17 October 2008

Maybe that's why curators find us so disgusting


"For Fritz, when he was writing, the lines meant roads and the letters ride on motor-bicycles - on the pen - upon them. For instance, 'i' and 'e' ride together on a motor-bicycle that is usually driven by the 'i' and they love one another with a tenderness that is quite unknown in the real world. Because they ride together there is hardly any difference between them, for the beginning and the end - he was talking of the small Latin alphabet - of 'i' and 'e' are the same, only in the middle the 'i' has a little stroke and the 'e' has a little hole. Concerning the Gothic letters 'i' and 'e', he explained that they also ride on a motor-bicycle, and that it is only a difference like another make of bicycle that the 'e' has a box instead of the hole in the Latin 'e'. The 'i's are skillful, distinguished and clever, have many pointed weapons, and live in caves, between which, however, there are also mountains, gardens and harbours. They represent the penis and their path coitus. On the other hand, the 'l's are represented as stupid, clumsy, lazy and dirty. They live in caves under the earth. In 'L'-town dirt and paper gather in the streets, in the little filthy houses they mix with water and dyestuff bought in 'I'-land and drink and sell this as wine. They cannot walk properly and cannot dig because they hold the spade upside down, etc. It became evident that the 'l's represented faeces. Numerous phantasies were concerned with other letters also."
-Melanie Klein "The Role of the School in the Libidinal Development of the Child," 

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