Author: Walter Shandy

On Crystallography

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Ernst Jünger’s The Adventurous Heart: Figures and Capriccios (a translation of his Das Abenteuerliche Herz, Zweite Fassung). There may well be some transcription irregularities in the German – I had to use text recognition since I’m too lazy to change keyboard layouts to type it out.

On Crystallography
Überlingen

I seem to have learned a thing or two over the last years in regard to a literary device that illuminates the word and renders it transparent. Above all I find it useful for resolving a dichotomy that often takes a powerful hold on us – the dichotomy that exists between the surface of life and its depths. It often appears to us that the purpose of the depths is to generate the surface, that rainbow-colored skin of the world whose sight so intensely moves us. In other moments, this colorful pattern appears to be composed only of signs and letters by which the depths speak to us of their secrets, Consequently, whether we live within or without, we are gripped by the anguish of one who is always turning away from wonderful riches in whichever direction he goes. Anxiety seizes us during the austere enjoyment of solitude, just as at the festively decorated table of the world.

A transparent structure is one in which the depths and the surfaces are simultaneously apparent to the eye. It can be studied in a crystal which could be described as an entity able to both generate inner surfaces and turn its depths outward. I now pose the question if the world, large and small, is itself not also constructed on the pattern of the crystal -but in such a manner that our eye only seldom penetrates into this aspect of it? Certain signs suggest this is the case: everyone has at least once felt how people and things have been illuminated in certain significant moments, perhaps to such a degree that dizziness or even a shudder overcame them. This is true in the presence of death, but all significant powers, beauty for instance, elicit this effect – and we can ascribe it to truth in particular. An arbitrary example: the apprehension of the protoplant is nothing other than the perception of its actual crystalline nature in a favorable moment. Our voices become transparent in the same way during discussions on matters that touch us to the core; we understand the other in a different and decisive sense, through and beyond the agreement in the words. In addition, it can be assumed that places exist where this kind of insight is not mediated by a state of exceptional elevation but where it belongs rather to the capital of a marvelous life.

In regard to the use of words in this sense, it is handy that language also possesses depths and surfaces. We have countless expressions at our disposal in which a plain meaning coexists with a deeply concealed one, and what is transparency to the eye is here secret consonance. There is also much in literary figures, particularly in similes, that bridges the deception of the opposites. Yet the process must be flexible – if we use a polished lens to observe the beauty of lower animals, we should not shy from threading a worm onto the hook in order to pursue the wonderful life living in the dark waters. It has always been required of an author that things not appear to him in isolation, not impulsively or randomly – the word is bestowed on him that it may be directed to the one and the all.

Zur Kristallographie
Überlingen

Es scheint mir, daß ich während der letzten Jahre gerade in bezug auf jenen Kunstgriff der Sprache, der das Wort erhellt und durchsichtig macht, manches gelernt habe. Ihn vor allem halte ich für geeignet, einen Zwiespalt zu lösen, der uns oft” heftig ergreift – den Zwiespalt, der zwischen der Oberflä- che und der Tiefe des Lebens besteht. Oft scheint uns der Sinn der Tiefe darin zu liegen, die Oberfläche zu erzeugen, die regenbogenfarbige Haut der Welt, deren Anblick uns brennend bewegt. Dann wiederum scheint dieses bunte Mu- ster uns nur aus Zeichen und Buchstaben gefügt, durch wel- che die Tiefe zu uns von ihren Geheimnissen spricht. So packt uns, ob wir draußen oder drinnen leben, der Schmerz dessen an, der, wohin er sich wende, sich von herrlichen Gü- tern abwendet. Unruhe befällt uns während der strengen Genüsse der Einsamkeit wie an den festlich gedeckten Ta- feln der Welt.

Die durchsichtige Bildung ist die, an der unserem Blick Tiefe und Oberfläche zugleich einleuchten. Sie ist am Kristall zu studieren, den man als ein Wesen bezeichnen könnte, das sowohl innere Oberfläche zu bilden als seine Tiefe nach au- ßen zu kehren vermag. Ich möchte nun die Frage stellen, ob nicht die Welt im großen und kleinen überhaupt nach dem Muster der Kristalle gebildet sei – doch so, daß unser Auge sie nur selten in dieser Eigenschaft durchdringt? Es gibt Zei- chen, die darauf hinweisen: wohl jeder hat einmal gespürt, wie in bedeutenden Augenblicken Menschen und Dinge sich aufhellten, und das vielleicht in einem Maße, daß ihn ein Ge- fühl des Schwindels, ja des Schauderns ergriff. Das ist in der Gegenwart des Todes der Fall, aber auch jede andere bedeu- tende Macht, wie etwa die Schönheit, bringt solche Wirkung hervor – im besonderen schreibt man sie der Wahrheit zu. So ist, um ein beliebiges Beispiel zu nennen, die Erfassung der Urpflanze nichts anderes als die Wahrnehmung des ei- gentlich kristallischen Charakters im günstigen Augenblick. Ebenso werden in einem Gespräch über Dinge, die uns im Innersten berühren, die Stimmen durchsichtig; wir begreifen unseren Partner durch die Übereinkunft der Worte hindurch in einem anderen, entscheidenden Sinn. Darüber hinaus dür- fen wir Punkte vermuten, an denen diese Art der Einsicht nicht durch Zustände der ungewöhnlichen Erhebung vermit- telt wird, sondern zum Bestand eines herrlichen Lebens ge- hört.

Was nun die Verwendung des Wortes in diesem Sinne be- trifft, so kommt ihr zustatten, daß auch die Sprache Tiefe und Oberfläche besitzt. Wir verfügen über zahllose Wendungen, denen sowohl eine handgreifliche als auch eine sehr verbor- gene Bedeutung innewohnt, und was in der Welt des Auges die Durchsichtigkeit, das ist hier die geheime Konsonanz. Auch in den Figuren, vor allem im Vergleich, liegt viel, was den Trug der Gegensätze überbrückt. Doch muß das Verfah- ren beweglich sein – wenn man hier ein geschliffenes Glas verwendet, um die Schönheit der niederen Tiere zu erspähen, so darf man sich dort nicht scheuen, einen Wurm auf den Ha- ken zu ziehen, wenn man dem wunderbaren Leben nachzu- stellen gedenkt, das die dunkleren Gewässer bewohnt. Aber immer ist vom Autor zu verlangen, daß ihm die Dinge nicht vereinzelt erscheinen, nicht treibend und zufällig – ihm ist das Wort verliehen, damit es an das Ein und Alles gerichtet wird.

θαυματὰ ἔργα

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From the Homeric Hymn to Dionysus (lines 34-53) – would-be kidnapping pirates coming to regret their choices.

But suddenly they began to see miraculous apparitions. First of all, wine gushed out over the dark swift ship, sweet-tasting and fragrant, and there rose a smell ambrosial, and the sailors were all seized with astonishment as they saw it. Then along the top of the sail there spread a vine in both directions, hung with many grape clusters. About the mast dark ivy was winding, all flowering, and pretty berries were out on it; and all the tholes were decorated with garlands. When they saw this, then they did start calling on the helmsman to take the ship to land. But the god became a lion in the ship, a terrible lion in the bows, and he roared loud; and amidships he made a shaggy-maned bear, to signal his power. Up it reared in fury, while the lion at the top of the deck stood glaring fearsomely. They fled to the stern, and about the prudent-hearted helmsman they halted in terror. Without warning the lion sprang forward and seized the captain. The others all leapt out into the sea when they saw it, to avoid an ill doom, and they turned into dolphins

τάχα δέ σφιν ἐφαίνετο θαυματὰ ἔργα·
οἶνος μὲν πρώτιστα θοὴν ἀνὰ νῆα μέλαιναν
ἡδύποτος κελάρυξ᾿ εὐώδης, ὤρνυτο δ᾿ ὀδμή
ἀμβροσίη· ναύτας δὲ τάφος λάβε πάντας ἰδόντας·
αὐτίκα δ᾿ ἀκρότατον παρὰ ἱστίον ἐξετανύσθη
ἄμπελος ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα, κατεκρμνῶντο δὲ πολλοί
βότρυες· ἀμφ᾿ ἱστὸν δὲ μέλας εἱλίσσετο κισσός
ἄνθεσι τηλεθάων, χαρίεις δ᾿ ἐπὶ καρπὸς ὀρώρει·
πάντες δὲ σκαλμοὶ στεφάνους ἔχον. οἳ δὲ ἰδόντες
νῆ᾿ ἤδη τότ᾿ ἔπειτα κυβερνήτην ἐκέλευον
γῆι πελάαν· ὃ δ᾿ ἄρα σφι λέων γένετ᾿ ἔνδοθι νηός
δεινὸς ἐπ᾿ ἀκροτάτης, μέγα δ᾿ ἔβραχεν· ἐν δ᾿ ἄρα μέσσηι
ἄρκτον ἐποίησεν λασιαύχενα, σήματα φαίνων·
ἂν δ᾿ ἔστη μεμαυῖα, λέων δ᾿ ἐπὶ σέλματος ἄκρου
δεινὸν ὑπόδρα ἰδών· οἳ δ᾿ ἐς πρύμνην ἐφόβηθεν,
ἀμφὶ κυβερνήτην δὲ σαόφρονα θυμὸν ἔχοντα
ἔσταν ἄρ᾿ ἐκπληγέντες. ὃ δ᾿ ἐξαπίνης ἐπορούσας
ἀρχὸν ἕλ᾿· οἳ δὲ θύραζε κακὸν μόρον ἐξαλύοντες
πάντες ὁμῶς πήδησαν, ἐπεὶ ἴδον, εἰς ἅλα δῖαν,
δελφῖνες δ᾿ ἐγένοντο.

A son resourceful and cunning, a robber, a rustler of cattle, a bringer of dreams, a night watcher, a gate-lurker

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From the Homeric Hymn to Hermes (lines 13-19), birth and initial character sketch of Hermes.

And she gave birth to a son resourceful and cunning, a robber, a rustler of cattle, a bringer of dreams, a night watcher, a gate-lurker, who was soon to display deeds of renown among the immortal gods: born in the morning, by midday he was playing the lyre, and in the evening he stole the cattle of far-shooting Apollo—on the fourth of the month, the day the lady Maia bore him.

καὶ τότ᾿ ἐγείνατο παῖδα πολύτροπον, αἱμυλομήτην,
ληϊστῆρ᾿, ἐλατῆρα βοῶν, ἡγήτορ᾿ ὀνείρων,
νυκτὸς ὀπωπητῆρα, πυληδόκον, ὃς τάχ᾿ ἔμελλεν
ἀμφανέειν κλυτὰ ἔργα μετ᾿ ἀθανάτοισι θεοῖσιν·
ἠῶιος γεγονὼς μέσωι ἤματι ἐγκιθάριζεν,
ἑσπέριος βοῦς κλέψεν ἑκηβόλου Ἀπόλλωνος,
τετράδι τῆι προτέρηι, τῆι μιν τέκε πότνια Μαῖα.

In English the picture from the final three lines (‘born in the morning…’) is probably the more memorable element, but in Greek the specific descriptors are at least equally attention catching.

  • πολύτροπον is famously the opening modifier of Odysseus in The Odyssey but where most accept that it there carries an intentional ambiguity – hitting both ‘much-turned/much-wandering’ and ‘turning many ways/wily’ – the sense here, given what follows, seems to tilt toward the second, more negative meaning.
  • αἱμυλομήτην is a compound of αἱμύλος – ‘wily, wheedling’ and used mostly of words (see Hesiod Works and Days 374) – and a form of μητίω – ‘have in mind, think on.’ This is the word’s only appearance, but it is close in form and sense to the more common ἀγκυλομήτης (‘of crooked counsel’) used in Homer of Kronos and in Hesiod of Prometheus.
  • ληϊστήρ is ‘robber’ or (because it appears in the Odyssey in a seafaring context) ‘pirate’. But in every other use I can think of (Od. 3.73 and a series of echoes in later books) it’s employed as part of a question from one character to another (‘are you a pirate?’) and always elicits a denial of some kind. This is the only Homeric instance I can remember where it’s used as a flat, unquestioned description by the narrating voice.
  • ἡγήτωρ ὀνείρων – rendered here as ‘bringer of dreams’ – is built on ἡγήτωρ, a frequent Homeric word meaning ‘leader’ and elsewhere used in a martial context. ‘Bringer’ comes closer to the etymology of the based verb but might lose a background image of Hermes as not just bringing but marshalling dreams.
  • νυκτὸς ὀπωπητῆρα – ‘a night watcher’ – ὀπωπητήρ appears only here but is generally taken as equivalent to equally rare ὀπτήρ – ‘spy, scout’.
  • πυληδόκον – another word that only appears here, a compound of πύλη – ‘gate’ – and δοκεύω – ‘watch closely’. It would seem obviously connected to a thieving function but there could also be a hint of Hermes’ roles in passing to/from the underworld, πύλη also possibly invoking the frequent periphrasis πύλαι Ἀΐδαο – ‘gates of Hades’.

A matter of business

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From Maupassant’s Le Diable (The Devil – French online here, English here). I sat down to read La Horla for Halloween and rediscovered how rich the rest of the collection is – Clochette especially is surprisingly close in feel to his mentor Flaubert’s Un Coeur Simple (A Simple Heart). This one is very different – a small masterpiece of the old peasant farce, something that could equally well be the basis of a Boccaccio tale but never pulled off with the same verve.

A woman employed to watch over the dying has agreed with a farmer to accept a lump sum instead of her normal daily wage, each party thereby hoping to steal a bargain on the other. Finding that the farmer’s mother isn’t dying as quickly as hoped, she improvises.

She came at daybreak, and found Honore eating his soup, which he had made himself before going to work, and the sick-nurse asked him: “Well, is your mother dead?” “She is rather better, on the contrary,” he replied, with a sly look out of the corner of his eyes. And he went out.

La Rapet, seized with anxiety, went up to the dying woman, who remained in the same state, lethargic and impassive, with her eyes open and her hands clutching the counterpane. The nurse perceived that this might go on thus for two days, four days, eight days, and her avaricious mind was seized with fear, while she was furious at the sly fellow who had tricked her, and at the woman who would not die.

Nevertheless, she began to work, and waited, looking intently at the wrinkled face of Mother Bontemps. When Honore returned to breakfast he seemed quite satisfied and even in a bantering humor. He was decidedly getting in his wheat under very favorable circumstances.

La Rapet was becoming exasperated; every minute now seemed to her so much time and money stolen from her. She felt a mad inclination to take this old woman, this, headstrong old fool, this obstinate old wretch, and to stop that short, rapid breath, which was robbing her of her time and money, by squeezing her throat a little. But then she reflected on the danger of doing so, and other thoughts came into her head; so she went up to the bed and said: “Have you ever seen the Devil?” Mother Bontemps murmured: “No.”

Then the sick-nurse began to talk and to tell her tales which were likely to terrify the weak mind of the dying woman. Some minutes before one dies the Devil appears, she said, to all who are in the death throes. He has a broom in his hand, a saucepan on his head, and he utters loud cries. When anybody sees him, all is over, and that person has only a few moments longer to live. She then enumerated all those to whom the Devil had appeared that year: Josephine Loisel, Eulalie Ratier, Sophie Padaknau, Seraphine Grospied.

Mother Bontemps, who had at last become disturbed in mind, moved about, wrung her hands, and tried to turn her head to look toward the end of the room. Suddenly La Rapet disappeared at the foot of the bed. She took a sheet out of the cupboard and wrapped herself up in it; she put the iron saucepan on her head, so that its three short bent feet rose up like horns, and she took a broom in her right hand and a tin pail in her left, which she threw up suddenly, so that it might fall to the ground noisily.

When it came down, it certainly made a terrible noise. Then, climbing upon a chair, the nurse lifted up the curtain which hung at the bottom of the bed, and showed herself, gesticulating and uttering shrill cries into the iron saucepan which covered her face, while she menaced the old peasant woman, who was nearly dead, with her broom.

Terrified, with an insane expression on her face, the dying woman made a superhuman effort to get up and escape; she even got her shoulders and chest out of bed; then she fell back with a deep sigh. All was over, and La Rapet calmly put everything back into its place; the broom into the corner by the cupboard the sheet inside it, the saucepan on the hearth, the pail on the floor, and the chair against the wall. Then, with professional movements, she closed the dead woman’s large eyes, put a plate on the bed and poured some holy water into it, placing in it the twig of boxwood that had been nailed to the chest of drawers, and kneeling down, she fervently repeated the prayers for the dead, which she knew by heart, as a matter of business.

Elle arriva, en effet, au jour levant.

Honoré, avant de se rendre aux terres, mangeait sa soupe, qu’il avait faite lui-même.

La garde demanda :

— Eh ben, vot’mé a-t-all’ passé ?

Il répondit, avec un pli malin au coin des yeux :

— All’va plutôt mieux.

Et il s’en alla.

La Rapet, saisie d’inquiétude, s’approcha de l’agonisante, qui demeurait dans le même état, oppressée et impassible, l’œil ouvert et les mains crispées sur sa couverture.

Et la garde comprit que cela pouvait durer deux jours, quatre jours, huit jours ainsi ; et une épouvante étreignit son cœur d’avare, tandis qu’une colère furieuse la soulevait contre ce finaud qui l’avait jouée et contre cette femme qui ne mourait pas.

Elle se mit au travail néanmoins et attendit, le regard fixé sur la face ridée de la mère Bontemps.

Honoré revint pour déjeuner ; il semblait content, presque goguenard ; puis il repartit. Il rentrait son blé, décidément, dans des conditions excellentes.

La Rapet s’exaspérait ; chaque minute écoulée lui semblait, maintenant, du temps volé, de l’argent volé. Elle avait envie, une envie folle de prendre par le cou cette vieille bourrique, cette vieille têtue, cette vieille obstinée, et d’arrêter, en serrant un peu, ce petit souffle rapide qui lui volait son temps et son argent.

Puis elle réfléchit au danger ; et, d’autres idées lui passant par la tête, elle se rapprocha du lit.

Elle demanda :

— Vos avez-t-il déjà vu l’Diable ?

La mère Bontemps murmura :

— Non.

Alors la garde se mit à causer, à lui conter des histoires pour terroriser son âme débile de mourante.

Quelques minutes avant qu’on expirât, le Diable apparaissait, disait-elle, à tous les agonisants. Il avait un balai à la main, une marmite sur la tête, et il poussait de grands cris. Quand on l’avait vu, c’était fini, on n’en avait plus que pour peu d’instants. Et elle énumérait tous ceux à qui le Diable était apparu devant elle, cette année-là : Joséphin Loisel, Eulalie Ratier, Sophie Padagnau, Séraphine Grospied.

La mère Bontemps, émue enfin, s’agitait, remuait les mains, essayait de tourner la tête pour regarder au fond de la chambre.

Soudain la Rapet disparut au pied du lit. Dans l’armoire, elle prit un drap et s’enveloppa dedans ; elle se coiffa de la marmite, dont les trois pieds courts et courbés se dressaient ainsi que trois cornes ; elle saisit un balai de sa main droite, et, de la main gauche, un seau de fer-blanc, qu’elle jeta brusquement en l’air pour qu’il retombât avec bruit.

Il fit, en heurtant le sol, un fracas épouvantable ; alors, grimpée sur une chaise, la garde souleva le rideau qui pendait au bout du lit, et elle apparut, gesticulant, poussant des clameurs aiguës au fond du pot de fer qui lui cachait la face, et menaçant de son balai, comme un diable de guignol, la vieille paysanne à bout de vie.

Éperdue, le regard fou, la mourante fit un effort surhumain pour se soulever et s’enfuir ; elle sortit même de sa couche ses épaules et sa poitrine ; puis elle retomba avec un grand soupir. C’était fini.

Et la Rapet, tranquillement, remit en place tous les objets, le balai au coin de l’armoire, le drap dedans, la marmite sur le foyer, le seau sur la planche et la chaise contre le mur. Puis, avec les gestes professionnels, elle ferma les yeux énormes de la morte, posa sur le lit une assiette, versa dedans l’eau du bénitier, y trempa le buis cloué sur la commode et, s’agenouillant, se mit à réciter avec ferveur les prières des trépassés qu’elle savait par cœur, par métier.

The Power of Words

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The Power of Words, a greatly underappreciated tale of Edgar Allan Poe’s that spreads more to speculative philosophy and proto-speculative fiction than what you’d expect from the author (and maybe even hits post-apocalyptic given the glancing mention of ‘shortly before the final overthrow of the earth’). The surface background would seem John 1:1 (In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God) but there are more interesting curiosities throughout like a proposed paradox of omniscience, a theory on the infinite traceability of cause, and recurring hints of gnosticism.

OINOS. Pardon, Agathos, the weakness of a spirit new-fledged with immortality!

AGATHOS. You have spoken nothing, my Oinos, for which pardon is to be demanded. Not even here is knowledge thing of intuition. For wisdom, ask of the angels freely, that it may be given!

OINOS. But in this existence, I dreamed that I should be at once cognizant of all things, and thus at once be happy in being cognizant of all.

AGATHOS. Ah, not in knowledge is happiness, but in the acquisition of knowledge! In for ever knowing, we are for ever blessed; but to know all were the curse of a fiend.

OINOS. But does not The Most High know all?

AGATHOS. That (since he is The Most Happy) must be still the one thing unknown even to Him.

OINOS. But, since we grow hourly in knowledge, must not at last all things be known?

AGATHOS. Look down into the abysmal distances!—attempt to force the gaze down the multitudinous vistas of the stars, as we sweep slowly through them thus—and thus—and thus! Even the spiritual vision, is it not at all points arrested by the continuous golden walls of the universe?—the walls of the myriads of the shining bodies that mere number has appeared to blend into unity?

OINOS. I clearly perceive that the infinity of matter is no dream.

AGATHOS. There are no dreams in Aidenn—but it is here whispered that, of this infinity of matter, the sole purpose is to afford infinite springs, at which the soul may allay the thirst to know, which is for ever unquenchable within it—since to quench it, would be to extinguish the soul’s self. Question me then, my Oinos, freely and without fear. Come! we will leave to the left the loud harmony of the Pleiades, and swoop outward from the throne into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets, and heart’s—ease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple—tinted suns.

OINOS. And now, Agathos, as we proceed, instruct me!—speak to me in the earth’s familiar tones. I understand not what you hinted to me, just now, of the modes or of the method of what, during mortality, we were accustomed to call Creation. Do you mean to say that the Creator is not God?

AGATHOS. I mean to say that the Deity does not create.

OINOS. Explain.

AGATHOS. In the beginning only, he created. The seeming creatures which are now, throughout the universe, so perpetually springing into being, can only be considered as the mediate or indirect, not as the direct or immediate results of the Divine creative power.

OINOS. Among men, my Agathos, this idea would be considered heretical in the extreme.

AGATHOS. Among angels, my Oinos, it is seen to be simply true.

OINOS. I can comprehend you thus far—that certain operations of what we term Nature, or the natural laws, will, under certain conditions, give rise to that which has all the appearance of creation. Shortly before the final overthrow of the earth, there were, I well remember, many very successful experiments in what some philosophers were weak enough to denominate the creation of animalculae.

AGATHOS. The cases of which you speak were, in fact, instances of the secondary creation—and of the only species of creation which has ever been, since the first word spoke into existence the first law.

OINOS. Are not the starry worlds that, from the abyss of nonentity, burst hourly forth into the heavens—are not these stars, Agathos, the immediate handiwork of the King?

AGATHOS. Let me endeavor, my Oinos, to lead you, step by step, to the conception I intend. You are well aware that, as no thought can perish, so no act is without infinite result. We moved our hands, for example, when we were dwellers on the earth, and, in so doing, gave vibration to the atmosphere which engirdled it. This vibration was indefinitely extended, till it gave impulse to every particle of the earth’s air, which thenceforward, and for ever, was actuated by the one movement of the hand. This fact the mathematicians of our globe well knew. They made the special effects, indeed, wrought in the fluid by special impulses, the subject of exact calculation—so that it became easy to determine in what precise period an impulse of given extent would engirdle the orb, and impress (for ever) every atom of the atmosphere circumambient. Retrograding, they found no difficulty, from a given effect, under given conditions, in determining the value of the original impulse. Now the mathematicians who saw that the results of any given impulse were absolutely endless—and who saw that a portion of these results were accurately traceable through the agency of algebraic analysis—who saw, too, the facility of the retrogradation—these men saw, at the same time, that this species of analysis itself, had within itself a capacity for indefinite progress—that there were no bounds conceivable to its advancement and applicability, except within the intellect of him who advanced or applied it. But at this point our mathematicians paused.

OINOS. And why, Agathos, should they have proceeded?

AGATHOS. Because there were some considerations of deep interest beyond. It was deducible from what they knew, that to a being of infinite understanding—one to whom the perfection of the algebraic analysis lay unfolded—there could be no difficulty in tracing every impulse given the air—and the ether through the air—to the remotest consequences at any even infinitely remote epoch of time. It is indeed demonstrable that every such impulse given the air, must, in the end, impress every individual thing that exists within the universe;—and the being of infinite understanding—the being whom we have imagined—might trace the remote undulations of the impulse—trace them upward and onward in their influences upon all particles of an matter—upward and onward for ever in their modifications of old forms—or, in other words, in their creation of new—until he found them reflected—unimpressive at last—back from the throne of the Godhead. And not only could such a thing do this, but at any epoch, should a given result be afforded him—should one of these numberless comets, for example, be presented to his inspection—he could have no difficulty in determining, by the analytic retrogradation, to what original impulse it was due. This power of retrogradation in its absolute fulness and perfection—this faculty of referring at all epochs, all effects to all causes—is of course the prerogative of the Deity alone—but in every variety of degree, short of the absolute perfection, is the power itself exercised by the whole host of the Angelic intelligences.

OINOS. But you speak merely of impulses upon the air.

AGATHOS. In speaking of the air, I referred only to the earth; but the general proposition has reference to impulses upon the ether—which, since it pervades, and alone pervades all space, is thus the great medium of creation.

OINOS. Then all motion, of whatever nature, creates?

AGATHOS. It must: but a true philosophy has long taught that the source of all motion is thought—and the source of all thought is—

OINOS. God.

AGATHOS. I have spoken to you, Oinos, as to a child of the fair Earth which lately perished—of impulses upon the atmosphere of the Earth.

OINOS. You did.

AGATHOS. And while I thus spoke, did there not cross your mind some thought of the physical power of words? Is not every word an impulse on the air?

OINOS. But why, Agathos, do you weep—and why, oh why do your wings droop as we hover above this fair star—which is the greenest and yet most terrible of all we have encountered in our flight? Its brilliant flowers look like a fairy dream—but its fierce volcanoes like the passions of a turbulent heart.

AGATHOS. They are!—they are! This wild star—it is now three centuries since, with clasped hands, and with streaming eyes, at the feet of my beloved—I spoke it—with a few passionate sentences—into birth. Its brilliant flowers are the dearest of all unfulfilled dreams, and its raging volcanoes are the passions of the most turbulent and unhallowed of hearts.

Marginalia on Casanova

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Miklos Szentkuthy’s Marginalia on Casanova, the first of ten volumes in his St. Orpheus Breviary . v. 2 is also available in English as Black Renaissance. The French have made it further and released up through v.4 (v.3 as Escorial and v.4 as Europa Minor). Since Szentkuthy likely needs a lead-in for English readers, here first is the somewhat puffed up introductory overview:

Basically, this opus can be read as a long mythos of the marginal. From his room-library with some twenty-five thousand volumes, Szentkuthy annotates and revisits history. Mixing with ease and joy hagiography, literary study, fiction, narrative, the lyric poem and the aphorism, this roman-cathedrale, whose denomination “breviary” must not mislead, with the humor of his antiphrasis, offers an unprecedented recrossing as unheard-of as much as it is ironical of all literary and artistic forms cultivated by the West, from early times to the twentieth century, with major milestones: Rome, Byzantium, Venice, the Italian Renaissance & the Spanish Baroque. As archivist buffoon, Szentkuthy feeds the extravagant theater with his rigorous bulimia of a thousand networks of burgeoning stories, palimpsests in abysses and apocryphal pitfalls. Appropriating countless masks, pacing the epochs, this emotional athlete has no other aim than to break time until it stills the whirlwind of history into one continuous present.

Lord of illusions or exhibitor of shadows, there is something of the devourer in this man, who cannot bear to live cramped in one body, one life, one language. He prefers to cultivate double replicas of being, invest all fates — saints, libertines, popes, musicians, emperors, writers, eunuchs, painters or biblical girls. “I always wanted to see everything,” he confessed, “read everything, think everything, dream everything, swallow everything.”

From whence the art and manner of travelling across languages and playing the Argonauts of Planetary Writing (is it a coincidence that Szentkuthy was the translator of both Ulysses and Gulliver?). In truth, this stubborn survivor of the Enlightenment seems motivated entirely by a furious encyclopedic desire. A simple glance at the table of contents of the Breviary suffices to show the profligacy of this inner odyssey, where a few characters who were never in search of an author marched pell-mell: Casanova, Mozart, Adonis, Toscanini, Turner, Rubens, Brunelleschi, Keats, Herodotus, El Greco, Pythagoras, Voltaire, Puccini, Ariosto, Tintoretto, Shelley, Abelard, Monteverdi, Tacitus, Messalina, Theodora, Akbar, Lao Tzu, Palladio, Mary Tudor, Donatello, Philip II, Buddha, etc.

As many roles as Szentkuthy assumes in the manner of a comedian or an absolute dreamer, writing thus a sumptuous catalogus amoris. Here truly resides the infinite song of an Orpheus with Apollonian harmonies, god of metamorphosis, “being whose role it is to celebrate,” in the words of Rilke.

In an age where anyone — even under the sign of the worst conformism — prides oneself on marginality, Szentkuthy appears, all in all, as the writer of the absolute margin. Throughout his life, he continued to write in the margins of his books, covering and recovering — maniacally, scrupulously — volumes, newspapers, journals, and other documents. An infinite mosaic of notes, footnotes, keywords and various doodles, continuous shuffling between reading and writing — one without the other is here inconceivable — interminable bubbling of the library-universe in the heart of the Opus Magnum. Borges reminds us: “Another superstition of those ages has come to us: that of the Man of the Book. On some shelf of some hexagon, we reasoned, there must exist a book which is the key and summary of all the others; there is a librarian who has read this book and who is like a god.”{2} If there is a writer who is a Man of the Book, according to the wish of the Argentinean master, it is Szentkuthy, in relentless pursuit of a magnum opus that would contain and even restore all creation.

Such was his passion, and his method as well. A process inaugurated in the first book of the Breviary, precisely titled Marginalia on Casanova. Strangely — but can we talk of strangeness when discussing a man who claimed to “work in co-production with chance”? — the structure of this founding volume owes much to theology. In 1938, Szentkuthy read the Römerbrief of the famous Protestant exegete Karl Barth, a commentary that is based on an analysis, phrase by phrase, even word by word, of the Epistle to the Romans. Literally enchanted by the effectiveness of this method — “where, in his words, every epithet puts imagination in motion” — he decided to apply it on the spot to Casanova, whose memoirs (a German edition in six large volumes) he had just annotated with gusto.

Simultaneity of all epochs, anachronistic audacity, chaos erected into a system (“the order of the random,” as defined by the same author) — was what this flamboyant opus quietly gave to read. The reception? Actually, there was none, since as soon as it was published — and even though Szentkuthy dutifully went to the church to “give thanks to all competent authorities of Catholic Heaven” to have authorized this iconoclast publication — the Royal Hungarian Court condemned Marginalia on Casanova for blasphemous profanity and assault on decency. Enjoying the protection of a prosecutor of the crown, the accused barely escaped trial — but all copies of the work were immediately confiscated. Thus was inaugurated the series of “Orpheuses”

And here are two relatively early chapters of the first volume (10 and 11). Halfway through the volume and I’m far from knowing what to do with it but these passages – the second especially – feel as good a representation of the author’s style as any.

“Ging ich in Maske aus” [I set out masked]— that is the logical culmination of civilization as an affirmation of self-contradictions. That culture: a mask culture, the reality of the 18th century, the reality of the mask. ‘Psychology’ here is a mistake arising from the mask, games of quid pro quo; sensuality only becomes truly great through the secret of the mask. Behind the mask lurks nihilism — a mask is almost as much a possibility of tragedy as Venice is simply by virtue of being Venice.

Neither Sophocles nor Shakespeare wrote a sentence as tragic as Casanova’s: “Ich ging in Maske aus.” A colored mask? A black one? With a long, corkscrew freak’s nose or just a simple covering for the forehead? Life is only tolerable in a mask — in this daring gesture civilization makes use of all game of games, a paradox from which it follows, but at the same time its nostalgia for non-civilization is quite tremendous.

A masked head is a death mask. In this disguise are preluded the two or three adventurous Venetian midnights which play a part in Casanova: when he has his revenge on an adversary; when a senator faints in a gondola; when marble tables are thrown together on resounding stone and he drunkenly tolls the bells with his musician companions.

As a small baby abate Casanova delivers a sermon in church. What is important above all else is that there is a world in which such a thing is possible, historically speaking. A world in which no one gives a damn about whether a person wearing a priest’s garb is a priest; a world in which a young boy can make a debut like a little ballerina. If that is the milieu then a thousand other things are self-evident. Yet Casanova’s entire intellectual mission (because he has none other in life) hangs on this: that a milieu can be one such or another, but there are only situations, the dramatis personae are not so much negligible as nothings.

Love is not a human death game or erotic game of patience, it is not a soul, not a body, not a marriage, not an adventure — love is: a ‘situation’; a constellation of objects, people, and times, one in which every object or time or even human component counts equally, irrespective of any ranking. Every Catholic child has been through that sweetly confusing age of twinges of conscience when budding sexual fantasies and equally budding religious notions chase each other around: we said our prayers with Greuze tears in our eyes and felt that God would excuse us for the female portrait, the one carried around in one’s pocketbook. Anyone who did not experience those partly uneasy, partly idyllic self-apologies knows little about love. Casanova’s sincere sermon and sincere adolescent boy’s eroticism fit alongside one another in his soul — that is what makes him childish. At this point moral insanity and Loyolan furor hover in balance — perhaps the finest sentimental and moral moment. One continually has the feeling that Casanova has a right to preach; something completely logical and completely free of hypocrisy is going on here. God wishes that the sermon should not be delivered by a bearded St. John in the wilderness but by a love-stricken Venetian young rascal in a periwig and without genuine faith: the whole religion is thereby cozier, more human, truer. After making his sermon, Casanova got a bagful of love-letters from female admirers; they straightaway smuggle into the sacristy.

Why should it be impossible and out of the question to label this as: frivolousness? How do we dare to say that the gondolaing settecento was religious, maybe because there is greater morality in this post-carnival ease? That it is all “I’ll go to confession and have done with it!” because everything is in Pauline contrition-versus-ecstasy? Because man is somehow so incestuously warm, somehow in an intimately fait accompli position with God: that God seeks to fall into the gossip net of human life, and this is where it happened. A Calvinist holding God at arm’s length and a baroque-Roman palling-up to God are probably equally bad extremes, but my theological heart mooches around the latter with unquenchable nostalgia.

The scene itself is unforgettable: a church next to the water like a swimming box of relics, the steps meeting the green paludial liquid like coins which have slipped just a nuance further out from an overturned stack of money; prows jammed together, gondolas lurch in one place around the gate like miff-necked black swans around an invisible morsel — the church is small, the whole thing no more than a boudoir, the women, in their balloon silks, thrown on each other — the lagoon’s marsh reek, an oily fish smell billowing out from the eating-houses, many perfumes and stifling hard fumes of incense concentrated into a single Catholic dogma: that’s Casanova’s world. This is the image added to which I always imagine Miracoli. When one first sees it: from behind. Thank goodness, we have such an entirely cost-free key to the reality-nature of reality: one must glimpse such magnificent edifices for the first time from the back, the ‘bad’ perspective. This is Santa Maria dei Miracoli: at one moment a powder-box at the edge of a green washbasin, the next moment (with its Byzantine artichoke cupolas) the new St. Mark’s church, a celestial Constantinople.

In cupolated buildings like this the high, smooth walls almost outgrow the height of the cupolas, with the green Orthodox cones falling between the shoulders. They are always falling; the five or six cupolas hurriedly shrink as if Orthodoxy were doubling the perspective, were hastening them to double. Casanova’s childhood sermon has grown together with this in my memory, and that too is symbolical: just like the miracle boudoir and Constantinople, so even Casanova’s young days of the intensification of sweetest intimacy with the world right up till the fateful journey (“ich muss… ich muss…”) to Byzantium.

Fancy with fact is just one fact the more

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Robert Browning’s The Ring and The Book (1.451-526), the narrator responding to an imagined reader’s question about the nature of the poem’s tale.

“A pretty piece of narrative enough,
“Which scarce ought so to drop out, one would think,
“From the more curious annals of our kind.
“Do you tell the story, now, in off-hand style,
“Straight from the book? Or simply here and there,
“(The while you vault it through the loose and large)
“Hang to a hint? Or is there book at all,
“And don’t you deal in poetry, make-believe,
“And the white lies it sounds like?”

Yes and no!
From the book, yes; thence bit by bit I dug
The lingot truth, that memorable day,
Assayed and knew my piecemeal gain was gold,—
Yes; but from something else surpassing that,
Something of mine which, mixed up with the mass,
Made it bear hammer and be firm to file.
Fancy with fact is just one fact the more;
To-wit, that fancy has informed, transpierced,
Thridded and so thrown fast the facts else free,
As right through ring and ring runs the djereed
And binds the loose, one bar without a break.
I fused my live soul and that inert stuff,
Before attempting smithcraft, on the night
After the day when,—truth thus grasped and gained,—
The book was shut and done with and laid by
On the cream-coloured massive agate, broad
‘Neath the twin cherubs in the tarnished frame
O’ the mirror, tall thence to the ceiling-top.
And from the reading, and that slab I leant
My elbow on, the while I read and read,
I turned, to free myself and find the world,
And stepped out on the narrow terrace, built
Over the street and opposite the church,
And paced its lozenge-brickwork sprinkled cool;
Because Felice-church-side stretched, a-glow
Through each square window fringed for festival,
Whence came the clear voice of the cloistered ones
Chanting a chant made for midsummer nights—
I know not what particular praise of God,
It always came and went with June. Beneath
I’ the street, quick shown by openings of the sky
When flame fell silently from cloud to cloud,
Richer than that gold snow Jove rained on Rhodes,
The townsmen walked by twos and threes, and talked,
Drinking the blackness in default of air—
A busy human sense beneath my feet:
While in and out the terrace-plants, and round
One branch of tall datura, waxed and waned
The lamp-fly lured there, wanting the white flower.
Over the roof o’ the lighted church I looked
A bowshot to the street’s end, north away
Out of the Roman gate to the Roman road
By the river, till I felt the Apennine.
And there would lie Arezzo, the man’s town,
The woman’s trap and cage and torture-place,
Also the stage where the priest played his part,
A spectacle for angels,—ay, indeed,
There lay Arezzo! Farther then I fared,
Feeling my way on through the hot and dense,
Romeward, until I found the wayside inn
By Castelnuovo’s few mean hut-like homes
Huddled together on the hill-foot bleak,
Bare, broken only by that tree or two
Against the sudden bloody splendour poured
Cursewise in day’s departure by the sun
O’er the low house-roof of that squalid inn
Where they three, for the first time and the last,
Husband and wife and priest, met face to face.
Whence I went on again, the end was near,
Step by step, missing none and marking all,
Till Rome itself, the ghastly goal, I reached.
Why, all the while,—how could it otherwise?—
The life in me abolished the death of things,
Deep calling unto deep: as then and there
Acted itself over again once more
The tragic piece. I saw with my own eyes
In Florence as I trod the terrace, breathed
The beauty and the fearfulness of night,
How it had run, this round from Rome to Rome—

Symbolic and serial perception

~ Walter Shandy ~ 2 Comments

From Byung-Chul Han’s The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present.

Symbolic perception is gradually being replaced by a serial perception that is incapable of producing the experience of duration. Serial perception, the constant registering of the new, does not linger. Rather, it rushes from one piece of information to the next, from one experience to the next, from one sensation to the next, without ever coming to closure. Watching film series is so popular today because they conform to the habit of serial perception. At the level of media consumption, this habit leads to binge watching, to comatose viewing. While symbolic perception is intensive, serial perception is extensive. Because of its extensiveness, serial perception is characterized by shallow attention. Intensity is giving way everywhere to extensity. Digital communication is extensive communication; it does not establish relationships, only connections.

The neoliberal regime pushes serial perception, reinforces the serial habitus. It intentionally abolishes duration in order to drive more consumption. The permanent process of updating, which has now extended to all areas of life, does not permit the development of any duration or allow for any completion. The everpresent compulsion of production leads to a de-housing [Enthausung], making life more contingent, transient and unstable. But dwelling requires duration.

Attention deficit disorder results from a pathological intensification of serial perception. Perception is never at rest: it has lost the capacity to linger. The cultural technique of deep attention emerged precisely out of ritual and religious practices. It is no accident that ‘religion’ is derived from relegere: to take note. Every religious practice is an exercise in attention. A temple is a place of the highest degree of attention. According to Malebranche, attention is the natural prayer of the soul. Today, the soul does not pray. It is permanently producing itself.

The crying need of our modern civilisation

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From The Feast of Nemesis, in Saki’s Beasts and Super-Beasts:

“The trouble is,” said Clovis to his aunt, “all these days of intrusive remembrance harp so persistently on one aspect of human nature and entirely ignore the other; that is why they become so perfunctory and artificial.  At Christmas and New Year you are emboldened and encouraged by convention to send gushing messages of optimistic goodwill and servile affection to people whom you would scarcely ask to lunch unless some one else had failed you at the last moment; if you are supping at a restaurant on New Year’s Eve you are permitted and expected to join hands and sing ‘For Auld Lang Syne’ with strangers whom you have never seen before and never want to see again.  But no licence is allowed in the opposite direction.”

“Opposite direction; what opposite direction?” queried Mrs. Thackenbury.

“There is no outlet for demonstrating your feelings towards people whom you simply loathe.  That is really the crying need of our modern civilisation.  Just think how jolly it would be if a recognised day were set apart for the paying off of old scores and grudges, a day when one could lay oneself out to be gracefully vindictive to a carefully treasured list of ‘people who must not be let off.’  I remember when I was at a private school we had one day, the last Monday of the term I think it was, consecrated to the settlement of feuds and grudges; of course we did not appreciate it as much as it deserved, because, after all, any day of the term could be used for that purpose.  Still, if one had chastised a smaller boy for being cheeky weeks before, one was always permitted on that day to recall the episode to his memory by chastising him again.  That is what the French call reconstructing the crime.”

“I should call it reconstructing the punishment,” said Mrs. Thackenbury; “and, anyhow, I don’t see how you could introduce a system of primitive schoolboy vengeance into civilised adult life.  We haven’t outgrown our passions, but we are supposed to have learned how to keep them within strictly decorous limits.”

“Of course the thing would have to be done furtively and politely,” said Clovis; “the charm of it would be that it would never be perfunctory like the other thing.  Now, for instance, you say to yourself: ‘I must show the Webleys some attention at Christmas, they were kind to dear Bertie at Bournemouth,’ and you send them a calendar, and daily for six days after Christmas the male Webley asks the female Webley if she has remembered to thank you for the calendar you sent them.  Well, transplant that idea to the other and more human side of your nature, and say to yourself: ‘Next Thursday is Nemesis Day; what on earth can I do to those odious people next door who made such an absurd fuss when Ping Yang bit their youngest child?’  Then you’d get up awfully early on the allotted day and climb over into their garden and dig for truffles on their tennis court with a good gardening fork, choosing, of course, that part of the court that was screened from observation by the laurel bushes.  You wouldn’t find any truffles but you would find a great peace, such as no amount of present-giving could ever bestow.”

“I shouldn’t,” said Mrs. Thackenbury, though her air of protest sounded a bit forced; “I should feel rather a worm for doing such a thing.”

“You exaggerate the power of upheaval which a worm would be able to bring into play in the limited time available,” said Clovis; “if you put in a strenuous ten minutes with a really useful fork, the result ought to suggest the operations of an unusually masterful mole or a badger in a hurry.”

“They might guess I had done it,” said Mrs. Thackenbury.

“Of course they would,” said Clovis; “that would be half the satisfaction of the thing, just as you like people at Christmas to know what presents or cards you’ve sent them.

The Schartz-Metterklume Method

~ Walter Shandy ~ Leave a comment

From Saki’s The Schartz-Metterklume Method in his Beasts and Super-Beasts. One Lady Carlotta is mistaken for a family’s new governess and goes along with the error.

Mr. Quabarl made a welcome diversion by asking what studies the new instructress proposed to inaugurate on the morrow.

“History to begin with,” she informed him.

“Ah, history,” he observed sagely; “now in teaching them history you must take care to interest them in what they learn.  You must make them feel that they are being introduced to the life-stories of men and women who really lived—”

“I’ve told her all that,” interposed Mrs. Quabarl.

“I teach history on the Schartz-Metterklume method,” said the governess loftily.

“Ah, yes,” said her listeners, thinking it expedient to assume an acquaintance at least with the name.

* * * * *

“What are you children doing out here?” demanded Mrs. Quabarl the next morning, on finding Irene sitting rather glumly at the head of the stairs, while her sister was perched in an attitude of depressed discomfort on the window-seat behind her, with a wolf-skin rug almost covering her.

“We are having a history lesson,” came the unexpected reply.  “I am supposed to be Rome, and Viola up there is the she-wolf; not a real wolf, but the figure of one that the Romans used to set store by—I forget why.  Claude and Wilfrid have gone to fetch the shabby women.”

“The shabby women?”

“Yes, they’ve got to carry them off.  They didn’t want to, but Miss Hope got one of father’s fives-bats and said she’d give them a number nine spanking if they didn’t, so they’ve gone to do it.”

A loud, angry screaming from the direction of the lawn drew Mrs. Quabarl thither in hot haste, fearful lest the threatened castigation might even now be in process of infliction.  The outcry, however, came principally from the two small daughters of the lodge-keeper, who were being hauled and pushed towards the house by the panting and dishevelled Claude and Wilfrid, whose task was rendered even more arduous by the incessant, if not very effectual, attacks of the captured maidens’ small brother.  The governess, fives-bat in hand, sat negligently on the stone balustrade, presiding over the scene with the cold impartiality of a Goddess of Battles.  A furious and repeated chorus of “I’ll tell muvver” rose from the lodge-children, but the lodge-mother, who was hard of hearing, was for the moment immersed in the preoccupation of her washtub.

After an apprehensive glance in the direction of the lodge (the good woman was gifted with the highly militant temper which is sometimes the privilege of deafness) Mrs. Quabarl flew indignantly to the rescue of the struggling captives.

“Wilfrid!  Claude!  Let those children go at once.  Miss Hope, what on earth is the meaning of this scene?”

“Early Roman history; the Sabine Women, don’t you know?  It’s the Schartz-Metterklume method to make children understand history by acting it themselves; fixes it in their memory, you know.  Of course, if, thanks to your interference, your boys go through life thinking that the Sabine women ultimately escaped, I really cannot be held responsible.”