Cabell Library

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Cabell Library

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1wirkman
Jan 12, 2019, 4:25 am

I wonder what Branch Cabell would think about the library that bears his name.

As far as I can tell, it is a library without any physical books.

https://youtu.be/dm6lF1rfiIo

2wirkman
Jan 12, 2019, 4:45 am

Of course there are books.... at least in the Cabell Room:

https://youtu.be/znHTT1ZlQKk

By the way, who believed that Cabell’s books are “thinly veiled commentaries on the manners of his times”? The books have universal themes, and are, as I argued before, more Menippean satire than comedies of manners. Oh, OK: his books set in his contemporary Virginia (Sil.) might qualify as comedies of manners — The Cords of Vanity seems to fit. But The
Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck aims for more universal themes, and by the publication of The Cream of the Jest, Cabell was well on his way to past the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Cabell did not “thinly veil” his “commentary”: he explicitly linked his characters to a tripartite schema of universal types, and explored how these types differently dealt with ideals and compromise and romance and dissillusion in a world not quite up to snuff, but always suggestive of grandeur and romance and many other fine things, eternally just out of grasp.

I know, Mencken mentioned that Cabell’s heroes behaved not like heroes of old but, instead, as average folks of his age. But this was not to satirize then-contempprary lofe, but to satirize (and cherish) universal humanity.

The Commonwealth of Existence Itself is Cabell’s theme.

Am I wrong?

3elenchus
Jan 12, 2019, 11:29 am

You are not wrong, no. The "thinly veiled commentaries" line smacks of someone either rushing through a work without care to absorb what is written, or someone applying a veneer of sophistication to an otherwise banal critique. Just the sort of behaviour Cabell would have a field day satirising.

4elenchus
Jan 12, 2019, 11:32 am

>2 wirkman:

The video highlighted something I'd been doing unconsciously: pronouncing Jurgen. How is it typically voiced, with a German y or an American dge? With my German background, I've always pronounced it as if a German name, which seemed to fit better Cabell's Poictesme.

5wirkman
Jan 12, 2019, 4:05 pm

What would it be in French? It has been 30 years since my only
my French lesson....

6elenchus
Jan 12, 2019, 4:35 pm

I've never had any formal French, I wonder if something closer to zh would be a propos.

7Crypto-Willobie
Jan 12, 2019, 7:18 pm

It's pronounced like Jergen's lotion with out the s. Jergen, not Yergen or Yurgen or Yoorgen, or as I heard once on youtube "jer-jen". Ray Bonis, the Cabell Room librarian at VCU, suggested to me that Cabell took the pronunciation from a Richmond VA store which was pronounced like the lotion.

The name itself was of course borrowed from a Hans Christian Andersen tale.

8anglemark
Jan 13, 2019, 4:02 am

Being Swedish, I have always pronounced it Yoorgen.

9elenchus
Jan 13, 2019, 11:02 am

And Cream of the Jest's final reveal makes the provenance of Jurgen's name all the more delicious. (I presume the lotion was not in existence at the time of Cabell's writing, however.) The sacred and the profane, indeed.

10Crypto-Willobie
Editado: Jan 13, 2019, 3:20 pm

"The Andrew Jergens Company began in 1882 in Cincinnati, Ohio, as the Jergens Soap Company. By the turn of the 20th century, the company had expanded to include a number of beauty care and cosmetic products, and would soon launch its most famous product, Jergens Lotion."

>9 elenchus: But at the time of the writing and publication of Cream of the Jest, Messire Jurgen had not yet been born. A draft version of Cream was in existence as early as 1914 or 1915, and it was published on September 27, 1917. Jurgen (in the short story Some Ladies and Jurgen) does not not seem to have existed before June 1918. (See Part IV of Between Friends.)

11Crypto-Willobie
Editado: Jan 13, 2019, 3:27 pm

Ray Bonis, personal communication, July 2018:

"I think {Mr Cabell} may have gotten the pronunciation from a Jurgen's furniture store here in Richmond and those folks pronounced it like the lotion."

ETA
https://theshockoeexaminer.blogspot.com/2010/12/jurgens-furniture-store-envelope...

12wirkman
Jan 16, 2019, 5:44 pm

When in Lichfield, prounce it like the Lichfieldians.

13John_Thorne
Editado: Fev 22, 2019, 9:54 pm

I think it's pretty clear that to Cabell and his contemporaries, it was "Jergen" with an American "J." In a letter to Cabell from Louis Untermeyer dated October 19, 1922, and referring to the judge in the recently completed Jurgen obscenity trial, LU made a point of stating that Judge Nott pronounced Jurgen as "Yourgen," and believed that the book was based on actual Medieval legends. The letter is quoted on pp. 269-270 of Between Friends.