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From: Stephen Lauf
To: design-l@lists.psu.edu
Subject: Re: living democracy
Date: 2004.04.16 15:20
Just heard on the news that one of the two US soldiers that went missing a few days ago showed up on a video tape alive and speaking, but also as a hostage.
[This morning I finished reading My Past by Marie Larisch. This is the book where the excerpt of Ludwig II's imaginary dinner party comes from. I found out about this book via another book about T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Apparently the Marie mentioned in The Waste Land is Marie Larisch, and there are other images in Eliot's poem that refer to Ludwig's death and southern Bavaria. My Past ends with Marie revealing what really happened regarding the assassination of Rudolph, the Crown Prince of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his young and brief mistress Mary Vetsera. Marie was sort of like an aristocrat un-finking Linda Tripp, and Rudolph and Mary slightly resemble Clinton and Lewinsky. Rudolph was assassinated [actually, it turns it the official reason for the death of Rudolph and Mary was their suicide pact] because he partook of a scheme to overthrow his own father, the Emperor Franz-Josef. The scandal was seen as the beginning of the end of 19th century Europe with its old aristocratic political system, an end which culminated with World War I.
What interests me here is how My Past may have influenced, or even inspired Eliot to write The Waste Land (especially because of the title of the epic poem).]
Have I these days also been reading The Waste Land II or the geography of .WL?
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