The Politics of Henry James
Each great writer acquires an image that owes its energies to certain felt airs and essences associated with his creative imagination. The cut and quality of that imagination, its character and code, its reach and ambit, finally determine its dynamics. The image is uniquely answerable to such a dialectic; it sustains itself through a certain "chemistry" of effects, and, at times, through a certain aesthetic "mysticism." In short, it attains, en route, an unmistakable ambience. Considered thus, Henry James figures to the responding imagination as a writer of such rare refinements, subtleties and felicities as to become in the end a kind of vintage wine to be taken in slow, measured draughts. To be sure, his fastidiousness has in some later tales a distressing aspect, and his "transcendence" a false ring, but where the Jamesian imagination is true to its inner energies and does not let the human situation turn cold or abstract or static, the compact between reader and writer has the quality of a shared dream. Its ceremoniousness has a purposive aspect; it becomes a kind of aesthetic tender. The "great good place" holds and compels.
The Tragic Muse
'You must paint her just like that ...as the Tragic Muse' Suggests one of James' characters to Nick Dormer, the young Englishman who, during the course of the novel, will courageously resist the glittering Parliamentary career desired for him by his family, in order to paint. His progress is counterpointed by the 'Tragic Muse' of the title, Miriam Rooth, one of James' most fierily beautiful creations, a great actress indifferent to social reputation, and triumphantly dedicated to her art. In portraying the conflict between art and 'the world' which is his novel's central idea, James engaged obliquely with current debates on the new aestheticism of Pater and Wilde and on the nature of the actor's performance. Through the living complexity of his protagonists he reveals how much, as Philip Horne puts it, 'to take art seriously as an end in itself ...is still a provocative course'.
Microbial flora of frozen tail meat from captive Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus).
Frozen tail meat samples from nine Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus) were evaluated for microbial numbers and types. Microbial analyses yielded a mean aerobic plate count (APC, 30 degrees C) of 4.86 log cfu/g, a mean coliform count (TC, 37 degrees C) of 3.77 log cfu/g and a mean faecal coliform count (FC, 44 degrees C) of 3.40 log cfu/g. Salmonella was isolated from three samples, and beta-haemolytic streptococci from two samples. Yersinia, Aeromonas, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus were not isolated. Typical bacterial genera recovered included Flavobacterium, Pseudomonas, Acinetobacter, Enterobacter, Moraxella, Micrococcus, Staphylococcus and Streptococcus.