Epigraphs

These are my contenders for summative quotes from this week’s group of readings to stand as epigraphs for this course.

“We need to invent fire once more, to settle down once again to the job of appeasing the body’s hunger.” Camus, p 140

“If (s)he is hungry for bread and heather, and if it is true that bread is the more necessary, let us learn how to keep the memory of heather alive.” Camus, p 142

“His long stubbornness has more meaning than his revolt against the gods.” Camus p 142

“Death lies not

in not being able to communicate

but in no longer being understood.” Pasolini, p. 333

“Yeah (I have to admit),

I’m in a state of confusion, Miss.” Pasolini, p 349

“The point was to humiliate a humiliated man...illness.) Pasolini, p 351

“Action is a WE not an I.”

“That is a real problem of every philosophy or history: How it is possible that in retrospect it always looks as though it [history] couldn’t have happened otherwise? Arendt p. 56

“ Where Hannah Arendt, for example, is able to fluidly cross between German, French and English she will still miss aspects of the intricacies of other languages, as does English within her interview.”

Arendt refused to be filmed for the interview [at home]?  I know I hate being seen on film, especially seen and heard on film because it causes a jarring encapsulation of a thought precisely to the words spoken NOT necessarily what was meant or what was understood at the time, between those people.  Truth is NOT the understanding of each word in itself or in its sentence but is somewhere in truth in time and may come around again to the truth.  Do writers believe more or less in the infallibility of a word.  There is always a translation between thought and words.  The language you use is indicative of the way and place and time in which you are reared.  Of course I do not understand what you are saying but can get a glimpse of it, a mirror reflection, an echo of the silence that points to a direction of communion if not communication with the other.

Prometheus in the Underworld:

P 139

Choose hell over quest for beauty because get caught up in the delusions of tyrants and madmen. And don’t realize until you are already on the path- wait what have I done? “Who shouted, it was the sun, Slapping Chen, NO HOPE”

“I took my place i the queue shuffling toward the open mouth of hell. Little by little, we entered.  At the first cry of murdered innocence, the door slammed shut behind us.”

P 141

“...blind justice does not exist, that history has no eyes, and that we must therefore reject its justice in order to replace it as much as possible with the justice conceived by the mind. This is how Prometheus returns in our century.”

We are in a new century. I’m afraid that western politicians have forgotten the horrors of war; they seem to be flirting with war for the glory and status like a bully picking a fight that they “know” they can win.  Eventually the bully gets knocked down- either by the pipsqueak who has nothing to lose and plays by different rules or by a bigger bully.  Hermes mocks Prometheus, “I am amazed that, being a god, you did not foresee the torment you are suffering.” “I did see it,” replied the rebel.”

Artists are the rebels.  Artists can accept this challenge from the Prometheus.  

“I promise you, O mortals, both improvement and repair, if you are skillful, virtuous, and strong enough to achieve them with your own hands.”

P 142

“...any mutilation of man can only be temporary, and that one serves nothing if one does not serve the whole man.”

Bernie over Hillary.  Hillary tried to feed the body first, to be a pragmatist,  to be reasonable.  Bernie was virtuous and strong but not skillful enough to take on the machine of shuffling civil servants en queue to Hell.

Mass incarceration, public education, health care.

Arendt, last interview

P 53

“See, this is not a nation-state, America is not a nation-state and Europeans have a hell of a time to understand the simple fact which, after all, they could know theoretically; it is this country is united neither by heritage, nor by memory, nor by soil, nor by language, nor by origin from the from the same... There are no natives here.  The natives were the Indians. Everything else are citizens and these citizens are united only by one thing and that's a lot: that is, you become a citizen in the United States by simple consent to the Constitution.” republic

P 54 Constitutional crisis of a head-on lash between the legislative and the executive offices.

Greatest danger of tyranny is of course the executive. A republic not a democracy- in order to preserve the voice of the minority and the plurality of opinion. TYranny could be the majority- majority rules but there is always opposition.

“I felt the Gods were lacking as long as there was nothing to oppose them.

Lucian, Prometheus in the Caucasus”

Opening quote from Prometheus in the Underworld

P 55

“They took it because they didn’t have any other framework.”

Why we suffer fools.  Because they are foolishly willing to lead even if they know there udea is not going to work.  Willing to fail, but try, Churchhill-  Democracy is a failure but it is the best I can find.  

P 56

We don’t know the future- too many contingencies.

Action is a WE not an I. Tyrants and Zealots act for a foreseeable future.  The future is not known, living to be remembered or to dictate the future is not a worthy goal because you sacrifice the now and the integrity of basing your actions on what IS knows.

“This shows that things were still alrights even if they were wrong because bureaucrats (like McNamara) still wanted to learn from what happened even if it is “not pretty””

P 57

Political will to dominate and to “believe the image” not succeeded (1973) because “Maybe I'm mistaken, but I feel perfectly free in this country”

Rene Char (mis)quote-

“Notre heritage n’est garanti par aucun testament.”

Accurate quote-

“Notre heritage n’est precede par aucun testament.”

“We are entirely free to help ourselves wherever we can from the experiences and the thoughts of our past.”

“ Every human being as a thinking being can reflect as well as I do and can therefore judge for himself”

“ the only thing that can help us I think is really to rephrase left you and to always mean to think critically period and to think critically is always to be hostile. Every thought actually undermines whatever there is of rigid rules General convictions exedra.

“ That is,  there are no dangerous thoughts for the simple reason that thinking itself is such a dangerous Enterprise. I think non-thinking is even more dangerous.

Calvinist, student centered classrooms, teaching for liberation, ability to think at all is a freedom that balances justice.

P 60

“First of all a totalitarian dictatorship is neither a simple dictatorship nor a simple tyranny. I analyzed totalitarian government what is the new form of government that wasn't known before I tried to enumerate its main characteristics. One characteristic is entirely absent from all tyrannies today and that is the role of the innocent the innocent victim. Under Stalin you didn't have to do anything in order to be deported or an order to be killed. You were given a role according to the dynamism of history and you had to play this role no matter what you did. No government before has killed people for saying yes period usually a government kills people or tyron's kill people for saying no. Now I was reminded by friend that's something very similar has been said stop by some Chinese many centuries ago namely that men who have the impertinence to approve are no better and they Disobedience will pose. This of course is the quintessential sign of totalitarianism and that there is a Total Domination of men, by men. “

“The great Political Criminals must be exposed and exposed especially to laughter.”

Arendt quote Brecht

Undermine the “greatness” of evil.  If he is a clown he will remain a clown no matter how many millions of people he kills. It is the ruling class allows a small crook to become a great crook. To undermine this you must keep your integrity by remembering your old way of looking at such things and laugh at the clown instead of fearing him.

Pasolini, tr. Stephan Sartarelli. A Desperate Vitality

P 331

“- I am like a cat burned alive crushed by a tractor trailer’s Wheels home by boys from a fig tree, But with 8 of its nine lives so left like a snake redo used to a bloody pulp a half-eaten eel.”

So many connections

The cruelty of man is without limit but nature, truth, justice are limited.

The pretty fiance that pulled the legs of the mosquito

The cat that ate her young.

Gassed prisoners

Crushed under a machines wheel

Tortured by innocents

There is not innocent bystander

From a fig tree- fig and grapes and heather

Liberty and beauty corrupted by the unlimited indifference of men

To kill

To kill without thinking

To kill as part of a machine is the same- not questioning, not critical not finding your moral compass for yourself

P 335

“How little it takes to shrink his snarl to the sulk of a mama's boy on death row .”

Like Arendt’s quote of Brecht laugh at the fool to undermine his power to perpetrate evil.

“Neo capitalism has won and I'm on the street as a poet, ah [sob] and as a citizen [another sob].”

America is a republic made up of citizens who consent to the constitution.  If Capitalism wins then we are no longer citizens just cogs in the wheel of the tyrannical machine steered by the dictatorship of the majority of the ruling class.

Capitalism is the rallying cry of the right.  Democracy is the cry of the left.  Isolationism and Nationalism is the cry of the alt right.  Freedom and Equality is the cry of the alt left.  There is opposition, but is the opposition creating such a rumble that a citizen cannot think?

Struggles when you know you will loose but you resist anyway, not to get somewhere but because it is the right thing to do according to your truth:

“A fascist victory! Write, write. Let them know (them!) that I know:

conscious as an injured bird that gently dies but never never forgives.”

“He took move it to his side and like a cracked skin up there in the world that precede life laid his hand on his head and altered the curse” whacky voice to text  353

“You shall descend into the world, be innocent and kind, faithful and fair;  you shall have an endless capacity for obedience, and an endless capacity for rebellion you shall be pure. For this I curse you”

“My God, then what have you got to show for yourself?...

“Me? -

Me? A desperate vitality.”

Is this a why bother statement?

Away from nihilism

Desperate vitality I know that it is hopeless (none of us are getting out of here alive!) but live fully nonetheless- is this absurd or spiritual?

BE HERE NOW

DO WHATS RIGHT (NOW)

Silence

Silence

I am going to compare the inhuman in the 4 works assign for this discussion period.

Starting with Camus’ Between yes and no I would like to point out the idea of the inhuman.

The first inhuman On page 30, “If it is true that they only paradises are those we have lost, I know what name to give the tender inhuman something that dwells in me today” suggests an otherworldly state. The second inhuman is an animal like state. This animal otherness is first made visible in the description of the canary yellow Lions on the wall of the deserted cafe,page 31.  The animal like state is brought up again on page 33, “this animal silence makes him want to cry with pain.”  The Arab Cafe owners eyes staring at him from the corner is an image repeated and made inhuman by the description of an apartment filled with dead and dying kittens on page 37, “the demented glow-in-the cats green eyes as it crouched Motionless in the corner.”

The idea of inhuman is used in the Silence of the Sea as well.  The German soldier in describing JS Bach’s music on pgs 81-82.  “Outside man- outside human flesh. That makes us understand, no, not understand but guess... No: have a presentiment... have a presentiment of what nature is... of what - stripped bare -  is the divine and unknowable nature of the human soul. Yes, it's inhuman music.” “...it’s like the presence of God  in me…”   The German soldier also states that Bach’s homeland of Germany has an “inhuman character… a different scale to man…”  On page 75 Ebrennac describes Germany in the other inhuman way while his contrasting description of France is quite human. “My home reminds me of a powerful thickset bull which needs all its strength keep alive. Here everything is intelligence and subtle poetic thought.  Animal like “inhuman stare of a horned owl”  is used to describe the look in the niece’s eyes as she looks at the German Soldier near the end of Silence of the sea.  Her uncle also ascribes a “catlike power of divination” to women in general.

The work of Pizarnik combine both understandings of inhuman: of a different scale than human, otherworldly, godlike, madness and animal like animal as metaphor for human desire, sex, bonds, and intuition.  I am hard pressed to find a concise quote but perhaps,” The real celebrations take place in the body and in dreams.” pg. 79 sums it up a bit.  The body being our animalistic selves and the dream being the other- worldly dimension. The artist is inhuman on both levels?  Pizarnik seems to be writing a lucid dream or nightmare of artistic fever.

Silence by Kawabata gets at the idea of inhuman through Ghosts, isolation, possession.

Akifusa “refuses” to speak and thus the ones surrounding him speak for him.  Tomiko acts as if her father is speaking, does she really understand what he wants? Mr. Mita also starts to speak to and for Akifusa.  He gets to an almost rhapsodic understanding of the meaning of words in his unfolding monologue with the man in the sickbed.  If a t could be the most momentous thin the mute writer could ever write then perhaps silence is the most meaningful.  The ghost story suggests that to speak with a ghost then you are doomed to be possessed.  I believe that Tomiko and her mute father have a ghost possessed relationship.  Mr. Mita is also being pulled in through his conversations with Tomiko. The presence of the ghost riding in a car with three people suggests that there is something unusual afoot.

It is certainly not stated but...Because, they spoke to him and then for him.  How do they know what he wants or is it a group fantasy and pretend game.  Yes we think we know, we posit we stumble and yammer on.  Talking to yourself is like talking to no one?  The daughter, the good daughter, the visitor thinks he will betray the mute writer’s words and history- where did that thought come from.  Was he possessed?  She says yes father I will offer him sake- who spoke?  No one- she IS the father.  He has possessed the daughters frail form- he is now she that tends to his mute writer’s body.  (S)he will write the first I book for them.  She tells the visitor that he should look seek out the ghost- the author says that is a strange thing to say.  When she leaves the room the visitor is the one possessed by the idea of writing for the mute…  If I were making a movie of this story that is definitely the angle I would take.

Mari-

In Vercors Le silence de la Mer Werner von Ebrennac confession is testified by the uncle: "I silently finished my pipe. I coughed a bit and said, "It may be inhuman to refuse him a single word. " (Vercors pg 19) "…an endless monologue; because not once did he attempt to obtain from us an answer, an acquiescence, or even a glance." (Vercors pg 21)

I appreciate your viewpoint.  The Pizarnik touched me deeply but it is difficult to put into words.  Silence contemplation, appreciation are sometimes the most suitable response.

Kathryn-

In Vercors’ Silence of the Sea, there are things thought but unsaid, or said only with knowing glances and other forms of body language. The uncle testifies to his niece’s complicated resolve to maintain silent resistance, in the face of the german occupation of their house in the body of the soldier, Werner von Ebrennac, “as if the officer didn’t exist, as if he had been a ghost” (74) but confesses that at one point he “lost all resistance,” and broke the silence. (90) The soldier tells of his meeting with German officers and confesses disillusionment when the reality of war thwarts his fantasy of a marriage between French and German culture (as perverse as it was) The writing of this novel itself, is in tension with its intent to testify without being detected.

The ghost connection to Kawabata and Silence of the Sea.  If you speak to the ghost you will be possessed.  The niece was possessed with feeling that is why she spoke.  The use of "Adieu" by both was the spoken conviction that this was goodbye forever, and the only words ever spoken on her part.

Ayo-

Not just a blanket for the environment, but this silence lays there and is the actual environment itself.

(this is a beautiful image so is the S curve between one and the (m)other.)

I also see silence materializing “It became thicker and thicker” (pg 43), or “Tacit agreement we had decided” (pg 46) which leads me to understand an unspoken, yet palpable tug of energy between to two parties, in agreement with each other, a confession. (or a conspiracy?)

I found the driving force of silence to be rooted in power and influence. It is simply an agreement to something that holds no space, but can be perceived to move and create just like an object. (the power of art, or a ghost, magician, hypnotist, or witch.)

Tyler- Vercor brings layers to the individual and the basis of looking into the mirror.   “Everything that I have said in these six months, everything that the walls of this room have heard…”He took a deep breath as laboriously as an aesmatic and kept his lungs full for a moment. “You must …” He breathed out again: “You must forget it all.” (P.91) Gazing into the individuality of the character and the agony within his discovery his new reflection shows the prior naivete and returns to Camus’s, “It’s men who complicate things.” (39) All characters have their own simplistic ideas, but continue to complicate the situations individually.

I can't find it now- but there was something about frightening yourself in the mirror. Something like becoming a soldier and then frightening yourself by the change in the mirror?

The idea of confession/ testimony not interchangeable but related.  Are you compelled to do both, is the motivation different.  If it is for consumption by others it is testimony, but when you expect no response as is the case for the soldier and Tomiko, does it move to the realm of confession? I respect the talking around and through the thoughts by Camus and some of the others we have read- the soldier, the visitor.  It is like riding someone’s thoughts.  Words do not say what we mean, they point to the place where our thought have been. “What does it mean to translate yourself into words?”, Pizarnik. History is owned by the ones speaking it.  The now owns everything.  Confession art.  Art that must be spoken, written, performed, created.  Must like a pious Catholic must go to mass and confession.  Maybe it is just a ritual but how would I/we know.   

The you happens eventually- The mother of the author of between yes and no, she thinks about nothing-  seeing your children is like breathing.  Maybe she is not thinking because She is not pondering she is doing the best she can every second.  Children do not realize they are separate from their mothers for a while.  Mothers know they are both separate and one.

Statues- women, broken statues, silent appraised but not addressed.  She sat like a statue and the soldier gazed at her face while he spoke.  He would turn and look at the Uncle but would pause, would close.  The flowing of speak came with the inanimate, cold, not -gaze-returning, silent niece.  

Oh what light, what he says when she looks back at him.  Like a religious revelation.  It is interesting the name given to the English editions during wartime, Put out the light, kill the soul, “there is no Hope” That light that shines from her eyes. That crossing of borders, the intersection of confessor to testifier- the confession of his guilt in the plot of his country, his testifying to the once mute niece and uncle.

“You wear the costume of a young assassin, yet you scare yourself in the mirror”, 73 Pizarnik

“Wolf deposits…”73 Piz

I speak the way I speak inside”, 71 Piz

“After prostrating myself before the pain of others, after silencing myself in honor of everyone else”, 79 Piz

History is the present- silence 170, kawabata

Truth

Truth

What is truth but the point where you and I agree.

You look good in yellow and I look good in green.

Having a thousand points is the same as having not point at all.

He looked forward to a cut and dried case, an easy win.

The expert can examine and turn over a thing until it is beyond understanding, but is attempting to make clear a thing that should be allowed to just behave naturally or savoir-vivre.

Who cried out?

Did I cry out?

Take your truth and shove it.  I am not listening anymore.  I know what I know but shall not be forced to recount the ways in which I know it!  Artists create something beyond words, when it is art it glimpses of something beautiful or clear or truthful or evident.

“No man can say what he is. But sometimes he can say what he is not.”

“You would vomit if I told you.”

“They destroy harmless opinions and replace them with implacable rules.”

Kaji slaps his assistant, he whips the prisoners he refuses the treat made with flour.

“The strategists are the scourge of this world, its evil-smelling breath”

What will you tell the military?

I will not report it.

“They are the whitewashers of putrefaction.”

“...the salvoes of laughter, the singing and stamping.”

“Because I am not dead, he doesn’t exist.”

I bid you farewell. It was I who shouted out.”

Be Patient

Resist

Assist

Can you work with or within the system with integrity even  if you do not agree with the current state?  Kaji went in with ideals and a position in middle management.  What happens when you come in as lower management or a worker.  If you disagreed with the way things are being done usually you are not rewarded with a promotion unless they think that that is the best way to force you out quick.

A change of state requires violence.  It seems that to retain a state it may also require continual violence.  

Kao the rebel.  The anti-hero to Kaji.  He wins the love of his woman but refuses to run away with her or marry her.  Be patient,  Kaji says.  Be Patient, Kao says.  

To Kaji: you are straddling a fundamental contradiction and trying to justify it (2:03)

Bending, creating, twisting the truth, creates a fundamental contradiction. An exceptional climate cannot be prolonged.   As soon as you do bend is the truth also a bent thing.  If I start out with a more elastic, organic moral code away from black and white and cube like does that make me more or less likely to condone murder.  To me it seems less likely. Then am I one of the patient, silent, rationale masses that allow the zealots to get away with the programs that support them? “Compromise with duplicity” is a well worn path and the renewed sense of civic responsibility is short lived.

The Wildermuth with the ax who was willing to go along with the official story, because it seemed so precise.  The Wildermuth who ate cabbage not noticing what happens on the street. The Wildermuth who is obsessed with truth to the point of exhaustion. If a Wildermuth falls a tree in the forest but no one is there to see it, did the tree really fall?  Crazy people don’t wonder if they are crazy.

An enigma of light and truth

Why bother to create

Be patient

I feel a strange updraft

The sun is behind you

The flaxen fires flare

Every artist is pursuing her enduring truth

Turn around and face it

Find the right lover

Who is also a creator

One who can criticize

Yes, all this noise

Objective and absurd

The light seals my mouth

Finding truth thru art. Art when it is art reveals something real if not correct.  Right, wrong, formal, essayistic or even verbal or written speech are not a prerequisite to "come out" with your work.  Some people do need to process by sharing what is reverberating in their head.  Some people need to expose themselves to see themselves.  We do not all need to squeeze the bruise blood. AYO not everyone needs, can handle or deserves your truth and you are the expert on you.

What do men in a cage dream of most?  The pause was long enough to let the view think freedom.  It seems that Freedom is the poet’s answer and Sex is the cynic's answer.  Again, I recall Kaji whipping the prisoners who were gorging themselves on the rice upon arrival to camp.  The men looked at the women as they entered the walls of camp like the looked at the rice, but now they were being "told" implicitly to eat eat.    The quote,"we all suffer the same misfortune" from the film may be the key for me.  The truth- the struggle is all connected.

Slapping Chen- That may be a new phrase for me but, I'm afraid you all may be the only ones who may get the meaning.  When your child does something and you scold him too harshly because it points to a similar fault of yours or to the fault prevalent in the system or the nature of being human.  That would be a moment to remind yourself that you may be slapping Chen.  Not at all helpful to the situation- possibly shutting down trust and setting the haters in motion.

The mashup of the texts mixed with my own words have rubbed some the wrong way.  This is the way I am attempting to find commonality without having to pedantically iterate the profound and perplexing texts to a simple understanding. This weeks point was that the truth is not a simple matter.  Simple understanding, common sense, human decency are minutely and bluntly battered into a corner and asked to confess that they are not true.  

"Take your truth and shove it.  I am not listening anymore.  I know what I know but shall not be forced to recount the ways in which I know it!  Artists create something beyond words, when it is art it glimpses of something beautiful or clear or truthful or evident."  This phrase is unfettered me.  A mangled quote of song lyrics "take this job and shove it, I ain't workin here no more." combined with my only metaphorical shouting- I am not a writer.  I am a visual artist.  I enjoy reading, and discussing but when writing I feel that I am forced to take too substantial a stand while I am still synthesizing the information.  The Char piece, short though-it-is was especially trying for me.  The first time I read it it was as if it was in a different language still.  After revisiting it and becoming accustomed to the cadence I find it a tragically plain spoken writing that illuminates a state of mind and society that still echoes in world, US, Chicago, CPS current events.

Do you like working here?  How long have you been working here?  At least once a week someone asks me about my job in a southside Chicago neighborhood public high school. There is no simple true answer to the real questions they are asking.  Why are they asking me?  Do I seem unhappy or like I am enjoying myself? What do they think I’m going to say?

Trauma is everywhere not just in war zones or post war zones.  They way it is dealt with depends on the day and the person.  If it seems like a trauma it is.  However it is dealt with may be the best way for that person on that day.

What is your art about? Why are you making that? It looks different [than your old stuff].  Just look at it.  I don’t want to answer you right away. I want you to process.

In response to Galina,

I read thru your link.

10. I saw what a forcible argument a simple slap could be for an intellectual. - Slapping Chen

46. That a writer must be a stranger — in the subjects he describes. And if he knows the matter well — he will write in such a way that no one would understand him.

So true.  We may not be able to read, understand someone else's truth.