by my green candle

spurious

2011-02-23T20:39:00.001-06:00

W. and I are celebrants of rivers, and always feel the need to hail them. —‘The mighty Tyne!’, W. might say, and I might say, ‘the mighty Plym!’ The sight of a river is always an occasion. So, of course, is that of the sea. It’s the ozone, says W., it makes you feel alive.

It does, and in particular the view of the sheet of the sea, just past Exeter. The whole sheet of the sea, viewed from the train, neat Plymouth Gin and ice in your plastic cups. —‘This is happiness’, says W….

W.’s felt ill nearly all his adult life, he says. When was the last time he felt well?, I ask him. He can’t remember. —‘It’s been years’, he says suddenly. ‘Years!’ He used to go for great walks on the moors, he remembers. That’s when he last felt healthy: on his great weekend walks, when he would set off with his walking friend (whatever happened to him?) with no particular end in view. They’d just walk for miles across the moors.

There’s nothing better, he says, than to climb up to the moors, and see the blue strip of the sea in the distance. Are there really big cats up there, panthers and the like? He never saw any, he says. There might be. But his moor walks are long since over. He lacks something, W. says. There’s something missing in him. Why doesn’t he go on his great moor walks any more?, he wonders, as we look out to sea.

It’s important to hail rivers, we both agree, but just as important to hail the sea, although we do not do so by name. We do not, for instance, hail the sea south of Edinburgh as the North Sea, or the sea south of Exeter as the Atlantic (is it the Atlantic?, I ask W. It is, he says.). A simple, ‘The sea!’ is enough. Just as when we see the edge of the moor on our train journeys in Devon, we cry, ‘The moor!’

Ah, the moor! W. is feeling regretful again. How can he become a better person, a better friend? How might he become a better thinker? His life is full of regret, he says, and gets out his Cohen. He’s going to read now, he tells me, and I’ll have to entertain myself.

Lars Iyer, Spurious

colonel zoo

2010-10-19T23:18:00.001-05:00

Without moving a muscle, I slowly extend my hand to release the catch on the reel, then give the ultra-light pole just the right flick, unleashing a full five yards of line in an arc above my head to position the Ryman III dry fly with steel highlights absolutely perfectly. Four times, each one just as perfect. But the fish doesn’t budge, too busy watching his little slice of river go by.

Just what I ought to be doing if I ever truly want to understand his motives.

So I cover my body with plaster, let it dry, and then remove the shell in two careful halves. Then melt some tires. Pour a layer of melted rubber into each half. Join the two halves with adjustable leather straps. Insert a clear plastic window at eye-level. Paint the whole thing the color of water.

Attach little balls of lead at the waist and a flexible rubber tube (say a radiator hose) at the mouth. Then slip silently into the current. Anchor myself to the riverbed with a metal stake, stay motionless and watch the river from inside while the fish get used to my presence.

Gaze forever at the little things upstream caught in the transparent block. Study the particular speed of things underwater. They appear quicker from above and slower from below.

Hide the whole thing, after oiling it to protect it, in waterproof wooden box buried near the spot in order to avoid the risk inherent in crossing the lawn in a diving outfit. Which would require me (as a supposed stranger) to say hello.

Olivier Cadiot, Colonel Zoo

exile's letter

2010-06-12T04:06:00.001-05:00

To So-Kin of Rakuyo, ancient friend, Chancellor of Gen.
Now I remember that you built me a special tavern
By the south side of the bridge at Ten-Shin.
With yellow gold and white jewels, we paid for songs and laughter
And we were drunk for month on month, forgetting the kings and princes.
Intelligent men came drifting in from the sea and from the west border,
And with them, and with you especially
There was nothing at cross purpose,
And they made nothing of sea-crossing or of mountain-crossing,
If only they could be of that fellowship,
And we all spoke out our hearts and minds, and without regret.
And then I was sent off to South Wei,
smothered in laurel groves,
And you to the north of Raku-hoku,
Till we had nothing but thoughts and memories in common.
And then, when separation had come to its worst,
We met, and travelled into Sen-Go,
Through all the thirty-six folds of the turning and twisting waters,
Into a valley of the thousand bright flowers,
That was the first valley;
And into ten thousand valleys full of voices and pine-winds.
And with silver harness and reins of gold,
Out came the East of Kan foreman and his company.
And there came also the “True Man” of Shi-yo to meet me,
Playing on a jewelled mouth-organ.
In the storied houses of San-Ko they gave us more Sennin music,
Many instruments, like the sound of young phœnix broods.
The foreman of Kan Chu, drunk, danced
because his long sleeves wouldn’t keep still
With that music playing,
And I, wrapped in brocade, went to sleep with my head on his lap,
And my spirit so high it was all over the heavens
And before the end of the day we were scattered like stars, or rain.
I had to be off to So, far away over the waters,
You back to your river-bridge.

And your father, who was brave as a leopard,
Was governor in Hei Shu, and put down the barbarian rabble.
And one May he had you send for me,
        despite the long distance.
And what with broken wheels and so on, I won’t say it wasn’t hard going,
Over roads twisted like sheep’s guts.
And I was still going, late in the year,
        in the cutting wind from the North,
And thinking how little you cared for the cost,
        and you caring enough to pay it.
And what a reception:
Red jade cups, food well set on a blue jewelled table,
And I was drunk, and had no thought of returning.
And you would walk out with me to the western corner of the castle,
To the dynastic temple, with water about it clear as blue jade,
With boats floating, and the sound of mouth-organs and drums,
With ripples like dragon-scales, going grass green on the water,
Pleasure lasting, with courtezans, going and coming without hindrance,
With the willow flakes falling like snow,
And the vermilioned girls getting drunk about sunset,
And the water, a hundred feet deep, reflecting green eyebrows
—Eyebrows painted green are a fine sight in young moonlight,
Gracefully painted—
And the girls singing back at each other,
Dancing in transparent brocade,
And the wind lifting the song, and interrupting it,
Tossing it up under the clouds.
        And all this comes to an end.
        And is not again to be met with.
I went up to the court for examination,
Tried Layu’s luck, offered the Choyo song,
And got no promotion,
        and went back to the East Mountains
        White-headed.
And once again, later, we met at the South bridge-head.
And then the crowd broke up, you went north to San palace,
And if you ask how I regret that parting:
It is like the flowers falling at Spring’s end
        Confused, whirled in a tangle.
What is the use of talking, and there is no end of talking,
There is no end of things in the heart.
I call in the boy,
Have him sit on his knees here
        To seal this,
And send it a thousand miles, thinking.

By Rihaku

Ezra Pound, “Exile’s Letter”

the birth of tragedy out of the spirit of music

2010-05-12T12:05:00.001-05:00

There is an ancient story that King Midas hunted in the forest a long time for the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, without capturing him. When Silenus at last fell into his hands, the king asked what was the best and most desirable of all things for man. Fixed and immovable, the demigod said not a word, till at last, urged by the king, he gave a shrill laugh and broke out into these words: ‘Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is—to die soon.’

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music

hell in a very small place

2010-02-15T10:24:00.001-06:00

Pouget was now once more pleading for reinforcements and ammunition. The calm voice of Vadot sounded like that of an old teacher trying to explain a difficult problem to a somewhat obtuse student:

“Come on, be reasonable. You know the situation as well as I do. Where do you want me to find a company? I can’t give you a single man or a single shell, old boy.”

But that moment, at about 0400, Captain Jean Pouget had about thirty-five men left alive and in fighting condition on the whole hill. Obviously, he thought, further resistance under such circumstances would be completely pointless and he requested from Vadon permission to abandon E2 and to break out in the direction of E3. There are two versions of what followed next. According to Jules Roy, Vadot is supposed to have said: “You’re a paratrooper. You are there to get yourself killed.” According to Pouget himself, Vadot said, after telling him that he had to fight on: “After all, you are a paratrooper and you must fight to the death—or at least until morning.”

There was nothing else to be said between the two men. Dien Bien Phu could no longer do anything for martyred Eliane 2, and Pouget, whose radio operator had been killed, no longer had any need for a transmitter.

“Understood. Out. If you have got nothing to add, I’ll destroy my set,” said Pouget.

The calm voice of Vadot seemed very far away, much farther than merely 400 meters of shell-pocked mud which actually separated the two men. Vadot also stuck to French Army radio protocol. “Out for me also.”

“Don’t destroy your radio set just yet,” said a Vietnamese voice in French. “President Ho Chi Minh offers you a rendition of the Chant des Partisans.” It was the voice of a People’s Army radio operator listening in on the French command channel. And the beloved words which the French Resistance sang in the dark days when it fought against the Nazi occupier could be clearly heard on the command channel. Pouget listened to it, from the first verse which spoke of the black crows—that is, the foreign occupiers—flying over the land, to the very last verse which speaks of black blood drying tomorrow on the roads, and ends on the haunting line: “Companions, Freedom is listening to us in the night…”

Then Pouget fired three bullets into his set and walked out of his command post.

Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place

the real life of sebastian knight

2009-12-18T14:32:00.001-06:00

Sebastian Knight was born on the thirty-first of December, 1899, in the former capital of my country. An old Russian lady who has for some obscure reason begged me not to divulge her name, happened to show me in Paris the diary she had kept in the past. So uneventful had those years been (apparently) that the collecting of daily details (which is always a poor method of self-preservation) barely surpassed a short description of the day’s weather; and it is curious to note in this respect that the personal diaries of sovereigns—no matter what troubles beset their realms—are mainly concerned with the same subject. Luck being what it is when left alone, here I was offered something which I might never have hunted down had it been a chosen quarry. Therefore I am able to state that the morning of Sebastian’s birth was a fine windless one, with twelve degrees (Reaumur) below zero … this is all, however, that the good lady found worth setting down. On second thought I cannot see any real necessity of complying with her anonymity. That she will ever read this book seems wildly improbable. Her name was and is Olga Olegovna Orlova—an egg-like alliteration which it would have been a pity to withhold.

Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

chaos and night

2009-12-17T15:08:00.001-06:00

‘How shrewd you are!’ she exclaimed with admiration. ‘You’re a psychoanalyst.’

‘One doesn’t have to be a psychoanalyst to make psychological observations,’ said Moragas, galled. He had a horror of psychoanalysis, because he was right-wing. And he was right-wing because he was in business; if he had been in nothing, like Celestino, he might have been an anarchist, like Celestino.

He went on:

‘Psychoanalysis is psychology pure and simple, when it’s carried out by someone who isn’t intelligent, or who’s a bit corrupt. Three years ago I knocked my head against the door leading up from my cellar. Immediately I had brain trouble. So it was nothing to do with psychoanalysis. I was given the name of a famous neurologist, and I found myself — there was some misunderstanding — in the hands of a psychiatrist. The questions he asked were so irrelevant (no connection whatsoever with my case) and so preposterous that I realized at once that I was dealing with a sick man. I felt sorry for him. I answered his questions in a way that I thought would soothe and console him. I hope I did him some good.’

Henry de Montherlant, Chaos and Night

on the sufferings of the world

2009-06-23T20:06:00.001-05:00

The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other.

Arthur Schopenhauer, “On the Sufferings of the World”

the new house

2009-03-31T23:13:00.001-05:00

A few years earlier, I’d awoken in a room in a country inn to discover that our thoughts are produced in a region of our innermost being marked by the quality of silence. Even amid a great city’s most strident clamor we think in silence about where we’re going or what we have to do, or whatever it is that corresponds to our desires. And the silence in which our feelings take shape is still deeper. We feel love in silence, before the thoughts come, and then the words, and then the acts, always moving farther towards the outside, towards the noise. Some thoughts can hide within silence and never become words, though they may carry out hidden acts. But there are also feelings that hide in silence behind deceptive thoughts. The silence where feelings and thoughts are formed is the place where the style of a human being’s life and life work is formed.

Felisberto Hernández, “The New House”

the savage detectives

2009-03-23T09:43:00.001-05:00

According to List (who in his day traveled to Europe too), they had laid a trap for mi general for political reasons, which was the exact opposite of what the newspapers said, the press inclining toward a brothel skirmish or a crime of passion with Rosario Contreras in a leading role. According to List, who was personally familiar with the brothel, mi general liked to screw in the most out-of-the-way room, which wasn’t very big but had the advantage of being at the back of the house, far from the noise, near this courtyard where there was a fountain. And after screwing, mi general liked to go out into the courtyard to smoke a cigarette and think about postcoital sadness, that vexing sadness of the flesh, and about all the books he hadn’t read.

Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

the savage detectives

2009-03-22T14:40:00.001-05:00

So this Marco Antonio, who is he? said the inspector. A poet, said Álamo, flatly. But what kind of poet? the inspector wanted to know. A surrealist poet, said Álamo. A surrealist and a PRI-ist, specified Labarca. A lyric poet, I said. The inspector nodded his head several times, as if to say I see, although it was clear to us that he didn’t understand shit. And this lyric poet didn’t want to show his support for the Sandinista revolution? Well, said Labarca, that’s a strong way to put it. He couldn’t make it, I guess, said Álamo. Although you know Marco Antonio, said Labarca, and he laughed for the first time. Álamo took out his pack of Delicados and offered it around. Labarca and I each took one, but the inspector waved them away and lit a Cuban cigarette. These are stronger, he said with a clear hint of irony. It was as if he were saying: we revolutionaries smoke strong tobacco, real men smoke strong tobacco, those of us with a stake in objective reality smoke real tobacco. Stronger than a Delicados? said Labarca. Black tobacoo, comrades, genuine tobacco. Álamo laughed under his breath and said: it’s hard to believe we’ve lost a poet, but what he really meant was: what do you know about tobacco, you stupid son of a bitch? You can kiss my ass with your Cuban tobacco, said Labarca almost without batting an eye. What did you say, comrade? said the inspector. That I don’t give a shit about Cuban tobacco. Where Delicados are lit, let the rest be put out. Álamo laughed again and the inspector seemed to hesitate between turning pale with rage and looking confused. I assume, comrade, that you mean what I think you mean, he said. That’s right, I do, you heard me. No one turns his nose up at a Delicados, said Labarca. Oh, Julio’s a bad boy, murmured Álamo, looking at me to hide his barely suppressed laughter from the inspector. And on what grounds do you say that? said the inspector, wreathed in a cloud of smoke. I could see that things were taking a new tone. Labarca raised a hand and waved it back and forth a few inches from the inspector’s nose, as if he were slapping him. Don’t blow smoke in my face, man, he said, do you mind? This time the inspector definitely turned pale, as if the strong scent of his own tobacco had made him sick. For fuck’s sake, show a little respect, comrade, you almost hit me in the nose. If you call that a nose, said Labarca to Álamo, unruffled. If you can’t tell the smell of a Delicados from a bundle of vulgar Cuban weed then your nose is failing you, comrade, which hardly matters in and of itself, but in the case of a smoker or policeman is worrisome, to say the least. A Delicados, you see, Julio, is blond tobacco, said Álamo, overcome by laughter. And the paper is sweet, too, said Labarca, which is something you only find in parts of China. And in Mexico, Julio, said Álamo. And in Mexico, of course, said Labarca.

Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives

natural history

2008-09-05T11:08:00.002-05:00

The lion’s tail gives a clue to his state of mind; the ears serve the same functions as in horses. For Nature has endowed all the noblest beasts with these means of expressing themselves. So the lion’s tail is still when he is calm, and moves gently when he wishes to cajole, which is rarely. Indeed, his anger is more frequently displayed: at its onset his tail lashes the earth, and, as it increases, his back, as if to goad him on. The lion’s strength is in his chest. Black gore flows from every wound, whether the injuries result from claw or tooth. When lions have eaten their fill they are harmless.

The lion’s noble spirit is most discernible in dangers: he sneers at weapons and protects himself for a long time by fearsome threats only — it is as if he protests that he will be acting against his will. And then he leaps forward, not as if forced by danger but rather as roused to anger by madness. A further sign of his noble spirit is that however large the number of dogs and hunters bearing down upon him in level plains and open ground, he gives ground contemptuously and stops every now and again. But when he reaches the undergrowth and forest, he races off very swiftly, as if the place hides his disgrace. He bounds forward when in pursuit, but not when running away.

If wounded, he memorizes his attacker with a marvellous power of observation and singles him out in however large a crowd you care to imagine. He seizes anyone who hurls a weapon at him, yet does not wound him, and whirls him round and throws him to the ground, but without inflicting any injury.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History

gorgias

2008-07-02T11:00:00.001-05:00

He concludes as follows that nothing is: if [something] is, either what-is is or what-is-not [is], or both what-is and what-is-not are. But it is the case neither that what-is is, as he will show, nor that what-is-not is, as he will justify, nor that both what-is and what-is-not are, as he will teach this too. Therefore, it is not the case that anything is. And in fact, what-is-not is not. For if what-is-not is, it will be and not be at the same time. For in that it is considered as not being, it will not be, but in that it is not being, on the other hand, it will be. But it is completely absurd that something be and not be at the same time. Therefore, it is not the case that what-is-not is. And differently: if what-is-not is, what-is will not be, since they are opposites, and if being is an attribute of what-is-not, not-being will be an attribute of what-is. But it is certainly not the case that what-is is not, and so neither will what-is-not be. Further, neither is it the case that what-is is. For if what-is is, it is either eternal or generated or eternal and generated at the same time. But it is neither eternal nor generated nor both, as we will show. Therefore it is not the case that what-is is. For if what-is is eternal (we must begin at this point), it does not have any beginning. For everything that comes to be has some beginning, but what is eternal, being ungenerated, did not have a beginning. But if it does not have a beginning, it is unlimited, and if it is unlimited it is nowhere. For if it is anywhere, that in which it is is different from it, and so what-is will no longer be unlimited, since it is enclosed in something. For what encloses is larger than what is enclosed, but nothing is larger than what is unlimited, and so what is unlimited is not anywhere. Further, it is not enclosed in itself, either. For “that in which” and “that in it” will be the same, and what-is will become two, place and body (for “that in which” is place, and “that in it” is body). But this is absurd, so what-is is not in itself, either. And so, if what-is is eternal, it is unlimited, but if it is unlimited it is nowhere, and if it is nowhere it is not. So if what-is is eternal, it is not at all. Further, what-is cannot be generated either. For if it has come to be it did so either from a thing that is or from a thing that is not. But it has come be neither from what-is (for if it is a thing that is, it has not come to be, but already has), nor from what-is-not (for what-is-not cannot generate anything, since what generates anything must of necessity share in existence). Therefore, it is not the case that what-is is generated either. In the same ways, it is not both eternal and generated at the same time. For these exclude one another, and if what-is is eternal it has not come to be, and if it has come to be it is not eternal. So if what-is is neither eternal nor generated nor both together, what-is would not be. And differently, if it is, it is either one or many. But it is neither one nor many, as will be shown. Therefore it is not the case that what-is is. For if it is one, it is either a quantity or continuous or a magnitude or a body. But whichever of these it is, it is not one, but being a quantity, it will be divided, and if it is continuous it will be cut. Similarly if conceived as a magnitude it will not be indivisible. And if it chances to be a body, it will be three-dimensional, for it will have length, width and depth. But it is absurd to say that what-is is none of these. Therefore, it is not the case that what-is is one. Further, it is not many. For if it is not one, it is not many either. For the many is a compound of individual ones, and s since [the thesis that what-is is] one is refuted, [the thesis that what-is is] many is refuted along with it. But it is altogether clear from this that neither what-is nor what-is-not is. It is easy to conclude that neither is it the case that both of them are, what-is and what-is-not. For if what-is-not is and what-is is, then what-is-not will be the same as what-is as regards being. And for this reason neither of them is. For it is agreed that what-is-not is not, and what-is has been shown to be the same as this. So it too will not be. However, if what-is is the same as what-is-not, it is not possible for both to be. For if both [are], then they are not the same, and if [they are] the same, then [it is] not [the case that] both [are]. It follows that nothing is. For if neither what-is is nor what-is-not nor both, and nothing aside from these is conceived of, nothing is.

Sextus Empiricus on Gorgias, Against the Mathematicians

pantagruel

2007-12-05T23:05:00.000-06:00

“My friend, where are you coming from, at this hour?”

The student answered him:
“From the spirit-evocative, grandiosely illustrious, manifoldly celebrated academy which one vociferates as Lutetia.”

“What did he just say?” Pantagruel asked one of his companions.

“From Paris,” he answered.

“Ah, so you come from Paris,” Pantagruel continued. “And what do you do all day, you and all the other gentlemanly students in Paris?”

The student answered:
“We transmigrate the Seineian flow, both matutinally and nocturnally. We perambulate the transecting metropolitan arteries and assorted urban intersectional quadrant points. We converse continuously in Latinate verbalizations, and like veritable connoisseurs of aspects amatory we endeavor to captivatingly incur the benevolence of the universally magistrate, multiplicitously engendered, and ultimately endogenous feminine sex. At suitably appropriate intervals we ensure that we incarnate ourselves in certain well-defined habitations and, in an utterly ecstatic venereal transport, we inculcate our virile members into the most interiorally located recesses of the pudenda of these meretricious but supremely amiable personages. Then we engage in gustatorial ingestion at the meritorious quaffing establishments of the Pine Cone, the Castle, the Magdalen, and the Mule, imbibing inter alia appropriately elongated comestibles, liberally perforinated with quantities of aromatic herbal concoction. On occasion, the hazards of aleatoric existence being what they are, and our pecuniary chambers being entirely evacuated of their contents, inclusive of all assorted metallic substances of recognized potency in such affairs, we obligatorily terminate our parsimony through the vendation of our printed textual sources, and equally of the habilitating furnishings of our persons, pending to be sure the anticipated arrival of alleviating remunerations from the trusted ancient source of original domestic succor.”

To which Pantagruel said:
“What the devil kind of language is this? By God, you must be some kind of heretic.”

François Rabelais, Pantagruel

hostages to momus

2007-11-15T08:29:00.000-06:00

“Well, gentlemen,” says the landlord , “I reckoned you-all would be inquiring this morning. You all dropped off of the nine-thirty train here last night; and you was right tight. Yes, you was right smart in liquor. I can inform you that you are now in the town of Mountain Valley, in the State of Georgia.”

“On top of that,” says Caligula, “don’t say that we can’t have anything to eat.”

“Sit down, gentlemen,” says the landlord, “and in twenty minutes I’ll call you to the best breakfast you can get anywhere in town.”

That breakfast turned out to be composed of fried bacon and a yellowish edifice that proved up something between pound cake and flexible sandstone. The landlord calls it corn pone; and then he sets out a dish of the exaggerated breakfast food known as hominy; and so me and Caligula makes the acquaintance of the celebrated food that enabled every Johnny Reb to lick one and two-thirds Yankees for nearly four years at a stretch.

“The wonder to me is,” says Caligula, “that Uncle Robert Lee’s boys didn’t chase the Grant and Sherman outfit clear up into Hudson’s Bay. It would have made me that mad to eat this truck they call mahogany!”

“Hog and hominy,” I explains, “is the staple food of this section.”

“Then,” says Caligula, “they ought to keep it where it belongs. I thought this was a hotel and not a stable. Now, if we was in Muskogee at the St. Lucifer House, I’d show you some breakfast grub. Antelope steaks and fried liver to begin on, and venison cutlets with chili con carne and pine-apple fritters, and then some sardines and mixed pickles; and top it off with a can of yellow clings and a bottle of beer. You won’t find a layout like that on the bill of affairs of any of your Eastern restauraws.”

“Too lavish,” said I. “I’ve travelled, and I’m unprejudiced. There’ll never be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms long enough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee and over to Norfolk for his rolls, and reaches up to Vermont and digs a slice of butter out of a spring-house, and then turns over a beehive close to a white clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he’d come pretty close to making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on Mount Olympia.”

“Too ephemeral,” says Caligula, “I’d want ham and eggs, or rabbit stew, anyhow, for a chaser. What do you consider the most edifying and casual in the way of a dinner?”

“I’ve been infatuated from time to time,” I answers, “with fancy ramifications of grub such as terrapins, lobsters, reed birds, jambolaya, and canvas-covered ducks; but after all there’s nothing less displeasing than a beefsteak smothered in mushrooms on a balcony in sound of the Broadway street cars, with a hand-organ playing down below, and the boys hollering extras about the latest suicide. For the wine, give me a reasonable Ponty Cany. And that’s all, except a demi-tasse.”

“Well,” says Caligula, “I reckon in New York you get to be a coniseer; and when you go around with a demi-tasse you are naturally bound to buy ’em stylish grub.”

“It’s a great town for epicures,” says I. “You’d soon fall into their ways if you was there.”

“I’ve heard it was,” says Caligula. “But I reckon I wouldn’t. I can polish my fingernails all they need myself.”

O. Henry, “Hostages to Momus”

mahu, or the material

2007-06-02T10:37:00.000-05:00

This time, he rings off. He then gets up. He shaves. He has his coffee. Very depressing. Everyone’s in the same state. He tries to laugh it off, defiantly. And in doing so he becomes even more like everyone else. He puts his right foot into his right sock and his left foot into his left sock; he puts on his braces; he buttons up his flies; he takes out a clean handkerchief; he double-locks his door; he doesn’t say good morning to his concierge. Outside, he says: “Good God, what weather!” It is raining. He takes advantage of the fact to perform his little experiment. When the rain is very heavy, it forms a mirror and you can see yourself on all sides. It’s very pleasant for the back and the profile. When he raises his foot, three million feet rise with it. When he scratches his ear, three million hands scratch three million ears. They are my hands, my feet. Or rather my hand, my foot. Oh, look, I’ve put my jacket on inside out. Inside out? Yes, north, south, east and west, three million jackets inside out. Latirail stops. The jackets continue on their way. My God, what’s happening? The other one moves on. It’s me that’s moving. Hey, wait, I’m just coming!

He bumps into a gentleman.

“Oh, excuse me, I thought it was me…”

The gentleman looks very surprised.

Damn, it didn’t work, thinks Latirail. First time I took myself for someone else.

The gentleman has walked on. He is thinking exactly the same thing. He too was performing an experiment and he bumped into Latirail. He is very annoyed. He thought it was an original experiment. So he invents another one and bumps into Latirail again:

“This time, Monsieur, would you please put your jacket on right side out. It’s been annoying me a great deal.”

“But, Monsieur…”

It wasn’t Latirail any more. It was someone else. Latirail was standing off, observing the scene with some concern.

Robert Pinget, Mahu, or the Material

ulysses

2007-06-01T13:42:00.000-05:00

Were they indefinitely inactive?
At Stephen’s suggestion, at Bloom’s instigation both, first Stephen, then Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs of micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumposition, their gazes, first Bloom’s, then Stephen’s, elevated to the projected luminous and semiluminous shadow.

Similarly?
The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations were dissimilar: Bloom’s longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter who in his ultimate year at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of greatest altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the institution, 210 scholars: Stephen’s higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic consumption an insistent vesical pressure.

What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the invisible audible collateral organ of the other?
To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, reactivity, dimension, sanitariness, pilosity. To Stephen: the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised (1st January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain from unnecessary servile work) and the problem as to whether the divine prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy Roman catholic apostolic church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of such divine excrescences as hair and toenails.

James Joyce, Ulysses

as i lay dying

2007-05-13T12:16:00.000-05:00

My mother is a fish.

William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

ulysses

2006-07-20T14:55:00.000-05:00

The last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries far and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain poured down from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared heads of the assembled multitude which numbered at the lowest computation five hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in the vast throng for whom the York Street brass and reed band whiled away the intervening time by admirably rendering on their blackdraped instruments the matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by Speranza’s plaintive muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our country cousins of whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang The Night before Larry was Stretched in their usual mirthprovoking fashion. Our two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned pennies. The children of the Male and Female Foundling Hospital who thronged the windows overlooking the scene were delighted with this unexpected addition to the day’s entertainment and a word of praise is due to the Little Sisters of the Poor for their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless and motherless children a genuinely instructive treat. The viceregal houseparty which included many wellknown ladies was chaperoned by Their Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the grand stand while the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the Emerald Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite. The delegation, present in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Beninobenone (the semiparalysed doyen of the party who had to be assisted to his seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitépatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Leopold Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Virága Kisászony Putrápesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos Karamelopulos. Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum Effendi, Señor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriums- ordinaryprivatdocentgeneralhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein. All the delegates without exception expressed themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to witness. An animated altercation (in which all took part) ensued among the F.O.T.E.I. as to whether the eighth or the ninth of March was the correct date of the birth of Ireland’s patron saint. In the course of the argument cannonballs, scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers, umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig iron were resorted to and blows were freely exchanged. The baby policeman, Constable MacFadden, summoned by special courier from Booterstown, quickly restored order and with lightning promptitude proposed the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally honourable for both contending parties. The readywitted ninefooter’s suggestion at once appealed to all and was unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was heartily congratulated by all the F.O.T.E.I., several of whom were bleeding profusely. Commendatore Beninobenone having been extricated from underneath the presidential armchair, it was explained by his legal adviser Avvocato Pagamimi that the various articles secreted in his thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by him during the affray from the pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of bringing them to their senses. The objects (which included several hundred ladies’ and gentlemen’s gold and silver watches) were promptly restored to their rightful owners and general harmony reigned supreme.

Quietly, unassumingly, Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless morning dress and wearing his favourite flower, the Gladiolus Cruentus. He announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so many have tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate — short, painstaking yet withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the worldrenowned headsman was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, hoch, banzai, eljen, zivio, chinchin, polla kronia, hiphip, vive, Allah, amid which the ringing evviva of the delegate of the land of song (a high double F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o’clock. The signal for prayer was then promptly given by megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared, the commendatore’s patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the possession of his family since the revolution of Rienzi, being removed by his medical adviser in attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate who administered the last comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr when about to pay the death penalty knelt in a most christian spirit in a pool of rainwater, his cassock above his hoary head, and offered up to the throne of grace fervent prayers of supplication. Hard by the block stood the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which his eyes glowered furiously. As he awaited the fatal signal he tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing it upon his brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a flock of sheep which had been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary office. On a handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged the quartering knife, the various finely tempered disembowelling appliances (specially supplied by the worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs John Round and Sons, Sheffield), a terracotta saucepan for the reception of the duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc when successfully extracted and two commodious milkjugs destined to receive the most precious blood of the most precious victim. The housesteward of the amalgamated cats’ and dogs’ home was in attendance to convey these vessels when replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an excellent repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and onions, done to a nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had been considerately provided by the authorities for the consumption of the central figure of the tragedy who was in capital spirits when prepared for death and evinced the keenest interest in the proceedings from beginning to end but he, with an abnegation rare in these our times, rose nobly to the occasion and expressed the dying wish (immediately acceded to) that the meal should be divided in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and indigent roomkeepers’ association as a token of his regard and esteem. The nec and non plus ultra of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into eternity for her sake. The hero folded her willowy form in a loving embrace murmuring fondly Sheila, my own. Encouraged by this use of her christian name she kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of his person which the decencies of prison garb permitted her ardour to reach. She swore to him as they mingled the salt streams of their tears that she would ever cherish his memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who went to his death with a song on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling match in Clonturk park. She brought back to his recollection the happy days of blissful childhood together on the banks of Anna Liffey when they had indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young and, oblivious of the dreadful present, they both laughed heartily, all the spectators, including the venerable pastor, joining in the general merriment. That monster audience simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome with grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh torrent of tears burst from their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse of people, touched to the inmost core, broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being the aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of the peace and genial giants of the royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye in that record assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a handsome young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, presenting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree, solicited the hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name the day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion in the shape of a skull and crossbones brooch, a timely and generous act which evoked a fresh outburst of emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the bearer, by the way, of one of the most timehonoured names in Albion’s history) placed on the finger of his blushing fiancée an expensive engagement ring with emeralds set in the form of a fourleaved shamrock the excitement knew no bounds. Nay, even the stern provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel Tomkin-Maxwell ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, who presided on the sad occasion, he who had blown a considerable number of sepoys from the cannonmouth without flinching, could not now restrain his natural emotion. With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was overheard by those privileged burghers who happened to be in his immediate entourage to murmur to himself in a faltering undertone:

— God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause I thinks of my old mashtub what’s waiting for me down Limehouse way.

James Joyce, Ulysses

snow white

2006-06-09T12:42:00.000-05:00

DEAR MR. QUISTGAARD:

Although you do not know me my name is Jane. I have seized your name from the telephone book in an attempt to enmesh you in my concerns. We suffer today I believe from a lack of connection with each other. That is common knowledge, so common in fact, that it may not even be true. It may be that we are overconnected, for all I know. However I am acting on the first assumption, that we are underconnected, and thus have flung you these lines, which you may grasp or let fall as you will. But I feel that if you neglect them, you will suffer for it. That is merely my private opinion. No police power supports it. I have no means of punishing you, Mr. Quistgaard, for not listening, for having a closed heart. There is no punishment for that, in our society. Not yet. But to the point. You and I, Mr. Quistgaard, are not in the same universe of discourse. You may not have been aware of it previously, but the fact of the matter is, that we are not. We exist in different universes of discourse. Now it may have appeared to you, prior to your receipt of this letter, that the universe of discourse in which you existed, and puttered about, was in all ways adequate and satisfactory. It may never have crossed your mind to think that other universes of discourse distinct from your own existed, with people in them, discoursing. You may have in a commonsense way, regarded your own u. of d. as a plenum, filled to the brim with discourse. You may have felt that what already existed was a sufficiency. People like you often do. That is certainly one way of regarding it, if fat self-satisfied complacency is your aim. But I say unto you, Mr. Quistgaard, that even a plenum can leak. Even a plenum, cher maître, can be penetrated. New things can rush into your plenum displacing old things, things that were formerly there. No man’s plenum, Mr. Quistgaard, is impervious to the awl of God’s will. Consider then you situation now. You are sitting there in your house on Neat Street, with your fine dog, doubtless, and your handsome wife and tall brown sons, conceivably, and who knows with your gun-colored Plymouth Fury in the driveway, and opinions passing back and forth, about whether the Grange should build a new meeting hall or not, whether the children should become Thomists or not, whether the pump needs more cup grease or not. A comfortable American scene. But I, Jane Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, am in possession of your telephone number, Mr. Quistgaard. Think what this means. It means that at any moment I can pierce your plenum with a single telephone call, simply by dialing 989-7777. You are correct, Mr. Quistgaard, in seeing this as a threatening situation. The moment I inject discourse from my u. of d. into your u. of d., the yourness of yours is diluted. The more I inject, the more you dilute. Soon you will be presiding over an empty plenum, or rather, since that is a contradiction in terms, over a former plenum, in terms of yourness. You are, essentially, in my power. I suggest an unlisted number.

Yours faithfully,
Jane

Donald Barthelme, Snow White

the barber's unhappiness

2006-05-25T23:22:00.000-05:00

“What I was just saying was that, our aim is, we’re going to be looking at some things or aspects, in terms of driving? Meaning safety, meaning, is speeding something we do in a vacuum, or could it involve a pedestrian or fatality or a family out for a fun drive, and then here you come, speeding, with the safety or destiny of that family not held firmly in your mind, and what happens next? Who knows?”

“A crash?” said someone.

“An accident?” said someone else.

“Crash or accident both could,” said the instructor. “Either one might or may. Because I’ve seen, in my CPR role, as a paramedic, when many times, and I’m sorry if you find this gross or too much, I’ve had to sit in our rescue vehicle with a cut-off arm or hand, even of a kid, a really small arm or even limb, just weeping as if I hadn’t been thoroughly trained, as I know none of you have, but I have, and why was I holding that small arm or limb and bawling? Because of someone like you yourselves, good people, I know you are, I’m not saying that, but you decided what? What did you decide? Or they. That person who cut off that kid’s arm I was carrying that day I was just saying?”

No one knew.

“They decided to speed is what you did,” said the instructor sadly.

George Saunders, “The Barber’s Unhappiness”

joseph andrews

2006-05-23T15:49:00.000-05:00

O Vanity! How little is thy force acknowledged, or thy operations discerned? How wantonly dost thou deceive mankind under different disguises? Sometimes thou dost wear the face of pity, sometimes of generosity : nay, thou hast the assurance even to put on those glorious ornaments which belong only to heroick virtue. Thou odious, deformed monster! whom priests have railed at, philosophers despised, and poets ridiculed : is there a wretch so abandoned as to own thee for an acquaintance in publick? yet, how few will refuse to enjoy thee in private? nay, thou art the pursuit of most men through their lives. The greatest villanies are daily practised to please thee : nor is the meanest thief below, or the greatest hero above thy notice. Thy embraces are often the sole aim and sole reward of the private robbery, and the plundered province. It is, to pamper up thee, thou harlot, that we attempt to withdraw from others what we do not want, or to with-hold from them what they do. All our passions are thy slaves. Avarice itself is often no more than thy hand-maid, and even Lust thy pimp. The bully Fear like a coward, flies before thee, and Joy and Grief hide their heads in thy presence.

I know thou wilt think, that whilst I abuse thee, I court thee; and that thy love hath inspired me to write this sarcastical panegyrick on thee : but thou art deceived, I value thee not of a farthing; nor will it give me any pain, if thou should’st prevail on the reader to censure this digression as errant nonsense : for know to thy confusion, that I have introduced thee for no other purpose than to lengthen out a short chapter; and so I return to my history.

Henry Fielding, The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews, And of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams

i sing the body electric

2006-02-25T14:58:00.000-06:00

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women, nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul, (and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and that they are my poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child’s, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger, finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping, love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!

Walt Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric”

l'amoureuse

2006-02-14T01:49:00.000-06:00

She stands on my eyelids
And her hair is in my hair,
She has the shape of my hands,
She has the color of my eyes,
She is engulfed by my shadow
Like a stone against the sky.

Her eyes are always open
And never let me sleep.
Her dreams in broad daylight
Melt away the sun,
Make me laugh, cry and laugh,
Talk when there’s nothing to say.

Paul Eluard, “L’Amoureuse”

the banquet years

2006-02-05T01:04:00.000-06:00

“Monsieur Jarry?”

“On the third floor and a half,” answered the concierge.

The answer astonished me. But I climbed up to where Jarry lived—actually on the third floor and a half. The ceilings of the building had appeared wastefully high to the owner and he had doubled the number of stories by cutting them in half horizontally. This building, which is still standing, had therefore about fifteen floors; but since it rose no higher than the other buildings in the quarter, it amounted to merely the reduction of a skyscraper.

It turned out that Jarry’s place was filled with reductions. This half-floor room was the reduction of an apartment in which its occupant was quite comfortable standing up. But being taller than he, I had to stay in a stoop. The bed was the reduction of a bed; that is to say, a mere pallet. Jarry said that low beds were coming back into fashion. The writing table was the reduction of a table, for Jarry wrote flat on his stomach on the floor. The furniture was the reduction of furniture—there was only the bed. On the wall hung the reduction of a picture. It was a portrait [of Jarry by the Douanier Rousseau], most of which he had burned away, leaving only the head, which resembled a certain lithograph I know of Balzac. The library was the reduction of a library, and that is saying a lot for it. It was composed of a cheap edition of the Bibliothèque rose. On the mantel stood a large stone phallus, a gift from Félicien Rops. Jarry kept this member, which was considerably larger than life size, always covered with a violet skullcap of velvet, ever since the day the exotic monolith had frightened a certain literary lady who was all out of breath from climbing three and a half floors and at a loss how to act in this unfurnished cell.

“Is that a cast?” the lady asked.

“No,” said Jarry. “It’s a reduction.” (Guillaume Apollinaire, Il y a.)

The ceiling of the room was so low that the top of even Jarry’s head brushed against it as he walked about, and he collected the flaky plaster like a severe case of dandruff. It was said that the only food that could be eaten conveniently in the place was flounder.

Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years

ancient music

2005-12-08T20:40:00.000-06:00

Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
                                        Sing: Goddamm.

Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
                                        Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, ’tis why I am, Goddamm,
                                        So ’gainst the winter’s balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

Ezra Pound, “Ancient Music”

the prose edda

2005-10-01T11:30:00.000-05:00

Ægir asked again: ‘Where did the accomplishment known as poetry come from?’

Bragi answered: ‘The beginning of it was that the gods were at war with the people known as the Vanir and they arranged for a peace-meeting between them and made a truce in this way: they both went up to a crock and spat into it. When they were going away, the gods took the truce token and would not allow it to be lost, and made of it a man. He was called Kvasir. He is so wise that nobody asks him any question he is unable to answer. He travelled far and wide over the world to teach men wisdom and came once to feast with some dwarfs, Fjalar and Galar. These called him aside for a word in private and killed him, letting his blood run into two crocks and one kettle. The kettle was called Óðrörir, but the crocks were known as Són and Boðn. They mixed his blood with honey, and it became the mead which makes whoever drinks of it a poet or scholar. The dwarfs told the Æsir that Kvasir had choked with learning, because there was no one sufficiently well-informed to compete with him in knowledge.

‘Then the dwarfs invited a giant called Gilling to their home with his wife, and they asked him to go out rowing on the sea with them. When they were far out, however, the dwarfs rowed on to a rock and upset the boat. Gilling could not swim and was drowned, but the dwarfs righted their craft and rowed ashore. They told his wife about this accident and she was very distressed and wept aloud. Fjalar asked her if she would be easier in her mind about it if she looked out to sea in the direction of where he had been drowned. She wanted to do this. Then he spoke with his brother Galar, telling him to climb up above the door when she was going out and let a millstone fall on to her head; he said he was tired of her wailing. Galar did so. When Gilling’s son, Suttung, heard of this, he went to the dwarfs and seized them and took them out to sea and put them on to a skerry covered by the tide. They begged Suttung to spare their lives offering him as compensation for his father the precious mead, and that brought about their reconciliation. Suttung took the mead home and hid it in a place called Hnitbjörg and he appointed his daughter Gunnlöð as its guardian.

‘This is why we call poetry Kvasir’s blood, or dwarfs’ drink or intoxication, or some sort of liquid of Óðrörir or Boðn or Són, or dwarfs’ ship, because it was that mead which ransomed from death on the skerry, or Suttung’s mead or Hnitbjörg’s sea.’

Then Ægir spoke: ‘It seems to me that to call poetry by these names obscures things.’

Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda

causa

2005-07-14T09:17:00.000-05:00

I join these words for four people,
Some others may overhear them,
O world, I am sorry for you,
You do not know these four people.

Ezra Pound, “Causa”

the sea crabb

2005-05-05T18:07:00.000-05:00

Itt: was a man of Affrica had a ffaire wiffe,
ffairest that euer I saw the days of my liffe :
with a ging, boyes, ginge ! ginge, boyes, ginge !
tarradidle, ffarradidle, ging, boyes, ging !

This goodwiffe was bigbelleyed, & with a lad,
& euer shee longed ffor a sea crabbe.
    ginge &c.

The goodman rise in the morning, & put on his hose,
he went to the sea syde, & ffollowed his nose.
    ginge &c.

Sais, “god speed, ffisherman, sayling on the sea,
hast thou any crabbs in thy bote for to sell mee ?”
    ginge &c.

“I haue Crabbs in my bote, one, tow, or three;
I haue Crabbs in my bote for to sell thee.”
    ginge &c.

The good man went home, & ere he wist,
& put the Crabb in the Chamber pot where his wiffe pist.
    ginge &c.

The good wiffe, she went to doe as she was wont;
vp start the Crabfish, & catcht her by the Cunt.
    ginge &c.

“Alas!” quoth the goodwiffe, “that euer I was borne,
the devill is in the pispott, & has me on his horne.”
    ginge &c.

“If thou be a crabb or a crabfish by kind,
thoule let thy hold goe with a blast of cold wind.”
    ginge &c.

The good man laid to his mouth, & began to blowe,
thinkeing therby that they Crab wold lett goe.
    ginge &c.

“Alas!” quoth the good man, “that euer I came hither,
he has joyned my wiffes tayle & my nose together!”
    ginge &c.

They good man called his neigbors in with great wonder,
to part his wiues tayle & his nose assunder.
    ginge &c.

ffinis.

“Good morning, mister fisherman, I wish you well.
Good morning, mister fisherman, I wish you well.
Please tell me have you any sea crabs to sell?”
    Mush a ding eye, mush a toodle eye day.

“Yes, I have got sea crabs, one, two, and three.
Yes, I have got sea crabs, one, two, and three.
Take any you want; it makes no matter to me.”
    Mush a ding eye, mush a toodle eye day.

When the old man got home, the old wife was asleep,
When the old man got home, the old wife was asleep,
So he put him in the pisspot just for to keep.
    Mush a ding eye, etc.

The old wife got up for to take a long shit.
The old wife got up for to take a long shit.
The God damned old sea crab grabbed her by the slit.
    Mush a ding eye, etc.

“Husband, oh, husband, now what shall I do?
Husband, oh, husband, now what shall I do?
The devil’s in the pisspot and he’s got me by the flue.”
    Mush a ding eye, etc.

The old man ran over and lifted her clothes,
The old man ran over and lifted her clothes,
And he took his other pincher and he grabbed at his nose.
    Mush a ding eye, etc.

“Now, Johnny, have the doctor hitch his horse and cart,
Now, Johnny, have the doctor hitch his horse and cart,
Come get your father’s nose and your mother’s cunt apart.”
    Mush a ding eye, etc.

It tickled the children right down to their soul
It tickled the children right down to their soul
To see their pa’s nose in their mother’s peehole.
    Mush a ding eye, etc.

Traditional, “The Sea Crabb” (two versions, both undated)

sumer is icumen in

2005-04-08T15:10:00.000-05:00

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing, cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
And springeþ the wude nu.
Sing, cuccu!

Awe bleteþ after lomb,
Lhouþ after calve cu,
Bulluc sterteþ, bucke ferteþ.
Murie sing, cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes þu, cuccu.
Ne swik þu naver nu!

Sing cuccu nu, sing cuccu!
Sing cuccu, sing cuccu nu!

Anonymous, “Sumer is icumen in”

pointy birds

2005-03-19T11:44:00.000-06:00

O pointy birds, O pointy pointy,
Anoint my head, anointy-nointy.

John Lillison, “Pointy Birds”

jacques the fatalist and his master

2005-03-12T12:01:00.000-06:00

— Where? — Where?

Reader, your curiosity is extremely annoying. What the devil does it have to do with you? If I told you that it was Pontoise or Saint-Germain or Loreto or Compostella, would you be any the wiser?

If you insist I will tell you that they made their way towards… yes, why not? …towards a huge château, on whose façade were inscribed the words: ‘I belong to nobody and I belong to everybody. You were here before you entered and you will still be here after you have left.’

— Did they go into this château?

No, because either the inscription was a lie, or they were there before they went in.

— Well, did they manage to leave, at least?

No, because either the inscription was a lie, or they were still there after they left.

— And what did they do there?

Jacques said whatever it was written up above that he would say and his master whatever he liked. And they were both right.

— What kind of people did they find there?

A mixture.

— What did they say?

A few truths and a lot of lies.

— Were there intelligent men there?

Where are there not some? And damned questioners whom they avoided like the plague.

Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master

the two sisters

2005-03-01T23:36:00.000-06:00

Was two sisters loved one man,
Jelly flower jan;
The rose marie;
The jury hangs o’er
The rose marie.

He loved the youngest a little the best,
Jelly flower jan;
The rose marie;
The jury hangs o’er
The rose marie.

Them two sisters going down stream,
Jelly flower jan;
The rose marie;
The jury hangs o’er
The rose marie.

The oldest pushed the youngest in,
Jelly flower jan;
The rose marie;
The jury hangs o’er
The rose marie.

She made a fiddle out of her bones,
Jelly flower jan;
The rose marie;
The jury hangs o’er
The rose marie.

She made the screws out of her fingers,
Jelly flower jan;
The rose marie;
The jury hangs o’er
The rose marie.

She made the strings out of her hair,
Jelly flower jan;
The rose marie;
The jury hangs o’er
The rose marie.

The first string says, “Yonder sets my sister on a rock tying of a true-love’s knot.”
Jelly flower jan;
The rose marie;
The jury hangs o’er
The rose marie.

The next string says, “She pushed me in the deep so far.”
Jelly flower jan;
The rose marie;
The jury hangs o’er
The rose marie.

Sung by Mrs. Samuel Harmon, Cade’s Cove, Blount County, Tennessee, “The Two Sisters” (Child 10)

interview with pacifica radio, 1975

2004-12-14T10:49:00.000-06:00

Charles Ruas: Are you working on a novel now?
Barthelme: Yes. Interestingly, interesting to me anyhow, writing The Dead Father—and this has never happened to me before—told me, if not what, at least how to begin writing the next one.
Judith Sherman: Which is how?
Barthelme: I’m not going to tell you, because it’s a secret.
Sherman: From whom?
Barthelme: From youm.

Donald Barthelme, interview with Pacifica Radio, 1975

the real life of sebastian knight

2004-11-16T10:29:00.000-06:00

After a while I went on with my business, examining and roughly classifying the contents of the drawers. There were many letters. These I set aside to be gone through later. Newspaper cuttings in a gaudy book, an impossible butterfly on its cover. No, none of them were reviews of his own books: Sebastian was much too vain to collect them; nor would his sense of humour allow him to paste them in patiently when they did come his way. Still, as I say, there was an album with cuttings, all of them referring (as I found out later when perusing them at leisure) to incongruous or dream-absurd incidents which had occurred in the most trivial places and conditions. Mixed metaphors, too, I perceived, met with his approval, as he probably considered them to belong to the same faintly nightmare category. Between some legal documents I found a slip of paper on which he had begun to write a story—there was only one sentence, stopping short but it gave me the opportunity of observing the queer way Sebastian had—in the process of writing—of not striking out the words which he had replaced by others, so that, for instance, the phrase I encountered ran thus: “As he a heavy A heavy sleeper, Roger Rogerson, old Rogerson bought old Rogers bought, so afraid Being a heavy sleeper, old Rogers was so afraid of missing to-morrows. He was a heavy sleeper. He was mortally afraid of missing to-morrow’s event glory early train glory so what he did was to buy and bring home in a to buy that evening and bring home not one but eight alarm clocks of different sizes and vigour of ticking nine eight eleven alarm clocks of different sizes ticking which alarm clocks nine alarm clocks as a cat has nine which he placed which made his bedroom look rather like a”

I was sorry it stopped here.

Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight

a portrait of the artist as a young man

2004-11-04T09:30:00.000-06:00

He was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father: and so was Dante too for one night at the band on the esplanade she had hit a gentleman on the head with her umbrella because he had taken off his hat when the band played God save the Queen at the end.

Mr Dedalus gave a snort of contempt.

— Ah, John, he said. It is true for them. We are an unfortunate priest-ridden race and always were and always will be till the end of the chapter.

Uncle Charles shook his head, saying:

— A bad business! A bad business!

Mr Dedalus repeated:

— A priest-ridden Godforsaken race!

He pointed to the portrait of his grandfather on the wall to his right.

— Do you see that old chap up there, John? he said. He was a good Irishman when there was no money In the job. He was condemned to death as a whiteboy. But he had a saying about our clerical friends, that he would never let one of them put his two feet under his mahogany.

Dante broke in angrily:

— If we are a priest-ridden race we ought to be proud of it! They are the apple of God’s eye. Touch them not, says Christ, for they are the apple of My eye.

— And can we not love our country then? asked Mr Casey. Are we not to follow the man that was born to lead us?

— A traitor to his country! replied Dante. A traitor, an adulterer! The priests were right to abandon him. The priests were always the true friends of Ireland.

— Were they, faith? said Mr Casey.

He threw his fist on the table and, frowning angrily, protruded one finger after another.

— Didn’t the bishops of Ireland betray us in the time of the union when Bishop Lanigan presented an address of loyalty to the Marquess Cornwallis? Didn’t the bishops and priests sell the aspirations of their country in 1829 in return for catholic emancipation? Didn’t they denounce the fenian movement from the pulpit and in the confession box? And didn’t they dishonour the ashes of Terence Bellew MacManus?

His face was glowing with anger and Stephen felt the glow rise to his own cheek as the spoken words thrilled him. Mr Dedalus uttered a guffaw of coarse scorn.

— O, by God, he cried, I forgot little old Paul Cullen! Another apple of God’s eye!

Dante bent across the table and cried to Mr Casey:

— Right! Right! They were always right! God and morality and religion come first.

Mrs Dedalus, seeing her excitement, said to her:

— Mrs Riordan, don’t excite yourself answering them.

— God and religion before everything! Dante cried. God and religion before the world.

Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.

— Very well then, he shouted hoarsely, if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!

— John! John! cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve.

Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb.

— No God for Ireland! he cried. We have had too much God In Ireland. Away with God!

— Blasphemer! Devil! screamed Dante, starting to her feet and almost spitting in his face.

Uncle Charles and Mr Dedalus pulled Mr Casey back into his chair again, talking to him from both sides reasonably. He stared before him out of his dark flaming eyes, repeating:

— Away with God, I say!

Dante shoved her chair violently aside and left the table, upsetting her napkin-ring which rolled slowly along the carpet and came to rest against the foot of an easy-chair. Mrs Dedalus rose quickly and followed her towards the door. At the door Dante turned round violently and shouted down the room, her cheeks flushed and quivering with rage:

— Devil out of hell! We won! We crushed him to death! Fiend!

The door slammed behind her.

Mr Casey, freeing his arms from his holders, suddenly bowed his head on his hands with a sob of pain.

— Poor Parnell! he cried loudly. My dead king!

He sobbed loudly and bitterly.

Stephen, raising his terror-stricken face, saw that his father’s eyes were full of tears.

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

2004-10-29T14:23:00.000-05:00

ygUDuh

  ydoan
  yunnuhstan

  ydoan o
  yunnuhstand dem
  yguduh ged

      yunnuhstan dem doidee
  yguduh ged riduh
  ydoan o nudn

LISN bud LISN

      dem
      gud
      am

      lidl yelluh bas
      tuds weer goin

duhSIVILEYEzum

E.E. Cummings, “ygUDuh”

this morning our boat left

2004-09-22T09:55:00.000-05:00

This morning our boat left the
Orchid bank and went out through
The tall reeds. Tonight we will
Anchor under mulberries
And elms. You and me, all day
Together, gathering rushes.
Now it is evening, and see,
We have gathered just one stalk.

Anonymous, “This Morning Our Boat Left”

closely watched trains

2004-09-21T10:07:00.000-05:00

I sat there on the dead horse, with my head leaning against its erected leg, which jutted towards the sky, and I fingered the little manes that horses have round their hooves … and a goods train rolled past on the line, whistling merrily. The wagons veiled and unveiled me in a steady rhythm, and I began to shake, and the saliva gushed in my mouth, because the beginning of all this was at Uncle Noneman’s, in Karlín, in Prague. I was sleeping there at Masha’s uncle’s place; they put me up in the studio on a couch, and covered me with a blanket, and then on top of that with the cloth on which was a painting of Prague, with an aeroplane flying above it, in which customers used to have themselves photographed as pilots and observers; whole groups of people used to get into the photograph in this aeroplane, for a lark. Then, in the night, when it was all quiet at the Nonemans’, Masha came and crept in under this cloth with the aeroplane, and stroked me and pressed herself against me. And I caressed her, too, and I was man enough until it came to the point of being a man, but then all at once I wilted, and it was all up with everything. Masha tried pinching me, but I’d gone quite dead, as though I were paralysed in all my extremities … and after an hour Masha crept out again from under the cloth, and went away into the little room, to her aunt …

And in the morning I couldn’t even look at her, I sat completely crushed. Customers started coming, and they stood behind that cloth beneath which I’d gone through such an awful experience in the night. One of them would get up on a chair, and another on a step-ladder, and Uncle Noneman would give each of them a bottle or a funnel to hold, and then he’d creep under the cloth that shrouded his camera, and raise his hand and give them the signal, like someone conducting music, and then duck out again from under the cloth, and after five minutes he brought the photograph, because he had a large notice over the doorway: finished in five minutes.

They kept coming all the morning, until two German soldiers came, and just when one of them had climbed on the chair and the other on the step-ladder, and Mr Noneman had arranged the cloth with the aeroplane and the panorama of Prague in front of them, there was a thunderous crash, and a great wind surged through the studio and swept away the cloth with the aeroplane, and those two soldiers fell down, and Uncle Noneman, who was just burrowing under his cloth, fell down, too, but that was the least of it. A moment later came a tremendous gust of wind, and I saw the whole wall of the studio roll away, and the gust carried off Uncle and those two soldiers, and blew in Auntie and Masha from the other room, and even though they were flying through the air, at the same time they were trying to hold down their skirts, but they couldn’t manage it, and their hair was blown fluttering all ways, curtaining the whole of the sky for me, and down we all went, and sailing lilke tossed balls we dropped slowly on to the grass outside … and the last thing that wind blew after us was the board on which was the notice : finished in five minutes …

Along the main street several people went running, then there was a long silence, and then the sirens began to wail, and a number of ambulances passed, and then came a lot of torn and draggled people, laughing and laughing like crazy men; they dropped on their backs on the grass, lay on their backs and shook with laughter … and only then did this fellow come along, and turn and point in the direction of Vysoĉany, and say : A terrible raid, folks! And when he looked down at the grass, at that big notice, he repeated with quite another meaning what was written on it : finished in five minutes …

Bohumil Hrabal, Closely Watched Trains

krazy kat

2004-09-14T01:02:00.000-05:00

George Herriman, Krazy Kat

the palm-wine drinkard and his dead palm-wine tapster in the dead's town

2004-09-11T10:27:00.000-05:00

The story went thus:—There were two friends, one of these two friends was money borrower, he had no other work than to borrow and he was feeding on any money that he was borrowing. One day, he borrowed £1 from his friend. After a year his friend who lent him the money, asked him to refund the £1 to him, but the borrower said that he would not pay the £1 and said that he had never paid any debit since he was borrowing money and since he was born. When his friend who lent him the £1 heard so from him, he said nothing, but went back to his house quietly. One day, the lender heard information that there was a debit-collector who was bold enough to collect debits from anybody whatsoever. Then he (lender) went to the debit-collector and told him that somebody owed him £1 since a year, but he refused to pay it back; after the debit-collector heard so, then both of them went to the house of the borrower. When he had showed the house of the borrower to the collector, he went back to his home.

When the debit-collector asked for the £1 which he (borrower) had borrowed from his friend since a year, the debitor (borrower) replied that he never paid any of his debits since he was born, then the debit-collector said that he never failed to collect debits from any debitor since he had begun the work. The collector said furthermore that to collect debits about was his profession and he was living on it. But after the debitor heard so from the collector, he also said that his profession was to owe debts and he was living only on debits. In conclusion, both of them started to fight but, as they were fighting fiercely, a man who was passing that way at that time saw them and he came nearer; he stood behind them looking at them, because he was very interested in this fight and he did not part them. But when these two fellows had fought fiercely for one hour, the debitor who owed the £1 pulled out a jack-knife from his pocket and stabbed himself at the belly, so he fell down and died there. But when the debit-collector saw that the debitor died, he thought within himself that he had never failed to collect any debit from any debitor in the world since he had started the work and he (collector) said that if he could not collect the £1 from him (debitor) in this world, he (collector) would collect it in heaven. So he (collector) also pulled out a jack-knife from his pocket and stabbed himself as well, and he fell down and died there.

As the man who stood by and looking at them was very, very interested in that fight, he said that he wanted to see the end of the fight, so he jumped up and fell down at the same spot and died there as well so as to witness the end of the fight in heaven. So when the above statement was given in the court, I was asked to point out who was guilty, either the debit-collector, debitor, the man who stood by looking at them when fighting, or the lender?

But first of all, I was about to tell the court that the man who stood by them looking at them was guilty, because he should have asked about the matter and parted them, but when I remembered that the debitor and collector were doing their work on which both of them were living, then I could not blame the man who stood looking at them and again I could not blame the collector, because he was doing his work and also the debitor himself because he was struggling for what he was living on. But the whole people in the court insisted me to point out who was guilty among them all. Of course when I thought it over for two hours, then I adjourned the judgement for a year, and the court closed for that day.

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and his dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Dead’s Town

moscow to the end of the line

2004-07-14T01:09:00.000-05:00

“And you, Venya? Moscow—Petushki, to the end of the line as usual?”

KILOMETER 85—OREKHOVO-ZUEVO

“Yes, as usual. And it’s for good this time: Moscow—Petushki …”

“And you think you’ll worm your way out of it this time, Scheherazade? Right?”

Here I must make a small digression and, while Semenych is drinking the dosage that he’s collected in fines, explain to you quickly why “Scheherazade” and what he meant by “worm your way out of it.”

Three years have passed since I first bumped into Semenych. Then, he had only just started to work as an inspector. He came up to me and said, “Moscow—Petushki? One hundred twenty-five.” And, when I didn’t understand what was what, he explained it to me. And, when I said that I didn’t have a drop with me, his answer to that was: “Do I have to kick your ass around for you, if you haven’t got any? I answered him that it wouldn’t be necessary and muttered something from the area of Roman law. He became terribly interested and asked me to tell him in detail about everything ancient and Roman. I started to talk and soon got to the scandalous tale of Lucretia and Tarquinius, but, at this point, he had to jump off at Orekhovo-Zuevo. So he didn’t get a chance to find out what finally happened to Lucretia: did that good-for-nothing Tarquinius attain his end or not …

Now Semenych was an extraordinary ladies’ man and a utopian; the history of the world interested him only for its intimate moments. So when he looked in again a week later near Friazevo, Semenych didn’t say to me, “Moscow—Putshki? One hundred twenty-five.” No, he flung himself on me for the continuation: “Well, did he fuck his Lucretia or not?

And I told him what happened next. I went from Roman to Christian history and came to the story of Hypatia.

“And so, at the instigation of the Patriarch Cyril, the monks of Alexandria, seized by fanaticism, tore the clothing from the beautiful Hypatia and …” But, here, our train came to a dead stop in Orekhovo-Zuevo, and Semenych had to leap onto the platform, hopelessly intrigued.

And in this way three years passed, every week. On the Moscow—Petushki line I was the only unticketed passenger who had never bought Semenych a single gram of vodka, and, nevertheless, remained unabused and among the living. But every story has an end—even the story of the world.

The next Friday, I got up to Indira Gandhi, Moshe Dayan, and Dubček. There was no place left to go.

And so Semenych drank the fines he had levied, grunted and looked at me like a boa constrictor.

“Moscow—Petushki? One hundred twenty-five.”

“Semenych,” I responded, almost begging, “Semenych, haven’t you drunk quite a lot already?”

“A decent amount,” he answered, not without self-satisfaction. He was really foggy.

“Then that means you’ve got an imagination? That means that you’re ready to race into the future? That means you can come with me out of the dark world of the past into the golden age which ‘verily, verily, shall be’!”

“I can, Venya, I can. Today, I can do anything.”

“From the Third Reich, the Fifth Republic, from Slaughterhouse Five, the Seventeenth Congress—can you leap with me into the promised land of the Fifth Kingdom, the seventh heaven and the Second Coming?”

“I can,” Semenych roared. “Speak, Scheherazade, speak!”

“Then, listen. The day will come, that day of days. On that day when most weary Simon shall say finally, ‘Now, absolve thy servant, Lord,’ and the archangel Gabriel shall say, ‘Hail, Mary, blessed art thou amongst women,’ and Doctor Faust shall pronounce: ‘The moment is now, linger and stop a bit!’ And all whose names are written in the book of life shall sing out: ‘Exalt Isaiah,’ and Diogenes will extinguish his lantern. There shall be good and beauty and everything will be fine and all will be good and other than good and beauty will be nothing and all shall merge into a kiss.”

“Merge into a kiss,” Semenych was fidgeting impatiently now.

“Yes! And the torturer and the victim shall merge into a kiss, and spite, design, and calculation shall disappear from the heart, and the woman—”

“The woman!!” Semenych started to quiver. “What? What about the woman?”

“And the woman of the East shall throw off her veil, the oppressed woman of the East shall throw off her veil once and for all, and the lamb shall lie down.”

“Lie down?” Here he started to twitch all over.

“Yes. And the lamb shall lie down with the wolf and not one tear shall be shed and every cavalier shall choose a lady, whoever pleases him, and …”

“Ooooh,” Semenych groaned. “Will she? Will it be soon?” And, suddenly, he started to wave his hands like a gypsy dancer and then to fumble busily about with his clothing, stripping off his uniform down to his most intimate parts.

Although drunk, I gazed at him in amazement, while the sober citizens around him just leapt from their seats. And in dozens of eyes was written a huge “Aha!” The people had interpreted the matter quite differently from they ought to have interpreted it.

I should tell you that homosexuality in our country has been overcome once and for all but not entirely. Or, entirely but not completely. Or else, entirely and completely, but not once and for all. What do people think about now? Nothing but homosexuality. That and the Middle East. Israel, the Golan Heights, Moshe Dayan. So, if they chase Moshe Dayan off the Golan Heights and the Arabs make peace with the Jews? What will remain in people’s heads? Nothing but homosexuality pure and simple.

Let’s say they’re watching television: General de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou meet at a diplomatic function. Naturally they both smile and shake each other’s hand. And then the audience goes: “Aha.” They say, “Go on, General de Gaulle!” Or: “Aha, go on, Georges Pompidou!”

Just like they were looking at us now. Everyone had “Aha” written in his round eyes.

“Semenych! Semenych!” I grabbed him under the arms and started to drag him toward the vestibule. “People are looking at us. Come to your senses … Let’s go!”

He was terribly heavy. He had gotten all soft and unsteady. I barely got him to the end of the car and propped up against the automatic doors.

“Venya, tell me … the woman of the East … If she takes off the veil … will she have anything else on? Does she have anything under the veil?”

I had no time to answer. The train stopped as if transfixed at the station in Orekhovo-Zuevo, and the doors opened automatically.

OREKHOVO-ZUEVO

Senior Inspector Semenych, intrigued for the one thousand and first time, half-alive and unbuttoned, was propelled out onto the platform, bumping his head on the railing. He then collapsed under the feet of the people getting off the train, and all the fines he had collected spewed out of his gullet and flowed away over the platform.

Venedikt Erofeev, Moscow to the End of the Line

the secret miracle

2004-07-01T09:15:00.000-05:00

Hladík’s first reaction was simply one of horror. He was sure he would not have been terrified by the gallows, the block, or the knife; but to die before a firing squad was unbearable. In vain he repeated to himself that the pure and general act of dying, not the concrete circumstances, was the dreadful fact. He did not grow weary of imagining these circumstances: he absurdly tried to exhaust all the variations. He infinitely anticipated the process, from the sleepless dawn to the mysterious discharge of the rifles. Before the day set by Julius Rothe, he died hundreds of deaths, in courtyards whose shape and angle defied geometry, shot down by changeable soldiers whose number varied and who sometimes put an end to him from close up and sometimes from far away. He faced these imaginary executions with true terror (perhaps with true courage). Each simulacrum lasted a few seconds. Once the circle was closed, Jaromir returned interminably to the tremulous eve of his death. Then he would reflect that reality does not tend to coincide with forecasts of it. With perverse logic he inferred that to foresee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Faithful to this feeble magic, he would invent, so that they might not happen, the most atrocious particulars. Naturally, he finished by fearing that these particulars were prophetic.

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Secret Miracle”

success algorithm

2004-06-24T10:42:00.000-05:00

Readers tend to identify an author’s position with his hero’s attitudes. “All the author’s sympathies lie on the side of…”, write the critics, disclosing their unique discovery. But, dear readers, what does sympathy or antipathy have to do with my story? Not a damn thing! This author is conducting an objective literary study of a specific situation. That, and nothing more. Frankly, if anything, he’s far from enthusiastic about Kaimenov’s and Malyshev’s venture. The idea of simulating an individual on a computer recalls an incident that occurred long ago, when this writer was a student. During an exam on accident prevention the instructor had asked a student to draw a schematic of a human being. The co-ed burst into tears: the idea of substituting a schematic for a person—a human being!—was monstrous to her. Naturally she was kicked right out of the exam room because such a schematic actually exists in safety engineering. It is a complex of inductances and resistances which determines how much current passes through a person plugged into a 380-volt, 50-hertz industrial frequency. But from a human standpoint, you can understand the girl’s reaction.

Vladimir Savchenko, “Success Algorithm”

ulysses

2004-06-16T07:42:00.000-05:00

Pa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney telling the men how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was, and high and heavylooking. How was that? The last night pa was boosed he was standing on the landing there bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney’s for to boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt. Never see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. He told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn’t hear the other things he said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying to say it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Dignam, my father. I hope he’s in purgatory now because he went to confession to Father Conroy on Saturday night.

James Joyce, Ulysses

midnight blue

2004-04-30T15:14:00.000-05:00

“I was saying,” said Mr. Spiers, “that if I detest anything more than a filthy mess in my saucer, it is the sort of fool who blathers out a dream at the breakfast table.”

“Oh, my dream!” said Mrs. Spiers with the utmost good humor. “All right, my dear, if you don’t want to hear it. It was about you, that’s all.” With that, she resumed her breakfast.

“Either tell your dream, or don’t tell it,” said Mr. Spiers.

“You said you didn’t want to hear it,” replied Mrs. Spiers, not unreasonably.

“There is no more disgusting or offensive sort of idiot,” said Mr. Spiers, “than the woman who hatches up a mystery, and then—”

“There is no mystery,” said Mrs. Spiers. “You said you didn’t want—”

“Will you,” said Mr. Spiers, “kindly put an end to this, and tell me, very briefly, whatever nonsense it is that you dreamed, and let us have done with it? Imagine you are dictating a telegram.”

“Mr. T. Spiers, Normandene, Radclyffe Avenue, Wrexton Garden Suburb,” said his wife. “I dreamed you were hung.”

“Hanged, Mother,” said little Daphne.

John Collier, “Midnight Blue”

evening primrose

2004-04-27T16:13:00.000-05:00

You know the sensation one has, peering into the half-light of a vivarium? One sees bark, pebbles, a few leaves, nothing more. And then, suddenly, a stone breathes—it is a toad; there is a chameleon, another, a coiled adder, a mantis among the leaves. The whole case seems crepitant with life. Perhaps the whole world is. One glances at one’s sleeve, one’s feet.

John Collier, “Evening Primrose”

a colder eye

2004-03-01T17:18:00.000-06:00

Mr. Yeats (corroborating Constable 170C): “I saw the defendant at the performance last night in the Abbey Theatre. There was an organized disturbance by a section of the pit to prevent the play being heard. I saw the defendant arrested, and saw him before the arrest rise up and yell at the top of his voice.”

Mr. Mahony (from the bench): “Did he say anything?”

Mr. Yeats: “He addressed some words to me in Irish.”

Mr. Mahony: “Were they complimentary or the reverse?”

Mr. Yeats: “I am sorry to say I understand no Irish.”

Mr. Mahony: “Well, I know some Irish, and I know that one can say very scathing things in Irish.”

Hugh Kenner, A Colder Eye

watt

2004-02-11T20:12:00.000-06:00

Would you care to hear, Mr Hackett, said the lady, about the night that Larry was born?

Oh do tell him, my dear, said the gentleman.

Well, said the lady, that morning at breakfast Goff turns to me and he says, Tetty, he says, Tetty, my pet, I should very much like to invite Thompson, Cream and Coulquhoun to help us eat the duck, if I felt sure you felt up to it. Why, my dear, says I, I never felt fitter in my life. Those were my words, were they not?

I believe they were, said Goff.

Well, said Tetty, when Thompson comes into the dining-room, followed by Cream and Berry (Coulquhoun I remember had a previous engagement), I was already seated at the table. There was nothing strange in that, seeing I was the only lady present. You did not find that strange, did you, my love?

Certainly not, said Goff, most natural.

The first mouthful of duck had barely passed my lips, said Tetty, when Larry leaped in my wom.

Your what? said Mr Hackett.

My wom, said Tetty.

You know, said Goff, her woom.

How embarrassing for you, said Mr Hackett.

I continued to eat, drink and make light conversation, said Tetty, and Larry to leap, like a salmon.

What an experience for you, said Mr Hackett.

There were moments, I assure you, when I thought he would tumble out on the floor, at my feet.

Merciful heavens, you felt him slipping, said Mr Hackett.

No trace of this dollar appeared on my face, said Tetty. Did it, my dear?

Not a trace, said Goff.

Nor did my sense of humour desert me. What rolypoly, said Mr Berry, I remember, turning to me with a smile, what delicious rolypoly, it melts in the mouth. Not only in the mouth, sir, I replied, without an instant’s hesitation, not only in the mouth, my dear sir. Not too osy with the sweet, I thought.

Not too what? said Mr Hackett.

Osy, said Goff. You know, not too osy.

With the coffee and liqours, labour was in full swing, Mr Hackett, I give you my solemn word, under the groaning board.

Swing is the word, said Goff.

You knew she was pregnant, said Mr Hackett.

Why er, said Goff, you see er, I er, we er —

Tetty’s hand fell heartily on Mr Hackett’s thigh.

He thought I was coy, she cried. Hahahaha. Haha. Ha.

Haha, said Mr Hackett.

I was greatly worried I admit, said Goff.

Finally they retired, did you not? said Tetty.

We did indeed, said Goff, we retired to the billiard-room, for a game of slosh.

I went up those stairs, Mr Hackett, said Tetty, on my hands and knees, wringing the carpetrods as though they were made of raffia.

You were in such anguish, said Mr Hackett.

Three minutes later I was a mother.

Unassisted, said Goff.

I did everything with my own hands, said Tetty, everything.

She severed the cord with her teeth, said Goff, not having a scissors to her hand. What do you think of that?

I would have snapped it across my knee, if necessary, said Tetty.

That is a thing I often wondered, said Mr Hackett, what it feels like to have the string cut.

For the mother or the child? said Goff.

For the mother, said Mr Hackett. I was not found under a cabbage, I believe.

For the mother, said Tetty, the feeling is one of relief, of great relief, as when the guests depart. All my subsequent strings were severed by Professor Cooper, but the feeling was always the same, one of riddance.

Samuel Beckett, Watt

gogol's wife

2004-01-31T09:47:00.000-06:00

But the fact remains that, as a biographer, I have certain firm obligations. Believing as I do that every bit of information about so lofty a genius will turn out to be of value to us and to future generations, I cannot conceal something which in any case has no hope of being judged fairly and wisely until the end of time. Moreover, what right have we to condemn? Is it given to us to know, not only what intimate needs, but even what higher and wider ends may have been served by those very deeds of a lofty genius which perchance may appear to us vile? No indeed, for we understand so little of these privileged natures. “It is true,” a great man once said, “that I also have to pee, but for quite different reasons.”

Tommaso Landolfi, “Gogol’s Wife”

wise blood

2004-01-30T16:13:00.001-06:00

Haze put his head in at the window, knocking the hat accidentally straight again. He seemed to have knocked his face straight too for it became completely expressionless. “Listen,” he said, “get this: I don’t believe in anything.”

Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood

the balloon

2004-01-29T10:36:00.000-06:00

There were reactions. Some people found the balloon “interesting.” As a response, this seemed inadequate to the immensity of the balloon, the suddenness of its appearance over the city; on the other hand, in the absence of hysteria or other societally-induced anxiety, it must be judged a calm, “mature” one. There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the “meaning” of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena. It was agreed that since the meaning of the balloon could never be known absolutely, extended discussion was pointless, or at least less purposeful than the activities of those who, for example, hung green and blue paper lanterns from the warm gray underside, in certain streets, or seized the occasion to write messages on the surface, announcing their availability for the performance of unnatural acts, or the availability of acquaintances.

Donald Barthelme, “The Balloon”

the man with the black coat

2004-01-29T01:37:00.000-06:00

There was once a red-haired man who had no eyes and no ears. He also had no hair, so he was called red-haired only in a manner of speaking.

He wasn’t able to talk, because he didn’t have a mouth. He had no nose, either.

He didn’t even have any arms or legs. He also didn’t have a stomach, and he didn’t have a back, and he didn’t have a spine, and he also didn’t have any other insides. He didn’t have anything. So it’s hard to understand whom we’re talking about.

So we’d better not talk about him any more.

Daniil Kharms, The Man With the Black Coat

the crying of lot 49

2004-01-28T14:17:00.000-06:00

She heard him pacing around his office. Unearthly siren-sounds converged on them from all over the night. “There is a face,” Hilarius said, “that I can make. One you haven't seen; no one in this country has. I have only made it once in my life, and perhaps today in central Europe there still lives, in whatever vegetable ruin, the young man who saw it. He would be, now, about your age. Hopelessly insane. His name was Zvi. Will you tell the ‘police,’ or whatever they are calling themselves tonight, that I can make that face again? That it has an effective radius of a hundred yards and drives anyone unlucky enough to see it down forever into the darkened oubliette, among the terrible shapes, and secures the hatch irrevocably above them? Thank you.”

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

the expedition of humphrey clinker

2004-01-28T12:18:00.000-06:00

For my part, I could not help thinking this lawyer was not such an invalid as he pretended to be. I observed he ate very heartily three times a-day, and though his bottle was marked stomachic tincture, he had recourse to it so often, and seemed to swallow it with such peculiar relish, that I suspected it was not compounded in the apothecary’s shop, or the chemist’s laboratory. One day, while he was earnest in discourse with Mrs. Tabitha, and his servant had gone out on some occasion or other, I dexterously exchanged the labels and situation of his bottle and mine; and having tasted his tincture, found it was excellent claret. I forthwith handed it about to some of my neighbours, and it was quite emptied before Mr. Micklewhimmen had occasion to repeat his draught. At length, turning about, he took hold of my bottle, instead of his own, and, filling a large glass, drank to the health of Mrs. Tabitha. It had scarce touched his lips, when he perceived the change which had been put upon him, and was at first a little out of countenance. He seemed to retire within himself, in order to deliberate, and in half a minute his resolution was taken; addressing himself to our quarter, ‘I give the gentleman credit for his wit (said he); it was a gude practical joke; but sometimes hi joci in seria ducunt mala. I hope for his own sake he has na drank all the liccor; for it was a vara poorful infusion of jallap in Bourdeaux wine; at its possable he may ha ta’en sic a dose as will produce a terrible catastrophe in his ain booels.’

Tobias Smollet, The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker

the pilgrim's progress

2004-01-28T12:03:00.000-06:00

He had them then into another Room where was a Hen and Chickens, and bid them observe a while. So one of the Chickens went to the trough to drink, and every time she drank she lift up her head and her eyes towards Heaven. See, said he, what this little Chick doth, and learn of her to acknowledge whence your mercies come, by receiving them with looking up. Yet again, said he, observe and look; so they gave heed and perceived that the Hen did walk in a four-fold method towards her Chickens. 1. She had a common call, and that she hath all day long. 2. She had a special call, and that she had but sometimes. 3. She had a brooding note. And 4. She had an out-cry.

John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress

finnegans wake

2004-01-27T22:28:00.000-06:00

Hearhasting he, himmed reromembered all the chubbs, chipps, chaffs, chuckinpucks and chayney chimebells That he had mistributed in port, pub, park, pantry and poultryhouse, While they, thered, the others, that are, were most emulously concerned to cupturing the last dropes of summour down through their grooves of blarneying. Ere the sockson locked at the dure. Which he would, shuttinshure. And lave them to sture.

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

ubu roi

2004-01-27T21:57:00.000-06:00

God’s bones, yes, by my green candle, I’d rather be poor as the skinniest mouse than rich as the cruellest cat.

Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi

ubu roi

2004-01-27T21:40:00.000-06:00

Yes, I’m tight. It’s because I’ve drunk too much champagne.

Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi

ubu roi

2004-01-27T21:18:00.000-06:00

Yes, by God, I’m perfectly satisfied. Who wouldn’t be? Captain of the Dragoons, aide de camp to King Wenceslas, decorated with the order of the Red Eagle of Poland, and ex-King of Aragon. You can’t go higher than that!

Alfred Jarry, Ubu Roi