Without Lifting A Finger

Carlyle to Emerson: One more juicy bit (for today): What with railways, steamships, printing presses, it has surely become a most monstrous “tissue,” this life of ours; if evil and confusion in the one Hemisphere, then good and order in the other, a man knows not how: and so it rustles forth, immeasurable, from “that roaring Loom of Time,” — miraculous ever as of old!

Carlyle to Emerson: Work and wages: the two prime necessities of man! It is pity they should ever be disjoined; yet of the two, if one must, in this mad Earth, be dispensed with, it is really wise to say at all hazards, Be it the wages then.

I am nauseated by their lying drivel about pure men and pure women and spiritual love and love for ever: blatant lying in the face of the truth. I don’t know much about the ‘saince’ of the subject but I presume there are very few mortals in Europe who are not in danger of waking some morning and finding themselves syphilitic. The Irish consider England a sink: but, if cleanliness be important in this matter, what is Ireland? Perhaps my view of life is too cynical but it seems to me that a lot of this talk about love is nonsense. A woman’s love is always maternal and egoistic. A man, on the contrary, side by side with his extraordinary cerebral sexualism and bodily fervour (from which women are normally free) possesses a fund of genuine affection for the ‘beloved’ or ‘once beloved’ object. I am no friend of tyranny, as you know, but if many husbands are brutal the atmosphere in which they live (vide Counterparts) is brutal and few wives and homes can satisfy the desire for happiness. In...

To Grant Richards (1906): I believe Richards would eventually publish Joyce's Dubliners , but there was a lot of back-and-forth before that happened (e.g., the slang term "bloody" -- mistakenly believed to be an allusion to Christ or the Virgin -- was a big trip at the time): Perhaps this may reconcile you to Dubliners. It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilisation in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.

The young James Joyce has gone from Trieste to Pola. In a letter to his brother Stannie he says that Nora's making his cigarettes and that he's going to buy Henry James' story "The Madonna of the Future" (which I've never read) that very day. Then JJ finishes the letter with the seemingly frustrated:  "I really can’t write. Nora is trying on a pair of drawers at the wardrobe Excuse me." & I check my Kindle trove and sure enough: I have the Madonna. I'll pingpong between the two Jameses.:) Excerpt: We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim idea, and seeing nothing but overwhelming greatness and dimness. The days of illumination are gone! We live in the evening of time! We grope in the gray dusk, carrying each our poor little taper of selfish and painful wisdom, holding it up to the great models and to the dim ide...

To Nora (1904): My mind rejects the whole present social order and Christianity—home, the recognised virtues, classes of life, and religious doctrines. How could I like the idea of home? My home was simply a middle-class affair ruined by spendthrift habits which I have inherited. My mother was slowly killed, I think, by my father’s ill-treatment, by years of trouble, and by my cynical frankness of conduct. When I looked on her face as she lay in her coffin—a face grey and wasted with cancer—I understood that I was looking on the face of a victim and I cursed the system which had made her a victim. We were seventeen in family. My brothers and sisters are nothing to me. One brother alone is capable of understanding me. Six years ago I left the Catholic Church, hating it most fervently. I found it impossible for me to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature. I made secret war upon it when I was a student and declined to accept the positions it offered me. By doing this I made...

To Nora (1904): I have been a half-hour writing this thing. Will you write something to me? I hope you will. How am I to sign myself? I won’t sign anything at all, because I don’t know what to sign myself.

To Lady Gregory (1902): All things are inconstant except the faith of the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light. And though I seem to have been driven out of my country here as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.

    Did you really not like the "Kreutzer Sonata"? I don't say it is a work of genius for all time, of that I am no judge; but to my thinking, among the mass of all that is written now, here and abroad, one scarcely could find anything else as powerful both in the gravity of its conception and the beauty of its execution. To say nothing of its artistic merits, which in places are striking, one must be grateful to the novel, if only because it is keenly stimulating to thought. As one reads it, one can scarcely refrain from crying out: "That's true," or "That's absurd." It is true it has some very annoying defects. Apart from all those you enumerate, it has one for which one cannot readily forgive the author--that is, the audacity with which Tolstoy holds forth about what he doesn't know and is too obstinate to care to understand. Thus his statements about syphilis, foundling hospitals, the aversion of women for the sexual relation, and so on...

Tomorrow I’ll send the father-letter to your apartment, please take good care of it, I still might want to give it to my father someday. If possible don’t let anyone else read it. And as you read it understand all the lawyer’s tricks: it is a lawyer’s letter. And at the same time never forget your great Nevertheless.  * But now I have to go to my sister’s wedding.—By the way, why am I a human being, with all the torments this extremely vague and horribly responsible condition entails? Why am I not, for example, the happy wardrobe in your room, which has you in full view whenever you’re sitting in your chair or at your desk or when you’re lying down or sleeping (all blessings upon your sleep!)? Why am I not that? Because I would break down with grief if I had seen your misery during these last days, or even if—you should leave Vienna. * How happy I am, how happy you make me! A client came—imagine, I have clients too. The man interrupted my writing; I was annoyed, but he h...

There's a chance I'll make it back to the eternal city. If only for a single night and too far from the Stare Mesto (but still within walking distance). Knight-errant thoughts: Mozart, the children's drawings of Terezin, Petrin Hill, The Hunger Wall, Kafka and Milena, getting lost (a good thing) in Prague. * A few clips from the letters: Of course I understand Czech. I’ve meant to ask you several times already why you never write in Czech. Not to imply that your command of German leaves anything to be desired. Most of the time it is amazing and on those occasions when it does falter, the German language becomes pliant just for you, of its own accord, and then it is particularly beautiful, something a German doesn’t even dare hope for; a German wouldn’t dare write so personally. But I wanted to read you in Czech because, after all, you do belong to that language, because only there can Milena be found in her entirety (the translation confirms this), whereas here ther...

Barnes returned me to "A Simple Soul" to see the parrot. That prompted me to return again to the letters. Some three hundred in all, but an easy read. My selection might insinuate that I'm a mild Flaubertophile. I won't pass judgement. * F. to S.: At the present time I am disheartened by the populace which rushes by under my windows in pursuit of the fatted calf. And they say that intelligence is to be found in the street! S. to F.: I forgot to get three leaves from the tulip tree, you must send them to me in a letter, it is for something cabalistic. F. to S.: I a mysterious being, dear master, nonsense! I think that I am sickeningly platitudinous, and I am sometimes exceedingly bored with the bourgeois which I have under my skin. Sainte-Beuve, between ourselves, does not know me at all, no matter what he says. I even swear to you (by the smile of your grandchild) that I know few men less vicious than I am. I have dreamed much and have done very li...

Finished Keats somewhere in the UP and started Hemingway's short stories in Boyne City, not far from Horton Bay. * To  Richard Woodhouse Wentworth Place, Friday Morn [December 18, 1818].      My dear Woodhouse — I am greatly obliged to you. I must needs feel flattered by making an impression on a set of ladies. I should be content to do so by meretricious romance verse, if they alone, and not men, were to judge. I should like very much to know those ladies — though look here, Woodhouse — I have a new leaf to turn over: I must work; I must read; I must write. I am unable to afford time for new acquaintances. I am scarcely able to do my duty to those I have. Leave the matter to chance. But do not forget to give my remembrances to your cousin. Yours most sincerely John Keats. * If what I have said should not be plain enough, as I fear it may not be, I will put you in the place where I began in this series of thoughts — I mean I began by seeing how man...

Of course I'm hoping the read will bear fruit in me. Keats has been complaining (off and on) re a sore throat since his journey to Scotland and Northern Ireland. Seems to be a sign (though, in googling this morning, apparently there is some disagreement re the jots and tittles of Keats' consumption). * An extensive knowledge is needful to thinking people — it takes away the heat and fever; and helps, by widening speculation, to ease the Burden of the Mystery, a thing which I begin to understand a little, and which weighed upon you in the most gloomy and true sentence in your Letter. The difference of high Sensations with and without knowledge appears to me this: in the latter case we are falling continually ten thousand fathoms deep and being blown up again, without wings, and with all horror of a bare-shouldered Creature — in the former case, our shoulders are fledged, and we go through the same air and space without fear. This is running one’s rigs on the score of abstr...

Should've been reading Yeats in Ireland, I suppose. But, sort of aping last year's reading of Coleridge's Letters in Scotland, I went with Keats (not really into his poetry, but his letters are quite poignant -- especially knowing the end of the story -- and at times quite interesting re content and language) because his letters are "new to me" and they were already drawing me in, i.e., I had already started them and liked them (Zagajewski had pointed the way). Though Keats occupied most of my reading time in Ireland (and of course the focus was "Seeing Ireland" not "Reading Keats"), I also continued pecking away at (deliciously pecking away at) Szymborska's poems. * Clips: You perhaps at one time thought there was such a thing as worldly happiness to be arrived at, at certain periods of time marked out, — you have of necessity from your disposition been thus led away — I scarcely remember counting upon any Happiness — I look not for...

The whole letter is fascinating but I ran out of steam (pecking things out on a tablet in MI) -- so this is the best I could do. * To James Gillman October 10, 1825 My dear Friend, -- It is a flat'ning thought that the more we have seen, the less we have to say. In youth and early manhood the mind and nature are, as it were, two rival artists both potent magicians, and engaged, like the King's daughter and the rebel genie in the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, in sharp conflict of conjuration, each having for its object to turn the other into canvas to paint on, clay to mould, or cabinet to contain. For a while the mind seems to have the better in the contest, and makes of Nature what it likes, takes her lichens and weatherstains for types and printers' ink, and prints maps and facsimiles of Arabic and Sanscrit MSS. on her rocks; composes country dances on her moonshiny ripples, fandangos on her waves, and waltzes on her eddy-pools, transforms her summer gales ...

Still enjoying Coleridge's letters. He's now in the Lake District, at Keswick (I've always wanted to return to the L.D., so this might be a small beginning to another trip). Will peck out a meaty (or drug induced) excerpt of a letter from Coleridge to Thomas Poole (a lifelong friend), and then get to my more mundane work: collecting data to answer questions re what I pretty much already know better than the numbers can communicate. :) * To Thomas Poole Monday, March 16, 1801 My dear Friend, -- The interval since my last letter has been filled up by me in the most intense study. If I do not greatly delude myself, I have not only completely extricated the notions of time and space , but have overthrown the doctrine of association, as taught by Hartley, and with it all the irreligious metaphysics of modern infidels -- especially the doctrine of necessity. This I have done ; but I trust that I am about to do more -- namely, that I shall be able to evolve all th...

It'll take some time, but I think it worthwhile: I'll peck out the entire thing. *  Autumn, 1794 Last night, dear Southey, I received a special invitation from Dr. Edwards (the great Grecian of Cambridge and heterodox divine) to drink tea and spend the evening. I there met a councillor whose name is Lushington, a democrat, and a man of the most powerful and Briarean intellect. I was challenged on the subject of pantisocracy, which is, indeed, the universal topic at the University. A discussion began and continued for six hours. In conclusion, Lushington and Edwards declared the system impregnable, supposing the assigned quantum of virtue and genius in the first individuals. I came home at one o'clock this morning in the honest consciousness of having exhibited closer argument in more elegant and appropriate language than I had ever conceived myself capable of. Then my heart smote me, for I saw your letter on the propriety of taking servants with us. I had answered ...

... I HATED THE Salinger story. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it? That horrible self-consciousness, every sentence comments on itself and comments on itself commenting on itself, and I think it was actually supposed to be funny . And if the poems were so good, why not just give us one or two and shut up, for God's sake? That Seymour figure doesn't impress me at all as anything extra -- or is that the point and I've been missing it? GOD is in any slightly superior, sensitive, intelligent human being or something? or WHAT? and WHY? And is it true that The New Yorker can't change a word he writes? It seems to be the exact opposite of those fine old-fashioned standards of writing Andy White admires so, and yet it isn't "experimental" or original -- it's just tedious. Now if I am running counter to all the opinions at pres...

Of course my attention is very scattered these days. I do like her letters however, probably even more than most of her poetry. I will keep reading at least until Frisch's Montauk comes (up till now, a hard to get Frisch -- I've read it only once -- but the Kindle version is due out at the end of March). Elizabeth is in Brazil. She's in her Lota phase. * Excerpt: To Kit and Ilse Barker                October 12, 1952      ... One of the charms of this place is that it almost never feels like Sunday -- maybe because it's a sort of lukewarm Catholic country -- but today it does, and I'm all alone for the time being in the large half-finished chilly house -- with an oil lamp lit at 3 p.m. to keep me warm. No it isn't hot now, but it is starting to get warm again. It was scorching in Rio when I was there last week, but here it's always much cooler. I'll quote from my geography book: "Du...