Lost Marginalia

In writing the entry on Jacob Boehme, I googled his last name and was amused by also getting websites referring to a 1920s G.W.Pabst movie starring Louise Brooks based on a novel by Margarethe Boehme. So typical of this online database search mechanism to bring together such disparate elements.

In the wake of last night’s “Lost” airing, I browsed online to see what responses “Eggtown” provoked, and I was surprised to see the posting related to one minor detail, the book that Sawyer is reading. Word is that it is “The Invention of Morel” by Adolfo Bioy Casares, a work of fiction that includes one man’s obsession with Louise Brooks, whose photograph is on the cover. Suddenly the name of the Boehme novel hit me – “Diary of a Lost Girl.”

In this instance, “lost” refers to “gone astray” in the sense of a “fallen woman” or “lost angel.” The plot and theme of this novel possesses some striking resemblances to Kate’s story and even the latest plot suggestion. An innocent 17^th-year-old girl, Thymian, loses her mother as a child and is impregnated by her father’s assistant. [The father himself rapes the housekeeper, who then kills herself.] To be brief, Thymian finds herself in a reformatory and gives the child to a midwife. When she escapes, she discovers that her child has died. She subsequently works in a brothel, but by the end she is able through marriage to regain her middle-class status. The novel and the film have been characterized as showing one girl’s pluck in the face of a corrupting patriarchy, and a subtheme is mother-daughter separations.

Rather than a specific clue, what is striking to me is the clustering of ideas within my search. A possible cultural allusion leads me to a 17^th-century theosophist, who happens to have the same name as a 20^th-century novelist. I find a reflection of both Boehmes and their works’ theme of lost in “Lost.” We keep looking for answers, but our pursuit (our mental and emotional engagement) is itself part of the show. Ultimately it doesn’t matter as much if the connection I make is a coincidence or intentional.