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Post by weirdmonger on Oct 23, 2022 14:20:07 GMT
Anyone agree with me that MISS MILLER by Walter de la Mare seems to be a ghost story based on Mary Poppins?
PS (EDIT): Sorry, just discovered that MISS MILLER preceded MARY POPPINS! So please adjust the question accordingly.
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Post by helrunar on Oct 23, 2022 15:21:36 GMT
P. L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins books, was a student of metaphysical philosophies and occult teachings. One of her teachers, George Russell aka AE, was a Theosophist, clairvoyant, and friend of Yeats. AE is mentioned in some of the writings of Yeats as well as being quoted in one of the most interesting passages in the book The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries by W. Evans-Wentz, published 1910. If you read the Poppins novels, there are quite a few occult "Easter eggs" more or less hidden in plain sight. I was very surprised upon reading the books as an adult to realize that Travers was portraying Poppins as some sort of amalgam of a Bodhisattva and a Pagan Goddess.
H.
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Post by weirdmonger on Oct 23, 2022 15:36:53 GMT
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Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Oct 23, 2022 16:26:18 GMT
Mary Poppins first appeared in 1926. www.marypoppinsandthematchman.com/index.htmlMaybe a biography will tell you if they knew each other, I'd think it likely as she seemed to mix with a lot of the literati of the day. I've seen a quote on Amazon attributed to Walter de la Mere about Mary Poppins: "Absolutely alive, and aglint with magic." The bird's head umbrella is probably just coincidence, as she has it in the 1926 story.
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Post by helrunar on Oct 23, 2022 16:48:31 GMT
Thanks, Princess, for that link. Interesting!
cheers, Hel.
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Post by weirdmonger on Oct 23, 2022 17:03:24 GMT
Amazing. Thanks, Princess.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 23, 2022 18:13:13 GMT
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Post by andydecker on Oct 24, 2022 7:59:59 GMT
'With a spoonful of sugar'. Yeah, right!
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Post by weirdmonger on Oct 24, 2022 15:44:42 GMT
That’s an amazing picture! It will pop up in my nightmares for ever more!
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 24, 2022 17:16:32 GMT
That’s an amazing picture! It will pop up in my nightmares for ever more! Cool!
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Post by weirdmonger on Oct 26, 2022 10:53:09 GMT
THE RIDDLE (1903) by Walter de la Mare
“And Vega the far-shining stood over against the window above the slate roof.”
This brief story — as beautifully haunting as it is simple — is an ironically gratuitous tontine of seven grandchildren, all siblings, defying their grandmother to whom they have gone to live as presumed orphans, but actually fulfilling her inferred wishes by being subsumed gradually, one by one, as intrinsic to their hobbies and games of pretence and even romantic role-playing, till only the grandmother is left. ‘Vega’ originally meaning ‘falling vulture’, I note from elsewhere.
===
“Out on the lawn I lie in bed, Vega conspicuous overhead […] Now north and south and east and west Those I love lie down to rest;” — W.H. Auden (A Summer Night 1933)
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Post by weirdmonger on Nov 8, 2022 16:55:45 GMT
I discovered today that Walter de la Mare in his dark masterpiece PRETTY POLL story refers to Minnie, a character who murders the parrot in it, and that the parrot in Elizabeth Bowen’s THE PARROT story keeps repeating the same name of Minnie! Which is the prequel and which the sequel!
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Post by weirdmonger on Nov 8, 2022 17:07:20 GMT
I discovered today that Walter de la Mare in his dark masterpiece PRETTY POLL story refers to Minnie, a character who murders the parrot in it, and that the parrot in Elizabeth Bowen’s THE PARROT story keeps repeating the same name of Minnie! Which is the prequel and which the sequel! Also cf Robert Hichens’ Guildea
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Post by johnnymains on Nov 8, 2022 18:19:40 GMT
that's actually really cool
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Post by weirdmonger on Nov 11, 2022 16:11:14 GMT
THE WHARF by Walter de la Mare
This is, of course, the most horrific story written by this author — preempting Ligotti, sidelining Jean Ray, out Poe-ing Poe, gazumping the Gothics. And more.
My detailed rationale on my site today.
PS: Believe me this is definitely an unmissable horror story.
I can’t see it has ever been anthologised other than in a handful of complete volumes of his stories.
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