I discovered that LJ has a character limit to reply-posts.
This is what i got from the page that follows the “Post Reply” mouseclick
Error
One or more errors occured processing your request. Please go back, correct the necessary information, and submit your data again.
Sorry, but your comment of 7210 characters exceeds the maximum character length of 4300. Please go back, shorten it, and try posting it again.
Now I cant figure out a better way of putting my reply , so here goes…
For the record, this is a discussion about a Gaiman poem. I got stuck on a minor detail. and since has traditionally been a friend I can pick fights with, I started the fight 
The story so far…
’s original post with replies
>You could write volumes about how a “thing”
>cannot love, or fall in love because hey, it’s dead,and so the poem, the countless vampire books, the innumerable vampire movies get thrown out of the back-door. By >calling a vampire a “thing”, you automatically negate 80% of all vampire fiction >throughout literary history.
A poet can can talk about an inanimate object loving something, as in
“the sunflower loves the sun”
he still cant talk about a dead thing having a life-as-it-is-generally-understood.
I was talking about a galring contradiction, viz, that a lifeless object describing its own life! this discussion is getting interesting. Artistotle classifies the qualities of an object as “per se” and “per accidens” take away any of the former kind qualities of any object and its not that object anymore. take away an accidental property and you dont abstract away the essence. These are rules ingrained into logic. So in calling a thing, oh, i should not use that word, i shall use object, that one described as dead or “not-living”(thus explaining fuzzy states like undead) as having a life is sheer non-sense.
>Technical glitch: Vampires are not “dead”. They are “Undead”…. negates the effect >of “death” - in other words, >the human body becomes a container, the contents of which >are definitely non-human.
i think neutralizes is what you are confusing with negates here. the negation of death (~death) is life, buddy! if something neutralizes death then it neutralizes life too. to get my angle of things, think of _any_ writer writing about a vampire awaiting his/her/its “death”(death , not obliteration). now do you see what i have been driving at?
or say, define life as that unique thing which is terminated by death (nothing else is, or life is that which is terminatable by death) Now since vampires are not affected by death, or in other words, death has no implication for vampires, vampires dont have a life.(theres a fault in this reasoning though not evident and not detrimental to the fact being evaluated)
>Second, my reasoning - or rather, my “humble” opinion about what Gaiman is trying to >say in that particular line. Look at the lines again - “For many centuries I’ve walked >the world, dispensing something that resembled love –a stolen kiss, then back into the >night contented by the life and by the blood.”, so going by your line of thought, he >says “i am contented with MY life and MY blood.”
i am not a moron to think that he says “my life and my blood” i think he’s saying MY life and the blood that i drink.
>well, it’s not. The “blood” here refers to that of his victims
good that we agree on this, but you avoid (for reasons of comfort?) explaining your opinion on whether he is discussing HIS life or the victim’s life, which he doesnt take away, he’s not death.
> I can go into technicalities of how different writers have handled the connection >between a vampire and his/her living victims, but that would be too far-fetched….(I >seriously have no idea how the newwave…Barker, gaiman et al have treated this in >their works, and i can just hypothesise. )
LIVING victims - he doesnt take their lives away and so he is not talking about their lives. it is HIS life he is contented with. The rest of the above paragraph is informative, thank you. And since you say you dont know Gaiman’s “stand” i assume the question is still open. I thought experts should know better (self declared experts more so, in their domain of expertise. 
)
>So the point here MIGHT be this. The Undead creature refers to the blood AND the life >around him…you can either equate blood WITH life or, life and blood as two seperate >entities altogether….my interpretation, based on the quote that i gave, says that he >just used a repetitive expression ( it IS a poem by a vampire, after all ) to convey >how important blood was in his life.
>As for the sarcasm…..blame it on the hungry soul who comes to the office and sees a >vampire newbie nitpicking on things beyond his ken.
he is contented with the life AROUND him? you dont make the least bit of sense there. take a break from this discussion , and as a third person, read the lines in the poem and think whether what you wrote above is a sensible comment. He is obviously not _contented_ with the life around him, he claims to be contented with HIS life.
>repetitive expression ( it IS a poem by a vampire, after all ) to convey how important >blood was in his life.
you too say ” how important blood was in _his_ life”
Make up your mind , do vampires have a “life”? if the do, we’re clear, Gaiman was wrong (even the Gods are fallible )
>As for the sarcasm…..blame it on the hungry soul who comes to the office and sees a >vampire newbie nitpicking on things beyond his ken.
I am not intersted the least bit in vampire so calling me a vampire newbie is incorrect. I like poetry and I like thinking about the intricacies in the way different authors use language. In fact, my first thought was that Gaiman must have meant to make this stand out, for shock effect. Like Sartre said “Man is Condemned to be Free.”
My ken is limited, so are my interests. I didnt know you had to be a vampire lover or expert to analyse poetry.
>Humbleness be damned! I am humble about things beyond MY scope of knowledge, not about >things I “specialise” in. Have I ever commented about you-know-which-band except for >the odd noises now and then?
Refer to subversive comment on the lack of depth in your speciality in a point I made earlier.
Just because you have not commented on Floyd doesnt mean I cant comment about an artist’s use of words.
Anyways, even in my quizzing days, which for the most part are over, I never claimed to be a specialist in anything, except the one off event when I claimed to be _the_ expert on how to make a certain vodka cocktail, with disastrous effect. I have noticed that I not that passionate about things. I mean I dont think any of my idols or personal favourites is perfect.
I wont burn anything. Please come out of the dogfight mode and think of debates as just that, something that has to be reasoned out logically, without getting emotional about the subject being discussed.
I had a couple of exams today and hence the delay in the reply. I was online when you buzzed me on y! mess, but i had an hour left for the exam, and so could’nt respond, since I knew i would be able to divide my attention between last-minute-mugging and discussing something else. All apologies.
Have a nice day!, and thanks for the interesting discussion.
Other Articles on this Subject:
It makes it easier to add links to posts. Usually i have trouble with the “autoformatting” option on LiveJournal.
Filed by Carthik at 4:35 am under Livejournal No Comments 
