User talk:Macspaunday/Archive 2006

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 * Image has now been tagged. Macspaunday 16:18, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

How to change page title?
Please see the question on the talk page at Musée des Beaux-Arts. The title of the page is incorrect (hyphen should be removed). Thank you.
 * fixed. -AMK152 18:20, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Auden
Thanks for all your work there, I left you a note on the article talk page. Haiduc 18:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Yates
Swift work on Yates. Thank you. Don't worry about the bot, I am about to put in a request to delete the old (stage designer) page. Haiduc 02:48, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Good - sometimes it's hard to be certain of tone in online communications. I went back to that Louise Jury story, and will put in a complete quotation to replace a fragment of one. The description of Auden's list of names is simply wrong; it's based on a hasty misreading of a printed description that says "Auden deleted two names while writing the list". Somehow the BBC producer got this information second- or third-hand and misinterpreted it to mean that Auden returned to it over and over again, when it's a hasty list that was obviously written out quickly in the course of drafting poems, and then forgotten. Journalism is clearly the worst possible source for accurate details. Macspaunday 02:58, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It doesn't seem like anything was done to Yates, so I added a speedy deletion template to the page. (I found out about the page through the post to the Village pump.) -- kenb215 talk 07:41, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

"Cerberus" might have been a more apt moniker for you
Thanks again for helping out (I did mean to get around to that fix on the Pederastic couples page, but you beat me to it). Which brings up a question that came up for me yesterday, when I was reading your edits.

Going by Louise Jury's article, Yates was very clearly aware of being loved, and not exactly in a fatherly fashion even if with fatherly intensity. What he did not realize at the time is that he was also Auden's muse. I do not think that comes across all that clearly in the Yates article. I think I'll touch that up, unless you prefer to do it. Regards, Haiduc 16:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Louise Jury's article is third-hand and gets things wrong in the way that things go wrong when one (accurate) phrase is extracted from a longer sentence so that the phrase is no longer accurate. Will touch this up and will add some further details. Macspaunday 16:34, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Have touched this up; Yates was not aware of the intensity of Auden's feelings until much later. This pattern was entirely typical of Auden and well-documented; more than one person in his later years reported that he had no idea that Auden had strong feelings toward him until he was told about it by one of Auden's other friends; meanwhile, Auden had published poems inspired by that person. You've noticed that I added the full quotation at the foot of the article. (Have also added family details; I have the father's name somewhere or other but can't find it now.) Macspaunday 16:42, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * His comments seem a bit more nuanced than that. After all he seems to have been quite aware of the love, and its "unfatherly" quality, and of his reciprocation. This was after all a very smart boy in his mid-teens in an English public school environment that left nothing to the imagination. It would be nice to include Yates comment about their mutual love, perhaps at the point where we first mention their passion. It is very evocative. Haiduc 18:47, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Excellent point; have added the very nuanced full quotation from Yates himself; his "in a way" speaks volumes. Macspaunday 19:19, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, this is an encyclopedia entry, and the level of detail seem slightly excessive here, as if this were an encyclopedia entry about an erotic relationship, when what matters about Yates is his distinction as a television designer (the reason for the obituaries). But if there is going to be this level of detail, then it seems important to get it right, based on all available sources (not only the online ones), and that's exactly what I've tried to do. Macspaunday 19:26, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

A little research found quite a bit more about Yates and his teachers and friends, including the poet Owen Dodson; also was able to provide accurate dates for quite a bit more of the page. Macspaunday 20:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks again for your willingness to investigate -- this has been one of my more instructive collaborations here (if I can call it that, since you have been doing most of the -laborating and I most of the co-ing). I think it is very important to cover the erotic aspect of someone's life, all the more when one is describing people for whom passion is at the center of their professional as well as personal existence. Anything else is to give undue weight to the more facile, obvious aspects. Haiduc 22:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * In Auden's case it's a bit more complicated; his sexual life was evidently less important to him than other aspects of life. He wrote that he got more erotic joy out of (non-sexual) collaboration with other writers than he ever got from any sexual relation, and it's this kind of special personal quality that seems to me important to keep in mind when so much of modern culture wants to interpret individuals in terms of standard labels that dissolve individuality. (I've tried to keep this in mind while editing the Auden entry.) Macspaunday 22:14, 29 December 2006 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that much of that impetus to flatten out erotic individuality into stock figures is the result of a societal reluctance to look at the particulars of our heroes' love lives. These unimaginative constructs are rooted in ignorance. Maybe one result of opening this aspect to public scrutiny, as you have done here, will be to expand that mental space to accommodate things as they truly are. Haiduc 04:23, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Truth has a way of succeeding sooner or later; sometimes much later, unfortunately enough, but eventually always. Macspaunday 04:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)


 * By the way, this has also been useful in that I was prompted to create an entry for Yates's teacher Maurice Feild, something that was notably lacking; he was mentioned in some other entries, and deserved an entry of his own. Macspaunday 22:37, 29 December 2006 (UTC)