15 March 2024
Télévision au XVIIe siècle : un monde rempli d'horreurs
10 March 2024
On Obscurity
07 March 2024
Une certaine espèce de petits vers
Although you have visited our Port (Amsterdam) I know not whether you have noted the ill condition, our ships are in, that return from the Indies. There is in those Seas a kind of small worms, that fasten themselves to the Timber of the ships, and so pierce them, that they take water every where; or if they do not altogether pierce them thorow, they so weaken the wood, that it is almost impossible to repair them.
26 February 2024
Parasitic worlds within worlds (2)
Parasitic worlds within worlds (1)
Sollte nicht eine Naturmythologie möglich sein? — Mythologie hier in meinem Sinn, als freie poetische Erfindung, die die Wirklichkeit sehr mannigfach symbolisiert.
Genialische, edle, divinatorische, wundertätige, kluge, dumme usw. Pflanzen, Tiere, Steine, Elemente usw. — Unendliche Invididualität dieser Wesen, — ihr musikalischer und Individualsinn — ihr Charakter — ihre Neigungen usw. Es sind vergangene geschichtliche Wesen.
Wir leben eigentlich in einem Tiere als parasitische Tiere. Die Konstitution dieses Tiers bestimmt die unsrige, et vice versa. Die Bedingungsverhältniße der atmosphärischen Bestandteile sind vielleicht sehr mit den Bedingungverhältnißen derselben Bestandteile im organischen Körper übereinstimmend.
— Novalis
Why should a nature mythology not be possible? — I here take mythology to mean free poetic invention, which symbolises reality in a highly multifarious way.
Ingenious, noble, divinatory, miraculous, stupid etc. Plants, animals, stones, elements etc. — endless individuality of such beings — their musical and individual meaning — their character — their tendencies etc. They are past historical beings.
In actual fact we live as parasitic animals within another animal. This animal's constitution determines ours, and vice versa. The interdependent relations between the constitutive parts of the atmosphere are perhaps highly congruent with the interdependent relations of the same constitutive parts in the organic body.
04 February 2024
The allotted world
28 January 2024
Obscure waters
31 October 2023
The Fate of Yaakov Maggid
25 September 2023
27 July 2023
A pluralitie of worlds
23 July 2023
Metaphysical detritus
(*) ‘And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations.’
(†) Sperma nonnulli eorum emittunt, et vermes quosdam spermate procreant (‡) vasave spermatica et vitalia
(§) Disquisitio curiosa an mors naturalis plerumque sit substantia verminosa? Revisa, aucta et emendata, multisque raris, selectis et curiosis DEI, Naturæ Artisque magnalibus, mys- teriis, et memorabilibus illustrata et confirmata, Frankfurt and Leipzig, Apud Johann Christoph Stösseln, 1703.
On 1 October 1803, at Greta Hall, Keswick, S. T. Coleridge opened his copy of this little-read title, which ‘had remained uncut an exact century, 8 years of the time in my possession,’ and was prompted to remark: ‘It is verily and indeed a Book of Maggots.’
21 July 2023
A labyrinth made of labyrinths
17 July 2023
Hanenpoot
Hanenpoot (1807) is an eight-page picture booklet consisting of pen and ink drawings captioned with rhyming couplets, mostly four to a page, which was made by Willem Bilderdijk for his young son Julius Willem, and whose content is nonsensical and scatological. In Dutch, hanenpoot ('cockspur', Echinochloa crus-galli) can also mean 'illegible handwriting'. Unknown for more than one and a half centuries, Hanenpoot was published in facsimile in 1977 (Willem Bilderdijk, Hanenpoot - Prentenboek voor zijn zoontje Julius Willem, Tjeenk Willink).
05 July 2023
Dystheoric and aporetic speculations
09 May 2023
Into the hollow halls of the Underworld must every poet venture
At the euphony of your songs, the kingdom of the dead itself did tremble. It came about that the beloved did float once more into the bright upper air. / Had you not so doubtingly turned back your gaze, to her would have been granted new life through the power of song. / Into the hollow halls of the Underworld must every poet venture, that like Orpheus he might carry Eurydice up into the light. / There is no doubt that my vineyard hyacinths, which exhale a scent of musk, have roots that plunge into Hades. / This fragrance is like a key to the farthermost spaces, where the spirits of all flowers dream their dreams of love. / Charon's swart boat cannot reach the other shore unless here the bright hours wind a garland of roses.
22 April 2023
The horrors of Sleep
31 March 2023
A paskudnyak
He turned out to be the ultimate swindler, a phoney, a lecher, a conman, a sleazeball, an out-and-out scoundrel: if there’d been a Nobel Prize for all that, he’d definitely have won it.
Haim Goldenstein, Regn-Boygns. Dertzeylungen [Rainbows. Short Stories], Bucharest: Verlag Kriterion, 1981, p. 119.
Er hot
zikh aroysgevizn der letster aferist, a gots-ganev, a khamereyzl,(*) an opnarer, a
paskudnyak, a vos-in-der-kort, volt men far dem ales gegebn dem nobel preyz,
volt er im zikher geven gekrign.
ער האָט זיך אַרויסגעוויזן דער לעצטער אַפֿעריסט, אַ גאטס־גנבֿ, א כאַמעראייזל, אַן אָפּנארער, אַ פּאַסקודניאַק, אַ וואָס־אין־דער־קאָרט, וואָלט מען פֿאַר דעם אַלעס געגעבן דעם נאָבעל פּרייז, וואָלט ער אים זיכער געווען געקריגן
חיים גאָלדענשטיין
רעגן־בויגנס (דערציילונגען)
פארלאג קריטעריאָן, בוקאַרעשט 1981
(*) Khamereyzl כאַמעראייזל [sic = חמור־אייזל] ‘lecher, womaniser, libertine, debauchee, oysgelasener’, lit. ‘donkey-donkey’. A bilingual tautology, the expression compounds the Yiddish words for ‘donkey’, khamer (< Hebrew חֲמוֹר khamor) and eyzl (< German Esel), to create a humorous term of abuse—in its figurative sense of ‘chucklehead’, the word khamer is inherently humorous.
19 January 2023
Wagner (2)
Entrance to the Venusberg |
16 January 2023
Wagner
11 January 2023
Library-cities (2)
24 December 2022
Library-cities
Die Bibliotheken werden endlich Städte werden, sagt Leibniz. [C 212]
20 December 2022
Infinite divisibility
06 December 2022
Realism
Qu’il soit fondé sur un fait ou librement inventé, de toute façon ce n’est pas le sujet qui fait le roman, à plus forte raison ne peut-on lui demander de débrouiller les relations du « vrai » et du « feint », dont la complexité outrepasse de beaucoup l'opposition tranchée admise par les articles des dictionnaires. A strictement parler, en effet, tout est « feint » dans un monde créé de toutes pièces pour être écrit : quelque traitement qu'elle subisse et sous quelque forme qu’elle soit suggérée, la réalité romanesque est fictive, ou plus exactement, c’est toujours une réalité de roman, où des personnages de roman ont une naissance, une mort, des aventures de roman. En ce sens on peut dire qu’il n’y a ni plus ni moins de réalité dans les Voyages de Gulliver que dans Madame Bovary, dans le Château que dans David Copperfield, dans Don Quichotte que dans un roman des Goncourt ou de Zola. Le Prague de Kafka n’est pas plus irréel que le Londres de Dickens ou le Saint-Pétersbourg de Dostoïevski, les trois villes n’ont que la réalité empirique des livres où elles sont créées, celle d’objets dont rien ne tient lieu et qui ne remplacent rien, mais qui viennent un jour s’ajouter réellement aux autres objets réels du monde. Le degré de réalité d’un roman n’est jamais chose mesurable, il ne représente que la part d’illusion dont le romancier se plaît à jouer.
Marthe Robert, Roman des origines et origines du roman, Éditions Bernard Grasset, 1972
12 November 2022
Mundus mortuorum
15 August 2022
The dark star
Marcellus Palingenius Stellatus, Zodiacus vitae (1536), Liber VII
By reason of the fact that this world consists of parts, and that world(*) of wholes, living through themselves, separate from each other, some believe that each star may be said to be a world, and they call the Earth the dark star, over which reigns the least of the gods,(†) for he wields power underneath the clouds, where he alone generates all things, the lord of shadows, governing the living simulacra that are the bodies which exist in sea, on land, and in lower air. To him is given the care and management of these things which, since they do not last, but waste away in a short time, scarcely deserve to be called even shadows. I deem him to be the same Pluto who, so the ancient bards sing, rules the dark kingdom, for underneath the clouds it is night, whereas up above pure light and eternal splendour shine. To him, therefore, as the least of them all, the God of gods, King and Creator, gave the basest realms. The other gods, in order of which was the better, He joined to better stars, dividing the rule of his kingdom among his sons.
* The preceding lines lay out a Platonic hierarchy of Being in descending order, from the higher world of the noumenal to the lower world of the phenomenal, from light to darkness, from indivisible wholes to sundry parts.
† Quoted by Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy (1.1.2.2): 'The air is not so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of invisible devils: this Paracelsus stiffly maintains, and that they have every one their several chaos; others will have infinite worlds, and each world his peculiar spirits, gods, angels, and devils to govern and punish it. Singula nonnulli credunt . . . Cui minimus divum praesit.'
10 August 2022
Words and things
08 June 2022
Tout est crasse
Nicolas Poussin, Le Triomphe de Cthulu (1633)
Mercredi 10 juillet [1957]
Bref nous vivons au milieu de crétins, en plein crétinisme, chez les sourds et chez les aveugles, que la prétention rend impardonnables puisqu’elle les prive des bénéfices de la naïveté, propre aux limites d’un organisme qui ne se transcende que pour prendre les mauvaises routes. Prêtrise, police, tout cela dans un monde où, s’il existait un humour supérieur au lieu de puissances atroces et bestiales, les hommes seraient sans cesse giflés et bottés par des mains et par des pieds énigmatiques. Mais hélas, tout est crasse, l’éternité, l’infini comme le reste, et la puanteur dont Lovecraft accompagne les manifestations de l’inconnu illustre à merveille la terrible parole de Renan : « Il se pourrait que la vérité fût triste. » Devenue pour moi : « La vérité est triste. D’autant plus triste qu’il n’y a même pas de vérité. »
Jean Cocteau, Le Passé défini, vol. 5, 1956-1957, eds. Pierre Caizergues, Francis Ramirez, Christian Rolot, Paris: Gallimard, 2006, p. 621
In short, we live in the midst of idiots, in complete idiocy, among the deaf and the blind, whose pretension makes them unforgivable because it deprives them of the benefits of the naïveté peculiar to the limits of an organism that goes beyond itself only to take the wrong path. Priesthood, police, all this in a world in which, if there existed some higher humour instead of atrocious, bestial powers, people would be constantly slapped and kicked by enigmatic hands and feet. But unfortunately, all is crass, eternity, infinity the same as everything else, and the stench which in Lovecraft* goes along with the manifestations of the unknown perfectly illustrates the grim words of Renan: ‘It may be that the truth is bleak.’ Which for me becomes: ‘The truth is bleak. All the bleaker for there not even being any truth.’
* In 1954, Cocteau had remarked on the stench emanated by Lovecraft’s entities of cosmic evil, when reading Jacques Papy's newly published translations La Couleur tombée du ciel (Paris: Denoël, 1954) and Dans l’abîme du temps (Paris: Denoël, 1954):
[24 octobre 1954] Importance olfactive chez Lovecraft. Son invisible pue. (Ce qui est étrange car il se dénonce par une infecte odeur.)
Importance of the olfactory in Lovecraft. His invisible [world] stinks. (Which is strange since it gives itself away by a vile odour.)
[14 novembre 1954] L’aspect qu’il donne à ses abominable entités et l’odeur infecte qu’elles répandent autor d’elles ne varient guère d’un conte à l’autre.
The aspect that he lends his abominable entities and the vile odour that they give off varies barely at all from one story to another.
In October 1954, on learning that Hemingway has won the Nobel Prize for Literature, Cocteau remarks on the triumph of mediocrity (‘Le médiocre marche tout seul’) and the epoch of journalists who think themselves great modern writers, whereas it took many years for Lovecraft to be translated into French and there are no publishers or translators to be found for Bierce, Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu.
Claude Gellée (Le Lorrain), Paysage avec le dieu Cthulu (1634) |