"Anecdote" is the word I keep running into in Harmonium, and I can't get it out of my mind: "Earthy Anecdote," "Anecdote of Men by the Thousand," "Anecdote of Canna," Anecdote of the Prince of Peacocks" and "Anecdote of the Jar." It's a lot of anecdote for one section, and there are only two others in the collection: another Prince of Peacocks, which seems to fit the title better than the first and Anecdote of the Abnormal.
I looked up various definitions of "anecdote" online- "a short narrative, which is often biographical, amusing, obscure and/or historical." But I don't think that's what I'm questioning, whether or the not the poems above are anecdotes, but why only those poems and for what purpose?
I have been looking up the use of anecdotes in essays and have had disappointing results, but some lines stick out. One essay by Dominique Jullien compares anecdotes with fait divers (brief news stories- lurid/sensational), saying "that anecdotes are little stories about big people, while faits divers are stories about little people made big by publicity or the press." Jullien also points out that the etymological meaning of anecdote is "unpublished." A lady named Helen Deutsch says the genre of anecdotes is used by literary theorists and historians as a starting point or kicking stone to "prove the reality and solidity of the matter they analyze."
And I've been stuck on that too, but just now I was thinking maybe I am thinking too hard about the little story anecdotes and missing the big picture or reality of what is sitting in plain view there within the story. I feel like I'm staring at one of those stereogram pictures. . .
And then the Prince of Peacocks won't get out of my head with his two anecdotes. Someone's wandering and wandering, lost in madness and dreams and nothingness. And it could be the man or it might be me. It's kind of a toss up.
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