Sunday, March 19, 2023

Sympathy for the Devil? May 7, 2013

  


 

In light of the scribe and the phoenix poems, I decided to revisit this poem too since my previous interpretation had painted it as part of the romantic series (which it may still be) and yet may have broader implications my previous view did not take into account.

This is especially true in the light of another recent poem about fairness she posted which I have read but not yet analyzed which seems to have a similar theme – if even more shocking.

In an upside down world, this poem claims--  as does the fairness poem--  ordinary rules no longer apply and the ultimate end game is to be survive.

She claims what was on the bottom it's now on the top and perhaps people with real talent and other virtues are frozen and dismayed and forgotten.

Her use of forgotten has multiple meanings: as people forgotten and “we” people who have forgot to obey the anti-rules of the day-to-day existence.

Anti rules have a number of inferences. The primary meaning: not authorized, illegal, elicit or unlawful.

But more to her point, she likely means a world where players are encouraged to ignore all rules creating a kind of chaos where things are unpredictable, and a person cannot simply get along by obeying ordinary rules

While my original assessment narrowly defined this in regard to love. her later posts make it clear she meant this in a much broader sense -- her language use reveals a much more aggressive approach to life and merely the aftermath of a  broken heart.

If she could “seize” what she felt she deserved she would feel less put out by the society and the company in which she finds herself.

She seems to understand that if she doesn't grab what she thinks she deserves she won't get it.

Yet, she implies in this poem that she might not be in a position to do so at the moment

And in a clearly unfair world, where up is down and perhaps right is wrong if she could grab what she deserves she would feel less fearful and less restrained by what she is so “unlawfully restrained from” and something that denies her self-forgiveness.

In her follow up poem on Fairness, she goes to a much further and scary extreme in this regard, so shocking, I’m shocked she did not yank the poem down before I could print it out.

In this poem, however, she defies my original assessment that painted this phrase in a romantic way – such as marriage or entanglement blocking her from getting the love she thinks she deserves.

It is clear this is a prelude to the much more unvarnished fairness poem to come, and seems a kind of Sympathy for the Devil extreme where right is wrong good is bad and in such a scandal existence everybody needs to be operating with the same plane if that's the only way a person can get what he or she deserves.

If there are no rules, then a person must do whatever it takes to get what he or she deserves or needs to survive

This is a much harsher assessment of this poem than the first one but is supported by the more recent fairness poem that takes this theme to an even more realistic and scary level which I will get into shortly.

 

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