That's funny. Me, introducing Amanda Miller, hot on the heels of a post on Georges Bataille. Don't ask how many gold plated walruses, chocolate covered spiders and organic egg rolls I had to pay to get her here. I'm just glad she's here. I read Brilliant Sulk (in the name of all you hold sacred, DON'T press that link if you're easily offended or shocked) Where was I? Oh, I read Brilliant Sulk because I'm a student of life. I plan to write the Great American Novel. Don't laugh. I've already started it. I've been working on it for years. One of my characters is a stunning beauty, breathtaking of both form and mind. And she's a potty-mouth. What makes a beautiful woman a potty-mouth? It's as if she's saying, 'I'm not just a pretty face, I'm disgusting too.' What childhood traumas, what deep-seated neuroses? In order to create my character, I have to get inside her head. That's why I read Brilliant Sulk. Am I saying Amanda is a potty-mouth? Of course not. It's just that she routinely uses labels like "blow-job" and phrases like "dipped in bacon fat and covered in pubic hair", that's all. It's a very interesting case study. Some of the women who hang out at her blog are even worse. And some of them are mothers. It's kind of scandalous.
In all seriousness, I read Amanda because she makes me laugh. And I need to laugh, people. If I didn't, there'd be a lot more posts here on guilt, Kierkegaard and death.
I present to you Amanda Miller, just doing what she does, talking about her day:
When Mark put the word out that he was looking for guest bloggers I quickly jumped at the chance. He said sure. Then I panicked. What was I going to write about? I don't write poetry well. Okay, I don't write poetry at all. And art? Well I'm an art lover and fancy myself a so so artist but there is no way I could churn out a post on art theory. You would laugh at me. A thundering prolonged guttural laugh.
So I thought it would be best if I wrote about my day yesterday. A peek into a stranger's life is usually interesting. I said usually. Turns out I'm quite boring...
Waking up is mandatory since I have animals and children to feed and take care of. The feeding part is quite easy. The hard part is trying to disguise my dog and two cats as small children so we can dine at the wonderfully healthy and delicious International House of Pancakes. My children love the cinnamon spice duck waffles.
After everyone has eaten I take them to the park where they can run, play and do their business. Why is it children love to poop outdoors? We somehow mange to elude the park police yet again and it's time to head home for a nap. While the little ones sleep I try to write. Which translates to: go onto Twitter and waste a couple of hours tweeting things like this : "Kids took a 2 hour nap. I managed to sneak out to buy a goat, have my back waxed and visit the meat sculpture garden in downtown S.F." Yes, I know what you're thinking. Who knew San Francisco had a meat sculpture garden?
My husband arrives home from work at 5:30. His occupation is still a mystery to me. It either involves numbers or some sort of canned fruit product. Children are handed over while I try to straighten up the house. Vacuuming would be a wonderful start except my $14,000 German vacuum cleaner broke so I was forced to duct tape the splintered piece of crappy plastic back on and forge ahead. I had to handle it like a tiny delicate newborn baby with a 600 pound bobbling pumpkin head. It took me three hours.
All day I had a fantastically awful taste in my mouth. It's akin to a combination of brussel sprouts and smelly giraffe feet. Close your eyes. Can you taste it? Good. Because it was driving me nuts. I brushed my teeth 1,000 times, gargled with everything under the sun, including some viscous orange goo I found in the medicine cabinet that smelled like Jagermeister. In retrospect? Not such a wonderful idea. I believe it exacerbated my mouth ailment.
To take my mind off of my trench mouth (side note here: do not Google trench mouth, images will appear that are utterly ghastly and you WILL run to the bathroom to floss and brush) I opened a bottle of wine and turned on the TV.
Ass Up Sluts 5 was on.
Saw it.
The remote control was waaay over on the other side of the room so I sat and watched for a few minutes. Boring. Those sluts were incredibly boring. I got my ass up, fetched the remote and tuned to the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. I sat there and endured the most appalling rendition of We Are The World. My ears. My poor ears. They bled profusely.
After I sopped up the pools of blood with the throw pillow I drank some more wine. The Canadian national anthem was being sung by a lovely woman in a red dress who looked alarmingly similar to the lead actress in Ass Up Sluts 5. It was then that I suddenly remembered my great great great uncle, Calixa Lavallee composed the anthem. Did any of this musical talent trickle down to me? Um, no. But I pull that little trivia tidbit out of my hat whenever we entertain Canadian dignitaries. Which is never.
Then I fell asleep on the sofa.
I bet your day was way better than mine.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Georges Bataille
Opium Poetry has published two of my poems: Docile Bodies (the title of which is stolen from Foucault's Discipline and Punish) and Fallen. I'm particularly pleased that Ross Vassilev gave Fallen a home. It begins with a quote by Georges Bataille, the subject of this post.
When I was twenty-one, my roommate brought a book in called Story of the Eye. At the time I was coming to terms with my upbringing: a fundamentalist Christian mother and an abusive father. I had not found a home in the world yet, and there were nights when I couldn't sleep until I thought about returning to my parents' home and tearing them to pieces. (Gentle reader, don't be shocked. I renounced those self-destructive feelings years ago.) The book shattered inside me like a grenade. It brought back the violent feelings of blasphemy I had felt when I first lost my faith, it expressed the kinds of sadistic fantasies I had been using and it sustained a feeling of exhilaration that was somehow liberating—and it was filthy, illicit, uncompromising and alluring. Soon another title entered the apartment: Literature and Evil. Surely, I thought, this man is an authority. But the book was deeply disappointing. The author had virtually no use for Lautréamont, but worse was its tone. Were there two Batailles? Compared to Eye, this was placid, without passion, disengaged. Bataille dropped off my radar screen.
Five years later I was making a home, deeply in love, and I rediscovered Bataille. Erotism, the City Lights book, caught my eye for its cover. This was not quite the Bataille of Eye, but neither did it remind me of the book that had disappointed me. Luckily, my renewed passion for this writer coincided with the wider American interest, and every year or two when a new translation came out I was there. Along with Erotism, Inner Experience and The Accursed Share became favorites.
The Two Batailles
Admirers of this writer seem to fall into two primary groups: those who love the filthy, incendiary Bataille, and the academics who like to discuss his ideas in a language only they can truly appreciate. But these aren't the two Batailles. Not: Bataille the drunk and Bataille the librarian. But: Bataille the artist and Bataille the rationalist. For Bataille, art was not enough. Story of the Eye is proof that he could have been one of the greats. It is by far the best literature he ever wrote. The psychology slows down L'Abbe C, so that one wonders if an essay would have done the job better. In My Mother, he vacillated between an explicit treatment of the matter and a detached one, in a way that destroys the book as art. Even The Dead Man, brutal as it is, is retarded by a clinical aspect, as is Madame Edwarda by theology. These are monsters or oddities—interesting to be sure, but not good art. Blue of Noon and a few of the poems are better, but most of the poetry I've read suffers from the same problems.
Bataille could have been a great artist. He chose not to, something in him rebelled against it, even as he was attracted to it. He was also attracted to philosophy. But as he said, he was not "trained" for philosophy. He never really settled in and felt himself a part of the academic world. Thus it was not a world he could reject in the way he could reject art. This may be one reason why his philosophical works don't suffer in the same way as his artistic works. He could afford to shit on art. It did not have to be this way, but art and philosophy have different requirements, and after Eye, Bataille knowingly neglected the requirements of art. He misused art.
The same is not true of his philosophical work. The artist that Bataille was—almost despite himself—was allowed to come through and be incorporated into the work. The hybrids that his artistic works failed to be were achieved in his philosophical works. There is at least one simple reason why. Art must begin and end with the individual, the subject, the particular, the discrete experience of a self. This is not simply its cardinal rule, it is its supreme and unique importance. Bataille did not respect that. His overriding tendency was to generalize. All of the subjectivity and passion he brought to philosophy never overrode his concern to generalize, which is what philosophy does.
One of the Strangest Portraits the World has ever Seen
Why Guilty? Denis Hollier gives several answers in his introduction to the English version of Bataille's most unusual book. He compares Bataille to Joseph K. who, instead of taking an interest in his case, spends time in frivolous pursuits. But there's more. Remember the anxiety K. felt in the office, in the cathedral: this is not due to indifference. On a deeper level, Bataille is guilty, not like Joseph K., but like the author of Joseph K. It is simply stated on page 57: "I'm guilty...an intellectual...Hypocrite! Writing..." I am guilty, I write. Page 41: "The idea of explaining what I do makes me sick! Sovereignty isn't speaking—or it's deposed." Page 54: "I want the conditions of the land surveyor...a game making the impossible possible." Bataille identifies primarily with Kafka, not the two K's. "Guilty" is a particular way of saying "impossible": it is the impossible imbued with anguish. Anguish is what he relates to not only in Kafka, but in Kierkegaard as well.
There is childishness, but no laughter in this book. Only a painful struggle toward it. "My light-heartedness is an arrow, released with enormous strength." I take that literally. "I approach the summit...at the decisive moment there's always something else to do." Something other than writing, that is. The arrow is only an object/sign in transit. All you see on the page is enormous effort, over and over again. When Bataille is at the point of having something else to do, he is closest to moving away from the condition of guilt. He is most guilty when he moves toward that condition—when he picks up his pen. The instant he starts writing, he is already moving away from writing, toward silence (or laughter, or something else). For me Bataille's primary significance is in his extreme lucidity of the game he is playing (and which we all play when we write), and after all that the integrity in his refusal to trivialize it with even the hint of a retreat: "I'll die with no answer to basic problems."
The introduction of the English version of Sur Nietzsche states that Bataille found the German occupation "boring." Here is one of the strangest portraits of a human being I've ever seen: France is occupied by the Nazis, many are hiding out in the countryside (including Beckett, writing Watt, playing chess with Duchamp, and picking fruit from orchards, after having worked in the Resistance and risking his life) and Bataille is convalescing in a small village. One of the things this ill man does is get drunk. And he stares at a photograph of a man being hacked to pieces until he puts himself in a certain meditative state. He writes in the journal which becomes the book Guilty, "who can accept that a horror of this magnitude would express 'what you are' and lay bare your nature?" This is Bataille's self portrait, the image that he made sure would be his lasting portrait. Who can accept it? When I read certain pages from Guilty, I feel as though Bataille is urging me to stare at the Chinese torture picture, and my response is "NO!" It's like someone getting in your face about drugs or Coltrane or religion. When someone comes on this strong my response is always to back off. Bataille's self portrait is sickening in the same way that one's own naked body is sometimes sickening.
I have always associated Lynch's film Fire Walk with Me with Bataille. Once I made a sort of compromise: I won't stare at the Chinese picture, but I will pay close attention to this film. I was surprised by what happened. The scene in which Daddy Palmer clubs the prostitute to death made me pause the film. Lynch had made the impact to the skull graphic, but more than that, he takes the viewer into Palmer's body. You see the action from his point of view, you become the murderer. I had been watching the nuances of Palmer's face throughout the film. At the moment of the clubbing I felt a momentary sense of rage, something perhaps like a murderer's ecstacy. I paused the film and sat on the edge of the chair, like someone about to throw up, and tried to retain the feeling, but couldn't. But for a second I had "identified" with the most despicable character imaginable.
Surya's Biography
I am thankful for the portrait, but I have issues with Surya. He presents Bataille's critics, but like enthusiasts do, he defends his subject. The problem is, I don't think Bataille would have wanted to be defended. He preferred people who proclaimed disgust or outrage to Sade to those who gave ultimately tepid rationalizations for Sade's behavior. The fact is, he sometimes put himself in a position to be accused. He wanted to provoke strong responses. Some of his critics are right on. Surya also seems to be concerned about protecting the incomplete, the fragmentary, the incoherent aspects of Bataille's work as if they should be maintained in an aura of legacy or a mystique. Again, I don't think this is an appropriate response to the man. If he worked against "completion", it is because he believed we complete each other. Everyone's life and work is fragmentary and incomplete. Death has the last word. If Bataille's life makes this more apparent than the lives of others does it need to be emphasized in addition? The opposite tendency is certainly worse—to manufacture a clarity where none exists—but it would have been helpful to provide just one page to sum up Bataille’s various attempts to build certain projects, the two most important being The Accursed Share and the Universal History. Surya actually compounds the sense of brokenness in Bataille's efforts, while a little clarity would have been helpful. I am afraid a somewhat romantic image of the man is encouraged. I think there is a need for a portrait of Bataille as clear and as classical as the sober portrait that adorns the jacket of Surya's book.
The Birth of Art
I find The Birth of Art to be Bataille's most beautiful book. First off, it's a beautiful book. Published in 1955 by Albert Skira, it was the first fine art book devoted to the paintings at Lascaux; Skira produced some of the nicest art books in the world. On the very first page of Bataille's text one encounters his disturbing attitude toward art. He states in passing that the "creative virtue" the Lascaux Man possessed, which makes him the "first" man (that is, "of our sort"), has today "ceased to be necessary". Bataille does not develop the idea further. Apparently to him it was perfectly obvious. But it begs the question: if this is the man "whom for the first time and with certainty we may say: he produced works of art; he is of our sort", then what does it mean to say that the very "virtue" that enables us to recognize him is no longer necessary?
One can certainly point to many examples which seem to point to an erosion of faith in art, yet one need not look far to find examples of the power of the art impulse. I think it is plain to see that Bataille doubted that art had the power anymore to deeply move people, opting instead for a type of philosophical inquiry informed by science and infused with the spirit of art. In his study of Manet, also from 1955 (and published by Skira), he states that there had been no significant development in visual art since the 1930's—an astonishing claim, meaning he was completely blind to developments in America. If art is not enough, then what is? And what is Bataille doing with his writing? Let us hear what he has to say. Writing about the sorcerer figure of Trois Freres, Bataille writes:
...perhaps every definition has the fault of missing the essential: here, what is essential seems to me more tortuous, more vague: inextricable...Whether or not this "god" figure was invested with the government of operations which for the Magdelenians were of the greatest practical importance, bypassing these material ends, so like those of our machines, I may focus upon very different aspects: for all his useful influences, this dream-begotten creature is no less a most remarkable negation of whatever has to do with man's everyday life...we too will now and again suddenly feel the oppressive dead weight of a civilization of which we too are proud. We suddenly languish, thirsting after another truth, and we ascribe our lassitude to some error incult in the privilege of reason. We are led to balk at and then cry down the values that derive from stolid application to work. [P 121]
and then:
P 26: The Modern Primitive, after untold ages of maturing, stands on a platform nearer the first men's level than ours; until some crucial change occurs, his lot is to stay where he is, uncreating and bogged down in the same dark backward abysm of time that immobilized his forbears. For us, on the other hand, a new but indefinite time is being born...the world within us is altering and in like manner, the world altered during that moment between the Reindeer Age's beginnings and the flowering of Lascaux. There was an outburst. There have been others, yes; [P 15] Greece also gives us the impression of a miracle, but the light that emanates from Greece is the light of broad day: dawn's early light is less certain, less distinct, but during a stormy season, early morning lightening is the most dazzling of all. [26] Those men [may not have] had the clear, analytical awareness which, too often, is the limited definition we give to conscious awareness. But the surge of strength and the feeling of grandeur that bore them up may be reflected in the passionate vitality animating the giant bulls of the Lascaux frieze. There existed a tradition, not strong enough to quash the new impulse, but to it those painters doubtless did owe something. However, they strode out of it, creating as they came; in the cave's semi-darkness, by the hallowing lamp-light, they surpassed what until then they had been by creating what was not there the moment before.
These are words that shudder with beauty. Creating as they came, he says—like I am, he seems to be saying. Like we are, creating ourselves as we go. This type of philosophy, first practiced by Nietzsche, is surely akin to the work of the Shamans. And it's poetry. Bataille's words convey the same kind of wonder that the images themselves do, and like Anne Carson's poetry, cause the ancient world to quiver with contemporary relevance. By asking of the figure, who is he?, Bataille asks, "who are we?"
When I was twenty-one, my roommate brought a book in called Story of the Eye. At the time I was coming to terms with my upbringing: a fundamentalist Christian mother and an abusive father. I had not found a home in the world yet, and there were nights when I couldn't sleep until I thought about returning to my parents' home and tearing them to pieces. (Gentle reader, don't be shocked. I renounced those self-destructive feelings years ago.) The book shattered inside me like a grenade. It brought back the violent feelings of blasphemy I had felt when I first lost my faith, it expressed the kinds of sadistic fantasies I had been using and it sustained a feeling of exhilaration that was somehow liberating—and it was filthy, illicit, uncompromising and alluring. Soon another title entered the apartment: Literature and Evil. Surely, I thought, this man is an authority. But the book was deeply disappointing. The author had virtually no use for Lautréamont, but worse was its tone. Were there two Batailles? Compared to Eye, this was placid, without passion, disengaged. Bataille dropped off my radar screen.
Five years later I was making a home, deeply in love, and I rediscovered Bataille. Erotism, the City Lights book, caught my eye for its cover. This was not quite the Bataille of Eye, but neither did it remind me of the book that had disappointed me. Luckily, my renewed passion for this writer coincided with the wider American interest, and every year or two when a new translation came out I was there. Along with Erotism, Inner Experience and The Accursed Share became favorites.
The Two Batailles
Admirers of this writer seem to fall into two primary groups: those who love the filthy, incendiary Bataille, and the academics who like to discuss his ideas in a language only they can truly appreciate. But these aren't the two Batailles. Not: Bataille the drunk and Bataille the librarian. But: Bataille the artist and Bataille the rationalist. For Bataille, art was not enough. Story of the Eye is proof that he could have been one of the greats. It is by far the best literature he ever wrote. The psychology slows down L'Abbe C, so that one wonders if an essay would have done the job better. In My Mother, he vacillated between an explicit treatment of the matter and a detached one, in a way that destroys the book as art. Even The Dead Man, brutal as it is, is retarded by a clinical aspect, as is Madame Edwarda by theology. These are monsters or oddities—interesting to be sure, but not good art. Blue of Noon and a few of the poems are better, but most of the poetry I've read suffers from the same problems.
Bataille could have been a great artist. He chose not to, something in him rebelled against it, even as he was attracted to it. He was also attracted to philosophy. But as he said, he was not "trained" for philosophy. He never really settled in and felt himself a part of the academic world. Thus it was not a world he could reject in the way he could reject art. This may be one reason why his philosophical works don't suffer in the same way as his artistic works. He could afford to shit on art. It did not have to be this way, but art and philosophy have different requirements, and after Eye, Bataille knowingly neglected the requirements of art. He misused art.
The same is not true of his philosophical work. The artist that Bataille was—almost despite himself—was allowed to come through and be incorporated into the work. The hybrids that his artistic works failed to be were achieved in his philosophical works. There is at least one simple reason why. Art must begin and end with the individual, the subject, the particular, the discrete experience of a self. This is not simply its cardinal rule, it is its supreme and unique importance. Bataille did not respect that. His overriding tendency was to generalize. All of the subjectivity and passion he brought to philosophy never overrode his concern to generalize, which is what philosophy does.
One of the Strangest Portraits the World has ever Seen
Why Guilty? Denis Hollier gives several answers in his introduction to the English version of Bataille's most unusual book. He compares Bataille to Joseph K. who, instead of taking an interest in his case, spends time in frivolous pursuits. But there's more. Remember the anxiety K. felt in the office, in the cathedral: this is not due to indifference. On a deeper level, Bataille is guilty, not like Joseph K., but like the author of Joseph K. It is simply stated on page 57: "I'm guilty...an intellectual...Hypocrite! Writing..." I am guilty, I write. Page 41: "The idea of explaining what I do makes me sick! Sovereignty isn't speaking—or it's deposed." Page 54: "I want the conditions of the land surveyor...a game making the impossible possible." Bataille identifies primarily with Kafka, not the two K's. "Guilty" is a particular way of saying "impossible": it is the impossible imbued with anguish. Anguish is what he relates to not only in Kafka, but in Kierkegaard as well.
There is childishness, but no laughter in this book. Only a painful struggle toward it. "My light-heartedness is an arrow, released with enormous strength." I take that literally. "I approach the summit...at the decisive moment there's always something else to do." Something other than writing, that is. The arrow is only an object/sign in transit. All you see on the page is enormous effort, over and over again. When Bataille is at the point of having something else to do, he is closest to moving away from the condition of guilt. He is most guilty when he moves toward that condition—when he picks up his pen. The instant he starts writing, he is already moving away from writing, toward silence (or laughter, or something else). For me Bataille's primary significance is in his extreme lucidity of the game he is playing (and which we all play when we write), and after all that the integrity in his refusal to trivialize it with even the hint of a retreat: "I'll die with no answer to basic problems."
The introduction of the English version of Sur Nietzsche states that Bataille found the German occupation "boring." Here is one of the strangest portraits of a human being I've ever seen: France is occupied by the Nazis, many are hiding out in the countryside (including Beckett, writing Watt, playing chess with Duchamp, and picking fruit from orchards, after having worked in the Resistance and risking his life) and Bataille is convalescing in a small village. One of the things this ill man does is get drunk. And he stares at a photograph of a man being hacked to pieces until he puts himself in a certain meditative state. He writes in the journal which becomes the book Guilty, "who can accept that a horror of this magnitude would express 'what you are' and lay bare your nature?" This is Bataille's self portrait, the image that he made sure would be his lasting portrait. Who can accept it? When I read certain pages from Guilty, I feel as though Bataille is urging me to stare at the Chinese torture picture, and my response is "NO!" It's like someone getting in your face about drugs or Coltrane or religion. When someone comes on this strong my response is always to back off. Bataille's self portrait is sickening in the same way that one's own naked body is sometimes sickening.
I have always associated Lynch's film Fire Walk with Me with Bataille. Once I made a sort of compromise: I won't stare at the Chinese picture, but I will pay close attention to this film. I was surprised by what happened. The scene in which Daddy Palmer clubs the prostitute to death made me pause the film. Lynch had made the impact to the skull graphic, but more than that, he takes the viewer into Palmer's body. You see the action from his point of view, you become the murderer. I had been watching the nuances of Palmer's face throughout the film. At the moment of the clubbing I felt a momentary sense of rage, something perhaps like a murderer's ecstacy. I paused the film and sat on the edge of the chair, like someone about to throw up, and tried to retain the feeling, but couldn't. But for a second I had "identified" with the most despicable character imaginable.
Surya's Biography
I am thankful for the portrait, but I have issues with Surya. He presents Bataille's critics, but like enthusiasts do, he defends his subject. The problem is, I don't think Bataille would have wanted to be defended. He preferred people who proclaimed disgust or outrage to Sade to those who gave ultimately tepid rationalizations for Sade's behavior. The fact is, he sometimes put himself in a position to be accused. He wanted to provoke strong responses. Some of his critics are right on. Surya also seems to be concerned about protecting the incomplete, the fragmentary, the incoherent aspects of Bataille's work as if they should be maintained in an aura of legacy or a mystique. Again, I don't think this is an appropriate response to the man. If he worked against "completion", it is because he believed we complete each other. Everyone's life and work is fragmentary and incomplete. Death has the last word. If Bataille's life makes this more apparent than the lives of others does it need to be emphasized in addition? The opposite tendency is certainly worse—to manufacture a clarity where none exists—but it would have been helpful to provide just one page to sum up Bataille’s various attempts to build certain projects, the two most important being The Accursed Share and the Universal History. Surya actually compounds the sense of brokenness in Bataille's efforts, while a little clarity would have been helpful. I am afraid a somewhat romantic image of the man is encouraged. I think there is a need for a portrait of Bataille as clear and as classical as the sober portrait that adorns the jacket of Surya's book.
The Birth of Art
I find The Birth of Art to be Bataille's most beautiful book. First off, it's a beautiful book. Published in 1955 by Albert Skira, it was the first fine art book devoted to the paintings at Lascaux; Skira produced some of the nicest art books in the world. On the very first page of Bataille's text one encounters his disturbing attitude toward art. He states in passing that the "creative virtue" the Lascaux Man possessed, which makes him the "first" man (that is, "of our sort"), has today "ceased to be necessary". Bataille does not develop the idea further. Apparently to him it was perfectly obvious. But it begs the question: if this is the man "whom for the first time and with certainty we may say: he produced works of art; he is of our sort", then what does it mean to say that the very "virtue" that enables us to recognize him is no longer necessary?
One can certainly point to many examples which seem to point to an erosion of faith in art, yet one need not look far to find examples of the power of the art impulse. I think it is plain to see that Bataille doubted that art had the power anymore to deeply move people, opting instead for a type of philosophical inquiry informed by science and infused with the spirit of art. In his study of Manet, also from 1955 (and published by Skira), he states that there had been no significant development in visual art since the 1930's—an astonishing claim, meaning he was completely blind to developments in America. If art is not enough, then what is? And what is Bataille doing with his writing? Let us hear what he has to say. Writing about the sorcerer figure of Trois Freres, Bataille writes:
...perhaps every definition has the fault of missing the essential: here, what is essential seems to me more tortuous, more vague: inextricable...Whether or not this "god" figure was invested with the government of operations which for the Magdelenians were of the greatest practical importance, bypassing these material ends, so like those of our machines, I may focus upon very different aspects: for all his useful influences, this dream-begotten creature is no less a most remarkable negation of whatever has to do with man's everyday life...we too will now and again suddenly feel the oppressive dead weight of a civilization of which we too are proud. We suddenly languish, thirsting after another truth, and we ascribe our lassitude to some error incult in the privilege of reason. We are led to balk at and then cry down the values that derive from stolid application to work. [P 121]
and then:
P 26: The Modern Primitive, after untold ages of maturing, stands on a platform nearer the first men's level than ours; until some crucial change occurs, his lot is to stay where he is, uncreating and bogged down in the same dark backward abysm of time that immobilized his forbears. For us, on the other hand, a new but indefinite time is being born...the world within us is altering and in like manner, the world altered during that moment between the Reindeer Age's beginnings and the flowering of Lascaux. There was an outburst. There have been others, yes; [P 15] Greece also gives us the impression of a miracle, but the light that emanates from Greece is the light of broad day: dawn's early light is less certain, less distinct, but during a stormy season, early morning lightening is the most dazzling of all. [26] Those men [may not have] had the clear, analytical awareness which, too often, is the limited definition we give to conscious awareness. But the surge of strength and the feeling of grandeur that bore them up may be reflected in the passionate vitality animating the giant bulls of the Lascaux frieze. There existed a tradition, not strong enough to quash the new impulse, but to it those painters doubtless did owe something. However, they strode out of it, creating as they came; in the cave's semi-darkness, by the hallowing lamp-light, they surpassed what until then they had been by creating what was not there the moment before.
These are words that shudder with beauty. Creating as they came, he says—like I am, he seems to be saying. Like we are, creating ourselves as we go. This type of philosophy, first practiced by Nietzsche, is surely akin to the work of the Shamans. And it's poetry. Bataille's words convey the same kind of wonder that the images themselves do, and like Anne Carson's poetry, cause the ancient world to quiver with contemporary relevance. By asking of the figure, who is he?, Bataille asks, "who are we?"
Friday, February 19, 2010
He Doesn't Even Know My Name
Rand wasn’t lost. By now he knew Uptown from Down, could read a subway map, and had Lynch’s instructions to the building tucked in his jeans. The student at the YMCA who put him in touch with Lynch had been a godsend, coming just as Rand had reached the end of his tether at the Y. Lynch didn’t require any deposits or guarantees or anything, just a couple hundred to “grease the super’s palm,” as he said. “He’s a little weird,” the student had warned, but Rand was in no position to judge. He would never have to go home again and that was all that mattered.
He had been to Lynch’s place a week prior to deliver a bag of clothes and some books, but that was during the day and by taxi. Now it was nighttime and he had never taken the R train to Brooklyn before. The walk was uphill and Lynch hadn’t told him how many blocks. January, cold, and he was sweating from the effort of heaving the white drawstring canvas sack full of paint tubes and sketch books from shoulder to shoulder. All of his clothes were either on his back or in the bag at the apartment and all of his money—all two hundred dollars—was folded up and tucked in his right shoe under the heel. He cussed himself for not eating a proper meal. Now a headache added its dolorous voice to the trombone saw of his gut and the pounding image of two cardboard boxes. The two boxes of books that he had deposited a week ago also contained two packages of Ramen noodles. He watched himself tearing into the boxes and retrieving the noodles, over and over again.
Rand had never seen brownstones before, nor so many brown faces. He stopped, pulled the slip of paper from his pocket and squinted up at the street lights. A group of who he guessed were Puerto Ricans were checking him out. He moved on and came to the red brick building that stood alone amongst the brownstones. His key fit its lock and he went up to the fifth floor.
The door opened to complete darkness. Lynch wasn’t home. Rand swept his arm across the wall and flicked a light onto chaos. A giant’s hand had scooped up the room’s contents and flung them back down like so many dice. Even the upright chairs were covered with debris. He didn't remember it being this bad before. There was no path. Leaving his bag by the door, Rand navigated the piles. By the crud encrusted stove stood a garbage can overflowing with empty half-pint Jack Daniel’s bottles and their little brown bags. The refrigerator had a poster taped to it which pictured a pretty girl in distress in the EC Comics style. The balloon read: “I just don’t know what to do. Last week Jack was humping me in the elevator. Now he doesn’t even know my name!” Rand surveyed the mess and finally located the boxes.
The Ramen noodles were gone. He clawed through the boxes again and again. They were gone. It was inconceivable. The son of a bitch ate them!
The fridge was empty but for a small lump of something green that Rand supposed was once a piece of cheese. The cupboards revealed nothing but a jumble of overturned pots and pans and dead roaches intermingled with little trails of boric acid. There was nothing but to go back out.
He didn’t know the neighborhood. Didn’t know that he went the wrong way, crossed Flatbush Avenue to the wrong side. He tried not to take too many turns, tried to memorize the ones he’d taken. Everyone he passed noticed him. Someone leaned out of a window high up and called down, “Hey white boy, you lost?”
Finally he came upon something resembling a store. The brown room was barely illuminated by a single failing fluorescent bulb. The shelves on either side were nearly empty but for a sampling of chips. At the far end of the room was a little counter with a bullet-proof glass shield. What kind of a store is this? He looked to the shelves again. Beside a bag of Cheetos sat two cans of Chef Boyardee Beefaroni. How messed up is that? The Chef Boyardee plant was located in Milton, PA, his hometown, and employed half his relatives. He had never been able to escape the smell of rotten tomatoes at harvest time.
Rand grabbed the cans and shoved his money through a hole in the glass. On his way out a man in rags the color of the street reached toward him. Almost shoving the man aside, Rand power walked up and down the streets until he stumbled upon the red brick building, learning on that first night one of the primary lessons of city living: never act like you’re lost.
The light in the elevator to Lynch’s, and now his place cast a morbid green film over everything, even the skin of his hands. Funny he hadn’t noticed it the first time. Would he ever get used to that?
Finally, inside. Finally he would eat.
There was no can opener.
He had been to Lynch’s place a week prior to deliver a bag of clothes and some books, but that was during the day and by taxi. Now it was nighttime and he had never taken the R train to Brooklyn before. The walk was uphill and Lynch hadn’t told him how many blocks. January, cold, and he was sweating from the effort of heaving the white drawstring canvas sack full of paint tubes and sketch books from shoulder to shoulder. All of his clothes were either on his back or in the bag at the apartment and all of his money—all two hundred dollars—was folded up and tucked in his right shoe under the heel. He cussed himself for not eating a proper meal. Now a headache added its dolorous voice to the trombone saw of his gut and the pounding image of two cardboard boxes. The two boxes of books that he had deposited a week ago also contained two packages of Ramen noodles. He watched himself tearing into the boxes and retrieving the noodles, over and over again.
Rand had never seen brownstones before, nor so many brown faces. He stopped, pulled the slip of paper from his pocket and squinted up at the street lights. A group of who he guessed were Puerto Ricans were checking him out. He moved on and came to the red brick building that stood alone amongst the brownstones. His key fit its lock and he went up to the fifth floor.
The door opened to complete darkness. Lynch wasn’t home. Rand swept his arm across the wall and flicked a light onto chaos. A giant’s hand had scooped up the room’s contents and flung them back down like so many dice. Even the upright chairs were covered with debris. He didn't remember it being this bad before. There was no path. Leaving his bag by the door, Rand navigated the piles. By the crud encrusted stove stood a garbage can overflowing with empty half-pint Jack Daniel’s bottles and their little brown bags. The refrigerator had a poster taped to it which pictured a pretty girl in distress in the EC Comics style. The balloon read: “I just don’t know what to do. Last week Jack was humping me in the elevator. Now he doesn’t even know my name!” Rand surveyed the mess and finally located the boxes.
The Ramen noodles were gone. He clawed through the boxes again and again. They were gone. It was inconceivable. The son of a bitch ate them!
The fridge was empty but for a small lump of something green that Rand supposed was once a piece of cheese. The cupboards revealed nothing but a jumble of overturned pots and pans and dead roaches intermingled with little trails of boric acid. There was nothing but to go back out.
He didn’t know the neighborhood. Didn’t know that he went the wrong way, crossed Flatbush Avenue to the wrong side. He tried not to take too many turns, tried to memorize the ones he’d taken. Everyone he passed noticed him. Someone leaned out of a window high up and called down, “Hey white boy, you lost?”
Finally he came upon something resembling a store. The brown room was barely illuminated by a single failing fluorescent bulb. The shelves on either side were nearly empty but for a sampling of chips. At the far end of the room was a little counter with a bullet-proof glass shield. What kind of a store is this? He looked to the shelves again. Beside a bag of Cheetos sat two cans of Chef Boyardee Beefaroni. How messed up is that? The Chef Boyardee plant was located in Milton, PA, his hometown, and employed half his relatives. He had never been able to escape the smell of rotten tomatoes at harvest time.
Rand grabbed the cans and shoved his money through a hole in the glass. On his way out a man in rags the color of the street reached toward him. Almost shoving the man aside, Rand power walked up and down the streets until he stumbled upon the red brick building, learning on that first night one of the primary lessons of city living: never act like you’re lost.
The light in the elevator to Lynch’s, and now his place cast a morbid green film over everything, even the skin of his hands. Funny he hadn’t noticed it the first time. Would he ever get used to that?
Finally, inside. Finally he would eat.
There was no can opener.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Guest Blogger: Laura Eno
I swear I'm not making this up. When I received the note from Laura Eno saying she had a post for The Bricoleur I got scared. I had recently dared to make a feeble joke (maybe two) in her direction. Humor on the internet is dangerous. You can't see the smiles or the subtle signs of body language - like a display of the jugular vein which means: 'Gosh I like you (please don't kill me).' You don't have to invite vampires. Maybe that works with Laura Enos too. But I didn't want to incur her wrath either... As I was wondering what to do my screen went blank. My pc shut down. There were no other signs of a power surge in the house, I swear I'm not making this up. I knew then what I had to do. With trembling finger I intoned the words, "Yes, Laura" and pressed the power button. I made a mental note to go buy at least one of her books, remembering that this is someone who turns little girls into breakfast sausages.
Then I read the piece she sent and learned that there is something that scares even her.
Lies of War
by Laura Eno
I look at you and see a kindred soul
You are like me, not like them
We join to make war
They are different from us
Their skin does not match
They don't worship our way
Or think as we do
You disappoint me now
We disagree
I make war on you
It is my way
Who rises now
And says I'm different?
The difference is yours
Not mine
Can't you see?
You strike against me
But you are wrong
No one is left
Nothing survives
The lies lay fallow
In dust and chaos
When I was eight I thought of myself as an 'earthling' and told everyone I knew that I would be living on a space station when I grew up. I'm still waiting for that shiny wheel in the sky that will house thousands of earthlings, living happily in peace. Obviously, I was born a bit too early but I still imagine that it will happen. I'm an optimist.
We won't get there though, unless people like you and me strive to make it happen. We are the creators—the artists, musicians and writers who are able to transcend boundaries and change opinions.
It's a thankless pursuit. Our works are not recognized until long after we are gone. We are called odd, offbeat and crazy while we struggle upstream. Still, we create out of love and desire, want and need, pain and longing. Others identify with these most basic of human emotions. We do make a difference. We must go on.
As long as we continue to fill that void, there is hope that people can lay aside their differences and come together. Maybe my grandchildren will build that shiny wheel in space and call themselves citizens of earth, knowing that you and I helped make that possible. I hope so. The alternative is chaos and it scares me.
Then I read the piece she sent and learned that there is something that scares even her.
Lies of War
by Laura Eno
I look at you and see a kindred soul
You are like me, not like them
We join to make war
They are different from us
Their skin does not match
They don't worship our way
Or think as we do
You disappoint me now
We disagree
I make war on you
It is my way
Who rises now
And says I'm different?
The difference is yours
Not mine
Can't you see?
You strike against me
But you are wrong
No one is left
Nothing survives
The lies lay fallow
In dust and chaos
When I was eight I thought of myself as an 'earthling' and told everyone I knew that I would be living on a space station when I grew up. I'm still waiting for that shiny wheel in the sky that will house thousands of earthlings, living happily in peace. Obviously, I was born a bit too early but I still imagine that it will happen. I'm an optimist.
We won't get there though, unless people like you and me strive to make it happen. We are the creators—the artists, musicians and writers who are able to transcend boundaries and change opinions.
It's a thankless pursuit. Our works are not recognized until long after we are gone. We are called odd, offbeat and crazy while we struggle upstream. Still, we create out of love and desire, want and need, pain and longing. Others identify with these most basic of human emotions. We do make a difference. We must go on.
As long as we continue to fill that void, there is hope that people can lay aside their differences and come together. Maybe my grandchildren will build that shiny wheel in space and call themselves citizens of earth, knowing that you and I helped make that possible. I hope so. The alternative is chaos and it scares me.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
To V
V is the woman I love. A few years ago we had to make an appointment with a surgeon. “A routine procedure. Nothing to worry about.” Right. Only when it happens to someone else. Neither V nor I have spent much time in hospitals. We didn’t know that when the nurse said, “I’m going to give you a little cocktail” that was the time to say, “I love you, see you later.” In just a second or two V was on another plane of consciousness. I felt I’d been robbed of something. The nurses stood up and wheeled my wife out the door. I followed a few paces and V spoke in a voice I didn’t recognize, like a mouth full of novocain, more fucked up on drugs than I’ve ever seen anyone. She said, “Don’t worry.” The strangers took her down an antiseptic hallway where I was forbidden to go. The ground opened beneath my feet. I floated to the waiting room, laid down on a bench, turned to the wall, and, worthless sack of bones, I cried.
Afterward they wheeled her to her room in a type of stretcher I had never seen. High and wide and slack, her tiny body lay in the depression like a clump of wet leaves in a tarp. They placed her body—so limp she could have been dead—expertly in the bed, connected the morphine drip and left me alone to await her waking.
This poem was written during the days of her convalescence.
To V
My kaleidoscope is crushed.
Broken splints for bedposts,
my eyes translucent in the bat black night.
But the velvety petals I gathered
for our bed speak to my skin,
they say:
“Love seeks itself
only until it is attained,
then it exudes its softnesses
in droplets
that quench exactly
as they are given away,
the way a single source,
to be true,
is twain.”
Afterward they wheeled her to her room in a type of stretcher I had never seen. High and wide and slack, her tiny body lay in the depression like a clump of wet leaves in a tarp. They placed her body—so limp she could have been dead—expertly in the bed, connected the morphine drip and left me alone to await her waking.
This poem was written during the days of her convalescence.
To V
My kaleidoscope is crushed.
Broken splints for bedposts,
my eyes translucent in the bat black night.
But the velvety petals I gathered
for our bed speak to my skin,
they say:
“Love seeks itself
only until it is attained,
then it exudes its softnesses
in droplets
that quench exactly
as they are given away,
the way a single source,
to be true,
is twain.”
Thursday, February 11, 2010
To Abelard and Heloise
Ten years of silence,
for a wounded troubadour and his lady.
Ten years of prayer and meditation:
She in her Holy vestments,
He in his pen and parchments.
Until, one day, the lady spoke
and her words ring out through the centuries,
causing men to fall in love with her still.
But they are still unfair to you, Abelard!
We do not know the songs which so charmed sweet Heloise,
making her the envy of every young maiden,
but we have a composition of singular sophistication:
the Historia Calamitatum,
a Sic et Non of heretical love and pious duty.
And to this we owe an enduring
anchor to our aching hearts
which might otherwise dissolve
in the distillery of Industry, and Duty.
O Brave Man! O Brave Woman!
Help me now, I pray,
not to keep my silence!
may each of my word arrangements
be a fit bouquet
to the eternal Purity of Love!
For generations men have been unfair to Abelard. He buckled under pressure, he betrayed Heloise, he did not live up to the incredible love she offered, he was dishonest, and in the end his love was merely lust—so the accusations go.
The latest translator of Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum into English has made an interesting discovery. The belief that Heloise was eighteen and Abelard almost forty when they met—held for decades—was based on no more than an assumption, whereas an actual document suggests that they were much closer in age, that Heloise was closer to thirty. This should give one pause to reconsider the blunt and at times cruel dismissals of Peter Abelard. A case can be made that Abelard’s various confessions of faith to the Church were not betrayals of Heloise at all, but on the contrary supreme acts of love. Let us ask how they could have gone forward in their marriage after his castration, not in matters of sex, but in light of marriage as it existed as a social institution at the time. Abelard’s Calamities, as well as all of his conduct toward Heloise after that vicious act, can be seen as efforts to shield, protect, and even to uplift his wife. Doesn’t he say so explicitly in the fourth letter?—"you are my superior and have been so since you became my lady." This should not be dismissed merely as doctrinal jargon identifying her as "the bride of Christ" (even though it is indeed that) but should also be taken for what it is at face value: absolute respect and devotion. There is another explanation for some of the unpleasant strokes with which he paints himself in the Calamities. He wants to draw all of the world's scorn upon himself, and make sure none can so much as cast a shadow on the lady. One must remember that it was she who foresaw the terrible consequences of their official union. It is not difficult to understand today what Abelard finally came to understand: that to persist in defending their secular marriage could only ultimately destroy them both. Fortunately Abelard was too clever to go to the stake, and he used all of his wits to save his wife.
William Levitan (the translator) writes that "The Calamities has little of the penetrating self-analysis found in other memoirs." Compared with St. Augustine, for example, an example that Abelard could certainly have followed. Considering especially that the Calamities was the first autobiography written in several hundred years, one might ask if that fact is not significant. Levitan points in the direction of an answer when he observes that "vanity and its comeuppance are surely not adequate terms for the pattern Abelard describes...arrogance and one-upmanship are endemic human diseases...and may be played out against a background of larger, though still shadowy, forces. When the dynamic of self-realization spins out of control, when its stakes become critical, how can one distinguish among these factors and point to one as the single cause?" The question, he adds, "is as pertinent to Abelard’s Calamities as it was in the matter of Robert Oppenheimer."—a fascination comparison to a man of our own time swept into ethical and moral questions which can only be discoursed upon by all of society.
In one of his lectures from 1976, Michel Foucault said, "For over a thousand years history justified and solidified power. Power dazzles, and power petrifies." Power has found ways to suppress the "counter-histories" which, Foucault tells us, "sometimes conspicuously and sometimes in the shadows, sometimes in scholarship and sometimes in blood, [have gained] ground for centuries in Europe." Was not the Historia Calamitatum such a "counter-history"? The powers in Abelard’s day destroyed heretics to the exact degree that they were threatened by them, and surely Abelard was a threat. As indeed he was proud. The episode about the "joke" from Bede is significant in that it would not have cost Abelard anything to cede to the Abbot Hilduin as the authority in that matter. Was pride, or simply being right, all that was at stake? The "memoir" is not self-analytical because to be so is to pivot around a specific ideological base. The addressee of the Calamities, Levitan says, "was almost certainly fictitious," and the "remarkable range of distinct tones and poses" is due, he suggests, to viewing the work as a "campaign of public rehabilitation, with different segments of [his] audience needing assurance on different points." And, importantly, "the letter presents both an offense and a defense." Discourse as battle.
After reading the Calamities I was mindful of that modern notion of the self as a conglomeration of selves, and Levitan’s excellent description of its cyclical structure—the current crisis is always the greatest one—reminded me of (Nietzsche’s?) phrase "a wheel spinning out of itself." This is the type of self-hood that was at stake—could it gain hold in the world, or would Power and Right keep it under subjection forever?
The Calamities, again to use one of Foucault’s terms, is a "disruptive" text: it disrupts all of the categories of its day. Was it: a letter to one person? Most people think not. Was it then a lie? Ah, but what kind of lie: fiction, camouflage, subterfuge? Was it a letter to the world at large? If it was a letter to Abelard’s public, to the many people who constituted his enemies, his would-be supporters, his students—both old and those who stood to potentially learn from his example—and if it also existed to exonerate Heloise—if it is all of these things (both offense and defense), then what does this say about the kind of man Abelard was, and the kind of man he proposed for the coming ages?
As far as I’m concerned, he was a modern man: he used rationality and art as tools to fight for his place in the world, not rationality with a capital "R", nor art as a sacred shrine, but as two primary avenues for an individual to both find and to make his place in the world, knowing that those who have won, those who have power, are "right" only because they have, for the moment, won, all discourse being battle.
It is obvious to me that he loved Heloise to the end, as deeply as she loved him, and that Joseph Campbell, for one, was most unfair to him.
for a wounded troubadour and his lady.
Ten years of prayer and meditation:
She in her Holy vestments,
He in his pen and parchments.
Until, one day, the lady spoke
and her words ring out through the centuries,
causing men to fall in love with her still.
But they are still unfair to you, Abelard!
We do not know the songs which so charmed sweet Heloise,
making her the envy of every young maiden,
but we have a composition of singular sophistication:
the Historia Calamitatum,
a Sic et Non of heretical love and pious duty.
And to this we owe an enduring
anchor to our aching hearts
which might otherwise dissolve
in the distillery of Industry, and Duty.
O Brave Man! O Brave Woman!
Help me now, I pray,
not to keep my silence!
may each of my word arrangements
be a fit bouquet
to the eternal Purity of Love!
For generations men have been unfair to Abelard. He buckled under pressure, he betrayed Heloise, he did not live up to the incredible love she offered, he was dishonest, and in the end his love was merely lust—so the accusations go.
The latest translator of Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum into English has made an interesting discovery. The belief that Heloise was eighteen and Abelard almost forty when they met—held for decades—was based on no more than an assumption, whereas an actual document suggests that they were much closer in age, that Heloise was closer to thirty. This should give one pause to reconsider the blunt and at times cruel dismissals of Peter Abelard. A case can be made that Abelard’s various confessions of faith to the Church were not betrayals of Heloise at all, but on the contrary supreme acts of love. Let us ask how they could have gone forward in their marriage after his castration, not in matters of sex, but in light of marriage as it existed as a social institution at the time. Abelard’s Calamities, as well as all of his conduct toward Heloise after that vicious act, can be seen as efforts to shield, protect, and even to uplift his wife. Doesn’t he say so explicitly in the fourth letter?—"you are my superior and have been so since you became my lady." This should not be dismissed merely as doctrinal jargon identifying her as "the bride of Christ" (even though it is indeed that) but should also be taken for what it is at face value: absolute respect and devotion. There is another explanation for some of the unpleasant strokes with which he paints himself in the Calamities. He wants to draw all of the world's scorn upon himself, and make sure none can so much as cast a shadow on the lady. One must remember that it was she who foresaw the terrible consequences of their official union. It is not difficult to understand today what Abelard finally came to understand: that to persist in defending their secular marriage could only ultimately destroy them both. Fortunately Abelard was too clever to go to the stake, and he used all of his wits to save his wife.
William Levitan (the translator) writes that "The Calamities has little of the penetrating self-analysis found in other memoirs." Compared with St. Augustine, for example, an example that Abelard could certainly have followed. Considering especially that the Calamities was the first autobiography written in several hundred years, one might ask if that fact is not significant. Levitan points in the direction of an answer when he observes that "vanity and its comeuppance are surely not adequate terms for the pattern Abelard describes...arrogance and one-upmanship are endemic human diseases...and may be played out against a background of larger, though still shadowy, forces. When the dynamic of self-realization spins out of control, when its stakes become critical, how can one distinguish among these factors and point to one as the single cause?" The question, he adds, "is as pertinent to Abelard’s Calamities as it was in the matter of Robert Oppenheimer."—a fascination comparison to a man of our own time swept into ethical and moral questions which can only be discoursed upon by all of society.
In one of his lectures from 1976, Michel Foucault said, "For over a thousand years history justified and solidified power. Power dazzles, and power petrifies." Power has found ways to suppress the "counter-histories" which, Foucault tells us, "sometimes conspicuously and sometimes in the shadows, sometimes in scholarship and sometimes in blood, [have gained] ground for centuries in Europe." Was not the Historia Calamitatum such a "counter-history"? The powers in Abelard’s day destroyed heretics to the exact degree that they were threatened by them, and surely Abelard was a threat. As indeed he was proud. The episode about the "joke" from Bede is significant in that it would not have cost Abelard anything to cede to the Abbot Hilduin as the authority in that matter. Was pride, or simply being right, all that was at stake? The "memoir" is not self-analytical because to be so is to pivot around a specific ideological base. The addressee of the Calamities, Levitan says, "was almost certainly fictitious," and the "remarkable range of distinct tones and poses" is due, he suggests, to viewing the work as a "campaign of public rehabilitation, with different segments of [his] audience needing assurance on different points." And, importantly, "the letter presents both an offense and a defense." Discourse as battle.
After reading the Calamities I was mindful of that modern notion of the self as a conglomeration of selves, and Levitan’s excellent description of its cyclical structure—the current crisis is always the greatest one—reminded me of (Nietzsche’s?) phrase "a wheel spinning out of itself." This is the type of self-hood that was at stake—could it gain hold in the world, or would Power and Right keep it under subjection forever?
The Calamities, again to use one of Foucault’s terms, is a "disruptive" text: it disrupts all of the categories of its day. Was it: a letter to one person? Most people think not. Was it then a lie? Ah, but what kind of lie: fiction, camouflage, subterfuge? Was it a letter to the world at large? If it was a letter to Abelard’s public, to the many people who constituted his enemies, his would-be supporters, his students—both old and those who stood to potentially learn from his example—and if it also existed to exonerate Heloise—if it is all of these things (both offense and defense), then what does this say about the kind of man Abelard was, and the kind of man he proposed for the coming ages?
As far as I’m concerned, he was a modern man: he used rationality and art as tools to fight for his place in the world, not rationality with a capital "R", nor art as a sacred shrine, but as two primary avenues for an individual to both find and to make his place in the world, knowing that those who have won, those who have power, are "right" only because they have, for the moment, won, all discourse being battle.
It is obvious to me that he loved Heloise to the end, as deeply as she loved him, and that Joseph Campbell, for one, was most unfair to him.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
The Bees Knees
Poet Nicelle Davis was kind enough to post an article I've written on two of my passions: Lautréamont and John Ashbery. If I had to pick a favorite book by Ashbery, it would be Hotel Lautréamont, and that is the focus of the article. You can read it at The Bees Knees.
The Bees Knees is a cool hangout for poets and all things poetry related: post poems, read poems, meet other poets. Currently Nicelle is hosting a discussion on all aspects of hybrid poetry, the sorts of genre blending referred to of late as literary 'mash-ups'. I've never been able to stick to one style or voice, not in visual art or in writing. In fact, until very recently, all of my prose writing, apart from an occasional essay, has been hybrid writing, so I was eager to join the discussion. I hope you'll check it out.
The Bees Knees is a cool hangout for poets and all things poetry related: post poems, read poems, meet other poets. Currently Nicelle is hosting a discussion on all aspects of hybrid poetry, the sorts of genre blending referred to of late as literary 'mash-ups'. I've never been able to stick to one style or voice, not in visual art or in writing. In fact, until very recently, all of my prose writing, apart from an occasional essay, has been hybrid writing, so I was eager to join the discussion. I hope you'll check it out.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Guest Blogger: John Ladd
I met John several weeks ago on twitter while exchanging a few jokes on Yo Yo Ma and football with some hard-core tweeters. Later his article Dawn of the Literary Mash-Up caught my attention mostly for its tone. I'm so used to hearing the word "post-modernism" used as a slur that John's positive treatment of the term came like a tall cool glass of water. He reminds us that the bewildering challenge of language does not have to be met with fear and cynicism. It can also be greeted with joy. You will see that same attitude at work here as he reflects on our Nation's Capital. Please welcome John Ladd.
Poems and Thoughts on Our Nation's Capital
by John Ladd
Poems and Thoughts on Our Nation's Capital
by John Ladd
At the end of this summer, I packed about half of my belongings into a borrowed car and drove myself five and a half hours from Pittsburgh, PA to Washington, DC. What waited for me there was a modest apartment, a small community of college friends, and a wealth of new experiences. Washington is a rich, vibrant city, and whatever your political persuasion it's an exciting time to live here. What I didn't realize at first is that Washington is also a deeply poetic city. As I learned from the Poetry Foundation's awesome DC Poetry Tour, this city has as much claim to the poetic underpinnings of our country as it does to the political ones.
And the longer I spent here, the more I felt compelled to write. Something about the vastly diverse sites and feelings that make up Washington pushed me to express myself in poetry. I'd like to use this guest post to share with you three of my more recent DC poems, along with some thoughts about the places that inspired them.
I.) In order to get to work in the morning, I get off the Metro at Rosslyn and walk across the Key Bridge into Georgetown. Every day on the bridge I get a nice view of the Potomac River as it flows into and out of the city. Being from Pittsburgh, I'm pretty familiar with rivers and bridges, but there's a mythical quality to the Potomac that's matched only by the Mississippi as far as American rivers are concerned. I tried to capture some of that mythical quality in this poem.
It's navigable right through the
American Experience
The aircraft carriers can mark
twain right past the
Kennedy Center
Though they're almost certainly too tall
for the bridges
I've got a too-thin scarf
Around my too-thin neck
And I'm trying to decide
Whether this is the
American Rubicon
What about the Delaware?
I lean forward into the breeze
Steadying myself against
200 years of History
My own dry cracking hands andlips don't even make a dent
in that rushing stream
of Progress and Regret
A native word with no such connotation
Given to Armies on both sides
And to what flows
Under the ice
II.) Let me start here by saying that I very much enjoy spending time in Georgetown. For the most part, the people are delightful and the atmosphere is friendly. But every community has its dark side, and that's what this next poem is about. The specific trigger for writing this piece came when I was standing at a corner one dreary day, and some of the dirtiest water I've ever seen slid down from where the expensive homes are up on the hill and slithered into the sewer.
The next time it rains
Step out into the rich neighborhoods of your city
Smell what runs down their limestone steps
The overwhelming stench of sympathetic spoiled children
Listen to the erratic heartbeats
Of people that detest themselves
The sting of the acid rains washing out their unrealized dreams
No singing in this kind of rain
No one leaping down the street
Only the disgusted expressions of those who never
Learned how to make lemonade
Washed out
Washed up
Snowed in
Hardened
Pleasantries only look good
When the sun is out.
III.) The third poem is the one that has the most excitement, and the one that was most difficult to write. On January 11th, I got the chance to sit in the gallery at the Supreme Court while it was in session. For someone like me, who in part moved to DC just for chances like that one, it was overwhelmingly exhilarating. Forget NASCAR: I was content just to watch those legal minds whirl around and around and around. Whether we're happy or unhappy with the decisions this court makes, I'm convinced that we've got world-class intellects on the bench.
This poem was so hard for me to write because I found that all I wanted to do was write about the building itself. There's something architectural about the Justices, I realized; it's almost as if they're a part of the building. But I wanted to do more in this poem than just describe my surroundings. There was a pervasive feeling everyone there was sharing, a collective experience. It was a little tough getting that in to the poem, and I'm not sure if I've yet accomplished it. We'll call this piece 'under construction' for now.
The Supreme Eleventh
Governmental groupies will go twice through the same metal detector
To sit on a bench
And stare at a bench
Shoulder-to-shoulder with the young professionals
In their pressed uniforms
Underemployment is slightly more demoralizing
When answering basic questions for government employees
About history and law
and the History of Law
The ionic columns in two rows
suggest they might be load-bearing
But in all honesty I'm talking
Out my ass
Except for the ionic part
This place looks like the Parthenon
If it was designed by Stephen Colbert
Zeus, [or is it Charlton Heston?]
Grasps the Ten
Commandments while Confucius and Caesar Augustus look on
And a Bald Eagle flies overhead
Flowers bloom from the ceiling and pollinate us with stone countenances
As the nine of them trot out in their basalt robes
And I squirm excitedly in my seat
My own questions about procedure
About life stories
About achievement
Are drowned out by the duties of the day
and the needs of the Constitution
These are dispensed with rather unceremoniously
But not disappointingly
Was that one sleeping?
I didn't notice
I was trying so hard not to blink that salty tears coated my eyes
Making the tops of their bald heads glisten
I couldn't tell if their eyes were open or not
For me, these three poems will always be a key part of beginning my new life here in DC. They each take on a part of the city in a different way, and they are my time capsules for what it was like to come to America's capital and start from scratch. They are personal and public, large and small in scope. To me, that duality, small neighborhoods in an international hub, is what makes Washington so appealing. My hope is that these will help you to think about DC in a new way, and if you've never been there, I hope I've encouraged you to try it out soon.
John Ladd is a writer, poetry student, and confirmed geek living in Alexandria, VA. The most notable objects of his geekery include formal poems, postmodern plays, crossword puzzles, the Internet, and dead languages. He is the author of Paradise Tossed, a blog that talks about what happens when poetry and technology collide.
John Ladd is a writer, poetry student, and confirmed geek living in Alexandria, VA. The most notable objects of his geekery include formal poems, postmodern plays, crossword puzzles, the Internet, and dead languages. He is the author of Paradise Tossed, a blog that talks about what happens when poetry and technology collide.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Dreams of Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Note: The following is a sketch of fiction. I have never met Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Dreams of Lawrence Ferlinghetti
1
I went to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s house. A few others were there. I didn’t know them. They were talking about the plumbing. The heating. The groceries. I timidly indicated the copy of his novel I had brought with me. Ferlinghetti ignored me. He talked about the carpet, a door, a toilet. Twenty minutes passed. I lit a cigarette. Then, the match still lit, I set his book on fire and watched it burn. Everyone watched it burn, unable to move. Finally Ferlinghetti leapt and made a spastic attempt to stamp out the fire, which had spread to his eyes. He turned them on me, then lunged, his fingers gripping my throat. I managed to get away with a kick to his pot belly. He was on me again immediately. No fighter, I swung my limbs desperately, catching him in all kinds of awkward places. The old man was no match for me. He lay comical stupid and stiff as a cartoon cutout on the floor, in total silence, but for the loud ticking of the grandfather clock.
2
‘Help help!’ she cried. There was a smell of sulphur in the air, and a loud ticking. Then the crash. You found her trapped beneath the massive bookcase that had tipped over. She lay choking on book dust, serifs needling her tender blank skin. You up-righted the monstrous thing, which now stood empty in front of the word processor. ‘You’re free now,’ you said.
3
Traffic had come to a stop on the two-lane road, angry men honking and shouting. She bounced out of the car, all curls and smiles, said, ‘isn’t this thing supposed to be open?’ and swung the gate full over to the side. Traffic now flowed freely. She bounced back into the car, all teeth and curves, and laughed, ‘they’re afraid of Her!’
Interpret this dream
Question for extra credit: Assuming the girl gets in and out on the passenger side of the vehicle, who is the driver?
Dreams of Lawrence Ferlinghetti
1
I went to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s house. A few others were there. I didn’t know them. They were talking about the plumbing. The heating. The groceries. I timidly indicated the copy of his novel I had brought with me. Ferlinghetti ignored me. He talked about the carpet, a door, a toilet. Twenty minutes passed. I lit a cigarette. Then, the match still lit, I set his book on fire and watched it burn. Everyone watched it burn, unable to move. Finally Ferlinghetti leapt and made a spastic attempt to stamp out the fire, which had spread to his eyes. He turned them on me, then lunged, his fingers gripping my throat. I managed to get away with a kick to his pot belly. He was on me again immediately. No fighter, I swung my limbs desperately, catching him in all kinds of awkward places. The old man was no match for me. He lay comical stupid and stiff as a cartoon cutout on the floor, in total silence, but for the loud ticking of the grandfather clock.
2
‘Help help!’ she cried. There was a smell of sulphur in the air, and a loud ticking. Then the crash. You found her trapped beneath the massive bookcase that had tipped over. She lay choking on book dust, serifs needling her tender blank skin. You up-righted the monstrous thing, which now stood empty in front of the word processor. ‘You’re free now,’ you said.
3
Traffic had come to a stop on the two-lane road, angry men honking and shouting. She bounced out of the car, all curls and smiles, said, ‘isn’t this thing supposed to be open?’ and swung the gate full over to the side. Traffic now flowed freely. She bounced back into the car, all teeth and curves, and laughed, ‘they’re afraid of Her!’
Interpret this dream
Question for extra credit: Assuming the girl gets in and out on the passenger side of the vehicle, who is the driver?
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