Without Lifting A Finger

Read the first in the trilogy some years ago. Then, seeing it was coming out in May, I next read  The Death of Jesus. Lastly, I read the middle text: The Schooldays of Jesus . Have been lazy about posting reading "clips" (busy with the end of school, the end of a career), but this one was pretty good so I had to post it. * He drops in on a class in astrology. Discussion turns to the Spheres: whether the stars belong to the Spheres or on the contrary follow trajectories of their own; whether the Spheres are finite or infinite in number. The lecturer believes the number of Spheres is finite – finite but unknown and unknowable, as she puts it. ‘If the number of Spheres is finite, then what lies beyond them?’ asks a student. ‘There is no beyond,’ replies the lecturer. The student looks nonplussed. ‘There is no beyond,’ she repeats. He is not interested in the Spheres, or even in the stars, which as far as he is concerned are lumps of insensate matter moving through empty...

There were certainly many more "clips," but I read it quickly and was perhaps a bit lazy. I also watched the film (for the first time), trying to compare. Though I love Coetzee for his language, his stories always seem a bit too contrived. But who am I to criticize. *** Although he devotes hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: ‘Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings and intentions to each other.’ His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul. * He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, whil...

It was the law at that time that if there was sickness on any person in the town of Sligo you should notice it to the Governors, or you'd be put up in the gaol. Well, a man's wife took sick, and he went and noticed it. They came down then with bands of men they had, and took her away to the sick-house, and he heard nothing more till he heard she was dead, and was to be buried in the morning. At that time there was such fear and hurry and dread on every person, they were burying people they had no hope of, and they with life within them. My man was uneasy a while thinking on that, and then what did he do, but slip down in the darkness of the night and into the dead-house, where they were after putting his wife. There were beyond twoscore bodies, and he went feeling from one to the other. Then I suppose his wife heard him coming—she wasn't dead at all—and "Is that Michael?" says she. "It is then," says he; "and, oh, my poor woman, have you your last...

Immense wealth of metal is contained in the roof of this gallery, throughout its whole length; but it remains, and will always remain, untouched. The miners dare not take it, for it is part, and a great part, of the rock which forms their only protection against the sea; and which has been so far worked away here, that its thickness is limited to an average of three feet only between the water and the gallery in which we now stand. No one knows what might be the consequence of another day's labour with the pickaxe on any part of it. This information is rather startling when communicated at a depth of four hundred and twenty feet under ground. We should decidedly have preferred to receive it in the counting-house! It makes us pause for an instant, to the miner's infinite amusement, in the very act of knocking away a tiny morsel of ore from the rock, as a memento of Botallack. Having, however, ventured on reflection to assume the responsibility of weakening our defence against ...

Saw the OK series The Woman in White with my wife. Had heard of Wilkie Collins before (I believe C. S. Lewis mentioned him?) but, not being a mystery fan (and never talking to anyone who'd read him), I didn't look till now. And that's also certainly why I chose the sidebar of Rambles beyond Railways  (it's about his "walking trip" in Cornwall in 1850). * Leaving Pistol Meadow, after gathering a few of the wild herbs growing fragrant and plentiful over the graves of the dead, we turned our steps towards the Lizard Lighthouse. As we passed before the front of the large and massive building, our progress was suddenly and startlingly checked by a hideous chasm in the cliff, sunk to a perpendicular depth of seventy feet, and measuring more than a hundred in circumference. Nothing prepares the stranger for this great gulf; no railing is placed about it; it lies hidden by rising land, and the earth all around is treacherously smooth. The first moment when you s...

Let us consider the village at the foot of Castle Hill whence K.’s alleged employment as a land surveyor is so mysteriously and unexpectedly confirmed. In his Postscript to The Castle Brod mentioned that in depicting this village at the foot of Castle Hill Kafka had in mind a specific place, Zürau in the Erz Gebirge. We may, however, also recognize another village in it. It is the village in a Talmudic legend told by a rabbi in answer to the question why Jews prepare a festive evening meal on Fridays. The legend is about a princess languishing in exile, in a village whose language she does not understand, far from her compatriots. One day this princess receives a letter saying that her fiancé has not forgotten her and is on his way to her. The fiancé, so says the rabbi, is the Messiah; the princess is the soul; the village in which she lives in exile is the body. She prepares a meal for him because this is the only way in which she can express her joy in a village whose language she...

Stated more briefly and dialectically, this means that the sphere of poetry was here explored from within by a closely knit circle of people pushing the “poetic life” to the utmost limits of possibility. And they can be taken at their word when they assert that Rimbaud’s Saison en enfer no longer had any secrets for them. For this book is indeed the first document of the movement (in recent times; earlier precursors will be discussed later). Can the point at issue be more definitively and incisively presented than by Rimbaud himself in his personal copy of the book? In the margin, beside the passage “on the silk of the seas and the arctic flowers,” he later wrote, “There’s no such thing.” * The reader, the thinker, the loiterer, the flâneur, are types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic. And more profane. Not to mention that most terrible drug—ourselves—which we take in solitude.

In any case, here it is: I have never been really able to believe that human affairs were serious matters. I had no idea where the serious might lie, except that it was not in all this I saw around me—which seemed to me merely an amusing game, or tiresome. There are really efforts and convictions I have never been able to understand. I always looked with amazement, and a certain suspicion, on those strange creatures who died for money, fell into despair over the loss of a “position,” or sacrificed themselves with a high and mighty manner for the prosperity of their family. I could better understand that friend who had made up his mind to stop smoking and through sheer will power had succeeded. One morning he opened the paper, read that the first H-bomb had been exploded, learned about its wonderful effects, and hastened to a tobacco shop.

That is what no man (except those who are not really alive—in other words, wise men) can endure. Spitefulness is the only possible ostentation. People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves. What do you expect? The idea that comes most naturally to man, as if from his very nature, is the idea of his innocence. From this point of view, we are all like that little Frenchman at Buchenwald who insisted on registering a complaint with the clerk, himself a prisoner, who was recording his arrival. A complaint? The clerk and his comrades laughed: “Useless, old man. You don’t lodge a complaint here.” “But you see, sir,” said the little Frenchman, “My case is exceptional. I am innocent!” We are all exceptional cases. We all want to appeal against something! Each of us insists on being innocent at all cost, even if he has to accuse the whole human race and heaven itself.

Have thought about going there once or twice. Relatively close to Amsterdam. Once it was an island in the Zuiderzee, a causeway now makes it a pennisula. * Doll Village "Clip": A DOLL’S village, isn’t it? No shortage of quaintness here! But I didn’t bring you to this island for quaintness, cher ami. Anyone can show you peasant headdresses, wooden shoes, and ornamented houses with fishermen smoking choice tobacco surrounded by the smell of furniture wax. I am one of the few people, on the other hand, who can show you what really matters here.

That’s the way man is, cher monsieur . He has two faces: he can’t love without self-love. *   They need tragedy, don’t you know; it’s their little transcendence, their apéritif. *   “One doesn’t talk back to one’s father”—you know the expression? In one way it is very odd. To whom should one talk back in this world if not to what one loves? In another way, it is convincing. Somebody has to have the last word. Otherwise, every reason can be answered with another one and there would never be an end to it. Power, on the other hand, settles everything.    

I visited my father a few days ago. Although visit isn’t quite the right word, since he’s not present mentally. Not only does he not recognize me; I always come away with the impression that his gaze no longer retains concrete images, it doesn’t focus on any single object. My father lies in bed and sleeps for days on end. He’s still in his apartment, in his room, he’s well cared for. These visits are so sad. And once I fell into despair because he left without saying goodbye.  * * *  Cioran reports that Dylan Thomas was seized by convulsions and threw himself on the floor when someone once tried to interpret one of his poems in the poet’s presence.  * * *

City of Angels, I thought, amused. I got my fire-engine-red Geo out of the garage—a test of courage and skill every time, though I tried to make sure that no one could tell by looking—and drove to Twenty-sixth Street again. Brecht’s cube-shaped house, where he had had long discussions with Adorno and Eisler and Laughton and reflected on the insoluble ethical problems of the Galileo play, was now occupied by a man I sometimes saw on his front lawn and who definitely did not know who had lived there before him. How many times would Brecht have left this house to drive downtown? Or to visit the Feuchtwangers at Villa Aurora, high above the Pacific cliffs at Paseo Miramar, which my Geo brought me to as well? Where once, years before, on an unforgettable afternoon, Marta Feuchtwanger had shown you and G. her husband’s library and where there were now contractors in clouds of stone dust busy in the emptied rooms. Where Brecht could discuss political and literary problems, and agree about...

Unfortunately Kindle erases the breaks. Oh, well ... * We played for the division of matches and then the real game started. It was uncanny how quickly Vigot threw a four-two-one. He reduced his matches to three and I threw the lowest score possible. ‘Nanette,’ Vigot said, pushing me over two matches. When he had got rid of his last match he said, ‘Capitaine,’ and I called the waiter for drinks. ‘Does anybody ever beat you?’ I asked. ‘Not often. Do you want your revenge?’ ‘Another time. What a gambler you could be, Vigot. Do you play any other game of chance?’ He smiled miserably, and for some reason I thought of that blonde wife of his who was said to betray him with his junior officers. ‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘there’s always the biggest of all.’ ‘The biggest?’ ‘“Let us weigh the gain and loss,”’ he quoted, ‘“in wagering that God is, let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose you lose nothing.”’ I quoted Pascal back at him—it was the only passage I r...

No machines in the house; everything was still done by hand. Objects out of a past century, now generally transfigured with nostalgia: not only the coffee mill, which you had actually come to love as a toy—also the GOOD OLD ironing-board, the COSY hearth, the often-mended cooking pots, the DANGEROUS poker, the STURDY wheelbarrow, the ENTERPRISING weed cutter, the SHINING BRIGHT knives, which over the years had been ground to a vanishing narrowness by BURLY scissor-grinders, the FIENDISH thimble, the STUPID darning egg, the CLUMSY OLD flat-iron, which provided variety by having to be put back on the stove every so often, and finally the PRIZE PIECE, the foot- and hand-operated Singer sewing-machine. But the golden haze is all in the manner of listing. Another way of listing would be equally idyllic: your aching back; your hands scalded in the wash boiler, then frozen red while hanging up the clothes (how the frozen washing crackled as you folded it up!); an occasional nosebleed when...

First book I ever read by Handke (given to me by a friend) was a used copy of Three By Peter Handke: The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick; Short Letter, Long Farewell; A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. I certainly have reread the other two once or twice, I can't remember re "Beyond Dreams." Anyway, Handke's mother plays a very important role in "Moravian Night," so I've decided I'd better give "Beyond" another go. *** As usual when engaged in literary work, I am alienated from myself and transformed into an object, a remembering and formulating machine. I am writing the story of my mother, first of all because I think I know more about her and how she came to her death than any outside investigator who might, with the help of a religious, psychological, or sociological guide to the interpretation of dreams, arrive at a facile explanation of this interesting case of suicide; but second in my own interest, because having something to do...

You wanted to become pure spirit as a writer, and what did you become? A ghost! True: your quivering writerly language came from wordlessness, a primal wordlessness. Without this primal wordlessness, there would be no writing, or so you believe. (And your writing, then, between guilt and elation.) But wordlessness today? As the basis of a writer’s existence? Old hat, snows of yesteryear, not worth mentioning. Every word and every sentence is available nowadays in advance, as prefabricated components, so to speak. Enough of your guilt and also, granted, your elation. The quivering is over and done with, my friend.

I've only "clipped" once (and I'm almost finished), but I'm enjoying. Fast then slow. And the "project" is a bit opaque, i.e., Seems an odd way to mourn your own son. Of course it's more than that -- and who am I to say what Coetzee should or shouldn't do -- but of course that is remaining an idee fixe for me throughout. Oh, and it's pushing me to read Dusty-and-Dusky's  The Devils . I think I've started it but never finished. We'll see. * He turns the pages back and forth distractedly. Forgiveness: is there no word of forgiveness, however oblique, however disguised? Impossible to live out his days with a child inside him whose last word is not of forgiveness.

By and by there was a little stir on the staircase and in the passage-way, and in lounged a tall, loose-jointed figure, of an exaggerated Yankee port and demeanor, whom (as being about the homeliest man I ever saw, yet by no means repulsive or disagreeable) it was impossible not to recognize as Uncle Abe. * Unquestionably, Western man though he be, and Kentuckian by birth, President Lincoln is the essential representative of all Yankees, and the veritable specimen, physically, of what the world seems determined to regard as our characteristic qualities. * This suggestion gave Uncle Abe rather a delicate task in his reply, because, slight as the matter seemed, it apparently called for some declaration, or intimation, or faint foreshadowing of policy in reference to the conduct of the war, and the final treatment of the Rebels. But the President's Yankee aptness and not-to-be-caughtness stood him in good stead, and he jerked or wiggled himself out of the dilemma with a...

Not much on politics or economics (other than the small circle of Home). Still, with so many friends and relatives "hammering" and "clamoring" about the mess we're in, I took up Wolfgang Streeck to see if he could make any sense of it all. Anyway, I'm plodding along -- in between my preferred "literary" stuff -- and there's lots of "clipping," though I'll only post a small sample (two today, more as I go ...). * The end of capitalism can then be imagined as a death from a thousand cuts, or from a multiplicity of infirmities each of which will be all the more untreatable as all will demand treatment at the same time. * Since 2008, we have lived in a fourth stage of the post-1970s crisis sequence, and the by now familiar dialectic of problems treated with solutions that turn into problems themselves is again making itself felt. The three apocalyptic horsemen of contemporary capitalism –stagnation, debt, inequality –ar...