Jiří Šalamoun's Tristram Shandy (2)

Here a Devil of a rap at the door snapp’d my father’s definition (like his tobacco-pipe) in two,---and, at the same time, crushed the head of as notable and curious a dissertation as ever was engendered in the womb of speculation.

Vol. II, Chap. VIII

My uncle Toby had scarce a heart to retaliate upon a fly. 

—Go,---says he, one day at dinner, to an over-grown one which had buzz’d about his nose, and tormented him cruelly all dinner-time,—and which, after infinite attempts, he had caught at last, as it flew by him,---I'll not hurt thee, says my uncle Toby, rising from his chair, and going a-cross the room, with the fly in his hand,---I’ll not hurt a hair of thy head:---Go, says he, lifting up the sash, and opening his hand as he spoke, to let it escape,—go poor Devil, get thee gone, why should I hurt thee?----This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

Vol. II, Chap. XII 

“May he be damn’d in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach. May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin,” (God in heaven forbid, quoth my uncle Toby)—“in his thighs, in his genitals,” (my father shook his head) “and in his hips, and in his knees, and feet, and toe-nails.”

Vol. III, Chap. XI

He consider’d rather Ernulphus’s anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder pontificate, Ernulphus, by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;——fir the same reason that Justinian in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman or civil laws all together into one code or digest,—lest through the rust of time,—and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition, they should be lost to the world for ever.

Vol. III, Chap. XII

“Good God!” cried my uncle Toby, “are children brought into the world with a squirt?”

Vol. III, Chap. XV

“Nihil me poenitet hujus nasi,” quoth Pamphagus;——“My nose has been the making of me.”—“Nec est cur poeniteat,” replies Cocles; that is, “How the duce should such a nose fail?”

Vol.III, Chap. XXXVII

With all this learning upon Noses running perpetually in my father's fancy—with so many family prejudices—and ten decads of such tales running on for ever along with them—how was it possible with such exquisite—was it a true nose?—

Vol. IV, Chap. I

My father instantly exchanged the attitude he was in, for that in which Socrates is so finely painted by Raffael in his school of Athens; which your connoisseurship knows is so exquisitely imagined, that even the particular manner of the reasoning of Socrates is expressed by it—for he holds the fore-finger of his left-hand between the fore-finger and thumb of his right, and seems as if he was saying to the libertine he is reclaiming—“You grant me this—and this: and this, and this, I don’t ask of you—they follow of themselves in course.”

 Vol. IV, Chap. VII

Though man is of all others the most curious vehicle, said my father, yet at the same time ’tis of so slight frame and so totteringly put together, that the sudden jerks and hard jostlings it unavoidably meets with in this rugged journey, would overset and tear it to pieces a dozen times a day—was it not, brother Toby, that there is a secret spring within us—Which spring, said my uncle Toby, I take to be Religion.

Vol. IV, Chap. VIII

There is something, Sir, in fish-ponds—but what it is, I leave to system builders and fish pond diggers betwixt ’em to find out—but there is something, under the first disorderly transport of the humours, so unaccountably becalming in an orderly and a sober walk towards one of them, that I have often wondered that neither Pythagoras, nor Plato, nor Solon, nor Licurgus, nor Mahomet, nor any of your noted lawgivers, ever gave order about them.

Vol. IV, Chap. XVII

Jiří Šalamoun's Tristram Shandy (1)

Laurence Sterne, Život a názory blahorodého pana Tristrama Shandyho [The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman], translated by Aloys Skoumal (1904-1988), illustrated by Jiří Šalamoun (1935-), Odeon, Prague, 1985, 552pp.

Nor does it much disturb my rest when I see such great Lords and tall Personages as hereafter follow;---such, for instance, as my Lord A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, and so on, all of a row, mounted upon their several horses;--some with large stirrups, getting on in a more grave and sober pace;----others on the contrary, tuck'd up to their very chins, with whips across their mouths, scouring and scampering it away like so many little party-colour'd devils astride a mortgage,——and as if some of them were resolved to break their necks.—So much the better—say I to myself;—for in case the worst should happen, the world will make a shift to do excellently well without them;—and for the rest,----why,----God speed them,----e'en let them ride on without any opposition from me; for were their lordships unhorsed this very night,——'tis ten to one but that many of them would be worse mounted by one half before to-morrow morning. 

Vol. I, Chap. VIII

Yorick's last breath was hanging upon his trembling lips ready to depart [...] Eugenius could perceive a stream of lambent fire lighted up for a moment in his eyes;----faint picture of those flashes of his spirit, which (as Shakespear said of his ancestor) were wont to set the table in a roar! Eugenius was convinced from this, that the heart of his friend was broke; he squeez'd his hand,——and then walk'd softly out of the room, weeping as he walk'd. Yorick followed Eugenius with his eyes to the door,----he then closed them,—and never opened them more. 

Vol. I, Chap. XII

Mr. Tristram Shandy's compliments to Messrs. Le Moyne, De Romigny, and De Marcilly, hopes they all rested well the night after so tiresome a consultation.—He begs to know, whether, after the ceremony of marriage, and before that of consummation, the baptizing all the HOMUNCULI at once, slap-dash, by injection, would not be a shorter and safer cut still; on condition, as above, That if the HOMUNCULI do well and come safe into the world after this, That each and every of them shall be baptized again (sous condition.)——And provided, in the second place, That the thing can be done, which Mr. Shandy apprehends it may, par le moyen d'une petite canulle, and, sans faire aucun tort a le pere. 

Vol. I, Chap. XX.

 

 

The strange mine workings of the soul

. . . der Seelen wunderliches Bergwerk . . . Felsen waren da und wesenlose Wälder. Brücken über Leeres . . . 

. . . the strange mine workings of souls . . . Cliffs were there and spectral forests. Bridges over vacancies . . .

  

'"Orpheus. Euridice. Hermes" (...) has the quality of an uneasy dream, in which you gain something extremely valuable, only to lose it the very next moment. Within the limitation of one's sleeping time, and perhaps precisely because of that, such dreams are excruciatingly convincing in their details; a poem is also limited by definition. Both imply compression, except that a poem, being a conscious act, is not a paraphrase or a metaphor for reality but a reality itself. (...) a poem generates rather than reflects. So if a poem addresses a mythological subject, this amounts to a reality scrutinising its own history.'

Joseph Brodsky, 'Ninety Years Later' (Torö, Sweden, 1994), On Grief and Reason: Essays (1995)

The Land of Papagosse

Ils sont prins s'ils ne s'envolent,(*) ces pourceaux qui vestus à la Turque,(†) le Turban sur la teste, le halebarde sur l'espaule, vont s'embarquer dans un panier percé, pour faire une grande guerre navalle(‡) sur l'aisle d'un moulin à vent, aux pays de Papagosse,(§) où les chiens chient la poix, les chats gosillent(‖) le diamerdis,¶ les femmes enceintes pissent un pucelage gros comme le bras, & les grenoüilles crachent les oysons touts cuits & farcis.

Bruscambille, "En Faveur du Galimathias", Les Plaisants paradoxes de Bruscambille, & autres discours Comiques, 1617

They're snared if they don't fly away, these swine dressed up Turkish-style, with turbans on their bonces, halberds over their shoulders, who are off to board a holey basket so that they can wage a big naval war, on the windmill isle in the lands of Papagosse, where the dogs shit pitch, the cats disgorge pulvilio of turds, the pregnant women piss virginity as thick as your arm, and the frogs spit out goslings ready stuffed and roasted.

* Ils sont prins s'ils ne s'envolent - Antoine Oudin, who in his Curiositez françoises, pour supplement aux Dictionnaires, ou Recueil de plusieurs belles proprietez, avec une infinité de Proverbes & Quolibets, pour l'explication de toutes sortes de Livres (1640) draws heavily on the works of Bruscambille, defines this expression as "une façon de parler, pour desapprouver ce qu'un autre dit."

† pourceaux - possibly an allusion to the Pugna Porcorum per Publium Porcium Poëtam (1530), a comic epyllion whose every word begins with the letter p, which for more than two centuries was widely reprinted in Latin collections of facetiae.

‡ grande guerre navale - possibly an allusion to the Battle of Lepanto (1571), thitherto the largest naval battle since Antiquity, in which the Holy League defeated the Ottoman fleet.

§ Papagosse - imaginary region whose origin lies in mediaeval Provençal folklore, also called Pampérigouste, by which name it can be found in Alphonse Daudet's Lettres de mon Moulin (1869), and Papeligosse, which Randle Cotgrave, in his A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (1611) defines as the "countrey of the Butterflyes".

‖ gosillent - the verb gosiller derives from gosillier, gosier 'gullet, gorge', and means 'to vomit', figuratively 'to talk, speak' (see: Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française). Bruscambille's series of images encompasses all the possible bodily evacuations: defecation, vomition/regurgitation, urination, sputation.

¶ Diamerdis - Cotgrave defines this as a "confection of turds, pilgrims salve". Desiccated and blanched faeces (album graecum)  were widely used as medicinal preparations up until the eighteenth century. See, for example, Christian Franz Paullini, Heilsame Dreck-Apotheke: Wie nemlich mit Koth und Urin Fast alle ja auch die schwerste gifftige Kranckheiten und bezauberte Schaden vom Haupt biß zun Füssen inn- und äusserlich glücklich curirt worden (1696), a textbook on the pharmaceutics and curative properties of human and animal faeces and urine. In Rabelais, Pantagruel, Chapter 30, Panurge revives the decapitated Epistemon using diamerdis.

 

Sterility

Les grands désastres ne rendent rien sur le plan littéraire ni religieux. Seuls les demi-malheurs sont féconds, parce qu'ils peuvent être, parce qu'ils sont un point de départ, alors qu'un enfer trop parfait est presque aussi stérile que le paradis.

Cioran, De l'inconvénient d'être né, Éditions Gallimard, 1973

The great disasters yield nothing on the literary or religious level. The semi-adversities alone are fruitful, because they are able to be, because they are a point of departure, whereas too perfect a hell is almost as sterile as heaven.

Seelengrund

 Sunt in anima perceptiones obscurae. Harum complexus fundus animae dicitur.

Baumgarten, Metaphysica §511

There are in the soul obscure perceptions. The combined whole of these perceptions is called the lowermost part of the soul. 

 Cf. The Unconscious Life of the Mind 

La rêve éveillé

Contingencies

Daniil Kharms, Sluchai, edited by Vladimir Glotser, illustrated by Leonid Tishkov, 

Assotsiatsiya "Mir Kul'tury" Fortuna-Limited, Moscow, 1993, 32 pp. 

Urmuz

 

 

Urmuz, Pagini bizare, illustrated by Ion Mincu, Editura Minerva, Bucharest, 1983

 

Neurospasts

(...) But the shows went on.

At length a voice out of the Void explained things. ‘You see,’ it said, ‘that—over there—you were not remarkable for a sense of humour, but you were distinguished by a marked business capacity. And business capacity consists, if you come to think of it, in treating your fellow creatures, not as if they were sentient beings, but as if they were puppets. The result is that the living beings who come here do not care to associate with you. We are trying to find what amusement we can for you. This is really the best we have to offer.’

Here Gribble lost his temper. ‘How long, confound it, am I to go on looking at the infernal things?’ he said, getting purple.

‘You might be more polite. I said we were doing our best.’

‘How long—that’s what I want to know—am I to go on looking at the conf—the toys? It seems an age already since—’

‘It is an age. It’s exactly a hundred years.’

From purple Gribble turned ghastly pale. His teeth chattered. ‘A hun—a hundred years! Good God! . . . And to—how long must I go on still?’

‘Ah! That I can’t say. Possibly for eternity. If so it can’t be helped.’

Charles Francis Keary,  ‘The Puppet Show’, ’Twixt Dog and Wolf (1901)

 

They that are acted onely by an outward Law are but like Neurospasts,* or those little Puppets that skip nimbly up and down, and seem to be full of quick and sprightly motion; whereas they are all the while moved artificially by certain Wires and Strings from without, and not by any Principle of Motion from themselves within; or else like Clocks and Watches, that go pretty regularly for a while, but are moved by Weights and Plummets, or some other artificial Springs, that must be ever now and then wound up, or else they cease. But they that are acted by (...) the Law of the Spirit, they have an inward principle of life in them, that from the Centre of it self puts forth it self freely (...) a kind of Musicall Soul, informing the dead Organ of our Hearts, that makes them of their own accord delight to act harmoniously to the Rule of God's word.

Ralph Cudworth, A Discourse Concerning the True Notion of the Lord’s Supper (1670) 

 

* Greek νευρόσπαστον, a puppet moved by strings; νεῦρον sinew, string + σπᾶν to draw, pull. Cf. Henry More, Psychathanasia, Book 1, Canto 2, Stanza 33: That outward form is but a neurospast; / The soul it is that on her subtile ray, / That she shoots out, the limbs of moving beast / Doth stretch straight forth, so straightly as she may. / Bones joynts, and sinews shap’d of stubborn clay / Cannot so eas’ly lie in one straight line / With her projected might, much lesse obey / Direct retractions of these beames fine: / Of force, so straight retreat they ever must decline. 

 

Worlds and World itself

To live in its own world is a fundamental phenomenon of life . . . This primal, integrative process of life as an existence in and along with its own world is exemplified in human life too, but human beings take the process even further through conscious discrimination and an active influence on their own world and then through their generalised knowledge of it. By such means life transcends itself and moves on into other possible worlds and beyond the concept of World itself. 

Karl Jaspers, General Psychopathology, trans. J. Hoenig and Marian W. Hamilton, Vol. 1, Introduction § Introduction, § 2. Some basic concepts, (d) Inner and outer world

vera sunt illa

Of any private person that ever appeared upon design after his death, there is none did upon a more noble one then that eximious* Platonist Marsilius Ficinus; who having, as Baronius† relates, made a solemn vow with his fellow-Platonist Michael Mercatus (after they had been pretty warmly disputing of the Immortality of the Soul, out of the Principles of their Master Plato) that whether of them two died first should appear to his friend, and give him certain information of that Truth; (it being Ficinus his fate to die first, and indeed not long after this mutual resolution) he was mindful of his promise when he had left the Body. For Michael Mercatus being very intent at his Studies betimes on a morning, heard an horse riding by with all speed, and observed that he stopped at his window; and therewith heard the voice of his friend Ficinus crying out aloud, O Michael, Michael vera, vera sunt illa.‡ Whereupon he suddenly opened the window, and espying Marsilius on a white Steed, called after him; but he vanisht in his sight. He sent therefore presently to Florence to know how Marsilius did; and understood that he died about that hour he called at his window, to assure him of his own and other mens Immortalities.

Henry More, The Immortality of the Soul, So farre forth as it is demonstrable from the Knowledge of Nature and the Light of Reason. 

London, Printed by J. Flesher, for William Morden, Bookseller in Cambridge. 1659

 

* eximious - excellent, distinguished, eminent; notable, singular (Latin eximius)

† Baronius - Caesar Baronius (1538-1607), Italian cardinal, author of Annales Ecclesiastici (12 vols., 1588-1607)

‡ vera sunt illa - those things are true

Dialogues of the dead

Passons outre, je sens desia que ce livre nous eschappe, & me semble que je voy desia un frippon de proposant*, qui s’est joinct avec un aspirant à la prestrise mediante coquedindo†, & ils disent que je suis Nigromanchian‡, que je fais parler des morts.

[Béroalde de Verville], Le Moyen de parvenir. Oevure contenant la raison de tout ce qui a esté, est, & sera. Avec demonstrations certaines & necessaires, selon la rencontre des effets de VERTU. Et adviendra que ceux qui auront nez à porter Lunettes s’en serviront, ainsi qu’il est escrit au dictionnaire à dormir en toutes langues, S. Recensuit Sapiens ab A, ad Z. Imprimé cette année [1616] 

* proposant — theology student preparing to become a Protestant minister or pastor.

† mediante coquedindo — by the intercession of a coq d’Inde (turkey cock), i.e., Jesuit. The dinde (Meleagris) was imported to France by the Jesuits in the sixteenth century.

‡ Nigromanchian — ‘nécromancien’, hapax legomenon; ‘negromancer’ (= ‘necromancer’), but with puns on ‘chien’, where ‘chiens’ satirically refers to the theologians engaged in a dialogue of the dead throughout the book, and possibly on ‘manche’.

Come away, I now perceive that this book is slipping out of our hands; I see a rascally Protestant with one that hopes to be a priest, mediante coquedindo; look, they put their heads together and declare that I am guilty of necromancy because I make the dead to speak. 

Fantastic Tales or the Way to Attain--A Book Full of Pantagruelism Now for the First Time Done into English, trans. Arthur Machen. Privately Printed, Carbonnek, 1923

The unconscious life of the mind

Hos flere og flere Folk, der lever et anstrængt Tankeliv, og dertil er ømtaalige af Gemyt, opstaar der ofte sjælelige Virksomheder af det underligste Slags. Det kan være aldeles uforklarlige Sandsetilstande: en stum, aarsagsløs Henrykkelse; et Pust af psykisk Smærte; en Fornemmelse af at blive talt til fra det fjærne, fra Luften, fra Havet; en grusom, fin Lydhørhed, der bringer én til at lide endog af Suset fra anede Atomer; en pludselig, unaturlig Stirren ind i lukkede Riger, der slaaes op; Anelsen af en forestaaende Fare midt i en sorgløs Stund (...) De er ofte for flygtige til at gribes og holdes fast, de varer et Sekund, et Minut, de kommer og gaar som farende Blinklys; men de har trykket et Mærke, afsat en Fornemmelse, før de forsvandt. (...) de hemmelige Bevægelser, som bedrives upaaagtet paa de afsides Steder i Sjælen, den Fornemmelsernes uberegnelige Uorden, det delikate Fantasiliv lioldt under Luppen, disse Tankens og Følelsens Vandringer i det blaa, skridtløse, sporløse Rejser med Hjærnen og Hjærtet, sælsomme Nervevirksomheder, Blodets Hvisken, Benpibernes Bøn, hele det ubevidste Sjæleliv. 

Knut Hamsun, 'Fra det ubevidste Sjæleliv' ('From the unconscious life of the mind'),  

Samtiden. Populært tidsskrift for litteratur og samfundsspörgsmaal, John Griegs forlag, Bergen, 1890

Now that more and more people live a strained mental life, and are therefore of fragile disposition, there often occurs psychical activity of the strangest kind. This can be an utterly inexplicable condition of the senses: a mute, causeless rapture; a waft of mental pain; a sense of being spoken to from a distance, from the air, from the sea; an excruciatingly fine sensitivity, which drives you to the point of suffering even from the whisper of dimly perceived atoms; sudden, unnatural glimpses into closed realms that open up; the hint of imminent danger in the midst of a carefree moment (...) They are often too fleeting to be grasped and held fast, they last a second, a minute, they come and go like racing, blinking lights; but they have imprinted their mark, laid down some kind of sensation before they vanish. (...) secret stirrings, which go unnoticed in the remote places of the mind, the incalculable turmoil of impressions, the delicate life of the imagination viewed through a magnifying glass, these random wanderings of the thoughts and feelings, untrodden, trackless journeys of brain and heart, strange workings of the nerves, the whisper of  blood, the beseeching of bone, all the unconscious life of the mind.

See also Le rêve éveillé

Vita tranquilla

 Vita tranquilla delle bestie nelle foreste, paesi deserti e sconosciuti ec. dove il corso della loro vita non si compie meno interamente colle sue vicende, operazioni, morte, successione di generazioni ec. perchè nessun uomo ne sia spettatore o disturbatore nè sanno nulla de’ casi del mondo perchè quello che noi crediamo del mondo è solamente degli uomini.

Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone di pensieri, 55 

Quiet life of animals in forests, uninhabited and unknown lands etc., where the course of their life is no less complete, with their vicissitudes, doings, death, succeeding generations etc., because no man is watching or disturbing them, and they know nothing of the events of the world, because what we believe about the world has solely to do with human beings.

 

George Topîrceanu: three sonnets

George Topîrceanu (1886-1937)

 

from Migdale amare [Bitter Almonds], Bucharest, 1928

Summertime Sonnet

Way down in the matte heavens, where it hunches,
Colossal blast furnace athwart the sky,
A sun diaphanous and still lets fly
With blazing rays in horizontal bunches.

The city, ‘deeply sunken in its dreaming’,
Though everyday appearances be vaunted,
The same as every year is being haunted
By sundry fancied plagues with which it’s teeming.

Through insect-thickened atmosphere there waft
Queer breezes from afar and, borne aloft,
Furtive contagion now its way does worm . . .

I close the shutters, leaving not a chink,
And feel my fearful heart begin to shrink
Till tiny as a typhoid-fever germ.

Rainy-day Sonnets

1.

For a whole week I’ve slept in a damp bed,
What with the rain that’s dripping through the ceiling…
Just one more night of this—I’ve got a feeling
The rafters will come crashing on my head!

The Balkans have been giving the impression
They are about to go insane . . . that’s why,
Since in the East the flames lit up the sky,
The world’s been in a hydro-treatment session.

Or did the Misanthrope who rules up there
Decide we have a second Flood to bear?
I’m not afraid of death, you ought to know,

But when the Kingdom comes, I shall decamp,
I’ll get a visa—off to Mars I’ll go.
Down here I've had enough of mould and damp.

2.

Like Crusoe on his isle, I’m in seclusion.
It’s been a while since anybody knocked
Upon my door, and anyway it’s locked:
Needing folk—I’ll dispense with that illusion.

Happier than the legendary Noah,
To join me on my ark, of all mankind,
I picked one girl, the rest I left behind.
And floating high, the flooded world I show her . . .

In vain you throng in a freeloading horde,
You countless specimens of earthly fauna,
I won’t take any other beasts on board!

One mating pair should be all it will take—
A minstrel with a maiden in his corner—
The antediluvian world to remake.

English translation © Alistair Ian Blyth, 2021

An Idiot

 

Jules Perahim (1914, Bucharest - 2008, Paris) illustrations (selection) to F. M. Dostoievski, Idiotul (E.S.P.L.A. - Cartea Rusă, Bucharest, 1959), translated by Nicolae D. Gane, Preface and endnotes by G. M. Freidlender (translated from the edition of Идиот published by Goslitizdat, Moscow, 1955). 

See Alistair Ian Blyth, Card Catalogue, Dalkey Archive Press, 2019, page 51