South Pole

Author: Miller
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: South of the Border as an important autobiographical romance by Henry Miller, primarily narrates and depicts Henry Miller's early life experiences in New York, as well as various thoughts, associations, reveries, and fantasies related to them. In this work that mainly portrays his inner spiritual world, Miller employs music, sexuality, and a Dadaist sense of disorientation to relentlessly pursue the ecstasy of self-expression. South of the Border as an important autobiographical romance by Henry Miller, primarily narrates and depicts Henry Miller's early life experiences in New York, as well as various thoughts, associations, reveries, and fantasies related to them. In this work that mainly portrays his inner spiritual world, Miller employs music, sexuality, and a Dadaist sense of disorientation to relentlessly pursue the ecstasy of self-expression. Apart from the initial major portion and some irregularly formatted passages left blank, the book only has two formal parts: Interludes and Epilogue, both borrowing terms from music, as if the entire work is a complete musical piece expressing self-emotional rhythms. Henry Miller's descriptions of repeated sexual impulses in the book form a sexual rhapsody, which is also part of his non-moralistic tendency to critique Western culture and reconstruct himself. In this book, Henry Miller first introduces the words of the French medieval moral philosopher Peter Abelard to explain the purpose of writing it: "Men and women's hearts are often agitated, and they are often comforted in pain. This is an example rather than the effect of words, because I am very familiar with how a witness to pain might offer some verbal comfort. Therefore, I now intend to write about the pain born from my misfortune so that those who were not present at the time but are essentially comforters can see. I do this to help you discover through comparing your pain with mine that your pain is nothing, at most a small matter, making it easier for you to bear the weight of your pain."