The first Harry we meet is Potter, the one in the books, with the
mark, but he is not First Harry. Before him there was Harry, a kid
JKR knew. Perhaps she had seen him hustled into the house one day by
over-bearing parents, who looked around suspiciously to see if anyone
was watching them. Perhaps he had spoken to her a couple times about
some Cavendish-like book. Perhaps, based on some things he said, she
had guessed at physical abuse.
"No, no. There WAS a kid she turned into Ron Weasley, not Harry."
Snorkack droppings, I say. Ron is simply everyman, the "mate" chorus.
There was a kid, known to JKR, who was First Harry, or, if you
insist, Real Harry. The one in the books is Second Harry, the one
about whom we ostensibly read, Fictional Harry. He so-called lives in
two worlds, the muggle and the witch wizard ones - he is nearly
nothing in one and nearly saviour in the other. And for him, the not
quite distinct worlds interact, generally in a way such that much of
what happens in the muggle world can be explained, directly or
indirectly, by what happens in the witch wizard world. His knowledge
of the muggle world is enhanced and enriched by his knowledge of the
witch wizard world. His situation is explained and justified by the
witch wizard world. But there is another, a shadow, a shape of
darkness, the eyes between the house and the fence that raises the
hairs on the back of his neck, a silent and watching Harry, Lost
Harry, if you will, necessary but not completely parsed, who we shall
call Third Harry.
Third Harry is a kind of triangulation based on the other two. Third
Harry is what JKR made of First Harry, the meaning of both seeing
First Harry and his situation, not ignoring her response to this
seeing and her feelings about his inferred situation, and of
understanding "the other" in some fullness, in a second of time,
all
at once, when she was younger - a moment of sight, of expanded
consciousness, or whatever it is people talk about when they use such
terms, the dawning of self-consciousness, which is also consciousness
of the other. This happened the way she claims to have later ideated
the whole of Second Harry on the train, the Hogwarts Express of her
imagination, as it were, between Manchester and London. What happened
on the train was that she remembered that moment of "universality"
and THEN thought of what could be done with it, what could be done to
parse it. And because this remembered moment, this dawning of self
and other consciousness was heartily compassionate, she began to reel
Third Harry (now Universal Harry) in, not completely, but enough that
Second Harry (Potter) could take form.
Potter is sandwiched between First and Third Harry, a kind of
compromise, or rather, the words used to communicate !Harry. (That's
why he's Second, he's in between, even if he came much later than
Third Harry.)
The question is, is Third Harry the distance, the height, or the
angle? My idea means that Third Harry gets more important the closer
we are to First Harry, so that could mean First Harry is the height,
representing the vertical (the real?), Second Harry the distance,
representing the horizontal (the telling) and Third Harry the angle,
representing the diagonal (the reading). The angle changes as Second
Harry (HP) moves between muggle and witch wizard world, for one
thing. Generally speaking, we'd need Third Harry (angle) to determine
Second Harry (Potter) in RW application. Also, depending on your
percieved position, that would mean Third Harry is wider or narrower
(more acute?) when Potter is in either the muggle or witch wizard
world.
So, what does this all mean?
For one thing, in triangulation, the angle is generally either known
or calculated "here," so we are always in the same spot as Third
Harry. It means that JKR is flying the kite, as it were, of her
triangulation, just as we are flying the kites of our reading. It
means if one of the Harrys was not represented, we would probably
have to invent him.
It means Third Harry is like "the room" in the Department of
Mysteries. It means JKR has introduced Luna because Luna
relates
almost directly to Third Harry. It means Third Harry accounts for the
fan fiction, this list, and Nimbus2003.
There's more, but this should be adequate for now.
I give you ANOTHER HARRY.
A Necessary Obscure Third Harry Evokes Rowling's Humanism And Readers
React Yearningly
From the first half of OOP, some interesting, or telling, statements,
leading to speculations on being marked, disillusionment, and "the
band of pure white light inside." Second half a bit later.
"Between the absence of Hagrid and the presence of those dragonish
horses, he had felt that his return to Hogwarts, so long anticipated,
was full of unexpected surprises, like jarring notes in a familiar
song."
JKR is telling us here exactly what she is doing in the book. This is
the definitive meta, as it were, in OOP. The sentence thus in fact
reads - Between the absence of naivete and the presence of death's
remembrance, the book, so long anticipated, is full of unexpected
surprises, like jarring notes in a familiar song."
"'Seems the house-elves do want freedom after all.'
"'1 wouldn't bet on it,' Ron told her cuttingly. 'They might not
count as clothes. They didn't look anything like hats to me, more
like woolly bladders.'"
Including this as the second funniest line in the book (the first
being HP's Quirrell as teacher comment that earned him another week
of detention.) But it also serves as a surfacing point for our
(readers) thoughts about HG's self-delusion about what she is doing.
She doesn't knit, magically or otherwise, very well - knitting is a
purely functional gesture, towards a 'cause' that really interests
her. RW is noticing that perhaps HG could come up with something
slightly better, more engaging of HG's passion, perhaps something
that involves a bit more interaction with, um, let's see... how
about... the house elves themselves! (to take a lead from HP). As is
JKR's wont, she is giving RW, rather less than exemplary in terms of
self-reflection, a slightly veiled "really good line." (Never give
up
hope in everyman, who has, after all, all things in some small
measure.)
'Oh, for heaven's sake, Harry, you can do better than her,'
said
Hermione. 'Ginny's told me all about her; apparently, she'll only
believe in things as long as there's no proof at all.
Well, what Luna represents
to me, who met someone very like Luna in
school and quite liked her, is more thematic than literal. Luna is
JKR's gesture, now necessary, since the story is "turning", as I
mentioned in the bit at the beginning of this post - a gesture toward
the underlying themes I have alluded to in other diatr... other
posts, a thematic expression of the so-called ethical imperative, at
the core. Such an imperative, which cannot be traced to or distilled
from, direct experience, book-learning, or emotion alone, requires we
posit something like a "source", a generator of sorts, which guides,
or shifts, or nudges, what we do with what we've been given and what
we've experienced, but not just that alone. Luna, and what she
represents, is overt openness, the non-judgemental, as it were - not
merely to the idea of Crumple-horned Snorkacks, or to HP's story
(which, by the way, if I had experienced, wouldn't want to blab to
too many people either, to then have to sit through their shocked
responses and then feel absolutely alone and miserable, knowing that
knowing is not nearly the same as having experienced and can even
create a false sense of identification), but to seeing (thestrals),
hearing (whispers) etc., in short, to what some refer to as sixth
sense, and others refer to as the experiencing pre-self, or whatever
it is, even, at times, as the band of pure white light inside, or
some such. At any rate, it is similar to "reading" signs or
sidewalks, or gestures - that is, taking all of knowledge and memory
and vision etc. and coming up with something greater than the parts,
the creative spark, as it were. Luna doesn't represent dream, in this
role. She is a dream - like dragons in Le Guin - they don't "have"
magic, they ARE magic.
"'You know what?' Harry said to Ron and Hermione as they entered the
Great Hall. 'I think we'd better check with Puddlemere United whether
Oliver Wood's been killed during a training session, because Angelina
seems to be channelling his spirit.'"
It was the use of the theosophic term that got me here. As sideways
glance at new agism. But it is also a statement more in tune,
emotionally, with the old HP, with the old trio. At least it reads
that way. Looking at it, however, I can't help feeling that it's
resemblance to the old HP is marked by just that - it's "like"
something the old HP would say. HP is being "like" the old HP alot
in
the book. What distinguishes this remark is that the idea of
channelling, to the reader, doesn't sit quite properly now. Not
irritating enough to get theorized about, perhaps, (though I wouldn't
put it passed someone on the list to do so) but nearly.
"He also felt dimly that this was between himself and Umbridge, a
private battle of wills, and he was not going to give her the
satisfaction of hearing that he had complained about it."
and
"'Yeah,' said Harry, before he could stop himself, 'that's the only
bit of me Dumbledore cares about, isn't it, my scar?'"
This is very hard to explain to the list because I find such very
different readings here, even if the idea isn't that difficult - but
let me try sideways. Before, the scar meant NOTHING, or rather,
marked him as belonging in the closet, marked him AS nothing. And HP
was "just Harry." Later, it was what set him apart in being a symbol
of why he should even be in the WW at all - a discovery of the "out"
from his closet - the very same scar! Wow - the imperfection isn't a
limitation, after all, but is salvation, or what have you. Later
still, it took on also the meaning of his difference in an even more
cruel way, a way that propelled him from being unknown to being
unknowable, from being untouched to being untouchable. His completely
understandable and justified approach to DUmbridge is partly his
dedication to becoming self-contained, self-sufficient as a stone, as
the poet said. Not a bad idea for someone who's been "protected"
or
sheltered in some rather inadequate ways, and I include AD's tragic
flaw here. The process is nearly complete in OOP. The so-called fate
sealed by the scar has taken HP to the very edge of the livable. His
sit down by the lake I read as his decision to "disillusion" himself
-
of ever being free of the marking, and of the marking itself, at the
same time - if he didn't do this, I suggest there would be nothing
for it but to jump into the lake sans gillyweed and save us the wait
for books 6 and 7. (The lake here I am thinking of something that
will "accept" anything with equanimity, a symbol of the place HP
needs to be.) Please note, however,it was only after this
meditation
that the exchange with Luna could take place.
In short, HP has managed to curtail, or set aside, the defining
aspects of the marking, of being just Harry and of being more than
just Harry, and he has become more open to what was motivating him
all along. He was motivated to take on injustice at the beginning of
OOP, for example, but in a destructive and almost petty way. At the
end of the book, though still responding to injustice, he sees,
because he is ready to see, a response that is quite opposite. Harry
Potter has become, how do I say this, likeable, and perhaps, almost,
touchable.
There is no doubt that Luna's mom's "accident" had
some lasting
effect on the girl - we need to know what spell her mom was doing,
and what Luna saw. We need to know more about the publisher of the
Quibbler, too. More centrally to my interest in Luna, however, is
what the facts that are given to him mean to HP, in light of their
last scene together. Whatever the effect on Luna her mother's demise,
it is her relations with the DA and with individual members,
Hermione, Ginny and Harry, that intrigues me. They all, like everyone
else, think she's a bit odd, but seem to be reasonably friendly with
her.
Now, as I mentioned to you, I see Luna as part of JKR that
needs to
be present in order to complete the liberation of HP from the closet.
Luna is the other side of JKR, the anti-Hermione, as she stated, the
alter ego, the openness to things other than logic or law or
tradition. (I even claimed, in one post, that Luna didn't represent
dream, but rather WAS dream, like dragons in Le Guin being magic, not
having it.) In other words, the series so-called resolution requires
Luna's presence, in some way - I place this significance in the
writing itself, in the position that so-called knowledge or
information occupies in Rowling. And where erised is the books
themselves, for the readers, Luna is the capacity to dream. In
conjunction with the plot-driven, Voldemort connected dreams of HP,
there is dreaming itself. Take HP dreams out of the context. What
would you do? You'd try to get down the hall, you'd try to open the
door, you'd try to follow where the dream was leading. And, feeling,
of course, that it's your dream, you'd stop at almost nothing to find
the meaning of it. Was there a meaning to the dream aside from the
big plot? If there was, it was connected to Luna, thematically. Why
don't the let her say what "might be in there" regarding the locked
room - which may or may not be "the room" of which AD speaks? Talk
about irksome!
Anyway, the point is that everyone seems to be telling HP that
even
his dreams aren't his own. But the curiousity to find the end of the
dream is very much his own.
On another Luna note, she's in Ravenclaw, and presumably loves
studying, though the choice of study material is questionable,
according to canon. Maybe she is also, even in the dream role,
someone who can help HP focus, as it were, apply himself, by finding
words, perhaps, for the motivations he has, which would be impossible
to describe in a satisfying way in the books they way they have been
written so far. In other words, Luna supplies a whole catagory of
senses or ideas or thoughts or feelings that weren't accessible to
JKR before. Or to HP. It's not so much what she can see, but what she
can say.
The centaur leaving the group, firenze, is making a decision not
unlike sirius to leave his family, as it were, or Dobby's sneaking
around behind Sr Malfoy's back, etc. If the statue at the MoM is to
be set right, then all creatures involved should certainly be given
the liberty to choose whatever they want to choose, including not
being segregated. Otherwise, if centaur-being or elf-being is
forever separate from human-being, say, then just put humpty back
together and change nothing. That is, firenze's act is laudable, and
I don't see why one would question it or his motivations.
Regarding new critics, I would just point out Walter Benjamin as
possibly illuminating in "close reading" Rowling. Rereading a bit
of
Breton, too, I was rather interested to hear how he seems to have had
an experience like Rowling's on the Hogwarts train, i mean the train
from manchester to london. I reproduce the quote and leave it to the
individual list members whether or not this seems at all similar to
the implications of "in essense divided"
Andre Breton
"It was in 1919, in complete solitude and at the approach of sleep,
that my attention was arrested by sentences more or less complete,
which became perceptible to my mind without my being able to discover
(even by very meticulous analysis) any possible previous volitional
effort..... I was really bewildered. Unfortunately, I am unable to
remember the exact sentence at this distance, but it ran
approximately like this: "A man is cut in half by the window."
Now, even Duchamp seems to have gained a little respect for T. S.
Eliot in later years, so there is evidence of some connection between
dada/surrealism and the theories of artisto-cultural "channeling",
as
it were. I think Rowling has a touch of both. So, I thought, is there
something to the list that's close as well. Here's Breton again,
later.
"Everything tends to make us believe that there exists a certain
point of the mind at which life and death, the real and the imagined,
past and future, the communicable and the incommunicable, high and
low, cease to be perceived as contradictions. Now, search as one may
one will never find any other motivating force in the activities of
the Surrealists than the hope of finding and fixing this point."
That is, there is ample room to describe Rowling's writing, or even
better, our scrounging of HP canon, as surrealist acts in themselves,
as defined by Breton.
Now, I have a confession to make. Perhaps too easily, I have
become a
total Luna fan. Not the "Rosemary" song quite, though that thing
was
certainly about a "hippie chick", or the "her name was JOANNE,
and
she lived in a meadow by a pond..." so-called song, quite. At any
rate, if Luna had lived a few decades earlier, she'd have been a
hippie. That's all. Which is cool by me.
Finally, regarding tarot interps
"The Hanged Man, in similar fashion, is a card about suspension, not
life or death. This is a time of trial or meditation, selflessness,
sacrifice, prophecy. The Querent stops resisting; instead he makes
himself vulnerable, SACRIFICES HIS POSITION or opposition, and in
doing so, gains illumination." (emphasis mine)
Well, let me confess something else - I half (or slightly more)
believe HP will run away this summer, and will NOT be intending to go
to Hogwarts. Maybe I just feel this way tonight... I am going to
reread a few later passages in OOP with this potential in mind.
~reading last bit quickly~ HP smiles, HG and RW reiterate "see you
soon", hmm... will get back to you
dan
"I do/as I dance/What people did, what they're going to do"
Andre Breton