are in some way or another related to literature. That's all I'll say. It might be verse or it might not. It might be within a citation or merely on a page that also has citations and then again it might not. Like Mike, you don't know.
You have five words, a vague idea of the field, and a library.
You know the rules of the game.
Obviously, we are not proving anything here, but we are going to have a little fun and we are going to demonstrate a little something about finding five words in a library full of books that are all full of pages that are all full of lines that are all full of words.
And we are going to put the Miracle story in a little more rational perspective.
I'm glad you are playing. I'm enjoying the game as well, even before it has really begun, if only because I'm enjoying seeing the criticism and the desperate warning cries already appearing from those who might now be realizing what is and isn't really possible.
I have confidence in you, Jenni. I just don't have any confidence in Mike or the stories he tells.
It's charming, though, that Caroline and Robert do.
In the spirit of our little game,
--John
PS: Find it or not, I'll buy you a drink either way.
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 822
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 10:36 am: | |
Hi Chris,
No, Jenni knows the source of the original five diary words, so that wouldn't work.
She asked me to send her five words from a book in her library.
So I did.
Now she's going to go look for them.
And that's all there is to it, really.
--John (playing in the new spirit of "All Mike had to do...")
|
Christopher T George
Chief Inspector
Username: Chrisg
Post Number: 942
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 10:46 am: | |
Hi, John
Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification.
Actually one of us though could play the game with an unsuspecting librarian using Crashaw's words, and see if they could identify where they are from.
Nonetheless, of course, what Jenn is doing in itself will be very useful.
All the best
Chris
Christopher T. George
North American Editor
Ripperologist
http://www.ripperologist.info
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 823
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 10:59 am: | |
Hi Chris,
Good idea.
I'll try that on my lunch hour this week.
Thanks,
--John
PS: I will admit to this in advance. One small difference between the game Jenni and I are playing and what Mike faced is that the words I gave Jenni actually appear in a book exactly as I gave them to her. I didn't give her a line where one of the words, the first one in fact, was written wrong and then still expect her to find the right source anyway. |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1071
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 11:00 am: | |
Chris,
It would be very easy for me to find the Crawshaw line as there are multiple copies of the other publishers sphere book and one actually sphere book supposedly in the uni library!
Hey I'm just having a laugh, I hope to prove john wrong (but i get the feeling this is going to be hard!)
Jenni
ps if you want me to ask an unsuspecting librarian to find the crawshaw line, well first i would have to find a librarian and that would be hard!
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 824
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 11:08 am: | |
Jenni writes, in parentheses,
"(but i get the feeling this is going to be hard!)"
Gee, ya think?
Miracles are often difficult to reproduce.
(Especially if they never happened.)
Happy to be here,
--John
(Message edited by omlor on September 21, 2004) |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1073
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 11:17 am: | |
John,
No actually, I think I have better odds than Mike Mike did not even know that it wasn't something made up.
I'll find it - dont you worry!
Jenni
ps who's mad idea was this anyway, oh hang on, mine, oh,
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1074
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 11:19 am: | |
Aside,
I will keep a note of exactly how many hours i spend in the library!
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 825
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 11:38 am: | |
Hi Jenni,
You write, "Mike did not even know that it wasn't something made up."
Unless...
But I know what you mean.
--John  |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1075
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 - 11:53 am: | |
Naturally John,
You know i didn't mean that (the thought never even crossed my mind!)
Jenni
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1252
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 12:51 pm: | |
Hi All,
I may be wrong, but I thought I had made it clear on numerous occasions that it was Shirley who observed to Mike that the two lines in the diary:
oh costly intercourse
of death
looked like they could be part of a poem, or at least some literary quote, before sending him to the library.
The rest should be too obvious for words, but evidently it's still not obvious enough for John, so here we go yet again:
Even a clueless Mike who had never seen the words outside of the diary until the end of September 1994 (which is the theory being tested here, don't forget) would have confined his search to poetry or prose penned before Maybrick's death in 1889.
Mike claimed that a student in the library suggested to him that 'oh costly' might be 'old' English. Whether the student was a figment or not, and whether Mike has any real idea how far back in time he would have to go if he wanted to find 'old' English literature, he had only to look along all the shelves in the English Literature section of the library and he would have come across three spines bearing the words English Poetry & Prose, 1540-1674.
Love,
Caz
X |
Caroline Anne Morris
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Caz
Post Number: 1253
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 1:03 pm: | |
Hi All,
Robert Smith, in his informative post of Wednesday, September 15, 2004 – 1:30 pm, provides evidence that Crashaw wasn’t as ‘obscure’ in 1888 as John, for some obscure reason, was desperate to have his readers believe. Neither would Crashaw’s poetry only have been sought out and appreciated by a tiny clique of highbrow Catholics in the late Victorian era.
The two copies of Crashaw’s Complete Works, published 1858, which Robert found randomly, and were a snip at £10 and £15, would have been far more expensive had they been rare books from a limited print run.
Robert even tells us that the ‘o costly…’ lines ‘are at the very top of a right hand page, so are easy to spot.’ And that, in 1907, William Stebbing, in his book The Poets, quotes 18 lines from Sancta Maria Dolorum, starting ‘with the quote from the Sphere Guide’ – a book that would not be published for another 63 years. So much for the uniqueness claimed by John when comparing the extract itself, and its positioning in the Sphere Guide, with the extract as written into the diary.
Yet Robert’s examples are completely and conveniently ignored by John, so desperate is he to cling to Mike’s number two and its claimed provenance (oh God), as the only remaining support for John’s claim that Mike lied about the library ‘miracle’ and knew all along where the lines could be found (although as luck would have it, three examples were also conveniently on the library shelves when Shirley asked him to try and ‘find’ them, and he went off ostensibly to look).
In reality, anyone could have owned either a Sphere vol 2 or Crashaw’s Complete Works, and we now know of another 20th century Liverpudlian, who actually owned a copy of the latter. And Mike appears to be just about the last person one could seriously imagine ‘idly looking for an appropriate seventeenth century quote in a book of literary criticism to pop into the diary, when there is no other literary quote in the diary’.
If Mike did pop it in, he could not have known where in the poem the ‘o costly’ lines came, and his charmingly naïve claim, according to Melvin Harris, was that he came across this quotation about ‘intercourse’ and ‘death’ and thought it would fit right into this diary about sex (ah, that kind of intercourse) and murder. Had Mike read the preceding passages in the Sphere Guide, he would not have known how the poem started, nor seen the immediately preceding line: Her eyes bleed tears, his wounds weep blood.
And here, John succeeds in getting things round the wrong way, just as he did when he put Mike’s first confession after his library claim, when in fact it was over three months before the ‘miracle’ came to pass. This time John reports that Robert ‘cited the line after the quoted line from Crashaw's poem’. Wrong!! Robert clearly stated that he was citing the line in the original poem immediately preceding the ‘o costly’ line - Her eyes bleed tears, his wounds weep blood - which doesn’t appear in the Sphere Guide, unlike the lines immediately following the diary quotation.
Twice now, John has got his ‘before’ and ‘after’ muddled for some obscure reason, and twice the error appears to have nudged the argument in his favour. But then, if Robert’s comparisons between Crashaw’s imagery and the diarist’s are clearly the ‘desperate and pathetic drivel’ John tries to paint them, he certainly doesn’t need a silly mistake in reading to stir the paint for him.
This isn’t the ‘awkwardly forced reading’ of a Freshman who is ‘reaching to an embarrassing degree’.
This is John, who is forever urging others to read more carefully, succeeding twice in carelessly reading ‘before’ as ‘after’.
Anyway, back to the passages in the Sphere Guide preceding the ‘o costly’ lines. I concede that any reader might have noted the reference here to other poems: filled with the imagery of blood and milk, wounds and breasts…
Is this reference perhaps what John believes was on the forger’s mind when referring to Sir Jim kissing Mary Kelly’s sweet-tasting severed breasts, and thinking of placing them by her feet – shortly after which the forger decided to place the ‘oh costly’ lines? Or will John concede that in this case it is just a linguistic coincidence, and that whoever wrote the diary probably didn’t even read the Sphere Guide’s description of Crashaw’s imagery, let alone use it for inspiration?
Love,
Caz
X
|
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 826
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 1:25 pm: | |
Shirley said that the words looked like they could be part of a poem or at least some literary quote.
That's funny, so do the words I have given to Jenni.
Of course, as in Mike's case at the time, they might not be, either.
Jenni, like Mike, won't know for sure until she looks.
And yes, perhaps Mike would have looked in books about literature before 1889, although he had no real reason to know for sure whether this would have to be case, that the diary could only contain words from before that period. I mean, if he went around the streets looking for a pub named The Poste House,, he would have done well to look at pubs named that only well after 1889, even though the name appears in the diary, right?
In any case, yes, Jenni too might think similarly to Mike regarding this question.
And, incidentally, Mike, it turns out, found the line NOT in a book written before 1889, but rather in a book from the 1970s. So Jenni's choices (and Mike's) are not nearly as narrow as they seem just because you are looking for words written before 1889.
Don't buy the spin, here people. We will soon demonstrate just how much a miracle this fairy-story really is.
But once again, I thank Caroline for her charmingly worried warnings.
They remind us just how much fun it was even to suggest this little experiment, since it is already flushing out more than I ever dreamed.
Meanwhile, I'll make a deal with Caroline. We'll just assume, starting now, that whatever the results of our little game, she will not accept them as meaningful or relevant. And we'll agree to that stipulation beforehand and be happy with it.
That way the rest of us can have our fun without her having to worry so much about what might actually happen (or not happen).
It's an impossible story, people. Anyone who has ever spent serious time in the library knows this. You don'tjust walk into the library with five words that carry no specific intended meaning (and which are not even all written correctly) and find them excerpted and cited in the only book in all of history where they appear as such. Common sense and simple experience tell us that much.
And when a known liar is the one saying such an unbelievable event happens....
Well, you know the obvious conclusion.
It never happened.
Jenni is about to learn why. Caroline, I suspect, already knows why.
But in this case she needs to have faith in Mike, so she returns here time and time again to argue for the miraculous rather than the obvious.
She needn't do so anymore. We accept her faith in all its mystery. We understand she is a believer. We are quite content to play our little game and to investigate the likelihood of the miracle without her.
Though I'm sure we won't have to. I'm sure she'll be around nonetheless.
Enjoying the pregame show,
--John
PS: In the name of simple logic, I accept no sentence which begins with "Even a clueless Mike would have...." as being true or demonstrable. I have no idea what a clueless Mike would have done or not done in a library while holding five unknown words. And given the behavior I have seen from Mike, I don't believe anyone else can tell us such a thing either, unless they are just dreaming, or making it up.
PPS: Have we finally confirmed for certain that all three copies were there on the same shelf in the library at the time Mike was supposed to be in the library?
PPPS: Remember, there's a much simpler and much more logical and obvious explanation for how Mike knew where the quote was from, isn't there? |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 827
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 1:53 pm: | |
And just as I was writing that, Caroline come forward with another charming missive.
So let's go through that one, shall we?
Robert, as I said, managed to find exactly one edition of Crashaw's Complete Works generally available at the time. That hardly constitutes an author being either well-known or widely read.
And, in case Caroline has forgotten, the real James Maybrick was dead by 1907.
Also, Robert's silly suggestion that Crashaw was more read then than he is today was easy to disprove by a simple search of the MLA bibliography, which revealed over twenty times more writing on Crashaw during a similar time frame that Robert was able to cite.
This is all easy. It's not even a serious question.
We know of only two people in all of history that have owned the only two books we now have that contain this line excerpted and cited within them in this way (the Sphere Guide and the diary) -- Mike Barrett and Robert Smith. And Mike was the one who brought diary forward, remember?
I would also call everyone's attention to the fact that Caroline cannot defend Robert's silly reading of the words in the diary (oh, look, there's a line in a Ripper diary with "blood" and "eyes" in it, the writer must have been reading Crashaw), so she has to write actual paragraphs on the fact that the line in the poem comes before the "O costly..." line rather after (a completely irrelevant difference for our purposes and for the purposes of my earlier post, obviously -- my argument remains precisely the same whether the "O costly..." line is immediately before or after the other). As I'm sure readers can see instantly, this just rhetorical game playing with no meaningful point behind it designed in part to cover over the fact that Robert's forced reading of the diary text was nonetheless desperate and silly and that there is no evidence anywhere in the diary that even suggests that the writer knew any other words from Crashaw than these five).
So I let her have her moment of simple correction, gladly. It reveals just how thin and paltry the meat of her arguments truly are.
This is precisely the depth of response I have come to expect from the KHA crowd. When you have no evidence, and when all your arguments fly directly into the face of simple logic and common sense, all you have left is to point out things like this and pretend its argument.
This is where we are now.
This is what this discussion has become, because one can't defend the story of miracle told by a liar by offering evidence, so one must dance in a purely rhetorical and meaningless fashion.
This is why Diary World is the sad and pathetic place it is.
As always there is nothing new, there is nothing real, and Caroline is forced into this sort of silliness precisely because she has no evidence to support her faith in Mike's miracle.
I'm sure no one is surprised.
Off to the library,
--John
(Message edited by omlor on September 22, 2004) |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1078
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 3:32 pm: | |
Hi everyone,
talk about over reaction, it's just a bit of fun. I intend to be systamatic!! I will find it if it is there but lets not expect me to find it on the first day, that would be a bonus!
Jenni
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 828
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 4:26 pm: | |
Hi Jenni.
Yes, ignore all the silliness and over-reactions around here. This thing should be fun. Head to the library and have a good time in your search and perhaps even learn a little bit from the experience about the realistic possibilities in a case like this.
Enjoy yourself. Remember that most of what just took place here this afternoon is simply over-the-top rhetorical posturing and meaningless nonsense -- perhaps even a fascinating side-effect of our fun little proposal.
Happy hunting,
--John
PS: In order to amend my earlier comments for the record, so that they will be accurate, I will happily repost them here, having changed the one word that bothered Caroline to such distraction, despite the fact that it was irrelevant to the point I was making.
I'll put the altered word in italics, so everyone can see it. (The other stuff in boldface was so in the original.)
Here's the new version. It's still true.
*************************************
And then, as if it made any of this somehow more explainable, Robert cites the line before the quoted line from Crashaw's poem, even though it doesn't appear anywhere in the diary and there is no evidence whatsoever that the diarist even ever read or knew it.
And because the Virgin Mary is weeping and Jesus is bleeding, he assumes this is somehow related to or even coincidentally like a line in the diary that also has the words "eyes" and "blood."
WELL!
With research and reading and convincing logic like this, it's no wonder we are all wasting our time. Clearly the diary must be real, since it has a line with the words "blood" and the word "eyes" in the same line. Especially a diary by Jack the Ripper. Yup. No one could have forged that, could they? The only way they could write a line that had the words "blood" and "eyes" in it in a Ripper diary is if they had read Crashaw's line about Jesus and Mary, right?
What desperate and pathetic drivel.
This is the sort of awkwardly forced reading that my Freshmen do when they are trying to impress me with a point they think they have "discovered" and they don't realize they are just reaching to an embarrassing degree.
*******************************
And that remains true, I'm sorry to say.
And this book was clearly not written by the real James Maybrick and he was not writing this line from this poem in his diary and everyone on these boards at this moment knows that, including Caroline. So her latest offering is just a sorry bit of rhetorical power gaming for some sad and silly personal purpose. |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1079
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 4:31 pm: | |
another thing, to be fair some of roberts examples dated after Maybricks death, hardly proof in favour of authenticity in those cases, though that it was in print means the possiblity is remaining, shall we say!
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 1080
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 4:42 pm: | |
Listen, you lot,
I am going to find those bloody words if it is the last thing I do!!!! (ok maybe not but still). its a laugh lighten up,
Geez!
Jenni
incidentally there is no reason to suppose the liverpool library copy is not the source of the quote. the conditions were such Mike could have found the quote, as he says, who are we to argue (well perhaps ignore that last line!)
"Think things, not words." - O.W. Holmes jr |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 829
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 4:46 pm: | |
Jenni,
Actually, five out of Robert's eight listed items dated after Maybrick's death. And I posted the full bibliographic information on both of the editions of the Complete Works myself, long ago, on the old boards, along with some of the other things written about him from the time and information about the size of their relative runs.
I suspect you can still find the post on the archive CD.
Nothing is ever new here. You should know that by now.
Nor does it always have to make sense.
It is, after all, Diary World, where desperation and desire routinely trump common sense and logic.
That's probably why Figment hangs around here.
--John
PS: Just saw your latest. Yes, I'll ignore the last line, at least until you've spent some time in the library.
And remember...
(Message edited by omlor on September 22, 2004) |
Mark Andrew Pardoe
Inspector
Username: Picapica
Post Number: 264
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 6:41 pm: | |
Whatho all,
Crashaw's Complete Works published in 1858. Maybrick died in 1889. So there is a chance he may have read the poem.
There again, any one could have read the poem after 1858; I expect more than two copies of the book were published.
Cheers, Mark (who's trying to find some logic) |
Tim Brownsea
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 6:08 pm: | |
From all what i have read on the subject, i just can`t imagine mike being the forger.I do believe the diary to be fake though.Does anyone have an opinion on who the forger was? |
John V. Omlor
Chief Inspector
Username: Omlor
Post Number: 830
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, September 22, 2004 - 9:53 pm: | |
Mark,
It's a bit more complicated than that, given Crashaw's audience, the history of his reception at the time, and especially the appearance of this very same line not only in the diary but also similarly excerpted and conveniently cited in another book owned by the very same guy who gave us the diary (and no other book we have today).
And that same guy was ALSO the only one who could tell us all where the line in the diary came from!
A quick read of the archives will reveal the problems, especially with the fairy-tale that guy told concerning how he knew this.
All the best,
--John
PS: Just for fun, I asked my ex, the tenured professor who has published specifically on Crashaw, to read Robert's little bit of literary analysis concerning the sentence in the diary.
I would like to report that she offered a deep and trenchant critique of his reading.
But I can't.
Because, I'm afraid, upon reading it she dismissed his interpretation with two quick words.
"That's silly."
|
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