Without Lifting A Finger

I woke up shortly afterwards and said to Georges, ‘Let’s go out.’ As we were crossing the Pont des Arts I explained the migration of souls and told him: ‘I think the soul of Napoleon is within me tonight, inspiring me and commanding me to do great things.’ I purchased a hat in the rue du Coq and while Georges was collecting the change from the gold coin I had tossed on the counter, I continued on to the galleries of the Palais-Royal. It seemed to me that everybody there was staring at me. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head that the dead no longer existed. I wandered up and down the Galerie de Foy, saying, ‘I’ve made some mistake,’ but I could not discover what it was as I searched through my memory which I believed to be Napoleon’s … ‘There’s something here I’ve left unpaid!’

 Aurélie had accepted the principal role in the drama I had brought back from Germany. I shall never forget the day she allowed me to read her the play. The love scenes had been written with her in mind. I believe I recited them with spirit, and above all with rapture. In the conversation that ensued, I revealed I was the Stranger of the two letters. She said to me: ‘You’re mad, but come and see me again … I have yet to find a man who knows how to love me.’

Worldly ambitions, however, meant little to our generation; the greedy scramble for honours and positions in which everybody was then engaged only served to distance us from all possible spheres of activity. The sole refuge left to us was the poets’ ivory tower – which we climbed, higher and higher, in order to isolate ourselves from the crowd. Having been guided to these heights by our masters, we at last breathed the pure air of solitude, drinking ourselves into oblivion from the golden cup of fable, drunk with poetry and love – love, alas, of vague shapes, of blue and rosy hues, of metaphysical phantoms. Seen close, any real woman seemed too gross to our starry-eyed sensibilities. She had to appear a queen or goddess: above all, she had to lie beyond reach.

Pere Lachaise was close enough to our 3rd hotel that I didn't have to take a Metro. Besides I wanted to walk: see things along the way. I woke early--even Mickey D's was closed on the corner--and walked in cool, on-and-off-rain. Had forgot to check when it opens (I was off an hour plus). OK, I had a couple coffees and a pain aux raisin. Kept dry by sitting at a busstop; kept warm by pacing over a vent. I only wanted three biggies (de Nerval, Balzac, Proust) and Aux Morts : I  got that and a little more.                                                                                                   ...

This is a short fragment from de Nerval's Sylvie (from the chapter called "Old Dodu"): I was about to reply, I was about to throw myself at her feet and offer her my uncle's house -- which it was still possible for me to purchase, given that there were several of us in line for the inheritance and that the property had remained undivided -- but we were already back at Loisy by now. Dinner was waiting for us. The fine old country smell of onion soup was wafting through the air. Some neighbors had been invited over for this day-after of the festivities. I immediately recognized an ancient woodcutter, Old Dodu, who used to tell us such comic or terrifying tales long into the night. By turns shepherd, messenger, gamekeeper, fisherman and even poacher, Old Dodu whittled cuckoo-clocks and turnspits in his spare time. For many years he had acted as a tour guide in Ermenonville, showing British visitors the spots where Rousseau used to meditate and recounting his final day...

From the beginning of Nerval's Aurelia, or Dream and Life: Dream is a second life. I have never been able to cross through those gates of ivory or horn which separate us from the invisible world without a sense of dread. The first few instants of sleep are the image of death; a drowsy numbness steals over our thoughts, and it becomes impossible to determine the precise point at which the self , in some other form, continues to carry on the work of existence. Little by little, the dim cavern is suffused with light and, emerging from its shadowy depths, the pale figures who dwell in limbo come into view, solemn and still. Then the tableau takes on shape, a new clarity illuminates these bizarre apparitions and sets them in motion -- the spirit world opens for us.       Swedenborg called these visions his Memorabilia; they came to him more often in reverie than in sleep; Apuleius' Golden Ass and Dante's Divine Comedy are the poetic models of such studies of t...

From Nerval's translation of  Faust: Two souls, alas, dwell within my breast, each wishing to be free from the other. The one, pining for love, grasps at the world with its bodily organs. A supernatural motion sweeps the other upward, far from the gloom below, towards the lofty realms of our ancestors.  

     The only criticism one might level at Monsieur Bouton is that he has made his human figures too large, especially in the final tableau. Man amounts to so little on earth that it is impossible to paint a horizon of any expanse whatsoever without having to turn him into a microscopic entity. 'How fortunate you are to be a poet,' said the painter David to Baour-Lormian one day. 'If you want to depict a love scene in the Alps, you come up with twenty pages of lovers, twenty pages of mountains and the whole thing fits together quite nicely. If I, by contrast, want to do a painting on the same theme, either my lovers will be enormous and my Alps minuscule, or my Alps will be gigantic and my lovers no taller than this' -- and he pointed to his little finger.

The preceding doppelganger lit was ok (I remembered them once I got in), but his Angelique is the first piece I've really "come back to" (and it's a real hoot besides). A taste:      From the age of thirteen onwards, Angelique de Longueval, whose temperament was at once dreamy and despondent, claimed -- in her own words -- that she had no interest in fine jewellery or beautiful carpets or elegant clothing and thought only of death to cure her spirits.   A gentleman in the service of her father fell in love with her. He could not take his eyes off her, he attended to her slightest need, and even though Angelique had not the faintest idea what Love might be, she was pleasantly surprised to find herself the object of such assiduous attention.      When this gentleman finally declared his love to her, his words so impressed themselves on her memory that six years later, after having gone through the trials and tribulations of another love a...

Foucault, echoing Beckett: What does it matter who is speaking. This came to mind in re-reading Eliot's first few lines (1-18) of "The Waste Land." And the pronouns "searching for antecedents" in the first few lines are continued and compounded throughout the consciously fragmented text, especially in the last strophe where a string of disembodied voices (from Weston's Fisher King to the Upanishads: Shantih   shantih   shantih) brings the poem to a close. * This morning I will only highlight one of those disembodied voices: Line 430 is a single line from Gerard de Nerval's sonnet El Desdichado ("The Disinherited"): Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie . Here is the entire sonnet: El Desdichado I am the man of gloom -- the widower -- the unconsoled, the prince of Aquitaine, his tower in ruins: My sole star is dead -- and my constellated lute bears the Black Sun of Melancholia . In the night of the tomb, you who consoled ...