the reason i like max luthi so much as a fairy tale critic, is that he does not give you psychoanalytic or anthropological readings. to him, fairy tales are romantic and poetic visions of man. they are literature. i'll always remember him for saying "the fairy tale is an epic genre". isn't that a great quote? so obviously provocatively paradoxical, and yet there is something so right about it. "the fairy tale is an epic genre" that inspired me to attempt an essay on spenser's faerie queene book one as a fairy tale, although my end-of-term panic and realisation that it's easier to write about one passage in the faerie queene than the whole idea of the faerie queene stopped me. luthi makes me happy because he is interested in language and style, the fairy tale as poetry, not as platform for mind operations or insights into local cultures. novalis will crop up in luthi often: "everything poetic must be like a fairy tale." luthi acknowledges that we would not, today, endorse this view without reservation, but he believes that "the fairy tale which transforms the world, like all true poetry, is an elemental form of literature from which great writers have repeatedly drawn strength and inspiration"

listening to edith piaf and trying to read emerson and thoreau. sleepy but kinda happy.