tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71901842024-03-12T22:29:01.788-04:00The Philosophical Worldview ArtistWeltanschauungskunst für alle WeltanschauerDouglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.comBlogger212125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-51884092904110475502024-02-05T01:05:00.005-05:002024-03-12T22:28:30.307-04:00All's Well That Ends Well<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">In </span><a href="https://www.suhrkamp.de/rights/book/peter-fabjan-a-life-alongside-thomas-bernhard-fr-9783518429471"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">his 2021 memoir of his half-brother</span></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">, Peter Fabjan writes, “The director
Jean-Luc Godard called Thomas Bernhard the greatest writer of our time.” As an
admirer of the corpuses of both Bernhard and Godard, I was delighted by this
sentence on reading it for the first time about a year ago, and as a student of
both corpuses I was (for reasons that I shall presently divulge) not entirely
surprised by it; but as a comparative ponderer of those corpuses, I could not
but be more than slightly bemused by it; first because to the best of my
recollection, no passage by Bernhard had ever struck me as even vaguely
Godardian and no scene in a Godard film had ever struck me as even vaguely Bernhardian,
and second, because another film director, one of Godard’s most illustrious
contemporaries, had long since been semi-officially anointed as Bernhard’s
cinematic analogue: in 1975, Werner Herzog had declared Bernhard his “spiritual
brother,” and I was fairly certain that somewhere (although I have not yet
managed to rediscover where) Bernhard had subsequently declared himself
gratified by this act of self-affiliation. As it happens, in the intervening year
I have come to descry certain subtle but significant affinities between
Bernhard and Godard—to notice, for example, that throughout his films Godard is
as emphatically non-naturalistic in his treatment of dialogue as Bernhard is throughout
his plays; and that in certain Bernhard works such as “The Weatherproof Cape”
and <i>The Celebrities</i> the displacement
of the human subject by the inanimate commodity as the basic social unit is as obliquely
pivotal as in the 1960s Godard films like <i>Made
in USA</i> and <i>A Married Woman</i> that
most explicitly address this theme. For
all that, the affinities between Bernhard and Herzog have never required such
long incubation to come to light to anyone, and the justness of Herzog’s
embracement of Bernhard is immediately evident from the most cursory reflection
on his filmography (or at least the portion thereof antedating Bernhard’s 1989
death): its almost exclusively rural or Central-European settings, its preoccupation
with homicidal and suicidal loners like Büchner’s <i>Woyzeck</i> and his
near-namesake, the eponym of <i>Stroszek</i>,
and with tyrannical monomaniacs like Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo; its incessant
evocation of the topoi of German Romanticism; and last but not least, its
assignment of one of its most prominent roles, that of Harker in <i>Nosferatu</i>, to Bruno Ganz, one of
Bernhard’s favorite actors and the star of the premiere of his second play, <i>The Ignoramus and the Madman</i>, are all
flagrantly Bernhardian. But in the course of my compilation of the catalogue in
the immediately preceding sentence, it has occurred to me that Herzog’s
affinities with Godard are themselves quite numerous and none too subtle, that
at the very least Herzog was the most Godard-like of the directors of the New
German Cinema in his solitary, maverick approach to filmmaking; that Godard was
after all Swiss and not French and hence something of a Central European
himself; that for all Godard’s primal association with Paris thanks to <i>Breathless</i>, many of his later films have
a Swiss and hence something of a Central-European setting; and that certain of
Godard’s central personages (notably those played by Jean-Paul Belmondo) are as
death wish-haunted as Herzog’s; and this occurrence has in turn impelled me to
find Godard’s filmography much more Bernhardian than I found it only yesterday.
In any case, whether intentionally or not, Herzog himself has very recently encouraged
the coalescence or confirmation of a Herzog-Bernhard-Godard constellation in
the publication of his autobiography <i>Jeder
für sich und Gott gegen alle,</i> which I first learned of from </span><a href="https://this-space.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-enigma-for-criticism.html"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Stephen Mitchelmore’s excellent essay on
it</span></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">, and whose English
translation, <i>Every Man for Himself and
God Against All</i> (Englished, incidentally, by Michael Hofmann, the
translator of Bernhard’s first novel, <i>Frost</i>),
appeared only three months ago as of this writing (January 19, 2024). The title
recycles in its entirety that of Herzog’s 1974 film about the early
nineteenth-century real-life proto-Tarzan, Kaspar Hauser, but that title in
turn is a modification of a late-medieval proverb, “Every man for himself and
God for us all,” which <i>The Dictionary of
Clichés</i> tells me existed in mutually near-verbatim versions in most of the
major European languages including English, German, and French. In this
original wording, the proverb effectively means, “Mind your own affairs, and
God will take care of the human race as a whole.” It is not so much a
prescription of selfishness as a reminder not to waste one’s time thinking
about the big picture qua something beyond one’s control. Herzog’s variant
(which Wikipedia tells me Herzog claims to have “been inspired [whatever that
means] by a sentence” in a novel by a Brazilian writer called Mário de Andrade
of whose writings I know nothing) puts a Satanic, or at the very least gnostic,
spin, on the proverb: it effectively means, “Human beings are completely
selfish, but their selfishness is ultimately perverse and futile because God
has it in for them from the beginning”—perhaps with the implication that God
has deliberately engineered humanity’s selfish streak for the sake of savoring
its very perverseness and futility. In point of fact Herzog’s (or de Andrade’s)
is not the first such spin on the proverb, because (per <i>The Dictionary of Clichés</i>) the common English extension of it, “Every
man for himself and the devil take the hindmost” dates from at least as far
back as 1574, although here the quasi-blasphemous addition imparts a slightly
different semantic effect to it, causing it to mean something like, “Anyone who
doesn’t look out exclusively for himself deserves to lose.” Employed on its
own, minus any extension, “Every man for himself” has tended to function as an
order rather than as a proverb: it is a phrase uttered by, say, the captain of
a sinking ship to signal to the crew that they are no longer under an
obligation to try to save passengers or keep the vessel afloat. This unextended
form of “every man for himself” is the standard English translation of the
French expression <i>Sauve qui peut</i> and
the German expression <i>Rette sich wer kann</i>.
Unlike <i>Jeder für sich</i>,<i> </i>these expressions do not map
grammatically or lexically onto their English counterpart at all, but<i> </i>they are very nearly verbatim
renditions of each other:<i> Sauve qui peut</i>
literally translates as <i>Let him who can
save, do so</i> and <i>Rette sich wer kann</i>
as <i>Let him who can save himself, do so</i>;
in other words, by employing a reflexive verb the German makes explicit that it
is oneself that is to be saved and in employing a non-reflexive verb the French
does not make that explicit. In 1980, Godard made a film called <i>Sauve qui peut (la vie)</i>. I have so far
found no explanation for his appending of the parenthetical <i>la vie</i>, but a passage from the Wikipedia
article on the film perhaps provides at least the ghost of clue thereto. The
passage reads:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">In his initial proposal for the film, a 20
minute video known as <i>Scénario de </i>Sauve Qui Peut (la vie)<i> </i>(included
as a supplement on the </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_Collection" title="Criterion Collection"><span style="background: white; color: #3366cc; font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Criterion Collection</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> DVD), Godard suggested a guest appearance
by </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Herzog" title="Werner Herzog"><span style="background: white; color: #3366cc; font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Werner Herzog</span></a><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> that is not in the finished film,
including a still photo that is apparently of Herzog doing a backflip. Perhaps
this is a joke, Herzog having made </span><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enigma_of_Kaspar_Hauser" title="The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser"><i><span style="background: white; color: #3366cc; font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Every Man for Himself and God Against All</span></i></a><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> six years
earlier.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">If,
as this passage conjectures, Godard employed Herzog’s inclusion in his proposal-video
as a jocular allusion to the movie about Kaspar Hauser, he could have done so
only had he been aware of the semantic quasi-equivalence of <i>Jeder für sich</i> and <i>Sauve qui peut</i> and hence mindful of the presence of the reflexive
particle “sich” in <i>Jeder für sich</i>,
and further hence, mindful of the absence of a reflexive form from <i>Sauve qui peut</i>, and further still hence,
mindful of a certain exploitable ambiguity in that expression. <i>Sauve qui peut</i> read or heard in
isolation elicits the question, <i>Save what
</i>(or rather a French question like <i>Que
doit-on sauve</i>)? And so perhaps by adding <i>(la vie)</i> in parentheses he intended to remind his viewers that it
is always a life that is expected to be saved when <i>Sauve qui peut</i> is uttered, that <i>Sauve
qui peut</i> is only ever uttered in life-and-death situations. As to why he
wrote <i>la vie—the</i> life—instead of
writing <i>sa vie</i>—<i>one’s</i> life—and thereby bringing the phrase more explicitly into
line with <i>Jeder für sich</i> and <i>Rette sich wer kann</i>, the most obvious
plausible answer is that he didn’t need to write <i>sa</i>, for by default <i>la vie </i>in
such a context is understood to be the saver’s own life because that is how
French works: in French, as in German, the definite article tends to be used
instead of the possessive adjective even when referring to articles possessed
by a specific person or thing. (In English, as a rule we make the possession
explicit, but there are exceptions to this rule: while we say, <i>I know this place like the back of my hand</i>
and <i>give me your hand</i> we also say <i>She took me by <b>the</b> hand</i>.) At the same time, as <i>la vie</i> can in almost any context be construed as “life in general”
(for after all, <i>C’est la vie</i> means <i>That’s life</i>), perhaps Godard chose this
form in order to leave open the possibility that life itself or everybody’s
life was expected to be saved by the saver. After all, French has a reflexive
verb, <i>se sauver</i>, its equivalent of <i>retten sich</i>, that he could have used had
he wanted peremptorily to confine the saving to self-saving. Weighing, however
lightly, against an inference of intentional equivocality is another sentence
from the above-cited Wikipedia article (I know it’s <i>terrible </i>form, the very antithesis of <i>comme il faut</i>, to cite Wikipedia as an authority, but sometimes
[and if one is honest, one must acknowledge that these some times are quite
close to being most times] there is no available source that is closer to being
authoritative): “</span><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">Godard has stated that a better title in </span><span style="background: white; font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">American English<span style="color: #202122;"> would be ‘Save Your Ass.’”</span></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> After all, if there is in American
English one metonym of egoism more vivid than one’s own life it is one’s own
ass. In any case, the sentence’s apocryphalness impinges not a jot on its
illustration in negative of another characteristic of both <i>Sauve qui peut </i>and <i>Rette sich
wer kann</i>, a decidedly scabrous characteristic thereof for any would be
Englisher thereof—their couching in the subjunctive mood. As my earlier
super-literal renditions of them make plain, the subjunctive forms here are not
of the kind with exact English equivalents like<i> if I were you</i> and <i>be that as
it may</i>; they are, rather, of a kind that must merely be approximated via
the super-stiff formula beginning with <i>let</i>.
And because this <i>let</i>-led formula is
grammatically speaking not in the subjunctive but the imperative mood—because,
in other words, the person expected to do the letting is the “you” implicitly
addressed by the expression, it is quite tempting simply to make the expression
not only grammatically but notionally imperative, to pare “let him save” down
to “save,” which is exactly what Godard did in devising his suggested improved
title. Of course, this destiffening comes at a certain cost: by expecting the
addressee not merely to let the saving take place but actually to do the
saving, the <i>save</i>-beginning version of
the translation makes the expression sound more personal; moreover, because
relative pronouns can’t be used in conjunction with the imperative mood the
“who” has to go, which is perhaps why Godard simply stopped short of Englishing
the <i>qui peut</i> part entirely. Not that
he would have had to look far to find a perfectly serviceable workaround:
because <i>Let him who can save himself, do
so</i> is notionally interchangeable with <i>If
he can save himself, let him do so</i>, one can simply change the <i>who</i>-beginning clause into an <i>if</i>-beginning conditional clause, and so
one ends up with, in a translation of the original French phrase, <i>Save if you can</i>; in a translation of
Godard’s modification of that phrase,<i>
Save </i>(<i>your life</i> [or <i>ass</i>])<i>
if you can</i>, and in a translation of the German version of the phrase, <i>Save yourself if you can</i>. Alternatively,
if one doesn’t care a jot about even approximate lexical or grammatical mapping
of the phrase, one can simply translate it as “Every Man for Himself,” and that
is exactly what the American distributors of <i>Sauve qui peut (la vie)</i> did in supplying the film with an English
title. (At least that is exactly what they did according to the abovementioned
Wikipedia article, although I distinctly recall that when I first saw the film in
the early 1990s it was entitled <i>Slow
Motion</i> [i.e., in presumptive allusion to the frequent use of that technique
in the film], which I suppose means I saw a British print of it.) “Fast
forward,” as they say, to ca. 2014, when I was preparing the first draft of my
translation of Thomas Bernhard’s play <i>Am
Ziel</i> or, in English, <i>The Goal
Attained</i> (itself only an approximate mapping of the original, but that
approximation is, as they say, “the subject of a separate essay” [or, rather,
sentence or two in a separate setting]), a play in which <i>Rette sich wer kann</i> repeatedly figures as the title of a play
written by a playwright who is a character in the play. As neither lexical nor
grammatical mapping initially looked as if it were going to be a priority, I
initially opted for <i>Every Man for Himself</i>.
After all, <i>Rette sich wer kann</i> was
and is as common an expression in German as <i>Every
Man for Himself </i>is<i> </i>in<i> </i>English, and I ideally wished to
preserve the ring of familiarity. What was and is more, the character of the Mother
praises <i>Rette sich wer kann</i> as a
“title reminiscent of Shakespeare,” by which, as she also mentions that her
deceased husband’s pet phrase was “All’s well that ends well” (or in the
original, its standard and quite literal German rendition, “Ende gut, alles gut”
[although, being a Dutchman, “in real life” he would doubtless have used the
equally literal Dutch equivalent, “Eind goed, al goed”] ), the namesake of a
Shakespeare play, I inferred that she meant that <i>Rette sich wer kann</i> reminded her of Shakespeare play titles like <i>All’s Well That Ends Well</i>, <i>As You Like It</i>, and <i>Much Ado About Nothing</i>—titles taken from proverbs or
quasi-proverbial expressions. So this was yet another good reason for preferring
<i>Every Man for Himself</i> to <i>Save Yourself if You Can</i>. But at a
certain point it became clear to me that I was not going to be able to hold
onto <i>Every Man for Himself</i> without
doing violence to the dialogue. This is a moment when shortly after praising <i>Rette sich wer kann</i> for its
Shakespearean overtones she praises it for another reason [for readability’s
sake I am simply going to quote from my finished translation; perhaps not quite
needless to say, every occurrence of “save” in the following passage
corresponds to <i>Rette</i> or some other
inflection of the verb <i>Retten</i> in the
original]: “Magnificent isn’t it / it’s quite in my vein of thought / <i>Save Yourself</i> <i>If You Can </i>/ and nobody can save himself / nobody has ever saved
himself / not a single person out of all those millions and billions / not a
single one / and so you call your play <i>Save
Yourself If You Can </i>/ You’re a bold individual a brazen one.” Here the
Mother tenders a “deconstructive” interpretation of <i>Rette sich wer kann</i>—both as a self-contained expression and
vis-à-vis its significance in the play-within-a-play—that is radically
incompatible with an Englishing of it as “every man for himself.” First, merely
in taking a close reader’s approach to the expression—in pondering the
significance of its individual lexemes in relation to each other—she imposes a
close mapping of the lexemes on the translator. Any attempt at a transposition
of her approach to “every man for himself” would perforce result in her
debunking that expression along entirely different lines than those of the
original’s of <i>Rette sich wer kann</i>; it
would result in something like the following: “…nobody can ever be for himself
/ nobody has ever been for himself”; it would make her seem to be saying, “Everybody
is at bottom an altruist, however strongly he may fancy himself an egoist,” or,
less plausibly, “Everybody is his own worst enemy.” (I suppose the second of
these possibilities is at least compatible with the playwright’s being “bold”
and “brazen”; the first would make him seem to be a Pollyanna’s Pollyanna.) Second,
in taking as her point of departure a part of the expression, “<i>wer kann</i>,” that is not even implied in
“every man for himself,” she imposes a burden on it that “every man for
himself” cannot even be asked to bear. “Every man for himself” merely enjoins a
stratagem of universal egoism; it is completely silent on the matter of the
outcome of that stratagem, on its chances of improving the fortunes of the
employer of it. The “<i>wer kann</i>” in <i>Rette sich wer kann</i> axiomatically posits
a distinction between those for whom the effort to save themselves will be
successful and those for whom that effort will fail and leaves open the
possibility of a world in which everyone who tries to save himself fails to do
so. And it is as just such a world that the Mother envisages the extant one:
“nobody can save himself / nobody has ever saved himself / not a single person
out of all those millions and billions / not a single one.” Her dismal
conclusion is that not even the practical philosophy vectored exclusively
toward the end of self-preservation, egoism, is capable of attaining that end
(or, yes, <i>goal!</i>) because even the
egoist is doomed to perish—or at any rate, to fail to save himself. This may
seem to be a distinction without a difference, but <i>Retten</i>, like <i>sauver</i> and <i>save</i>, has a long soteriological history,
a long association with the Christian concept of the salvation of the soul: in
German, Christ is known as <i>der Retter</i>
just as he is known as the <i>Sauveur</i> in
French and the Savior in English. Accordingly, although <i>escape</i> is an accepted rendition of <i>rette sich</i> and perhaps slightly preferable to “save yourself” in
the context of secular emergencies like the foundering of ships, I never
seriously entertained the idea of translating <i>rette sich</i> as “escape.” This is not to say that I believe Bernhard
is using the Mother as a mouthpiece for the affirmation of Christian
soteriology but merely that I think he wishes us to be mindful and scornful of
modern secularists’ claims to have alighted on a universal raison d’être more
compelling than the hope of eternal salvation. In other words, I think there is
more than a whiff of Foucault’s “You may have killed God but don’t imagine you
will make a man that will live longer than him” in the Mother’s words. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">In
short, for several ineluctable reasons, I had to opt for <i>Save Yourself If You Can </i>rather than <i>Every Man for Himself</i>, for having not yet read the Wikipedia
article on <i>Sauve qui peut la vie</i>, I
had not yet learned of <i>Save Your Ass</i>,
and I was evidently insufficiently American to have thought it up on my own—not
that I would have been likely to opt for it even if I had (although I own I do
find it enormously entertaining to imagine the Mother saying, “Nobody can save
his ass / nobody has ever saved his ass / not a single ass out of all those
millions and billions of asses has been saved…You’re a bold-ass individual with
an ass of brass.”)<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">But
of course I mustn’t forget to make the blindingly obvious observation that in
including the expression <i>Rette sich wer
kann </i>in his play Bernhard established an allusive connection to Godard even
more solid than Herzog’s in the title of his memoir. Whether it is a
particularly significant connection is admittedly debatable. I can’t say that I
find <i>The Goal Attained</i> more Godardian
than most of Bernhard’s other works, let alone that it resembles <i>Sauve qui peut (la vie)</i> in any striking
way (and the totality of intelligence its dialogue discloses about the
near-eponymous play within the play is too scant to furnish significant
parallels between that play and the film), but the fact that Bernhard wrote <i>The Goal Attained</i> in 1980, the year of <i>Sauve qui peut (la vie)</i>’s release,
suggests at least that he had no desire to discourage comparisons between the
play and the film. I am unaware of any documentary evidence that he ever saw the
film, but it seems unlikely that what with his being an avid newspaper-reader
he would not have at least caught sight of an advertisement for it. And as for
any potentially significant connections to Godard or Bernhard supplied by
Herzog’s memoir: of Godard or anything made by him there is nary a trace
therein, but this is hardly surprising, as Herzog has never taken much of an
interest in the work of other filmmakers. The book certainly doesn’t much read
like something penned by a “spiritual brother” of Bernhard, even the Bernhard
of the four autobiographical volumes, although, as in Herzog’s films, the mere
referencing of mid-to-late-twentieth-century Central-European locales cannot
but prove slightly evocative of Bernhard (even if, what with these locales
being more specifically Bavarian, it cannot but prove much less slightly
evocative of Sebald). To be sure, there
are occasional <i>sentences</i> that sound
Bernhardian, and even one paragraph that might have been “sourced” entirely
from Bernhard works:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; tab-stops: 6.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">I’d rather die than go to an analyst,
because it’s my view that something fundamentally wrong happens there if you
harshly light every corner of a house, the house will be uninhabitable. It’s
like that with your soul; if you light it up, shadows and darkness and all,
people will become “uninhabitable.” I am convinced that it’s
psychoanalysis—along with quite a few other mistakes—that has made the
twentieth century so terrible. As far as I’m concerned, the twentieth century,
in its entirety, was a mistake. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">But
the Bernhard pastiche-like quality of this passage ultimately proves
unsurprising, for only pages before the end of the book, Herzog intimates that
his ancient assertion of spiritual kinship with Bernhard is traceable to the
most substantial of material foundations—namely, an acquaintance with the
lineation of his prose at its finest-grained resolution:<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; tab-stops: 6.25in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">I’m a slow reader because I often depart
from the text in front of me to picture scenes and situations and only then
return to the words on the page. There are some books, like Thomas Bernhard’s <i>Walking</i>, that took me two weeks to get
past the first paragraph. The opening lines of that book are so stupendous that
I never got over my amazement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Anyone
who has felt compelled to devote so much time as a reader to those opening
lines of <i>Walking</i>—of the work that </span><a href="https://this-space.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-opposite-direction.html"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">according to Mitchelmore is (to my mind
quite rightly) “recognised as the breakthrough work for Bernhard’s famous style,”</span></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> the style characterized by an “undertow”
of long, breathless sentences uninterrupted by paragraph breaks, cannot but
have felt more than a superficial affinity with Bernhard’s entire cast of mind
in the light of the mutual inextricability of his style and subject-matter.
Tantalizingly enough, though, the habit or disposition that compelled Herzog to
dwell at such length on <i>Walking</i> is
intensely evocative of the work of another writer, a writer who, although he
seems not have been often compared to Bernhard, seems often to be admired by
readers (such as the present writer) who are also Bernhard fans; namely, Gerald
Murnane, who, in pursuance of the observation that “the act of reading is much
more complicated than some people seem to acknowledge,” has dedicated much of
his own writing to recording and exploring “the multitude of…often distracting
but sometimes enhancing…imagery [that] appears during the reading of a text.” (Both
of the just-quoted passages occur in Murnane’s purported final work, </span><a href="https://giramondopublishing.com/books/gerald-murnane-last-letter-to-a-reader/"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Last
Letter to a Reader</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">
.) But the immediately preceding sentence perforce marks the start of a new
constellation, and one constellation is quite sufficient for an essay of the
scope of the present one, that scope being a decidedly peculiar sort of
telescope whereby the present writer has hoped to focus long and intently enough on his sole
constellation of choice to bring into view an as-yet-invisible star thereof
that will somehow produce a significant connection between all the phenomena
discussed above and the as-yet-apparently-merely coincidental near-conjunction
of the publication of <i>Every Man for
Himself and God Against All</i> with that of </span><a href="https://www.seagullbooks.org/save-yourself-if-you-can/"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">Save
Yourself If You Can</span></i></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">,
a collection of the present writer’s translations of six of Bernhard’s plays,
including <i>The Goal Attained</i> and <i>The Ignoramus and the Madman</i>—but having
failed so far to realize his hope in the present essay, the present writer now
willingly resigns possession of the telescope to his readers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 6.25in; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">THE END<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"> </span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif";"> </span> </p>Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-17438960986106075512023-12-13T01:18:00.010-05:002024-02-05T00:23:24.388-05:00Time Capsule or Poison Pill?<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">The English comedy duo Mitchell
and Webb have a sketch in which one of their fans (played by a member of their
supporting cast) accosts Mitchell and praises one of their earlier sketches,
which was set in a cash-register shop (and which really is quite funny), says
he craves another sketch exactly like it, and implores them to write such a
sketch. He likens the prospective sketch to a sausage roll: “What’s wrong with
more? If you have a sausage roll, and the next day you think you fancy a
sausage roll, that’s OK isn’t it? It’s not the same sausage roll. It’s a
fundamental principle of commerce: if people like something, make another one.”
Mitchell politely but firmly refuses on the grounds that sketch comedy is not
like food, that people will not watch or listen to the same sketch over and
over again even though they will happily eat the same style of food-preparation
over and over again; whereupon the fan, totally unconvinced but willing to
offer Mitchell a sop to his fetishization of variety for the sake of getting
his duplicate sketch, suggests the replacement of the cash registers, and only
the cash registers, with doorbells. Whereupon Mitchell emits a(n) “Hmm”
significative of <i>That just might work</i>,
and the next sketch is indeed a carbon copy of the cash register sketch with
doorbells instead of cash registers, and it is in fact even funnier than its
original. The sitcom <i>It’s Like, You Know…</i>
illustrates both theses implied by the preceding scenario, albeit from two
entirely distinct perspectives: it was created and written by a group of ex-<i>Seinfeld</i> writers immediately after that
sitcom’s voluntary egress from the prime-time schedule and was billed as “<i>Seinfeld</i> in Los Angeles instead of New
York,” and it fell dead-born into the ratings and was canceled midway through
its second season, in early 2000, thereby suggesting that viewers had
interpellated it as <i>Seinfeld</i> full
stop and had had quite enough of <i>Seinfeld</i>
despite their very recent rabid enthusiasm for it. And the show has not enjoyed
anything approaching a vital afterlife: it has never been released on DVD or
via any streaming service and has apparently been re-broadcast only twice (or, more
properly speaking, broadcast in full for the first two times, for the pilot and
last six episodes never aired during the original run, as their scheduled
airdates postdated the show’s cancelation), on Fox Latin America and
Australia’s The Comedy Channel. Fortunately a YouTuber formerly styled
JamesCanavanWagner but mystifyingly now styled knockitoffnow89 posted </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHKCTMvMPgs&list=PLVSvuryXmoliG2IIgEgGfo8_XUQQxeZ3w"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">air
checks of all 32 of the Australian broadcasts</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> about three years ago
as of this writing (August 11, 2023), but these air checks have since garnered only
an average of about 4,000 views apiece and a whopping 100,000 in total. If such
underwhelming statistics bespeak a so-called cult following, even as obscure a
so-called content creator as the present writer deserves to have at least a
temple or two dedicated to his worship. Anyhow or -hoo, from this perspective,
the perspective furnished by the verdict of its contemporary public and its near-term
posterity, <i>It’s Like, You Know…</i>
appears to bear out the Mitchellian thesis that variety is as surely the life
of comedy as Spice (whether as incarnated in the girl group or in the adult
cable channel) was the life of <i>Variety</i>
in the late 1990s. Yes, beginning in ca. 1993 the American television-viewing
public embraced <i>Seinfeld</i> with a
degree-cum-near universality of gusto and affection they had perhaps only
previously lavished on <i>M.A.S.H.</i> (for <i>All in the Family</i>, for all its legendary
<i>Zeitgeist</i>-definingness, had always
had a fairly large chorus of detractors), and out of loyalty to their original
enthusiasm they stayed with the show in near-record numbers until the airing of
its concluding episode in May of 1998. But seemingly no sooner had <i>Seinfeld</i> gone off the air than the public
relegated it to an earlier short-1990s micro-epoch in favor of shows that had
entered NBC’s “Must See TV” prime-time roster since its debut (<i>Friends</i>, <i>Frasier</i>, and <i>Will and Grace</i>)
much as they had relegated<i> Cheers </i>to
an earlier long-1980s micro-epoch in favor of <i>Seinfeld</i> roughly five years earlier. To the extent that they
noticed <i>It’s Like, You Know… </i>at all,
they must have regarded it in much the same smugly scornful attitude as that
evinced by a certain character in a certain play by one or both of Shakespeare’s
most illustrious junior contemporaries, occasional collaborators, and smugly
triumphal successors in the hearts of Jacobean theater (naturally I would not
be expressing myself in such vague terms here if I had managed to relocate the
play and the passage in question), Beaumont and Fletcher, when he remarks to
some other character that he or she is indulging in some sort of low form of
japery that went out of fashion with Shakespeare’s plays, thereby conveying to
the reader or spectator that those plays had become to be regarded by then, in
ca. 1620, as as (<i>sic</i> on the
repetition of <i>as</i>) naff and retardataire
as parachute pants in 1990 or inline skates in 2005. But from a different—and I
would argue far more enlightened and judicious—perspective, the perspective of
the present writer qua recent viewer of <i>It’s
Like, You Know…</i> in its 26-episode [or, rather, 25-episode-plus-1 pilot]
entirety, <i>ILYK</i> would seem to bear out
the thesis tendered by Mitchell and Webb’s fictitious fan—the thesis that if a
comedic formula-machine ain’t broke, the worst thing in the world one can do to
it is fix it, let alone replace it with an entirely different comedic
formula-machine; but that by making just the right and exactly superficial
changes to the machine one can improve it ever so slightly. And inasmuch as I
think time hath more or less conclusively shewn that <i>Seinfeld</i> is the pinnacle of the sitcom quasi- or pseudo-form, the
sitcom-ic exact analogue of Shakespeare’s plays in the history of drama <i>insgesamt</i> (note, my fellow unregenerate
c*******l snobs, the presence of <i>quasi</i>-
<i>or pseudo</i> qua preemptor of any
ascription to me of the preposterous notion that any sitcom episode, however
brilliant, could equal any more or less competently turned play, however mediocre,
in point of aesthetic cogency-plus-quality [by which in particularized terms I
meantersay that while I would rather watch even the worst episode of <i>Seinfeld </i>than the most spectacular
performance of <i>Our Town</i> or <i>You Can’t Take It with You</i>, I cannot in good
faith deny that even the best <i>Seinfeld</i>
episode is beset by certain quasi-fatal flaws that inexorably flow from the
sitcom format and that <i>Our Town</i> and <i>You Can’t Take It with You</i> are
hermetically protected from corruption by such flaws merely in virtue of being
plays rather than sitcom episodes {even if certain plays that antedate the
sitcom format by several hundred years (and even at least one, <i>The Merry Wives of Windsor</i>, in Shakespeare’s
corpus)<i> </i>are contaminated by such
flaws in virtue of being possessed of certain qualities that anticipate those
distinctively characteristic of the sitcom format}]) it follows that <i>It’s Like, You Know</i> is more deserving of
the discerning viewer’s attention than any other sitcom that either originated
or lingered on the air after <i>Seinfeld</i>’s
<i>disparation</i>. This is not, admittedly,
to say that <i>ILYK</i> is quite as good as <i>Seinfeld </i>at its ca. 1994-1996 peak, but
it is admittedly to say nearly as provocatively that<i> ILYK</i> is at least slightly better than <i>Seinfeld</i> would likely have been in its counterfactual tenth season to
the extent that one can extrapolate what that season would have been like from
the tone and quality of its factual ninth one. To sum up this tone-cum-quality as succinctly
as possible (albeit at the cost of a certain amount of precision [not that I
have often or perhaps even ever before allowed succinctness to impede my <i>precisation</i> of precision {So why allow
it to do so this time? Why simply, I suppose, because giving precision its head
(!) would probably transform this essay into a comprehensive reader’s guide to <i>Seinfeld</i> that would presumably tender
many an assertion and conjecture long ago tendered by other commentators {whereas
I doubt very much enough has been written about <i>ILYK</i> to allow <i>any </i>extended
discussion of it, however wide of the mark or vapid, to consist much of
duplicative matter}]): the ninth season’s occasional reliance on overarching
formal gimmicks like the reverse chronology of “The Betrayal,” the traffic jam
in “The Puerto Rican Day,” and, indeed the entire jurisprudential framework of
the two-part finale, in lieu of relying on the long-established formula of simply
allowing the plot of each episode to be guided by the idiosyncrasies of the
four central characters (i.e., essentially, by the question “What would Jerry,
George, Kramer, and Elaine do if A, B, C, and D, respectively, happened to him
or her?”) imparts to it a false-ringing note wherein the characters are
presented as embodying or exhibiting certain traits that do not jibe quite
convincingly with their thitherto-established dramaturgical constitutions. The
finale’s gimmick is a particularly unfortunate one because in addition to
distorting the conduct of the <i>comediae
personae</i> within its 53-minute span it retrospectively imposes a contentious
master interpretation of the conduct of those characters over the course of the
entire series and, in virtue of being a part of the series itself, obliges the
viewer to regard this interpretation as authoritative. It is at least highly
debatable whether each of the “Latham Four” is essentially what the jury’s
guilty verdict enjoins us to regard him or her as being—viz., a dedicated
engine of egoism. True, Larry David did assert that the show’s foundational “creed”
was “No hugging, no learning,” but this “creed” is transparently to be regarded
as a general principle of poetics and dramaturgy rather than as a specific program
for Seinfeld’s <i>comediae personae</i>, as
a salvo in favor of verisimilitude and against the lazy proclivity of even the
“hippest” sitcom writers for portraying the ludicrously implausible complete
yet ultimately inconsequential moral transformation of a central character
within the confines of a single 23-minute episode. (An episode from <i>Taxi</i>, perhaps the “hippest” sitcom
antedating <i>Seinfeld</i>, illustrates the
intelligence-insulting cloyingness of this sort of scenario: the character
played by Judd Hirsch somehow or other gets set up with some girl he has been
led to believe is incredibly attractive only to discover on date-night that she
is more than slightly, erm, big-boned, and consequently run like heck on hydrazine
from her only to feel guilty and subsequently realize that he has been blind to
her “inner beauty” and set up a second date wherein he apologizes for having
been such a schmuck and promises her at minimum a third one [doubtless
following up the promise with a hug {for I confess I haven’t seen the blessed
thing in at least ten years}]. And naturally that is the last we ever see or
hear of Hirsch’s prospective new girlfriend; in the very next episode he is
preoccupied with some completely different problem like the resurfacing of an
estranged sibling or a dormant case of sciatica.) True, at some point roughly
halfway through <i>Seinfeld</i>’s run Julia
Louis-Dreyfus famously said apropos of the show’s <i>CP</i> something to the effect of “They’re completely selfish and
self-absorbed” (I use “famously” decidedly hesitantly here, for although not so
long ago this utterance was perhaps the most easily locatable one about <i>Seinfeld </i>apart from “It’s a show about
nothing,” I am now finding it as hard to track down as the abovementioned
passage from Beaumont and/or Fletcher, whence the paraphrase in lieu of the
thing itself), but since when has a character’s portrayer been a reliable
source of insight into that character, let alone of characters not portrayed by
her or him? Surely—as persuasively argued by Leonard Rossiter, portrayer of the
eponymous protagonist of <i>The Fall and
Rise of Reginald Perrin</i>, one of the greatest and most <i>Seinfeld</i>-like of pre-<i>Seinfeld</i>
sitcoms, </span><a href="https://youtu.be/ksvBVnMVPow"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">beginning at about 3:00
of this interview</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">—the most reliable source of such insight is to
be found in the writer who has supplied that character with the lines only
eventually spoken by the actor (and, <i>pace
</i>Larry David’s unconvincing [albeit only deliberately and indeed <i>contrivedly </i>deliberately unconvincing] performance
of George Costanza’s lines for the <i>Seinfeld</i>
reunion episode-within-the-<i>Seinfeld</i>
reunion episode of <i>Curb Your Enthusiasm</i>,
lines generally convincingly performable by a wide range of competent thespians).
And at least one <i>Seinfeld</i> writer is
on the record as stating, some years after the show’s <i>disparation</i> (and hence, then, “arguably” while in a position to
speak more frankly than Louis-Dreyfus was when she proffered her own two cents
of moral philosophy) that he found nothing particularly unusual or
objectionable about JGK&E and that indeed he had always caused them to act
and react in exactly the same manner as he would have reacted in his own
real-worldial lifeworld. To be quasi-sure, this writer may, for aught I know
(and after my pismere’s piss-poor luck at tracking down Louis-Dreyfus’s remark
I am not going to try to know, or rather recall [for I definitely did hear this
writer saying something to the effect of the statement indirectly presented in
the previous sentence in an interview in which his name was mentioned {I
believe it was broadcast in an installment of NPR’s <i>Fresh Air</i>}] a jot more than this aught about the wight) this man is
scarcely representative of <i>Seinfeld</i>’s
stable of writers; indeed, for aught I know, he may have written every bit of
scriptage from which the prosecutor in the finale ultimately owed his case
against the Latham Four qua supposedly criminally bad non-Samaritans. But I
doubt it, else why would he of all the writerly horses be the only one whom I
can recall having been interviewed specifically about <i>Seinfeld</i> (he or him in notable contrast to Larry Charles, Sacha
Baron Cohen’s partner in comedic crime, whose affiliation with <i>Seinfeld</i> I learned about only in the
course of some interview regarding the first Borat movie)?—and in any case, it
is the validity of such pieces of scriptage qua indices of irredeemably
unregenerate egoism that is in dispute here. At minimum JG&E’s recurring
obsession with the minutiae of decorum suggests that they care at least a
smidgen about the well-being of other people “after a fashion” (even if
“paradoxically” Kramer’s utter heedlessness of even the biggest magnatia
thereof, as attested by, for example, his telling Elaine’s friend [and his own future
girlfriend] Audrey point-blank, “You’re a pretty girl; you just need a nose
job” attests to his caring even more thereabout albeit after a completely
different fashion). A pre-<i>disparation</i>
article in Baltimore’s <i>City Paper</i>
provoked by this obsession and certain other manifestations of scrupulousness
chez the <i>comediae personae</i> (like most
of the rest of Baltimore’s <i>City Paper</i>’s
articles it is now unlocatable even via the Wayback Machine) described <i>Seinfeld</i> as “the most puritanical show
on TV”—this naturally with the understanding that the show’s puritanism was a
very bad thing indeed. Of course Puritanism with a capital P is one of the
great veins of Protestant Christianity, such that what with Christianity being
a famously <i>loving</i> religion one might
be forgiven for at least entertaining the notion that a group of characters
embodying even some lowercase thoroughly secularized version of puritanism
could not be radical egoists. And in any case, it is not as though the show is
devoid of evidence of the <i>comediae
personae</i>’s espousal of a more organically altruistic sort of
quasi-Christianity, a sort of secular Catholicism—one sees evidence of such an
espousal in, for example, the moment at which Jerry announces that he is going
to give his father a car simply because he can now afford to do so, and Kramer
chimes in “You know this is about getting in good with the man upstairs [i.e.
God]”; an assertion that Jerry does not contradict. Of course, here godless
wags will brayingly demur that if Jerry had been a <i>true </i>altruist he would not have been motivated at all by a desire
to improve his estimation in the eyes of the Almighty, that indeed if he had
been a true altruist he would have resolved to give his father a car only in
the teeth of the expectation of being eternally damned in consequence. To which
demurral I shall whisperingly (i.e., mock-patiently-cum-genuinely
exasperatedly) counter-demur that not even the saints ever act out of true
altruism in the wag’s sense, that indeed, the <i>only</i> reason they sacrifice their own well-being for the sake of the
well-being of other human beings is because such fellow-men-orientated
self-abnegation pleases God; or, rather, I <i>would</i>
counter-demur this if I thought I had a hope in heck of not receiving a
counter-counter demurral of something to the effect of either “That’s not <i>real</i> Christianity” or “What but such
sociopathic callousness would you expect from a religion that gave us the
Crusades, the Inquisition, gunpowder, and <i>Gunsmoke</i>?”—in
either case a manifestation of the as-yet-unreversed triumph of the cult of
“empathy” (a word that is really just a linguistic fig leaf for unbridled
sentimentality) over the entire Occidental moral landscape over the course of
the last, say, third of the twentieth century. At bottom I think one “arguably”
can view the entire arc of <i>Seinfeld</i>’s
conception and reception, from David’s formulation of his “creed” to the
digital chorus of finger-wagging that has beset its <i>comediae personae</i> since the show’s middle years, as an
epiphenomenon of that triumph. Starting in ca. 1960 psychologists and other
“thought leaders” started banging on about the need to be “empathetic”;
starting in ca. 1970 the sitcom-writers started imposing “empathy”-advocating
scenarios on their scripts and thereby amplifying the influence of the on-banging
(this in virtue of both the pride of place of the sitcom in the c******l life
of the period and the time-constraints of the genre-cum-format); by the late
1980s a substantial minority of people involved in the production of sitcoms,
including their “creators” and writers, had gotten sufficiently sick of the “empathy”-centered
formula to wish to try something different, and their audiences had also gotten
sufficiently sick of the formula to tune into that selfsame different something—but
by no means sufficiently sick of the cult of “empathy” <i>eo ipso</i> to take a full-fledged and enduring shine to characters who
did not at least make an occasional spectacle of their prostration before the
cult’s idol. And one suspects, in point of fact, that even David was only ever
exasperated with the empathy-cult to the extent that it had vitiated the sitcom
genre-cum-format, that he never had much if any of a bone to pick with the cult
itself; one suspects this first if perhaps ultimately not more convincingly on
the evidence of the near-pride of place given to David’s whiny sentimental wife
in the <i>comediae personae </i>of <i>Curb Your Enthusiasm</i>, to a character who
invariably comes across as presenting “empatheticness” as the normative
habitus-cum-ethos of the show, as the habitus-cum-ethos that it believes to be
the morally correct one, however it may allow Larry to embody and advocate a
habitus-cum-ethos stridently at odds with it. One also suspects this (i.e.,
that David had no beef to air about the empathy-cult <i>eo ipso</i>) on the evidence of something David said near the end of the
2011 gathering of the <i>Curb Your Enthusiasm</i>
cast at the 92<sup>nd</sup>-street Y (a gathering emceed by the now-notorious
Brian Williams): he said that if he were to lose the notepad on or in which he
wrote more than figuratively everything he
wrote, the loss would be for him “like someone dying.” To lose the sole
repository of the objective fruits of one’s lifelong métier and vocation is by
any sane and decent measure a “traumatic” event; an event that could only even
be equaled, let alone exceeded, in point of devastatingness by the death of a
spouse, a parent, or a child. The death of a mere “someone”—meaning by default <i>anyone</i>, down to some celebrity one has never
heard of in some country halfway across the world—can be likened to the loss of
such a repository only by a mawkish milksop who takes it for granted that every
human life both can and should be precious to everyone everywhere at all times,
and indeed more precious thereto than any non-human entity. And when one
considers that David returned to <i>Seinfeld
</i>after a two-year absence for the express purpose of writing the finale, the
very episode in which the <i>nouvelle idée
reçue</i> of the comediae personae as egoists was solidified, one cannot but
conclude that by then he had been converted, or re-converted, to the “empathy”
cult, that if he had been obliged to state his creed then, he would have
formulated it as “Hugging galore, learning galore.” But anyway, as I have
already effectively said, and been meaning to elaborate on for several pages
now, the imposition of the empathy-cultish interpretation of the <i>comediae personae </i>was but one of the
distortions of characterization that crept into the later seasons of <i>Seinfeld</i>. What I have not already even
effectively said and what I am now going to say verbatim is that many and
perhaps even most of those distortions (that perhaps-even-most naturally
excluding the empathy-cultish interpretation itself) were more or less beyond
the control of Jerry and his writers. Take that episode in which Jerry
considers getting married and ends up briefly engaged to that woman played by Janeane
Garofalo. The engagement is highly out of character for the Jerry of the show,
and at the time it would have been highly out of character for the Jerry of
real life—at least <i>qua</i> Jerry. And
when the Jerry of real life got married only two or three years after <i>Seinfeld</i>’s <i>disparation</i>, it was still out of character for him qua real-life
Jerry, but one might have persuasively argued that the marriage was long, long
overdue for real-life Jerry qua real-life adult human male. And now that
real-life Jerry has been married for more than twenty years or nearly half of
his adult life and more than three times as long as <i>Seinfeld</i> was originally on the air, one might persuasively argue
that being married is as much in character for Seinfeld (whether real-worldial
or “fictional”), is as authentically Seinfeldian, as a query of “Who <i>are</i> these people?” So if <i>Seinfeld</i> had stayed on the air much
longer, it is quite likely that the Jerry of the show would have had to enter
into an engagement that, unlike one of George’s showers (or his own sole
engagement), “took,” simply so that he could retain his plausibility as a more
or less normal man in his late forties and beyond; it is highly unlikely that
the two Jerrys could have pulled off a Jack Benny, with the show Jerry living
as an aged (and not merely aging) bachelor who only went on occasional dates
with a woman portrayed by the wife of real-life Jerry. And while such a move to
matrimony would have been quasi-inevitable, it would also have been inimical to
the show’s <i>Schaugeist</i>. For make no
mistake: for all the offbeatness of most of the métiers pursued (or
deliberately not pursued) by its <i>comedia
personae</i> and its claim to be a show “about nothing,” there is no denying
that <i>Seinfeld</i> was originally at its
core as much of a show about “yuppies” as its much-ridiculed contemporary, the insufferably
po-faced ABC drama series <i>Thirtysomething</i>.
The high jinks-suffused scenario-components that formed the building-blocks of
the plots of the episodes of the first few seasons—the endless string of dates
with potential girlfriends or (in Elaine’s case) beaux, the endless string of Jerry’s
club gigs, Elaine’s and George’s office jobs, and Kramer’s <i>bricolage</i>-centered moneymaking schemes, and the like—worked because
they were, if not always exactly plausible (for of course from the beginning the
show thrived on implausibility at least in certain registers [e.g., Kramer qua
across-the-hall neighbor who had taken Jerry’s
moving-in salutation of “What’s mine is yours” {retroactively inserted
into the chronologically ancient conclusion of “The Betrayal”} far too
literally and a version of prewar Eastern Europe in which every little girl had
a pony]) at least always eminently <i>seemly</i>
for youngish single childless non-working class people living in a big city.
The second half of the show’s run tended to exploit not exactly the <i>unseemliness </i>but the <i>decaying seemliness </i>and <i>incipient general seediness </i>of the same
sorts of high jinks in the lives of <i>oldish</i>
childless people of any class living anywhere. (Elaine’s fifty-something
coworker Peggy’s pithily withering pronouncement on and to her—“You’re with a
lot of men”—in the Season-Nine episode “The Apology” encapsulates the effect of
this aura of decaying seemliness on the normative viewer.) Had the show
remained on the air and insisted on sticking to its original dramaturgical
constitution in lieu of availing itself of age-appropriate scenario-components
like “taking” engagements, the high jinks would have devolved into full-blown
seediness and thence into preposterousness, but not the preposterousness of
mere farce that salutarily imbues, for example, Season Nine’s “The Blood” with
its multi-generational crepe-making dynasty employing Kramer-conscripted Cuban
cigar rollers in its kitchen; the preposterousness, rather, of the cartoon, in
which there is not even a pretense that the events <i>could</i> occur by any concatenation of events, however improbable.
What “third way” then remained to the show’s show-runners (or those of whom who
continued to want to run it, a set of persons that excluded both of its
“creators”) but that of continuing to work with the original genres of
scenario-components in connection with a new <i>comediae personae </i>consisting of people young enough and
attachment-free enough to inhabit them seemly-ly? Whence the timeliness—and,
after a certain fashion, the indispensability—of <i>It’s Like, You Know…</i> qua cash-register sketch analogue. <i>Pace</i> the show’s original billing, its
cash-register analogue is its younger cast-cum-less attached characters, not
its Los Angelenan setting (its title being a presumably supposedly
quintessentially Los Angelenan verbal hedge that is uttered exactly once in
each episode). And now that I have established this fact about <i>It’s Like, You Know</i>…, the reader who has
had his hand importunately raised in Horshak-esque fashion since the
lower-first page of the essay and been straining with anticipation for the
moment when I allow him to tender his assertion that the reason <i>It’s Like, You Know</i>… has never developed
even a cult following is that it was rendered instantly redundant by the
premiere of <i>Curb Your Enthusiasm</i> in
October of 2000, less than a year after <i>It’s
Like, You Know,,,</i>’s cancelation—now, I say, is the moment for that reader
to lower his hand, but not so that he may tender his assertion but rather so
that he may hold his peace and hang his head in utterly crestfallen dejection.
For while <i>Curb</i> does indeed like <i>ILYK</i> feature a Los Angelinan setting it
most certainly does not feature a re-<i>Seinfeld</i>ed
<i>comediae personae</i>. The star, Larry
David, playing himself, is a quinquagenarian at its very start. He is also
married to Cheryl Hines’s semi-namesake Cheryl David at the very start. This
couple are complemented by another married couple—Larry’s agent, Jeff Greene,
and his wife Susie, played by their semi-namesakes Jeff Garlin and Susie Essman.
It’s true that Garlin and Hines, being 38 in and 34, respectively, in 2000, were
and are both younger than <i>Seinfeld</i>’s
youngest cast member, and that Essman, being only 44 then, was and is yonger
than both Jerry Seinfeld and Michael Richards. But <i>en revanche</i>, all but Hines were and (<i>a fortiori</i>) are grotesquely untelegenic. It is extremely unpleasant
even to imagine Garlin and Essman involved in any remotely “romantic” scenario,
either with each other or with other parties. So from the outset in <i>Curb</i> we are presented with a <i>comediae personae</i> that more closely
resembles that of <i>I Love Lucy</i> than
that of <i>Seinfeld</i>. And indeed, perhaps
the best way of thinking about <i>Curb Your
Enthusiasm </i>is as a latter-day <i>I Love
Lucy</i> with the husband rather than the wife of the more telegenic couple in Lucy’s
spot (i.e., the spot of the principal unwitting fomenter of chaos) and a far
less telegenic (and altogether more disagreeable) couple in Fred and Ethel’s
dramaturgical spot. In any case, in virtue of the just-mentioned in-built
qualities of its cast and <i>comediae
personae</i>, <i>Curb</i> is most certainly
not merely a sort of R-rated version of <i>Seinfeld</i>,
however strongly its tone may often recall <i>Seinfeld</i>’s
merely in virtue of its authoring by Larry David (even if, <i>en revanche</i>, a goodly portion of <i>Curb</i>’s R-ratedness is doubtless owing to the absence from it of any
contribution by real-world Jerry Seinfeld, who has never been the biggest fan
of “blue” material, such that even had <i>Seinfeld</i>
been afforded the greater license for profanity, nudity, and the like permitted
by HBO it would doubtless still have been much thinner in R-rated material than
<i>Curb</i>). <i>It’s Like, You Know…</i>, on the other hand, more than serviceably
takes up the <i>komödiesgeistig</i> thread
deliberately dropped by <i>Seinfeld</i>, and
it manages to do this simply in virtue of centering on a <i>comediae personae</i> composed entirely of single people under the age
of 40, including one person well shy of the age of 30. This is not to say that <i>ILYK</i>’s <i>comediae personae</i> merely replicates that of <i>Seinfeld</i>. For one foundationally non-replicating thing, it consists
of five characters rather than four, and for another, it contains two women
rather than merely one woman. The first of these un-<i>Seinfeld</i>emes perforce both facilitates and begets more complicated
plots than <i>Seinfeld</i>’s; the second
perforce facilitates and at least per-pressure begets intrasex team intrigues,
which were impossible in <i>Seinfeld</i>
except in one-episode increments, via the in-roping of a female member of the
guest cast. (Not that I can even think of a single such intrigue in <i>Seinfeld</i>, what with Kramer’s appraisal
of Elaine as “a man’s woman” whom other women avoid like the plague being [like
so many of Cosmo’s other pronouncements, including the above-cited one about
the big nose] basically, on the, erm, nose, although I assume there were a few
such rule-proving exceptions.) Both un-<i>Seinfeld</i>emes
simultaneously invite (<i>invite</i>, mind
you, not <i>beg</i> [“<i>invite</i>, mind you, not beg” seems to have become my corpus’s
equivalent of “other brands available” qua boilerplate disclaimer {but how can
it cease to be so, as long as the misusers of as indispensable an idiom as “beg
the question” continue to outnumber the responsible users of it by an enormous
and ever-increasing number}]) and frustrate the question of the mappability of <i>ILYK</i>’s <i>comediae personae</i> onto the <i>comediae
personae</i> of <i>Seinfeld</i>; the
question of who is <i>ILYK</i>’s Jerry, who
its George, etc./et al. Obviously the principle of parsimony that is the
guiding principle of this entire essay (i.e., inasmuch as I have postulated
that <i>ILYK</i> differs from <i>Seinfeld</i> no more than it absolutely has
to, such that the notion of a <i>comediae
personae</i> with no significant characterological overlap with <i>Seinfeld</i> is precluded from the outset)
dictates that the answer to this question is either that one and only one of <i>ILYK</i>’s five characters is not more or
less precisely mappable onto a <i>Seinfeld</i>
character or that the characteristics of the four <i>Seinfeld</i> characters have been apportioned among the five <i>ILYK</i> characters such that each <i>ILYK</i> character is a mixture of two <i>Seinfeld</i> characters, that <i>ILYK</i> character A is a mixture of Jerry
and George; <i>ILYK</i> character B is a
mixture of George and Kramer, etc./et al. When I embarked on this essay, I was
more or less firmly convinced that the second possible answer was the correct
one; now I am at least slightly tentatively convinced that the first answer is—i.e.,
that the character played by A. J. Langer, Lauren Woods, has no counterpart
whatsoever in <i>Seinfeld</i>’s <i>comediae personae</i> but that the other
ones have at least vague counterparts therein. Robbie Graham, the character
played by Steven Eckholdt, is basically <i>ILYK</i>’s
Jerry. Like Jerry he is eminently datable (and indeed even more datable than
Jerry, verging as his features do on the cloyingly handsome), hard-working at
his métier (in his case software development), and more or less sane.
Admittedly, his big professional project, a subscription cable-TV synagogue
service called Pay Per Jew, is decidedly wacky (or was decidedly wacky until
COVID mainstreamed religious worship via Zoom), but from the start he has only
been involved in it from the back end, as they say, the idea and the name
having been concocted by an old college chum of his. So like Jerry, Robbie
tends to become wacky or less than fully sane only by association and light
contamination. Shrug, the character played by Evan Handler, is basically the
show’s Kramer, and indeed the “creators” seem to have signaled that he is a
sort of bizzaro Kramer-plus by never divulging his last name rather than (as in
Kramer’s case) refraining from devising and divulging his first name as long as
possible (although of course it must be remembered that if <i>Seinfeld</i> had also only run for a season-and-a-half, Kramer, too,
would have remained one-named in perpetuity, as his first name only surfaced in
Season Six). Like Kramer, he is the immediate neighbor of the Jerry figure,
although what with this being Los Angeles rather than New York, the abodes of the
two dudes are freestanding houses rather than apartments and are sited cheek by
jowl rather than face-to-face. Like Kramer, he has a distinctively eccentric
hairstyle—although in his case it is a <i>non</i>-hairstyle
because he is completely—i.e., Kojak-esquely—bald (here again, a bizzaro-ish
quality seems to have been aimed for). Like Kramer, he has no regular
occupation, although in his case, unlike Kramer’s, the <i>métier</i>-lessness has been given a verisimilitudinous alibi in the
form of rentierism: he is a trust-fund kid with an incredibly large trust fund.
(The abovementioned house next door in which Robbie resides is Shrug’s guest
house, and from the outside both men’s houses seem to be semi-palatial.) Like
Kramer, he is always coming up with wacky or harebrained schemes, although in
his case, owing partly to his superabundant wealth, the schemes tend to be
self-indulgent or philanthropic rather than entrepreneurial in conception. He
hires the movie star Elliott Gould to record his (Shrug’s) autobiography, a
narrative which, what with his being an incredibly well-endowed trust-fund kid,
is completely without incident. (Gould eventually storms out of the recording
session in exasperation with Shrug’s implacable punctiliousness about his
enunciation of Shrug’s prose in the teeth of its manifest vacuity.) He starts
up a one-man detective agency at which he sits around all day waiting for
people to come to him not to ask him to tail their cheating spouses like your
average private dick but to track down the answers to questions of no personal
interest to them that have been irking them simply because they don’t know the
answers. Having dreamt up the idea of a “smell bar” serving up cocktails of
odors, he gives a friend enough money to open and begin running the joint. When
that friend is subsequently (or perhaps precedingly [it is <i>exceedingly</i> hard to track down and situate individual moments of
even a short-lived twentieth-century American network sitcom like <i>ILYK</i> with no episode guide!]) jailed for
violating the city’s then-universally-thought-to-be-draconian prohibition of
smoking in bars and restaurants, he spends a night in the slammer with him just
to keep him company. I just said that the less-entrepreneurial-than-Kramer’s
conception of Shrug’s schemes is or was <i>partly</i>
owing to his great wealth, and I said that because this conception is also
owing to Shrug’s non-entirely-Kramerian cast of mind. Kramer’s mind is or was
like Falstaff’s (for despite his lack of corpulence and non-bibulousness Kramer
is “in a certain very real sense,” like his contemporary, Jeffrey “The Dude”
Lebowski, a latter-day Falstaff) “apprehensive, quick, forgetive,” always on
the qui-vive for “nimble, fiery, and delectable shapes”; Shrug’s, on the other
hand, is quiescent, naïve, and whimsical, like that of a clever-but-lazy very
small child, or indeed, like a person heavily intoxicated by a(n) hallucinogen,
although he seems never to touch any drugs of that type. He finds himself
bemused or baffled rather than captivated by an idea and then ambles or wanders
rather than runs with it as Kramer would do like a dog with a bone in its mouth
(it is of course not for nothing that Kramer is closely paired with a dog in at
least one <i>Seinfeld</i> episode). Lastly,
in point of Shrugian divergence from Kramer, Shrug’s wardrobe is utterly
lacking in any stylistic flair; his dress does not set him apart from the other
characters in any manner that really sticks in the mind; indeed, if I remember
aright, it differs from Robbie’s only in its more frequently featuring a buttoned-up
shirt than an unbuttoned one and Dockers-style twill slacks than jeans. I shall
have occasion to discuss both this sartorial habitus and Shrug’s trippy-hippy
mental bearing a bit later, in connection with an appraisal of <i>ILYK</i>’s overall <i>Schaugeist</i>. For the moment I shall continue my adumbration of its <i>comediae</i> <i>personae</i> by discussing its analogue to George Costanza, Arthur
Garment, played by Chris Eigeman. “Right up front” (to the extent that we are
at the front of anything now), I cannot forbear from mentioning that it greatly
pains me to designate this character a George Costanza analogue because George
is the least telegenic and most morally objectionable of <i>Seinfeld</i>’s <i>comediae personae</i>
and Eigeman has been an object of my intense admiration since at least slightly
before <i>ILYK</i> could possibly have been
a twinkle in anybody’s eye. I certainly won’t go so far (or so low) as to say
that he has ever been a so-called role model for me, but I can (and will) say
(because it is true) that when, within two years of its 1995 release, in other
words, at the age of 25 at the latest, and hence an age at which one is still
(if only <i>just</i> still) permitted to
pattern one’s outward behavior on that of other people, I first saw Noah Baumbach’s
debut film <i>Kicking and Screaming</i>,<i> </i>I was impressed enough by Eigeman’s
performance to want to be a bit more like him around my friends, to be more a
bit more blasé, pernickety, and witty around them in exactly the same way as
Eigeman’s character was blasé, pernickety, and witty around his fellow recent
college graduates at the bar they frequented together; and that when, in the
early-to-mid oughties, I finally got around to seeing the three Whit
Stillman-directed films featuring Eigeman, I was impressed enough with the continuity
of his performances in those films with the one in <i>Kicking in Screaming</i> (even if I could not help finding him a bit
off-putting in the against-type role of a cocaine-sniffing club-bouncer in the
final one of these films, <i>The Last Days
of Disco</i>)<i> </i>to wish that I had seen
them alongside <i>K&S</i> and hence had had
a chance to incorporate their Eigemanisms into my bearing at a seemly age. I
realize that my simply saying that <i>I</i>
have found Eigeman thus charismatic in these roles does not suffice to make it
plain to the reader that he <i>is</i> more charismatic
than Jason Alexander in the role of George Costanza. But I think any reader who does not have some
sort of fetish for “short, stocky, bald men” will, on watching even a half a
minute of an Eigeman-featuring scene from <i>Kicking
and Screaming</i>, <i>Metropolitan</i>, <i>Barcelona</i>, or (even) <i>The Last Days of Disco</i>, agree with me that
he is a less off-putting presence—which is to say, handsomer, better dressed,
and wittier—than Jason Alexander at his very most charming in <i>Seinfeld</i>. And I can confirm from my
viewing of the entirety of <i>ILYK</i> that
he is just as less off-putting than JA as GC in <i>ILYK </i>(even if the slightly [but only <i>slightly</i>] poorer average quality of the writing of the ex-<i>Seinfeld</i>ians of <i>ILYK</i> than that of Stillman and Baumbach makes Eigeman as Arthur
Garment slightly less witty than Eigeman as Nick Smith [his character in <i>Metropolitan</i>] et al.)<i>.</i> Why, then, do I declare without
hesitation that he is the George Constanza of <i>ILYK</i>? Why, simply because unlike the other characters he is a
near-constant and unabashed worrywart, a type who a decade or two earlier would
have been reflexively described as a <i>neurotic</i>.
And really it could not have been otherwise, even if Eigeman had been as
cloyingly handsome as Steven Eckholdt rather than merely as uncannily handsome
as the young Ludwig Wittgenstein (to whom he bore an uncannily close
resemblance between the ages of about 25 and 40, such that the failure of any
biopic of Wittgenstein to be made between ca. 1990 and ca. 2005 is an incalculably
great loss both to the corpus of world cinema and Eigeman’s own career [for I
believe it sadly must be conceded that he has really done nothing truly
noteworthy, at least as an actor {for I have not seen the single film he has
directed} since <i>ILYK</i> {for I certainly
don’t consider his featherweight supporting role in that featherweight instance
of televisual chick-lit, <i>Gilmore Girls</i>,
noteworthy}] since <i>ILYK</i>) because the
show is at least initially presented as a comedy of the encounter of Arthur
Garment qua New Yorker with Los Angeles, and in the <i>commedia dell’arte</i> of late-twentieth century America neuroticism is
as tightly conjoined to New Yorkers as Pierrot’s (or “Crazy” Joe Davola’s) pompom-buttons
to his domino and Pantaloon’s pantaloons to his backside in the original <i>commedia dell’arte</i>. Of course, by the
same token, the fact that Arthur Garment is presented as a New Yorker among Los
Angelenos rather than a New Yorker among other New Yorkers like George Costanza
imparts to his neuroticism an entirely different valence from George’s even
when it is implicated in aspects of his character profile (e.g., his lack of
amorous success), that are likewise imported directly from his <i>Seinfeld</i>ian counterpart, but I shall
“park” this valence alongside Shrug’s mental bearing and sartorial habitus as
matters to be considered in my consideration of <i>ILYK</i>’s <i>Schaugeist</i> and
thereby impel myself to consider the very last member of its <i>comediae personae </i>with a <i>Seinfeld</i>ian antecedent, namely Jennifer
Grey, who by a process of deduction the reader will have correctly inferred must
be regarded as <i>ILYK</i>’s Elaine
according to this schema. But in what respects does she resemble Elaine closely
enough to have made this schema compelling to me in the first place? Why,
simply in being a woman and “being with a lot of men” and indeed in making no
bones about her non-monogamy, in constantly referencing recent and distant
rendezvous of hers that terminated in coition. Admittedly, to the best of my
recollection, a far smaller proportion of Jennifer’s lot of men than of Elaine’s
lot thereof are seen onscreen (and indeed, I can recall only one of these [even
if I am sure there were at least two more adult-male accompanists of Jennifer not
counting Robbie {see immediately below}]), but “in a certain very real sense”
this comparative dearth only underscores Jennifer’s promiscuity. Even a
beau-appearance fully spanning her plot-strand of a single episode à la that of
Elaine’s Mr. Spongeworthy and Crypto-Wiz, let alone one spanning nearly a dozen
episodes à la that of her David Puddy would have implied that Jennifer was at
least flirting with “commitment,” that she was going on successive dates with
her coition-partners; instead, given that she almost exclusively talks about
isolated coition-sessions we are led to suppose that her so-called sex life
consists almost exclusively of one-night stands. This aura of flooziehood or
sluttishness is allowed to spread even to the prominent <i>Seinfeld</i>-echo of Jennifer’s previous amorous involvement with
Robbie in the show’s so-called back story. While Jerry and Elaine’s mutual
ex-hood rarely imparted the merest soupçon of sexual tension to their
rapport—the single exception I can think of is “that one time” when a sudden
effulgence of such tension was made to serve as the central dramaturgical
engine of an episode only to be broken off at the end of that episode without
leaving a trace in any subsequent ones—it did provide a rich fund of shared biographical
particularity to which they frequently made reference, and upon which <i>Seinfeld</i>’s writers could and did often
draw for dramaturgical fodder. Robbie and Jennifer’s pre-<i>ILYK</i>-timeline involvement, by contrast, in being yet another
one-night stand, can only ever be gestured towards ostensively, in the perfect
aspect, as it were—as a single isolated event that happened exactly once. On
the plus side, as they used to say, the super-brevity of the Robbie-Jennifer
conjugation allows it to be dramatized in its entirety (within the constraints
and conventions of <i>fin-de-millénaire</i>
network television, of course), in a flashback-dominated episode depicting what
each of the <i>comedia personae</i>—or each
of them except Arthur, who had not yet arrived in LA then—was doing when an
earthquake hit. Now is perhaps no worse a time than any other for mentioning
something that <i>must</i> be mentioned at
some point in this essay—namely, that although dramaturgically speaking
Jennifer Grey corresponds to Elaine, she also provides formal continuity with <i>Seinfeld</i> (and <i>Curb Your Enthusiasm</i>) in playing or, rather, (because I have so far
talked of her only as a character) being played by herself. (Not that she, Jerry, and Larry are the <i>only</i> people played by themselves in any
of the three shows, for <i>Seinfeld</i>
featured occasional cameos from the likes of Jon Voight, Bryant Gumbel, and
Keith Hernandez; as mentioned before, Elliott Gould appeared as Elliott Gould on
<i>ILYK </i>[and he was followed a couple of
dozen episodes later by Estelle Getty]; and on <i>Curb</i>… well, obviously self-portrayed celebrities are so profusely
present on <i>Curb</i> that there is little
point in simply mentioning one to three of them [although this profusion itself
is worth descanting on qua yet another aspect of <i>Curb</i> in point of which it is inferior to both <i>Seinfeld</i> and <i>ILYK </i>{and as
I don’t know where else I am going to have an opportunity to descant on it, I
shall do so right cheer}. I suppose there’s nothing intrinsically objectionable
to having virtually every episode of a sitcom, center, as virtually every
episode of <i>Curb</i> does, on the <i>comediae personae</i>’s interactions with
real-world celebrities, although at least the present writer finds such a <i>modus comediae </i>intensely irritating, and
<i>IYLK’s </i>essential bereftness of such
episodes {for even in the abovementioned episode with a plot strand about the
recording of Shrug’s memoirs, Elliott Gould receives at most a minute of
screen-time} gives the lie to the notion that any show with a Los Angelinan
setting and an actor in its <i>comediae
personae</i> cannot escape such a <i>modus
comediae</i>]. But at least accidentally, any sitcom that succeeds at effecting
such centering will perforce run roughshod over the discerning viewer’s ability
to suspend disbelief. For a sitcom that consisted <i>exclusively</i> of interactions between the <i>comediae personae</i> and real-world celebrities would not be a sitcom
at all but a successsion of chamber dramas, or perhaps rather a “reality-TV”
version of a talk show; in order to survive as a sitcom, which is to say, to
generate and sustain plot-strands and other units of dramaturgy, it must draw
on and involve a roster or stable or pool of supporting characters understood
to be mere diagesis-sustaining non-celebrities, which means it must draw on a
roster or stable or pool of actors to play the barmen, barmaids, quantity
surveyors, bum bailiffs, and other sets of people with whom the <i>comediae personae</i> are to interact when
they cease to be preoccupied exclusively with one another. Chez the production of
any new or merely moderately successful sitcom, the casting-call for these
actors will as a matter of course attract absolute or relative obscurities
whose average-Joe or Jane-dom the viewer will reflexively accept. But chez the
production of a sitcom, like <i>Curb</i>,
that has been a darling of the critics since it was a twinkle in its creator’s
eye bright enough to attract the attention of one of their number at [insert
name of 2023’s rough equivalent of the Brown Derby here, if such an
establishment exists], actors who are often every bit as famous as the
self-portraying guest stars stampede over one another to get the minor parts,
such that when an actor playing such a part first appears onscreen, the viewer
tends reflexively to interpellate him as the actor himself rather than as the
character he is playing. And in <i>Curb</i>
itself, wherein the foreground parts are already monopolized by self-portraying
celebrities, this monopolization of the mid-ground parts by biggish-to-big name
actors generates a bizarre semblance of a two-tiered caste system wherein Larry
and the other first-class characters address each other by their real-world
names but appear to be blind to [or knowingly to overlook] the real-world
identities of their second-class screen-sharers à la the posh couple in Luis
Buñuel’s <i>Discreet Charm of the
Bourgeoisie</i> who toss the local bishop out the front door when he shows up at
their house in the gardener’s clothes.) Here a reader possessed of a certain
sort of personal history will be unable refrain from interjecting that the <i>must</i> I just emitted was an
overstatement-eme, that I could have more economically signaled that JG was
played by or played herself by simply typing “(yes, <i>the</i> Jennifer Grey)” after my first registration of her name, a
couple of hundred words ago. But the truth is that I could not have typed that
parenthesis, at least in good faith, because I do not share with such a reader
the possession of such a personal history, which is to say I did not know who
Jennifer Grey was before I first saw <i>It’s
Like You Know</i>…. For I can remember the very first occasion on which I saw <i>It’s
Like You Know</i>…—it was at or near the very beginning of its first season and
in the living room of the apartment I then shared with a longtime <i>Seinfeld</i> fan who was at least willing to
give <i>ILYK</i> a try (a try that seems not
to have lasted much if at all beyond Episode 5, “The Valley,” for my most
recent original-run-of-<i>ILYK</i>-derived
memory consists of a fragment of invective against the Pay Per Jew channel’s
presiding rabbi, and from my YouTubic viewing of the series I recall no other episode
in which such invective occurs), and on this occasion, somebody onscreen asked
Jennifer Grey (or asked somebody else about Jennifer Grey), “Jennifer Grey, the
actress?”; whereupon I inwardly (or perhaps outwardly—i.e., to my roommate)
interjected “Who she?” or perhaps, rather, “Is that the name of an actual
actress?” In other words, I hadn’t heard of Jennifer Grey, and I wasn’t sure
whether the referent of the mentioned Jennifer Grey was an actress in the real
world or an actress only within the diagesis of the show, whether she was an
actress in the sense in which Elvis Presley was a rock star or in the sense in
which Conrad Birdy was a rock star, in the sense in which Johnny Cochrane was a
lawyer or the sense in which Jackie Chiles was a lawyer. This isn’t to say I
had never seen Jennifer Grey in a TV show or movie, because I had seen <i>Ferris Bueller’s Day Off</i> several times,
but the only actor from that film whose name I had retained in my memory was
its star, Matthew Broderick. To be sure, I had <i>not</i>—I am more or less proud to say, for reasons semi-obscure to me
[for I’m not sure exactly what genre of film this film is supposed to be,
whether, for example, it is properly speaking a chick-flick, such that I should
be more or less proud qua man for not having seen it]—seen <i>Dirty Dancing</i>, although I certainly had heard plenty about the
movie when it was at the cinema, but I subsequently remembered it solely as a
Patrick Swayze movie, and whenever—whenever, that is, right up until I
revisited <i>ILYK</i> at the Chewb only a
few months ago—I was prompted to recall the name of its female lead, I alighted
on <i>Jennifer Beals</i>, and quickly found
myself obliged to remind myself, “No: that’s the woman from <i>Flashdance</i>,” another movie I was more or
less proud never to have seen and that I tended to confuse with <i>Dirty Dancing</i> in the other direction
(i.e., by alighting on “<i>Dirty Dancing</i>”
when prompted to recall the name of the movie for which Jennifer Beals was best
known). I dwell at such length and in such detail on my personal non-history of
acquaintance with the career of Jennifer Grey qua Jennifer Grey both because
the fact that it is a non-history and because it would seem quasi-inevitably
either (if it is typical of the general cinema-going and television-viewing
public of today [<i>sic</i> on “today” in
place of “the very late 90s,” for what with today’s generally agreed to be a
decadent period in—if not the posthumous period of—both television and cinema, today’s
typical viewer of television and cinema is “in a certain very real sense”
better acquainted with the peaks and troughs of both media than the typical
viewer thereof of their respective or shared heydays {think, for example, in
this connection, of the popularity of television game shows of the 1970s among
people not even yet born during their original run}]) to vitiate my appraisal
of <i>ILYK</i>’s failure to become a runaway
hit or (if it is atypical) to suggest both that that failure was an instance of
dog-bites-man rather than man-bites-dog and that Grey’s specific gravity in the
<i>comediae personae </i>is slightly
different than I am imagining it to be by default. Certainly until I discovered
that the female lead of <i>Dirty Dancing</i>
was (or had been) Jennifer Grey I had assumed that that lead had been—not to
put too fine a point on it—<i>incredibly hot</i>;
so hot, indeed, that even after seeing a full episode or two of <i>ILYK</i> on the Chewb and thereby
discovering that Grey bore no resemblance whatsoever to Ferris Bueller’s
manifestly hot girlfriend I was faintly shocked on looking up the credits of <i>Ferris Bueller’s Day Off</i> to learn that
Grey had played not that girlfriend but Bueller’s manifestly unhot, and indeed
borderline downright plain, sister. Of course, there are and always have been
such things as former ugly ducklings turned into swans, and there are and
always have been actors and actresses talented enough to make themselves seem less
attractive than they really are (not to mention couturiers, cosmeticians, and
directors talented enough to help them realize the imposture), but until the
fairly unlikely event that I see <i>Dirty
Dancing </i>I shall never know if Jennifer Grey at her mid-to-late-eighties moment
of peak photogenicity was a member of either such entity-class. (As Grey’s nose
job, whose radically transformative effect on her appearance is made much of
throughout <i>IYLK </i>from the pilot
onwards [having seen her only in <i>Dirty
Dancing</i>, Arthur Garment, on being introduced to her cannot believe that she
is <i>the</i> Jennifer Grey until he is
apprised of the rhinoplasty operation], was effected only after<i> Dirty Dancing</i>, it is entirely
irrelevant to the question.) I assume, though, that most of my late-90s
contemporaries, including <i>IYLK</i>’s
so-called creators had seen <i>Dirty Dancing</i>
and had therefore formed fixed notions of Grey’s degree of hotness. If, then,
the so-called creators had come to regard Grey as <i>an</i> if not necessarily <i>the</i>
epitome of late-80s feminine hotness, they needs must have regarded her
acceptance of her inclusion in the <i>comediae
personae </i>as something of a coup-cum-harbinger of the show’s success in the
ratings and consequently regarded the show as being first and foremost her
vehicle “in a certain very real sense.” If on the other hand they thought of
her mainly as Ferris Bueller’s borderline plain-Jane-ish sister and Patrick
Swayze’s <i>DD</i> character’s borderline
plain-Jane-ish dancing partner, then they most likely regarded her as a sort of
figure proleptic of (or exactly contemporaneous with) John Malkovich in the ca.
2000-released film <i>Being John Malkovich</i>,
wherein much of the humor arises from the fact that in real life its central
personage, the actor John Malkovich, was a relatively obscure character actor
known well and widely by face but ill and narrowly by name. It is true that she
does not terribly often encounter random Los Angelinos who recognize her, but
this infrequency is partly explicable by the parenthetically abovementioned
nose job, but by the same token, if she had still been an A-list celebrity in
the late 90s, the average Los Angelino (and indeed the average Anglophone
anywhere in the world) should have been familiar with her post-nose job
features. Against this, and in favor of her relatively timeless “iconicity” one
must consider her occasional encounters with people (perhaps most notably the
Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic) who bestow on her a degree of idolatry
historically vouchsafed only to the likes of Elizabeth Taylor. In any case,
however plausibly reflective of Jennifer Grey’s real-world trajectory this inter-episodic
thread is meant to be, in <i>ILYK</i> she is
shown to be constantly on the lookout for acting work and consequently engaged
in a mode of living that is at least metonymically associated with sexual
promiscuity, such that her “being with a lot of men” seems much more organic
(if the word <i>organic</i> be not too
skunked by this meta-90s-Los Angelenan context for a less-time-and-place-bound
use) than Elaine’s. I suppose I ought to say something about <i>ILYK</i>’s Grey’s temperament, cast of mind,
and the like (as opposed to about her lifestyle alone) before wrapping up my
discussion of her contribution to the <i>comediae
personae</i>, but in all frankness and candor, I have a great deal of
difficulty (in) thinking about such aspects of her character except in negative
terms, except in contrast with those aspects in the character of another member
of the <i>comediae personae</i>, Lauren
Wood, a personage who serendipitously happens to be the only member of the <i>comediae personae</i> whom I have not yet
discussed at length. And so on to Lauren Wood. Ah Lauren Wood! How do I love
thee? Let me count the ways. On second thought, as there are only two or three
of them, let me not. In any case, what these ways lack in quantity they
certainly more than make up for in quality, or perhaps rather, in salience, in
constituting the most fitting and meritorious ways of loving. First and
foremore or (if I end up finding that there are more than two ways in point)
foremost, I love her out of bedazzledness by her sheer well-nigh-insuperable
prettiness, which soundly eclipses or trounces the prettiness of late 1990s,
post-nose job Jennifer Grey and even that of Julia Louis-Dreyfus/Elaine Benes at
her early-1990s peak. Of course, I suppose many a reader who, being as
unfamiliar as I was with A. J. Langer’s filmography when I embarked on my
survey of<i> IYLK</i> (i.e., not familiar at
all) has just looked up a production or video still of her (and any reader who
is still as unfamiliar therewith had better look up such a picture, because I
am not going to describe Lauren’s features in any detail) will now exclaim “Get
<i>out</i> of here!” à la Elaine Benes and
yearn to be in my presence solely for the purpose of following the exclamation
up with the obligatory two-palmed shove to my thorax. But I think if such a
person reflects on his comparative appraisal of Grey, Louis-Dreyfus, and
Langer’s features he will have to admit that the superior prettiness that he is
ascribing to the two older ladies is actually a superiority in point of<i> handsomeness</i> as it was recognized in
George’s Jerry-lookalike girlfriend when Elaine said of her, “She’s certainly a
very <i>handsome</i> woman.” This is not to
say that either early-90s Louis-Dreyfus or late-90s Grey is not very pretty
indeed but that the photogeneticity (or, in old-timey aestheticians’ lingo, <i>beauty</i>) of both of these women is
composed not only of prettiness but also of an additional quality,
handsomeness, that is utterly absent from late-90s Langer’s photogenticity,
which is utterly exhausted by prettiness, such that Langer must axiomatically
be regarded as prettier than the two older ladies. Second(ly), I love Lauren
out of admiration of her sheer inexhaustible (and seldom even flagging)
ebullience-cum-exuberance. This is a quality that is <i>never</i> evinced by Grey and was seldom evinced by Louis-Dreyfus
except in Elaine’s very occasional moments of drunkenness. From the fact(s)
that I have just associated ebullience-cum-exuberance with inebriation and that
I have slightly less recently described Lauren as exceedingly pretty, the
reader may very well readily infer that Lauren is at least something of a <i>ditz</i> or even an <i>airhead</i> or a <i>bimbo</i>, but
few things could be further from the truth. For Lauren is also possessed of a
certain irresistible combination of aplomb, competence, and versatility (here
it appears that I do love her in at least three ways and possibly as many as
six) that is radically incompatible with mental vacuity. This combination is
hinted at at the very beginning of the pilot when, in her first chinwag with
Arthur, whom she has just met as her seat-neighbor on his first-ever NY-to-LA
flight, she informs him that she is both a process server and a masseuse. Being
one of Los Angeles’s most sought-after practitioners of both occupations, she
is constantly oscillating between the one and the other and indeed on one
occasion even practicing them simultaneously, thrusting divorce papers before a
massage client’s eyes with one hand as she kneads his neck with the other. Apart
from the abovementioned proto-Zoom-style religious services, <i>ILYK</i>’s inclusion of a character
possessed of such superhero-like mastery of two radically mutually dissimilar
métiers probably constitutes its sole moment of genuine prescience, its sole-plus-one
aspect in which it anticipates a genuinely new phenomenon of the twenty-first
century—in this case, the so-called gig economy about which so much eulogizing
and polemizing has been generated over the past decade or so. The negative
implication of the immediately preceding sentence is of course that <i>ILYK</i> is by and large and for better or
for worse “very much a product of its time” or perhaps even something of a
throwback, something that would have been more congruously placed in an earlier
time. And the fine-tuned truth behind that implication is of course that <i>ILYK</i> is both very much a product of its
time <i>and</i> something of a throwback.
And the more finely tuned truth behind that truth is by no means of course (at
least for the reader familiar with the generally reactionary cast of my mind)
that in those respects in which <i>ILYK</i>
is of its time it is so for the better and in those respects in which it is something
of a throwback it is so for the worse. It is of its time for the better in
simply (and seemingly without even trying to do so, in manner of a time capsule
that bears no marks of having been deliberately constructed as a time capsule, in
the manner of a particularly felicitous <i>objet
trouvé</i>) reflecting certain attributes of that time that contributed to its
superiority (in almost every conceivable respect: intellectual, moral,
aesthetic, etc.) to the present; it is something of a throwback for the worse
inasmuch as its throwbackishness does not take the form of, say, a revival of
some virtuous dramaturgical technique of yesteryear that had unfortunately
fallen into desuetude, but rather the form of the dramaturgical propounding of
assertions about the world that were no longer true in its time and that to the
extent that they ever were true probably need never have been asserted.
Unhappily for the viewer who would have the mellow of his enjoyment of the
show’s <i>gemütlich</i> of-its-time-ness
unharshed by any obtrusively or persistently harshing matter, the just-mentioned
naff throwbackishness is part and parcel of <i>IYLK</i>’s
overarching and governing dramaturgical backdrop—viz., the supposedly
innumerable differences between New York City and Los Angeles qua supposedly
radically incommensurable <i>Lebenswelten</i>.
We may gauge the degree of naffness of the notion of NYC and L.A. qua such <i>Lebenswelten</i> in 1999 by a remark made in
a 1983 <i>Playboy</i> magazine interview
with “TV’s zany David Letterman” (for so was the then host of NBC’s <i>Late Night</i> dubbed on the front cover of
the interview-containing issue), a remark to the effect that he had no interest
in guests who showcased material on the differences between New York and L.A.
To be sure, Chewbularly available air checks of <i>Late Night</i> prove that at least as late as 1982 Letterman was
humoring and even slightly egging on the L.A.-bashing pronouncements of one of
his New York-residing guests, the curmudgeonly raconteuse Fran Lebowitz, but a
lot can happen in a year, and in any case, one can hardly blame Dave for not
complaining to a guest’s face—and certainly not the face of a guest as
notoriously prickly as Fran Lebowitz—about her flouting of what he himself
doubtless would have belittled as a mere personal pet peeve. Not, to be sure,
that we should reflexively genuflect to Dave regarding each and every thing he
said but that because from its 1981 debut until Dave’s departure for CBS in
1992, <i>Late Night</i>, in virtue of its
domination by Dave’s licensed “zaniness,” functioned as a sort of <i>Zeitgeist</i>-spanning naffness-filter or canary
in the coalmine of anti-naffness, such that when the Dave of the <i>Late Night</i> years was jaded about
something, we should be inclined to believe that he was onto something in his
jadedness. Perhaps here I should explain, for the benefit of both non-Anglophile
readers and UK-residing readers who have already assumed that in virtue of my
Yankitude I am using “naff” and its derivatives incorrectly (and who by the
time I get to the end of this explanation may very well believe that their
assumption has only been confirmed thereby {not that that belief need shake
their confidence, for by then they will at least know what I mean by “naff”
etc.}), by “the naff” and “naffness” I mean (and mean specifically in the realm
of utterances or gestures readily turned into utterances [for there are
naffnesses of many other realms—for instance, and perhaps notably, that of
sartorial fashion]) not the flagrantly false or immoral but that which, while
it may be true is not worth saying, or that while true and formerly worth saying
is no longer worth saying because it has already been said enough times, or
true but only with certain qualifications that the sayer omits (whether
deliberately or inadvertently) to say. In connection specifically with Los
Angeles, probably the most salient sub-sort of naffness of the first sort is
remarkage on its weather-cum-climate, specifically on how miraculously if not
quasi-obscenely <i>wonderful</i> this
weather-cum-climate is by comparison with the weather-cum-climate in most other
parts of the U.S., very much including New York. It is undoubtedly true that
the weather-cum-climate in Southern California is much better than the
weather-cum-climate in almost the entirety of the rest of the U.S. for it is
one of the very few parts of the U.S. that features a climate that the boffins
call a Mediterranean climate—a climate signalized by lots of sun, low humidity,
warm but not hot temperatures, and very little rain. To be sure, this climate
is “not for everyone” and indeed probably not even for the present writer
specifically, but I think that anyone (including the present writer) who
affirms that he could “never live” in a climate like Los Angeles’(s) will find
on querying himself about what he would miss in being obliged to live therein
that he alights on certain admittedly inalienable concomitants or epiphenomena
of the typical weather of other climates—e.g., the sight of falling snow or the
crunch of autumn leaves underfoot—rather than attributes of that weather
thereof itself, inasmuch as “in a certain very real sense” good weather is
about immediate somatic comfort, and no kind of weather is more immediately
somatically comfortable than mild, dry, sunny weather. “That said,” the
superiority of Los Angelenan weather is not exactly a new discovery; presumably
it was noticed by the first settlers from “back East” who arrived in the 1870s,
and doubtless it was <i>first</i> noticed at
least a full century before that, by Junipero Serra, when he founded the
mission from which the town soon sprouted, for although Padre Junipero was born
and raised in Mallorca, an island with perhaps an even more notoriously perfect
Mediterranean climate than Los Angeles’s, his long journey to the Californian
coast took him through the full breadth of Mexico, a land rich with all sorts
of inhospitable geographies from stiflingly muggy rain forests to scorchingly
hot deserts. So one, or at least a sane one, would have expected the mania for
singing the praises of Los Angelenan weather to have subsided into a yawning
habit by the beginning of the twentieth century and certainly not to have
persisted at a rolling boil into the 1980s. But persist it did thitherto and
beyond and indeed up to the present day (September 15, 2023); and indeed, by
now naff remarkage about the spectacularity of Los Angelenan
climate-cum-weather has even spawned entire sub-strains of climate-cum-weather
orientated naff remarkage: for example, the topos of the “Floridian bad hair
day” that every Southern Californian supposedly haplessly stumbles into upon
setting foot in the Sunshine State for the first time owing to the sudden
exposure of his or her coif to unprecedented high humidity levels, which
supposedly causes each and every lock and tress either to lie as limp(ly)
against one’s skull as a wet lasagna noodle or to “poof up” as explosively as a
bag of jiffy pop–I can’t remember which, because I am after all a non-Southern
Californian man. All I know is that over the past, say, five years, I’ve heard
at least a hundred visiting or ex-Californians kvetch about this phenomenon as if
they were the first ever to observe it and consequently been irritated by every
one of these kvetchers but the first (and been irritated by the <i>n+1</i>th of these subsequent kvetchers more
than by the <i>n</i>th one). Of course,
“arguably,” <i>any</i> pronouncement about
any place’s climate or weather in a dramaturgical setting such as a sitcom is
naff in the sense of being even un-worth remarking on to begin with, inasmuch
as all dramaturgical modes deal first and foremost with social interactions
between people, and as Dr. Johnson famously queried when the abovementioned
LA-seeding mission, although already standing, was perhaps still missing its
steeple, “What is climate to happiness?” And as he elaborated on this
rhetorical question: “Place me in the heart of Asia, should I not be exiled?
What proportion does climate bear to the complex system of human life? You may
advise me to go live at Bologna to eat sausages. The sausages there are the
best in the world; they lose much by being carried.” On the praiseworthy
naff-debiting side, <i>ILYK</i> does not
explicitly present any of its <i>comediae
personae</i> as prizing the Los Angelenan climate as highly as Johnson’s
counterfactual Bologna-booster fetishizes sausages; at no point, to the best of
my recollection, does any one of those five characters assert or even imply
that he moved to Los Angeles exclusively for its climate. <i>En revanche</i>, though, <i>ILYK</i>
does not shrink from peppering itself with references to this climate as
liberally as I believe its most prominent auxiliary cast member, the overly
officious waiter at the café that serves as <i>ILYK</i>’s
analogue to <i>Seinfeld</i>’s Monk’s, at one
point peppers a customer’s plate with pepper from a grinder; and it does not
even shrink from centering an entire episode on this climate, albeit only
negatively, via the southern portion of the city’s supposedly antithetical contrast
with the San Fernando Valley, which the episode presents not only, à la Frank
Zappa or Martha Coolidge, as a sociocultural abyss, but also as a climatic
dystopia on account of its apparently unbearably high humidity: when a member
of the <i>comediae personae </i>(Robbie, I
believe) is obliged to visit to the Valley on an errand whose purpose now
escapes me, the minuscule jaunt is treated by the remaining members thereof
(barring, of course, Arthur, who is even less schooled on the Valley than on
the rest of the area) as a sort of Marlovian journey into the unknown center of
a more than figurative jungle in connection with which no mention is made of
the threat of bad hair probably only because it is swamped or little-personed
by the threat of death by heat exhaustion. Of course at this point the
discerning reader will want to interject that the centering of this episode on
the supposed unbearability of the weather in the San Fernando Valley was
doubtless intended to satirize Los Angelenos’ excessive preoccupation with the
weather, their jealous sense of entitlement to sunny, rainless bone-dry days,
that the writer’s (or, more likely, writers’) sympathies were doubtless with
Dr. Johnson on this point; that that writer (or a controlling proportion of
those writers) doubtless hailed from some part of the 97% of the United States
without near-perfect weather and wished it to be understood that the
appropriate attitude to take towards a brief sojourn in an uncomfortably humid
place was one of stoical detachment. And the discerning reader may very well be
right about this, but to the extent that he is right, he only points up the
naffness of <i>ILYK</i> in another register,
the register of
trueness-only-with-certain-qualifications-omitted-by-the-propounder. For while
the impetus to L.A.’s explosion from a sleepy mid-sized burg into a mighty
metropolis was indeed delivered by the settlement of the earliest film studios
there, such that a televisual depiction of life in early-to-mid 20<sup>th</sup>
century L.A. might have reasonably centered on a <i>comediae personae</i> bristling with the peccadillos of the set set
([sic] on the reduplication of <i>set</i>),
and that even in the late 1990s vampire-from-a-crucifix-like revulsion from
less than perfect weather may very well still have been characteristic of
certain Angelenos, Angelenos who like three-fifths of the <i>comediae personae</i> of <i>ILYK</i>
were fabulously wealthy or established in the film industry, by then the Angeleno
was far better typified by the typical inhabitant of the Valley: lower-middle
class, involved in a non-meta-cinematic trade or profession, and perfectly willing
to take the vicissitudes of the weather in his stride. At times, <i>ILYK</i> itself acknowledges this (dead) sea
change in L.A.’s <i>Volksgeist</i>, and
indeed half-acknowledges it in its very first scene, wherein Robbie and Shrug
are seated in a luxury convertible parked perpendicularly to the luxury shop
fronts of a particularly upmarket street (perchance, Rodeo Drive?) and debating
whether one of them owes the other $50,000 as a paunchy middle-aged white male construction
worker noisily pulverizes the sidewalk in front of them with a jackhammer
(a.k.a. pneumatic drill). “People like that,” Shrug says to Robbie, “make
America great,” and Robbie, after concurring, ruefully concurs, “People like us
<i>don’t</i> make America great.”
Fortunately for the self-regard of both of them, Shrug is resourceful enough to
rejoin, “People like us make America <i>pleasant</i>,”
but by then the damage to the old Angelenan <i>Volksgeist</i>
has been done: Los Angeles has been shewn to be inhabited by certain people
essential to maintaining the general top-shelf American system of life, these
people have been shewn to be different in social habitus from at least two-fifths
of the <i>comediae personae</i>, and the
upshot of a mid-run episode in which Robbie and Shrug journey to a motel dozens
of miles from L.A. in search of “real American women” is gainsaid many months
in advance. This register of naffness also permeates the show from the opposite
direction, so to speak, in that social phenomena that had long since gone
nationwide by the late 90s are recurrently presented as quintessentially
Angelenan. In one episode the live televised pursuit of a private vehicle by
the police brings all other activity in the city to a standstill as every
non-immediately involved Angeleno tunes in and keeps his eyes glued to the tube
for the duration of the chase. If one didn’t know better, as they say, one
might well assume this episode dated from early 1994 at the latest, for in June
of that year a genuinely overwhelming minority of Americans (i.e., 95 million
persons or well over a third of the country’s then-current population), the
genuinely overwhelming majority of them perforce based outside L.A., watched such
a broadcast of such a pursuit, the pursuit of the sport-utility vehicle of O.J.
Simpson-qua-murder suspect by an assortment of vehicles driven by officers of
the Los Angeles Police Department. After that moment, any attempt to point out
the absurdity of Angelenos’ car-chase spectatorship on behalf of the average
American could not but seem far more absurd than Angelenan car spectatorship
itself. But the Angelenification of American life had supervened much earlier
in much more prosaic aspects thereof, and <i>ILYK</i>
is (or was) no less keen to pretend that this supervention had never taken
place, as is instanced by an episode centering on Robbie’s shamefacedness at dating
a woman who is a full-time pedestrian. Of course, “in a certain very real
sense” there is “much nature” (as our old friend Dr. Johnson would [have] put
it) in this scenario: statistically speaking, the Missing Persons were quite
right in asserting way back in 1982, “Nobody walks in L.A.,” and despite the
development of a rudimentary subway system in the intervening years, by 1999
the full-time pedestrian population of L.A. was doubtless still effectively nil.
But would the MPs not have been no less right (statistically speaking) in
asserting, even as far back as 1982, “Nobody walks in Houston” or “Nobody walks
in Phoenix” or perhaps even “Nobody walks in Chicago” or “Nobody walks in
Poughkeepsie,” such that a counterfactual Robbie residing in one of these
cities in 1999 would have been just as embarrassed as his actual L.A.-residing
counterpart (to the extent that any fictional character can in any sense be
actual [there is doubtless an entire career in academic philosophy embedded in
the question of this extent]) to admit to dating a full-time pedestrian? Nay,
in the mid-to-late 1980s, was not Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom, the country whose capital was (and had been and is) the
birthplace of the first subway system in the world, the London Underground, and
remained among the most mass transit-intensive cities in the world, reported to
have said something to the effect of, “If you’re thirty and still taking the
bus to work, you’re a loser”? Of course here nit-pickerly fact
checkers-for-fact checking’s sake will lunge in to demur that it was most
likely not Margaret Thatcher but some duchess or other who said something to
this effect, but whether Maggie herself actually said this is quite beside the
point: the fact that she was widely believed to have said it in ca. 1986 and
yet managed to hold onto the premiership until 1990 shews that the sentiment
was at least broadly expressive of the attitude of the Great British and
Northern Irish people (very probably including those Northern Irish who tried
to blow her up several times) towards pedestrians (or, if one insists on
word-mincing for word-mincing’s sake [as after all even the present writer has
insisted on doing on more than umpteen-million occasions], towards non-drivers
[for a person who is moving by the aid of a vehicle is technically not a
pedestrian even if he happens not to be driving that vehicle]). The latish (d. 2019) journalist and television
personality Clive James once said something to the effect of “Before you start
making fun of Los Angeles, you should realize you’re already living in it.”
(I’d like to be able, if only to avoid using the phrase “something to the
effect of” twice on the same page, to quote this quip verbatim, but it does not
turn up in any of the half-dozen “Clive James Quotes” lists in which I have
just searched for it and in one of which I almost certainly originally [and, as
of now, and only and finally] encountered it, about a decade ago. Perhaps it
has since been “scrubbed” for one of the usual sinister reasons.) In saying
this, James most likely meant something of the sort that pundits have
historically always meant about Los Angeles whenever they have said something
about it that they fancy is pithy. He most likely meant, namely, that inasmuch
as Los Angeles was the site of Hollywood, and inasmuch as Hollywood was a
“dream factory,” and inasmuch as every last swinging or jiggling appendage of a
person in the Anglosphere was addicted to that factory’s products (namely,
movies and TV shows) and indeed spent the preponderance of his or her time
fantasizing about inhabiting the worlds conjured up in and by those products, that
selfsame every last swinging or jiggling appendage of a person could be said to
be living in those products, and hence, synecdochically in L.A. itself, “in a
certain very real sense.” But what I would <i>like</i>
to believe he meant was that the “lifestyle” (itself a quintessentially
southern-Californian word, <i>nicht</i>?)
classically associated with L.A.—a “lifestyle” dominated on the one hand by
long commutes along multi-lane, dual-carriageway, limited-access roads while
seated behind the wheel of one’s own car; and on the other by shopping binges
in spacious air-conditioned indoor environments surrounded by acres of parking
space—had become so pervasive in the Anglosphere that the average non-Angelenan
would have been hard-pressed to distinguish the manner in or extent to which
his mode of existence essentially differed from that of his typical Angelenan
contemporary. I would like to believe he meant this because it is far less naff
than the usual dollop of pundit’s pseudo-pith and also quite true. Of course to
assert that it is true is not to deny that to this day there are millions of
people in the Anglosphere who are <i>not</i>
living the classic L.A. “lifestyle”—who spend little or no time driving on
U.S.-Interstate-type roads or shopping in gigantic shopping malls. Indeed for a
quarter-century that ended only three years ago, the quarter-century when he
resided in Baltimore, the present writer lived a “lifestyle” that could have
been made less L.A.-like only if he had joined the Amish. Throughout that
quarter-century the present writer walked or took public transportation to
virtually every destination and purchased almost everything for his everyday
use from small independent retail establishments sited within a few miles of
his abode. But at no point in that quarter-century could the present writer
escape the sense of being a failure in the abovementioned Thatcherian sense—or,
perhaps, not so much a failure as a fish out of water or dinosaur (or, yes, an
extinct fish out of water), because although he was all the while making ends
meet (and meat) he was all the while surrounded by evidences that almost
everyone else even in his immediate propinquity was living the L.A.-like
lifestyle, by privately owned-and-driven cars whizzing past him en route to the
outermost suburbs, by office and barroom chit-chat on the latest bargains at
so-called big-box stores that they could get to within minutes. And even though
my neighborhood of residence was a densely built-up area that made full-time
pedestrian living quite convenient, I could not have said the same of Baltimore
as a whole (and by “Baltimore as a whole” I do not mean the massive five or
six-county Baltimore metropolitan area but the tiny eighty-square-mile
land-patch constituted by Baltimore City itself); for I had only to wander a
quarter of a mile outside that neighborhood’s confines to find myself in much
more lightly developed precincts. And within a mile-and-a-half of those
precincts there was a dual-carriageway street or road called <i>the Alameda</i>. Whether the Baltimorean
Alameda was named after Alameda street in Los Angeles is unknown to me;
certainly, according to the online reference source of first resort, that
Angelenan street is old enough to have served as a not merely coincidental
namesake of the Baltimorean one, for it dates from the 1820s, when all the land
eventually traversed by the Baltimorean Alameda lay well beyond the city limits
and presumably consisted of a mixture of farmsteads and woodlands. And in any
case—and perhaps of much more material significance here than any appeal to
chronology or nomenclatural genealogy—the first time I watched an episode of <i>ILYK</i> from beginning to end and found
myself being speedily guided along a tree-lined dual-carriageway street in its
opening credits, I immediately suspected I was watching the wrong show, or that
<i>ILYK</i> was, contrary to my
recollection, set in Baltimore as well as in Los Angeles, for that street so
closely resembled the Baltimorean Alameda that I knew quite well from several
(if only several) bus trips to the shopping mall in suburban Towson and
numerous cab rides to the houses of friends residing in less centrally situated
neighborhoods of the city than my own, that I could not help mistaking it for
the genuine article. But why should that
stretch of street or roadage or any other randomly selected bit of Los Angeles <i>not</i> have put me in mind of Baltimore
given that for all its reputation “as one big suburb,” according to the online
reference source of first resort, in the year 2000 Los Angeles had a population
density of about 7,800 people per square mile or only a few hundred fewer
people per square mile than Baltimore in that year (and a few hundred <i>more</i> people per square mile than Baltimore
when I left it, in 2020)? Basically, the entire <i>tableau reçu</i> of Los Angeles as “one big suburb,” at least by the
standards of American urban geography, is and always has been a crock. To be
sure, if one defines ease of survival within a given delimited area according
to the ability to get from any given point A to any given point B within that area,
it is harder to survive as a pedestrian in Los Angeles than in most other
American cities, but that is because Los Angeles occupies a much larger
geographical footprint than those cities, not because it is less urban in
geographical consistency. In point of fact, given that Los Angeles is
appreciably <i>more</i> densely built up
than the average American city, <i>caeteris
paribus</i> it is appreciably <i>easier</i>
to survive as a pedestrian there, given that greater population density tends
to correlate, as they say, with closer proximity to commercial real estate—to
places at or in which one may sell one’s labor and purchase essential
provisions. Of course there is one—and really only one—American city that is so
much more densely built up and populated than Los Angeles that in its most
densely built-up neighborhoods it is rather more convenient than inconvenient
to a be a more-or-less full-time pedestrian (although of course even in these
neighborhoods anyone who can afford to do so will keep a car for vacations and
occasional day-trips to the suburbs), namely, New York; and such being the
case, <i>ILYK</i>’s episode centering on the
full-time pedestrian might have been redeemed had it been recast as an episode
satirizing her as an anomaly not vis-à-vis Los Angeles but vis-à-vis the United
States <i>en bloc</i> (perchance, further, as such an anomaly whom
Arthur managed to lure away from Robbie by dint of his greater ability to
“bond” with her merely in virtue of his greater experience as a full-time
pedestrian in consequence of his longtime residence in NYC). And indeed, the
New York of the late 1990s differed from the rest of the United States
materially enough that (although even here, what with the vein in question’s
having been heavily mined for decades, the naffness quotient is very high) a
fair proportion of <i>ILYK</i>’s
Arthur-mediated digs at L.A. and tributes to New York hit the mark. But as the
historically situated character of the immediately preceding sentence
intimates, these digs and tributes are best considered in the context of a
discussion of the abovementioned virtuous ways in which <i>ILYK</i> is “very much a product of its time,” to which discussion I
now proceed. First and very probably most, one notes (or at least I have noted
or noticed) the clothes worn by the male three-fifths of the <i>comediae personae</i>. Robbie favors
sporty-preppy long-sleeved button-down shirts of subdued solid dark hue (or one
of the subdued tartan patterns associated with flannel) worn unbuttoned and
untucked over tucked-in white undershirts and straight-legged lightly
stonewashed jeans held up with leather rope-belts. Shrug’s wardrobe is a
striking but ultimately subtle variation on Robbie’s: solid bright-hued
(electric blue seems to be his preferred color) long-sleeved non-button-collar Continental-cut
shirts worn buttoned up and untucked over khaki chino slacks. I own I have no
recollection of either man’s shoes. Perhaps they were not seen often enough in
the frame to stick in my mind. I find myself reflexively inclined to paste
Timberlane-type hiking boots onto Robbie and low-key Nike-type running shoes
onto Shrug, but if this impulse arises from memory, that memory is an
“unconscious” one. The style comprised by these two wardrobes is quite familiar
to me in an almost cloyingly <i>gemütlich</i>
sort of way, and how could it not be, given that barring the rope belts and the
imaginary shoes it is virtually indistinguishable from my own sartorial habitus
in my leisure hours of the 90s and indeed only slightly distinguishable from my
leisure-hour sartorial habitus today—distinguishable therefrom, that is,
inasmuch as I never wear jeans now and always tuck my shirt in before leaving
my abode? And yet these men are presented to us as leading lights of Los
Angeles’s <i>beau monde</i> such as it
was—multi-millionaires if not semi-billionaires who live in palatial mansions
and rub elbows and shoulders with movie stars, whereas I have always been a
social and financial nonentity. Does it not “say something,” as they say, about
the very late 1990s that a television sitcom produced and set in that micro-epoch
could present the masculine sartorial habitus of its ruling elite as one
attainable by a man of far less than modest means and station? Arthur’s wardrobe is unsurprisingly set off
from Robbie and Shrug’s: as the wardrobe of a New Yorker it is obviously meant
to seem more formal than theirs and to exude an aura of greater sophistication.
And yet it is not all <i>that</i> different,
the only garment (apologies for the lowercase echo of the character’s surname
[whose symbolic significance continues to elude me, for if à la Joseph Surface’s
surname it were meant to signify that he is shallow and superficial, that he is
all “trappings and suits” and has nothing “within that passes show,” would not
this signification undermine the show’s critique of Los Angeles as the world
capital of depthlessness?] but it really can’t be helped) that is manifestly
absent from that of the two other men is his sport coat or blazer, which is
indeed conspicuous by its ubiquity irrespective of social setting, at least in
the early episodes. But it is not an insufferably super-preppy navy-blue blazer
with brass buttons but rather a comparatively egalitarian one with a subdued
hound’s tooth pattern, a blazer that a Midwestern public high-school math
teacher of the time would not have found too snooty for the classroom; and he
never wears this blazer with a tie but rather always over an open-collared shirt,
and the shirt in each case is impossible to distinguish from one of Robbie’s
sedater ones. And while he always tucks this shirt in, he tucks it into jeans
that are likewise indistinguishable from Robbie’s. And to be sure, while his
shoes are always black lace-up dress brogues (is it merely accidental that I
remember his shoes and not the other men’s, or did the “creators” or directors
go out of their way to give them prominence?), they are shoes of a make and
style that I have been wearing for thirty years despite having not had more than
a minuscule shoe budget at my disposal at any point in the past three-tenths of
a century. To specify what exactly three men of the same age and circumstances
would wear in the actual world of 2023 is difficult for the present writer for
reasons that he in turn has difficulty specifying. He conjectures that one of
these reasons is the fuzziness or patchiness of his acquaintance with the
couture of his slightly younger male contemporaries owing partly in turn to his
tenacious adherence (to the admittedly woefully inadequate extent made possible
by today’s clothing retailers) to the sartorial habitus of his youth; and that
another of them is his suspicion that men who are now both as old as Robbie,
Shrug, and Arthur were then (or still are now in the timeless world of
“fiction”) and are actually living in circumstances even roughly analogous to
the ones in which they were (or still are) living do not now exist in
statistically significant numbers. In any case, whether on any reliable
empirical foundation or not, he can at least say that he at least initially imagines
one such man wearing a narrow-lapeled two-button solid-gray two-piece business suit
at least three sizes too small for him over an open-collared white dress shirt
with its top three buttons unbuttoned (and no undershirt underneath) and another
such man in a short-sleeved untucked button-up shirt that is at least three
sizes two large for him, a shirt that is indistinguishable in cut from the type
called Hawaiian but patterned in an entirely different but no less loud or
off-putting way, over a pair of taper-legged jeans so tight-fitting that one
can almost see the gooseflesh of the wearer’s scrotum through them. But on
further exertion of his imaginative faculty, he finds himself picturing—and picturing
with a degree of conviction that meets but does not exceed that of the previous
pair of images—any such man as togged out in a dark gray so-called hoodie (more
specifically one discolored by stains of uncertain provenance, stains that may
as likely have been caused by a fresh outpouring of sweat as by an ancient
outpouring of pasta sauce) and a pair of knee-length so-called gym shorts so
close and yet so distant in hue to and from that of the hoodie that one can be
certain that no thought has been given to the coordination of the two garments
(apologies again for the lowercase namesake), that each of them was selected
entirely at hazard from a jumble of identically genred garments, most likely directly
from the laundry basket (or even moster likely, dirty-clothes hamper). In
short, whereas the outfits of all the men of <i>ILYK</i> were and are signalized by a combination of grace and comfort,
I picture these latter-day quasi-analogous outfits as ensembles that at their
very best, as in the case of the business suit, have their smattering of grace
nearly fatally undermined by their manifest uncomfortableness and at their
worst, as in the case of the hoodie-and-shorts pairing, have utterly sacrificed
grace to comfort. The attentive reader will have noticed that unlike in my
description of the outfits of the men of <i>ILYK</i>,
I have not differentiated any of these conjectural outfits by locale, that I
have not assigned any one or two of them to Los Angeles and the other one or
two to New York, and this is because I cannot conceive of any of them as more
characteristic of either city than of the other. I suppose one might be more
inclined to think of the business suit as a smidge more <i>new-yorkais</i> than the others simply in virtue of its genre’s intrinsic
heightened formality, but if one does, I do not share one’s inclination inasmuch
as I associate such a business suit most closely with musclebound sportscasters
and tend to think of sportscasters as provincial louts, and while the shirt of
the middle outfit certainly seems more L.A.-ish in virtue of its
quasi-Hawaiian-ness, the tight jeans thereof are decidedly reminiscent of the
original New York punk milieu of the mid-to-late 1970s. And of course, the
gym-going or jogging outfit is specifically evocative of neither city simply
because gym-going and jogging are equally common and popular in both of them. Assuming
that these three outfit-images have arisen out of and atop at least <i>some</i> reliable-<i>ish</i> empirical foundation, one might draw some valid and potentially
non-naff inferences from them, and I intend to draw just such inferences –but
only once I have begun binding together sheaves of inferences of parallel
purport from certain entities that have yet to enter the scene of my argument. At
the moment I am obliged to invite onto that selfsame scene a pair of those
certain entities—viz., the sartorial habituses of the female two-fifths of the <i>comediae personae</i> of <i>ILYK</i>. For after all, merely in asserting
as I have done that the clothes worn by the male three-fifths of the <i>comediae personae</i> number among the virtuous ways in which <i>ILYK </i>is “very much a product of its
time” I have ungallantly and therefore provocatively implied that the sartorial
habituses of the female two-fifths thereof do not number among those virtuous
ways (or, indeed any other virtuous ways, for I have already made plain that I
think that in the ways in which <i>ILYK </i>is
throwbackish it is not virtuous, thus precluding the possibility of Jennifer and
Lauren’s being togged out in Empire dresses or shirtwaists and shoe-length
skirts). But the provoked gentlemen (for I scorn to think that my male
empirical readers would be so ungallant as to let the female ones defend the
honor of their sex themselves!) may find themselves thinking twice about
slapping me about the face with their gloves and sending for their seconds once
I have explicated my implication, for the truth is that while I do not regard
Jennifer and Lauren’s ways of dressing as downright virtuous I am far from
thinking these ways downright vicious, and indeed, I would go so far as to say
that I at least regard them as comparatively virtuous, as better ways of
dressing than one would see in the leading ladies of a sitcom made today (if,
that is, one qua <i>nom de guerre</i> for
“I” had ever clapped eyes on a sitcom made in 2023, for I am not sure if I have
seen a sitcom more recently produced than the first season of <i>Miranda</i>, which must date from the late
twenty-oughties at the earliest). It’s
just that these <i>habitus habituum</i> <i>mulierum</i> don’t prompt one (or at least
[not] me) to shout aloud at the screen, “You just don’t see women dressing that
way any more!” in aghast admiration as did, for instance, Geena Davis’s outfits
in David Cronenberg’s version of <i>The Fly</i>
when I saw that film for the very first time in about 2019. Jennifer Grey’s
outfits always simply seem natural in a relatively timeless way for the
relatively timeless type she embodies—viz., the woman of easy virtue who takes
especial pains to preserve her “girlish figure” and generally look as
immediately appealing to men as possible. And lest anyone find this
characterization especially harshly “sexist” or “misogynistic,” I must point
out that it is repeatedly seconded by Jennifer herself at scads of points throughout
the series (and lest one demur that here Jennifer is merely ventriloquizing the
“sexism” or “misogyny” of the show’s writers, I must point out that <i>ILYK</i>’s most prominent writer was <i>Seinfeld</i>’s
Carol Leifer). She is always going out of her way to mention how frequently or
recently she has slept with this or that dude. In this respect, as mentioned
above, she is very much like <i>Seinfeld</i>’s
Elaine, but she is not <i>exactly </i>like
her therein, for Elaine was always at least nominally “dating” her
coition-partners and therefore not averse at least to shacking up with them
with them at least in principle (and indeed perhaps even in practice in at
least one case, that of David Putty), whereas Jennifer makes no bones whatsoever
about regarding coition as a contact sport played in a succession of pickup
games with first-time partners-cum-opponents. (To some extent this unapologetic
promiscuity can be chalked up to her métier as an actress with its institution
of the so-called casting couch, but only to a very limited extent, as a
significantly high proportion of these partners-cum-opponents, including
Robbie, hail from outside “the industry.”) Accordingly, she is on the whole
much more flashily and skimpily attired than Elaine, favoring bright-hued
short-sleeved shirts or blouses worn above skirts short enough barely to skirt
the top of an entirely bare kneecap-to-ankle stretch terminating at the
groundward end in less-than-entirely sensible shoes (i.e., pumps or heels). It
isn’t a look that I find particularly appealing, but I certainly wouldn’t kick
it (let alone the woman displaying it) out of bed for eating crackers, as they
say. As for Lauren, she is almost perpetually clad in a slightly more formal
and ocularly ingratiating version of the abovementioned gym-cum-jogging outfit—viz.,
a light-hued hoodie and full-length light-hued sweatpants that unlike those of
the abovementioned gym-cum-jogging outfit do always seem to be well matched
with their upper body-covering complement. Perhaps not quite needless to say, despite
its aesthetic superiority to its masculine counterpart of 2023, I don’t care
for this outfit at all, but I appreciate its diagetic plausibility and utility:
I understand that it is more or less exactly the sort of outfit one would
expect a combination masseuse-and-process server of the micro-epoch to wear.
And in truth, Laurel-stroke-A.J. is so insuperably pretty, so indisputably one
of those women who would look good in more-than-figuratively <i>anything</i> (gallantry precludes my
interjection of the boilerplate masculine follow-up to the immediately
preceding clause) that one can’t in good faith complain about the outfit; it
certainly would have been <i>nice</i> to see
her togged out in a more elegant and more emphatically feminine ensemble, but
one never finds oneself thinking of her two-piece tracksuit along lines even
remotely comparable to those along which Kramer thought of Audrey’s nose. And
of course it must be said in favor of an outfit so unrevealing, so baggy and
comprehensive, that it at least gives the viewer no cause to impugn Laurel’s
modesty, a virtue that she is dramaturgically compelled to preserve in being
the incessant object of the amorous yearnings of Arthur. (At this point I
should perhaps apologize for not having mentioned earlier that <i>ILYK</i> departs quite drastically from <i>Seinfeld</i>’s “no hugs” policy in thus
making the prospect of a sustained liaison between two of its central
characters a central plot-thread. I suppose it is mildly tempting to flag this
as yet another instance of retardataire naffness, but I ultimately prefer to
think of it as a harmless concession to the enormous popularity this
thread-genre had enjoyed in NBC’s sitcom roster since the premiere of <i>Seinfeld</i>, specifically in the Ross and
Rachel-centered will they?/won’t they? subplot in <i>Friends</i> and [even more proto-<i>ILYK</i>ishly]
Niles’s long-undeclared enamorment with Daphne in <i>Frasier</i>. In any case, <i>ILYK</i>’s larger [i.e., than <i>Seinfeld’</i>s] <i>comediae personae</i> still left plenty of room for
non-meta-amorously-laden intra-cast banter, and the short lifespan of <i>ILYK</i> mercifully spared its writers the
ever-embarrassing problem of what to do with prospective amours when they
congeal into “relationships,” and its viewers the pain of sitting through its
version of the ever-unsatisfactory attempt to resolve this problem.) And in connection with this modesty, even in
the midst of our deprecation of the athleisureliness of Laurel’s wardrobe as a
wardrobe-in-itself—as a wardrobe presented for wearing not by insuperably
pretty women alone but by women of all degrees of attractiveness—we must be
thankful that a certain garment of present-day feminine atheleisurewear was not
yet available to her, or if materially available to her, then decidedly forbidden
to her by the late 90s’ standards of decency, as categorically forbidden
thereby, indeed, as any garment more revealing than the birthday suit itself. I am referring, of course, to so-called yoga
pants (or, in grammatically strict terms, the pair of yoga pants); otherwise
known as leggings (or, in grammatically strict terms, the pair of leggings).
For in virtue of their super-tight form-fitting properties, and their
consequent revelation of the minutest and most intimate contours of the
feminine form, together with their (at least to the present writer’s mind)
incomprehensible embracement by women of all walks of life and social strata, Yoga
pants have obliterated the distinction between modesty and immodesty in feminine
couture by rendering flagrant immodesty universal and ubiquitous. Not that
there are not still Occidental women who do not at least occasionally “dress
up” in a way that is recognizably continuous with the formal modes of earlier
epochs (although such women almost certainly constitute a smaller proportion of
the female Occidental population than they did a quarter-century ago and, as
with the abovementioned ill-fitting present-day men’s business suit, the present
modes are markedly aesthetically inferior to their predecessors) but that even
the up-dressing of these women is nullified qua index of modesty by their unselfconscious
self-presentation in Yoga pants in almost every informal public setting. Nobody
who has seen a woman repeatedly in Yoga pants at the supermarket or shopping
mall is likely to be intimidated by the sight of her in an evening dress or
skirt suit. (To be sure, the bikini had long since greatly undermined the
semiotic efficacy of more female formal jib-cuts, but the confinement of beach
vacations to a tiny fraction of the calendar year and to places far from the
vacationers’ regular abodes had imparted a mitigating aura of the carnivalesque
to bikini-wearing.) And the longer Yoga pants enjoy universal acceptance as
feminine casualwear, the lesser the likelihood that any empirical viewer of <i>IYLK</i> apart from the present writer
(perhaps along with the former JamesCanavanWagner, if he has not already
forgotten that he ever uploaded his <i>IYLK</i>
air checks to the Chewb) will be able to appreciate the semiotic valences of
Lauren’s wardrobe vis-à-vis Jennifer’s, to understand that Lauren by dressing
the way she dresses is presenting herself as a nice and relatively chaste girl
and Jennifer by dressing the way she dresses is presenting herself as more than
something of a good-time girl and floozy. After all, we have probably already
outlived the last person capable of appreciating the semiotic valences of the
outfits worn by characters in movies and TV shows produced on the far side of
the previous meta-sartorial divide, the one separating the “square” 50s from
the “swinging” 60s. In the eyes of everyone younger than these characters’
exact contemporaries (or, to be more ontologically precise, the exact
contemporaries of the actors who played them) the outfits favored by them in
their most casual hours have always seemed semi-formal at casualest because
they are far more formal than any casual outfit worn anywhere but on the set of
a(n) historical drama since ca. 1964, and I strongly suspect that any
present-day viewer of <i>ILYK</i> under the
age of 40 [and indeed many a present-day viewer thereof over that age {for rare
is the oldster who retains his youthful understanding about what is fitting and
natural uncorrupted by the degenerate habits and attitudes of his younger
contemporaries}] will find the outfits favored by its <i>comediae personae</i> (the male and female components thereof alike) far
too formal for present-day relaxed-fitted comfort. And now that I have opened
the worm-can—or, to recast the metaphor in positivity-accenting terms,
monkey-barrel—of disparagement of the 2020s on the sartorial plane, I might as
well plough straight ahead into my itemization of all the points at which <i>ILYK</i> points up the increasing
barbarization of the world since the dawn of the century-cum-millennium. These
points occur so early and often in the show that I fear this essay is doomed to
meet a <i>Tristram Shandy-</i>esque fate—in
other words, abandonment by the author when its subject is still in its
childhood (or, in this case, by strict arithmetical analogy, its fifth or sixth
episode), simply because hundreds of pages of material will have been produced
by then and proceeding any further would wear out the author’s patience along
with the reader’s. Indeed, we have already encountered the very first of these points
in the abovementioned moment in the pilot’s opening scene when Shrugg flags a
white male middle-aged construction worker as an example of the people who
“make America great.” It goes without saying that such a moment would never be
written, let alone filmed, now for fear—nay, for certainty—that it would be universally
regarded as a so-called dog whistle to Trump supporters, a veritable hypersonic
clarion call to white-supremacist insurrection. In 1999, the moment worked—at
least for the roughly double-dozen people involved in its production—because in
1999 any white-male construction worker at work would have been
interpellated—and this by any American regardless of his race, sex, etc.—first
and foremost not as a white male but as a construction worker, and because
“making America great” would have been understood to mean making America
universally admired for universally admirable attributes (including
well-maintained sidewalks and their subterranean infrastructure kept in good
repair with the indispensable aid of capably wielded jackhammers), not purging
it of the entire non-white portion of its population. The very next scene
featuring Shrugg and Robbie (this being the third scene of the show, the
intervening one being the airplane interior-set one that introduces Arthur and
Lauren) lobs another now-unfilmable moment at the viewer: Robbie asks Shrugg,
“If you could go back in time, would you rather go back to the invasion of
Normandy or Normandy Street and [some intersecting street whose name escapes
me] during the 1992 Rodney King riots?” (The framing of the question is
throwbackish to exactly the same short but noticeable temporal extent as the
abovementioned car-chase centered episode, recalling as it does the improvised
mini-quizzes in such mid-90s oh-so-Gen-X media productions as <i>Reality Bites, Kicking and Screaming, </i>and
the “Ginger-or Maryanne?” Budweiser commercial.) Shrugg unhesitatingly replies,
“The invasion of Normandy.” When Robbie understandably evinces skepticism, what
with Normandy Beach during the allied invasion having been a <i>literal</i> war zone and Normandy &
Whatever Streets during the 1992 riots having been a merely figurative one,
Shrugg explains: “Black people just don’t like me.” Here is another moment in which there is
“much nature” in the Johnsonian sense: would it not be entirely reasonable for
a white person in 1999 or 1992, or indeed in any other year of American history
to date, to assume that black people generally dislike him? And such being the
case, would it not be entirely rational in that white person to avoid the scene
of a riot motivated by resentment of certain white people’s treatment of a
certain black person? But of course received opinion of 2023 paradoxically
cries “Amen!” to the first of these rhetorical questions while interjecting “Whoa, whoa,
whoa!” with both palms raised against the second. Of course, the <i>bienpensant</i> of the present <i>anno domini</i> concedes, black people
dislike white people, and have every legitim—, erm, or rather <i>just</i>, reason to dislike them, what with
the United States’ having been an essentially and exhaustively white
supremacist polity <i>ab initio</i>, but (so
this <i>bienpensant</i> continues) that
dislike ought by no means to be adduced by a white person as grounds for his
declining to visit the scene of the Rodney King riots: first, because those
riots were the most notable precursor to the George Floyd Riots of 2020, the
most important event in American history, and King a sort of King David to
Floyd’s Christ, such that any threat to the perdurance of one’s biological
existence posed by one’s presence at that scene perforce must cut a very
miserable figure indeed alongside the privilege of being present on such sacred
ground at such a holy moment; second, because precisely because ([sic] on the
repetition of <i>because</i>) the United States
has always been a white supremacist polity, any white person should positively
welcome any opportunity to sacrifice the perdurance of his biological existence
to righteous black anger. Then no sooner has Grey made her first appearance
than she is announcing her intention to write a “relationship”-help book for
gay men entitled <i>Men Are from Mars, Men
Are from Mars </i>(i.e., in pointed contrast to the 1992 bestselling
“relationship”-help book for heterosexual couples, <i>Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus</i>). Here again we have a
“nature”-oozing moment, for the title of the counterfactual book points up an
(even then) all-too-infrequently acknowledged attribute of homosexual couples
that makes them qualitatively different from heterosexual couples–viz., their
constitution by<i> persons of identical sex</i>.
<i>Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus</i>
argued banally but not untruthfully that both the conflict and mystery of
heterosexual coupledom arise from the fact that men and women think
differently. Accordingly, the title <i>Men
Are from Mars, Men Are from Mars</i> ineluctably implies, no more untruthfully
and much less banally, that homosexual couples are perforce defective in both
conflict and mystery—and hence perforce less interesting than heterosexual
couples—because people of the same sex think alike. Such an implication is of
course anathema today because <i>bienpensant</i>
received opinion now holds that conventional heterosexuality is the least
interesting form of eroticism and that the less like conventional heterosexuality
a given erotic proclivity is the more interesting it is. But the implication works in the “universe” of
<i>ILYK </i>because that “universe” is
unabashedly “heteronormative.” “Not that,” in <i>Seinfeld</i>ian parlance, it holds “that there’s anything wrong with”
homosexuality, but that like <i>Seinfeld </i>it
makes no bones about centering on a group of people who are exclusively
interested in coiting with members (in two or more senses!) of the opposite sex
and feel no pressure to make any bones about the exclusivity of this interest.
Indeed, as near as I can recall it overshoots (!) the <i>Seinfeld</i>ian “heteronormative” remit in not even featuring an
episode with a single openly gay character (for <i>Seinfeld</i> does after all feature that one episode in which Jerry is
frowardly offended at not being taken for an openly gay man’s paramour). In
almost every episode of <i>ILYK</i>,
homosexuality, to say nothing of even more niche sexual proclivities, is as
little in evidence as in an episode of <i>Leave
It to Beaver</i> or <i>The Dick Van Dyke</i>
<i>Show</i>. The sole exception that I can
think of apart from the pilot is some episode about halfway through the second
season (so much for treating of the barbarization up-pointing moments in
sequential order) when Robbie and Arthur briefly debate whether the degree of
flirtatious attention they have received from gay men correlates positively or
negatively with their chances of “scoring” with women. And at about the same
late point in the series homosexuality is obliquely glanced at in a certain
jocular fashion, but so obliquely and jocularly that I would not even have
glanced at this at-glancing at all, however obliquely or jocularly, if it did
not point up the barbarization of 21<sup>st</sup>-century life in relation to a
different (if related) phenomenon—viz., so-called sexual harassment. At this
moment Arthur, having reluctantly accepted a position as a book critic at a
newspaper (I believe it is even mentioned by name as <i>The Los Angeles Times </i>[ILYK’s prevailingly Angelophobic <i>Schaugeist</i> virtually enjoined it to bid
defiance to anyone who would have sensibly demurred that the <i>LAT </i>was a serious organ of journalism
and “arguably” even superior to the <i>NYT</i>
in certain departments]), is required to purchase “sexual harassment insurance”
against the possibility of his making unwanted amorous overtures toward his
secretary, and in order to assess his risk for the behavior for the purpose of
setting his premium, the insurance company sends a conspicuously attractive
female agent (played by Mimi Rogers) to his house (or, rather, Robbie’s house,
where he is still residing) to comport herself towards him in a calculatedly
arousing manner. When he reacts by unambiguously making a pass at her, the
company concludes that he is too high a risk to be insured at all. And so
instead of assigning to Arthur the attractive young woman who had been
tentatively selected for him, the paper saddles him with a weedy, dweeby, skittish
young male assistant. Predictably if amusingly enough, within a few days of
starting to work for him, the young man successfully accuses Arthur of sexual
harassment on the basis of the briefest of instants of involuntary physical
contact. Of course this episode is a veritable flowchart of a currently
impracticable dramaturgical entity, not one of whose essential components would
have been mooted let alone approved in a writing room of 2023. Merely in
centering on sexual harassment the episode unpardonably makes light of an
experience now generally understood to be only slightly less traumatic than fully
penetrative rape; in presenting the young man’s accusation as well-nigh more
than figuratively preposterous it both anticipatively travesties the
commandment to <i>believe all women </i>and
(i.e., because to imply that it is absurd corollarily implies that same-sex
attraction is rare) reaffirms the show’s heteronormative orientation; and in
presenting the accuser as sniveling and cowardly it champions “toxic
masculinity” by implying that men should be able to stand up for themselves in
handling their points of contention with other men. An episode featuring a cop
show starring Siamese twins, one of whom charms Lauren into going on a date
with him and consequently renders his brother a third wheel in a materially
more-nearly-literal-than usual sense, would of course now receive an instant
and un-overridable-veto from the disability-cum-accessibility lobby (even if
the envelope pushed by this conceit is ultimately withdrawn back into with
imperturbable snugness when it turns out that the twins are actually two fully
freestanding and two-armed fellows under their shared shirt). An episode in
which Jennifer (with a typically hyper-bemused Shrug in tow) zealously attends
a candlelight vigil for a death-row inmate only to snuff out her taper when her
fancy is caught by a hunky clean-cut man (today he would be called a “chad”) participating
in a sympatric pro-death penalty demonstration naturally reminds one that <i>ILYK</i> hails from the by-now-proverbially
less divided pre-blue states-versus-red states America, when people of even the
most stridently divergent political outlooks could still be not only friends
but even “friends with benefits” [not that that phrase was yet current then].
But no sooner had I been reminded of the ante-rubracerulean provenance of this episode
and begun to look forward to immersing myself in a long warm bath of nostalgia
for the <i>deuxième fin de siècle</i> (a
bath whose aromatic salts naturally would have been heavily sourced from other
moments in <i>ILYK </i>that I have
approvingly remarked on in the preceding pages of this essay) than I realized
that for all its preferability to anything still makeable, <i>ILYK</i> fairly bristled with moments that pointed up certain
unwholesome continuities between the America of the very-late late 1990s and America
of the very-late early 2020s; of moments at which it became evident that in
many ways and registers, America of the very-late 1990s was already shaping up
to become the America of, let us say, the early-late 20-teens-and-since (and I
must emphasize that by the America of ca.-2016 onwards I mean an America that
was [and is] bad in a way that is <i>specifically
characteristic</i> of America of ca.-2016 onwards; for, for all my comparative
nostalgia for it as evinced in the immediately preceding pages, by my
ultra-reactionary standards very-late-1990s America was or were [even as I was
living in it] a fly-blown cesspit even in the most specific and characteristic
of its aspects in which it had least steeply declined from the America of
earlier micro-epochs). For example, in
the abovementioned episode featuring the Siamese twins-starring cop show, on
taking in the opening credits of the program, Arthur exasperatedly remarks,
“Great: you [i.e., you people who make television-drama programs] can’t manage
to show blacks, Hispanics, or Asians, but you’ve got room for Siamese twins.”
This is a decidedly bemusing line because taken at face value it cannot but quite
erroneously imply that blacks, Hispanics, and Asians were completely absent
from American television screens in the
very late 1990s and least debatably imply that this absence in itself and on its
own constituted a lack of something absolutely indispensable to good
television—or perhaps, rather, and what comes to the same thing (i.e., inasmuch
as Arthur’s point of view is implicitly presented as normative here), a lack of
something indispensable to the idea of good television harbored by Arthur Garment
qua upper-middle-class Jewish New Yorker whose favorite author was John Updike
(for in a certain episode Arthur mentions that Mr. Updike is his favorite
author). In reality, of course, such a person as Arthur Garment’s idea of good
television would have been <i>Seinfeld </i>(which
Arthur Garment himself could have watched, at least in reruns, for in a certain
episode of <i>ILYK </i>Larry David is
mentioned by name as the co-creator of <i>Seinfeld</i>),
a show with no “people of color” in its <i>comediae
personae</i>. Of course <i>Seinfeld</i> had
scads of “people of color” in its supporting cast, and even a few (e.g., the
lawyer Jackie Chiles, George’s immediate superior in the Yankees hierarchy, Mr.
Morgan [did he even have a first name?] and the Pakistani restaurateur whose
entire name escapes me [at this moment I hear in my mind’s ear the “Soup Nazi”
saying “You’re pushing your luck little man!”]) in its cast of returning
supporting characters, but this peripheral presence presumably retrospectively
smacked of “tokenism” in the eyes (or against the bottom) of <i>ILYK</i>’s ex-<i>Seinfeldian</i> writers, who by then (but <i>only</i> then) probably felt guilty about working on yet <i>another</i> show with an all-white <i>comediae personae</i>. So in Arthur’s
complaint we see an early <i>affichage </i>of
one of the cardinal articles (if not <i>the</i>
cardinal article) of the early twenty-first-century Hollywood producer’s
credo—viz., that the realistic (<i>sic</i>
on the absence of inverted commas) depiction of white people hanging out mainly
with other white people in any setting is in itself “racist” however amply
nonwhites may be represented in other tableaux, an article whose effectuation
has resulted in the manifestly unrealistic (<i>sic</i>
again on the absence of quotation marks) depiction of every non-“legacy”
amorous couple (i.e., any such couple old enough to have been already in
existence before the dawn of the millennium [say, Ross and Rachel from <i>Friends</i> as reunited in some
counterfactual proper diagesis-resuscitating reunion show as against the mere
cast-reuniting <i>Friends </i>reunion show
that was actually produced back in ’21 or ’22]) in every movie, TV show, and
commercial as either all-BIPOC or interracial. (In this complaint,
incidentally, we also see an early manifestation of another lamentable trend in
twenty-first-century cinema and television—viz., galloping
amnesia-cum-obtuseness-cum-po-facedness in relation to phenomena addressed
earlier with the exactly appropriate proportions of perceptiveness and humor. For
<i>Seinfeld</i> had already adequately dealt
with white guilt about mere whiteness qua whiteness in that episode in which
Elaine continues dating a man just because she thinks he is black while he
continues dating her just because he thinks she is Hispanic, and in which when
they simultaneously discover they are both “just white,” Elaine gamely proposes
a visit to the then-excellent [for I
have an all-leather belt that I purchased thereat in 1996 and that continues to
do me yeoman’s {if not yo man’s}] service] if admittedly undeniably “soul”-less
clothier The Gap.) Moreover, the stilted, census-box-ticking wording of
Arthur’s plaint “blacks, Hispanics, or Asians” anticipates a complementary (and
even more bizarre) article of the credo—viz., that the mere fact of not being
white constitutes a kind of social crazy-glue uniting all “BIPOC”s in
more-than-figurative indissoluble commensality; although this article had probably
already been more graphically presaged by a scene from the sitcom <i>News Radio</i> (I say probably not because I
am in any doubt as to the greater graphicity of <i>News Radio</i>’s presaging but because <i>News Radio</i>’s original run overlapped with that of <i>ILYK</i> by five-and-three-sevenths weeks—the
period comprising March 24, 1999 [the airdate of the last episode of <i>News Radio</i>] and May 4, 1999 [the airdate
of the first episode of <i>ILYK</i>]—and as
I have only seen the presaging scene in a now-unlocatable Cheewbial montage of <i>NR</i> scenes, I don’t know at which point
in <i>NR</i>’s run it aired (although the
gimmicky character of the about-to-be-mentioned governing conceit certainly
suggests a post “shark-jumping” date). <i>News Radio</i>, as its name suggests but
does not necessarily promise, was set in or at a radio station, and the presaging
scene occurs in an episode whose governing conceit consists in affording the
reader a glimpse of each of the disaffected station employees’ fantasies of the
station as they would like to see it constituted, and the fantasy of the
station’s only black employee, its female secretary, centers on the break room,
in which at lunchtime she is joined by another black person, an east-Asian
person, a Muslim man (we know he’s a Muslim because she addresses him as
“Mohammed” [whence my specification of his sex {for I have semi-forgotten that
of the other three}]), and an Hispanic person, who all commiserate with her on
finally being able to get away from the white folks if only for a few blissful
minutes. To be sure, I find it easy enough to believe that a black woman in
that secretary’s position would have felt alienated in being surrounded
entirely by white people during her work day and yearn for at least a few of
them to be replaced with black people (even if I find it extremely hard to
believe that I would ever feel particularly un-alienated in being surrounded
entirely by other white people during mine, seeing as how I worked for more
than twenty years in an extremely “diverse” office environment and the coworkers
I found most off-putting were certain fellow-whiteys who would perversely congregate
near my cubicle for water-cooler chinwags about the latest installment of <i>Game of Thrones</i> even though an actual
water cooler stood a mere twenty paces from me). But I find the notion that a
congeries of representatives of non-black non-white ethnicities would have pleased
such a woman as much as an equal number of members of her own “community” downright
laughable—and so will anyone who has spent a week in any part of America more
ethnically heterogeneous than mid-twentieth-century Omaha. But perhaps,
improbable as it might seem, for all the impeccability of the <i>Seinfeld</i>ian credentials of the most
illustrious among them, <i>ILYK</i>’s
writing team did not come to the series with such a minimum quantum of time
spent in such an America-part under their collective belt. Such, at any rate,
is the impression imparted by the treatment accorded to Jesse Jackson in an
episode wherein he, or rather, presumably some actor impersonating him (for, at
the <i>instar</i> of <i>Seinfeld</i>’s presentation of one of its most celebrated recurring
characters, George Steinbrenner, Jackson is only ever seen face-down on
Lauren’s massage table [the device is recycled on at least one other occasion,
and quite a delightfully “edgy” one, the above glanced-at one in which Jennifer
is stalked by Slobodan Milosevic {whose portraying actor is therein concealed
by way of strategically placed shadows}]) figures as one of Lauren’s massage
clients. To be sure, Jackson is not accorded wall-to-wall po-faced reverence à la
the real Stacey Abrams appearing in the role of the president of the galactic
federation in that episode of <i>Star Trek</i>
from a year or two ago: we learn that the entire reason he is in Los Angeles is
to close the deal on a movie about a prospective all-black space mission called
<i>Do the Right Stuff</i>; this is a
flourish that obviously makes light of Jackson’s “civil rights activism” and
unflatteringly affiliates it with Spike Lee’s incendiary cinematic
race-hustling. Still, the tone of the satire directed against Jackson is
jovially Horatian throughout: he good-naturedly exchanges small talk with
Lauren as she kneads his neck, eventually evincing enough “empathy” with her
entire circle to offer kindly “relationship” advice to another member of the <i>comediae personae</i> (Arthur, if I’m not
mistaken) who happens to stop by. And when this by-stopper happens to receive a
telephone call from a third member of the <i>comediae
personae</i> while he’s there, he jocularly but by no means scornfully explains
his presence there by saying something to the effect of, “I’m doing my bit for
civil rights.” In short, the episode gives the viewer every reason to suppose that
the makers of <i>ILYK </i>have swallowed, or
would like to make him believe they have swallowed, Jackson’s self-presentation
as a selfless, disinterested campaigner for the dispossessed H, L, and S; that
they are ignorant or willfully heedless of any part of his multi-decade long
history of sh*t-talking, blarnifying, charlatanry, and chicanery, of the
shameless exploitation of “civil rights” as the flimsiest of screens for
gluttonous self-enrichment and the wanton propagation of barbarity. I cannot but suppose that such naïve
JJ-fellation would not have been in evidence in any sitcom made ten years or
even five years earlier. True, Lorne Michaels let JJ host <i>Saturday Night Live</i> in 1984, but <i>SNL</i>- hosting spots have always been double-edged swords both in
conception and in execution; to be offered one is to be offered an opportunity
not only to strut one’s untested stuff as a thespian but also to make a
thoroughpaced ass of oneself. True, Michaels
himself doubtless supported Jackson’s presidential candidacy in ’84, but the
hosting gig, in postdating the Democrats’ National Convention in which Walter
Mondale was chosen as the party’s nominee, could at best have served as a
consolation prize for his failure to secure the nomination, and Michaels
doubtless would not have dreamt of offering JJ the spot before the
convention—both because his behavior would have been as likely to reduce as to
increase his minuscule chances of receiving the Democratic nomination, and
because the majority of <i>SNL</i>’s
viewers, for all their presumable “liberalness,” could not have shared his
enthusiasm for Jackson and hence would have been bound to resent the
exploitation of <i>SNL</i> as a platform for
the Jackson campaign. After all, JJ’s brazenly anti-Semitic disparagement of
New York City as “Hymietown” at the beginning of the year could not but have
been fresh in their minds, and many of them would not have forgotten his not
yet-ancient tall tale-telling about his whereabouts and actions on the day of
Martin Luther King’s assassination. And JJ certainly did not trick anyone into
regarding him as a conciliatory civil-rights activist à la MLK (or at least,
which comes to the same thing public opinion-wise, MLK as imagined by the mass
of Americans thanks to judicious posthumous sound-biting) as the 80s progressed,
what with his full-throated bellowing of “Hey Ho, Hey Ho, Western Civ has got
to go!” through a bullhorn on the campus of Stanford University in 1987. In short, by the dawn of the 90s, Jesse
Jackson had enjoyed a long and distinguished career of failing to fool anyone
outside his so-called base (and probably even a goodly proportion of people
within that so-called base), a sufficiently long and distinguished one, indeed,
to lead one to take for granted that he would never be vouchsafed the hearty
dose of credulous good will he was destined to receive from and on <i>ILYK</i>. But when I “fast forward” from
pseudo-JJ’s appearance on <i>ILYK </i>to the
early 2020s, I find JJ’s feting therein a relatively mild anticipation of the
reflexively unqualified adulation and credence accorded to the coarsest race-hustlers
today. After all, JJ did at least emerge from the original civil rights
movement, a movement that had enjoyed a reasonably well-founded fund of
credibility; whereas today’s most celebrated ethnically correct denouncers of
“whiteness” are people who were traffickers in manifest untruths <i>ab initio</i>; for example, the “Reverend”
Al Sharpton, a man who divides his schedule more or less evenly between
peremptorily holding forth as a pundit on the flagship shows of the mainstream
news networks and delivering eulogies at the funerals of persons officially
deemed to have been killed by “racism,” first arose to national prominence as
the perpetrator of a racial-rape hoax that made him an object of universal
scorn and ridicule, a byword for shameless race-baiting that bade fair to
outlive Samuel Mudd, Pearl Harbor, and Pee-Wee Herman in point of infamy. That
that byword has instead become as unintelligibly obsolete as “prenzie” is of
course owing to the obliteration of any conceptual distinction between a
race-baiter and the airer of a genuine racial grievance, to the development of
the racial equivalent of “believe all women” from a slogan into a
presupposition. Pseudo-Jesse Jackson’s appearance on <i>ILYK</i> would therefore seem to mark a turning point in the <i>Weltgeist</i> or the moment of the <i>Weltgeist</i>’s first consumption of a sort
of gateway drug leading to the “stronger stuff” that would eventually result in
complete blindness to race-baiting. “True,” <i>ILYK</i>’s
writers may have collectively concluded at the end of lengthily “workshopping”
the inclusion of pseudo-JJ in one of their scripts, “JJ has lied a lot and is
more than a bit of a dick, but his heart must have originally been in the right
place, what with his having been pals with MLK, so let’s not make him look <i>too</i> silly in this episode.”
Twenty-something years later, the show-runners of any sort of network program would
make it their first order of show-running business to hop on the blower to get
in touch with Al Sharpton’s “people” in the ardent hope of recruiting him as an
all-purpose “expert” on the assumption that because he was a black man decrying
racism he must be absolutely right about absolutely everything. And one sees
other evidences of creeping “don’t kick-me-ism” on the meta-racial front in <i>IYLK</i>, evidences that even in the course
of the minuscule life-span of the show white people became appreciably less
comfortable about their relations with black people, and that by the end of
that life-span they had walked a great distance along the eggshell-paved
meta-racial path, that by then they “were in eggshells stepped in so far that
returning were as tedious as to o’er.” The reader will recall Shrug’s admission
in the pilot that black people don’t like him. Towards the end of the second
season the “creators” or show-runners evidently determined that that admission
could not be allowed to risk standing as an implied synecdoche for an inference
both common to white people and not entirely unworthy of sympathy, for in an episode
at this late moment Shrug tenders the admission again to two or three of his
fellow <i>comediae personae</i> apropos of
his having been coldly received by a youngish black man with whom he has briefly
rubbed shoulders, and on asking these other white people for an explanation of
this cold-shoulderdom, he is immediately proffered the usual catalogue of white atrocities qua open-and-shut case for unapologetic
black snubbery—i.e., one of these characters blandly says something to effect
of ,“I would think four hundred years of slavery plus a century of segregation
would be enough to justify it.” So by now Shrug has been condignly reproved for
his “white fragility,” and yet, bizarrely enough, the matter is neither allowed
to drop there nor work its way into the meta-racial comportment of the balance
of the <i>comediae personae</i> as a
“teachable moment,” for by some plot device that now escapes me, Lauren is soon
dating Shrug’s old shoulder-rubber, apparently without the slightest meta
racially-occasioned consciousness on either side of the couple or on the part
of Jennifer, Arthur, or Robbie, and yet Shrug still struggles to ingratiate
himself with the dude in vain. The two of them find that they even share a
peculiar passion that Lauren positively holds in abhorrence—namely, reading
books aloud, and so they come to meet <i>à
deux</i>, for long reading-aloud sessions, but at the end of one of these
sessions (an end that, I believe, coincides with the end of the episode, after
which the black fellow never appears in the show again [yes, yes, yes: just
like the big-boned woman in <i>Taxi</i> {at
this point, the reversions to older sitcom formulas in <i>ILYK</i> are stacking up so deep that it is perhaps time to entertain
the notion that some sort of theory might account for them <i>en bloc</i> }]), the younker, after admitting to Shrug that he’s been
having a heckuva time, shakes his head with a puzzled frown and says, “The
funny thing is, I still don’t like you.” So what the heck is going on here? Why
is Shrug being allowed to serve as the show’s sole scapegoat for “white guilt”?
Why, seemingly, because he is the <i>comediae
personae</i>’s resident weirdo. But is weirdness somehow paradoxically whiter
than the white-breadishness (or, perhaps, rather, white-and rye-breadishness)
embodied by the other characters? No, not in itself, but weirdness <i>is</i> nerdiness-adjacent, and nerd-dom was
the subculture most strongly marked as white in the 1990s, as is attested by 90s-TV’s
rule-proving sole exceptional black nerd, Erkel from <i>Family Matters</i>. But by the same token (!) in the 1990s, nerdiness
had not yet completely “colonized” all forms of literary erudition or “book
learning,” as is evident from the outset in <i>ILYK</i>’s
presentation of Arthur, who, as we have seen, is held forth above all else (apart
from as a neurotic, a Jew, and a New Yorker) as a <i>literary</i> man, a man who reads and aspires to write serious prose.
(When, my fellow miserable inhabitant of the 2020s, was the last time you heard
<i>anybody</i> articulate a disinterested
but intense interest in <i>any</i> body or
system of knowledge, very much including the works of a literary author or the
fashioning of a literary prose style, without preliminarily either flagellating
himself or submitting to flagellation by others for “being a total nerd”?)
Whence, presumably, the plausibility, according to <i>ILYK</i>’s apparent lights, of making Lauren’s new black beau a
bookworm, and further of making him intensely averse to that most “iconically”
black of all team sports, basketball. Such people, while already vanishingly rare by
the very end of the century, are not and never have been analytical chimeras,
for in my sophomore year in high school (i.e. in portions of the years 1987 and
1988), I took a creative writing class alongside a black fellow whose personal
motto, which he repeated with Wimpyesque frequency, was, “If it were not for
baseball, my life would have no meaning.” (Note that the motto itself bespeaks
another stereotype-annihilating trait—an impeccable command of a subjunctive
form <i>chez</i> a member of an
“underclass.”) As a general policy, I both shun and eschew “informatics”-driven
metaphors and conceits even when they are intrinsically fitting—not merely
because they are overused but because their overuse seems only to increase in <i>inverse</i> proportion to the degree that
“informatics” exerts (<i>sic</i> on the singular
form) an influence on the world, at least at the level or “resolution” of the
electronic nuts and bolts that serve as the (driverless!) vehicles of such
tr*pes. (Tr*pe [and I don’t mean <i>tripe</i>]<i> </i>has been “the other T-word” for me ever
since the present micro-epoch’s Wallis Simpson said it in an interview about
two years ago as of this writing [October 29, 2023].) But I shall and will
contravene this policy now because the “informatics”-driven conceit that I have
in mind is not only intrinsically fitting but also “sourced” from a
micro-micro-epoch in “informatics” so distant and superannuated that its
terminology is bound to seem refreshingly quaint even to those old enough and
intensively enough involved in “informatics” at the time to remember it, and a
micro-micro-epoch thereof, withal, that at its later end appositely abuts
against the micro-micro-epoch of <i>ILYN</i>.
The micro-micro-epoch in question is the early-mid-mid-1990s, which commenced
the only period in my life-history in which I have been the owner-operator of
an Apple-branded computer, a period that was still in progress when <i>ILYK</i> debuted and that ended only about
six months before <i>ILYK</i>’s <i>disparation</i> when I chucked aside my Mac
Quadra 605 in favor of a laptop-style so-called PC only because the latter,
being a few years newer, was more powerful in raw processing-cum-storing power
and had been “gifted” to me as a hand-me-down. Not long before this
micro-micro-epoch there had supervened the supposedly biggest modification of
the Mac operating system in its decade-spanning history: the transition from an
operating system called System 6 to one called (surprise, surprise!) System 7. And by the beginning of this micro-epoch, the
sub-version System 7.1 was standard for all new Mac computers. But in between
there had supervened yet another sub-version, System 7.01. System 7.01 had not
been a so-called Beta version of System 7.1 but a full-fledged sub-version of
its own, and yet for some reason it had not been granted the dignity of being itself
styled System 7.1. It was as if the Woz & co. (for Mr. Jobs’s re-takeover
of the company was then but a glimmer in his eye [or perchance Guy Kawasaki’s {horrifying
as it might sound, in the mid-mid-1990s, Guy Kawasaki joke-mongering was a kind
of subcultural Borsch belt within the Mac-using “community”}]) hadn’t been
arseable to admit that they weren’t ready to introduce a new sub-version—and so
for umpteen-dozen weeks umpteen-thousands of Mac users were stuck using a limbo
or mezzanine of an operating system that was “neither fish nor fowl.” The
episode of <i>ILYK</i> featuring Lauren’s
Shrug-disliking black boyfriend comes across as such a transitional operating
system on race relations: it contains certain modules, certain contentious or
absurd assertions masquerading as doxa, that are still in place in 2023 interacting
with certain other modules that have long since been discarded. By the
very-late 1990s the powers that be or (be’d) had evidently already decided that
white people had to hate themselves for being white and for hanging out mostly
with other white people but they hadn’t yet decided that <i>absolutely no sorts</i> of white people could ever effectively extirpate
their guilt through more extensive fraternization with black people; and while
they had <i>probably</i> already decided
that black people of a certain political persuasion did not count as really
black (for after all, Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings
were already nearly a decade in the past and Alan Keyes’s run for the
Republican presidential nomination had been met with jeers of <i>Uncle Tom!</i> from all Democrats), such
that a Republican-voting black sitcom character like <i>Barney Miller</i>’s police detective Ron Harris had probably long since
been unfilmable (or unvideotape-able), they were not yet prepared to disqualify
a bookish non-basketball fan from being black or to refuse to deduct hours
spent with such a black person from a white person’s whiteness debit card. I conjecture
that the whole Big Salad (to switch to a different metaphorical vehicle [and to
do so not entirely gratuitously, for we are after all now told by our masters
{!} and mistresses {!!} {not to mention mistrixes} that the Salad has
permanently displaced the Melting Pot as the appropriate metaphor for how
America should and does cohere at a meta-ethnic level]) managed to hold
together even as awkwardly as it did only thanks to the moribund persistence of
a distinction between the highbrow and lowbrow or genre-fiction-centered
literary worlds, a distinction that has effectively gone extinct in the present
century. We have already seen that
Arthur Garment’s Jewishness did not (<i>sic</i>
on the past tense, for I am now referring to Arthur qua inhabitant of a bygone
age not qua inhabitant of a living text under consideration) prevent his
selection of John Updike, a WASP, as his favorite author, and I daresay if <i>ILYK</i>’s writers had had occasion to flesh
out his pantheon of literary greats, they would have had him “name-checking”
James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison by way of showcasing not his solidarity with
black America but his familiarity with certain highlights of the canon of
serious twentieth-century American literature. (Here again, as with the
non-basketball-affecting black person, I can attest that embodiments of the
type in point do not exist merely in counterfactual sitcoms, for in ca. 1996 at
a party in Baltimore I met a young black man who averred to me that the pallid
bald native Marylander John Barth was his favorite living writer.) And had
Lauren’s black beau been suffered to stick around for another episode or two,
he might have been heard to “name check” Updike for exactly the same reason
rather than out of anything like “internalized white supremacy.” And the two
men would have been united in their adamantine disdain for genre fiction—for
science fiction, fantasy novels, detective novels, bodice-rippers, comic books,
and the like—all of which, incidentally, were then emphatically coded (as) ultra-white.
How tragic that blacks never embraced their imperviousness to genre fiction while
there was still time! That would have been something to be truly proud of—as
proud of, indeed, as their refusal (attested to me by yet another black
non-chimera known to me personally) to join their white compatriots in swapping
trousers for shorts on the very first day of the year on which the high
temperature exceeded sixty degrees Fahrenheit. But “that ship has sailed,” as
they (“they” being not blacks but pundits of all colors and textures) say
nowadays: over the past twenty years the number of Americans (and other
Occidentals) who know (!) that genre fiction is trash has dwindled to a statistical
nullity, and the trashiest sorts of genre fiction of all—comic books and
fantasy novels—have attained pride of place in the personal “literary”
pantheons of the highest (in two or more senses!) officeholders and tastemakers
in the land (and all lands). Meanwhile, even as increasingly brutalistically
primitive rap “music” engrosses an ever larger share of what is officially regarded
as authentically black “art,” the inundation of comic-book and fantasy-novel
movie-adaptation casts with black actors and occupation of comic-book writing desk-chairs
by umpteenth pressings of Stokely Carmichael like Ta-Nehisi Coates have
impelled black Americans to regard trashy genre fiction as as (<i>sic</i> on the repetition of “as”) organically
their own as so-called soul food. And the demographic catastrophe hinted at in
the last sentence but one ultimately explains why the interstitial “operating
system” described in the last sentences but ten and nine failed to “take.” You
see, or, more likely, re-see (for the state of affairs I am about to discuss is
not exactly a secret and I have none-too-obliquely already touched on it
numerous times), <i>ILYK</i> was an odd sort
of demographogenetic hybrid: officially the “creation” of a man hailing from
the dead center of the Baby Boom (Peter Mehlman, b. 1955 or 1956 [so the online
reference source of first resort {and how characteristic of a late-flowering
Boomer to be cagey about his birth year!}]), it seems to have been written by a
combination of Boomers and Gen Xers and definitely also starred a combination
thereof. The Boomers, as everyone certainly knows, were the largest American
generation of the twentieth century, while the Gen Xers, as probably not quite
everyone knows, were the smallest, and the Millennials, as probably everyone
knows, are an even larger generation than the Boomers. As their very name makes
plain, at the time of <i>ILYK</i>’s
production the Millennials had yet to make their imprint on the “culture”
except as juvenile consumers (in which capacity they were of course largely responsible for the boy-band, Pokemon,
and Brittney Spears crazes) but were just about to start making that imprint.
The Boomers, as everyone knows, invented the so-called counterculture, but as
not everyone knows or at least hardly anyone cares to reflect, they also
inherited the culture they were countering from their parents, the so-called
Silent Generation, which meant that although they were quite sincere and
passionate in their detestation of that culture they could not avoid at least
occasionally referencing and embodying the landmarks and mores of that culture
in their own cultural productions, such that as long as they remained at the
vanguard of the <i>Weltgeist </i>(and their
parents still in charge of the wellsprings of patronage), that culture could
continue to enjoy a superficially robust existence. Accordingly, the counterculture
could come into its civilization-annihilating own when and only when, in the
second decade of the twentieth-first century, the Millennials arrived at that
vanguard, and their parents, the Boomers, assumed control of the wellsprings of
patronage (<i>their</i> parents, a mixture
of the so-called Silent Generation and the so-called Greatest Generation,
having meanwhile died off). For the Boomers inculcated in their children, the
Millennials, that rock ‘n’ roll was truly great music and indeed the greatest
of music, the <i>Lord of the Rings</i> great
literature and indeed the greatest of literature, Marvel comics the greatest of
art and literature, jeans, T-shirts, and shorts proper clothes, etc. And so,
now that the Millennials are in their thirties and forties we are for the first
time living under the auspices of a truly hegemonic counterculture.
Consequently, the socio-geographical satire at the heart of <i>ILYK</i> no longer makes sense except in
historical terms. Nobody today would even think of making a satire on the
trashiness of contemporary Los Angeles in which New York figures as Los
Angeles’s elegant, sophisticated antipode because today’s New York is far
trashier than the Los Angeles of a quarter-century ago and just as trashy as
today’s Los Angeles. There is a touching moment in <i>ILYK </i>when Robbie and Arthur commune over the ineffable and inalienable
grace and allure of a quintessential young female New Yorker, dwelling with
particular eloquence on what one might term the dialectical interplay between
the formal and informal elements of her hairstyle-cum-headgear, the way her
ponytail alone is suffered to break free of the confines of her baseball cap,
itself an incongruously casual element of her wardrobe despite its materially
inhibiting function. For all the drastic differences in women’s couture between
the two epochs, an analogous interchange might plausibly have occurred between
two American men of the very end of the nineteenth century apropos of the
quintessential young female New Yorker of their time, with her hat
ever-so-fetchingly topped with a stuffed bird carcass, and I daresay there <i>is </i>such a moment in a Henry James or
Edith Wharton novel (and I shouldn’t be surprised if <i>ILYK</i>’s writers based Robbie and Arthur’s interchange on that
moment). Such an interchange would not be possible today not because women’s
fashion has changed even more drastically since the late 1990s than between the
late 1890s and the late 1990s (because “in a certain very real sense” it has
obviously changed much less) as because an unstudied blowsy slatternliness is
now the most prized look among the women of New York as among the women of the
rest of America. The ideal woman of 2020s New York is a tousle-haired morbidly
obese creature in a muu-muu who hasn’t showered in at least two weeks and whose
every fifth spoken or written word is “folks” (if not “folx”). And from the
lack of care to one’s person exhibited by this type we can “pivot” to the
forestalling of a certain perhaps otherwise unavoidable misconception about the
drift of the <i>Welt</i>-cum-<i>Volksgeist</i> in point—namely, that it
constitutes an L.A.-ification of the rest of the U.S., for as the habitus of <i>IYLK</i>’s two female central characters
shews, while the L.A. lifestyle of the late 1990s paid scant regard to grace or
elegance, it placed an extremely high premium on physical fitness and
attractiveness. The truth is that the drift of the <i>Welt</i>-cum-<i>Volksgeist</i> has
made L.A. itself and the rest of the country much worse than the L.A. of the
late 90s because the trend-setters and tastemakers of today’s America know and
care much less about what is worth knowing and caring about than the
trend-setters and tastemakers of LA back then did. For let it not be forgotten
that although Los Angeles of that time was the wellspring and seat of much in
American life that was most objectionably vulgar—in other words, most of the
products and activities associated with its flagship media industries—it also
was not lacking in cultural and intellectual amenities of the first rank: for
example, the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of
Southern California were among the United States’ (and hence the world’s) best
universities, the Los Angeles Philharmonic one of the United States’ (and hence
the world’s) best orchestras, and the Getty Museum one of the United States’
(and hence the world’s) best art museums. Hence, although in moving to Los
Angeles a cultural and intellectual super-snob like the Arthur Garment of the
late 1990s would have been obliged to be confronted with much that he found
laughable and contemptible, he would not have been obliged to sacrifice much
that he found edifying and admirable, and the fact that Los Angeles rivaled New
York and exceeded Chicago (America’s universally acknowledged “second city”
until some difficult-to-specify moment in the 1980s) as a desired city of
residence for young, hip Americans was no great slur on the cultural and
intellectual elite of the United States. Toward the end of the second decade of
the twenty-first century Los Angeles was exceeded in the affections of American
hipsters by a city that lacked any cultural and intellectual amenity of the
first rank—namely, Portland. The present writer supposes Portland has a
symphony orchestra, but he cannot specify whether it is the Portland
Philharmonic or the Portland Symphony or the Portland Music Engine, let alone
the names of any of its conductors at any point in its history, and as he has
been listening to serious orchestral music for more than forty years, he
supposes he would be able to do this if it were a superior ensemble to, say,
the Nashville and Utah Symphony Orchestras, both of which he can name and
recordings of both of which he owns. Portland’s principal university, Portland
State, is certainly not one of America’s great universities, and indeed it
functions principally as a so-called safety school for would-be matriculators
to the University of Oregon (located more than a hundred miles away in the
state capital, Eugene), itself not one of the brightest stars in the American
academic firmament. And yes, I’m sure
Portland’s flagship museum, whatever its s**ding name is, has got an excellent
collection of some twentieth-century painter that everyone is supposed to think
is Big One-scale earthshakingly important like de Kooning or Rauschenberg or (lest
the reader think I am merely high modernist-bashing) Wyeth—but the Metropolitan
Museum of Art or MoMA or the National Gallery of Art or the Getty it presumably
ain’t. Until the dawn of the present century, if not until several years beyond
that, Portland was nationally known as a sort of Omaha that happened to be
located in the Pacific Northwest—<i>not</i>,
mind you, as <i>the</i> Omaha <i>of</i> the Pacific Northwest, for such a
designation would have implied that the Pacific Northwest was rich enough in biggish
cities to have its own Omaha, whereas of course Seattle and Portland were and
remain its <i>sole</i> metropolises (which
is “worth pointing out” because it shews that the Pacific Northwest as a whole
axiomatically cannot evince any appeal to the full-bodiedly urbane); a city
that a non-Pacific Northwesterner never dreamt of relocating to unless his
“career path” required it (not that I can think of a single
Portland-headquartered so-called Fortune 500 company to furnish such career-path
stepping stones [such that, incidentally, Portland cuts a poor showing even
alongside such middling East-Coast burghs as Pittsburgh, the home of Heinz
ketchup and baked beans, and Cincinnati, the home of Chiquita Bananas]), a city
that East Coasters were even prone to getting mixed up with its minuscule
Mainean namesake when the qualifying postpositive “Oregon” was omitted. What
finally put Portland on the map of residential covetability was not its unprecedented
acquisition of something of peculiar interest to genuinely would-be cultivated people
but rather and merely the statistically unremarkable irruption within its
precincts, towards the end of the nineties, of one of the principal “scenes”
associated with one of the umpteenth pressings of the punk-rock subculture
(yes, yes, yes, one of that subculture’s Ta-Nehisi Coateses, if you will
[although given that we are now dealing with a subculture that fetishizes a
certain kind of pressing, that of vinyl gramophone records, an analogue drawn
from the annals of vinyl gramophone record-dom would be more apt]), a pressing
known, I believe, as <i>cuddlecore</i> (an
appellation that quite rightly suggests an unregenerately infantilized
orientation to the world), and exemplified and dominated by Sleater Kinney, a band
truly execrable even by the dubious standards of pop music and consisting of a
trio or quartet of young clock-stoppingly ugly anemic white women who were
easily mistaken for clock-stoppingly ugly anemic young white men and “sang”
like underfed young goats (yes, yes, yes, i.e., “kids”). Presumably not
coincidentally one of the members of Sleater Kinney went on to portray a
so-called transman or transwoman (what difference does it make? as the Moz or
Archie Bunker would say), one of the <i>comediae
personae</i> of <i>Portlandia</i>, which
might not inaptly be described as a counterfactually wildly successful <i>It’s Like, You Know</i> of the 20-teens, a
show that cemented and augmented Portland’s status as the city in which to be.
Of course, thanks to the increased prestige of rock music even <i>chez</i> the Gen-Xers (most of whom were
raised by Silent Generation-ers but felt a keener anxiety of influence in
relation to their generational older siblings, the Boomers), the United States
had already had a sort of dry run for this phenomenon in the non-accidental trendiness
of Seattle in the years following the explosion of the so-called grunge scene
occasioned by Nirvana’s topping of the pop charts, but Seattle unlike Portland
was not entirely lacking in old-school cultural amenities—what with the
University of Washington being at least one of America’s better universities
and the Seattle Symphony at least one of America’s better orchestras (and any
town that had hosted the birth and upbringing of a writer as witty and
wide-ranging as Mary McCarthy could not be altogether banausic at bottom);
whence the facility with which it (had) served as the setting of <i>Frasier</i>, whose eponym had been the house
snob in the bar of the 1980s’ flagship sitcom, <i>Cheers</i> (which of course had been set in Boston, a city that in many
registers outstripped New York in point of snob appeal). Portland was the first
trend-setting American city to whose trendiness culture in the traditional
sense was completely extraneous, the first such city whose allure was
completely exhausted by its hospitableness to social deviancy. To get the full
“Portland experience” all one had to do was bind one’s breasts or tuck one’s
balls, accumulate one’s chickenshit gender studies degree four credits at a
time at PSU while slinging mocktails at a smootheria, and march down the street
with Molotov cocktail in hand every first Saturday after some right-wing
politician said something deemed offensive to BIPOCs or queer folx by Rose City
Antifa. At this point the discerning yet adversarial reader will doubtless
demur that however trendy Portland may have managed to become despite its lack
of traditional cultural amenities, those selfsame amenities survive and indeed
flourish in the metropolises in which they originated—that, for example, MoMa, both
non-MLB-affiliated Mets, and the Philharmonic are all as indubitably in
operation (would that opera companies alone were in point, that I might exploit
the pun!) in today’s New York as the workhouses were in Scrooge’s London. And
of course I am not unaware that most of the top-shelf orchestras, opera
companies, museums, and the like that were in operation a quarter-century ago
are still in operation now, but I would describe their operative condition as
one of subsistence rather than of flourishing and maintain that it has only
been by humoring the banausic mindset of this age of Portlandification that
they have managed to cling to life. And so, yes, one can still tour the Museum
of Modern Art, but not without strolling through a gauntlet of ethno-kitschy bric-à-brac
produced by demographically appropriate daubers and tinkers; or tour the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, but not without enduring a series of lectures on
the “problematic” character of its European and American masters. And one can
still attend an ostensible performance of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, but
only to hear a version of Beethoven’s Ninth in which the choral finale has been
replaced by a rap “composition,” or to watch a live Crime Scene Investigation of
Beethoven’s death in which mere scraps of his music serve as pieces of
“evidence,” or to endure a program in which Brahms shares billing with
Radiohead or some local synth-pop group that make Depeche Mode sound like
late-period Schoenberg. And one can still take in an opera at the other
non-MLB-affiliated Met, but only if one is willing to sit next to an oversized
slug in pajamas and so-called Crocs and behold four hours of uninterrupted
metastasized Eurotrash—which is to say, a style of <i>mise en scène</i> in which every human figure in the <i>scène</i> looks like either a perpetrator or
a victim of p(*)********a. (The “academic postmodernism” of the Met’s 2020
production of Alban Berg’s <i>Wozzeck</i>
that I decried in an earlier essay certainly partook of this <i>mise en scène</i>, but I am hesitant to
posit an absolute co-extensivity of academic postmodernism and metastasized
Eurotrash, inasmuch as the 2010 Salzburg Festival production of Berg’s <i>Lulu</i> that I decried in an even earlier
essay was pretty darned metastasized-Eurotrashy despite being not very
postmodernist at all.) Of course I cannot deny that in many registers and
domains of their activity these traditional cultural institutions maintain the
standards associated with them in earlier epochs; indeed, I am at least
prepared to entertain the notion that in certain of these registers and domains
they now excel their late-1990s selves. But at the same time I am prepared to
assert that this maintenance of standards is largely the effect of inertia and
cannot be expected to be maintained itself. Of course none of America’s best art museums
has simply burned and smashed to pieces its entire inventory of traditionally
classic art, but almost all of them have yielded to and are continuing to yield
to the temptation to sell off portions of that inventory to allow themselves to
purchase manifestly inferior works or to fund a series of “initiatives” that
somehow or other undermine their core traditional mission of presenting that
inventory to the general public; and as there is no discernable movement afoot
within the ranks of their trustees or administrators to resist the temptation,
it is entirely reasonable to suppose that eventually, and perhaps even “sooner
rather than later,” they all will have ceased to fulfill this mission
altogether and become dedicated exhibitors of vacuous trash in dedicatedly vacuous
fashions. The same is true, <i>mutatis
mutandis</i>, of symphony orchestras and opera companies: they are not going to
chuck out Beethoven, Brahms, Verdi, Wagner, et al. altogether and overnight,
but they are inevitably going to perform and produce them ever more ineptly and
perversely, and they are going to force them to share an ever-larger share of
concert programs with inferior composers and sub-composers until these
composers and sub-composers—who perforce exact lower technical standards from
performers—have completely displaced them. In connection with this terminal and
precipitous down-dumbing I am reminded of something Paul Valéry said to Andre
Gide when they were both still fairly young (and so shortly after the apogee of
the Symbolist movement of which Valéry was one of the leading lights) something
to the effect that nobody would ever dream of inventing poetry then, at the end
of nineteenth century or beginning of the twentieth, if it did not already
exist, because experience was no longer of such a nature as to impel anyone to
attempt to articulate it in anything constituted like a poem. And of course as
everybody (at least everybody who knows anything about Valéry [i.e., hardly
anybody]) knows, Valéry decided to stop writing poetry in his early thirties
and devoted the long remainder of his literary career to essays and novel-like
compositions, and while the mere existence of the entire tradition of great
modernist poetry may seem to invalidate both his assertion and his decision,
one cannot reasonably deny that since the end of the nineteenth century poetry
has been a marginal mode of expression even within the domain of “high” culture
(the inverted commas around “high” are in this exceptional case not
“ironizing”[like the ones just placed around “ironizing”] but self-abasing,
inasmuch as while I am certain that there is such a thing as “high” culture and
that it is superior to pop culture, I am
not quite sure that “high” is <i>not</i> the
best denotator of that superiority), that even the reader desirous of
encountering the most uncompromisingly precise and subtle verbal presentation
of some aspect of the world seldom finds himself reaching for a volume of
verses rather than for a novel and that even writers desirous of producing such
a presentation seldom find themselves struggling to write a poem rather than a
novel. <i>Pace</i> Adorno (and yet at the
same time probably more or less in concurrence with him [for I cannot
immediately call to mind any passage in his writings in which he praises a twentieth-century
poet as highly he does Kafka or Proust in countless passages therein]), long
before Auschwitz the <i>Weltgeist</i> had
moved on from poetry, and that on-moving was a sad commentary on the <i>Weltgeist</i>, an attestation of its
barbarousness by comparison with the last golden age of poetry, the Romantic
period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. And at about the
end of the second decade of the present century the <i>Weltgeist</i> moved on from “high” culture <i>en bloc</i> and <i>insgesamt</i>
when for the first time it fell into the hands of a generation of “elites” for
whom “high” culture meant nothing, a generation of “elites” who if they had
their druthers would banish listening to the “three Bs” (Bach, Beethoven, and
Brahms) et al., reading Shakespeare, George Eliot, Proust, et al., and viewing
the paintings of Botticelli, Rembrandt, Kandinsky, et al., in favor of
listening to pop music, playing video games, reading comic books and “fantasy”
novels, watching “anime,” writing and reading “fan fiction,” and “larping” as one’s
favorite comic book, “fantasy,” video-game, and “anime” characters. “What’s
going to happen to the children, when there aren’t any more grown-ups?” queried
Noël Coward in the middle of the twentieth century. Now we know what was then
going to happen because it has longish-since happened. And if in the teeth of
all that I have already said in efficient preemption of such cavillage the
reader should pigheadedly query what the big deal is and point out that comic
books and pop music have been around for more than a century and fantasy novels
and animated cartoons for more than three-quarters of a century, that even
video games are nearly a half-century old, and that however inane or barbarous
these popular-cultural forms and genres may be, civilization, including its
high-cultural component, has somehow muddled through their slough of inanity
and barbarism, I shall and will take the reader by his porcine ears and shake
his porcine skull while screaming, <i>The
difference between now and the previous century is that people grew out of
their infantile pop-cultural obsessions as they became acquainted with the more
adult-worthy antecedents of the objects of those obsessions, and now they don’t
grow out of these obsessions because they are never required to become acquainted
with those antecedents!</i> before more temperately adducing a case in point in
illustration of that difference, namely my own trajectory as a consumer turned
ex-consumer of infantile pop-cultural pabulum. As a pre-teenaged youngster I
was as fascinated with and by <i>The Lord of
the Rings</i> as any pre-teenaged youngster of today is by that novel-cycle and
its umpteen subsequent pressings ([here the reader is of course entitled even
as I berate him to interject “Again-a with the pressings!” in a sing-songy
Italian accent appropriate to the vehicle of the metaphor) by the likes of J.
K. R*****g, and I derived all my original knowledge of the Greek gods and
heroes from that cinematic gallimaufry of Hellenic and Nordic mythology, <i>Clash of the Titans</i>. But as I entered
and progressed through my teen years, I gradually learned from my elders and my
own investigations that Tolkien had pieced together his “universe” out of his
findings as a linguist learned in tongues of numerous language-trees, a scholar
of medieval English literature, and a nostalgist for the same pre-industrial
English countryside more “realistically” evoked by Thomas Hardy; and that Zeus,
Hera, Pegasus, Perseus, et al. subsisted in written memory largely as names
fleetingly mentioned in plays and epic and lyric poems dealing with less
vividly colorful figures rather than as full-fledged characters in filmworthy
tales of their own. And once I had learned this, I permanently found it
impossible to engage with anything either answering directly to the name of
“fantasy” literature or anything that while not answering to that name made use
of that mode or genre’s arrogated privilege—the privilege of selecting
personages and topoi from a diversity of more or less ancient historical
periods and synthesizing the presentation of these personages and topoi under
the auspices of the literary and cinematic techniques of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. “I am” (to quote an expression of David Hume for what must
be the hundredth time [and to point out that I am quoting it for what must also
be the hundredth time]) “as certain as I am that I am over five feet tall” that
I have evolved beyond the capacity to appreciate such rubbish, for it
invariably participates in a phenomenon that one of my professors in graduate
school, a man now deceased (and whom I shall forbear from naming only because
one of his sons is one of the world’s most dedicated champions and ardent
propagandists of the notion that video games constitute an “art form” and so
might strive to make my life difficult if he discovered me representing his
father as a man categorically averse to notions of that sort) termed “the prosaification
of the supernatural” in specific connection with the obtrusion of
Tolkien-inspired story-submissions into the creative writing class of a
colleague of his, who had responded to the submitting students with an
interjection of “No fucking elves!” We must accept the personages and other entities
of fairy tales, sacred scriptures, old chronicles, and the like as they have
been transmitted to us by those documents and accordingly resign ourselves to
finding those personages and other phenomena strange, mysterious, and more than
occasionally ridiculous rather than attempting to make them more “relatable” (a
Millennialism I loathe with more than my usual fund of anti-neologistic passion
because it doesn’t even have the decency to encompass the concept from which it
is derived [for in finding something <i>simpatico</i>
one does not “relate” it but “relate <i>to</i>”
it]) by putting into their mouths and minds words they—or to be more precise,
the people who originally committed them to paper (for it is only through paper
that we can ever know them)—never could have said and thoughts they never could
have thought. But the current
custodians-cum-conduits of the <i>Weltgeist </i>do
not acknowledge this requirement—I do not say that they <i>refuse</i> to acknowledge it because that would imply that they are
actively rejecting it, which in turn would imply that they at least dimly
understood it, whereas I get the distinct impression that they are not even
aware of the requirement and would not understand it even if it bit them on the
arse, as they say (or, rather, as the “they” of a generation-and-a-half ago,
exemplified by Denis Leary’s military history-and-cigar gourmandizing “asshole”
[a figure transparently hailing from the so-called Silent Generation], used to
say). In the thirty-something-year-old eyes of even the most literate of these
people, Gandalf the wizard (or some pressing [I dare employ the olive-press yet
again!] of him from the <i>Harry Potter</i>
novels [I am proud to say that in my proud ignorance of the <i>Harry Potter</i> novels I don’t know the
proper name of that pressing, although the ubiquity of chitchat about the <i>Harry Potter </i>novels has prevented me
from remaining ignorant of that pressing’s presence therein]) remains as he was
when they were in their single digits—both more portentously wise than Solomon and
more approachably down-to-earth than Bob the Builder, because they have yet to
read a novel of more ancient pedigree than <i>The
Lord of the Rings</i> (if even that ancient) or any narratively constituted book
that is avowedly “non-fiction,” with the result that they tend to regard just
about any pie-in-the-sky chimera as prosaically practicable in the real
external world or to regard even the most immediately practicable improvement
of the real external world as too prosaic for their notice, and because they
wield considerable administrative power, this real external world is suffering
keenly from their indulgence of these tendencies—suffering from it in the
ubiquitously observable progressive deterioration in the provision of basic
services (a deterioration inevitably arising from a belief that one can clear
away any material obstacle by only barely figuratively “waving a magic wand”)
and equally ubiquitously observable ever-increasing hideousness in all aspects
of personal appearance (a hideousness inevitably arising from the belief that
one’s true self is not the person as whom one presents oneself in everyday
external life but the wizard or warrior princess as whom one “larps” at comic-book
conventions or within the confines of a “virtual” environment). Of course at
this point at the latest the least pigheaded of readers—at least even the least
pigheaded of readers who is not well acquainted with my body of previous
essays—is entitled to wonder how and why I, a person who has “outed” himself as
a cultural paleosnob, a person who at his very downest down-to-earth is no more
kindly disposed to pop culture than Arthur Garment, ever came to address himself
to an essay on a television sitcom, for after all, television has been
officially institutionalized as a “vast wasteland,” as a repository of the very
dregs of pop culture, since Mr. Minow made his famous-cum-notorious speech more
than sixty years ago. I suppose the answer to this question, or these
questions, is that I find <i>It’s Like, You
Know</i> far more enlightening about the trajectory of the <i>Weltgeist</i> than most high-cultural productions of the very end of
the twentieth century because as is becoming clear only belatedly, some twenty
years after its effective demise, television, like radio before it (and rather
unlike cinema alongside it) affords the most capacious view of what one might
term the ego-ideal of the nation or society, the manner in which the nation or
society chooses to imagine itself. In virtue of having been adopted by all
social strata more or less all at once, of its self-confinement to a schedule
and to “seasons,” of its extraneously imposed confinement to a handful of
transmission frequencies (at least until the effective universalization of
premium cable television channels in the late 1990s [which universalization
effectively put an end to television by making its products formally
interchangeable with those of cinema
{whence my dating its demise back as far as twenty years}]), and of the
transnational simultaneity with which its products were consumed by default
(and by necessity until the popularization of home video recorders in the early
1980s), television, at least at its prime-time vital core [for weekday daytime
programming was indeed aimed more or less exclusively at housewives and weekend
daytime programming more or less exclusively at children], could not afford to
appeal to specific subcultures to the exclusion of others. Polemical exceptions
like <i>Hee-Haw</i> aside, there were never
any substantive prime-time televisual equivalents of Blaxploitation or “women’s
pictures,” let alone the Novel Targeted at Anybody but the Little Old Lady from
Dubuque (the “narrowcasting” orientation of which explains its typical
inadequacy as a prompt for the sort of essay I typically find myself writing,
however strongly I might desire to read or aim to read or write such a novel).
A prime-time television show had more than figuratively to have “something for
everyone.” And one mustn’t confuse the demographic profile of a given show’s
setting or <i>comediae personae</i> with
those of its target audience: everybody regardless of race or income level
watched <i>The Andy Griffith Show</i> and <i>Good Times</i> even though the one centered
on a white sheriff and his son in an all-white southern small town and the
other on an all-black family in the projects of Chicago. Moreover, one mustn’t
confuse television’s fulfillment of its obligation to provide something for
everyone with its much-decried (and in hindsight perhaps over-decried) tendency
to “pander to the lowest common denominator,” for that <i>everyone</i> included double-domed highbrows as well as sub-philistine
louts—whence, for example, the presence of the Goethe-gourmandizing Detective
Dietrich in the <i>comediae personae</i> of <i>Barney Miller</i>, the figuration of the
terminology of Riesman’s <i>Lonely Crowd</i>
in the bavardage of a victim’s roommate on <i>Columbo</i>,
allusions to Milton and Shakespeare on <i>Star
Trek</i>, and the next-door neighbor Wilson’s regular quotation of thinkers as
serious as Kant and Samuel Johnson in <i>Home
Improvement</i>. And such appeals to the <i>highest</i>
common denominator were not infrequently well received thereby, as witnessed by
the Yale lit prof Paul de Man’s incorporation of an interchange between Archie
Bunker and his wife Edith into a lecture on deconstruction, by the pianist
Glenn Gould’s religious fandom of <i>The
Mary Tyler Moore Show</i>,<i> </i>and his
colleague Charles Rosen’s equally ardent viewership of <i>Taxi</i>. And such being the case, it is entirely fair to use even an
utterly mainstream prime-time sitcom like <i>IYLK</i>
as a more or less comprehensive <i>volks</i>-cum-<i>zeit</i>-cum-<i>welgeistig</i> barometer (or, to cast the metaphor in more palpably
augural terms, cultural weather forecast), to infer from the cultural hierarchy
that such a program implicitly postulates a sense of the trajectory of the <i>Volks</i>-cum-<i>Zeit</i>-cum-<i>Weltgeist </i>as a
whole. And for all its muscle memory-like retention of certain <i>points de repère</i> of the old cultural
hierarchy, <i>IYLK</i> propounds what one
might term a <i>hard-Boomer</i> cultural
hierarchy, a cultural hierarchy in which the <i>points de</i> <i>repère</i> of the
Boomers are the central totems. One sees this most graphically in a certain
episode in which the phrase “the saddest thing I ever heard” becomes a sort of
scale-model analogue of the show’s eponymous phrase, which is to say it keeps
being uttered as a naturally motivated utterance by characters unaware of the
previous occurrences of it. And to the best of my recollection, all roughly
half-dozen of these occurrences of the utterance
barring the last one are prompted by tidings that would tend to prompt the
utterance of the phrase in real life, i.e., tidings that are <i>pathetic</i> in the vulgar sense rather than
tragic—e.g., someone’s failing to claim a jackpot-garnering lottery ticket, or
missing out on a plum job for flubbing the boss’s name in the last seconds of
the interview, or (to double-invert the denouement of the <i>Seinfeld</i> episode “The Millennium” [which denouement is itself in
danger of being the saddest thing ever heard only by a rabid <i>Seinfeld</i> fan who thinks of Newman as the
show’s hero]) showing up a year early for an end-of-the-millennium party for
want of realizing that the last year of the millennium was December 31, 2000
and not December 31, 1999. But on Arthur or Robbie’s uttering the last of these
all but last occurrences in a chinwag between the two of them in the very last
seconds of the episode, whichever of the two didn’t utter the phrase says to
the other, “No: the saddest thing you ever heard was when Paul McCartney said
after Linda’s death, ‘I’ve just lost my girlfriend.’” Whereupon the utterer
nods in grim unqualified acquiescence as the last credit is displayed and the
scene fades to black (or commercial). Immediately
on spectating on that final scene and taking in those words about Paul
McCartney the new widower, I did the scornful-cum-outraged version of a
spit-take (as I was in the perfect meta-oral-cum-meta-potational condition to
do, for I was watching this episode, as I had watched all its predecessors and
would watch all its successors, over a “liquid breakfast” [and not a Lincoln
Continental one at that]). How, I asked myself as soon as the last fleck of
spit had cleared my lips, could <i>anyone</i>—let
alone specifically a pair of men too young to have bought even <i>Abbey Road </i>as a new release (each of
them having been in 1969 too short to see over the countertop at a record store
even in the unlikely event that he had preferred the tunage of the Beatles to
that of the Banana Splits)—have thought of even the worst thing that had ever
happened to Paul McCartney as the saddest thing he (Arthur or Robbie, not Paul)
had ever heard? But no sooner did I finish wiping my mouth dry than I came to
see both Arthur or Robbie’s remark and Robbie or Arthur’s reaction to it as
entirely natural and indeed well-nigh inevitable in the light of <i>ILYK</i>’s Boomerian provenance. For after
all (I said to myself), the Fab Four were more than figuratively gods to the
Boomers, for John Lennon had been neither missing the mark by a micrometer nor
exaggerating in the slightest when he termed the Beatles “more popular than
Jesus” in 1966 (a moment at which popularity with the Boomers was more or less
coextensive with popularity <i>tout court</i>
inasmuch as the Boomers were then perhaps at their demographically most
formidable); and indeed, in virtue of their just-parenthetically-mentioned
demographic formidability, the Boomers enjoyed possession of a notion of a kind
about these gods that not even Christians had enjoyed possession of about
Christ when “the Sea of Faith was at the full”—the notion, namely, that every
other living person on earth, regardless of his age or place of origin or
residence, revered these gods as abjectly as they did. And there is most
certainly no other moment in <i>ILYK</i> in
which any other “creative” figure is apotheosized as Paul McCartney is
apotheosized at that episode-concluding moment; the closest approach thitherto being
Arthur’s much-abovementioned interpellation of John Updike as his favorite
writer, an interpellation that apart from its comparative lukewarmness, its
evincing of mere veneration rather than full-blown idolatry, is robbed of any
normative force by its presentation as an interpellation peculiar to him, one
that is ho-humly shrugged off by the other members of the <i>comediae personae</i>. And such being the case, <i>ILYK</i> seems to mark a decisive break and a great leap downward in
television qua cultural barometer-cum-weather forecaster, a moment at which
high culture was decisively toppled from atop the cultural hierarchy of a
would-be ego-ideal-defining program and pop culture installed in its place. For
<i>Seinfeld</i>, despite its relentless
flaunting of Jerry’s and George’s lack of serious intellectual interests,
evinced quite a high regard for the canons of high culture, especially that of serious
(a.k.a. “classical) music (not that literature exactly received short shrift from
the show [see the episode entitled “The Cheever Diaries”]), as witnessed by the
monopolization of the incidental music of one episode by the overture of
Rossini’s <i>Barber of Seville</i>; the
centering of the plot of an episode on the attending of an opera performance; the
incorporation of an orchestra conductor, a concert pianist, and even the most
obscure of the “Three Tenors” into its guest <i>comediae personae</i>; and Jerry and George’s “name-checkings” of
Beethoven’s “Waldstein” sonata and Schumann’s descent into madness; while its
level of esteem for pop culture (including pop music) seldom rose above the
level of affectionate disdain, as witnessed by the assignment of fandom of the
“yacht rocker” Christopher Cross to the rebarbative and contemptible figure of Newman
the obese postman and the foregrounding of the fatuity of <i>Star Trek</i>’s metaphysical aspirations in Jerry’s quotation of <i>The Wrath of Khan</i> at George’s late
fiancée’s graveside (a moment that shews that the just-mentioned flaunting of
J&G’s lack of serious intellectual interests was certainly not tantamount
to the postulation of that lack as a norm). <i>Frasier</i>,
too, kept itself well to the aft of hard Boomerism, even if at first blush its
placement of its eponym’s cultural snobbery at the bull’s eye of its satiric
squibbery may seem to suggest otherwise, for while the show did indeed position
Frasier’s down-to-earth father as a salutary foil-cum-counterweight to his
elder son’s (and for that matter, his younger son’s) impossible loftiness, it
would be wrong to say that it presented Martin Crane as a full-blown <i>norm</i>, a figure in whom the viewer might
discover the show’s moral and epistemological center. Rather, the relation of
father and son(s) to that center was <i>dialectical</i>
in the most wholesome sense of that word. If Frasier’s hyperfastidiousness
about clothes was pilloried as foppish, if not downright effeminate (such that
he was made belatedly to realize that he had been “hit on” by another man only
on recollecting that he had initiated a chinwag about men’s fashion with him),
Martin’s complete indifference to them was hardly championed; for if it had
been how could his complaint of having splurged in spending 15 dollars on a
pair of trousers been played for laughs? If Frasier’s wine connoisseurship was
pilloried as ludicrous in its ceremonial intricacies, Martin’s obdurate
adherence to Ballantine beer in every possible culinary setting was shown to be
equally ludicrous in its one-note unceremoniousness; if Frasier’s opera fandom,
with its endless retailing of his spectation-cum-audition of performances of
legendary singers such as Renata Tebaldi was seen to be absurdly hifalutin,
Martin’s fandom of sixties action heroine Angie Dickinson qua supposed pinnacle
of cinema thespianism was seen to be absurdly downmarket. In short, if Martin’s
down-to-earthness nicely complemented such virtues as his stoicism and honesty,
virtues that had stood him in good stead in his honorable and perhaps even
heroic service as a police officer, it was still seen to be defective for
wanting so much as a soupçon of Frasier’s elegance and sophistication. <i>Something
too much of this</i>—the discerning reader (and perhaps even the fairly
undiscerning reader) is now doubtless inclined to interject: <i>as you have just postulated that ILYK is
situated to the fore of a chronologically situated divide between a certain
kind of goodness and a certain kind of badness and that not only </i>Seinfeld <i>but also</i> Frasier, <i>a show that although certainly better than most sitcoms is manifestly
inferior to </i>Seinfeld <i>(and that,
incidentally but doubtless significantly, remained on the air many years after
the disappearance therefrom of both </i>Seinfeld<i> and </i>ILYK), <i>are situated to
the aft of that divide, are you not obliged to retract the very assertion with
which you began this essay and which seems to have constituted its principal
impetus and very raison d’être—viz., that ILYK constitutes a worthy (and indeed
the worthiest conceivable) continuation of </i>Seinfeld? No, but it does indeed
require me to recalibrate, reframe, reappraise or what have you (provided it is
a verb beginning with <i>re</i>) the
ultimate intellectual and moral purport of the notion of a “worthy continuation
of <i>Seinfeld</i>.” Fortunately, I have
already done a goodly portion of the work of that recalibration autc. in “teeing up” the
postulation the discerning or even relatively undiscerning reader has just
mentioned. For in stating as I did some pages above that <i>ILYK</i> was a show that propounded a “hard-Boomer cultural hierarchy”
I was axiomatically implying that <i>Seinfeld</i>
propounded a <i>soft</i>-Boomer cultural
hierarchy, a cultural hierarchy in which, while the <i>points de</i> <i>repère</i> of the
pre-Boomer dispensation remained the central totems, certain <i>points de</i> <i>repère </i>of the Boomer dispensation occupied a much loftier position
than in the pre-Boomer dispensation. And indeed, I have already touched on
certain of these Boomergenetic elements of <i>Seinfeld</i>,
albeit not in explicitly Boomer-referencing terms—for example, the show’s
dramaturgical emphasis on all four central characters’ maintenance of an active
and variety-rich “sex life” and its admittedly residual and partly adscititious
presentation of those characters as insufficiently “empathetic.” And
in-double-deed, the second of these elements is closely related to another Boomergenetic element of <i>Seinfeld</i> that I have not yet discussed—viz., its presentation of
what would was once known (and still would have been known to Jerry Seinfeld,
Larry David, and their older writers well into their young adulthoods) as the
American WASP elite, an elite whose displacement and supersession every Boomer
was conscious of participating in and most Boomers were enthusiastic about
participating in even when they happened to hail from that elite themselves. While
this presentation is not particularly acrimonious, it is most certainly not
affectionate or respectful either, for the conspicuous smattering of elderly
WASP characters are portrayed as characterologically dominated by a combination
of “uptightness,” mirthless loopiness, and “passive-aggressive” spite. One sees
this combination in fullest flower in Mr. Pitts, the dour, ultra-formal elderly
bachelor friend of the recently deceased Jackie Kennedy Onassis as whose
personal assistant Elaine works for a rather long succession of episodes—sees
it in his habit of eating Snickers bars with a knife and fork and his
delegation to Elaine of the task of not merely purchasing his socks but also of
his helping him to try them on afterwards, a task whose demeaningness is
amplified by the perversity of the interchangeability and
one-size-fits-all-ness of the socks themselves, a bushel of the blindingly
white “tube crews” seldom unselfconsciously worn by anyone over the age of ten
(the incongruity of such socks with Pitts’s presumptively bespoke three-piece
dark blue suits, like that of the Snickers bars with his presumptively bespoke
china and cutlery, seems intended to suggest that the WASPs are not even to be
relied on to maintain the standards of elegance they quasi-single-handedly
set); or perhaps, rather, in the Rosses, the parents of George’s fiancée Susan—Mrs.
Ross an uncannily tight-lipped and impeccably coiffed and made-up twenty-four-hour
drunk, Mr. Ross a perpetually sullen and brooding closeted homosexual secretly
pining for his youthful days as the paramour of the abovementioned John
Cheever, both of them seething with a hatred for each other exceeded in
intensity and tenacity only by their contempt for their traditional social
inferiors—a contempt hilariously evinced by their gameness for being driven for
two or three hours to the tip of Long Island by George for the sole pleasure of
exposing his lie of possessing a mansion in the East Hamptons. <i>So are you now undermining the raison d’être
of the present essay even further—nay, making mincemeat of the very raison
d’être of that raison d’être—by averring that </i>Seinfeld <i>was not even worthy of continuation?</i> By no means, first because
there is enough “nature” in <i>Seinfeld</i>’s
portraits of elderly WASPs to redeem them qua quasi- Theophrastian character
sketches despite their turpitude qua conduits of Boomerism, and second because
these portraits and the other Boomerist elements of <i>Seinfeld </i>are now of interest to me not qua elements of <i>Seinfeld—</i>in which they are “low-profile”
enough not to vitiate the show as a whole beyond the point of
moral-cum-aesthetic defensibility, but rather in their capacity as aids to the
further interpretation of the moral-cum-epistemological schema of <i>ILYK</i>. In this capacity, these elements
shew us that “New Yorkism” in the Boomer mindset of the 1990s was not neatly
consubstantial or coextensive with sophistication or elegance in an
old-fashioned or “establishment” sense, such that in taking in a Boomergenetic <i>mise en scène</i> such as <i>ILYK</i> wherein “New Yorkism” is presented
as a normative mindset, we should not reflexively expect to find an absence or
even a comparative lack of sophistication or elegance in that sense in the
entities presented as antithetical or inimical to that mindset—which entities
in <i>ILYK</i>’s case are of course the
entities that embody “Los Angelesism.” And indeed on taking a closer look at <i>IYLK </i>with this aid-to-interpretation
ready to eye, I have discovered scadlets of moments in which “Los Angelisism”
is derided precisely <i>on account of</i>
its possession of a comparatively high degree of such sophistication and
elegance. For instance, there is the moment in a fairly early episode in which
the abovementioned Elliott Gould elicits murmurs of scandalization from an
entire jam-packed drawing room at an L.A. society lady’s soiree when he admits
that he is the driver and owner of a certain midmarket or even downmarket-model
of car (perhaps a Honda Civic) just spotted parked outside. He huffily defends his
drivership-cum-ownership of the car on the grounds that it is “practical”—but
to no avail. And why, if one considers the matter from a certain historically
relatively transcendent point of view, <i>should</i>
the argument that the car was practical have cut ice of any weight with the
people at that party? After all, they were all rich or very nearly rich people,
people who were under no financial pressure to weigh “practicality” into their
choice of a car or any reason to suppose that a movie star, a man as rich or
richer than themselves, had weighed “practicality” into his choice. They were
people who could afford to give pride of place to <i>luxury</i> and <i>style</i> in
making that choice, as the show-runners of <i>ILYK</i>
went out of their way to make clear by frequently showing Robbie behind the
wheel of an exceedingly luxurious and stylish convertible sports car—presumably
either a Jaguar or a Mercedes (if a Mercedes is ever a sports car). And indeed
Gould’s argument from practicality puts me directly and vividly in mind of a
ca. 1994 essay by the academic literary critic Stanley Fish in which he—a
virtual professional pejorator of his fellow academics—tried to explain to the
general reader why university professors nearly always drove Volvos despite
their manifest hideousness. These profs would, he said, always say that they
preferred Volvos because they were “practical,” but (he added) this
fetishization of practicality was but a stalking horse for a combination of
their quasi-Marxist aversion to being associated with the ruling elite (or, at
any rate, to divulging their unavoidable association therewith), their lack of taste,
and their lack of respect for people who did not lack it. In ca. 1994, Fish could
write such an essay in full confidence that it would be met with a warm and
mirthful reception, for in the America of 1994 the stylelessness of university
professors was both widely known and widely derided; indeed, as I recall, in
the autumn of that year one of the three or four nationally circulated
newspapers (it may even have been the <i>Los
Angeles Times</i>!) published an article on that year’s MLA convention (the
annual conference of literature professors) that described the attendees as a
cohort of people for whom “gravy stains are a fashion statement.” All the same,
it must be admitted that while Volvos are ugly, they are not particularly cheap
or light on frills; that early 1990s academics’ predilection for Volvos showed
that they were not prepared to break ranks with the non-ivory tower-dwelling <i>haute bourgeoisie</i> to the extent of
buying cars that might have typically been driven by, say, elementary school
teachers. The scene of Elliott Gould’s divulgence of his ownership of such a
car in <i>ILYK</i> shows that by 1999, the <i>Welt</i>-cum <i>Volksgeist</i>-stewards had overshot the academics of ca. 1994 in point
of studied stylelessness-cum-unpretentiousness; it shows that by 1999 America’s
tastemakers at least wished to believe that it was perfectly acceptable for anyone,
be he ever so rich or highly placed, to drive a car that was not only ugly but
cheap and unluxurious. Of course here a certain type of reader—not a stupid or
even inattentive one but rather a magpie-eyed one with an allergy to
dialectical thinking—will interject that the mere fact that Elliott Gould was
(and is) a movie star precludes his serving as a norm within the moral
landscape of <i>ILYK</i>, inasmuch as the
entire logic of that landscape is predicated on the notion that movie stars are
shallow, airheaded, morally vacuous people. But such a reader has failed to
consider or recall that <i>ILYK</i>’s notion
of a typical movie star is Jennifer Grey, an actress known exclusively for her
work in inescapably trivial film genres, for her work in teen comedies like <i>Ferris Bueller’s Day Off</i> and “chick
flicks” (or, per my far-above hesitation, quasi-“chick flicks”) like <i>Dirty Dancing</i> and that in presenting
Elliott Gould as at loggerheads with Shrug in the abovementioned recording
session it perforce distances him from the <i>Gestalt
</i>comprising the L.A.-based three-quarters of the <i>comediae personae</i>, a <i>Gestalt</i>
defined by its shallowness and flakiness, and thereby “casts” him as a very
different sort of movie star from Jennifer Grey, as an altogether better sort
of movie star. And indeed the <i>ILYK </i>production
team would have found and presumably did find it entirely natural to “cast” him
as such a figure, for after all, despite his occasional turkeys like the Disney
flick <i>The Devil and Max Devlin </i>(in
which he starred as a latter day Faust-cum-Jabez Stone to the then utterly
un-notorious and indeed universally beloved Bill Cosby’s Devil), Gould was
preeminently known for his work in the films of Robert Altman, Hollywood’s most
outrageous maverick, who was forever biting the hand that fed him, and in particular
for his (Gould’s) “creation” of the role of Hawkeye Pierce in Altman’s <i>M.A.S.H., </i>perhaps the central text in
the cinematic portion of Boomer Scripture (I say <i>perhaps</i> because that central text may be <i>The Big Chill</i>, but there is no seriously entertainable third
contender. <i>M.A.S.H.</i>, the namesake and
basis of the far-abovementioned wildly popular sitcom, was a 1970 military sex-comedy
film that presented the Korean War as a dedicated prolepsis of-cum-stand in for
the Vietnam War, a film whose <i>comediae
personae </i>was unevenly divided between guys like Hawkeye, happy-go-lucky
sexually uninhibited types with a jaundiced attitude to the war, who were
presented as the heroes; and po-faced sexually repressed hawks like Robert
Duvall’s Major Burns, who were presented as the villains (of course there is
presumably some sort of Freudian pun embedded in the antithesis between a dove
with a hawk’s eye [i.e., an eye for the ladies] and an “eye”-less [and hence
castrated or impotent] hawk). Such being the case, <i>M.A.S.H.</i> was generally interpreted not merely as an allegory of the
Vietnam War but also as an allegory of the entire American system of life and
an attack on the American “establishment,” very much including the
establishment of Hollywood, then still seen as dominated by po-faced sexually
repressed hawkish studio executives. Whence the presumptive naturalness to <i>ILYK</i>’s show-runners of presenting Gould
as a different, better sort of movie star, with “better” being envisaged as
coextensive not only with “deep” or
“substantial” but also with “subversive.” So Gould is effectively a fifth
columnist in the Los Angeles of <i>ILYK</i>.
But a fifth columnist hailing from what sort of enemy polity? He is not, as we
have already established, attacking the Angelenan system of life from the point
of view of a New York-style snob, and triangulation of his Altmanian CV with
his automotive preferences suggests an affiliation with what would probably now
be called (and may already have been beginning to be called by then) Green
Leftism. To be sure, he does not directly defend his choice of a downmarket car
on the grounds that the car is “environmentally friendly,” but “practicality”
is often a stalking horse for “good gas mileage,” and “good gas mileage” is
often defended on environmentalist grounds. We might conjecture that Gould here
is halfway to being a full-fledged Green Lefty of the twenty-twenties, that at
a soirée-scene set in the present he would be disclosing his ownership of an
electric car; or perhaps, rather, as electric cars are still very expensive and
hence still amenable to being mistaken for old-fashioned “status symbols,”
disclosing that he was a full-time pedestrian—a conjecture strongly supported
by the sympathetic treatment accorded (via the satirical treatment of Robbie’s
embarrassment at being associated with her) to the far-abovementioned full-time
pedestrian dating-partner of Robbie. But one needn’t insist too strenuously,
“lean too heavily,” as they say, on Gould’s formal sinister verdure, for in
“lived” quotidian terms contemporary Green Leftism amounts merely to an implacably
prescriptive asceticism in the domain of everyday creature comforts (for of
course as regards the purely intercorporeal [and intracorporeal!] sins of the
flesh today’s Green Lefties are apostles of unbridled sybaritism in the
tradition of Hawkeye Pierce and co.), such that the Elliott Gould of <i>ILYK</i> has already caught up with today’s
Green Lefties in substance and has only to catch up with them in degree. In
contemporary “lived” quotidian terms, the Green Lefties’ agenda takes the form
of a relentless carping, canting, nasal plaint of “Do you really <i>need</i> the nice version of Product-or-Activity
X? Why don’t you just opt for the shitty version of it, or better yet, opt for a
great big glob of shit <i>instead</i> of Product-or-Activity
X?”—as in, “Do you <i>really</i> need a
heavy-duty clothes dryer? Why don’t you buy a light-duty drying machine, or
better yet hang your clothes out to dry, or better yet, never change them so
that you never have to wash them or dry them?”; “Do you <i>really</i> need to take a ten-minute shower or to shower every day? Why
don’t you just take a five-minute shower twice a week, or better yet, it lieu
of showering at all, just step outside whenever it rains?” “Do you really need
to change your clothes every day? Why not change them just twice a week, or not
at all, or better yet, throw out all your clothes and wear a muumuu woven out
of a combination of your own pubic hair and bellybutton lint?” “Do you really
need to eat the flesh of real vertebrate animals? Why not subsist on a diet of
insects, or better yet, of your own excrement straight from the chute?” “Do you
really need to drink distilled water? What don’t you drink tap water, or better
yet, your own urine straight from the spigot?” This last Mad Libette in the
catalogue makes for a perfect (some would say <i>all-too-conveniently</i> perfect) segue to my second moment-scadlet of <i>ILYK</i> in which “Los Angelisism” is
derided precisely on account of its possession of a comparatively high degree
of such sophistication and elegance. The scene is once again a soirée hosted by
a woman hailing from the cream of Angelenan society (here is as good a place as
any [except of course the passage in which I first mentioned the previous
soirée], to point out that in even still possessing a society at all, let alone
a cream-topped one, the Los Angeles of <i>ILYN</i>
is far more sophisticated and elegant than any Occidental city of the 2020s),
who for this event has managed to snag the metropolis’s most coveted caterer, a
chef whose canapes are second-to-none and doubtless described by more than one
guest as “to die for” (albeit most likely not as “TDF” [as “texting” was only
just beginning to become a “thing” then]). At a certain point about midway
through the episode a particularly bumptious guest (I’m almost certain it was
Shrug) finds his way into the kitchen, where he finds the master at work
replenishing trays with his masterpieces and has the effrontery to ask him to
what his canapes owe their unsurpassable excellence. Although irked by the
intruder’s inquisitiveness, the chef is sporting enough to tell him that the
excellence is owing to “a secret ingredient,” and most of the rest of the
episode is devoted to a guessing-game among the guests regarding this secret
ingredient, and all sorts of extremely recherché and expensive commodities like
platinum dust and bird-of-paradise brains are tendered as guesses only to
suffer a devastating deflation in the concluding seconds when for some reason
or other the caterer decides to “go nuclear” and reveal that the SI is nothing
other or better than tap water; whereupon everybody naturally starts vomiting like
Mr. Creosote into his or her cocktail napkin. Hey, as I’d be the first (and, in
the light of my near-solitariness qua <i>ILYK</i>
viewer, most likely also last) to admit, I take a certain amount of shame-lack
in my withers’ being only lightly wrung by that episode punchline, for although
I now happen to drink bottled water almost exclusively (or, rather, to misquote
the central personage from the [at least to my mind] last genuinely
entertaining television advertising campaign, “I don’t always drink water, but
when I do I prefer it from bottles”) owing to certain qualities of plumbing of
my present abode that it would be indecorous of me to specify, I have nothing
in principle against tap water and indeed consumed it gamely if not exactly
enthusiastically throughout my nearly quarter-century of residence in Baltimore
(although I plan to avoid drinking any of it there in the future in view of a
“recommendation to boil water” from the city’s government that I happened to
see about a year-and-a-half ago [and that could not but put me in mind of
Tchaikovsky’s supposed death by unboiled water during a cholera epidemic]).
Natheless, an aversion to tap water and insistence on drinking bottled water is
hardly the most fastidious, extravagant, or other-inconveniencing of pet
peccadilloes-cum-pet preferences. It is not like an addiction to caviar as a
universal condiment or proper champagne (as opposed to mere “sparkling water”
of unspecified provenance) as a bathtub-filler, let alone that most notorious
of all Hollywood pet peccadilloes-cum-pet preferences, Jerry Lewis’s refusal to
wear the same pair of socks twice. One does not need to be a movie star or even
a television star to finance a bottled-water addiction; one can indeed quite
comfortably finance a bottled-water addiction on the wages of, say, a roofer
(to name a very low-paying blokey livelihood) or a supermarket cashier (to name
a very low-paying womanish one). It is about as expensive as a two-pack-a-day
chewing-gum habit, and even back at the turn of the millennium, when cigarette
taxes were much lighter than in 2023, it was considerably cheaper than a
pack-a-day cigarette habit. Such being and having been the case, it can only
serve as a satirical target in a satirical schema that posits a properly
Spartan existence (even one in the fullest sense!) as a norm, that presents any
degree of luxury above the level of biological subsistence as abnormal. <i>And such being and having been the case,
must you not at long last give over even trying to defend ILYK qua supposed
worthy continuation of </i>Seinfeld? No, but such being and having been the
case, I am duty-bound to concede that a sane, decent, and would-be-civilized
inhabitant of the early-to-mid 2020s can fully appreciate <i>ILYK</i> only by reading it against the grain, so to speak—in other
words, by giving over any attempt to enter into its satirical attitude towards
Los Angeles and viewing even (or perhaps even especially) the Angelemes it
presents as most outrageous or contemptible as elements of a more civilized
system of life than the one that obtains in present-day America (or anywhere
else in the present-day Occident). To appreciate <i>ILYK</i> fully for what it has to offer is to see its satirized Los
Angelenan side and its normativized New Yorkean side as two halves of a whole
that is deserving of normativization in relation to an America of the 2020s that
is in turn worthy of satirization—an America in which the distinction between
vulgarity and refinement has been obliterated; in which vulgarity and
refinement now stand at one end of, not a “spectrum,” but rather a stark
antinomy whose opposite pole is insanity, infantilism, and chaos. For just as
hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, vulgarity is the tribute
barbarism pays to civilization. The vulgarian wears a gold lamé suit or has
gold plumbing fixtures installed in his bathroom (and yes I am thinking of the
bathroom of a <i>particular</i> vulgarian;
the most notorious vulgarian now alive; a man who is most ardently loathed not
because he is vulgar but because his vulgarity has not a whiff of the prosaified
supernatural about it) not only because he knows that gold is expensive but
also, and even more significantly, because he appreciates the same beauty of gold
that is integral to the sculptures of Cellini (the ostentatiousness of whose
autobiography in turn befits the vulgarity to which his medium is ineluctably
prone). The vulgarian who keeps <i>Hooked on
Classics</i> or a James Last album in constant rotation on his stereo keeps
them thereon not only because he lacks the “attention span” to appreciate a
full-length symphony but also because he genuinely appreciates the rich
sonority and (at least intuitively) the voice-leading capabilities of a
symphony orchestra. Accordingly, if there is one type of person who would singularly
benefit from a comprehensive viewing of <i>ILYK</i>
it is probably the type of American who has been described as the “Blue-state
conservative” and (in an appellation that itself reeks of the peculiar rot of
our epoch in virtue of its Tolkienian provenance) the “dark elf”; the type of
American who sympathizes with the concerns and preoccupations of people in
so-called flyover country but says that he cannot tear himself away from the
coastal metropolis in which he resides because he is too closely attached to
the cultural amenities that (according to him) still abound in coastal
metropolises. Of course even in describing such a type in such a fashion, I
have, despite having striven to fashion as narrow-circumferenced a conceptual
net as possible, cast far too broad a conceptual net, for in reality many a
“dark elf”-stroke-“Blue-state conservative” is as lacking in true cultivation
as his shitlib compatriots and supposes that easy access to Malaysian,
Ethiopian, and Uyghur-Chinese cuisine (I have of course over the years banged
on <i>ad nauseam</i> about the
low-rentishness of culinary snobbery <i>insgesamt</i>,
but any otherwise genuinely cultivated person who insists on its
high-rentishness will at least behind closed doors concede that French cuisine
is the only cuisine really worth being snobbish about, what with its having a
centuries-old tradition of snobbery more than figuratively baked into it) and to
reunion concerts by turn-of-the millennium indie-rock bands (regarding which
any parenthetical disclaimer is naturally superfluous) constitutes the <i>ne plus ultra</i> of cultural amenity. But
presumably at least a more-than-minuscule minority of DEs-cum-BSCs still sincerely
appreciate old-school high culture—still like to go to old-school symphony
orchestra concerts with programs exhausted by the works of serious composers
and unframed by childish gimmicks; to museums displaying the works of serious
artists absent disclaiming lectures on their connections to the slave trade;
and to opera-performances in which it is possible to draw some connection
between what is being sung about and what is happening on stage—and still fancy
that this O-S HC is still available in abundance in coastal metropolises, still
have yet to realize that the entities doing business under the names of these
institutions are merely a congeries of so-called skin suits but poorly
concealing their utter lack of affinity with the essential qualities thereof;
they still fancy this and have yet to realize that either because they don’t
get out as much as they suppose, such that they have not yet even been afforded
a proper view of the degeneration, or because, like the god-awfully hackneyed
but unavoidable proverbial frog in slowly boiling water, they have been getting
out so frequently over such a long stretch of time that they have not yet noticed
how much everything has changed for the worse—and for how different a sort of
worse than the old one. And lest the defender of coastal metropolises come to
suppose that he still has an ace in the hole or t***p card in the so-called
arthouse cinemas sited therein, I shall interject here that less than 24 hours
before the moment of this writing [4:46 a.m. on December 4, 2023] I saw a film—or,
at least the first minute-and-a-half thereof—that exemplifies the skinsuit
phenomenon to a nauseating turn and that I believe may fairly be said to typify
the offerings of such cinemas inasmuch as I spectated on it via a so-called
streaming service that was simultaneously hosting at least a half-dozen movies
I had seen at Baltimore’s main [and essentially sole] so-called arthouse venue
in the late twenty-teens. The film
was—and is—a 2021 adaptation of Balzac’s novel (or, if one regards each of its
parts as a novel in its own right, trilogy) <i>Lost
Illusions</i>. The book(s) recount(s) the intertwined life histories of two
friends in the French provinces: one an enterprising printer who is trying to
come up with a form of book-paper that is sturdier and cheaper than the current
standard, the other a poet who longs to see his verses appreciated by
discerning readers. The poet moves to Paris where he is quickly distracted from
his true calling by the more immediately lucrative livelihood of journalism;
his success as a journalist encourages him to live a “champagne lifestyle” and
consequently to run up enormous debts, debts that his friend back home, being
surety for them, is obliged to discharge; and being unable to discharge them,
the friend is obliged to spend a disagreeable term in the local debtor’s
prison. The moral-cum- sociopolitical upshot of this plotline, a plotline to
which the bifurcation of the protagonists is essential, is of course that in a
modern commercial society it is not enough to live a good life oneself, as
one’s fortunes are always tied up with people who live emphatically bad lives.
Within the abovementioned first minute-and-a-half, the film makes it
eyeburstingly and earburstingly clear, via both the <i>mise en scène</i> and an accompanying voiceover, that it has
obliterated the just-mentioned bifurcation—that the printer and poet have been
merged into a <i>single</i> character, into
a poet reduced to the shift of printing his own verses. As soon as my eyes and
ears had been burst by the discovery of this act of obliteration, I more than
figuratively exclaimed, “Check please!” and switched over to Claude Chabrol’s
1991 adaptation of <i>Madame Bovary</i>, a
film which, however dubious its moral-cum-sociopolitical upshot may be simply
in virtue of its being an adaptation of Flaubert’s novel (what with the
moral-cum-sociopolitical upshot of that novel’s being highly dubious indeed, as
Jean Améry [q.v.] eloquently argues in <i>Charles
Bovary, Country Doctor</i>) at least possesses the virtue of keeping Emma
categorically distinct from her husband. The reader unfamiliar with the Balzac
work will doubtless think that the consolidation of the poet and the printer is
some minor if regrettable bit of dramaturgical streamlining like Laurence
Olivier’s elimination of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from <i>Hamlet</i> and reassignment of a handful of their lines to Polonius,
but I can assure this reader that it is far more serious and far more grotesque
than that; that it is at least as egregious as would be the consolidation of
George and Kramer in a <i>Seinfeld</i>
“reboot,” or of Arthur and Shrug in a reboot of <i>ILYK</i>. “That said,” such an act of dramaturgical brutality is
entirely par for the course in Millennials’ treatment of established
personages; it is merely another instance of their predilection for wresting
such personages entirely free of their established context, whether historical
or fictional; it is exactly the kind of thing one would expect from a
generation that has delightedly produced and consumed <i>Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer</i> and <i>Pride and</i> <i>Prejudice and
Zombies</i>, and that in its hierarchy of cinematic modes accords pride of
place to Japanese animation, with its blithe and ever-quasi-pornographic
mingling of human and animal characteristics in a single personage (e.g., a
schoolgirl with cats’ ears and a puppy-dog’s tail), and pointless displacement
of characters to alien settings (e.g., Sherlock Holmes to twenty-fourth century
Mars).<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">In 1971, the abovementioned
Jean Améry, a man who had spent a great deal of time observing and analyzing
the changes and continuities in the Occidental way of life of the mid-to-late
twentieth century (and who had recorded the fruits of his observation and
analysis in his highly enlightening 1964 book <i>Preface to the Future</i>), delivered </span><a href="https://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2017/11/a-translation-of-zugang-zu-marcel.html"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">a
lecture in honor of the hundredth anniversary of Marcel Proust’s birth</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">, a
lecture that he concluded by championing continuing attention to Proust work on
the grounds that “as long as we are stuck here in and with this epoch, which is
every bit as much a late-bourgeois epoch as in Proust’s day, we cannot get by
without him.” And at that moment, Améry’s assertion of the essential
late-bourgeoisness of the present must have been unchallengeable. After all,
the following year, 1972, saw the release of Luis Buñuel’s <i>The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie</i>, which proved wildly popular
throughout Europe and North America, and <i>pace</i>
my preceding strictures on the “narrowcasting” tendencies of cinema, it is hard
to imagine that a film that flaunted its monomaniacal obsession with the
bourgeoisie in its title would have been an international hit if the
bourgeoisie had been a marginal social force, let alone a relic of a bygone
age. But as I believe the preceding pages of this essay have at least credibly
suggested if not exactly trenchantly proved, we have at some point in the past
twenty years ceased to live in a definitively late-bourgeois epoch—an epoch in
which while dogged industriousness may not have been universally esteemed,
unregenerate laziness was still universally stigmatized; and in which while
very few people may have had decent taste, everyone still appreciated beauty
within the limits of his aesthetic capacity—and begun to live in a definitely
post-bourgeois epoch—an epoch in which sloth and ugliness have become normative;
and while I—a Proustophile’s Proustophile who was not even (albeit only barely
not even) born in 1971—am certainly not going to sit here, let alone stand
there, and say that it is no longer worthwhile to read Proust (even if “in a
certain very real sense,” I have already said just that way back in the
mid-20-oughties, in the essay </span><a href="https://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2006/10/proprietary-names-name-proprietary.html"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;">“Proprietary
Names: the Name / Proprietary Names: the Place”</span></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;"> [and
inasmuch as the names of the entities inhabiting the trash so ardently beloved
of the Millennial generation at least <i>seem</i>
to function in a manner not dissimilar to that of proprietary names, one cannot
but suspect that the <i>Aufstehen </i>of the
proprietary name is implicated in the <i>Untergang</i>
of the bourgeois epoch in some fashion {not to mention but hope that that
fashion proves rich and coherent enough to yield a sequel-essay to “Proprietary
Names: the Name / Proprietary Names: the Place”}]), I <i>am</i> going to sit here (and would be glad to stand there) and say
that in order to understand the transition from the bourgeois epoch to the
post-bourgeois one we would do best to study the television of the micro-epoch
of that transition (why the television and not the cinema or <i>belles lettres</i> thereof I have already
made plain several pages ago [and hinted at only a single sentence ago]) and
that inasmuch as the tipping-point of that transition seems to be situated at
the very tip of the tipping-point between the second and third millennia, we
would be best of all served thereunto by studying <i>It’s Like, You Know</i>. And in closing I must dot-connectingly emphasize
that the understanding of this transition today will conceivably yield a very
different sort of fruit from that yielded by an understanding of the bourgeois world
fifty or sixty years ago—and “arguably” a much more fruitful sort of fruit; for
in the twilight decades of the bourgeois epoch, an improved understanding of
the bourgeois world could perforce merely yield an understanding of how to get
along in that moribund world, whereas an understanding of the transition from
the bourgeois to the post-bourgeois epoch will perforce allow at least the
understanders with residual bourgeois tendencies to perceive what was lost in
the transition and thereby, conceivably, to facilitate their less fortunate
contemporaries’ “detransitioning” back into proper bourgeois subjects and
concomitantly usher in the restoration of the bourgeois world, which if hardly
a full-fledged utopia was at least a proper and halfway decent topia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 9.0pt 319.5pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">THE END</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 9.0pt 319.5pt; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p><br /><p></p>Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-43614994225511455152023-02-21T00:48:00.016-05:002023-10-16T08:48:49.800-04:00From Bosley's Cyclopædia of Musical Anecdotes<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Unlike that of
most of Haydn’s sobriquet-sporting compositions, the nickname of Haydn’s Symphony
No. 64 in A major, ‘Tempora mutantur,’ has always been unequivocally traceable
to the composer owing to its appearance in his hand in the headings of the
orchestral parts distributed to the musicians at Esterházy for the work’s first
performance, but hitherto no one has tendered a satisfactory explanation of the
phrase’s superscription. The full wording of the phrase in the headings, ‘Tempora
mutantur et.,’ makes plain that it is an invocation of the modern-Latin adage ‘Tempora
mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis,’ meaning ‘The times change and we change
with them,’ but no aspect of either the form or the content of the work
plausibly hints at any applicability of the adage thereto. Elaine Sisman’s widely
circulated contention that the adage is invoked zeugmatically by way of
designating certain ‘time changes’ in the second movement—notably, irruptions
of fortissimo quavers and pianissimo crochets suggestive of a common-time meter
in contradiction of the movement’s 3/4 time signature—has never been more than
faintly tenable in the light of both the manifest applicability of the adage to
the entire symphony (owing to its exclusive presence on the first page of the
first movement) and the absence of it or any other verbal indication of an
unusual treatment of meter from the orchestral parts of the Symphony No. 65
(also in A major), which was composed at most three years later and indulges in
explicitly notated proto-Stravinskyan alternations between 3/4 and 4/4 in its
minuet. Fortunately, thanks to a new edition of legendary Haydn scholar H.C.
Robbins Landon’s legendary <i>Haydn:
Chronicle and Works</i>, the meaning and purpose of the nickname have now been definitively
ascertained ‘thanks,’ writes Landon, ‘to the recent discovery in the attic of
the Rathaus in Eisenstadt of the manuscript of a memoir by the violinist and
leader of the Esterházy orchestra, Luigi Tomasini, and in particular to the
following passage therein (apologies to my Italian readers for taking the
liberty of presenting it in my own English translation, which makes no attempt
to capture the ineffable verve and sprightliness of the original):<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">At
midday on the 10<sup>th</sup> of October, Herr Haydn and I were in the Kapellmeister’s
wardrobe-room and dressing for the final rehearsal of his new overture in A
major, which we were to perform for his Excellency and his guests in the Sala
Terrena that evening. In conformity with the maestro’s own rule for these final
rehearsals, we were donning our full livery—the same livery of silver-trimmed
scarlet that we would be wearing at the performance itself—and the maestro,
having already put on his breeches, was buttoning up his waistcoat, and he
found that owing, apparently, to his excessive girth at about the level of his
navel, he could not make the bottom button completely traverse the distance
separating it from its hole. The maestro immediately expressed much surprise
and consternation at the excess: “How can it be, my dear Luigi, that I have put
on so much weight since the Kapelle’s last performance a mere month ago? After
all, as you know, I rigorously adhere to the most austere dietary regimen, taking
only a Lincoln continental breakfast<sup>1</sup> and at suppertime a bit of
bread with a sip of wine. And at dinner, like you, I always sit at his
Excellency’s servants’ table, at which we have been offered the same four or
five main courses and side-courses in rotation for at least the past five
years. Moreover, I have not lately bated the length of my daily morning or
afternoon constitutional by so much as a hand-span. So what the D***l has
induced this lamentable expansion of my belly?” “In the first place, maestro,”
I began in reply while smiling the most equable of smiles, “you are not alone
in having put on a few pounds since our last performance. Observe,” I said, pointing at the lower half
of my waistcoat (for I had arrived at the wardrobe room a few minutes before
the maestro, and consequently had already buttoned up my waistcoat as nearly
fully as I could), “that I myself have been obliged to leave my bottom
waistcoat button unbuttoned.” “Why then,” the maestro immediately countered
with characteristic gimlet-eyed quick-wittedness, “you have obviously been
letting yourself go in some department of your life.” “To the contrary, maestro,”
I counter-countered, my equability unruffled in virtue of my full knowledge of
the facts of the case, “I have been adhering as tightly as you to a dietary
regimen and an exercise routine as Spartan as yours (although, to be sure,
whereas you take wine with your suppertime crust of bread I take beer with
mine, and whereas you exercise by taking constitutionals I exercise by ringing
a dumb-bell in my chamber). And as you have just remarked, like you, I have
been dining exclusively at his Excellency’s servants’ table, where, as you have
also just remarked, we have been offered the same four or five main courses and
side-courses in rotation for at least the past five years.” “So then what are
you insinuating, Luigi? Would you have me believe that the very air here at Eszterháza
has lately been impregnated with lard or butter?” “The air, no, my dear
maestro, but the<i> water</i>, yes.” “What
the D***l do you mean, Luigi? I have never heard, let alone partaken, of a
glass of butter-water or lard-water, here or anywhere else.” “Nor have I. But
do we not consume water through certain ingredients of food as well as through
beverages?” “Ah yes: through sauces, gravies, soups, doughs …” “…sauces,
gravies, soups, doughs, yes—and <i>batters</i>.”
“Ah yes, of course, <i>batters</i>, as in
pancakes. But we are served pancakes here only at Shrove Tuesday, which was well
over half a year ago.” “Yes, but batter is used in other preparations of food
than pancakes. You will recall, maestro, that on each and every Thursday, barring
special fast and feast days, we servants of his Excellency dine on <i>Tafelspitz</i> accompanied by a sort of
vegetable fritter.” “Ah, yes: the fritter whose recipe his Excellency received
from his epistolary correspondent in Japan, that Swedish natural philosopher,
Herr von Thun-something?” “Von Thunberg. Exactly: that very fritter prepared
and cooked in conformity with that very recipe received from that very
correspondent of his Excellency. Well, my current dulcinea, Gisele, is a
scullery maid in his Excellency’s kitchen, which as you know is presided over
by old Frau Stuckenschmidt.” “Ah, yes, Frau Stuckenschmidt: I have never encountered
a sharper-tongued old termagant (apart, perhaps from Frau Haydn, my wife. But
let us not repair thither [in either of two ways]).” “Yes (or no), let us not. In
any case, for all her shrewishness, Frau Stuckenschmidt is a most excellent
cook.” “To be sure she is, Luigi. For as the proverb goes,” he added with a
mischievous twinkle in one of his eyes (I no longer remember which one): “‘With
a name like Stuckenschmidt, it has to be good.’” Whereupon the two of us enjoyed
a hearty laugh that made our unprecedentedly exposed bellies shake like a pair
of brimful jam-jars until at length I resumed my account thus: “About two
months ago, my Gisele was in the scullery at about eleven in the morning, in
other words, about three hours before dinnertime, and having prepared the
batter for the fritter, she was about to immerse the first of several-dozen radishes
in the mixture, when Frau Stuckenschmidt came rushing in with a saucepan in one
hand and a spoon in the other and shrieking, ‘Drop that radish at once,
Silchen!’ Whereupon (or, at any rate, immediately after my Silchen had heeded
her command and the previously mystifyingly hazardous radish was lying
harmlessly on the chopping-board) she emptied the contents of the saucepan—which
self-evidently consisted entirely of melted butter—into the bowl containing the
batter. Then she handed the spoon to Gisele and said: ‘Mix that butter thoroughly
into the batter before you dip any more radishes, and throw out any of ’em you’ve
already dipped.’ ‘B-b-but,’ my poor Silchen spluttered in desperation, knowing
as she did that if she obeyed her mistress she would risk bringing down the
wrath of his Excellency himself upon her poor snail braid-bracketed little
head, ‘what about Herr von Thunberg’s recipe?’ ‘Zum T****l mit Herr von
Thunberg und mit his schtinking recipe!’ Frau Stuckenschmidt thundered, then
continued at a rolling boil thus: ‘A batter without butter is simply and
utterly un-Austrian, un-Hungarian, un-German, un-Central European, un-Habsburgian
and un-Holy-Roman-Imperial! From now on, we are going to put a half a pound of
butter in every batch. And neither his Excellency nor Herr von Thunberg need
ever know about it, as long as you keep your schtinking little lips sealed!’”
“And obviously,” the maestro then ruefully remarked, “your dulcinea has failed
to keep those selfsame lips sealed.” “Obviously, at least to me. But I hope,
maestro, that I can prevail upon you not to breathe a word of this to his
Excellency at his next baryton lesson.” “You most certainly can and indeed
have. Howbeit, the news of this change in the recipe for the fritter must be
shared with the rest of the orchestra, lest we all soon find ourselves too
heavyset to fit into our chairs as well as our uniforms.” “I agree, maestro.
But how are we to keep the news confined to the band? Not to name any names,
but among my fellow-fiddlers alone there are one or two fellows who are
scarcely more trustworthy with a secret than my Silchen.” “Why, then, we must
somehow communicate the news to the musicians without communicating it to them,
if you take my meaning.” Genuinely nonplussed, I replied, “I’m not quite sure I
do, maestro.” “What I mean is that we must give them a kind of signal that
works on them…how do you say?...<i>subliminally</i>,
that makes them averse to the fritter without apprising them of the source of
their aversion. But the signal must be something that they all know by rote,
something they have all known since their schooldays….<i>Sapperlot</i>, I think I’ve got it! <i>Tempura
mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis</i>.” Genuinely nonplussed yet again, I
remarked: “I own that they are all likely to recognize that tag, but I fail to
see its relevance to our purpose. I mean, ‘The times change…’” “…Not <i>tem<b>por</b>a
mutantur</i>, Luigi: <i>tem<b>pur</b>a mutantur</i>.” “Ah,” I exclaimed,
plussed at last: “<i>tempura</i>: the
authentick Japanese name of the fritter!” “Exactly: so, <i>Tempura mutantur—</i>”<i> </i>here
he broke off just long enough to grip his new paunch on either side like a loaf
and heft it like a ten-pin bowling ball as he smiled a smile whose impish
winsomeness would have made Shakespeare’s Puck turn green–“<i>nos et mutamur in illis</i>: as Japanese fritter recipes change, we
change with them.” “And,” I gleefully chimed in, launching into the remainder
of the new-modeled tag: “<i>Quomodo? Fit
semper tempura peior homo</i>: How so? A new Japanese fritter recipe always makes
a man worse.” “Exactly! And now,” he said as he sat down and began pulling on
the first of his stockings (I no longer remember which one), “fetch me pen and
ink forthwith, Luigi,” (for by then I was fully dressed), “for as soon as I have
put on my shoes I shall add the opening words of the tag to the instrumental
parts myself, so that the musicians will reflexively regard them as an order
from me.” And so I did as he had asked; he did as he had promised; next time
the fritter made its appearance at dinnertime, not a single one of us butcher’s
double-dozen musicians touched it; Frau Stuckenschmidt promptly took the hint
and reverted to the old recipe; by All Souls’ Day we were all once again
fitting comfortably into our uniforms; and I’ll wager that by Christmastime we
were the sveltest musical ensemble in all the Habsburg Lands, if not in all of
Central Europe.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">That Haydn’s
one-charactered alteration of the adage went unnoticed for over two centuries
is easily explained by the presumptive minuteness of the interval in which he
was obliged to add its abridgment to all butcher’s double-dozen parts, for
while Haydn’s handwriting was ordinarily quite impeccably regular, in
situations of unusual urgency it would exhibit certain peculiarities that have
bedeviled his most gimlet-eyed editors (including the present one). Chief among
these quirks was a tendency of the return arcs of his descending strokes to
overshoot their marks, a tendency that inter alia made his lowercase u’s
virtually indistinguishable from his lowercase o’s. Although I had been aware
of this tendency since my days as a teenaged amateur Haydn scholar, until I
encountered Tomasini’s memoir, my equally ancient familiarity with the adage had
blinded me to the tendency’s occurrence in the quotation, or rather creative
misquotation, of the adage in the orchestral parts of Hob. I:64.”<sup>1.</sup><o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">1.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";">H.C. Robbins Landon, <i>Haydn: Chronicle and Works</i>, Vol. 2, <i>Haydn in Esterhaza</i>. <i>The
Director’s Cut.</i> (Sheboygan: University of Wisconsin-Green Bay Press, 2005),
pp. 215-24.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">2.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif";"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the same passage wherein Landon cleareth
up one mystery he begetteth another, for I was always given to understand that
the Lincoln continental breakfast, consisting of a cup of coffee <i>solus</i>, owed its name to the breakfasting
practice of the 16<sup>th</sup> U.S. president, but as Abraham Lincoln was not
even born until Haydn’s death-year, 1809, that debt must evidently be sought
elsewhere—presumably in the breakfasting practice of the inhabitants of the county
town of Lincolnshire, as the capital of Nebraska was founded in 1856, nearly a
half-century after Haydn’s <i>disparation</i>.
(Editor’s [i.e., Bosley’s] note) </span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p><p></p>Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-5298252522221629912021-12-24T05:30:00.016-05:002023-02-21T00:33:58.617-05:00From Bosley’s Cyclopædia of Courtroom Anecdotes<p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Wellsir, in answer to your question: yes, what with that
there trial being the biggest thing that’s ever happened here in Dayton, or
really even the only thing that’s ever happened here in Dayton, I have heard a
fair amount about what folks from other parts o’ the country have said about
it. I hear tell they mostly blame Bryan’s downfall on all them snippy highfalutin
things Darrow said about Scripture. For example, there was that bit he did
about the book of Joshua, about how Joshua couldn’ta made the sun stand still as
long as Scripture says he did ’cos if he had the earth woulda turned into “a
vast molten mass”—I guess ’cos the bit o’ the earth facin’ the sun woulda been
facin’ it too long. Then o’ course
Darrow laid into them mile-deep family trees in the book o’ Genesis with all them<i> begats</i>—“And Arphaxad begat Salah, and
Salah begat Eber,” and so forth. He tried to show that even after you added up
all them <i>begat</i>s starting with Adam,
the world turned out to be a heck of a lot too young ’ccordin’ to the Bible by
comparison with how old them scientist-folks said it was ’ccordin’ to some
cockamamie way they had o’ weighin’ rocks—or maybe it was smellin’ ’em; I don’t
rightly remember. Well, like I said, from what I hear tell, them out-o’-town
folks think that Bryan’s goose was cooked by all that highfalutin mumbo-jumbo,
that it discombobulated him and also made him look like a clown in the eyes o’
the jurors. But I say different, and I say it partly ’cos apart from one other
moment—which I’ll get round to talkin’ ’bout in the sweet by and by—I can’t
recall any other time during the trial when the jury looked more like a circus
audience or a passel o’ goose-cookin’ spectators than when Darrow was spoutin’
that there mumbo-jumbo. What’s that you asked, mister? Oh yeah, there sure as
heck is such a thing as a public goose-cookin.’ They’re mighty pop’lar around
here, or were mighty pop’lar round here, till that Julia Child woman started
’pearin’ on television. Anyhow, like I was sayin’, the jury was obviously
unimpressed by Darrow’s Bible-bashin’ spiel. In particular, I remember how the foreman, Jim
Stebbins, seemed to find the whole spiel completely ridiculous, and he looked
like he found it more and more ridiculous the longer Darrow talked. He started
out by rollin’ his eyes, then he moved on to stickin’ his tongue out, and by
the time Darrow was wrappin’ up he had his right hand balled up into a fist and
was movin’ it to and from his person in a manner that as a Christian I daren’t
even describe in greater detail, let alone show you with my own northpaw.
What’s that you ask, mister? Since the jury did end up findin’ Mr. Scopes not guilty,
mustn’t there have been somethin’ ’bout Mr. Darrow’s case that they did end up
findin’ convincin’? Why o’ course there musta been, and that brings me to that
other moment I was alludin’ to just now.
It came just after Bryan’s rebuttal o’ the Bible-bashin’ spiel. The
upshot o’ this rebuttal was that for all he, Bryan, knew, Darrow mighta been
right about the sun and about all those rocks, and even about somethin’ he,
Darrow, had said earlier than that, namely that give or take a million or two <i>begats</i>, every single one of us—includin’
Adam and Eve—were actual, genu-wine monkeys’ nieces and nephews. So Bryan said
that for all he, Bryan, knew Darrow mighta been right about that but that he,
Bryan, couldn’t see what difference it made even if he, Darrow, was right. He,
Bryan, said the whole thing reminded him o’ somethin’ in that feller Boswell’s
book about his, Boswell’s, friend Sam Johnson. You see, Boswell and Johnson had
been chattin’ with an acquaintance o’ theirs, a sort o’ Chuck Darwin before his
time; only he wuddn’t just a regular scientist-type feller like Darwin; he was
one o’ them-there aristocrats, a lord, you know, a real high mucky-muck,
although I’m tempted to call him a <i>monkey</i>-monk,
not only ’cos he was wild about monkeys like Darwin but also ’cos his name
sounded like one o’ them there bigger types o’ monkeys—it was Lord Monumbo or
Benombo or somethin’ like that. Anyhow, like Darwin this Lord Monombo feller thought
that us human bein’s used to have tails and walk on all four like monkeys and that
they’d somehow lost them tails and started walkin’ upright along the way ’cos
it wuddn’t useful for </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">em to have tails anymore on account o’ their not livin’ in trees
anymore. And Johnson thought this Lord Monombo was just about the silliest
feller in the world—not only or even mainly just ’cos he, Johnson, didn’t
believe human bein’s had ever had tails or walked on all four (although to be
sure, he sure as Sam Hill didn’t believe that), but mainly ’cos he reckoned
that even if human bein’s had had tails and walked on all four once upon a
time, it wouldn’t do ’em any good now to know they’d once had ’em and done that,
’cos they didn’t need tails or need to walk on all four anymore now. “Sir,” Sam
Johnson had said to Boswell, ’ccordin’ to Bryan, “it,” meanin’ this notion o’ human
bein’s havin’ had tails like monkeys and walkin’ on all four way back when, “is
all conjecture about a thing useless, even were it known to be true. Knowledge
of all kinds is good. Conjecture, as to things useful, is good; but conjecture
as to what it would be useless to know, such as whether men went upon all four
and had tails, is very idle.” Those had been Sam Johnson’s exact words
’ccordin’ to Boswell ’ccordin’ to Bryan; I’ve got one o’ them what they call </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">phonographic</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> memories, you see, even if
I can’t quite remember the exact name o’ that Lord Monombo or Benombo feller;
most peculiar, that. Anyhow, I thought Sam Johnson’s words made mighty good
sense, ’specially with regard to the whole point at issue in the trial, the
question whether that Darwin feller’s mumbo-jumbo should be taught in our
school. After all, school’s all about—or should be all about—teachin’ the young
’ins readin,’ writin,’ and ’rithmetic, teachin’ ’em things they’ll actually </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">use </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">in a complex, ever-changin’, and
increasingly globalized workin’ ’vironment. And what could the blessed use be
of knowin’ their umpteenth-great granpa ‘n’ granma went around on all four and
swung from tree to tree by their tails like a dad-blamed monkey? Will they
somehow climb up the…how do you say?…</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">corporate
ladder</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> with that nonexistent tail o’ theirs? That nonexistent tail sure as
heck duddn’t do </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">me</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> any good at the jail
or the courthouse. ’Course in lots o’ ways it would be </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">nice</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> if I had that tail, if it was an </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">existent</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> tail. I could carry m’keys with it, and maybe lassoo
prisoners with it if they tried to run away. But as long as I ain’t got that
tail, and that’s goin’ to be as long as all eternity, there’s no point in
dwellin’ on what I could be doin’ with it, ’cos that’s just goin’ to make me
sad. And I s’pose I </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">could</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> go ’round
the courthouse on all four even now if I wanted to. But the judge and the
sheriff’d never stand for it—or, rather, join me on all four for it—and it’d be
mighty hard to slip handcuffs on the prisoners if I had to keep m’own two mitts
on the floor as a matter o’course. I suppose I’d just whip the cuffs into
m’teeth first with m’tail. Anyhow, like I was sayin’, or about to be sayin’, I
found that Sam Johnson-powered spiel o’ Bryan’s pretty persuasive, and more to
the point, the jury seemed to be findin’ it pretty durned persuasive too. Jim
Stebbins started out by furrowin’ his brow and pursin’ his lips and noddin’
pretty sympathetically, and by the time Bryan was finished, he was kissin’ his
fingertips (I mean his own fingertips not Bryan’s) over ‘n’ over again in a
manner that as an American, and more to the point a non-Eyetalian, I daren’t
even describe in greater detail, let alone show you with m’own
northpaw-‘n’-kisser. I tell you, that jury looked like the furthest thing in
the world from a passel o’ goose-cookin’ spectators; they looked like they was
watchin’ an…I dunno…an </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">owl-freezin’</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">,
I guess. Bryan himself seemed pretty satisfied with that owl-freezin’ spiel,
and rightly so, and I reckon that if the trial had ended right then ‘n’ there,
Mr. Scopes woulda been found guilty on all counts and sent straight to the
hoosegow, and he’d probably still be behind bars to this day. But unfortunately
the order o’ bidness that day allowed Darrow a counter-rebuttal. And that counter-rebuttal
was what really administered the abovementioned cookin’ to Bryan’s goose. It
bawled down to just fifteen words, and none of ’em any o’ those fifty-cent
lawyerly words neither. Surprisin’ ain’t it, that a feller’s whole goose could
be cooked by just fifteen little words? But it wuddn’t the words alone that
were so devastatin’; what made ’em so devastatin’ was what Darrow was doin’ as
he was sayin’ ’em. But even to give you
an idearrof what he was doin’ then, I’ve got to tell you a little story. You
see, a few days before this, before this day of the trial, Darrow paid a visit
to our town’s only tailor, Joe Haggardy, to order some new pants. I know this
’cos I stopped by Joe’s shop m’self a few days later, a few days after the
trial was over, to have a new pair o’ pants for m’uniform made from scratch,
which I had to do for reasons that’ll soon become clear, and Joe told me all
about what Darrow’d said to him during his visit. He said Darrow wanted the new
pants—six pairs o’them, actually—’cos all the ones he had with him were fittin’
him too tightly in a certain part o’ the body that as a Christian I daren’t
name. “The problem with the pants I got now,” Darrow says, as he’s standin’ in
his skivvies and Joe’s measurin’ him for the new pants, “is that the crotch,
down where your nuts hang”—What’s that, you say? Why am I namin’ the place when
I just said I daren’t name it? Well, ’cos this ain’t me talkin’ now, you see:
this is</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> Darrow</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> talkin’, courtesy of
my phonographic memory. So anyhow, Darrow says, “The problem is that the crotch,
down where your nuts hang, is always a little too tight. So when you make the
new ones up, give me a couple inches that I can let out there, ’cos the old
ones cut me. They’re just like ridin’ a wire fence. See if you can’t leave me
about six inches from where the zipper ends around under my—back to m’
bunghole.” “In other words,” Joe rejoins, and again, this is Joe talkin’ now,
not me, “you’d like just a little more stride in the crotch?” “Yeah that’s
right,” Darrow re-rejoins. “I asked him that,” Joe says to me after tellin’ me
all this, “’cos that’s what I always ask a feller when he wants more room down
there, but o’ course six inches is an awful lot o’extra cloth just for addin’ a
</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">little </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">more stride, and I woulda
thought </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">one</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> extra inch wouda done for
that purpose for a man o’ his build, if you know what I mean.” And I </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">did</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> know what he meant, and I </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">still</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> know what he meant, only I ain’t
goin’ to specify it, ’cos it ain’t somethin’ fit for a Christian to specify,
and m’phonographic memory’s obviously no use to me now ’cos Joe didn’t specify
it himself. But I reckon a fancy-pants city slicker like yourself, a feller
who’s prob’ly got his own personal tailor, will know what Joe meant if a pig-ignrn’t
hayseed like me does. Anyhow, considerin’ Darrow didn’t seem to need all that
extra cloth, you mighta thought he’d asked for it with exactly what he did in
court a coupla days later in mind, ’cept I don’t know how he woulda known he
was goin’ to have occasion to do what he did then, ’cos I don’t know how he
woulda known Bryan was goin’ to say what he said just before he, Darrow, did
what he did. It almost makes you think the two of ’em had scripted it all out
beforehand, duddn’t it? Well anyhow, irregardless of whatever the two o’them’d
concocted behind the scenes, what Darrow did ‘n’ said after Bryan finished up
his mighty persuasive spiel was meant to make Bryan look like a clown, and
certainly it did just that. Now what he did was this: he grabbed the fly o’his
trousers—one o’ the pairs of trousers he’d just had Joe make him—and bunched up
the cloth there so that a good bit of it—yes, yes, yes: a good </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">six inches of it</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">—was stickin’ out from
between his thumb ‘n’ forefinger. And then he said with a smile on his face
that woulda’ made that wicked Roman feller from that fancy film ’bout our
Savior’s robe—</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Caligula</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">, you
say?—right, Caligula; he said with a smile that woulda made Caligula blush,
“Mr. Bryan, I am much more interested in the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Johnson of life</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> than in the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Life
of Johnson</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">.” And then he wiggled that bit o’ cloth over ‘n’ over again; he
kept wigglin’ it and wigglin’ it, and dad blame me if (and ’member I didn’t yet
know he’d been to Joe’s shop then), dad blame me if it didn’t look like there
was nothin’ but a flypaper-thin layer o’ gabardine ‘n’ broadcloth apiece
separatin’ my peepers ‘n’ the peepers of everybody else in that courtroom from
the sight o’ his nekkid you-know-what. And I don’t know if it was owin’ to the
sheer dad-blamed cheekiness o’ the whole performance, or the sheer dad-blamed
ridiculousness of it or sheer-dad blamed </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">awe
</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, "serif"; font-size: 12pt;">at the presumed dimensions of that-there-you know what, but whatever the reason
was, there wuddn’t a man or woman in that courtroom—includin’ Bryan himself ‘n’
the judge—who could keep a straight face as they watched those six inches o’
cloth jigglin’ up ‘n’ down ’tween Darrow’s fingers. And some of us, includin’
m’self, also couldn’t keep control o’certain other parts of us, certain parts
down below other’n the one we thought Darrow was jigglin’; hence m’need to
visit Joe’s shop afterwards. And perhaps not quite needless to say, ’cos that
some-of-us also included the stenographer, that lady stopped mindin’ the keys
on her machine altogether ‘n’ never got ’round to recordin’ any part o’ the “Johnson
o’ life” episode, so’s it ended up bein’ missin’ from the record of the trial,
so’s that as far as the general public and history’ve been concerned, Darrow
nailed Bryan on nothin’ but his ignorance o’ that cockamamey mumbo-jumbo ’bout
rocks. But that’s all goin’ to change
now, ain’t it, Mr. Hornbeck? You’ll make sure the truth finally gets out,
wontcha?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">—Enos P. Shroyer, former bailiff at the jail and courthouse
of Dayton County, Tennessee, speaking to E.K. Hornbeck, Jr. of the <i>Baltimore Herald</i> on January 23, 1965.
The typescript of Shroyer’s remarks, evidently transcribed from a subsequently
destroyed Dictaphone tape, was discovered in Hornbeck’s posthumous papers in
1999; no article incorporating the remarks had appeared in the <i>Herald</i> or any other newspaper in the
meantime.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p></p>Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-59875928548324847622020-02-28T18:31:00.002-05:002022-08-04T02:13:14.942-04:00An Uncharacteristically Topical Post on the Metropolitan Opera's Latest Production of Alban Berg's Wozzeck<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Despite its title this post is in many and perhaps even in
most respects essentially a sequel to one penned nearly six years ago, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“<a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2013/12/lululations.html" target="_blank">Lululations</a>,”</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> inasmuch
as it is likewise a polemic directed against the production of a Berg opera, in
this case the Metropolitan Opera’s current one of <i>Wozzeck</i>, as seen and heard by the present writer on Saturday,
January 12, 2020 at the Charles Theater here in Baltimore via live
transmission; but inasmuch as <i>Wozzeck</i>
is in many (and perhaps even most) respects a very different sort of opera than
<i>Lulu</i>, the Metropolitan Opera in some
(although undoubtedly not most) respects a very different sort of institution
than the Salzburg Festival, and 2020 in some (although undoubtedly not enough)
respects a very different sort of year than 2014, the title really must stand. Last and penultimate present
post-differentiating things first: what this new Met presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i> most eye-burstingly suggests is that
in its treatment of productions the Met has recently adopted (or more than
likely merely slid into) an ethos that is in some (albeit not all) respects
stridently at odds with the classic Met’s meta-productional ethos.—viz., an
ethos alternating with Eveready bunny-esque reliability between an attitude of “If
it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” and one of
“If it ain’t going to be reused at least every other year, don’t bovver over-building
it.” Certainly as recently as 2010, and
very probably as recently as 2017, one could count on the Met to deliver an opera
under the auspices of one of exactly two styles of production—an opulently
old-school neo-verist style and a middle-school minimalist style. In either case, the production could be
counted on neither to contribute to nor to detract from the quality of the
performance very materially. In this
respect the Met differed at least intermittently from the Salzburg Festival, which
despite its ever-close affiliation with the local <i>Mozartkugeln</i>-propagating heritage industry has always been obliged
to give at least an occasional dramaturgical nod to its at least aspirantly
transgressive modernist roots; such that an objectionably licentious Salzburg <i>Lulu</i> production such as the one I
decried nearly ten years ago was for all its objectionability hardly an
out-of-left-field dramaturgical curve-ball.
Accordingly, the present Met presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i>, in being at least twice as objectionable as the Salzburg
one of <i>Lulu</i>, hit the present writer in
the goolies like a googly bowled from the return crease. Indeed, now that I have seen this Met
presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i>, my
objections to that older Salzburg presentation of <i>Lulu</i> have come to seem downright nitpicking. For at bottom, all these objections were
directed at mere tactical misplacements of dramaturgical <i>emphasis</i> eventuating at worst in a misapprehension of the opera’s <i>tone</i>, of its attitude towards its <i>theme</i>, misplacements that could not even
ever-so-slightly occlude or distort the spectator-cum-listener’s comprehension
the theme itself—viz., that human sexuality is a fundamentally destructive
force impervious to moralization of any kind in any register. For example, my chastisement of Lulu’s throwing
of her knickers to a manservant and this servant’s immediately subsequent
sniffing thereof, an episode of throwing-cum-sniffing nowhere indicated in the
libretto’s stage-directions, was occasioned by the entirely farcical tone of
the episode, by its distinctly anti-Bergian <i>Carry
On</i> film-esque intimation that the ineluctability of sexual obsession was
fundamentally ridiculous rather than fundamentally horrifying. But this episode for all its risibility did
nothing to undermine the centrality of the theme, to undermine the implied
assertion that whether under the dramaturgical auspices of tragedy, farce,
comedy of manners or grand guignol, sexuality must be regarded as a might(il)y
devastating <i>nachon</i>; indeed, the
episode fairly underscored that centrality, which is why I am almost inclined retrospectively
to tip my hat to it (as well as, incidentally, to the <i>Carry On</i> franchise, for all its reliable unwatchability on account
of its consistently ultra-lazy treatment of its source material, an
ultra-laziness that makes Mel Brooks’s <i>History
of the World Part One</i> look like a Ken Burns documentary). The faults to which I objected in the
Salzburg production’s treatment of the final scene likewise performed no fatally
deleterious theme-decentralizing work.
To be sure, in libretto-defyingly leaving Jack the Ripper onstage at the
conclusion it did rather give the decidedly wrong impression that one was to be
more interested in him than in his principal victim, but it did not leave
anyone in doubt about the motive of his crime; it did not lead one to believe
that he had killed Lulu for any other reason than that she was a beautiful
woman. To be sure, in that Salzburg
production there was <i>exactly one
potentially</i> fatally theme-decentralizing episode, the Act II-concluding
episode dramatizing the foreplay to Alwa’s presumptive inaugural act of coition
with <i>Lulu</i>, an episode whereby it was
erroneously intimated, via a libretto-unheeding bit of stage business (i.e., a
bit of stage business that in contrast to the retention of Jack was simply
unindicated by the libretto rather than proscribed altogether thereby) that
Alwa’s obsession with Lulu was but a stalking horse for his obsession with
writing the perfect opera. But this
episode mercifully never came into its fatally theme-decentralizing own because
its upshot went mercifully unechoed by any of the production’s treatment of
Alwa vis-à-vis Lulu in earlier or subsequent scenes, wherein he was faithfully
portrayed as a man utterly in thrall to an exclusively erotic obsession with
the opera’s eponym. And to be sure, the
dopey interruption of the toast scene at the beginning of the third act by bits
of fourth wall-breaking horseplay with the audience was inexcusably
gratuitous. But meta-dramaturgically
speaking, it could not be described as <i>fatal</i>,
inasmuch as it was probably accurately regarded as a genuine interruption (as
opposed to a written-in interruption) even by those members of the audience
unfamiliar with the opera, who in any case presumably could be counted on to
reabsorb themselves into the diagesis after the conclusion of this interruption. And to be surest if in hindsight least
significantly, the misrepresentation of the painter’s portrait of Lulu as a
gigantic semi-abstract mural did indeed make semantic mincemeat of every remark
made apropos of it by the dramatis personae.
But ultimately not even the most egregious of these licentious meta-dramaturgical
interventions detracted from the audience’s sense of what <i>Lulu</i> was about—viz., the rise and fall of an erotically
irresistible woman. The Met’s latest
production of <i>Wozzeck</i> in horrifying
contrast consists of almost nothing but episodes intended to deprive the
audience of any sense whatsoever of what it, <i>Wozzeck</i>, is about and to drown it, the audience, in a welter of
semiotic bilge (yes, yes, yes—and thus to drown it, the audience, even more
effectively than the protagonist is literally drowned in the penultimate scene). The principal conduit of this bilge-welter is
the transposal of the opera’s setting from its de facto one of just about any
garrison town in any part of pre-unified Germany to the trenches of the Western
Front in World War I. To the
transposition itself one is reflexively inclined to exclaim à la the opera’s
captain, <i>Schon gut, schon gut!</i>, for
after all, <i>Wozzeck</i> was composed
during the Great War war and moreover while Berg was in military service and
moreover being bossed about in a manner that made him feel a more-than-brotherly
sense of solidarity with Wozzeck (although it should be mentioned that this
about-bossing was taking place in the relative comfort and safety of an office sited
hundreds of miles from the Front, such that the original de facto-peacetime
setting more effectively captures the gratuitousness of Wozzeck’s about-bossing,
the sense that his about-bossing is not being occasioned by any imminent threat
to life or limb, that it is, rather, a manifestation of the Authoritarian
Personality fostered by the military <i>modus
vivendi tout court</i>). But any
conscientious effectuation of such a transposition must reconcile the new
setting with the libretto-cum-score in such a way that none of the anachronisms
detract from the basic gist or import of any of that libretto-cum-score’s
significant gestures; it must somehow convey the sense that whatever is
happening could have happened either in the original setting or in the new one
but not necessarily anywhere or anywhen else.
Such a reconciliation is admittedly deucedly difficult to pull off, and
at the moment only one such successful off-pulling occurs to me, this
off-pulling being Michael Haneke’s 1997 cinematic adaptation of Kafka’s <i>Castle</i>, in which, for example, each member
of the cast is attired in a manner that would not have been seen as
old-fashioned or excessively formal during the microepoch of the making of the
film and yet the only visible piece of technology not available in Kafka’s
lifetime is a single transistor radio allowed to relay its historically
unspecifiable bit of broadcastage for a mere handful of seconds. This Met production of <i>Wozzeck </i>by unsalutary contrast seems from start to finish to wish
to give the impression that the events of the opera could have taken place
between 1914 and 1918 and not a year earlier or later. And I do really mean <i>from start </i>to finish in a pedantically exact sense<i> </i>because the striking-up of the
orchestra in performance of the opera’s <i>Falstaff</i>-esque
ultra-brief overture is perfectly synchronized with the title character’s switching-on
of a silent film projector whose projected images then bathe the erect and
about-strutting form of the Captain as he delivers his opening mule
driver-esque adjuration <i>Langsam, Wozzeck,
langsam! </i> I shall address the content
of the images projected by this projector anon, but first I must mention that
the very inaugural appointment and positioning of Wozzeck as a
film-projectionist opposite an erect and about-strutting captain necessitates
the complete disregard of a stage-direction that governs the entire
dramaturgical essence of the first scene and consequently establishes the central
dramaturgical power dynamic of the entire opera—namely the direction that as
the curtain rises Wozzeck is to be seen <i>shaving
the captain</i>, a direction that of course most obviously requires Wozzeck to
perform a task that is by its very nature servile but even more signally places
the captain in a position in which his very life is more than figuratively in
Wozzeck’s hands: Wozzeck <i>could</i> slash
the captain’s throat at any moment; the captain cannot seem to open his mouth
without ridiculing or abusing Wozzeck; after a very few minutes of such
treatment, a certain sort of manservant, perhaps, indeed, the most usual sort,
would leave off shaving the captain long enough to remind him in no uncertain
terms of his life-and-death power over him; Wozzeck, in contrast, simply keeps
shaving and rejoins <i>Jawohl, Herr
Hauptmann</i>, to each of the captain’s utterances, as if he were seconding
them—until, that is, the captain takes it upon himself to impugn Wozzeck’s
siring of a child out of wedlock, whereupon Wozzeck leaves off shaving to
deliver an impassioned defense, not of himself, but of his child qua entirely
worthy receiver of eternal salvation despite his bastardy. Here the captain palpably registers alarm at
his corporeal vulnerability to Wozzeck. There
is clearly something very wrong, something very badly out of balance, here,
something that will eventually need to be put to rights. And of course it eventually is in a perverse
and horrifying fashion—which is to say via Wozzeck’s murdering of his common-law
wife Marie, of the only other adult whose life is so literally in his hands,
and not so much because she has cuckolded him as because in the military
hierarchy the agent of the cuckoldry, the drum-major, is both superior to him
and subordinate to the captain. So, I
say, the opening scene of the opera as properly presented with the captain
being shaved by Wozzeck implies with more-than-figuratively trenchant
eloquence. As for the opening scene as
presented in this latest Met production, on the other hand—well, sure, it’s
still evident enough that the captain is a domineering bully, that Wozzeck is
an <i>armer Kerl</i>, a poor wretched fellow,
but the bullying is of a purely verbal character, and all sense of impending
so-called pushback from this <i>armer Kerl</i>
is absent. Now to the content of the
projected film segments (which, incidentally, are not confined to the screen
aimed at by Wozzeck the projectionist, as there are also two much larger
screens situated at upstage left and right; needless to say, these two larger
screens would seem to be completely otiose in diagetical terms, which is to say
that they would seem to have no presence of any kind even in the
misrepresentation of the opera’s world imagined by the production, which is to
say a version thereof in which Wozzeck’s principal duty is to project movies
for his captain rather than to shave him): they consist prevailingly of still images
of WWI soldiers grotesquely disfigured by their war wounds, the sorts of images
made world-famous by the paintings of Georg Grosz and Otto Dix, and presumably
a goodly chunk of the segments was taken from the works of those very artists. The substantial remainder of this content
would seem to consist of moving footage especially shot for the production—a
seeming fact that at first blush gives the lie to the pan-<i>bienpensant-</i>Anglospheric <i>idée
reçue</i> that <i>Kulturkraftwerke</i> like
the Met have been getting inexorably poorer year by year over the past
half-century, inasmuch as, as I mentioned in “Lululations,” the Met of 1980
couldn’t even manage to produce a proper movie for the cinematic interlude of <i>Lulu.</i>
This footage consists prevailingly or perhaps overwhelmingly of
sequences incorporating black people—or at least people presented as black (for
there is one particularly disturbing sequence centering on some sort of platoon
of black soldiers conspicuously pale immediately about the eyes [presumably
this was an implicitly condemnatory allusion to some supposedly white
supremacist visual tract like <i>Birth of a
Nation</i> {which the present writer has never seen and plans never to see}, in
which case I would strongly caution the producers against including this
footage in future presentations of their production, inasmuch as in the current
pseudo-political climate one simply cannot win with any sort of presentation of
blackface]) in sub-diagetic juxtaposition with presumably white people whose
faces are concealed by gas masks.
Presumably (this really is my favorite adverb, isn’t it?) the
juxtaposition is meant to underscore some supposed connection of the
prosecution of the Great War with the prosecution of Africa-oppressing European
colonialism and North American Jim Crow-ism, a connection that is presumably
worth drawing in a certain sense or context but whose applicability to <i>Wozzeck</i> eo ipso is much more and worse
than questionable, inasmuch as the connection of the opera’s diagesis to the
Great War is entirely of the producers’ making, and from the applicability of
certain sub-states of affairs of one historical period to another historical
period it eye-burstingly obviously does not follow that every other sub-state
of affairs of that historical period is ascribable to the other. For farthest-fetched and therefore most
eloquent example: in dramaturgically presenting the fifteenth-century discovery
of the so-called New World as a reenactment of the Apollo moon landing(s), one
would be well within one’s rights to require Columbus and his crew to quaff
tankards of Tang, because Tang was after all what the Apollo astronauts quaffed
throughout their trip to the moon, but one would be well without those selfsame
rights to back-project a television advertisement for Tang behind the quaffage inasmuch as such a
projection would give the highly misleading impression that Columbus, &co.
gave a twentieth century-style toss about the brand name of whatever they
happened to be drinking en route to the so-called New World. Now if some would-be producer of<i> Wozzeck</i> wished to situate the opera in
a meta-oppressive context that could actually be extrapolated from the opera
itself, he or she might profitably turn to the institution of serfdom, which
was abolished throughout central Europe only as late as the 1840s—in other
words, about a decade after Büchner’s writing of the play on which the libretto
of <i>Wozzeck </i>is<i> </i>based. Presumably (!) a
non-duplicitous allusion to this institution could be made even in a production
primarily diagetically set in the First World War; as to <i>how</i> it could thereby be included, why, that for the present beats
the carp out of the present writer, although the present writer flatters
himself that despite his CVs’ utter bareness of reference to the dramaturgical
preparation of operas he could contrive a serviceable enough answer to this
question if he were afforded the hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of
dollars that were presumably vouchsafed to the Met’s production team this time
round<i>.</i> But to get back to the inclusion of all the
cinematic screenage qua cinematic screenage: it presumably (!) is there to
highlight the more or less exact coincidence of the outbreak of the First World
War with the explosion of the popularity of movies and to intimate that this
coincidence was much more than a mere coincidence, that there is some causal
link between the one event and the other, an intimation that is presumably (!)
worth intimating (although as to how etc.).
But any such intimation by all rights must take into account the fact
that Berg himself was a witness to-cum-participant in the coincidence, and that
indeed he developed quite a well-thought-out dramaturgical modus operandi for
registering the recent sudden <i>Lebenswelt</i>-transforming
supervention of cinema in the presentation of his operas. The abovementioned silent movie desiderated
by <i>Lulu</i> is the most obvious
manifestation of this MO; a more obscure manifestation thereof is his hope,
imparted to his pupil Theodor W. Adorno, of having <i>Wozzeck</i> adapted for the screen in a manner whose-fine grained
sensitivity to stage action in real time was never even approximated vis-à-vis
any opera by any composer until the advent of the multi-camera video-recording
of performances for television broadcast in the late 1960s. But ultimately the
most salient manifestation of Berg’s awareness of the new power of cinema is
his apportionment of <i>Wozzeck </i>into a
succession of fairly-to-extremely brief scenes, the longest of which, the
tavern scene in Act II, is still just short enough at ten minutes to occupy a
single reel of film. (Admittedly the
fragmentary structure of Büchner’s play invites such an apportionment, but it required
a cinematically orientated mind such as Berg’s to realize that this structure
could be accommodated in dramaturgically intelligible and compelling terms,
that it did not have to be digested into the usual five-to-seven scene presentation
that makes even such masterly adaptations as Verdi’s <i>Otello</i> and<i> Falstaff </i>seem
so un-Shakespearean in their sluggardly pacing.) And that Berg conceived of these scenes as
scenes in the fullest dramaturgical sense—i.e., as requiring some sort of
stage-setup that distinguished them from their immediate predecessors and
successors--can readily be gleaned from his scrupulous inclusion of an
instrumental interlude between each pair of scenes, an interlude that was and
is in each and every case just long enough to accommodate the lifting of two or
three side-flats and the depositing of one or two backdrops. Accordingly any presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i> that even aspires to be worth
its salt must obscure the stage during these interludes and at their
conclusions re-enlighten the stage to reveal a mise-en-scène at least minimally
visually distinct from the preceding scene. The Met’s latest presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i> by disastrous contrast refuses
to obscure the stage at any point, and indeed, it seems positively and cheekily
to revel in its repudiation of such dramaturgical enlightenment by leaving the
entire set, one extending to multistory heights, exposed to view from beginning
to end. And not only is this set
agoraphobically overexposed, it is also entirely unintelligible, consisting of
a snakes and ladders-like network of poorly illuminated gangways that just <i>might</i> be intended to represent the
parapets of trenches on the front line but that actually evokes nothing so
vividly as the boardwalk of a so-called nature trail in a swampy national park.
At scarcely any point is there any sense
that the action is moving from one sort of place to another as indicated in the
libretto—from an officer’s apartment to a field to an enlisted soldier’s
apartment to doctor’s surgery, etc. To
be sure (in the interest of full disclosure), perhaps the present writer’s
favorite production of a Berg opera, Graham Vick’s of <i>Lulu</i> for the 1996 Glyndebourne Festival, was even more minimalist,
with no scenery whatsoever and hardly any props. But <i>Lulu</i>’s
libretto, being based as it is on a pair of finished plays written by a
professional playwright for a version of live theater at its technical apex,
rather than by a quasi-amateur poet for a German stage still in its infancy, is
a dramaturgically much more finely wrought affair than <i>Wozzeck</i>’s; its dialogue is chockful of descriptive cues evidently
designed to compensate for productional shortcomings—such cues as Schigolch’s
praising of the wall-hangings and plush carpet of the painter’s house, and Lulu’s
exhortation to tidy up <i>the studio</i> rather
than a mere room in the opening scene.
Vick’s was the first production of <i>Lulu</i>
I ever saw in its entirety, and yet thanks to these cues, at few if any points
during my initial spectation of it did I have any trouble figuring out in what
sort or genre of space the current scene was being enacted. Thankfully, I was not obliged to spectate on
this new Met <i>Wozzeck</i> in a state of
comparable innocence, as I was already casually to intimately familiar with
several fully staged productions; if I had been so obliged, I cannot imagine
how I would have been able to make head or tail of where anything was supposed
to be taking place; by default I suppose I would have assumed <i>everything</i> to be taking place in
so-called no-man’s land, in one of the stretches of open ground between the
trenches, although I assume I would have been hard-pressed to account for the
presence of a civilian woman (i.e., Marie) and her infant child in such an
environment, let alone for the un-machine gunned survival of a half-dozen noisy
soldiers therein during the scene that the libretto directs to be set in a
tavern. But by far the most perniciously
licentious of the production-team’s liberties is one not of staging but rather
of casting, or rather <i>non</i>-casting,
namely their complete omission of Wozzeck and Marie’s child from the embodied
dramatis personae. By this I do not mean
the excision of all parts of the libretto and score pertaining to the child—a
move that for all its prima facie greater drasticity could conceivably have led
to a less reprehensible outcome than the one actually achieved—but rather the
exclusion from the stage of an actor portraying the child as a self-contained
flesh-and-blood human being on par with Marie and Wozzeck in this regard. To be sure-stroke-don’t get me wrong, casting
this role appropriately cannot but be a whale of a <i>Hündin</i>. Wozzeck’s and Marie’s handful of references to the child as
a <i>Bub</i>, i.e., a boy, specify the sex
of the child; his age is not specified in any fashion by either Büchner or Berg, but
because in the final scene he is seen to be both old enough to ride a
hobby-horse and young enough not yet to understand what it means for his mother
to be dead, one may infer that he is between the ages of about three and five
and hence at that life-stage at which a child is both too old to be confined to
a crib and too young to be bribed into doing an adult’s bidding via even a
more-than-figurative mountain of sweets or so-called action figures—in short
when he or she is a stage-director’s worst nightmare not even barring a horse
with an irritable bowel. Granted, the
kid’s is an entirely mute role until the concluding scene, when he has only to
sing the pseudo-word <i>Hopp-hopp</i>
exactly six times, but for all that the temptation to fill this
three-to-five-year-old-child-shaped space with someone or something other than
an actual three-to-five-year-old child cannot but be a very strong one; and the
tradition-sanctified tendency to hand those six <i>Hopp-hopps</i> over to an offstage soprano (as in the otherwise
punctiliously score-cum-libretto-respecting Vienna State Opera production of
1987) cannot but make the temptation all but ineluctable. Howbeit, I must strenuously insist that this
temptation must be strenuously resisted inasmuch as the opera’s meta-thematic
upshot, its so-called communication of its so-called message, hinges on the
recurring presence of the child, and that it is impossible to cast an even very
slightly older person as a three-to-five-year old without generating an
instance of travesty or pantomime as outrageously un-<i>Wozzeck</i>ian as that of the cigar-chomping cartoon baby of <i>Who Framed Roger Rabbit?</i>. Now that I have thus perforce strenuously
insisted, the reader naturally expects me to go on to reveal that in this Met
presentation the child was played by a hookah-huffing nonagenarian dude with a
ground-skirting white beard, but what I am actually going to reveal is
something quite different and yet far more horrifying, and something that I can
reveal only by way of an account of my own assimilation of the presentation’s
presentation of the first appearance of the child, wherein the addressee of
Marie’s first words thereunto is shown (at least by the <i>camera</i>; obviously viewers-cum-listeners at Lincoln Center did not
have their line of sight so guided) to be a lad aged at least twenty and
possibly as old as twenty-nine. And so,
after an initial frisson of horror, I gloomily resigned myself to having the
child presented to me as a teenager as played by a post-teen actor à la Michael
J. Fox’s characters in <i>Family Ties</i>
and the <i>Back to the Future</i> movies. But no sooner did I or had I tendered this
gloomy resignation, than the camera pulled back to show that the younker was
moving about a pair or trio of sticks connected to some sort of vaguely
baby-shaped-and-sized mannequin with a head completely enclosed in (guess
what?) a gas mask. Whereupon I naturally
experienced a second and more intense frisson of horror, but to my credit qua
meta-polemical non-ambulance chaser, I also tried to recuperate the
presentation in a manner that would not make utter mincemeat tartar of the
abovementioned meta-thematic upshot: <i>OK</i>,
I said to meself whilst breathing as slowly and deeply as I could manage, <i>let’s say</i> <i>the kid is supposed to be a teen traumatized by the horrors of the war
and regressively acting out his traumatization via a baby-sized puppet. I can deal with that, at least between now
and the final scene, wherein the child’s incomprehension-cum-hobbyhorsicality
will be utterly unconvincing because utterly unverisimilitudinous.</i> But alas!
Even this wretched meta-diagetic<i>
pis aller </i>was made mincemeat tartar of long before the final scene, and
indeed in the immediately subsequent child-including scene, wherein the baby-
puppet was manipulated by a manifestly different person, a young woman. When I happened to notice that this young
woman had a red cross on one of her sleeves, I could not forbear concluding
that she was a nurse and consequently immediately revising my sense of the
diagetic function of the puppet: presumably, I reflected, in this diagesis
there is no biologically current child; presumably in this diagesis Marie is in
a hospital (a hospital at which the young fellow in the previous
child-including scene is also a nurse whose red cross I failed to notice), and
is mentally disturbed in such a way and thanks to such a cause (perchance a
shellshock-induced miscarriage) that interacting with an artificial baby is
understood to be therapeutic for her.
But I immediately thereupon reflected that such a meta-diagetic exegesis
was pretty much untenable in the light of the first scene of the opera,
wherein, as mentioned before, both Wozzeck and the Captain refer to the
perduring biological existence of the child, such that if the child must be
regarded as merely an hallucination it must perforce be highly improbably
further regarded as a collective or Gestalt hallucination (the <i>highly</i> is to be ascribed to the ineluctable
participation in the hallucination of the Captain, who is at no point remotely
imaginable, even in this presentation, as a reformed Scrooge to the miscarried
child’s Tiny Tim). Howbeit, I managed to
cast one last saving throw in favor of this presentation’s diagesis: what if, I
conjectured, the child, although very much extra-uterally alive at some earlier
point in the diagesis was dead by the opening scene of the opera—dead, that is,
to the obvious knowledge of Wozzeck and Marie yet quite plausibly unbeknownst
to the captain. In the context of such a
diagesis, Wozzeck and Marie might quite plausibly for various motives go on
continuing as though the child were still alive, and indeed, at times they
might even be persuaded that he actually <i>was</i>
still alive. To be sure, this last
saving throw of a meta-exagetic diagesis left the child-centered final scene
diagetically un-accounted for, but perhaps, I reflected at numerous times
throughout roughly the second three-fifths of the presentation, the
show-runners had somehow managed to account for it. But no suchluck: in the final scene yet
another puppeteer was seen solitarily manipulating the baby-puppet to the
accompaniment of a succession of disembodied voices comprising not only the
boy-child’s <i>Hopp-hopp!</i> but also all
the other children’s registrations of the death of his mother. Try as I might then, while spectating on the
scene, and try as I have mighted in the three weeks since, I have been unable
to produce a single even vaguely meta-diagetically compelling interpretation of
this presentation of the final scene.
If, after all, the point of the puppet’s existence was to console Marie
for the death of her child, what point could there be in continuing to operate
the puppet after Marie’s death?
Moreover, if the child was either deceased or ever-non-existent, what
function could the voices of the other children possibly be serving? In the
highly improbable event that they have ever been queried about this meta-diagetic
conundrum, I suppose the show-runners have mealy-mouthedly yet brazenly stated
something to the utterly bullshittic effect that in the concluding scene the
baby-puppet, the puppeteer, and the disembodied children’s voices collectively
symbolize both the instigators and the survivors of the First World War, or better
yet both the instigators and the survivors of every war that has ever occurred
in human history-cum-prehistory.
Whatever it is meant to symbolize, this symbolization is manifestly
irreconcilable with the dramaturgical structure of<i> Wozzeck </i>as it presents itself on the page quite irrespective of
the composer-cum-librettist’s intentions. <i> Wozzeck</i> is manifestly and ineluctably an
opera about a real soldier with a real common law wife and a real very young
son; each and every presentation of the opera must take this manifest and
ineluctable philological fact as its starting point, and each and every
presentation that refuses to do so as the latest Met’s refuses to do so is
doomed to present not <i>Wozzeck</i> but a
kind of live-action music video with the score of <i>Wozzeck</i> as its utterly contingent soundtrack. Not that this soundtrack need in consequence
suffer a jot as a purely aural presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i>, and indeed to the extent that I could avoid being
distracted by the visuals, I found the soundtrack of the Met’s new ostensible <i>Wozzeck</i> to be among the most beautifully
sung and played <i>Wozzeck</i>s that I had
ever heard. Indeed, I would go so far as
to say that to the limited extent to which the cast were able to circumvent or
sidestep the irrelevancies of the mise en scène, they put on quite a visually
compelling performance and that hence I found their contribution to the
presentation to be among the most beautifully <i>acted</i> <i>Wozzecks</i> that I had
ever seen. Peter Matei’s interpretation
of the title character was certainly an improvement on that of the reigning
Wozzeck of a generation ago, Franz Grundheber, who tended to look merely
sluggishly bemused rather than kinetically harried (<i>verhetzt</i>, as the Captain describes him in the opening scene) as
Matei does with appropriately slowly rising intensity; here, in a portrayal
evidently meant to underscore his resemblance to the Drum Major qua destroyer
of Wozzeck, the Captain as played and sung by Gerhard Siegel uncharacteristically
yet persuasively cut a fairly commanding figure despite his character-defining
cowardice; here Marie, as played and sung by Elza van den Heever, was adequately
plebbish without being gratuitously whorish (although I’m not sure her voice
has quite enough bottom for the part’s tessitura, as in the higher registers
she did tend rather to slip into the cartoon mouse-like timbre that I have
decried in Evelyn Lear’s Lulu); here the Doctor despite his character-defining
lugubriousness had a winning almost- Groucho Marx-at-a-<i>Day at the Races</i>-esque animated zaniness about him. Even vis-à-vis such a minor character as
Margret (I own that Andrew Staples’s portrayal of the slightly less minor
character of Andres made no impression on me whatsoever) some pains had
evidently been taken by somebody to present her in a new but not completely
perverse light: in both the tavern scenes she was seen holding a broom, which
of course suggested that she occupied the ultra-menial position of a
cleaning-woman; i.e., a position even lowlier than Wozzeck’s, which in turn
helped to explain, as perhaps no earlier presentation of the opera has
attempted to do, why Wozzeck was conjugally paired with Marie rather than with
Margret to begin with and why he finds it entirely natural to turn to Margret
for conjugal succor after Marie’s death—and also, persuasively enough, why in
this presentation Margret rebuffed his advances outright, apparently regarding
them as an assertion of a plebeian analogue to <i>droit de signeur</i> (shades of <i>Figaro</i>,
natch), rather than at least provisionally yielding to them by deigning to
dance with him in conformity with the established performance history. All the immediately preceding plainly
indicates that I am not opposed to innovative mises en scène <i>eis ipsis</i>, that indeed I welcome any
presentation of an opera that shews it in a new light provided that this new
light does not work at refractive cross-purposes with the letter of the
score-cum-libretto, that I believe that anything that is not expressly forbidden
by the score-cum-libretto and that does not preclude the conveyance of the
just-mentioned letter should be permitted.
And in a score-cum-libretto as schematically stage-directed as that of <i>Wozzeck</i> the scope for such innovation is
quite latitudinous—and not only latitudinous but also perhaps dramaturgically
exigent, for as Dr. Johnson averred vis-à-vis the presentation of the works of
a playwright whose authenticated stage directions (directions not to be
confused with the interpolated ones of his earliest editors, most of which were
silently assimilated to later editions and thence into the dramaturgical
tradition) were to say the least extremely spotty, namely Shakespeare, so-called
stage business, for all its manifest peripherality to the conveyance of the
gist of a drama on paper, is apparently indispensable to the conveyance of that
selfsame gist in a theater. So in the BBC’s early-1960s presentation of <i>Richard III</i>, Lord Hastings is seen
shaving his own beard with a straight razor at the exact moment at which he is
being asked to entertain the notion of elevating Richard Duke of Gloucester to
the throne, and he still has the cutting edge of the knife poised against his
own throat (such that, yes, yes, yes he is both his own Captain and his own
Wozzeck) when he eventually declares that he would rather have his head
separated from the rest of his body rather than accept Richard as the
legitimate king. Naturally here the
shaving-centered stage business has been interpolated into the mise en scène by
way of anticipating Hastings’s beheading a few scenes later. It can of course be compellingly argued that
such stark foreshadowing is more than a bit heavy-handed, but under our
post-Johnsonian dramaturgical dispensation the submitter of such an argument
cannot get away with simply leaving Hastings to twiddle his thumbs at most
during this scene; he must come up with something else for Hastings to do while
he is rebutting the proposal of Richard’s coronation; something as diagetically
plausible as, yet less semiotically loaded than, shaving. The Met’s present presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i> contains a paragon of such
unobtrusive stage business in the penultimate scene, wherein the Captain and
the Doctor are walking along the river (not, to be doubly sure, that it looks
anything like a river in this presentation) just after Wozzeck has disappeared
beneath its surface, and they are both trying to ascertain if they have been
hearing somebody drowning, towards which end the doctor, still clad in his
surgery-attire, quite naturally raises the funnel of his stethoscope as a
hearing aid. (Incidentally, the fact that the Doctor is equipped with such a
crude, Beethoven ear trumpet-esque, auscultational apparatus when by the First
World War doctors had long since been using stethoscopes more or less exactly
identical to the ones they are using now suggests that the show-runners
themselves felt at least slightly straitjacketed by the WWI setting.) If only all this presentation’s
interpolations had been so singularly felicitous, this might have been the best
presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i> ever. But doubtless if the show-runners of this
presentation had confined themselves to such interpolations, they would have
found their work unrecognized, and consequently themselves out of a job. Whence the entire bullshittic apparatus of
the trenches, the film projector, the woke-orientated films, etc. And whence further the non-gratuitousness of
the present post vis-à-vis “Lulullations,” which still naively treated the
fully staged live presentation of operas as though it could be reformed en
bloc, as though the shit-together-getting of all parties concerned could lead
to a coherent and faithful fully staged presentation of a given opera. For in the course of reflecting on his
spectation-cum-audition of the Met’s latest presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i>, the present writer cannot have
helped concluding that such reformation is utterly impracticable, because such
shit-together-getting is also utterly impracticable, because the
shit-getting-together attending any enterprise, very much including the literal
collection of animal waste, necessitates a sense of more or less equally
apportioned intentional involvement among all materially substantial parties
concerned in that enterprise, and the adequate presentation of operas does not
necessitate the eventuation of such a sense; this because the material contribution
of the show-runners can no longer ever be—if it ever was—equal in magnitude to
such contribution by the singers or even by the instrumentalists. To expatiate: nowadays, in this most-Whiggish
of all microepochs of the Whiggish era, one constantly hears talk about how <i>we</i> (i.e., effectively universally, all
of us apart from the present writer) are living through a <i>golden age</i> of this or that phenomenon or practice, and vis-à-vis
99.99…% percent of these phenomena the present writer would reach for it (or
them) rather than the nearest loo-roll in the event of a second-species loo-emergency. When people say, for instance, that we are
living through a golden age of television, I cannot but conclude that they are
simply registering the unprecedented abundance of nudity and profanity in
first-screenings accessible in a domestic setting, for nothing could be more
patently devoid of any other engaging—let alone redeemable—dramaturgical
feature than this microepoch’s most fulsomely lionized televisual franchises—<i>The Crown</i>, <i>Ta-Tas & Dragons</i> (a.k.a, <i>G***
of T****s</i>), etc. But when it comes
to performers and performances of serious music, I really do believe that there
is something to this Whiggish talk. It
strikes me as entirely plausible that, for example, Simone Dinnerstein and Paul
Lewis are among the most sensitive and accomplished interpreters of the
keyboard repertoire, and Alicia Weilerstein and Hilary Hahn, of the cello and
violin repertoire, respectively, ever to have lived; and these last two must be
singled out in particular for their outstanding recordings of two
extraordinarily difficult modern works—Carter’s cello concerto and Schoenberg’s
violin concerto. When badgered about the
apparent unperformability of his then-new concerto some eighty years ago,
Schoenberg is said to have frostily rejoined that he was <i>willing to wait for the little finger to evolve </i>to the point at
which it was capable of playing the work.
Well now in Ms. Hahn we have a violinist whose little finger has evolved
to that stage of competence. And Ms.
Hahn is by no means known as a specialist in especially recondite corners of
the repertoire—to the contrary, she is about as mainstream and successful as
one can get with a bowed instrument, a veritable fiddling superstar. Essentially, in the present generation of
musicians the entire corpus of serious modernist music, a corpus that was
widely regarded as unperformable only a generation ago, has found a pool of
interpreters entirely adequate to its realization. And not the least striking proofs of this
discovery is a Met orchestra to whom two of the three operatic masterpieces hailing
from that corpus,<i> Wozzeck</i> and <i>Lulu</i> (the third being Schoenberg’s <i>Moses und Aron</i>, whose infrequency of
appearance at Lincoln Center is probably more up-chalkable to dramaturgical
causes than to musical-performative ones [for let’s face it, Schoenbergophiles:
<i>M&A</i> does not have a libretto that
is overall as remotely captivating as that of <i>W </i>or <i>L</i>, even if the
notorious-cum-celebrated episode of its dance around the golden calf does call
for some guaranteed lorgnette-attracting full-frontal nudity]), have apparently
become as familiar as <i>Die Meistersinger</i>
or <i>Falstaff</i>, an orchestra that can comfortably present <i>Wozzeck</i> every third or fourth season and
<i>Lulu</i> every fifth or sixth—not to
mention that this orchestra is able to interact with a cast of singers who, as
mentioned before in specific connection with <i>Wozzeck</i>, are also entirely adequate to the technical-cum-expressive
demands of these works. And yet although
we would seem to be living through a golden age of instrumental and vocal performance,
to judge by the likes of the current production on which the Met’s latest
presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i> is centered,
we would seem to be simultaneously living through a tin age of opera
shew-running. Whence emanates the
discrepancy in quality? This
discrepancy, at least so it presently seems to the present writer, seems at
least in the main to emanate from a deflatingly prosaic discrepancy in the
degree of amenability to improvement between the two lines of cultural
production. In instrumental musical
performance, there has always been room for technical improvement as composers
reliably continue to write works—e.g., the just-mentioned violin concerto—that
are too technically demanding for the best instrumentalists of their day; and
to a lesser but still pronounced extent as instrumentalists absorb the insights
of their predecessors, an absorption that has presumably become more and more
thorough and exacting over the past century with the ever-increasing expansion
of the archive of recorded performances.
Vis-à-vis the performance of vocal music the prevalence and
perdurability is at least slightly more disputable; how, after all, is one to
explain that Schoenberg deliberately composed his most technically challenging
piece of vocal music, the soprano concert aria “Herzgewächse,” for a vocal range
<i>exactly</i> as extensive as that of the
Queen of the Night in Mozart’s <i>Magic
Flute</i>, for if he was willing to wait for the human pinkie to evolve to play
his violin concerto, why should he not have been willing to wait for the human
larynx to evolve to sing a song with an even broader range than that of the
Queen of the Night—why not, indeed, if he did not presume that the human
larynx, unlike the human pinkie, was destined to undergo no further exploitable
evolution? For all that, it is aurally
observable that there has been at least a modest improvement in the overall
quality of singing in the past half-century, such that the listener is
generally benefited from hearing live or in new recordings the most celebrated
vocalists of today alongside recordings of the most celebrated vocalists of
yesteryear. That such improvements on
the performative end of musical production will continue into the indefinite or
even the near-term future seems unreasonable to assume not only and most
obviously on account of presumably insurmountable limitations to the human
organism qua vehicle of performance—to the presumptive fact that both the
pinkie and the larynx, how ever well nourished or exercised, will eventually be
incapable of becoming suppler or more articulate (except, perhaps, through
cybernetic means [but by all means let us not go thither of all places])—but
also, and probably even more materially definitively, because composers have
ceased to produce works that mutatis mutandis present technical challenges
equal to those of the likes of <i>Wozzeck</i>,
works that require performers to play them badly before they play them well. This is not to say that there are not new
compositions that present such technical challenges, but that none of these new
technically challenging compositions enjoy the pride of place among musicians
that the likes of <i>Wozzeck</i> enjoyed
nine-tenths of a century ago. In 1930
the American premiere of <i>Wozzeck</i> was
conducted by Leopold Stokowski, then the most famous conductor in the world
barring Toscanini and soon to be a collaborator with the most notoriously
successful peddler of cinematically animated kitsch in the world, Walt Disney;
in 1999 the world premiere of Elliott Carter’s <i>What Next?</i>, the most conspicuous heir apparent to <i>Wozzeck</i> in technical terms, was
conducted by Daniel Barenboim, then at most the tenth-most-famous conductor in
the world and a musician whose biggest pop-cultural splash had been his
portrayal by an obscure character actor in a moderately financially successful
biopic of his deceased wife, the cellist Jacqueline du Pré. In general to the limited extent that today’s
most celebrated serious musicians—and I am thinking here in particular of the
abovementioned Mss. Hahn and Dinnerstei—have been interested in commissioning
new works, they have sought out composers working in a
technically-cum-expressively regressive idiom; most often an idiom consisting
of a combination of unwaveringly diatonic minimalism and pseudo-folk-derived
chromaticism; this perhaps because however ardently they may yearn for more
demanding works they yearn even more ardently to be more accessible to some
phantom bobo audience who unaccountably actually care about hearing the sort of
kitschy aural pabulum available on tap from their local pub’s open mic night’s
shittiest strummer or fiddler played by an artist who can and should know and do
quasi-infinitely better. Of course, if
these artists had any sense—note that I write <i>sense</i> and not <i>integrity</i>,<i> </i>inasmuch as I believe that the
aggrandizement of their own reputations is ultimately as much in point here as
any duty to the music itself, whatever that music may be—they would give over
trying to compete with their pop-cum-pseudo-folk-orientated counterparts and
commission works from composers generally guaranteed to come up with something
that is too difficult to sight-read and that therefore impels them to improve
their technique. But of course I am
being more than a bit too hard on these most celebrated serious musicians for
the purpose of the present digression, which purpose was after all to shew that
they were far superior to their official counterparts in the domain of opera
show-running, who in contrast to them (this was, by the way, the point to be
highlighted by the digression) have long since lost all wiggle-room for
technical-cum-expressive improvement.
They have lost this wiggle-room, in the first and perhaps foremost
place, because opera show-running has never been an art in the restrictive
sense in which violin-playing or piano-playing or singing or composing or even
conducting is an art. Nobody has ever
discovered, or had imposed on him or her at his or her earliest infancy, a
calling to become an opera show-runner as many a body has discovered or had
imposed on him or her at his or her earliest infancy a calling to become a
violinist aut al. (aut etc.), and thereby been compelled from earliest infancy
onwards to work night and day at becoming as good an opera show-runner as
possible in the manner that would-be violinists aut al.’s (aut etc.’s) have always
been compelled to work night and day at becoming etc.; rather, one starts out
pursuing some other sort of art or no art whatsoever and gets roped, or
deliberately ropes oneself into, the practice of show-running operas. A plurality, or perhaps even a slight majority,
of opera show-runners have started out as actors and directors for the
non-operatic stage, but a goodly proportion of them have hailed from such
wildly unstageworthy lines of work as medicine (Jonathan Miller) and filmmaking
(W***y A***n). Hardly any of them have
started out as aspiring professional musicians.
In describing opera show-running and opera show-runners in these admittedly
implicitly unflattering terms, I by no means wish it to be understood that I
take a dim view of opera-show-running as an ignoble pursuit <i>eo ipso</i>; for to the contrary, in the
absence of opera show-runners no operas ever could have been simultaneously seen
and heard by anyone anywhere, which would have been a sad loss in ca. 1790,
ca., 1890, and even ca. 1990 if not necessarily now (more on this anon). At the same time, from this description it
must be clear that opera show-running does not require anything in the way of
dedicated expertise in the way that the three activities in whose absence opera
would not exist at all—namely, composing, singing, and playing a musical instrument—do. The opera show-runner can bring to bear on
the presentation of his assigned or appropriated opera ideas drawn from his own
bailiwick or indeed any other bailiwick under the sun provided that he can
prevail upon the other material human forces involved in the presentation to
accept these ideas. At the same time<sub>2</sub>,
it cannot be denied that the archive of opera show-running constitutes a body
of work just as surely as the operatic repertoire itself does, an archive that
is as open to consultation as that repertoire (is). And such being the case, the latest
show-runner of a given opera cannot but be tempted to one-up each and every one
of his predecessors to whatever extent he is able within the scope of the
bailiwick he brings to bear on the presentation of that opera, to overload the
particular opera-show that he is running with every trick up his sleeve that
has not been exploited by preceding presenters of that particular opera. To be sure, there was a moment almost exactly
a century ago—a moment therefore
coinciding almost exactly with the world premiere of <i>Wozzeck</i>—when developments in operatic show-running seemed to be
moving in lock-step with developments in the abovementioned truly existentially
indispensable components of opera. Thus
when <i>Wozzeck</i> was new, it, like most
other works theretofore produced by the Schoenberg school, was regarded as an <i>expressionistic</i> composition and by
chance or design received a premiere with <i>expressionistic
</i>Edward Munch-esque painted backdrops.
Whether musical expressionism ever had much in common with painterly
expressionism is debatable; certainly Schoenberg’s own bewilderingly beguiling
paintings put the viewer in mind of the sound-world of his musical corpus, but
they are hardly typical expressionistic canvases. At any rate, by all admittedly spotty
accounts, the initial expressionistic staging worked well for <i>Wozzeck</i>, and while not all subsequent
successful presentations of the work could be described as expressionistic, all
of them have inherited from the first one a certain salutary austerity and
simplicity, a tendency to pare away everything that might impair the
viewer-cum-listener’s ability to follow the work’s dramaturgical arc. My favorite production, the late-80s Vienna
State Opera one, might most aptly be described as one of minimalistic
naturalism, inasmuch as while its costumes are all quite verisimilitudinously
detailed, its sets are all quite unverisimilitudinously schematic,
self-evidently designed with the aim of merely conveying where the scene
immediately to eye and ear is taking place.
The Met’s present singularly unfortunate production I would describe in
the phraseology of a certain Radio 4 panel show guest, an art critic whose name
has regrettably long since escaped me, as an essay in <i>academic postmodernism</i>. Academic postmodernism is the kind of art
that over the past thirty years we have come to expect by default in museums
thanks to the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin—a kind of art characterized
by the laziest sort of semiotic laissez-faire-ism, essentially by the
ad-nauseam visual quotation of the iconography of earlier artistic traditions,
pseudo-traditions, and sub-traditions without any regard for their mutual
semiotic interrelation. It is
postmodernist in virtue of its semiotic heterogeneity, which heterogeneity in
itself is not objectionable provided that is subservient to some sense of
purposive form (my norm here is the better portion of the musical corpus of
Alfred Schnittke, in which the styles of earlier periods are evoked only at
strategically significant points), and it is specifically <i>academic</i> postmodernism because of its laziness and because it is
now the long-established museal status quo despite its willful
unintelligibility. One is never bemused
or bewildered by exhibits of academic postmodernist art because bemusement and
bewilderment are contingent on curiosity, on the will to understand, and one
knows from the start that there is nothing to understand in connection with
these works, that they have been conceived from the start with an eye merely to
fulfilling the criterion for exhibition-worthiness—viz., semiotic heterogeneity. And in the light of the specifically <i>academic</i> character of this
postmodernism, my shock on seeing it applied to <i>Wozzeck</i> at the Metropolitan Opera last month seems more than a bit
gormless in hindsight. To be sure, the
Metropolitan Opera, the Other Old Gray Lady of New York, was almost duty-bound
to be slow to embrace a postmodernist opera show-running ethos. But once, ca. five years ago, the
postmodernist ethos had become a definitively <i>academic</i> ethos, once it had become the uncontested museal status
quo with no rival in its remotest offing, once it had become as definitively
functionally dead as the outermost skin cells of a centenarian’s big
toe-calluses, why, then the Metropolitan Opera qua Other Old Gray Lady of New
York was almost duty-bound to throw itself into the arms of that ethos like—well,
I don’t know; perhaps like Whistler’s newly transitioned trans-father
alacritously anally engaging with C*****n J****r in a MOMA-enshrined double
portrait; from that moment onwards the dearth of postmodern productions from
the Met’s stage must have seemed to Met general manager Peter Gelb at al. as
embarrassingly retardataire as the counterfactual absence of touchtone
telephones from the company’s administrative offices. And as far as the present writer is concerned,
the Met can put on academic postmodernist productions of its core repertoire until
the gender-queer cattle come home in wellies, inasmuch as he regards that
repertoire as aesthetically nugatory piffle that is impervious to either
elevation or degradation by any means apart from the quality of the playing and
singing involved. As far as the present
writer is concerned, the entire canon of bel canto, all those operas by the
likes of Bellini and Donizetti, might as well never have been composed had they
not attracted the vocal attention of Maria Callas and Luciano Pavarotti, whose
best versions of their arias he can in any case listen to at his pleasure
without even having to wade through a complete three-CD set of <i>Norma</i>, <i>I
Puritani</i>, autc., let alone sit through a complete kinescope or videotape
performance thereof. But <i>Wozzeck</i> is
an opera he cares deeply about, and it pains him to see it made dramaturgical
mincemeat of merely for the sake gratifying not even so comparatively noble a
creature as the whim of a misguided but enthusiastic show- runner—say, the
Peter Sellars of ca. 1985—but rather the sub-ignoble zombie of artistic
conformism. And he is pained not only or
even principally on his own behalf but also and principally on behalf of the
tens or perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people who in going to see <i>Wozzeck</i> at the Met are approaching this
masterpiece-cum-significant contribution to Occidental intellectual history as
an entirely new or at most highly unfamiliar work and who are
all-but-ineluctably bound to come away from the Met’s present presentation with
the impression that <i>Wozzeck</i> in its
essence is as chaotic, as incoherent, as the semiotic landscape of this
presentation, that the landscape of the presentation is indeed tantamount to a
perfect rendition of that chaotic, incoherent essence. Such an impression is well-nigh ineluctably
to be come away with by the newcomer because while the musical language of <i>Wozzeck</i> has long since become second
nature to the work’s principal empirical producers, to singers and
instrumentalists, this language has yet to become even tertiary nature to the
work’s principal empirical consumers, to opera-goers and listeners and viewers
of recordings of operas. A case in what
will ineluctably be thought of as all-too-convenient point (but so be
it-stroke-f**k it) is the reaction of the friend with whom I took in last
month’s Met HD presentation. This friend
is both an anciently ardent fan of Mahler and Dick Strauss and an anciently
ardent anti-fan of the entire so-called Second Viennese School. He has never been able to sit through
anything by Schoenberg himself, let alone by Webern, and has always found <i>Lulu</i> thoroughly off-putting. But by this or that same token he has always maintained
a tentatively sympathetic placelet in his heart for <i>Wozzeck</i>, has always at least grudgingly acknowledged that he can at
least understand why somebody might be moved by that work to the same extent
that he himself is moved by the works of Mahler and Dick Strauss. Howbeit, after watching that Met HD
presentation he remarked to me that that presentation, the first <i>visual</i> presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i> he had yet encountered, led him
to believe that he had always overestimated <i>Wozzeck</i>,
that while the several audio recordings of <i>Wozzeck</i>
he had heard had led him to conjecture that it was a work imbued with great meaning
and pathos, the presentation we had just seen led him to the contrary to
conjecture that it amounted to nothing but a lot of affectively neutral meaningless
noise. So whereas before spectating on
this bisensory presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i>
he had been on the royal road to appreciating <i>Wozzeck</i> in all its actual glory thanks to a purely aural
presentation of it, now he was on the plebian road to consigning <i>Wozzeck</i> to the same fictitious rubbish
heap to which he had (wrongly to be sure) preemptively consigned all the other
works of the SVS. Obviously any manner
of presentation of an opera (or indeed of any other so-called work of art) that
impedes its appreciation and understanding by someone as favorably disposed to appreciate
and understand it as my friend has been to appreciate and understand <i>Wozzeck</i> is pernicious from the point of
view of anyone but that opera’s would-be effective utter destroyers, its would-be
buriers in utter oblivion. But such
would-be destroyers-cum-buriers in oblivion is what the Met’s current crop of
show-runners undeniably are, however much at their <i>insu</i>. In this connexion I am
reminded of the third of Robert Conquest’s laws of politics: </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">“The behavior of any
bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is
controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies,” not so much in connection with
the Met considered in isolation—if it even can be considered in isolation in
any so-called meaningful sense—or even with the opera show-running industry
considered in isolation, as with the entire high-cultural show-running
industry, which is undeniably tantamount to a mighty bureaucratic organization
comparable in personnel size if not in budget to one of the larger U.S. federal
governmental agencies. The present
writer admits to having always found Conquest’s Third Law a bit shy if not
quite wide of the mark in the light of his own experience of bureaucratic
organizations, an experience that tends rather to confirm Max Weber’s assertion
that such organizations are self-perpetuating and self-ramifying—i.e., inter
alia, that they are controlled by their friends rather than by their enemies,
and that, in the words of <a href="https://www.isegoria.net/2008/07/robert-conquests-three-laws-of-politics/" target="_blank">a judicious corrector of Conquest</a>, in the case of
each such organization the controllers direct their enmity towards </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">the
stated purpose</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> of the organization rather than towards the organization itself. Thus the stated purpose of the high-cultural
show-running industry is the transmittal to the present of the best that has been
thought, said, and wrought in dramaturgical terms in the past, and yet as
instanced by the present Met presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i>, it seems to be controlled by people who wish to do
everything in their power to impede this transmittal. These controllers diabolically cloak their
willful impedance in the language of altruism by purporting to be making the
works in their care <i>fresher</i> <i>and more</i> <i>relevant to today’s audience</i>—all the while knowing that it is it
they themselves rather than today’s audience who have grown tired of and out of
touch with these works, which they have in general never appreciated in the
first place, as they have in turn in general never been placed in a position
requiring them to confront the works on the works’ own terms, as artifacts in
the fullest, richest sense, as repositories of objectified historically
conditioned experience—or in plainer terms, as crafted but fundamentally inert things
that can only be brought to life via the excavation of what was actually put
into them at the moment of their fabrication.
If the destiny of the great dramaturgically conceived works of the past
were entirely and permanently in the hands of the high-cultural show-running
industry, we who love these works would indeed have cause to vomit our own
hands in despair. Happily, as suggested
by the very recent moribundity or even outright demise of too many bureaucratic
quasi-organizations to be named, there is at least unbad reason to suppose that
in contravention of the present writer’s previous experience Conquest’s Third
Law holds true in a strong sense and that it will soon be borne out in the
fortunes of the high-cultural show-running industry, that this industry will
simply disintegrate in face of the manifest general awareness that it has no desire
to fulfill its stated purpose or even to perpetuate itself, that it continues
to exist simply in order to line the pockets of a passel of short term-minded
pirates who have no interest (either financial or affective) in sticking around
long enough to inculcate the cadges of their mystery into a succeeding
generation of show-runners. To be sure,
as long as these pirates remain alive and in business, intelligent but naïve
seekers after the best that has been thought, said, and wrought in
dramaturgical terms in the past will continue to seek out such abominations as
the Met’s latest <i>Wozzeck</i> and the
RSC’s latest travesty of a Shakespeare play in the delusory belief that they
are thereby getting as close as possible to that selfsame best; and a goodly
proportion of these intelligent naifs will subsequently erroneously conclude
that the bilge served up to them by the pirates <i>is</i> that selfsame best and will consequently give over taking any
interest whatsoever (affective or otherwise) in that selfsame best for the respective
durations of their respective naturals.
But once these pirates are safely slumbering forever after in Davy
Jones’s bosom, such intelligent naifs will be compelled to acquaint themselves
with this selfsame best via the audiovisual dramaturgical archive thereof, and
they will in every respect be all the better off for the supervention of this
compulsion. In the case of Shakespeare
they will be algorithmically directed to such yeomanly serviceable realizations
as the BBC’s 1980s survey of the complete plays and Trevor Nunn’s
quasi-contemporaneous TV adaptations of three of the four great tragedies; in
the case of <i>Wozzeck</i> etc. (the <i>c.</i> naturally comprising the at-most
butchers double-dozen other operas actually worth paying any attention to) to
the cream of the studio recordings and video-tapings made between the late
1960s and, say, the late 20-oughties. Of
course even under the auspices of this
post-piratic dispensation, the Met’s latest presentation of <i>Wozzeck</i> will figure among the
audiovisual choices offered, and if in point of viewerly-cum-listenerly hits it
happens to come out on top of the to-my-mind immeasurably superior likes of the
aforementioned 1987 Vienna State Opera presentation and Pierre Boulez’s 1966
double LP starring Walter Berry (to my mind still the ultimate Wozzeck, at
least in exclusively vocal terms), why, then, this will just go to show either
that the people really do imponderably regard this as the most faithful
realization of <i>Wozzeck</i>, or even more
discouragingly that they have a higher regard for academic postmodernism than
for anything that pre-academic modernism ever had to offer.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
THE END</div>
Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-51066099829247211782020-01-10T18:51:00.001-05:002020-02-28T18:39:24.847-05:00A Translation of Ein Jahr mit Thomas Bernhard by Karl Ignaz Hennetmair. Part IV: May and June<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 17.12px;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A Year with Thomas Bernhard: The Sealed 1972 Diary</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 1, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas came
by at 7:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked him right away
if he was running away from Janko Musulin, because he wrote that he was going
to be visiting him on May 1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas
didn’t want to meet up with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
somebody pays you a visit as early as 10:30 in the morning and you’re in the
middle of polishing your shoes, you can’t run away anymore, said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t think that Musulin would be coming
so early; I wanted to get away right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Naturally I later gave him my opinion about Zuckmayer’s book, because
Musulin didn’t believe that I was actually ill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Lernet-Holenia will now write the review of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Henndorfer Pastorale</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told
Musulin that I couldn’t write the review because he insults my grandparents
when he writes that he sweetened my lugubrious childhood with chocolate. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I by no means had a lugubrious childhood; to
the contrary, I was downright spoiled by my grandparents and so I grew up like
any other boy there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything else
that didn’t sit right with me and wasn’t accurate, which of course I have
already told you about, I also told Musulin about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
said that he had taken down his red curtains because those colors were
detrimental to his well-being in each room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One should have completely monotone, inconspicuous curtains in one’s
rooms, said Thomas. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yours are also
really irritating; those patterns are noxious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I said: they’re not noxious; on top of that we’ve actually grown quite
accustomed to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What you just said
is wrong, said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A person can also
get used to a narcotic drug, and yet it’ll still be noxious; the fact that he’s
accustomed to it is absolutely irrelevant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These curtains cost several thousand schillings; I can’t change them
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when I do need new curtains,
I’ll take your advice and buy calm curtains with no patterns, I said. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So from now on shopping for curtains won’t be
so difficult, because the simplest are the best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas said he’d read through the note
from Mrs. Schmied again and that he’d now found out that her sister had come to
visit her and the six men in her bed were probably guests of her sister Ilse,
because she had often stayed with guests in the Schmieds’ house in the Lederau,
etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
started talking about Peymann again, and among other things he said that
Peymann had laughed very scornfully when Kaut said to him that it would be a
real feather in Peymann’s cap if he became director of the Salzburg
Festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Karajan’s been aching for that
position for 15 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon Peymann
said, Ha, ha, ha.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, Kaut isn’t
used to being around a person like that, a person who treats him like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We also
agreed that I’d try to be at Thomas’s house in Nathal when the head of the
mining society came at about 10:00 a.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas stayed till 10:30 p.m.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 2, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 8:00 in
the morning I went with Thomas to the Ohlsdorf post office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that at the town hall he’d said that
he’d be at home at 9:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That now he
unconditionally had to go to Gmunden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
told Thomas that I’d come to his house at that time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That I’d have taken care of my bits of business
in Gmunden by about 9:00. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then I was
at Thomas’s house in Nathal at 9:15 a.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He said that he was already having some inferior trees chopped down in
his newly purchased woods and that he was going to set up enough pasture fence
to enclose about an acre at the Krucka.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
female neighbor is allowed to have two heads of cattle there and in exchange
must help him look after a head of young cattle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s enough feed and room in the stall
there for three head of cattle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, he
says, the Krucka will also be exploited and he won’t have to do any work there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because
after 10:00 the head of the mining society still hadn’t arrived and I had a
fair amount of work to do around the house, I drove back home after an
hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas asked me to come to him
immediately if I saw a car from Salzburg that the head of the mining society
might be in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agreed to do so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas also
let me read a letter from the minister of education that he had just
received.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The letter was two pages long,
dated 4/28, and Sinowatz wrote that he had successfully made some
inquiries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That the drilling site is 380
meters from the house, and that negotiations about the drilling site would be
taking place first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That Thomas would
have an opportunity to make his objections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That the extent to which these objections could be sustained would be carefully
considered, and that no matter what he’d able to avail himself of all the
appeals courts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he, Sinowatz, had
sent a copy to Staribacher, the foreign minister, and the head of the mining
society in Salzburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That no matter what
he wasn’t going to be rolled over by an automatic mechanism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I made a mental note of this last sentence
right away; the rest I voided from my memory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At the conclusion Sinowatz wrote that in the event of further
difficulties he should turn to him again immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He signed under “Warm regards.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As I was
handing the letter back to Thomas, I drew his attention to a spelling error on
the second page.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rohöhlgewinnung A. G.</i> [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">crude
oil company, inc.</i>] appears there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Roh</i> is spelled with an
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">h</i>, it’s easy to be misled into
spelling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Öl</i> with an<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> h </i>as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I write; if I honed my skills, I’d probably
also make this error.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d even be
inclined to say that I’m constantly writing it with an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">h</i>, because that’s actually constantly been happening in my uncorrected
notes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said, that’s a mistake,
when I drew his attention to this error in the minister of education’s letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally, I said; every mistake is an
error.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we also discussed that happy
turn of phrase “not be rolled over by an automatic mechanism.” He obviously
can’t write that you’ll be rolled over by the law, but one could also say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the law</i> instead of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">automatic mechanism</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 12:30
p.m. Thomas came to my house and said that he had just had lunch at
Pabst’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s nobody but blacks
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The landlady’s sister and her
mother are now also working at the guesthouse and are also as black as the
young landlady whom Pabst has brought back with him from Hawaii.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it occurs to him that there are fewer
guests there now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The slip of paper from
Mitterbauer doesn’t come during lunch either anymore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What’s the
news about the head of the mining society, I asked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right after you left, said Thomas, Mrs.
Maxwald came and informed me that the town government had called, that the head
of the mining society had told Ohlsdorf town hall by phone that he would be
coming this coming Thursday at two in the afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’d like to ask you to make sure you’re
there too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Thomas that I would
be, and at 3:15 Thomas left me again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 7:00 Thomas
came back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told me that he had
written a letter to Kaut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quite short
and matter-of-fact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas recited
its text to me, and as he did so he gave special emphasis to the period of each
sentence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example: “Have obtained
the house for Peymann, which is maintained by a single woman, a full six weeks
ago in Pfaffstätt, 35 km from Salzburg, period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d like to take this opportunity to say that for me Peymann, Ganz,
Hermann, Bickel, et al., all of them listed by name, constitute the optimal
team, period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Please reserve me three tickets
for the premiere, period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will show up
a few times during the rehearsal; otherwise I don’t intend to let myself be
seen, period.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the closing, said
Thomas, I haven’t written “very warmly,” but rather “with friendly regards,” so
that it’ll come across as a bit cooler.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
went on to talk about his comedy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">More Luck
than Brains</i>; he said that that was a very good title that would someday be
as familiar as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What You Will</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas told me that he had also received
a letter from Unseld and that the new edition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frost</i> had been sent off in the same mailing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll be receiving that book tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It looks very nice in blue, said Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We also
discussed my work scheduled for tomorrow morning, so that Thomas knew that I
wouldn’t have any time for him tomorrow and that in the evening I’ll be going
to my gym class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 10:15 p.m. Thomas
drove home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 3, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 10:00
a.m. I ran into Thomas in my patch of woods next to the street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had waylaid the postman and was furious
that they’d sent him another book instead of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frost</i>, namely a book by Bert Brecht from Suhrkamp
Publications.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told him: Of course
you’re constantly heaping abuse on people and on your publishing firm, saying
that they’re stupid and do everything the wrong way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now you’ve just proved yourself right once
again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas nodded, waved the book in
the air, and silently concurred with me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We kept talking
for a little while longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas told
me that the Hufnagls had gotten married again a few weeks ago and were now on
their honeymoon in Italy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When they came
here last Thursday they had gotten married again the day before, Wednesday,
without telling anybody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course you
know, said Thomas, that they only agreed to get divorced way back when because
she thought I was going to marry her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
don’t know how in the world she ever could have thought something like
that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I didn’t learn about it
directly from her but rather from Mrs. Pauser.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So we’ll see
each other at 2:00 tomorrow afternoon at the latest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll come to your house then, on account of
the mounty-head [i.e., the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Berghauptmann,</i>
the abovementioned head of the mining society (DR)], I said to Thomas as we
were going our separate ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Around
here the natives say mounty [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beri</i>] instead
of mountain [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Berg</i>], as in a mounty
meadow, etc., and so Thomas and I like to use these dialectal expressions in a
broader context, which the natives wouldn’t do.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 4, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 2:00 p.m.
I was at Thomas’s house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn’t until
3:00 that a few people associated with Prezelj’s, the head of the mining
society’s, inspection, which was scheduled for 2:00, came into view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until then we were in the courtyard in the
sun, and Thomas said to me that he hadn’t ever received an invitation to the
ceremony for the awarding of the Wildgans prize to Ingeborg Bachmann.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course last time they had canceled the
ceremony for Thomas completely and had just sent the prize money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now they’re not inviting me to the ceremony
for the next prizewinner either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because
Thomas is planning to leave for Vienna immediately after meeting with the
commission, after 3:00, when we saw the commission in the distance, he said
that he’d really like to take off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because when somebody says they’re coming at 2:00, it’s enough to wait
for an hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas asked me to
drive up to the commission; he said that he couldn’t do that, I had to see what
was going on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I was driving by them I
could tell just from their gestures that Secretary Möser and the head of the
mining society had won over Baldinger, and I also concluded this because I had
previously said hello to the crude-oil gentlemen, who were holding themselves
aloof, and exchanged a few words with them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After that I
drove to Thomas’s house and told him that it would be better if I weren’t
present when they came into his house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because if I were then he could put them blame on me if there were any
allegations against the steps he had taken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I got the feeling that it wasn’t going to be possible to stop the
drilling, because I’d heard that they were only going to drill for ten
days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas himself had no problem
with the drilling, because everything will be over after ten days and nights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immediately after that Thomas left for
Vienna, because Thomas’s aunt had made him an appointment to have a checkup at
the Baumgartner Höhe Clinic tomorrow, Friday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This coming Sunday or Monday Thomas will return with his aunt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas also asked me if during his absence
I’d randomly check in on the decortication of the felled trees in the woods and
if I’d take care of the courtyard as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps he’s worried that students could do him some mischief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wants to make sure that no matter what I
keep an eye on the courtyard and drive over a few times.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had drawn
off four liters of cider as we were waiting for the commission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s already running very thin out of the
barrel, and when he’s back from Vienna he’ll tap a new one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 10, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today Thomas
came back from Vienna with his aunt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
came over towards 4:00 in the afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My spouse told him that at 9:00 in the morning I’d met with Moidele
Bickel and Herrmann from Berlin in order to inspect the accommodations for
during the festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That nevertheless I
still hadn’t gotten back yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon
Thomas said he’d come again later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
because I got back from Salzburg only a half an hour later, I drove to Thomas’s
house at Nathal right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The gate was
open and the car was there, but nobody was home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Thomas must have gone for a walk with his
aunt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I walked around the house and ran
into Thomas his aunt at the fire station.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas asked me to join them for one or two hours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">First I had
to tell him how things had gone in Salzburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mrs. Bickel and Hermann were crazy about the accommodations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They had already known about his letter to
Peymann.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas was glad that I had also
shown them Mattighofen, so that they’d also know right away where the nearest
market to the house was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because if you
come from Salzburg, you have no idea that there’s such a fine market town three
kilometers away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I had to brief him
on the work with the timber that had since taken place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ferdl didn’t show up for work, but his
neighbor Ennsberger had brought along a work colleague who worked so diligently
that even in the well-shaded woods, in the cool wind, sweat was dripping from
his forehead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could even report to
Thomas on the exact working hours, because I’d stopped by for a look several times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I said to Thomas that I hadn’t spoken
with Bickel Hermann at all about the theater or their own work in the theater,
or about his play either, because I noticed right away that both of them had
had enough of their own trade and preferred to relax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Thomas that I had only told him that
he had written a letter to Kaut and in that letter had described all the
collaborators by name as the optimal team.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But otherwise they won’t see Bernhard much in Salzburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author will only stop by twice for a
look; he’ll view the general rehearsal and won’t be attending the premiere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So after an
hour we had already reached Aichlham; it was Thomas’s turn to do some reporting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had long since noticed that Thomas was
waiting to report on how his checkup had turned out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because I wanted to learn exactly what
the results were, I didn’t ask him about them, because in the event that
everything wasn’t in order, he might answer that question curtly and vaguely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, if Thomas reports on it
himself, of his own volition, he’ll talk about it quite precisely. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the sake of not actually beginning with
his checkup at the clinic in Vienna, Thomas told me that he had received a
letter in which the German Academy for Language and Literature had informed him
that he had been inducted as a corresponding member.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The new president, Böll, proposed him back at
the time of the Büchner Prize, and now he’s probably made this happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But right
afterwards Thomas started talking about his checkup and said that he had been examined
more thoroughly than ever before and that not a trace of a growth at the site
of his old operation had been found.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
doctors themselves were very interested in the follow-up checkup because they
had succeeded in getting rid of this rare “Böck,” a benign tumor for which there’s
no method of completely curing in the professional literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only important thing for me was to be
sure that a very painstaking checkup that certified that he was in good health
had taken place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The doctors said that
he was completely healthy, that he couldn’t be healthier. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time of the operation things really
reached a crisis point, because even a specialist hadn’t recognized the
“Böck.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can still hear Thomas’s dry
cough to this day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He didn’t have it
when he left for the checkup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the
cough he had could only have been the symptom of an early stage of a “bock”;
accordingly I found a painstaking checkup a great source of relief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then we got right back round to talking
about his appointment as a corresponding member of the German Academy for
Language and Literature, and Thomas declared that he wouldn’t reply to this
letter for a very long time, because he had to consider carefully whether or
not to accept this appointment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It could
be that this membership came with expensive membership dues, in which case
accepting it would be completely out of the question for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I regarded this as unthinkable, and said that
if anything an honorarium would be paid to the members.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here Aunt Hede also intervened in the
conversation quite a bit, because according to her lights it was impossible for
Thomas to plan to put off replying to this letter any longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stuck by Thomas and said that he was right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can even answer a few months from
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas doesn’t want to spoil
anything for himself by declining, but he also doesn’t want to incur any
obligations by accepting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas’s aunt
insisted on his coming to a quick decision and accepting the membership.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At this
point Thomas slackened his pace so that Aunt Hede could walk ahead of us by
herself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then it was 6:30 p.m., and
the evening coolness forced Aunt Hede to walk quickly, because she was pretty
sensitive to cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas took advantage
of this, and once Aunt Hede was out of earshot, Thomas told me that the basic
outline of his new novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Correction </i>had
come to him in Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The novel’s plot
will take place over the course of just three days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An Austrian man returns from living abroad
with the intention of staying in Austria and never leaving this country again,
because he has such fond memories of his homeland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But after three days he realizes that so much
has changed, that everything is so execrable, that it’s impossible to put up
with living in Austria, and so he leaves Austria with the intention of never
returning to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, said Thomas,
in these three days I can find a place for everything I want, everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won’t shrink from mentioning people like
the mayor of Vienna, Slavik, by name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Also all the rest, like the minister of education, I’ll mention all of
them by name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But everything that
happens in it will make all my earlier things pale by comparison. I’ll describe
the whole horrifying state of affairs that we’ve got here, this whole
perversity, and the title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Correction</i> will
be apt for two reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because on the
one hand my main character will correct his view of Austria in three days and I
myself will vigorously correct my earlier assertions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ll see what’s coming from me there and
also be surprised by it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then we
caught back up with his aunt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
stayed behind at his neighbor Ennsberger’s house in order to discuss additional
work in the woods, and from there I went to his farmhouse with just Aunt Hede.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mrs. Stavianicek didn’t have a key to the
front door, and she was shivering a lot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She said: Thomas has obviously got to come right away, because he
obviously knows that I’ve got no key and that I’m very cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you know how Thomas is, I said, Thomas
“hasn’t got” to do anything at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Take
a seat in my car, and we’ll get the key from Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We drove
towards Thomas, and when we were halfway to Ennsberger’s, we crossed paths with
him. He gave us the key, and once Aunt Hede was in the kitchen she started
making semolina porridge, because on account of her stomach trouble she’s not
allowed to eat anything else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
said that she should make a double portion, that he was also very happy to eat
semolina porridge, by which he meant semolina pudding.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">By then it
was 7:25.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so I said my goodbyes very
quickly, so that I could still watch the news at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also told Thomas that my daughter Elfriede
would be getting married on the 12<sup>th</sup> and that I would be in St.
Nikolai im Sausal from the 13<sup>th</sup> to the 16<sup>th</sup>, so that we
wouldn’t be seeing each other for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 17, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Towards two
in the afternoon Dr. Wieland Schmied came to see me with Wolf Jobst Siedler of
76 Lindenstrasse, Berlin, the president of Ullstein Publications (at the Propylaea).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schmied was looking for his wife and for
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither was at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was hoping to run into his wife at
Thomas’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because Siedler has to drive
back to Munich, he won’t have a car, and if Thomas isn’t there, I’m supposed to
take him to Lederau towards evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
later the better, he says, because by then his wife is sure to be at home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because
Siederl was interested in purchasing a farmhouse, we inspect a few objects with
him until evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because by seven
Thomas still wasn’t home, I took Dr. Wieland Schmied to Lederau, where we find
his wife with her mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schmied left a
message on Thomas’s gate before we left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 18, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At eight in
the morning I ran into Thomas in front of the Ohlsdorf post office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told me that he was just about to come see
me to ask me about Schmied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schmied had
written his message on the gate on the back of my business card, and so Thomas
knew that I had been at his house with Schmied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I told Thomas that I had shown Siedler the inside of his courtyard, and
that to do this I had used the stowed key.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I know Siedler already, said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wolf Jobst Siedler’s his complete name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Naturally I couldn’t show him the residential part other than the <span style="background: #fefdfa; color: black;">old farmer’s nook, because Thomas
himself never lets anybody into it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
three sides of the four-sided house aren’t taboo.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas
showed me a book that he had just received in the mail, a book entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Somebody Who Writes</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas proudly showed me the second page, where
underneath a quotation from Goethe there’s a quotation from him:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I am not a writer, but rather somebody who writes<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Thomas Bernhard) <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
designation of “writer” has always disgusted Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Author” he can just barely stomach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before he had “farmer” stamped on his
passport, I advised him to call himself an “odd-jobber.” In the light of his
history of doing odd jobs he’d be entitled to do that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas also
told me that he had been in Vienna and hadn’t got back till after
midnight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That at one in the morning he
had seen that my car was still parked at Asamer’s tavern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was another tarot game that went on into
the small hours, said Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I advised
Thomas to drive to Schmied’s right away, before noon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he’ll surely find Schmied, who’s a late
sleeper; otherwise they’ll miss each other again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, Thomas was planning to drive to the
Krucka, because the pasture fence was finished and he had to take a look at
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, you’re right, said Thomas, I’ll
drive over to Schmied’s right away; then I’ll have gotten it out of the
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He drove to Schmied’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Obernathal 2 in 1968: an estate and the vehicle of
its owner: Thomas Bernhard, farmer.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 19, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At nine in
the morning Thomas came to see me in order to wait for the postman with
me. But I told Thomas that I had already
picked up my mail at the post office and that therefore the postman wouldn’t be
coming into the house. When he sees my
car he’ll surely come in, said Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then he told
me that last Friday and Saturday he had been visited by actors from Berlin who
would be performing his play <i>The
Ignoramus and the Madman</i> as soon as September 1 in Berlin. On Friday evening he played “blackjack” with
them at Pabst’s tavern in Laakirchen and relieved the theater people of almost
all their money until it was three in the morning. Then at three o’clock they no
accommodations. Then a master painter
took them with him to Eisengattern where they could sleep in no-frills
makeshift beds. But they’d left their
baggage at Thomas’s house in Nathal, and so they had to ride along without
their things. But at 3:00 a.m. Thomas
naturally wasn’t prepared to take them home with him or to fetch their baggage,
because then he’d never get rid of them.
As a matter of principle he doesn’t let people stay overnight at his
house. So far, apart from his Aunt
Stavianicek nobody has ever spent the night at his house. Thomas said that these big winnings were very
awkward for him, because now he was going to be forced to pay for these
people’s accommodations. That he had
booked them rooms for the next day at the Hotel Schwan in Gmunden. But it’s over now; I’d rather not see anybody
else this year. The actors’ entire visit
led to nothing. Such visits are
completely superfluous. Why do actors
need to meet the author?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">By then it
was 10a.m., and I showed Thomas a postcard from his Aunt Stavianicek that was
in my mail. The card came from
Wolfsegg. Because the postman must have
left some time before, Thomas drove after him in his Rayon. At 10p.m. Wieland Schmied came with his
spouse. Thomas is nowhere to be found,
he said. They’d been supposed to meet at
Pabst’s at 7p.m., but Thomas hadn’t shown up.
He wasn’t at home either. So
then, he said, I thought I’d stop by your house. At 11p.m. I’m leaving Attnang for Venice to
see Hundertwasser; my wife is driving me to the train station. But it’s still too early. At 10:30p.m. the Schmieds set out for Attnang
and left behind their regards for Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It also
occurred to me that Thomas told me that today he was expecting a visit from
Schaffler from Salzburg in the evening and that he had to “wash” the latter’s
“hair.” Dr. Schmied had also learned
about this from Thomas, but he said: But Schaffler was supposed to come by
midday; he made a date with us for the evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 22, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 11:45a.m.
the film director Ferry Radax came. He wanted
to pay Thomas Bernhard a short visit on his way from Germany to his farmhouse
at No. 35 Schönbach in the Waldviertel. As
Thomas Bernhard wasn’t at home, he came to me to see if I knew where Thomas
Bernhard was. Radax told me that he’d
prefer to shoot the footage for <i>Frost</i>
in the Waldviertel near Schönbach, because the original location had since become
so heavily built up that the area in the Waldviertel was better suited to the
novel. As were the houses, background
actors, etc. Only a few shots will have
to be filmed in the area around Weng. We also talked about the fact that the
area around Rappottenstein and Ritterkamp would be perfect for a film
adaptation of <i>Verstörung</i> [<i>Gargoyles</i>]. Because I know that area well, I agree with
Radax. After about three-quarters of an
hour, at 12:30p.m., Thomas Bernhard suddenly walked in through the front door. Thomas had no idea that Radax was with me; he
just wanted to tell me that he’d be coming to see me in the evening. He said hello to Radax and told him that he
didn’t have a minute to spare now because his aunt was expecting him for lunch
at Wolfsegg. That he was going to be
accompanied by Mrs. Schmied, her daughter, and her mother. That they were with the child at the Kirtag
(the fair) in Ohlsdorf. Mrs. Schmied had
fallen onto the gravel and had bleeding abrasions on her knees and hands, and
because of this he was already running late for the date at Wolfsegg, Thomas
said. He asked Radax to catch up with
him at the Brandlhof in Wolfsegg later on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 12:45p.m.
Radax left for Wolfsegg. Before that he
told me how the Grimme Prize award ceremony had gone and that he had heard from
television that Thomas Bernhard had become a corresponding member of the German
Academy for Language and Literature in Darmstadt. I was surprised because Thomas hadn’t told me
that he had accepted the offer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 8p.m.
Thomas walked in while saying, “Thank God I’ve got this day behind me.” I told Thomas right away that I had heard
from Radax that he had become a corresponding member. I said that if that was true he was one of
those people like Hilde Spiel who accept every “postlet.” I can’t believe that that’s true. You’ll laugh, said Thomas; I accepted, and
Hilde Spiel and Canetti are also corresponding members. Why do you need this, what’s it good for? I
asked. I can’t waste my chances with the
new president, said Thomas, and that’s why I wrote back right away that I was
accepting. Right after that came the
public announcement. As I keep making my
way in the world I’ll need that. In
order to make your way in the world you’ve got to be able to walk on corpses,
including even the corpse of a corresponding member. You’ve simply got to be able to do that, to
climb over such corpses. Canetti and
Spiel are obviously corpses; they’re all corpses, but in this case I’m even
prepared to climb over my own corpse.
I’ve got to do that, because as I said, I’d rather not spoil my chances
with the new president. Because eventually
you’ve just got to do something you really don’t want to do, but I won’t be
taking on any obligations at all by doing this.
Besides, said Thomas, I’ve already turned down completely different
things that you’d never have any idea of why I turned them down. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I settled
for this explanation and told Thomas that the Schmieds had been here on Friday
and asked him if he had washed Schaffler’s hair on Friday. Yes, said Thomas, on Friday I was at Pabst’s
in Laakirchen at 7p.m. I left a note
that I was there on the gate. The
Schmieds didn’t come; Schaffler found the note and came to Pabst’s at about
9p.m. But anyway, as for what you may
have imagined by my washing his hair, I’m not going to do that, because if I do
I may need to find another tax adviser and make Schaffler into an enemy. Dr. Schmied and Schaffler have already fallen
out with each other. That’s why Schmied
didn’t come to Pabst’s, because he didn’t want to run into Schaffler. Aha, I said, he told me that he was having
his book about Arik Brauer published in Vienna by another publisher. That’s why Schaffler is angry at him. Yes, of course, Schaffler didn’t pay him what
he wanted for the book, and so Schmied had the book published in Vienna by
another publisher. No, no, I didn’t wash
Schaffler’s hair, but I did tell him that that stuff about me in that book by
Zuckmayer, <i>Henndorfer Pastorale</i> would
simply have to be taken out. Schaffler
said that that would be just fine, that he would publish a second edition right
away, that he’d write to Zuckmayer immediately to tell him that that stuff would
have to be taken out, that I demanded that.
Or at least my “sad” or “unhappy” boyhood will have to be described as
“happy” instead. Because I did have a
happy boyhood. On top of that I’ve drawn
Schaffler’s attention to the typos in the book.
Stelzhamer with two ems and so forth; there’s really no excuse for stuff
like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then I said:
You know, you really should have been invited to the snack reception in
Henndorf; it’s naturally obvious that you wouldn’t have gone, but you should
have gotten yourself invited.
Zuckmayer’s daughter would have blocked that, said Thomas; of course you
know what I told you about the dog-whip way back when. Someday that will make a fine biography of
you, I said. Then it will also be
written that when you played “blackjack” with your visitors you took all their
money away from them. Nobody will
believe that anyway, said Thomas, even if it’s in writing, because all
biographies get the facts wrong and aren’t true. On top of that, I couldn’t care less, because
by then I won’t know anything about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas went
on to tell me that he had lunch at the Brandlhof in Wolfsegg and that Radax had
still come there to have lunch with him.
On that Whitsunday he was sitting across and one table over from
Governor Wenzl who was there with his wife and daughters and whom he was very
angry at because this man hadn’t written a single line in reply to his letter
about the oil-drilling. Because Radax
was sitting across from Thomas, the whole time Thomas was speaking with Radax,
he saw the governor’s face in the background at the other table. Thomas said that he’d told Radax pretty
explicitly what mistakes had been made in the film version of <i>The Italian</i>, and because he also kept
seeing the governor’s face, Radax had to suffer for that, because it spurred
him on to criticize Radax even more harshly.
Among other things Thomas asked Radax to see to it that the contract for
the film adaptation was signed by the ORF as soon as possible, because now that
he’d come to think about it differently it seemed that Radax had written his
screenplay for nothing. He made it clear
to Radax that nobody could write a screenplay based on his novel <i>Frost </i>in the absence of contractual
protection and authorization. Moreover,
he said, when Radax had asked him how he’d like the screenplay, he’d answered
that he’d only read a small part of it and was satisfied that the rest was
exactly the same. Besides, he’d
continued, a screenplay on its own is still nothing; you can never say whether
it’s good or bad because you can make a good film out of a bad screenplay and a
bad film out of a good one. But, he’d
added, if the film is supposed to be shot this coming winter, it’s more than
high time to start worrying about casting and begin our preparations. Governor Wenzl looked intently over at Thomas
several times, and Thomas got the impression that his daughter had told him who
he was very early on. As Governor Wenzl
was on his way out of the restaurant, he begged Thomas for a greeting, as
Thomas put it in his novella. But as the
governor was passing by Thomas, Thomas pointedly gazed at his plate and acted
as if he didn’t notice. Right after the
governor had left the restaurant, the owner came up and said: Didn’t you
recognize him? That was the
governor. Of course I recognized him,
said Thomas. When the owner then spent a
good bit of time talking with the governor in front of the building, Thomas said
that he was probably being told about that as well. But he really could have written a line or
two in reply to my letter. After all,
that’s the least he, Wenzl, has got to do if some old lady with a pension
writes to him. And this whole business
with the ORF is totally unacceptable as well, Thomas added. I’m supposed to let a screenplay based on my
novel be written in the absence of a contract or anything in the way of
payment. I tell you, they’re treating me
worse than at a whorehouse. At a whorehouse
you can’t just walk in, consume everything on offer, and walk out the back door
without paying. But I told Radax that
that would have to be taken care of as soon as possible; otherwise I’ll keep
mulling things over and won’t agree to anything else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A “Henndorf Snack Reception” in the traditional
style. Those present at the launch party for Carl Zuckmayer’s </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Henndorf Pastorale <i>included Gretrud Frank, Carl Zuckmayer,
Clemens Holzmeister, Rudolf Bayr, Ingrid Oberascher, Wolfgang Schaffler, and
some musicians.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I asked
Thomas if he had been at the castle.
Yes, said Thomas, for coffee. But
the count wasn’t at home. Of course the
old countess and her two daughters were there.
It was just like it always is when only ladies are present, all the
usual twittering. Radax was there
too. Then he left for Schönbach in the
Waldviertel at 6p.m. Now that I’ve had a
chance to observe him again for a few hours, I’m finding once again that I
don’t like him at all. Radax is an
unacceptable director. Of course I’ve
already told him that I’d like to take a look at his house in the
Waldviertel. But just think about it, if
he’s got to drive two-and-a-half hours from Vienna, he might as well just have
something here. On top of that, the man
doesn’t belong in a hundred forty thousand-schilling car. Why does he need a family car like that, such
a ridiculously expensive car, just for himself?
There are certain high-class people who can own three Rolls Royces
without attracting any attention. At
7:30 I left Wolfsegg in turn and came directly to you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It was 10:30
by the time Thomas left for his house, and he said he’d visit me again tomorrow
evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 23, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 6p.m.
Thomas dropped by my house unexpectedly.
He usually comes at seven, and for a moment I was really annoyed. Because although I really wanted to continue
writing my long account of his Whitsun Monday, I instinctively cleared
everything away barely five minutes earlier.
If he surprises me while I’m writing, it would be very easy for him to
walk up to the typewriter and say: Let’s see, who are you writing to? This time I had taken quite a lot of notes,
and just shortly before then they were lying strewn all over the table. This time I wouldn’t have cleared everything
away as quickly. In the winter it was
easier; back then the doors to the house were shut, and he would have to stop
in the vestibule to take off his coat or use the doormat. A few times when he was doing that I
disappeared with my papers just in the nick of time. But now that the weather’s nice, he’s
suddenly standing there in the doorway of the living room. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As he was
walking in, Thomas said that he’d finished all his essential letters and that
he had taken everything to the post office just before 6p.m. He’d like to walk with me for an
hour-and-a-half, up to the starting time of <i>The
Age in Images</i>. I was willing to do
that, but first I showed him my 5/17/1972 letter from Ulrich and Vera
Wildgruber of 98 Blumenfeldstrasse, Bochum 463, which I received today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So we walked
to Traun, Aupointen, Sandhäuslberg and back.
Thomas told me he’d finally sent the corrected script of <i>The Ignoramus and the Madman</i> to the
publishing firm. At the same time, he
said, he had informed the firm that he didn’t want to hear or see anything else
having to do with this thing. Because
the firm is going be getting incessant inquiries about this play. He’s also frankly informed the firm that he
won’t be attending the premiere in Salzburg. He said that he’d have to shut himself off
from the rest of the world until the end of the year in order to tackle his new
prose work seriously. I wrote something
to that effect to Unseld. This coming
Friday I’ll go to Salzburg, because Unseld will be coming there. I’ll still meet him there, but then things
have got to stop; I’m determined to do some work now. But then you’ll be writing into the dog
days. I plan to do just that, said
Thomas. I also wrote <i>Frost</i> in my swimming trunks. I’d take a cold shower every two hours, and
so I’ll do that again now with <i>Correction</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We get back
from this walk just in time for <i>The Age
in Images</i>. Today I’d like to hear
the news again, said Thomas. (On Whitsun
Monday he wasn’t in the mood to watch the news program that was just starting
on German television.) <i>The Age in Images</i> began with President
Jonas’s reception of Chancellor Brandt at the Hofburg in Vienna. Look, here are two conmen on display. One of them is a typesetter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Thomas
started talking about the letter from Mrs. Wildgruber, whose husband is acting
in <i>The Ignoramus</i> in Salzburg. He said that the letter was written in a
totally unacceptable style. It includes
words and expressions like “encouraged” and “sorry to bother you,” and “may I
hope for a tiny postcard reply from you?”
I had to show Thomas the letter once again. He advised me to write back in the same
style. Come on, I’ll do it for you. Thomas took the letter and read out an
amusing reply in the same style. I said
to Thomas: Tomorrow I’ll write a very matter-of-fact, correct, clear letter of
reply. I’ll let you read it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas
wanted to see <i>The Conversation</i> with
Günther Nenning and Elisabeth Mann Borghese at 9:05p.m. on Channel 2. Until then we watch <i>That’s Your Call!</i> During the
interview with André Heller, Thomas said: It’s terrible, the way he’s dressed
and the way he’s sitting in his chair. Later, during the program with Günther
Nenning, the latter was so bad and awkward and really unacceptable from the
beginning that I expected a critical remark from Thomas at any moment. Thomas followed the program intently. In particular Elisabeth Mann Borgese’s mother
[Katia Mann, Thomas Mann’s widow] spoke well, and it was only towards the end,
when the interview with Mann Borgese had been airing for a while, that Thomas
stirred. I can’t keep watching Nenning;
it’s insufferable. But he’s the
president of the journalists’ union.
They want to fire him as president; they’ve been wanting another one for
the longest time. He really deserves to
be fired; I can’t watch him anymore.
Please switch it off. Perhaps
Thomas held his peace for so long because at the beginning of the broadcast the
female announcer said that this was the first episode of a new series. Thomas gave me a disconcerted look and said
he agreed with me. But perhaps he was
secretly disturbed by the realization that he himself didn’t notice that right
away, and that was why he held his peace for so long, until he couldn’t keep
watching Nenning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then towards
10:15 Thomas drove home. We had already
agreed during our walk that I’d pick up his mail at the post office at eight in
the morning and meet him at the Café Brandl in Gmunden at 8:30. At 7:00 tomorrow morning he’s got to take his
VW in for inspection, and since he won’t be getting his car back from the
garage until just before noon, in the interval the two of us will drive to the
Krucka, walk around a bit, and at noon I’ll take him back to the garage. I told my wife she should wake me up at 4:30
a.m. so that I could catch up on my writing.
Because if I’m going to spend another three-and-a-half hours with Thomas
tomorrow, I’d like to have the old stuff written down before then; otherwise
I’ll get everything mixed up, or I won’t remember anything at all anymore. To Thomas, who heard this, I said: I’ve got
some important letters to write. As we
were saying our goodbyes, Thomas once again reminded me of where we were
supposed to meet tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 24, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On my way to
meet Thomas in Gmunden I stopped by the garage to check on Thomas’s car. It was still parked in front of the washing carport
and wasn’t being worked on yet. I went
straight to the boss, and he promised me that Bernhard’s car would be ready for
pickup at 11:30. When I drove up to the
Café Brandl in Gmunden, I could see from the car that Thomas was settling up
with the waitress. He saw me and
beckoned me over. The previous day we
agreed that on our way to the Krucka we’d stop by the garage to goad them
on. But when I told Thomas that I’d
already been to the garage he said: Then we don’t need to go there; we can go
straight to the Grasberg and the Krucka.
We parked the car on the bank of the Aurach River and set out on the
ten-minute walk to the house. Because it
hasn’t got a driveway, you can only get to the house on foot or by four
wheel-drive tractor. On our way there
Thomas was once again brimming over with praise for this property. Every time I come here, he said, I can’t help
thinking of you, because I owe this “gift” entirely to you. Because it really is a gift as far as I’m
concerned. Today I’d pay 500,000
schillings for it: I like it that much. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Near the
house we came across two heifers in the enclosed pasture. I saw that Thomas had had the pasture fence
built to extend so far to the west towards the woods that the spot where we
picked some fine arnica flowers last year was half fenced in. So this year we won’t be able to pick enough
arnica. Last year on there were some
really lovely flowers on the spot where cows are grazing, I said to
Thomas. Thomas barely paid attention to
what I was saying; he was so enthusiastic about the cows; he petted them and
praised the pleasant odor of cattle. And
look, they take such lovely shits, he said as one of the cows lifted her tail
and dropped a proper cowpat. We
inspected the trough and saw that higher uphill the second fence hadn’t yet
been completed because there wasn’t enough barbed wire to hand. We walked around the second enclosure, where
only the stakes had been hammered in and ascertained that he would need almost
twice as much wire as he’s already used it in order to finish it. Only the steepest part of the meadow had been
fenced in as pasture because getting the feed there takes a lot of work. The rest of the meadow is very easy to
cultivate and so getting feed there is also much easier. After we had finished inspecting the whole lot
we went into the house. In the pantry
there was a kilo of butter from the woman next door. Thomas has been buying the butter from this
82-year-old “peeping Thomasina,” because he thinks that she’ll be more likely
to sell the house to him as a result.
But regarding this house next door, No. 99, things are going to turn out
as I’ve already described earlier.
Because Thomas commissioned me to negotiate the additional purchase a
long time ago, and I’ve investigated the situation a long time ago. When he sees the butter Thomas said: I’ve
already got so much butter at home; can I give you the butter? There’s already butter here again; I picked
up some butter just a few days ago. I
don’t know how I’m supposed to stop this now.
I can’t use so much butter, even though I eat quite a lot of it every
day. The house itself was being kept
spick-and-span by the neighbor; only the stable hadn’t been cleaned out, I
noticed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 10:00 we
climb down from the Krucka and at 10:30 at the garage we asked how things stood
with the car. They said it would be
ready in an hour. We drove to
Pinsdorf-Kufhaus, to the Dichtmühl Pub, a proper country pub for locals. Naturally at that time of day we were the
only customers and had a splendid hour-long chat. By the end of it the car was ready, and when I
left Thomas’s house at 11:30, he shouted after me: Don’t forget to take the
butter out of the car, or it’ll turn rancid.
It already is a bit rancid, I said, and drove away. Before I left I reminded Thomas that on
Wednesday I had my tarot evening so that we wouldn’t be able to see each other
again until tomorrow, Thursday. Come to
my house, said Thomas. I’d rather not,
because if you’re not working, you’ll come see me anyhow, and you’re if busy
writing you can’t have any use for me. It’ll
definitely be better if you come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today I also
wrote to Mrs. Vera Wildgruber. I haven’t
been able to show Thomas the carbon copy yet, because I wrote this letter at
five in the morning and Thomas hasn’t been to my house since. But I filled Thomas in on the essential
contents of my letter as we were walking around the Krucka. This got Thomas talking again about the actor
Ulrich Wildgruber’s spouse’s terrible letter.
He said he couldn’t ever possibly get married. When he thinks to himself that his wife might
write such a letter or could meddle in his business! So it’s quite simply impossible for me to
have a wife. Only if I’m lying in bed
with a 40-degree fever will I think of getting a wife, said Thomas. In a case like that you’ll just have to hire
yourself your own personal nurse, I said.
Then it’ll be her job to be there, and she’ll have to take care of you. But it would be even better and cheaper if
you asked the president of the Society for Literature, Kraus, either directly
or via Hilde Spiel, to send you a talented young female writer to be your
nurse. Then which women report for duty
would be decided immediately; they’ll believe they can practice their trade at
the same time. Or they’ll be of the
opinion that if they’re nursing a successful writer they’ll be able to write
better. It’s like assuming Mann’s
daughter writes better articles because her father was a famous writer. For ten or twenty paces in a row Thomas
didn’t say anything. Then he said that
nothing was more terrible than what could happened to a person who was the son
or daughter of a famous father. Such
children will never achieve anything because they know that they’ll never touch
the greatness and the fame of their father.
That robs them of their courage from the outset. In reply to this I said: It’s also possible
that they’ll see that their father often got so famous just thanks to a stroke
of good fortune or luck. If in such
cases they go on to learn about the deeper causes and interconnections, that’ll
also discourage them from accomplishing anything special. Yes of course, said Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It was
really quite odd, the kind of conversation and the trains of thought in
Thomas’s mind and mine that got started by Mrs. Wildgruber’s stupid
letter. But there must be writers who
can’t write anything because they haven’t got any material. I’m understanding better and better why
Thomas so strongly resists being labeled a “writer.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 27, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because
Thomas didn’t come to see me Thursday evening, I visited him at Nathal at 10
o’clock this morning. He was just about
to leave for Gmunden in order to browse the newspapers. I arrived in rubber boots because it was
raining cats and dogs. When I asked him
at the courtyard gate if I was disturbing him, he gave me new leather
slippers. Because Thomas was in Salzburg
yesterday, he naturally had a lot of things to report on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Schaffler
from Residenz Publications wants to have <i>Treeline</i>
filmed for the same honorarium as the one for <i>Frost.</i> This TV movie is
supposed to be filmed at the same places as <i>The
Italian</i> was. But there are no plans
to have Radax be the director, because if there were he would have had to know
something when he was here on Whitsun Monday, said Thomas. And so first thing Monday he’s going to send
off a letter withdrawing his consent to have <i>Frost</i> adapted for film by the ORF.
If he can bag the same sum for <i>Treeline</i>,
he’d rather have <i>Treeline</i>
filmed. Nothing can go wrong with that,
like with <i>Kulterer</i>, because of course
<i>Treeline</i> is nothing special. Whereas it would be a shame if <i>Frost</i> were filmed badly and maybe later
on a better director for <i>Frost</i> will
turn up anyway. But if<i> Frost</i> is made into a bad film, no good
director will angle for any of this stuff anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Schaffler
told Thomas that he was going to accept a play by Canetti. Canetti has asked for an honorarium of
100,000 schillings, and Schaffler thinks that Thomas told Canetti that he had
gotten 100,000 schillings for <i>The Italian
</i>and that that was why he was asking for that sum. Schaffler hasn’t yet answered Canetti
regarding this request and he told Thomas that honoraria as high as the ones
Thomas gets aren’t common, even for good writers. And so he was going to offer Canetti 30,000
schillings. I would have let him have
the 100,000, said Thomas. But this way
at least he’ll see, what he’s worth, I said during the pause when Thomas was
considering saying something else. He
was surely thinking about making a similar remark.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
said that he had “dismembered” several of Schaffler’s blurbs. In Schaffler’s presence he excoriated several
authors published by Schaffler. He
fished out some sentences and read them aloud, read them correctly, so that Schaffler
could see what nonsense those sentences expressed. But he said that Schaffler should go ahead and
publish them, because nobody reads a text the way he does, and the great mass
of readers never realize what nonsense they’ve been given to read, because
they’re absentminded. Everybody in
general is absentminded. I went on to
tell Schaffler that he was publishing copies of copies, because first Handke
copied him (Bernhard), and now everybody was copying Handke. But you know I told him all this in a
friendly, good-humored way, because that’s the only way you can tell people the
truth; if I hadn’t I’d have fallen out with Schaffler and I’d even have had to
look for a new tax adviser.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But of
course Unseld was much more important to me; I met up with him in
Salzburg. Thomas said nothing about the
particulars of his conversation with Unseld, but he did mention that he’d met
with the president of the Salzburg Festival, Kaut. Kaut told him that no premiering play had
brought in as many ticket sales for all performances as this one had. On top of that, he was going to have to put
the brakes on Peymann, the director, because he wanted a co-director’s
honorarium of 10,000 schillings for a certain female medical student of his
acquaintance. Kaut declined to give him
this. Thomas said that Kaut was doing
the right thing, because the actors in Berlin have learned the movements
they’ve got to make, the movements that are made when cadavers are operated on,
at the anatomical institute. So a mere
medical student can’t override their say on what the proper movements are. Anyone who could would obviously have to be
somebody other than a mere student. Then,
said Thomas, he was almost literally dumbstruck when Kaut told him the
videotaping of the play by the ORF was a sure thing again. Thomas didn’t know that the ORF’s original
consent had been withdrawn with all sorts of explanations, etc., and that only
a bit earlier Kaut received a letter from the ORF explaining that the situation
was different now and that the taping for telecast was going to take place
after all. Once again you see how shaky
these things always are in Austria, said Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
asked me when I was last at Mrs. Menzel the antiques dealer’s shop at 13
Getreidegasse. I replied: I was most
recently there a few minutes before I met with Moidele Bickel and Hermann. Mrs. Menzel reproached me for not having
brought her the Renaissance room I had promised her. I told her that it wasn’t to my taste to give
her goods on commission. She doubles my
costs. If she sells it she’ll get as
much as me for the goods; if not, she doesn’t run any risk, because of course
she hasn’t staked any money on the goods.
I’d like to have a business like that, where everybody gives me goods on
commission, I said. Mrs. Menzel said I
should start an antique shop myself.
Whereupon I said to her that I couldn’t do that, because I didn’t
understand it and because you probably need decades of experience in this
trade. You see, she said, I’ve been
active in this business for forty years.
Yes, and surely you can still learn a thing or two more about it even
today, I said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You see, I
was at Mrs. Menzel’s shop, said Thomas, and when I said that I was from
Ohlsdorf, she started talking about you right away and knew you were from
Ohlsdorf. But she’s got nothing but
execrable things there. I only went
there because of a painting that was in the front window, but I wouldn’t want
to have a single piece of hers. I didn’t
see your picture of the Virgin Mary there.
Which picture of the Virgin Mary?
I’ve got two, I said. You know,
the old one, said Thomas; you were planning to bring it to her. Yes, I said, but it’s hanging on the wall in
my house. Because you like it so much, I
like it even better now. It was the
other one, which you also know, that I took to Mrs. Menzel’s. Yes, that one’s right for her; she deals in
things like that, said Thomas. I’d never
like such a picture. Then I asked Thomas if I might take a look at his portrait
of Joseph II, which he’d brought from Vienna the previous week. Sure, go up there, but don’t fall down the
stairs. The slippers are slippery
because they’re new. In the room at the
top of the stairs I contemplated the portrait between two windows above the
inlaid table. I liked it very much, and
it looked good there. I also told Thomas
this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">By then it
was 11am; I had learned enough again, and I prepared to leave. As I was putting my rubber boots back on and
Thomas was accompanying me to the gate, he also told me that he was still going
to visit his aunt at Wolfsegg today. He
was planning to read the newspapers in Gmunden before then. In this rainy weather your aunt will be
especially glad if you come to see her, I said, and then I drove off. Before I left Thomas said: Perhaps I’ll come
see you this evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas
actually did come to see me at 7:00pm.
That’s rare on a Saturday, because then he usually meets up with the
Hufnagels or the O’Donells. The reason
why he came was destined to come to light later on. Preliminarily we spoke some more about Mrs.
Schmied, who was planning to leave Lederau today. Thomas said he’d been over there; the house
was unlocked; the expensive cameras were lying all over the place; Mrs. Schmied
was nowhere to be seen, not even elsewhere in the neighborhood. She simply drives off without locking up the
house. I’d like for something to be
stolen from her sometime so that she’ll learn that it’s a good idea to lock up
the house when you’re leaving it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then, at
8:15pm, when Thomas wanted to see Jean-Luc Godard’s film <i>Weekend</i> on Channel 2, I knew why he’d come by on Saturday this
week. Thomas was unusually enthusiastic
from the very beginning of the film and said that Radax could learn something by
watching it. Thomas stayed till
10:30. Before he left I told him that my
brother from Schwarzenau would be visiting on Monday. Thomas said he could still remember him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 30, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 7pm Thomas
walked into my living room. We had a
particularly large feast laid out, because we were celebrating my daughter
Reinhild’s name day. Apart from my wife,
Granny, Reinhild, and Wolfi my daughter Elfriede was at the table with her
husband Franz Stiegler. I invited Thomas
to join us right away, and he was very merry.
His good mood lasted so long that he even stayed to watch the show “What
Am I” with us. Before that Bishop Zak
could be seen on “The World in Images.”
He spoke about environmental pollution.
Thomas said: They should stop polluting the intellectual environment
themselves. When he recalls Dean Kern of
Ohlsdorf’s funeral eulogy, it’s enough to tear his ass-cheeks to pieces. When we then switched over to the “Daily
Show” on the German channel, Thomas said he had spoken with Unseld about German
politics last Friday. The arch-socialist
Unseld himself didn’t believe that the socialists would emerge as victors from
the new elections. Thomas went on to
say: Everything that weakens Germany strengthens Europe, he told Unseld,
because he believes a strong Germany strengthens Europe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How do
things otherwise stand between you and Unseld right now? I asked. I could get anything I wanted from him. If I asked for a gold cover for my new book,
he’d even have that done. Perhaps
because your appointment as a corresponding member of the academy in Darmstadt
impressed him so much? I asked. No, he
didn’t even know a thing about that yet, I told him about it. But on account of the membership, I subsequently
received a letter addressed to “The Member of the Germany Academy for Languages
and Literature.” That’ll soon come to an
end. In the letter the academy informs
me that all new members will introduce themselves with a speech. You see, they’ve got you, I said. You said there were no obligations attached
to it. They’ll never get a speech from
you, because you won’t fake it, and you won’t say the truth there; you simply
can’t give a speech. Of course not, said
Thomas; I simply won’t go there. Who can
force me to go there? You must also
write that you don’t want to be mentioned as a member. That’s exactly what you don’t want, to be a
“member.” Yes, that’ll simply come to an
end entirely on its own. If I don’t join
in, then it’ll simply fall asleep.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas then
said that he would visit his aunt at Wolfsegg tomorrow, Wednesday. I asked him to ask his aunt if it would be
all right for us to pay her a visit on Thursday, Corpus Christi Day, so that we
didn’t disturb her during her afternoon nap if we visited. Thomas said that after his visit tomorrow he
would come see me and let me know.
Thomas went home with our regards for his aunt at 10:30 pm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">May 31, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 6:15pm
Thomas came to my house directly from Wolfsegg.
He knew that I’d have to leave again for my card game at 7:00, and he
said right away that he’d only detain me till seven. At Wolfsegg he was with his aunt in the rear
courtyard of the house; despite the rain they had a good view of the
mountains. What’s more, he and his aunt
happened to hear a circa-30-minute-long program about <i>Verstörung</i> on the radio. I
reminded Thomas how back then telegrams were flying to and from his publishing
firm for a fortnight and how in the end even his editor sided with Unseld and
proposed a different title. His editor,
a woman who otherwise always stood by Thomas.
Eventually it got to the point where the firm proposed three titles to
Thomas, and he had to choose one of them, or else the book wouldn’t be
published. They said that his time was
up, that if he didn’t choose, it wouldn’t be ready to be shown at the book
fair. I reminded Thomas that I received
a telegram almost every day and that I kept telling him he had to stick to his
guns. But then when the three proposals
arrived I said he should wire back that they would have to print the title as
it stood. Today every other title would
be perceived as a foreign body, I said, and what’s more, since the publication
of <i>Verstörung </i>that word has been used
more and more often as a catchword by journalists. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 1, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 3:30pm my
mother, my wife, and I visited Aunt Hede at Wolfsegg. We stopped by the rear courtyard and then
went walking till 6:30. Along the way
Mrs. Stavianicek kept asking us whether we didn’t find the walk too long and
perhaps far too taxing, and she showed us the grand tour she had walked with
Thomas the day before. When I started
talking to her about the fact that the day before she and Thomas had gotten to
hear an excerpt from <i>Verstörung</i>, she
didn’t agree with me when I said: The title must originate with the author. Aunt Hede told us that she could still
clearly recall when she had been walking with Dr. Wieland Schmied and Thomas in
St. Veit in Pongau before the midnight mass on Christmas Eve and looking for a
title for a volume of poetry by Thomas.
A ton of proposed titles were discussed.
She couldn’t say anymore what title was then selected. But she hadn’t forgotten that among other
titles Dr. Wieland Schmied had proposed “Stray Dogs.” I also told Mrs. Stavianicek that she could
come with me and my family to the premiere in Salzburg if she liked. Thomas isn’t going to attend the premiere. He’s giving his ticket to my mother so that
they can be together at the theater.
Aunt Hede was enthusiastic about this proposal, and our three hours with
her went by in a trice. She also said
that at the age of 78 she was gradually having to get used to talking to old
people as well. So far she’s only ever
rubbed shoulders with younger people, but at the boarding house, in the
evening, it’s gradually becoming necessary for her to concern herself with old
people. Until now she’s only ever
oriented herself towards the young. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 3, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 7pm
Thomas walked into my house. Even though
he often goes for months without coming by on a Saturday, I immediately said: I
was expecting you. How come, he
asked. Because you recently said you
wanted to watch <i>Peer Gynt</i>, and
because you certainly wouldn’t want to be glued to your set by yourself for so
long, I knew you’d come. Thomas said
that he’d just come from visiting Aunt Hede at Wolfsegg. He asked me how our visit had gone, what was
new. I said it that was very nice, that
his aunt had told anecdotes and talked constantly, so that the time had really flown
by. But Aunt Hede actually said the same
thing about you. You talked and told
anecdotes constantly, she told me. I was
a world away then. I nodded my head and
meditated. Then I said: That really
isn’t possible; I was listening the whole time; otherwise how could I know all
the stuff she was talking about. Then I
recited to Thomas a list of all the topics that his aunt had spoken about. Naturally I spoke as well, but really for the
most part I just listened. Well, because
I know you both, I can get a pretty good idea of what it was like, said
Thomas. But my aunt said exactly the
same thing as you; you talked, and she mostly listened. Probably each of us got the same impression
because we were almost always thinking along the same lines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas was
very enthusiastic about the new arrangement that will allow his aunt to ride
with us to the festival and back.
Because the original plan had been for his aunt to ride to Salzburg with
the Hufnagls and stay there overnight with them after the premiere. That would all be much too complicated and
troublesome. On top of that Thomas has
also abandoned his plan to host a small celebration in a café after that
performance, a celebration that a few actors also would have attended. I was also opposed to such a celebration,
because there’s really nothing to celebrate.
And how is that supposed to work when you still have to drive almost an
hour to get home afterwards?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">By then it
was late enough for us to watch <i>Peer Gynt</i>
on television. Thomas was interested in
it because Hermann had designed the sets and Bruno Ganz was a member of the
cast. Of course both of them are
involved in the premiere of <i>The Ignoramus
and the Madman</i> in Salzburg. At 11:00
Thomas left me and said he’d come back to watch the second part tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 8, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At noon
Thomas came by. I invited him to join us
for lunch. Thomas had a ton of things to
tell me about. On Sunday when he was
planning to come by for the second part of <i>Peer
Gynt</i>, he was with O’Donell in Hochkreuth and was too tired to watch
television afterwards. He asked me how
it was. I told him: I watched till
10:30. When I realized then that you
weren’t going to come, I thought if you don’t want to see it, then I don’t need
to see it either, and I switched it off.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas also
told me that the speaker of parliament’s wife was in Hochkreuth and had brought
Mrs. O’Donell a big bouquet of flowers with her. As she was handing it over Mrs. Maleta said
that she had received this bouquet from the chancellor who was a guest of her
husband’s that day and that she actually didn’t care for those flowers. As Thomas was saying this he wagged his head
and pursed his lips at me. That was
another treat for you, savoring something so impossible. Yes of course, said Thomas, and how can she
talk about the chancellor anyway? That
could only have been Schleinzer, who she’s already calling the chancellor. That’s all totally impossible; I could never
get away with writing something like that; nobody would buy it; people would
say that I was exaggerating immeasurably.
Mrs. Maleta had to leave early, because the chancellor was there, she
said. But the whole hubbub got me so
tired that I didn’t want to watch <i>Peer
Gynt</i> anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On Monday,
Thomas went on to tell me, he went with Hufnagl the architect and O’Donell to
the Weissen Rössl in St. Wolfgang, to Altötting in Bavaria, and to
Burghausen. Because O’Donell wants to
build an eatery in Hochkreuth, they went on an inspection tour of modern
hotels. Then in the evening they had a
very good and very cheap dinner in Mattighofen.
I’m supposed to share this with the theater people who are staying in
Pfaffstätt. Because it got every late
when they were in Mattighofen, he couldn’t visit me on Monday, Thomas said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On Tuesday
he was also too tired to come because he ran into Mrs. Maleta at Lampl the
butcher’s shop in Gmunden, and she insisted on seeing the Krucka. He was with her at the Krucka, and Mrs.
Maleta was so enthusiastic that she really didn’t want to go back
downhill. The Maletas have been close to
Lampl the butcher since 1945. Because
when Mr. Maleta was being driven through Gmunden on an American truck back
then, he jumped off on am Graben and ran straight through Lampl’s front
door. Then he hid out there for a while
until he could go to his villa in Oberweis.
Finally Thomas told Mrs. Maleta that they’d have to go back down into
the valley, and afterwards Mrs. Maleta invited him to Oberweis for tea. And just imagine, said Thomas, when she
showed me the visitors’ book, Gorbach’s name was written there right under my
nose. So by the chancellor she’d meant
Gorbach (he was already retired at the time).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yesterday,
Wednesday, said Thomas, I was planning to come see you despite your gym class.
But I saw that your car was already parked in Ohlsdorf by 7pm, and so here I am
with you at noon today. There’s still
lots of other news to tell you, you see.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So I’m now
going to resign my membership of the academy in Darmstadt after all. Just imagine it, yesterday I received another
letter; the envelope was addressed to “The Academy Member.” I can’t put up with
receiving any more letters like that. I
can’t be a “member”; I’ve got to annul that.
I’m going to write that to that fine fellow Krolow. Naturally I’m not going to write “Mr.
President”; I can’t do that; I don’t address Kaut as Mr. President either. After further consideration I’ve concluded
that I simply can’t accept the membership. I simply can’t do something that I find
oppressive. Whereupon I said: maybe
Unseld won’t be okay with this. I’ve got
a fool’s license with Unseld; I can do whatever I like with him. I’m going to write to him that he’s got to
remit 10,000 schillings to my account at the Oberbank branch in Gmunden,
because I’m pretty much already overdrawn.
Thomas then itemized his expenditures: the fence around the pasture, the
chimney-tops, then part of the roof will have to be redone, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
said that early today he’d received an official notice that he along with
Günther Nenning was being sued by <i>The
Groove</i> and that the hearing was going to take place in the Hernalser Gürtel
in Vienna on 6/22. In its May issue the <i>New Forum</i> printed his old letter about
the theater. Several years ago, Thomas
was supposed to write about the theater for a theater journal. At the time he wrote the editor a letter
stating that he wasn’t going to write about the theater, because the theater,
and especially the Burgtheater, was so bad that he couldn’t write any articles
at all. Because he’d been criticizing
the theater for more than ten years, and then he’d have to appear in court and
be sentenced to pay a fine. Because he
didn’t want to have any dealings with the courts, he wasn’t going to write
about the theater.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This letter
naturally contained some devastating criticism of the Burgtheater. The editor then printed this letter, which
naturally wasn’t intended for publication, in lieu of an article about the
theater by Thomas Bernhard. Because of
this, Thomas was sued by <i>The Groove</i>
in 1970. At the time Thomas asked
Günther Nenning, the president of the journalists’ union, to provide him with a
good lawyer for cases involving the press. On top of that he asked Hilde Spiel
to attend the hearing so that no distorted accounts of the hearing would
emerge. At the time Thomas was really
agitated; for weeks before the hearing he was at my house every day and
couldn’t be calmed down. And so I went
with my wife to this hearing. In the court’s
subpoena, Thomas was described as a journalist.
That was enough to make him go around blushing with rage for weeks. But at the hearing itself a compromise
agreement was worked out. The two
gentlemen from <i>The Groove</i> weren’t
personally opposed to Thomas Bernhard, and after it was explained that the
letter was a private one that hadn’t been intended for publication, as was
obvious from its text, they were fine with a compromise agreement in which
Thomas was symbolically obligated to pay a schilling in damages and both
parties bore the court costs themselves.
<i>The Groove</i> was evidently
interested in keeping the monstrous attacks on the theater from receiving too
much publicity and didn’t make use of the right to a public reply contained in
the settlement in the hope that the whole business would blow over.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now Günther
Nenning has reprinted this letter with its insulting criticism in the <i>New Forum</i>. Thomas immediately wrote to Nenning that he
was going to protest against this unauthorized publication and that the <i>Forum</i> would have to bear sole
responsibility for it. In the meantime
Thomas received from <i>The Groove </i>a
letter bristling with insulting remarks.
You see, in the <i>New Forum</i> the
text was presented in such a way as to suggest that Thomas had only recently
make these assertions. It was therefore
unsurprising that <i>The Groove </i>reacted
so irately. Now Thomas asked me about
finding a lawyer who could represent him on 6/22 in Vienna. Ideally, Thomas said, he won’t go there at
all, because he’ll be so agitated that he’ll lose his composure, that what he
said about the theater was accurate and that he’d possibly even start hurling
abuse at the judge, so that he could even end up being arrested.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I said: This
just won’t fly; if you spewed some venom years ago, people can’t just keep
stirring that venom up over and over again.
This obviously could be repeated every year; editors could just keep
publishing this text, and you’d be sued every year. There’s only one lawyer, I said, Dr. Michael
Stern. The only important thing is for
you to have the reference number from the hearing with the compromise agreement
in 1970. I’ve got it, said Thomas,
because I’ve still got the summons from back then. And can you believe it, he continued,
“journalist” is on the summons again this time.
So I really can’t go there, because who knows what’ll end up happening. So, if you’ve still got the summons from 1970,
because the reference number’s on it, it won’t be necessary for you to appear
at the hearing in person. Dr. Stern will
just have to ask for the act from back then to be brought in. Everything is evident from this act, and
you’ll be out of the woods. Because a
compromise agreement is something that’s been agreed to, something that’s still
in effect today. If Dr. Günther Nenning
can’t prove that he had your consent to the letter’s publication, he’ll simply
be condemned. But if you should still be
subpoenaed anyway, I’d say that you can’t remember anything anymore and that
you’re sticking to your testimony from 1970.
Then the hearing will quickly come to an end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas was
enthusiastic about my proposal. Because
Thomas knew that I was in close contact with Dr. Michael Stern, he asked me to speak
with him and urge him to take the case.
By then it was 2:30pm, and I immediately proposed my trying to reach Dr.
Stern via his unlisted number. We drove
together to the post office in Steyrermühl, from which Thomas was planning to
drive on to Wolfsegg to see his aunt. I
was lucky enough to get hold of Dr. Stern on the phone, and after I gave him a
brief summary of the case, Dr. Stern told me that Bernhard should come see him
between 2 and 8pm on Monday and mention me as a reference. I told Thomas that he’d have to bring
everything with him because Dr. Stern was very curt and matter-of-fact, and that
he should be especially sure to bring along a 50,000-schilling advance. That if possible he should mention the
payment of the advance at the beginning of the conversation, because Dr. Stern
insists on having money upfront before he does anything. Monday was very congenial to Thomas, because
he was planning to drive Aunt Hede to Vienna, so he would be in Vienna on
Monday anyway. He said he’d tell Aunt
Hede about this right away and left for Wolfsegg. I’ll come see you again in the evening, he said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas was
back at 7pm. He and Aunt Hede agreed
that he would bring her to Nathal after dinner on Saturday. I said he should stop by with her for tea on
Saturday afternoon. Thomas stayed still
9:30pm. We kept going over what we had
already talked about at noon. But in
conclusion Thomas said that this time he wasn’t going to feel as depressed in
the days leading up to the hearing, that he was even going to try to stay in
Vienna until Friday and work some more on his novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 9, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 7pm Thomas
visited me. He said that the
oil-drilling was already underway. He
also mentioned that three days earlier, June 9, 1972, he had received a reply
to his letter to Governor Wenzl from a while back. The reply was more or less to the same effect
as the one from Sinowatz the education minister, but the letter was dated 5/30.
So it takes six days for a letter like
this to make it out of the office when it’s already been written. You’d really end up a goner if you had to
depend on something like this, said Thomas.
He said that Aunt Hede must be packing already because he was going to
pick her up tomorrow. He’ll stop by here
with her on his way to Nathal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas had
also been to the Krucka and said that the arnica was already blooming. Because there’s only one spot on his property
where arnica blooms and we had still had a small bottle from last year, my
mother said: We’ll fetch it first thing tomorrow morning. Thomas got tired quickly and only stayed till
10pm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 10,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 3pm
Thomas came to our house with Aunt Hede.
He had left Wolfsegg with Aunt Hede immediately after lunch and visited
the Krucka with her. From the Krucka he
came directly to my house. He naturally
had already seen that the arnica had been picked, and we could show him a basketful
of it. It was very pleasant. After two
hours, at about 5pm, the symptoms of Mrs. Stavianicek and Thomas’s having
missed their midday naps became noticeable. But I noticed this just in the nick of time
and changed the subject to something stimulating. After that all of us, including my wife and
my mother, who were there, were in such rare form that Aunt Hede even blurted
out that she had spent five years at the Grafenhof Lung Clinic. These clinics and illnesses, like all such
topics, are always painstakingly steered clear of, even though we all naturally
know all about them. But Aunt Hede said
this in connection with a round-the-world voyage taken by one of her female
friends, and so we went on to talk more about this friend of hers. But we were all quite surprised to learn that
Aunt Hede had had to spend five years there.
Until then we’d had no idea how long she’d been there. We continued cheerfully chatting for so long
that it wasn’t until 6:30 that Aunt Hede and Thomas left us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas is planning
to leave for Vienna with his aunt just before ten tomorrow morning and to stop
somewhere for lunch along the way, so that he’ll be in Vienna by 3pm. Thomas asked me to check on his house every
day. The key is stowed, he says. Probably he won’t come back before
Friday. I walked Thomas and his aunt to
his car. Then Thomas insisted on my
coming along to take a quick look at his new fireplace, to see what a nice job
Ferdl had made of it. I did that and drove
straight back home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 16,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yesterday,
Thursday, I had checked on the key to the gate, and since it was stowed
differently than usual, somebody must have been using the key. Since only Ferdl knew about the key, I stuck
my head into the courtyard to see if he had done any work or brought anything
over. It turned out that Ferdl, the
bricklayer who does jobs at Thomas’s house, still had some work to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because by
nearly five o’clock in the afternoon Thomas still hadn’t stopped by my house, I
wanted to find out if he’d even gotten back from Vienna yet. I drove to Nathal and immediately saw from
the position of the key that it was stowed the way Thomas stows it. Whenever he’s away, it’s always in a
different position, so I can easily tell whether it’s been used. To make sure Thomas was there, I also checked
to see if the mail, which had been deposited in the former pigsty in the
meantime, was gone. Yes, the mail was
gone, so I could expect Thomas in the evening.
About an hour later a car with Belgian plates parked in my little patch
of woods, on the Ohlsdorf-bound side of the street. I immediately thought that this car was bound
for Thomas’s house at Nathal, and I stopped by so that I could give the driver
directions. But as I approached the car,
I thought: As often as I’ve been here, I overlook the turn-off to Nathal every
time. Ah, you’re trying to get to Thomas
Bernhard’s place, I said. He’s only just
gotten back from Vienna today. I was
over there an hour ago, but he wasn’t at home.
Well, we wrote that we’d come at 6pm, said the man, so he’ll surely be
there now. Then I thought to myself that
this could only be Count Uexküll with his spouse, because Thomas never receives
any other visitors from Belgium.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 17,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 3pm
Thomas walked in through the front door and said: So they’ve left now. Were they the Uexkülls, I asked. Yes, they told me they’d spoken with you. I knew right away that it could only have
been you. The Uexkülls spent the night
at my house. They’re on their way to
Geneva and took a detour to see me.
Uexküll is a native of Vienna, and in Brussels he’s got to look after
the refugees from the Eastern Bloc for the UN.
But he’s sympathetic to the Baader-Meinhof Group. Uexküll is a committed Leftist and against
every from of private property. I’ve
been so badly corrupted by him that now I suddenly wouldn’t like to have any
property at all either. But in order to
get horrified by private property, you’ve got to have some in the first place;
otherwise you can’t get properly horrified by it, I said. So that must also be why you first started
hating it. Yes, you’re right, said
Thomas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was
naturally very curious about how Thomas had fared at Dr. Stern’s law office,
and Thomas told me: Dr. Stern didn’t know a damn thing about anything, but all
his people at his office made a good impression. Everything seemed to be very well organized. Dr. Stern was also very nice, but he didn’t
know a thing about cases having to do with the press. He has therefore simply entrusted all these
cases to a certain woman, Dr. Schönborn.
She says that Dr. Stern is her uncle and that he, Thomas Bernhard,
shouldn’t make anything of this, that Dr. Stern has no idea who he is. This Dr. Schönborn then accepted the case as
a matter of course, and by the next day the transcript of the hearing from 1970
was at the law office. The transcript
precisely specifies Thomas’s degree of liability, and it will be exhibited at
the court. Thomas himself does not need
to be present at the hearing. Thomas
said that it was a great weight off his shoulders not to have to be there. Thomas went on to say that in Vienna he had
run into Schaffler the publisher and his wife.
Suddenly it occurred to him that he was supposed to visit Schaffler in
Salzburg the next day. He had completely
forgotten about that. But he just
started hemming and hawing about how he’d been just on the point of wiring him
to let him know that he wouldn’t be able to go to Salzburg tomorrow, and about
how glad he was that he’d run into Schlaffler because it would spare him the
trouble of sending a telegram. Thomas
invited them both to come to the Sacher with him. They sat there for over two hours, and Mrs.
Schaffler and her husband were quite surprised that anyone could sit anywhere
for two hours and not have to rush about. These two hours did the Schafflers a great
deal of good. As they were sitting in
front of the Sacher, Haeussermann walked by and said as he was walking by: “All
the contracts have been signed—the schillings are rolling in.” It’s very good that Haeussermann told me
that, because now I know that the contracts have been signed. Because I asked Unseld to ask for so much for
the videotaping that my debts to him have been paid off; now I’ll write to him
that we’re even, that he should send me another advance right away. If Unseld hasn’t asked for that much, that’s
his problem, because he should have notified me. I believe he couldn’t do that without my
consent; what do you think? You’re a sly
dog, I said; something’s new is always occurring to you. The way you describe it, you’re debt-free no
matter what, regardless of the size of the sums in the contracts when they were
finalized. Yes, he said, whatever extra
he might get belongs to the firm, said Thomas.
I only wanted enough to make me debt-free. Thanks to this I also know that the taping in
Salzburg will definitely be taking place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">By the way,
said Thomas, Peymann and his actors should be here as of yesterday. You know, this rainy weather would be good
for paying them a visit in Pfaffstätt.
They were definitely supposed to get there on 6/16. I said: just to be safe, I’ll ring up the
shop in Pfaffstätt beforehand; they’ll surely know whether the Berliners have
arrived. When I rang, Mrs. Neuhauser in
Pfaffstätt couldn’t recall anything that had attracted her attention. But she was very nice and said that she would
go see Mrs. Bamberger herself, that I should call back in 30 minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">By then
Thomas and I had gotten the impression that they Peymanns weren’t there yet,
because they would have attracted people’s attention right away in Pfaffstätt and
obviously had to pass by Mrs. Bamberger’s shop when they turned onto the
street. A half an hour later, when I rang again, Mrs. Baumberger herself was on
the phone and said that the Peymanns were scheduled to arrive on 6/26. She asked me how many beds she should
fix. She had already made up six
beds. I told her that I didn’t remember
anymore, that that was why when we were setting up the accommodations I had
said that she should put the number of guests and their names on the
doorframes, so that when the people came they’d all know how they’d been
divvied up. Now it turns out that she herself
doesn’t remember anymore. Then I asked
Mrs. Bamberger to notify Mrs. Neuhauser immediately if anybody from Berlin came
in, so that the latter could tell me by phone whether he was there already.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas was
very angry that his condition that his play should be rehearsed for at least
six weeks wasn’t being met. Surely, I
said, during the rehearsals it will become evident that that the play contains
certain difficulties and that it can’t be rehearsed like some popular favorite. Yes, said Thomas, the director, Dorn, from
Hamburg, has already realized that.
There the performance will take place much later, but they’re already
rehearsing. Really such a play should be
rehearsed for three months straight. I
can imagine that with such short rehearsals leading right up to the premiere,
they’ll be totally exhausted, and then they’re bound to achieve something. Yes, it’s incredible, said Thomas, now we’ve
got to take a walk, even if it’s raining.
I just can’t stand it any longer.
The walk in the rain did us so much good that right after <i>Culture Special</i> we went for another walk
to pass the time until <i>The Age in Images</i>. Later Thomas was also planning to watch on
television the Russian film <i>Stolen Life</i>
adapted from <i>The Overcoat </i>by Gogol.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 18,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Somewhat
unexpectedly, because it was Sunday, Thomas came by at 8pm. I’ll only stay with you for an hour; you see,
I’ve been invited with O’Donell to come to Mrs. Maleta’s at 9:00. Thomas said that he’d stopped by to take a
look at the gas drilling and that he’d be glad for them if they found
something. They have insulated all the
pipelines and exhaust pipes so heavily that even with the windows open Uexküll
and his wife couldn’t hear anything but a faint, steady hum and were able to
sleep very well. He said it was very
interesting to watch what was happening there.
I told him that when he had been in Vienna I had already stopped by
there several times and that they were working incredibly quickly. Every grip and every movement has its place
just like in the circus. They’ve already
reached a depth of 950 meters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We had
almost lost track of the time while chatting; suddenly Thomas looked at his
watch; it was 9:00, and he raced off to Oberweis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 19,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On my way
back from Gmunden I saw a flame as high as a house blazing at the drilling
sight at Nathal. I drove in, and amid
much loud noise water and gas hissed out of the pipe for burning off
fires. Shortly after I got there, the
flame was extinguished, and with a rag on a long pole the workers got the
effluent mixture of gas and water burning again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After that I
went to see Thomas. It was exactly 11am;
the key was in the inner side of the keyhole, so he was there. As the window was open; I called out to him
through the window. Thomas came directly
from bed in his bathrobe. Just imagine:
it got to be 4am at the Maletas’. Was he
there too, I asked. No, I think I
wouldn’t have turned up at all then.
When the cat’s away, the mice will play, said Thomas. He said that the park at their villa was spectacularly
beautiful. For the mowing of the lawn
they’ve got two riding mowers at 60,000 schillings apiece, so that the park is
always taken care of, and the park also includes 360 meters of the bank of the
Traun. These people are stinking rich. In Vienna they also have a few factories; his
salary as president of Parliament is probably just “pocket money.” Thomas also asked me to take a walk with him
in the afternoon, if I’d have the time.
The whole afternoon, at any time, I said. Come whenever it suits you; I’ll be at home. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 2:00 I
started getting bored, and as I was hoping that Thomas wouldn’t come very soon on
account of the frantic night, I drove to Steindl’s building site at Ohlsdorf to
do some work. I told my wife: If Thomas
comes, he’s to go meet me at the site, and we’ll set out on our walk from
Ohlsdorf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas came
to Weinberg at 4:00 and spoke with my wife, but he left his car at Weinberg and
walked through the woods via the forester’s lodge and met me at the building
site in Ohlsdorf. When he arrived, I
declared that I was ready to continue marching immediately. Thomas said that it had gotten very cool in
the forest, that he’d prefer to take field paths. We headed south, but after ten minutes we
turned around because a thunderstorm was gathering. We had barely reached my car when it started
sprinkling. When we got to the house, we
noticed that the storm was heading in another direction, and Thomas said: I
won’t put up with being stuck in this room for the next two hours until the news. He wrapped himself up in a blanket and lay
down in the garden. I sat down next to
him in a chair. Thomas told me that
today he’d already mailed off his letter to Unseld informing him that he’d
learned about the contracts from Heussermann, etc. At the same time he’d almost suffered a blow
today, because in the <i>Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung</i> he read of a car accident that Unseld had been involved
in; a clavicle fracture, etc., said Thomas.
So now Unseld won’t be able to swim for a long time. That’s his hobby; he swims every day. But a disaster like this could happen at any
time, and who knows how a successor of his would treat me. Unseld does a great deal on my behalf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
told me that he’d already prepared for his trip to Salzburg to see Schaffler
tomorrow. That tomorrow was the final
deadline for submitting tax returns.
Apart from a few old train tickets and plane tickets as well as some
electric bills and petrol receipts he’s got nothing to present that he could
write off. In addition to this he’ll
tell Schaffler that he won’t be having the town or the state pay for his roof,
because roofing the residential part only costs 25,000 schillings, and he
doesn’t want to sacrifice his independence for that amount of money. He said that in any case he’d prefer to have
somebody think that on account of 25,000 schillings he’d done something for
him. That this sum was far too trifling,
that he’d rather pay for the roof himself.
That in addition to this he wasn’t going to let Radax film his <i>Frost</i> because he was too weak for it and
because on account of the money he was in no need of that now.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When it had
gotten late enough that we were headed for the television to watch <i>The Age in Images</i>, Thomas fetched the <i>Kurier </i>from his car and showed me an article
about him with a headline reading “Versus Thomas Bernhard.” Once again we
discussed his visit to Dr. Stern regarding this case. After 9:00 Thomas showed signs of
fatigue. He was feeling the aftermath of
the preceding day, when he didn’t get to bed till 4am, and drove home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 21,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 8am I ran
into Thomas at the Ohlsdorf post office.
Because he had been in Salzburg the day before, he wanted to tell me
about a few things. But I had no time,
because I had things to do in Gmunden, and we agreed to meet for a walk at
1:30pm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas
arrived punctually, and we walked to the forester’s lodge via Aupointen. We inspected the abandoned forester’s lodge,
and Thomas said that I should ask if it mightn’t be for sale. He might possibly buy it, because it would be
too bad if it fell into ruin. On our way
to the forester’s lodge Thomas said that now that he had been to Salzburg he
wasn’t as worried about the rehearsals with Peymann, because he had run into
Tinguely the stage designer. He’s
running all over town; he’s supposed to be doing the stage design for the
Felsenreitschule and still has no idea of how he’s going to do it. He’s got no idea and no ideas. Thomas then told him he should put down
rails, etc. In order to give him further
suggestions, he agreed that they should meet at the Tomaselli at 3pm. Thomas waited till 4:00; then he went to his
hotel and left him a note. In it he wrote: “Where were you? I waited for you for an hour! I’m in Ohlsdorf, at Nathal, at my house.” I underlined “an hour” twice. Nobody can be enough of a big shot to make
somebody sit for an hour; it’s totally unacceptable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas
managed to settle everything nicely with Schaffler in Salzburg. Kaut was on holiday, and so he didn’t get to
see him. Then Thomas told me with a
shameless smile that he had also picked up his three complimentary tickets for
the premiere and that as the secretary was giving them to him she said that
they were very conveniently placed seats from which he’d be able to walk directly
to the stage. They’re still thinking I
might walk onto the stage at the premiere, he said with a sadistic smile. They’ll be surprised when two old ladies are
sitting in your seat, I said and laughed along with him. Then we circled back to talking about
Tinguely the stage designer, and I said: He’s sure to turn up at your house,
because he’ll want to get some pointers from you. You know the ropes; you were an assistant
director there. He’ll cling to you; he’ll realize that you
could do the stage design there. Thomas eased
up a bit and said: Well sure, everything will turn out fine. Then I was sure that he was taking a firm
hand behind the scenes, because he hardly ever invites anybody to his house. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
said that tomorrow he was going to be visited by a former girlfriend and her
husband. She was another one of those
women: When things were at their height with her, she suddenly married somebody
else. That happened a few times. Or my girlfriends have suddenly gone away on
a trip abroad; then everything was always suddenly over as well. Ask Aunt Hede; she knows everything; she can
tell you about everything. So far I
haven’t dared do anything like that; I haven’t dared broach such a topic with
her behind your back. Whatever you’ve
wanted to tell me you’ve told me yourself.
Yes, of course, said Thomas, but I don’t want to say anything else about
it myself, but Hede will have to tell you about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
said that he’d bought an annual pass for the beach with a changing room in
Altmünster and that now he was going to go swimming every day. He said that at the moment he found it
impossible to write. That in September
or October he’d visit the Uexkülls in Brussels and finish writing everything
there. That at the moment he wasn’t in
the right frame of mind for it. He
intended to be writing now. But when he
gets up in the morning, he looks for little changes to make here and there in
the house; he looks for them until he’s got some trivial task to take care of
in the house and doesn’t have to write.
I said: It would have surprised me if you could write well now, because
of course nothing’s forcing you to. If
you’re not supposed to have finished the book until November, you’ll probably
have to knock off a few weeks without interruption in October, because then you
won’t even taste a bite of food; then you’ll be thinking of nothing but
writing. You need the time-pressure;
otherwise it doesn’t go properly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">By about
4:00 we’d finished our walk, and Thomas said that he’d rather drive straight
home; that a break wouldn’t be good, because then he’d prefer just to sit
around longer, but he doesn’t want to do that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 25,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Today,
Sunday, Thomas came to see me at 9pm. We
hadn’t seen each other in three days. We
had just switched on the mystery show <i>Flotsam
and Jetsam</i> right away; Thomas sat down for an hour to watch that. He wanted to say something, but the show’s
trivial scenes didn’t quite suffice for comment, and so Thomas said that he’d
just come from the Krucka, that the arnica was in full bloom again, and that we
should be sure to pick the arnica in the next few days, that otherwise it would
be too late. Naturally as soon as Thomas
entered I turned the set down so that I could speak with Thomas, but my wife
was glued to the set, so we restrained ourselves. After the end of the show Thomas stood up and
left immediately. This was at about
10:00. I walked him to his car and said
that we should visit Peymann right away, that he should already have arrived in
Pfaffstätt. Certainly not, said Thomas;
it’ll be better if we wait a few days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 27,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 4pm I ran
into Thomas in Gmunden, on am Graben. I
told him that I had been expecting him on Monday, meaning yesterday, because
Monday has always been one of our surest days.
Yes, said Thomas, so I’ve got to tell you something good. Yesterday I was at Pfaffstätt at nine in the
evening. Not a trace of Peymann or Ganz. Mrs. Bamberger has already holed herself up
in a room and prepared all the rooms for the guests. But no postcards; there hasn’t been a word
from them, and they simply haven’t come.
All the while she’s being such a nice lady. I said to Thomas: Peymann just can’t do that,
pocket 20,000 DM and promise six weeks of rehearsals. Then he deserves to have a few hundred marks
taken back from him for every day. In
the next contract you’ll put all your demands in writing and stipulate a
penalty for each rehearsal day; then something like this won’t happen anymore. I won’t accept Peymann anymore anyhow, said
Thomas. Next time everything’s going to
be completely different again. If I know
Ganz, he’s surely studied his role well, and we’ll have to wait and see;
perhaps they’ve already finished rehearsing in Berlin. In Hamburg the rehearsals are going fine;
they’re practicing the handholds on cadavers there, and the actor is performing
operations on cadavers to practice for the play. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I still
haven’t told you everything that had already happened by the time I saw you on
Sunday, said Thomas. Tinguely the stage
designer had already stopped by to see me twice, and on Sunday, before I came
to see you, a friend of my mother’s from Holland visited me at the Krucka. Because she didn’t find me at Nathal, she
followed me to the Krucka in the company of two Dutchwomen. But then she lost her way; she came up to the
Grasberg and then came down from there to me just when I was about to leave; of
course by then it was already very late.
And so I promised the old lady—she’s 64 and hasn’t seen me since I was
12—that I’d visited her in Holland on my way to Brussels. You see, she’s my mother’s friend from
Henndorf, Anna [<i>recte</i> Aloisia] Ferstl,
who was in Holland back then and on account of whom my mother went to Holland
when I was coming into the world. She
was her best friend, and I was really delighted that she visited me. She talked as if she had never left Henndorf,
exactly the way they talk in Henndorf.
Her Dutch friends couldn’t understand a word. But it was all very brief; she had to leave
that same evening, and right afterwards I came to see you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You know, we’ve
been standing a full half-hour in the street, here in front of the Three Hoes. I was in Linz today; I’ve got a lot to tell
you about as well. I went shopping in
Wels, and on Friday I’ll be going to Salzburg.
I’ll stop by Pfafstätt then to see whether anybody is there yet. Thomas consented and said: I got a letter
from Dr. Stern. He writes that the
hearing has been adjourned. Thomas said
that he himself, Dr. Michael Stern, had represented him at the hearing. That Dr. Stern had written that he had
something to share with him that he couldn’t write about in the letter. What do you make of that? He’ll want to tell you what you should say at
the hearing and what you shouldn’t say.
He doesn’t want to write that in the letter. But of course I don’t plan on being at the
hearing, said Thomas. You won’t be able
to avoid it, I said. You’ll be
subpoenaed; as the defendant you’ve got to appear in person if the judge
insists on it. Anyway, we’ll talk
further in the evening, I said, because I’ve still got a few things to take
care of.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Immediately
afterwards I couldn’t help wondering why Thomas was telling me about everything
in such detail. He mentioned the name of
the stage designer, an Italian name, several times; I couldn’t manage not to
forget it [the sculptor Jean Tinguely was Swiss]. Specifically it occurred to me that when I’d left
the living room a few days ago, when I came back in, Thomas was standing next
to my planning calendar and gazing very unconvincingly at the old newspaper. When he saw the subject headings St.
Wolfgang, Altöting, Burghausen, Mattighofen, and Fool’s License, Thomas figured
out that I’d been taking notes. Now it
occurs to me that he must secretly be taking an interest in that, and I’m also
reminded that he said: Ask Aunt Hede what happened with my girlfriends; she
knows everything. But on the other hand,
as long as we’ve known each other Thomas has told me about everything. Like about how on New Year’s Eve in Grundlsee,
Dahlke the film actor wanted to shoot him dead over a German princess, or about
the whippings of Zuckmayer’s daughter, etc., so I may be very much mistaken
here. I’m more inclined to think there
will be a “news blackout” if Thomas has figured out that I’m writing everything
down.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At ten
minutes to seven, Thomas comes with Agi.
Agi and Thomas met up with each other in front of the courtyard gate at
Nathal. Pinned to the gate was a note
from President Maleta informing Thomas that he was on his way to the Krucka
with his wife because he hadn’t found him here at Nathal. Because Thomas was in no mood to get together
with the Maletas today, he immediately asked Agi to come to my house with him. Agi’s got her mother, Baroness Handl, in the
hospital in Wels, and there she ran into Peter, Thomas’s half-brother. He told her that in February Thomas had shown
him out of his house very, very rudely.
Then Agi plucked up the courage to visit Thomas again, and so they met
up in front of the gate. I wasn’t
surprised that Thomas was on good terms with Agi again, because after the
scandal with the <i>Münchner Abendblatt</i>
he said to me: I’m going to let Agi “air out” until the summer. So Agi picked the right time, because the
first day of summer was six days ago. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas was
in a very good mood. After he’d left my
house to go to the coffeehouse in the afternoon, he ran into Mrs. Hufnagl
there. He told me that he’d been trying
to go to the Brandl at a time of day when he’d be least likely to run into Mrs.
Hufnagl, because she keeps talking about getting a divorce again, even though
the Hufnagls got married for the second time only a couple of weeks ago. But as it turned out, said Thomas, Mrs.
Hufnagl came into the Brandl, and he tried to slip away, but she buttonholed
him and said that that afternoon she had been in Salzburg and stopped by the
theater to ask if Peymann was already there.
They told her that Peymann and Ganz and the others would be rehearsing
the whole day. But after everything that
had happened so far she was suspicious; she asked where the rehearsals were
taking place and went there. And Peymann
was actually rehearsing. She saw him
with her own eyes. So now we’re at least
sure that he’s there, said Thomas.
Because if she hadn’t seen him with her own eyes…I wouldn’t have just relied
on the word of somebody at some information desk either. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After supper
we moved upstairs to watch the news on television. But as we didn’t glean anything interesting
from the news, a conversation got started.
Agi said she was planning to invite Thomas with Hede and Peter to her
house so that another reconciliation between Thomas and Peter could take place. Thomas said: Sure, invite everybody. And turning to my wife he added softly: I
won’t come and such and such. Then my
wife and Thomas laughed downright maliciously, but they didn’t tell Agi and me
why they were laughing like that. Only after our guests had left did my wife
tell me why they’d laughed like that. I
was reminded of what Wieland Schmied had said at one point, and I said to Agi:
Surely Thomas isn’t mad at Peter about this, because he’s insulted Peter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
conversation with Agi was very rough, but friendly. When Thomas again let slip a few negative
remarks about Mrs. Hufnagl, Agi asked: Does he talk about me like this too when
you’re alone? Then I said to Agi: You’ve
got a really thick skin; you can take a joke; we talk with you so bluntly and
critically that there’s nothing more to say behind your back. Shortly before that I had called Agi an
informer several times in allusion to the article in the <i>Münchner Abendblatt</i> and said that I didn’t know that she couldn’t
be trusted to keep a secret, that otherwise I wouldn’t have told her that
Thomas had only sold Kaut the title <i>The
Ignoramus and the Madman</i> and still had to write the play. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas
had already upbraided me back then, because he learned right away from her that
I had told her that. Mrs. Hufnagl could
never be attacked as harshly as you are; she wouldn’t be able to take it;
that’s why we talk about her behind her back like this. (Basically I’m glad that his relationship
with the Hufnagls has cooled a great deal and that I’m still not personally
acquainted with O’Donnel and that I’m never present at gatherings of these
circles, because surely nothing good could come of that and Thomas would lose
my house as a place of refuge, a refuge he’d needed once again today to protect
himself from the Maletas, because if they knew me they’d also come to my
house.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then when the show called <i>What
I Am</i> began and Marianne Koch was on the screen, Thomas said: This week she was
with a friend of mine who lost his wife, in Nathal. But he wasn’t at home; she left a note. Thomas said that his friend was very unhappy
and that Marianne Koch consoled him. But then I switched off the set, because
Agi was telling some very good Jewish jokes, and we’d stopped paying attention
to the TV some time earlier. Agi went on
to ask me how many channels I received here; then Thomas loudly chimed in
“five.” Agi gaped and asked: Really, that many; what are the channels? Then I
said: “Austrian Channels 1 and 2, German Channel 1, and Thomas in an Austrian
accent and in a Bavarian one.” You see,
Thomas had once again said something in a super-broad Bavarian accent. Everything was very jolly from then on, until
the two of them drove home at 10:30.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">June 29, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas comes at 9:00 pm.
He says he’ll be leaving right away.
He was in Salzburg today. He had
had lunch at Moser’s wine bar at noon and was then planning to go to see
Peymann, to see the rehearsals. But at
2:00, as he was just about to leave Moser’s wine bar, Peymann and Ganz came
in. Then Thomas drove with Peymann and
Ganz to Pfaffstätt and Mattighofen. Mrs.
Peymann hadn’t come from Germany with them.
She has a six-week-old child and is ill.
Peymann and Ganz don’t want to take lodgings in Pfaffstätt because it’s
too far from Salzburg for them. They
rehearse until 2pm; then they’d have to go to Pfaffstätt in order to rest and
go back to the rehearsals at 6pm. Thomas
was of the opinion that only a single round trip per day would be
necessary. Mrs. Bickel and Hermann with
his spouse are expected to arrive tomorrow.
Driving that stretch four times each day is too much for Peymann. Thomas came to appreciate this. Because he saw that both of them were
rehearsing to the point of exhaustion and that it would be impossible
afterwards to drive so far twice during the breaks. Thomas also says that Ganz is taking his role
very seriously and has already dissected several brains so that he can play his
role like a true professional. Because
that’s something his role involves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because Granny got back from her vacation in Yugoslavia today,
another subject of the conversation was Yugoslavian vacation spots and towns.
Granny and Thomas know everything. They
sound as if they’d both seen the same movie.
Then the subject inevitably became souvenirs brought back from there,
and even though I instructed Granny not to buy any souvenirs, she still brought
a few knickknacks back. Thomas said: Yes
of course, you can’t help bringing a few things back. But you can get these things at significantly
cheaper prices in the Wollzeile in Vienna.
Whenever Aunt Hede has gotten back from Yugoslavia, I’ve gone to the
Wollzeile and bought the presents from Yugoslavia for her girlfriends.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It had gotten as late as 10:30pm by the time Thomas drove
home. Before that we debated whether or
not I should visit Peymann when I’m in Salzburg this coming Friday.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">END OF PART IV<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Translation unauthorized but
Copyright ©2020 by Douglas Robertson. Source: Karl Ignaz Hennetmair,Ein
Jahr mit Thomas Bernhard. Das versiegelte Tagebuch 1972. Sankt Pölten:
Residenz Verlag, 2014.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-30460943786921325482019-10-11T17:27:00.002-04:002020-01-10T18:30:50.984-05:00A Translation of Ein Jahr mit Thomas Bernhard by Karl Ignaz Hennetmair. Part III: March and April<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><b style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">A Year with Thomas Bernhard: The Sealed 1972 Diary</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 3, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas has been “missing” for five days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He isn’t even at the Krucka in
Reindlmühl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I fetched cider from
Thomas’s cellar on Tuesday, I left the key to the gate in such a position that
I’d be sure of noticing if anybody touched the key.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because as of today it hadn’t been touched
yet, at 5:30 p.m. I decided to call Thomas’s Aunt Stavianicek in Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it’s more than high time that I
notify Thomas that Radax will be coming to Nathal on Saturday, at 2:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mrs. Stavianicek answers the phone and says
that Thomas is lying on the couch right next to her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she says that he isn’t sleeping, that he
can speak with me right away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas tells me that on Monday he had suddenly decided to go
to Vienna, and that he had been planning to tell me that at midday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell him that the neighbor saw him, and
about my phone conversation with Radax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas has spoken with him himself in the meantime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I just say: thank God; I’d been worried
Radax would come for nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
says he took off so fast on Monday that he left the laundry hanging on the
clothesline outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m supposed to
bring in the clothes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says he’ll be
coming on Monday. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 5, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dr. Peter Fabjan comes over from Wels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s come straight from Nathal and picked up
some tires stored there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He asks about
Thomas and is glad that he isn’t here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
offer Peter some of Thomas’s cider.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
he say: No, thank you, I just washed my hands with cider from Thomas’s cellar,
because I’d gotten dirty from the tires.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But please don’t tell Thomas about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Peter is terribly disconcerted by the fact that Thomas told me about
their recent quarrel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The tension
between them is easing up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 7, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas still hasn’t come back from Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today I received a letter from Governor Erwin
Wenzel, which I’m enclosing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Linz,
March 3, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dear Mr.
Hennetmair!<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">First of
all, I wish to apologize for the tardiness of this reply to your communication
of January 24, 1972.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was
necessary to get in touch with the Department of Culture in connection with the
subject you raised, whence the delayed response. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I can
assure you that the Upper-Austrian State Government has an extraordinarily high
regard for the author Thomas Bernhard and that it is always prepared to assist
this artist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly, in the specific
case of the Adalbert Stifter Prize, there are admittedly certain directives
that not even the Upper-Austrian State Government can circumvent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to the current statutes the nomination
of candidates for receipt of the prize is to be made by a jury empaneled by the
Austrian State Government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I have
asked the Director of the Department of Culture to inform the gentlemen of the
jury of your petition, I can readily imagine that the jury is thoroughly
prepared to confer the prize on Bernhard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The reason that he has not yet received the prize is not that he has
been regarded as unworthy of such a distinction, but rather that Bernhard has
after all received a more important prize virtually every year.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I thank
you once again for your suggestion and urge you to continue attentively
following cultural events in our State.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yours with sincere regards,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dr. Wenzl<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the afternoon I drive to Nathal; the key still hasn’t been
touched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I step into the courtyard and
check the mail that’s been thrown in there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It includes a request to pick up a registered letter from Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At about 5:00 I call Aunt Hede in
Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She offers to call Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I decline the offer; I just want to know if
he’s ill and when he’s coming back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
is well and will be coming back the day after tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ask her to give Thomas my regards and say I’ve
only got unimportant mail for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
mustn’t be disturbed by news of the registered letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 9, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 11:30 in the morning I drive to Nathal with my wife.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The gate is open; he arrived about a quarter
of an hour ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the doors and
windows are open; he hasn’t lighted the heating stove yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell him about the letter from Governor
Wenzl and the letter from Barbara Peymann.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We invite him to have lunch with us 30 minutes later.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas comes over and stays till 2:30 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that the contracts at the Burgtheater
were signed a long time ago and that the deals with the actors etc. have
already been sealed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A cancellation
would cost a hundred thousand schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But he has managed to get them to agree to hire a different
director.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more, quite a number of
performances have been scheduled, and a friend said to him: be prudent; you
stand to make 350,000 schillings if these performances take place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 7:00 Thomas comes over for dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have a magnificently entertaining chat,
and at 9:45 we watch the broadcast about Guido Zernatto.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 11:00 Thomas drives back to Nathal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also told me that for the electric heating
he was only going to be allowed to have 6 kw instead of the 40 kw he had
requested.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He plans to have the workers
get started in about a fortnight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
7:00 we remembered the celebratory dinner party in Marl that he was supposed to
be in attendance at then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Radax flew
first class to Marl, because it was an-all-expenses-paid trip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s going to stop by Nathal on his way back.
He’ll make a pitch for the dubbing there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 10, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas comes over for dinner at 7:00 in the evening. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are planning to chat by ourselves until
10:30 and then watch the first German channel’s broadcast about the awarding of
the Grimme Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then Thomas has
told me among other things that he made the acquaintance of André Heller, or,
to put it better, failed to make his acquaintance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was sitting with a female friend in a
coffeehouse when André Heller came into the restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her face beaming with joy, the friend said to
Heller: “Allow me to introduce you to Thomas Bernhard.” Heller said, “I don’t
give a toss about Thomas Bernhard,” turned around, and left the restaurant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, so now I know André Heller, said
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas also ran into Kruntorad
in Vienna, and Kruntograd strongly encouraged him to let his play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Party for Boris</i> be performed at the
Burgtheater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Furthermore, during his
most recent visit to Vienna, Thomas read Mrs Kaschnitz’s memoirs, because in
them she mentions that he was with her at a reading in Frankfurt six years
ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later we watch the broadcast about
the Grimme Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas finds Höfer
execrable; Wiebel spoke very well; the Grimme awardees were given short shrift;
even their names were barely mentioned; Vandenberg and Radax were onscreen for
just a few seconds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said he was now
quite glad he hadn’t gone there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
still hasn’t received a reply to his most recent letter to the execrable
Donnepp, who was seen onscreen a few times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At midnight Thomas drove back home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 11, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Now that the cost of the installation of the new heating
system has gone down a great deal and his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Italian</i>
has been broadcast a second time in Germany, a broadcast for which he has
received another 5,000 marks, Thomas has been urging me to find him some lot of
land with a selling price of up to 200,000 shillings. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We met to discuss this at the post office at
7:45 in the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We agreed that in
the afternoon in Reindlmühl I would inform Thomas of the results of my
inquiries about the availability of purchasable land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Thomas that I wasn’t going to be
picking up the mail until a quarter-past eight because I had phone calls to
make, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As I was about to leave the post office at about a
quarter-past eight, Thomas came in and said he had read his mail in the
meantime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the afternoon he’s got to
receive a visitor from Salzburg, so he’ll only be staying in Reindlmühl until
midday; in the afternoon he’ll be at Nathal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you’re going to have company, I don’t want to disturb you, I
say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he says: No, no, come anyway; I
want to learn what you’ve found out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the afternoon I visit Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His visitor, the Countess von Axel Corti, is
sitting on the bench in the courtyard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
say: It’s impossible to do this so quickly; I can’t say yes or no to your
questions; come by this evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
3:00 sharp, and he asks if he can come by as early 4:00, an hour from now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says this while taking a sidelong glance
at his visitor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Presumably the visit is
lasting too long for his liking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’ve
got no time and don’t cotton to this proposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We end up agreeing on his visiting me at 7:00 p.m.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas is so eager to hear what I’ve got to report
to him that throughout the “Zeit im Bild” evening news program he keeps
apologetically turning to me and saying: Tell me such and such a thing in more
detail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s completely fixated on the
idea of buying a good piece of land for up to 200,000 schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But an inspection tour won’t be possible
until the middle of next week, because on my end some further negotiations with
the sellers are going to be necessary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas urges me to hurry, but I can’t possibly move any faster, because
of course I’ll drive the price through the roof myself if I’m too pushy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It’s still an amusing evening, and Thomas doesn’t
drive home until 11:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among other
things, he says there are far too few “genuinely good execrable people,” but far
too many nice, good, weak ones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(In the afternoon I borrow Thomas’s chainsaw,
etc.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 12, 1972</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Quite contrary to his habitual practice, Thomas
comes to see me on a Sunday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He stays
from 6:30 in the evening till almost 11:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He nags me to scare up any old promising piece of land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also spend some time sitting in front of
the television, and when some guy onscreen says he’s “overwhelmed” he says:
it’s also possible to understand him as being overwhelmed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Overproduction) That’s true of a lot of
people. All children that their parents didn’t want to have are “overwhelming.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I simply take this literally. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 13, 1972</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For the past seven years Monday evening has
generally been the evening we spend together at my house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas comes over at 7:00 and stays till
10:30.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since on Tuesday evening I’m
going to have meetings with people to discuss the properties he’s interested
in, meetings that could last till 10:00, I ask Thomas not to visit me on
Thursday evening, because I’m going to have a busy day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we agree to go for a ride to inspect the
properties on Wednesday the 15<sup>th</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m going to pick Thomas up for that ride at 7:45 in the morning in
Nathal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 15, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 7:45 I drive with Thomas to the post
office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time only part of the mail
is there; a mail bus is running late, and we’ll be getting something more later
on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The finest and most promising piece
of land, 19,000 square meters of south-facing slope in Grossalm, he finds
execrable in the extreme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For two hours
straight he lambasts me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s incredible
how many things he criticizes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everything in sight, from trees to boundary stones, the view of
Hochlecken—everything is ghastly, an imposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve apparently confused him with some stupid
German who’s fallen in love with the view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even so, he would consider buying this spot for 70,000 schillings, but
not for the asking price of 171,000 schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Afterwards we visit the estate called Kaltenbach in Grossalmstrasse near
Altmünster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas only comes along to
hear my “verdict,” because about a million schillings are being asked for this
piece of property.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there are only
about eight hectares of shabby, shady land there. But there it also comes to
light that the Austrian government’s forestry has made an offer of eight
schillings per square meter of the property. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the Austrian government is paying such
a rock-bottom price, Thomas sees the price of nine schillings per square meter for
land on the sunny side with better access etc. in another, more favorable light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I take no notice of this and change the
subject of the conversation to the owner’s children and dog.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Yesterday I didn’t pick up the reply to my bid to
the “dauber,” so that he got a “shock” when I, the expected buyer, didn’t show
up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas wants to go see him now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, Schmid, as the “dauber” actually
calls himself, has gotten over the shock by now; he’d like to know what the
answer is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve offered him 25,000
schillings for 4,000 square meters, and Schmid can hold onto the trees that are
ready for felling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is clear to us that we aren’t going to be meeting
with Schmid, but I manage to schedule an appointment with his wife for the
evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas gives me bits of advice
on how I should negotiate and what I should say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among other things, he says that I’ve got to
point out to him that the survey for the partition of these 4,000 square meters
has already cost more than 6,000 schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You see, the seller, Schmid, held onto these 4,000 square meters after
the sale of the Krucka, and Thomas would have to pay 6,200 schillings for this
survey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He really wants me to make sure
I mention this during the meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
I circle back to the fact that after the visit to the Kaltenbach estate Thomas
upbraided me for having talked too long about the children and the dog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I can tell you why I do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whenever I’ve talked about children and dogs,
I’ve won the game right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
people won’t let me get into bed with them, but they will let their dog into
their bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly you can never go
wrong if you have that kind of conversation with people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I’m obviously not some kind of baker,
who starts selling his hotcakes and his bread there and is an immediate hit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what’s just as important about that kind
of conversation is the fact that while I’m having it I can mull over what’s
good and what’s bad, what’s being said about “business.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just now you’ve given me some really stupid
advice, to say that the surveyor cost 6,000 schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if at the moment it looks like a good
idea to mention this, it can destroy absolutely everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in order to recognize the right time to
mention it and to think things over, I need the “chinwag about the kids.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because if I say that the surveyor costs
6,000 schillings for 4,000 square meters, it’s possible that the seller or his
spouse will bury their face in their hands and scream: What, are we supposed to
sell this piece of land for 25,000 schillings when the survey has already cost
6,000 schillings? Thomas admitted I was right straight-away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you’re offering 25,000 schillings for a
piece of land, you can’t say that the survey has cost 6,000 schillings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At noon we were back in Nathal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because he had already run me close
enough to ragged for the day, I asked him not to come that evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve also got a lot of other things to take
care of in the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so I’ll come
to him with his mail at 8:15 tomorrow morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ll brief him further then, because I’m still intending to negotiate
with the “dauber,” etc. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Meanwhile Thomas has looked into his disused
pigsty to see if any further mail has arrived there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m already sitting in the car and ready to
drive away when Thomas walks up with an express letter from his publishing
firm. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says: It’s a rare event when I
receive an express letter from my publisher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m curious to see whether it’s auspicious or inauspicious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I say: Tomorrow morning I’ll tell you
what happened at the “dauber’s,” and you’ll tell me whether the letter was
auspicious or inauspicious, and drive off.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">My afternoon is being wasted in recuperating from the
stresses of dealing with Thomas, and I’ve also written everything above in the
full heat of my rage.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 16, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Because the local postman has mistakenly only
brought me my own mail, I’ve got to follow the postman back to the district
post office to fetch Thomas’s mail and don’t get to Thomas’s house till
half-past eight in the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says
to me: I couldn’t imagine your not showing up punctually.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve already locked up the house, and I’m
driving to Reindlmühl right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today
is such a lovely day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Get a load of
this:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>only yesterday afternoon I was in
Freilassing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The express letter from my
publisher shared with me the news that I could withdraw 10,000 marks from the
bank in Freilassing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course I
immediately did just that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I told Thomas that the “dauber” isn’t going to
sell his woodlands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That if he does, it
won’t be until three or four years from now at the earliest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon Thomas insists on our yet again
inspecting Asamer’s patch of woodlands adjacent to Thomas’s property in Nathal
right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I really must see to it that
Asamer sells the woods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now he would
even pay 150,000 schilling for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
say: Fine, let’s take a look at those woods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But yesterday after I was turned down by the “dauber” I immediately
thought that now you’d want to have Asamer’s woods, and so I went on to speak
with Asamer along those lines at eight o’clock last night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally not in a nagging sort of way, but
as incidentally as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at the
moment he’s not ready to sell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
says that I must inform him that he’s willing to pay him the entire purchasing
price right now regardless of when the transfer will be officially recorded in
the land registry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell Thomas that if
Asamer is there, I won’t do that until I can use it as a way of spreading ca.
200,000 schillings’ worth of manure on the fields.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(That won’t be possible until May.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After our inspection of the woods, Thomas drives
to Riendlmühl, to the Krucka, and I ask him to come see me at 7:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Axel Corti is then mentioned on
television in the evening, he says: He’s making a good impression on me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’ll certainly do that well at the Burgtheater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course his wife, who’s from Salzburg, was
at my house this week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You remember her,
of course—my afternoon visitor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the
crash of the 151<sup>st</sup> Starfighter plane was reported on on the news
magazine show, Thomas sings: “Merle, Thrush, Finch, and Starfighter…[here B.
quotes the lyrics of a popular children’s song, substituting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Starfighter</i> for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Star </i>{i.e., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">starling</i>}
(DR)].” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we chat with Granny and Mum
until 10:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas says that tomorrow
he’ll be driving to Vienna first thing in the morning, because Aunt Hede has
got to go back into the hospital.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today
he received from her a postcard announcing that she was planning to take a trip
to Opatija; now that’s not going to happen. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas plans to be back here by Sunday
evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he plans to come straight
to my house, because he’ll want to learn whether I’ve scared up anything to
buy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again he starts giving me bits
of advice on this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re all the things
he’s picked up from watching me for ten years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A lot of what he says is taken directly from what I’ve told him about
how to approach business matters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas also tells me again about the bombing</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> raid
that he survived as a boy when he was picking blueberries with several women
near Traunstein.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The women prayed aloud
to Heaven with their hands raised skyward as the bombs were falling.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">They could distinctly see the bombs being
dropped, and so they all leapt into the bushes and loudly prayed.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">But because in the process the women had torn
their dresses to bits, Thomas couldn’t help loudly laughing as they were all
praying.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">After the bombs had exploded,
some farmers came up; they had seen that the blueberry-pickers had taken cover
where the bombs had fallen and couldn’t believe that they were still alive.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">But quite nearby there were some large
craters, and only dirt, wood, and splinters had fallen on the women.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">This hail of debris and the clouds of smoke
after the explosion had naturally made them all say afterwards that it was a
miracle that nobody had been injured.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Because they were all covered in rubble.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Towards 10:00 p.m. Thomas said goodbye until
Sunday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has absolutely no desire to
see for a second time the Radax film that’s about to be shown, because he says
it’s really awful, even though Radax won the Grimme Prize for it as well at the
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So prizes issued by adult
education centers obviously aren’t worth very much, said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was referring to Konrad Bayer and “I Am
the World, and That’s My Business,” a docudrama directed by Ferry Radax.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 17, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On our way back from Linz, my wife and I visited
Thomas in Nathal at about 6:00 in the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He shows us where the electric stove is being installed and how the rooms
are being fitted out and converted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After a half an hour, we left Thomas and asked him to come see us in
about thirty minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 7:00 Thomas walked in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is always a good time, because now we
can still have supper before the news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After the news we sat around until nearly 11:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Thomas that I had received a ton of
books from my aunt in Linz today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I left
more than half of them there because I didn’t know the value of the books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I only took the “Nazi books.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From
the Karawanks to Crete</i>, published by the high command of the Wehrmacht, or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The German House Book</i>, published by the
culture division of the propaganda department of the NSDAP.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All
Rivers in Bohemia Flow to Germany</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Germans
at War in Spain</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Farmers’
Child</i> by Springenschmid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The inside
of the Springenschmid book is stamped “The German Women’s Welfare
Association.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the sight of “Women’s
Welfare Association” Thomas flies into a rage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I never got more boxes to the ears or less to eat anywhere than at the Women’s
Welfare Association.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I lived in one of
the Women’s Welfare Association’s hostels in Thüringia when I was about eleven
years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They boxed my ears so long
that I turned into a bed-wetter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
early next morning in the breakfast room during breakfast they openly showed
everybody my soiled bedclothes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this
day I can scarcely believe that my mother put me in that place. But I have even
more trouble forgiving her for having left me there when she knew full well
what was going on there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s why to
this day I can’t let anybody get away with yammering on to me about the Women’s
Welfare Association and other sanctimonious stuff from the Nazi period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because those hypocritical female champions
of “welfare” brought me up on nothing but boxes to my ears.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas once again reminds me that I absolutely
must scare up something for him when he parts company with me at just before
11:00.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 19, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Shortly before 7:00 p.m. Thomas walks in to watch
the news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the main news magazine
program was over we weren’t interested in any other programs and amused each
other with our own conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
Friday I brought back for Thomas from Linz two beautiful rustic schnapps
decanters along with their accompanying sets of six shot glasses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today I presented him with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was crazy about the glass stoppers and
about the irregular shapes of the little schnapps jugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas is expecting the electricians for the
installation job to show up on Monday and Tuesday, and he asks me to drop in a
couple of times to see how the work is going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After 10:00 Thomas drives home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 20, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As I stepped through the front door at Nathal,
Stadlbauer the Laakirchen electrician’s firm’s van was just driving off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas greeted me agitatedly and told me to
get a load of this fine mess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The men
just left without saying goodbye because he simply couldn’t take another minute
of watching the work being done so lousily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He said that the men couldn’t even use a chisel properly, that they’d
kept unfastening the door frame with their impossibly incompetent chiseling. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I only stayed till 6:00, because after listening
to him bellyache for an hour I’d had enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But Thomas was right about each and every detail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He actually understood everything better than
the so-called craftsmen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I invited him to
come to my house at 7:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because Granny isn’t there, I said, I’m going to have to light the stove myself so that we can
stay warm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I promised him a good supper
and asked him to be punctual because I myself was already quite hungry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When at five minutes past seven Thomas still
hadn’t shown up, I decided to intercept him in my car, because he was planning
to come on foot, so that he could pass the time till seven more agreeably.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as I was walking to my car, Thomas
arrived from Gmunden in his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
couldn’t stand being at home anymore, he said, and had then driven to Gmunden
and bought himself a late Biedermeier desk for 11,000 schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He closely inspected it once again and then took
it as it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I tell Thomas that
I’ll be driving to Vienna at two in the morning, he asks me to give his aunt a
call from Vienna to brief her on his problems, give her his regards, and ask
her how she’s doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the light of my
early departure for Vienna, Thomas drives home at 9:00.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 21, 1972 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As
my meeting with Dr. Michael Stern in Vienna was already over by 6:00 a.m.,
after it I drove straight back to Weinberg without calling Thomas’s aunt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I didn’t want to disturb her so early
in the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also told Thomas this
as soon as I got back and invited him to my house to watch his program “At Home
with Thomas Bernhard.” For days he’s been saying that he fears the worst about
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He only let the crew get as far as
the hallway, and apart from that he had wired to withdraw his consent to filming
years ago, so that the telegram had arrived in Vienna earlier than the two
people from the ministry of education to whom he had given consent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
the beginning of the program, as details of his biography were being read out,
he said that back then he was incredibly young and believed he had to represent
himself as such a wretched creature so that people would pay attention to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today, Thomas says, he can no longer put up
with hearing that he was a garbage man and looked after a seventy-year-old
woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I wrote that, and I’ll have
to keep hearing it for the rest of my life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But they should at least also say that I wrote it when I was about
twenty years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the way they
presented it, it sounds as though I’d only just written it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After
the end of the program, Thomas says that there was nothing embarrassing in it,
that he’s glad that it slipped by so painlessly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because they could have included some truly awful
footage that would have done him no good, because he really was quite rude to
those people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas
stayed till just before 11:00, and we agreed to watch <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Italian </i>at my house tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To that end, Thomas is supposed to come for supper at 7:00, and between
the end of the news and the beginning of the broadcast of the film at 9:20 we
plan not to watch any television so that our ability to take in the film won’t
be impaired.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">March
22, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
four in the afternoon I visit Thomas for an hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things are looking much better inside the
house; the work is drawing towards its conclusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ferdl is already done with the “dusting,” and
Thomas has removed most of the debris and dirt himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 7:00 he’s here for dinner, and, as previously
discussed, we watch <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Italian</i> at
9:20. Thomas is satisfied with the adaptation; he says that one couldn’t ask
for anything more from Radax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Radax
hasn’t got anything more to give; this constitutes his highest achievement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I fundamentally disagree with Thomas, because
I’m familiar with all the “takes” and can justly say that the best ones were by
no means always selected from the available stock of shot film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said that the film was by no means boring
but that many of its good scenes would have been better if they’d lasted only
five to ten seconds, that a lot scenes should have been tightened up a great
deal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas sticks by Radax; I insist
that I’m going to remonstrate with Radax, and indeed in great detail; that he did
a better job directing than editing and that he should have gotten more out of
the available material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas says that
during the editing Radax was perhaps too much under the influence of [Martin]
Wiebel [from IFAGE].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This discussion
dragged on until almost 1:30 in the morning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">During
my afternoon visit at Nathal Thomas showed me the Grimme Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fantastically impossible pedestal that
can’t stand on its own but that can’t be fitted into the socket into which it’s
supposed to fit either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Falkenberg
accepted the prize for him and also sent him the pedestal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">24
March 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I am in the process of selling off a few old picture
frames.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas has been aware of the
frames for a very long time but has always written them off as rubbish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I drive to Nathal to show him the frames one
more time just in case before they’re gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas is in the middle of whitewashing his house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rochelt and the Hufnagls have announced
they’ll be stopping by in the afternoon, and so he and Ferdl have thrown
themselves into a big work project so that they’ll see right away that he’s got
no time for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re coming on
account of the environmental protection activity that’s taking place near
Altmünster tomorrow, Friday [In 1972 the 25th actually fell on a Saturday (DR)].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I set up the four picture frames in his kitchen and quote him
a price of 960 schillings, a quote that doesn’t include the inscription on one
of the frames [Presumably an engraved inscription on some sort of detachable
plate (DR)], which Thomas finds worthless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I tell Thomas that tomorrow I’m going to sell these frames on commission
to Menzel in Salzburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas says:
These are exactly the sorts of picture frames I’ve been looking for for years; not
a single one of them is ever going to leave my house again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll take the lot; here, I’m giving you 800
schillings for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not a penny less
than 960 schillings, I insist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
Salzburg I’d be just as hardline, because they’re a steal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just take a look; where else are you going to
get something like this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas
hands me the 960 schillings and says, help yourself to the inscription on the
frame, but at least let me keep my head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You’re really fleecing me; I don’t expect this kind of thing from you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So the deal is done; Thomas has got a lot of work to do; the
Hufnafgls could walk in at any moment, and I tell Thomas I’d like to visit him
again towards eight o’clock, because as far as I can see, he’s going to be busy
until then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 8:00 I run into Thomas in
the hallway when he’s on his way to the bathroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says, I’ve got to go upstairs to visit
with the Hufnagls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re up in the
vestibule; the heating cycle’s been running for a few hours already; it’s
already quite warm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up there I find Mr.
and Mrs. Hufnagl and Hans Rochelt’s girlfriend, whose name is Irina David.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The conversation centers on tomorrow’s press
conference and gala in Altmünster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
agree to attend with my spouse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After an
hour, at about 9:00, Thomas and his guests drive to Gmunden; I drive home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 25, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 8:00 a.m. I run into Thomas at the Ohlsdorf post
office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas tells me that later on
yesterday they all got together with the state assemblyman and mayor of
Altmünster, Dr. Scheuba, and that he promised to come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally he has no interest in this gala,
and I’m supposed to excuse him for his absence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On account of urgent work projects; you know the drill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course I’m not an idiot and I’ll
attend that kind of function.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the way,
Thomas added, what’s the matter with you; are you taking some kind of pills, or
what the hell else is it that’s making you seem so different than usual to
me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How am I different than usual?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I can’t exactly say, but you seem different than usual; you’ve never
been like this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we say our
goodbyes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 27, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 8:00 a.m. I meet up with Thomas at the Ohlsdorf post
office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He takes great interest in the
fact that since we last met I’ve scrounged up a house for Peymann in
Pfaffstätt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s planning to visit me in
the evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas shows up at 7:00 p.m. He tells me that he’s been in
Wörgl with Hufnagl the architect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hufnagl’s got a school under construction there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s also been in Wildschönau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that it’s really terrible there, that
he imagined its being a different sort of place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I apologize to Thomas for not having been
able to call his aunt in Vienna, because I was already finished with Dr. Stern
at 6:00 a.m., and by 10:00 I was already back in Wels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t want to call his aunt so early in
the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas wanted to know
whether she had yet scheduled an appointment at the hospital and how she was
doing in general.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas stayed until 10:30.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He also read my letter to Mrs. Peymann.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 28, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas is housebound because since yesterday he’s had the
workers for the installation of the electrical heating in his house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I visit him several times over the course of
the day, and in the evening he’s glad that he can discuss his problems with the
electricians with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among other
omissions they forgot to install the cable with the outgoing day-current along
with the one for the outgoing night-current.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ferdl had already dusted the outlet; they wanted to make another outlet
in another place and do even more damage to the look of the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Additionally, Thomas noticed just in the nick
of time that the thermostat was about to be installed in the wrong place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas stayed until about 10:00 p.m.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 29, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I visit Thomas several </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">times over the course of the day, because
he asked me to stop by when the workers were in the house.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The installers were doing a better job.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">In fact, they might even have fitted
everything together by then, and the house was already quite warm.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Since I’ve got my weekly gym session this evening, Wednesday
evening, we agree that I’ll come to see him on Thursday morning to plan a trip
to Pfaffstätt on Friday, Good Friday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve promised to drop by between ten and eleven.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">March 30, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 11 o’clock, when I arrive at Nathal, Thomas has made so much
headway with his “domestic laborers” that he says: If you’ve got the time we
can leave for Pfaffstätt anytime this afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We take off at 1:45, but in my car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then in the afternoon Thomas and I drive to Mattighofen via
Vöcklabruck, Strasswalchen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There we
take a look around the market and walk around the church, which is surrounded
by its churchyard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We both buy a copy of
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wochenpresse</i>, because Thomas
already knows that there’s a good review of his work <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Italian</i> in it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When Thomas sees that it’s only 38 km from Mattighofen to
Salzburg, he says that Mattighofen would be quite manageable in terms of
distance for the Peymanns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we get
to Pfaffstätt, Thomas is wildly enthusiastic about the lodgings I’ve scared up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s been ages since I stopped being able to
put with this kind of overwhelming approval from him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The house, the garden, the stable, all the
rooms were unlocked, and we walked through the entire house. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we stepped into the house, Thomas said he
missed my loud shout of “Hello!” because I’m in the habit of shouting that out
when I walk in like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said that
that would be pointless, that sure, the house was unlocked but that certainly
nobody was in the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it’s
probably even been a fairly long time since anybody was last in the house,
because the chickens are standing and looking hungry at the door to the stable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the chickens are standing by the door
like that, nobody’s at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
surprised the doors haven’t been locked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I showed Thomas all the rooms and led him through the whole house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we were back walking in the street, we
asked a lady where the woman who owned the house was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s working at the tavern, she said, but
her nine-year-old son should be at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We passed through the garden once again, because Thomas was so
enthusiastic about every little thing in the house that he said he was going to
write to Peymann.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s absolutely no
need for them to see the house beforehand; if they won’t take it they can get
stuffed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then we went to the tavern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There we were hit straight in the face by a fearsome stench.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dining room with its ancient furniture
was empty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A hallway took us to a
miserable hole of a room in which six women were crammed together in a tight
space and mechanically plucking chickens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The table was piled high with mountains of guts, and the chickens were
being passed from hand to hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The woman
stuck with doing the actual plucking was Mrs. Bamberger, who we wanted to speak
with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Mrs. Bamberger caught sight of
me, she shook a few buckets of water onto her rubber dress and took off her
rubber boots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On account of the stench,
Thomas and I walked to an exit gate via the hallway and stepped out into the
open air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even out there it wasn’t
any better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right there in plain view
next to the building hundreds of chicken-heads were piled up against a
chicken-decapitating machine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
said: This is all much more disgusting and appalling than anyone could ever describe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those six women in that tiny room—it’s the
sort of thing you never still come across nowadays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This whole operation is obviously illegal and
in violation of the health regulations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mrs. Bamberger eventually came outside without her rubber
dress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on account of the stench I
said the deal was perfect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve spoken
by phone with Peymann; they’ll take the rooms no matter what.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s just got to set up some beds wherever
she thinks is best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The large room that
she uses herself and that she’s willing to swap for a smaller one won’t be
needed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We don’t want to impose so much
work on her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We told her we had
inspected the unlocked house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wasn’t
surprised that her son had left without locking it up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are still places, I say to Thomas,
where people leave their houses unlocked when they go away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, I don’t allow my own house to be
locked up during the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even when my
people aren’t in the house but in the garden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Things are hardly ever stolen from unlocked houses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Usually all the houses in the entire village
are left that way, and because everybody notices a stranger right away, it
would be hard for anybody to steal anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas was bursting with enthusiasm for Mrs. Baumberger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says he couldn’t imagine a better
landlady.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the way back we take a
route that leads from Salzburg to Mattsee to Köstendorf, then take Federal
Highway 1 to Vöcklabruck and finally Weinberg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because I had relished my Maundy Thursday lunch of spinach with sunny
side-up eggs, I wanted to offer Thomas the same meal for dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said he had eaten the same thing for lunch
at the tavern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we switched to
omelets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we promised each other to
eat spinach with sunny side-up eggs more often, because it tastes so good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas stayed until 10:00 p.m. and couldn’t
stop raving about the great lodgings in Pfaffstäft.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas also said that he would pick up the butter he’d ordered
at the Krucka, that he wasn’t really expecting any visitors for Easter, but
that first thing Tuesday he’d be going to Vienna to visit his aunt in the
hospital.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He added that we’d see each
other before then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 4, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 8:00 in the morning I run into Thomas at the Ohlsdorf post
office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas walks up to me and says:
I was hoping to run into you here; otherwise I would have driven straight to
your house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I spent the long holiday weekend
lying in bed with a fever, Thomas says.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I left the gate open each day and was hoping you’d come by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told him I’d assumed he might visit
Wolfsegg for Easter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because then Count
Saint Julien’s entire family is there at one time, so he could take care of his
required yearly visit to all of them in one trip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought he’d take advantage of the cheerful
atmosphere of such days over cakes and coffee, not only there but maybe
somewhere else as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It never
occurred to me to drive over, because no matter what, I wasn’t expecting to
find him at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even if you were
at home you presumably would have had a visitor, and you know I don’t like to
disturb you then as a matter of principle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yes, says Thomas, I was hoping you’d stop by and there were no visitors
here, and whenever you see that the gate is open and that are no visitors here,
you can walk right in, as you of course do at other times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I didn’t have a single visitor or anyone
to lend me a hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I said, you’re
coming straight home with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got
to take Granny to Dr. Beck’s office; after that I’ll take you straight back to
my house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You won’t need to wait; Granny has announced that she’ll be coming and can get in there ahead of schedule. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ll tell the doctor that she’s got to see
her right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas immediately
agreed to this arrangement.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We paid our visit to the doctor’s office and then drove to the
pharmacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas was hoarse and could
hardly speak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas’s cold syrup had to
be specially prepared and wouldn’t be ready to be picked up from the pharmacy
until 5:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given that Thomas had
felt so well during our trip to Pfaffstätt on Maundy Thursday, I was quite
surprised that he was so ill now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mother
saw Thomas and said: You’ve lost your calves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s right, said Thomas; they’re lying in my bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He really looked quite enfeebled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then in the evening I brought him the syrup
from the pharmacy and was at his house from 6:00 to 7:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We agreed that I’d come to him with his mail
at 8:15 a.m.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 5, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As agreed, I come to Thomas’s house with the mail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I’m there I can report to him that
Asamer is now prepared to sell him the woods adjoining his lot in Nathal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Asamer that I’d be bringing him the
money and finalizing the sale no later than tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, I added, Asamer will be at home all day
today because it’s raining. Thomas’s hasn’t got a trace of fever, but his voice
is even hoarser than the day before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
so I suggest my driving him to the bank to withdraw the money for Asamer
tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas is so greedily
eager to get hold of the woods, as he has been since the autumn, that he says
that maybe tomorrow he’ll be feeling worse than today, that I’ve got to drive
him to the bank right away, and that he’d like to get the whole business
settled immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He types the
necessary sales contract himself on his typewriter, and so we drive first to
the bank and then to Asamer’s place in Ohlsdorf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The deal takes place in accordance with my plans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole thing takes lasts until shortly
before noon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stop by my house with
Thomas in order to brief my wife.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD3UM_KsuRBYM4qdkKf722Ou7_7G2y3Nt3Nvbtfd04wTUMOXQU2htGECMaoEslncwGXHUqJWWTdzRKdCQI7zFgBRaRa6l3WXoa4Wh9awHV3lRdzaTpnE3HoR9fvOUvr-1PfwYoLA/s1600/Vertrag.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="337" data-original-width="569" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD3UM_KsuRBYM4qdkKf722Ou7_7G2y3Nt3Nvbtfd04wTUMOXQU2htGECMaoEslncwGXHUqJWWTdzRKdCQI7zFgBRaRa6l3WXoa4Wh9awHV3lRdzaTpnE3HoR9fvOUvr-1PfwYoLA/s1600/Vertrag.PNG" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At Asamer’s Thomas drank nothing but a cup of tea, marjoram
tea, and when my wife asks me, have you invited Thomas to have lunch with us? I
can only say: He can’t eat anything; nothing tastes good to him; he’s just that
sick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas asks me to make sure to
take the contract to Dr. Meingast this afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At Asamer’s Thomas also immediately pays me
the 4, 500 schillings he’s promised me for brokering the sale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s still a lot more I can achieve for
that money, he says.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my achievement
didn’t consist in also driving to Dr. Meingast’s office after the sealing of
the deal, but rather in knowing the most auspicious moment for the sale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back in the autumn I was already saying to
Thomas: the only time, if ever, when the sale can take place will be when the
farmers are fertilizing their fields.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
a time like that even a farmer as well-situated as Asamer may need cash.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the evening, after I had delivered the contract to Dr.
Meingast, I was back at Thomas's house for about an hour.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I promised to bring him his mail at 8:15 a.m. again tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas asked me to bring him some newspapers
as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But since I didn’t have
anything to do in Gmunden, Thomas was content with having <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Die Presse</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kurier</i>,
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Die Salzburger Nachrichten</i>, which
I could even buy in Steyrermühl.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 6, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Towards 9:00 in the morning I walk into Thomas’s house with
mail and newspapers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still had to make
a few telephone calls and so I was running late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His voice was still very raspy, and I said to
Thomas: As long as I hear your raspy voice, I don’t need to ask you whether
you’re doing better yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, said
Thomas, it keeps staying stuck down here, and he pointed at his chest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once he’d recovered, he said, he’d go to
Vienna and get a physical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I said I
had assumed he’d already done that during his last trip to Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course way back when he had weathered the
same illness, and I had hoped that he’d be convinced by a follow-up checkup on
his case of “Bocke’s disease” that this had nothing to do with it anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas said that he had actually
intended to do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that in Vienna
he was so healthy that he’d felt as though it would be ridiculous to have a
follow-up checkup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, I said to
Thomas, that’s certainly no reason not to have a follow-up checkup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of course in the case of such a
strange illness and such a strange Bocke’s disease operation the doctor will
also be interested in seeing whether you’re healthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You actually owe it to your doctor to let him
see whether you’re healthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, yes,
next time I’ll go see him, said Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 7, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 8:15 a.m. I’m back at Thomas’s with mail and newspapers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m back again from six until eight in the
evening. Because there won’t be any mail tomorrow, Sunday, Thomas was planning
to drive to Gmunden by himself to read the newspapers and consume another
proper soup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far he’s only had four
sausages, each of them prepared in a different way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He hasn’t had a proper appetite all day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve brought to Thomas a few items from the
supermarket in Wels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among these are a
pack of 500 disposable handkerchiefs, because he’s got an enormous demand for
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I’m leaving I tell him I’ll be
stopping back again late tomorrow afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He says he’s feeling so weak that he might not even be able to do more
than read through these newspapers in the meantime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We also spoke about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Italian</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said that his speedy
power of discrimination would be an asset during editing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That because he wouldn’t need much time to
look at this or that, he’d quickly come to the right decision.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this he said that he’d let Radax make a
hash of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frost</i> on his own, that he’d
leave him alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he’ll demand and
get the rights and the go-ahead to produce a television film entirely by
himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’ll do all the directing and
editing himself based on instructions in his own screenplay.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 8, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As promised, I visited Thomas towards five in the
afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told me that he’d only
been home since 3:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He ran into Mrs.
Hufnagl in Gmunden and drove with her to Traunkirchen, Pühret, to have fish for
lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He ate a char, but in particular
the soup before the meal did him good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He said that he absolutely needed to have something proper to eat once
again, and that he would also go dine at the tavern tomorrow, Sunday, morning. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The three hours I spent with Thomas until 9:00 actually went
by quite quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had his entire
rural neighborhood wiped out by a plague epidemic and then bought up all the
houses and lots in the neighborhood, all the property, his two houses and all
their furniture, etc. but subsequently declared that it was all pointless. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he lives long enough to get old, he wants
children to run away from him as he’s walking down the street and to cry out:
“Quick, run, here comes the old skinflint.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And mothers will have to say to their children: “If you’re not nice,
Bernhard will come get you.” They’ll have to fear and loathe him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’d like to look exactly like the late Mr.
Franzmaier of No. 1, Hochbau, Ohlsdorf: tall and haggard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcd0ECuEwxb9J30jAUmv9jGcK1Awrc8Hkl4VZkqbX4BMAayX5FQoBoJDVQnyREFr8S6dhMb1Sf_IXSTblvhH8hLcEyzv34pO5nfSb3BhklTMiEGvdw4gqrkYsqjZr90AyiIlLfsQ/s1600/Franzmaier.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="438" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcd0ECuEwxb9J30jAUmv9jGcK1Awrc8Hkl4VZkqbX4BMAayX5FQoBoJDVQnyREFr8S6dhMb1Sf_IXSTblvhH8hLcEyzv34pO5nfSb3BhklTMiEGvdw4gqrkYsqjZr90AyiIlLfsQ/s1600/Franzmaier.PNG" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
picture from 1965 is inscribed: “Franzmaier from Hochbau with Wolfi, Granny,
Reinhild, and Franzmaier’s girlfriend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas was looking on.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then before I leave I suddenly recalled a home remedy for his
cold: vaporizing French brandy one drop at a time on the stovetop and inhaling
this steam through the nose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course
it’s a drastic cure because it burns your eyes and your respiratory tracts, but
the congestion loosens up and you get air flowing through your nose again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course it’s got to be done patiently
several times an hour; otherwise it won’t have a lasting effect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because Thomas hasn’t got any French brandy
at home, I promise to bring him some at 10:00 tomorrow morning, so that he’ll
able to get some air before lunchtime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 9, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As promised, I’m at Thomas’s house with the bottle of French
brandy. He diligently sniffs in the steam and notices right away that his
respiratory tracts are opening up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
the stuff won’t come up from his chest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’s still sitting down there, he keeps saying; it’s got to come up;
otherwise I won’t be healthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I show
Thomas a letter from the Rosenbach Gallery in Hanover, which wrote to me at the
suggestion of his friend Dr. Wieland Schmied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After Thomas had read it, he handed it to me and remarked: That’s a
letter from him that you could just as easily have received from Neulengbach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas keeps going back to the stovetop and
sniffing and sniffing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s enthusiastic
about the relief that he’s noticing right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I take a few hits myself and it doesn’t even seem very harsh to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Probably healthy respiratory tracts aren’t as
sensitive to the steam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a good
half-hour I take off and say I’ll stop by again late in the afternoon to see
how he’s doing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 10, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Shortly after eight in the morning I’m at Thomas’s with the
mail, and I apologize for not having been able to come again yesterday on account
of a visitor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the evening I was very
tired, and that was also true of my visitor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But yesterday we had also spoken about the article in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oberösterreichische Nachrichten</i> in which<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Thomas was described as an
“inconvenient executioner of Alpine mindlessness,” and then I realized once
again that it’s really quite taxing to speech and debate with Thomas for hours
on end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That also played a bit of a role
in my decision to let him “sit” on Sunday evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He himself has been confined to his house for
quite a long time, hasn’t been receiving any visitors with whom he could
squabble, hasn’t been sending off any poison letters either; a moment of
inattention to his sickliness could very easily lead to an attack of
resentment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because his cold has been
dragging on for so long that it’s really getting on his and my nerves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we don’t let this show and trick
ourselves into thinking that it isn’t.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">His aunt wrote to him that her brother who was two years
younger than her died on Easter Sunday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas says it’s better that his aunt is in the hospital now and won’t
be able to attend the funeral.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’ll
affect her less. We shared a laugh over what a fine day it had been to die on,
over the fact that he’d chosen to die on Easter Sunday of all days, but it was actually
only bad news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because Thomas says to me
that he’s going to start driving out to eat and read newspapers again, I invite
Thomas to come to my house in the evening if his health permits, and then I’m
off again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 11, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At a quarter-past eight in the morning I’m at Thomas’s house
with the mail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t feel a jot
better and says he would have found it too taxing to come in the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas is still in his bathrobe and shows me
his scar from the chainsaw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s about
five centimeters long, dark red, and it’s a bulge half as wide as a pencil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The deep notches from the stitches are
distinctly recognizable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We chat for
about an hour, and Thomas says that he plans to come this evening, because he’s
got to get out of the house for a bit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
told Thomas that he should build up his strength by drinking an egg yolk mixed
with a teaspoon of honey and a tablespoon of brandy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been doing that for a few days myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s been doing me a world of good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Since I’ve
got a spare moment at 5:00 p.m., I drive to Thomas’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I noticed some wood-gatherers in his newly
purchased patch of woods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I took a
closer look and noticed that the occupants of the Gruber estate had already
taken a few huge piles to the removal truck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At the same time I noticed that last Sunday’s storm had knocked over a
30-cm wide spruce at the roots and this tree had fallen from the edge of the
woods into the woods themselves without damaging any of the other trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I reported this to Thomas and told him that
the tenants from the Gruber estate were saving him a lot of work, because
otherwise he’d have to remove the deadwood himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be good if these people continued to
take an interest in the wood in the future, because he’s still got a great deal
of clearing away of deadwood to do, as the woods have been untended and
neglected for some time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas doesn’t
feel well and says that he won’t even be coming over this evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After about a half an hour I’m off again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">April 12,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">At 8:15 in the morning I’m back at Thomas’s
with the mail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It includes a letter from
Dr. Meingast in Gmunden that Thomas hands right back to me and asks me to take
care of for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also gives me the
original contract that Dr. Meingast asks for in the letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas doesn’t want tomorrow’s 8:00 a.m.
onsite inspection, which is the subject of the letter, to be postponed yet
again on account of illness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wants me
to consult with Panholzer the engineer so that the rendezvous site won’t be at
the plot itself but at Schachinger’s tavern next to the church in Reindlmühl
instead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that he’s going to sit
in the tavern the whole time, and that I’m going to have to show them the house
and the limits of the property on my own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Besides, he says, he would prefer me to be there instead, because he’s
terribly embarrassed at having confused Panholzer with the other engineer,
Meindl, when he sent he sent his telegram to Meindl from Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell Thomas that that mix-up is absolutely
nothing to be worried about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meindl is
very influential at the district office, such that Panholzer will actually feel
honored by having been confused with him. <span style="color: black;">For
breakfast Thomas is taking spoonfuls of egg yolk and honey as I
recommended.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says he used rum instead
of cognac.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that’s just poison, I
say; it’s important to use brandy in that mixture, because it’s fortifying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You must never use good grain alcohol.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t matter, spirits are spirits; why
should it make any difference what kind of spirits you use? says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rum is off-limits, I says, because it’s made
from poisonous aromatics, and brandy is definitely brandy and not grain
alcohol.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brandy is more refined and more
fortifying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas won’t concede this,
and finally I say: If you won’t admit there’s any difference between different
kinds of spirits, you might as well get drunk on the wood alcohol that’s a
waste byproduct of paper production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just
like Mr. Hradil, who died at the age of 45 because he used to drink that stuff
constantly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If spirits are just spirits,
then get them straight from the wood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then Thomas says that he’s already feeling much better, that it’s
already been eight days since I took him to the doctor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that if he doesn’t get better in four
days, he’ll have to go back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re a
proper farmer, I say to Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also always
makes sure that everything’s in order around the farm, but when he’s got
something wrong with himself, he won’t go to the doctor unless he’s forced to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’ve obviously already built up a tolerance
to these pills in the past eight days; they’re not helping you a bit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Probably the doctor would have prescribed
something different after four days if she’d seen that there’d been no
improvement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Probably something
stronger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Apart from that you’re
obviously not feeling at all better; I can tell that from your voice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just that you’ve gotten used to your
condition, and you’re confusing that with “feeling better.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tomorrow it won’t be possible on account of
the commission, but on Friday I’ll take you to the doctor, to her back door, so
that you can go in right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll do
that because I won’t let another whole weekend pass without a doctor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, by then it’ll have been ten days
since your last visit to the doctor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You’ve been putting it off for six days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After a little while, a good hour or longer, I say goodbye and promise
to come over at about four in the afternoon to inform him of the new rendezvous
site that I’ll have agreed to with Mr. Panzholzer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">After I’ve gotten hold of Mr.
Panzholzer and delivered the original contract to Dr. Meingast, I return to
Thomas’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We agree that we’ll meet up at
the Ohlsdorf post office at 7:00 tomorrow morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, I want him to drive to Gmunden in
his own car so that I won’t be tethered to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some time ago, Dr. Wieland Schmied told me that Thomas had done this to
him when he was dependent on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
Thomas can take a sudden mischievous pleasure in getting the other person to do
the opposite of what he plans or wishes to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So when on the other hand Thomas gets a sense that the other person
would like to go for a drive, he digs in his heels, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">We also speak about that
evening’s broadcast, in which Ferry Radax will have something new to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I don’t want to miss this broadcast,
I go to the gym during the 6:00-8:00 p.m. session for the youngsters instead of
during the 8:00-10:00 session for the adults, so that I can avoid breaking my
exercise routine and also see the broadcast featuring Radax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas stays at home, and I don’t want to
go see him that late, so each of us watches the broadcast at his own house.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">April 13, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">At 7:30 a.m. sharp I meet up with Thomas in
front of the Ohlsdorf post office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
still too early to pick up the mail, and so we ask the postman to deliver
Bernhard’s mail to my house at No. 3 Weinberg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Bernhard leaves his car parked at the tax
office in Gmunden, and we take mine to Reindlmühl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Panzholzer the engineer is already
waiting there in front of Schachinger’s tavern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We explain to him that Thomas is going to stay at the tavern and that
I’m going to show him the house and rest of the property.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas goes into the tavern, and I drive with
Mr. Panholzer to the Krucka; naturally we cover the last stretch on foot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGoFiUyYtOHGQpj_vasHS9UuIrz9SZHLf8B8hCl8MVziSmKrucU9wqnmQbl15HTD5_mRxV3DXwGG9-wRISCh0OWIf25a13RnkbZYSweTu3B0UWMBU5-1HTm4CZBCOkzN9vGVWaEA/s1600/Krucka.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="344" data-original-width="557" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGoFiUyYtOHGQpj_vasHS9UuIrz9SZHLf8B8hCl8MVziSmKrucU9wqnmQbl15HTD5_mRxV3DXwGG9-wRISCh0OWIf25a13RnkbZYSweTu3B0UWMBU5-1HTm4CZBCOkzN9vGVWaEA/s1600/Krucka.PNG" /></a></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The property at 98 Grasberg,
the “Krucka” Photo: Matthias Burri<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I show Panhozer the borders of the property
in detail, then I show him the house and pour us some schnapps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we’re discussing the pros and cons, Thomas
comes in from the rain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says there
was no heat at the tavern, so that he thought it better to follow us here
slowly so as to avoid freezing to death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As it’s also freezing cold in the Krucka, I say: Fine, then we’ll have
to leave again right away so that you don’t catch cold. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">We were originally planning to take care of
the paperwork at Schachinger’s tavern, but I proposed our visiting the Alpine
hotel in Altmünster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There Thomas orders
a huge plate of cold cuts for three people and some tea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when we then turned our attention back to
the paperwork, there were constant discrepancies of scale between Panholzer’s
and Thomas’s estimates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It eventually
turned out that in Panholzer’s deed the appraisal of the property of Ms.
Charlotte Schmidt at 45 Feldstrasse in Holzen über Schwerte had inadvertently been
used as a draft in place of the appraisal of 68 Grasberg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the previous owner of 98 Grasberg was
called Josef Schmid, the two Schmid(t)s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>had been confused with each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas was outraged by such brainlessness on the part of the authorities,
especially in the light of the fact that they’d been dealing with this deed for
months and nobody had detected this error.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Accordingly, all the factors discussed since have completely changed,
and a definitive assessment is impossible without the appropriate documentation
from the tax office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By 11:00 I’ve
already told them I’m going straight to Dr. Meingast to ask him to get hold of
the appropriate documents before the end of the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas stayed at the hotel with Panholzer,
and we agreed to meet up at my house shortly after midday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the ticket agent’s I also picked up the
five tickets I’d ordered for the premiere of the play in Salzburg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas didn’t show up at my house in Weinberg
until just before 1:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He lingered a
bit in Gmunden to read the newspaper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
addition to his mail he’s received a telegram today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas eats and drinks and wants a verbatim
account of what I’ve said at Dr. Meingast’s office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I reported to Thomas that I had asked Dr.
Meingast to get hold of the appraisal of the property from the tax office
before the end of the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That I’d told
him that I’d have to visit you at 5:00 p.m. to share with you what I’d managed
to get done at Dr. Meingast’s office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d pointedly drawn his attention to the fact that at 5:00 I’d have to
tell you that he’d gotten hold of the appraisal as promised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also told him that as I had some other
business to attend to at the district agricultural office tomorrow I’d also make
sure that the appraisal had arrived there by then. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There would have been absolutely no point in
hurling abuse or raising a fuss about such incredible brainlessness, I
said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the mere fact that
something like has happened is already disgraceful enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When a fourth-grade public schoolboy shows up
to class with the wrong books, he’s punished by the teacher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is one to do with an attorney who makes
mistakes like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was quite good,
the way you dealt with him, said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I couldn’t have gone there, I would have ended up raising a horrible
fuss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I show him the telegram and
say: At least take a look at the telegram; perhaps it’s important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas opens the telegram, reads it; it’s a
fairly long text, and then he hands it to me to read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The telegram is from Musulin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It asks Thomas if he’ll write a review of
Zuckmayer’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Henndorf Pastoral</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The telegram proposes 4/24 in Vienna and 5/5
at Musulin’s house in Frankfurt as possible dates and locations for handing
over the review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says he’s convinced
that Thomas would be happy to do it, that it would give him a thrill, etc.
Yours, Danko.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After I’d read the
telegram, Thomas angrily said: That’s the sort of thing people are always
trying to force you to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’m not
going to do anything of the sort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
goes to show once again how…and blind Musulin is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zuckmayer’s book is simply awful; all the
names in it are misspelled, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
people are buying it just because it’s by Zuckmayer, and they also even like it
because it’s by him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say: I’m
surprised that Musulin didn’t know you well enough not to hope that you’d write
such a book review.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He ought to know you
well enough to know that he’ll never get you to do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, naturally, of course that annoys me;
we’ve known each other for fifteen years, but in actual fact he’s never really
known me at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course he’s charming,
and rich, filthy rich, and…Of course, when you’re watching his TV broadcasts
you can often tell what he’s…really like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But with all his money, he does everything he can to hide it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he’s very charming, and you’ve always got
to be wary of people who are charming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They’ve got no substance; they’re nothing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">but</i> charming and there’s not much of anything behind the
charm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s impossible to get by on
nothing but being charming and nice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
simply cannot say something good about a book that I abhor, because of course
that’s what Zuckmayer and Musulin are expecting of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of that it annoys me that he writes
that as a little boy I used to like drinking chocolate there at Zuckmayer’s
house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say: So far I haven’t read the
book at all, apart from an excerpt in the newspaper in which he got blood
poisoning in a pond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I got the
impression that it wasn’t any better written than an eighth-grader’s
composition exercise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t understand
how a man like Zuckmayer could write something like that and have it published.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas says: The only person to blame for
that is Schaffler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s just a
gold-digger; he’s talked him into writing it, because it’ll sell well even if
it’s rubbish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zuckmayer is senile; he’s
got a greedy wife and a greedy daughter, and they just want to squeeze
everything out of Zuckmayer’s name that can still be squeezed out of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Finally Thomas says that it irritates him
that it’s going to cost him 50 schillings to send the telegram in which’s he’s
going to decline to write the review, and it vexes him even more that he’s also
going to have to drive to the post office in order to send it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve always got a few telegram forms for that
purpose ready to hand at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll give
you two of them and some carbon paper so that you can also make a carbon copy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas makes as if to go to the study nook,
where my typewriter is set up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I go
get my typewriter and say:</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> </span></i><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Take your time.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"> I place the machine in front of him on the
table and say that I’ll take the telegram to the post office for him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas types: Baron Musulin 28
Leerbachstrasse/Frankfurt D 6.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have been
ill two months and condemned to complete inactivity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sincerely Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There, now they’ll think I’m about to kick
the bucket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I wouldn’t have used any
other excuse even if I’d been well, because I can’t be wasting my time on
Musulin and Zuckmayer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Then, beaming with joy, I show him the
tickets for the Salzburg Festival premiere of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ignoramus and the Madman</i> that I picked up earlier today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas contemplates the tickets and says: Ten
years ago I would never have dared dream that something like this would ever
exist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ignoramus and the Madman</i>; the title alone is madness, but
everything is madness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The seventh row;
these are good seats; critics and guests of honor will be sitting right in
front of you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But why is the performance
on the 28<sup>th</sup>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, you see,
Kaut told me that there’s been one tiny change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas contemplates the tickets a bit longer and suddenly says: But
these are for August 28.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ve given
you the wrong tickets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The premiere is
on July 29! Thomas says I’ve got to go right away, before the end of the day, and
return the tickets and absolutely insist on being given tickets for the
premiere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that this travel agency
in Gmunden had once booked him a trip to Brussels that went all the way to
Brussels on a branch line without any express service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That on top of that his aunt had once been
given the wrong timetable, and when she complained about it, the employees
there had just kept calmly consuming their sausage rolls, whereupon his aunt
kicked up a huge ruckus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’ll never
use this travel agency again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I say
that they were adamantly determined to sell me a ticket to a matinee on August
26.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even though I repeatedly said I
hadn’t ordered it, they kept saying that this ticket had been ordered by me,
that I had to take it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, when
they took a good hard look at my request, they said, yes, the ticket was
ordered by somebody else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said:
The world is crawling with these “little Meingasts” who screw up everything.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas stayed till 5:00, and we agreed that
I’d go straight to the ticket agent’s and then report back to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said that when I got there I should
say that all three of them deserved to have their heads chopped off, and that
all three of these heads with their tongues lolling out should be put behind
the front window with a sign over them reading: They sold wrong timetables and
wrong tickets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That I should take an axe
with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That on top of that I should insist
on their calling the box office in Salzburg while I’m standing there and that
if the people in Salzburg say that no more tickets are left, I should
remonstrate with them and tell them that that can’t be true, that the author
himself said that, because he knows from experience that there are always a few
tickets left even when they say there aren’t any.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That the call must be made right away,
because the box office is always open, there’s always somebody there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That I should throw down the tickets and immediately
demand to have my money back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That I
should also tell them about the business with his aunt and with the
preposterous train itinerary they booked him there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In response to all of this I say to Thomas:
I’ll do what I can, but I’m so worn out that I can’t raise any more fusses
today; besides, I still won’t have any tickets even if I do lop off their
heads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas asks me to come see him as
soon as I get back from Gmunden; he wants to know how things turned out.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In Gmunden the paperwork associated with my order makes it
clear that tickets for 8/29 were ordered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The 29, I say, comes from me, but you’re to blame for the 8.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ordered tickets for 7/29.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m also shown a letter from the box office
in Salzburg in which they write that there isn’t going to be any performance of
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ignoramus and the Madman</i> on the
29<sup>th</sup>, but that there is going to be one on the 28<sup>th</sup>, and
that they are therefore sending tickets for the 28<sup>th</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On being informed that there are no more
tickets left there, the employee says that the author knows that despite that
there are always a few tickets available, and that because the customer is an
acquaintance of his, they should hand them over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Salzburg they insist that they’re all
gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a sop they tell her that if any
tickets are returned they’ll be sent over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whereupon I say to the employee that Thomas Bernhard has asked me for
their heads, that he’s furious at them, and that they had once led him to
Brussels along a branch line, via Brussels, and I also rebuked the employees
for what his aunt had gone through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s completely irrelevant, this woman said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course it’s very much relevant, I say,
because the same sort of cockup happened then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She gives me back my money without further ado and asks me to come back
tomorrow, when Mr. Ruckser, who took down my order wrong, will be there,
because it’s in his handwriting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Right afterwards I visit Thomas in Nathal; it’s about 6:30 in
the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He immediately asks me
whether I talked about chopping off their heads, and when I say yes, he asks: Did
you also say that their tongues would have to be lolling out of their chopped-off
heads as well?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I forgot to say that, I
say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I mentioned the bit about the
sign that would have to be posted above their chopped-off heads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then it’s fine, says Thomas; how’s the
situation with the tickets? After I’d briefed him, he said that I shouldn’t let
it slide no matter what.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That they could
get hold of the tickets whenever they liked. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That I’d ordered them in the proper way, that
I had a right to the tickets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What the
hell, if somebody flew here from America they obviously couldn’t say to him: It
was a mistake; we haven’t got any tickets either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas tries really hard to stir me up to
take the initiative quite energetically tomorrow, because he’s convinced that
tickets are still available, even if the people in Salzburg have said there
aren’t any left there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then he shows me the bill from Stadlbauer the master
electrician in Laakirchen; it amounts to 32,346.10 schillings for the
installation of the entire heating system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He was charged 4,000 for labor, so that the radiators and the building
materials cost about 28,000 schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We both found the bill quite fair after we went through the individual
items.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas says he budgeted for
30,000 to 35,000 schillings, so shortly before noon today he went straight to
Gmunden to transfer the money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now he
says he’s got 50,000 schillings in debt at the bank.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now it’s easier for him, because it’s very
disagreeable to have credit at the bank, because the inflation rate is rising
so quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that it’s better to
have 50,000 in debt than 50,000 in credit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That kind of credit melts like snow in the sun.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then we find ourselves talking about Radax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas saw the broadcast on Wednesday and is
disappointed in Radax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His statement in
Viennese dialect was particularly execrable, a person simply can’t say
something like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of that, in
the meantime Thomas has perused Radax’s screenplay, perused it more closely,
and noticed that Radax transcribed whole passages from the book verbatim and
then just tacked on where the person’s got to go or where the person’s got to
be next. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What Radax has done certainly
isn’t worth 20,000 DM.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you consider
that he’s getting 20,000 for this, you become conscious of the fact that that’s
much too much for this job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of
that Radax writes: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frost</i>, adapted
from the novel of the same name. That alone is already a disgrace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when he comes, I’ll tell him a thing or
two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell Thomas that he shouldn’t do
that, that he should instead let Radax fail, and he’ll come to do that even
more easily with something new.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
a bad film by Radax based on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frost</i>
won’t do him any harm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When Thomas notices shortly before 7:30 that I’m about to
leave him, he says that he’d like to come along, that he couldn’t bear to spend
this evening alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later on at my house
Thomas is so high-spirited and witty that I say he’ll “laugh himself out of his
own chest” before long, that he’s laughing so hard his insides are surely
coming loose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 11:30 I take Thomas home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We agree that at 8:30 in the morning I’ll come to him with his mail and
then ride with him to the doctor’s office.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">14 April 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Shortly before 8:30 a.m. I’m at Thomas’s house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s only got two letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each of them is from a publishing firm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He chucks them and doesn’t even read them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again he asks me to come with him to the
doctor again, and also actually to go with him into the office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, I had already promised to book him
“from behind,” so that he could go right in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He also gives me the photocopy of the municipal government’s confirmation
from the farmer’s association, which the agricultural commission urgently
needed, because the municipal government didn’t have access to the confirmation
from the farmer’s association.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a
letter from the Ohlsdorf municipal government in which it’s confirmed that
Thomas is running his farm on his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
then talked Thomas into having a photocopy made so that I could take possession
of it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time I also added my own
notes as an attachment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was good
that Thomas had this photocopy as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I had it photocopied again and took a copy to Mr. Panholzer the engineer
from the agricultural commission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
invited Thomas to my house for dinner at 7:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between now and then Thomas will visit Dr.
Meingast himself and ask him for the main contract for this coming Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I point out to Thomas that he should tell Dr.
Meingast this by 10:00 a.m. at the latest so that he can pick up the lustrum by
noon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it’s Friday, and in the
afternoon Dr. Meingast might be at court and no longer able to get the dates
from the surveyor’s office and so also unable to finish preparing the contract
until Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, this contract can
only be signed on a Monday, when Asamer stays at home all day, and once the
weather is better, Asamer will also be out in his fields from four in the
morning till eight in the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because he’s constantly on the move on his own with his machines in his
roughly 150 hectares.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more,
because he already knows the price he’s sold the land for, once he’s begun to work
in his fields we won’t even be able to drag Asamer to the notary’s office with
a lasso, because we’ll never be able to find him, what with his fields being so
expansive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Thomas will do everything
he can to make sure to get hold of the contract from Dr. Meingast by
Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas also gives me some advice
on my visit to the ticket office and says in conclusion: If the worst comes to the
worst, you can have mine, because of course you know I’m not going to attend
the premiere in any case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I say:
Haven’t you promised that ticket to Irina, Rochelt’s wife?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She told me she didn’t have any tickets yet
but that she’d certainly be receiving one, and then I thought, “She’ll be
sitting next to Aunt Hede.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas gets indignant: I’m not giving anybody
a free ticket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only in the event that
you couldn’t get hold of anything would I give you the ticket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve told all my acquaintances that they must
surely think I’m worth the cost of a ticket to the premiere, and that if they don’t,
they’ll just have to miss it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
certainly not going to insist on their attending the performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For exactly the same reason I don’t give
away books anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where would that get
me; if I give 49 acquaintances a book, then the fiftieth is upset if he doesn’t
get one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s all stopped; that
business of giving away books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
anybody’s interested in my books, he’ll have to buy them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But naturally in the event that you can’t get
a ticket anymore, you can certainly have mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well, you know, I say, in my case it’s on account of my family; they’ve
really been looking forward to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe
I could still get tickets through Peymann, because of course he’s bound to have
a few tickets at his disposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Next I accompany Thomas to the doctor’s office in
Steyrermühl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I make his appointment
“backwards,” but because just then the doctor is giving a patient stitches,
which is going to take at least another 20 minutes, the nurse promises that
Bernhard will be announced immediately afterwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he’s just going to have to take a seat at
the front.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I sit there with Bernhard for
about another 30 minutes because we’re having a very interesting conversation
and the patient with the stitches still wasn’t finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I left him we had no idea that this would
be a successful day for both of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
he’d finalize the contract and I’d get hold of the tickets for the
festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said goodbye and that I’d be
seeing him at 7:00 that evening. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 7:00 p.m. Thomas shows up for dinner as scheduled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He managed to get everything done just fine;
the sales contract is set to be signed at three o’clock Monday afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rendezvous point is Dr. Meingast’s
office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He hasn’t notified Mr. and Mrs.
Asamer yet, because he was planning to ask me to do that for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell him I’ll drive to the Asamers’ house in
Ohlsdorf right after dinner, because I’ll be sure of finding Rudolf at home
then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sooner they know that they’re
going to have to be in Gmunden at 3:00 p.m. this coming Monday the better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But even before then I can report to Thomas that the travel
agent’s in Gmunden has already promised me the tickets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Officially no further tickets can be
delivered to the agent’s, but they’ve received the tickets privately, meaning
via a private individual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just as
Thomas said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When they say they’re
completely sold out, there’s still always something there for private
emergencies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course I was very happy
about this and gladly drove to Asamer’s afterwards. I found Asamer at home, and
he agreed to sign the contract with his wife on Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas was soothed by learning that this had
been taken care of as well, and he remained in a good mood until 10:30 p.m.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Granny sewed up the torn pocket of his windbreaker very
nicely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was actually highly delighted
that the seam turned out so well that it was almost unnoticeable, and he
thanked her very warmly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Because most of the time Saturday and Sunday are days on which
we find it hard to meet up because most of the time I’m busy viewing lots or
houses with customers, we’ve agreed that if we don’t meet up before then I will
in any case come to his house with the mail early Monday morning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 15, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas stops by at three in the afternoon and only finds only
my mother here, because we, my wife and I, are on the road with prospective
buyers of houses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas chats for a
while with my mother in the garden and asks her to give me his regards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since there were quite a lot of people here
on Saturday, it wasn’t until Sunday that I recalled that I had actually said to
Thomas: If you don’t stop by, I’ll check in with you to see how you’re doing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 17, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Shortly before eight in the morning I came to Thomas’s house
with the mail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’d received a huge pile
of letters, including one from Musulin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I asked Thomas if he’d mind if I stayed a bit longer so that I could
look through my own mail and for another reason that I’d tell him about
later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas was fine with staying
until 9:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also spoke about the
Japanese Nobel Prize winner who had committed suicide at the age of 72 the
previous day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few years ago one of his
fellow-Japanese writers committed hara-kiri.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As I had done many times before, I told him that suicide was a very
frequent cause of death among writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas says: At 72 that’s the best thing you can do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you were to kill yourself at the age of
72, I’d hold you in very high regard and doff my hat to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the pointed cap you’ve got on right now, I
say. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas says he’s wearing it so that he doesn’t
catch a cold, because he’s just washed his hair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As soon as I walked in I noticed that he
seemed healthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was why I wanted to
stay there with him longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After an
hour he hadn’t coughed even once, so I said to him that I was trying to observe
whether he was still coughing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Especially whether he was coughing those dry, short coughs that are
typical of “Bocke’s disease,” which he wasn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So he can calmly go to Vienna, get a checkup there, but still assert
that he’s got a cough and pressure in his chest so that he can be thoroughly
tested for “Bocke’s” and come back with a firm confirmation that he hasn’t got
a case of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Bocke’s” sitting in his
chest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas agrees with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I took my leave I invited him to come over
to my house at 7:00 in the evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Before I leave Thomas also tells me that he felt the
earthquake at exactly 12:05 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said
that it was impossible he was mistaken, because he was lying on the divan when
suddenly flames starting shooting out of the stove, as if the stove was about
to explode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time he was
being shaken towards the stove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whereupon he leapt to his feet and wrote down the time, 12:05, on a slip
of paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, he said, it was impossible
he was mistaken, because he knew what TV show he’d been watching, and it hadn’t
aired at 11:00 a.m. or whatever other time was reported in the news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said it was really sloppy work to report a
wrong time for the earthquake, because he had distinctly felt it, and that was
most certainly at 12:05.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the meantime
I’ve read in the paper today that an aftershock was felt in the Vöcklabruck
area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Thomas really hadn’t been
mistaken, but the aftershock wasn’t announced in yesterday’s news.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 7:00 Thomas came by as scheduled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During dinner he told me that today he’d
mailed replies to two letters that he’d received some time ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One was to the general manager of the
Burgtheater, who had written him a five-page letter about a fortnight ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he, Thomas, said that he found it impossible
to write a full reply to such a long letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That he couldn’t understand how the general manager of a theater could
ever write such a long letter to an author, a letter with so many little
details, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That that wasn’t
appropriate either for the general manager or for the author.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that just goes to show what small fry
these people are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He only wrote a very
brief reply to Klingenberg, didn’t go into particulars in the letter and
notified him that he’d have to come see him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He wrote the second letter to his female friend in Hamburg,
and in it he offered her his ticket for the premiere in Salzburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, in the meantime she’s written him a
very nice letter, and she’s supposed to sit next to Hede at the premiere while
he waits for us in the coffeehouse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
show Thomas my tickets for the premiere, which I received today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He sees that they’re seats at the back behind
the central box and says, these seats are very good; he’s had a seat like that
quite often, and if I can’t see anything I should simply bash the person at the
front of the box on the head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has
always just thwacked away at the people in front until they just got tired of
it and let him have a proper view.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then came the highpoint of the evening, when we went up to the
second floor to watch the TV news program <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Age in Images</i> in Granny’s apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Right at the beginning of the news Granny pulled Thomas’s stiletto out
of his buckskin breeches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I noticed
this, and because Granny had been playing this same practical joke every two
months for as long as I could remember, I said to her: Omi, if you do that one
more time, Thomas is going to stab you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yes of course, said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s
do it right now, I said, so that we can report your actual age in the
newspaper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m 72, as you know full
well, said Granny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas says, That’s
the age when that Japanese guy Kawabata killed himself; it’s a very good age to
die at.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where do you want to be buried,
I asked Omi, next to Grandpa in Ottensheim or in Ohlsdorf?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas drafted a half-dozen newspaper
headlines: Writer Stabs to Death 72-Year-Old Granny, Blood-Dripping Knife
Recovered from Crime Scene, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgau0Wmn3VUQSfq75qnxjHylqhYv2rrPPKGKeopmyfy7WBTjoUER6aPOJKTBjdYrwA99gAXdjE0kG8sXTFcZbRXxulRKlQ4sL3ZBoI8QuSOSsFjP1kWdVYgHyp4uAQY_h22HnF3Ow/s1600/Wohnzimmer.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="583" data-original-width="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgau0Wmn3VUQSfq75qnxjHylqhYv2rrPPKGKeopmyfy7WBTjoUER6aPOJKTBjdYrwA99gAXdjE0kG8sXTFcZbRXxulRKlQ4sL3ZBoI8QuSOSsFjP1kWdVYgHyp4uAQY_h22HnF3Ow/s1600/Wohnzimmer.PNG" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In
Granny’s apartment on the second floor of Karl Ignaz Hennetmair’s house, the
viewing schedule was dominated by five channels: “</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Austrian Channels 1 and 2,
German Channel 1, and Thomas in an Austrian accent and in a Bavarian one.</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>” </i>(Diary entry, June 27, 1972).</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When footage of the Socialist Party’s conference in Villach
is shown, Thomas starts acting like a ventriloquist as he mimics the political
promises in a high voice and then announces the price and tax hikes in a very
deep voice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He keeps switching between
the two; he makes promises in a high voice, and in a deep voice he admits that
the opposite of what’s promised will happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As Governor Sima’s speaking a few really lame sentences, Thomas says,
people like this make political programs, we’re ruled by people like this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ve simply got no personalities, and the
Austrian People’s Party has also hit rock bottom; they haven’t got any
personalities either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What can possibly
happen next, when the people believe all that stuff, when they’re duped by such
inanities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the news on the German
channel, we turn off the set, and because Granny was planning to go to Linz
early tomorrow morning, she went to bed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When were alone afterwards Thomas said that he had received a
long letter from Musulin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Musulin is so
nice and…He writes whether he can help me, because I’m so ill, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally it’s true I’m ill, but there’s
obviously no help for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no idea
what I’m supposed to write in reply; is he expecting some sort of
tear-jerking letter from me, or what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
he already knows how execrable and lousy I’m feeling, he must have noticed from
my telegram that it’s not all about my illness, even though I wrote “cordially
Thomas.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it had really been only
about my illness, I would have added a couple of words to a telegram like that,
for example, that I was “unfortunately” condemned to inactivity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If that had been genuinely true, I would have
had to limit my telegram to a few words like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he’s so…, he doesn’t realize that at all,
something like that never occurs to him. “For two months I’ve been ill and
condemned to complete inactivity, cordially Thomas,” so if he’s intelligent,
he’s absolutely got to realize that this isn’t just about my illness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But am I supposed to stop writing
“cordially,” so that he’ll realize what a monster I actually am?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he knows what a horribly unpleasant person
I am, he’s simply got to comprehend a telegram like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But apparently he still doesn’t understand me
at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A person simply can’t expect
anything from me; of course, I don’t expect anything from people either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m not even going to do the interview with
Kaut, which we were planning on doing before the festival and that I promised
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tell me, said Thomas, how am I
supposed to do that, before the festival?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m sure that starting in May the reporters from all the newspapers will
descend on me, and I’ll be expected to say something about my play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before the premiere they’ll all impose
themselves on me, but I won’t say anything at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got nothing to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The play is there, and there’s nothing to say
about it or any need to interpret it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everything I’d say would certainly just be stupid, and in ten years I
myself wouldn’t be able to listen to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On top of that journalists leave out sentences or distort what you’ve
said because they cut something out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel
so strong that I’m not going to get involved in anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally, I say, like that one time when you
said “narcissism” [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Narzissmus</i>] and
they left out the “r,” even if it was just out of sloppiness; you’re constantly
exposed to the danger of your meaning being distorted, and you’re at their
mercy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They can select and publish the
worst bits instead of vice-versa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
what’s the best way for me to escape from their clutches? says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, I say, you should lock yourself in your
house again and not budge, and since you’ve recently stopped interacting with
your neighbors altogether, they don’t know where you are, and they’ll say maybe
he’s at the Krucka or in Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if
you’re actually confronted by somebody from the newspaper, because he happens
to chase you down, you’ll say you’re stuck in the middle of a great work; that
you’re totally preoccupied with it, that you can’t possibly be torn away from
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’ve got to rebuff a person like
that just that bluntly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gave him some
advice to the effect that he should walk in the deepest part of the forest, so
that your walks won’t be noticed by the neighbors and they can’t give away any information,
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On account of the daily mail and
the newspapers that he’ll want to read in the coffeehouse, holing up in the
Krucka for several weeks is out of the question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end Thomas justifies his plan not to
give the newspapers any information at all and not to let anything be written
about the performance beforehand, on the grounds that there’s no point to it.
Because either the play will be a success, in which case it isn’t necessary to
try do anything on its behalf beforehand, or it’ll be a flop, then everything
that’s been written beforehand will have been for nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s why he’s not going to do the interview
with Kaut, the president of the festival, either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the only good thing to do is to do
nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas sang and even warbled
and stayed until 11:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like a
weight being off his chest again, the idea that he’s not going to take on any
further obligations whatsoever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Because tomorrow I’m planning to go to bed quite early,
because I’m going to go to Vienna at three in the morning on Wednesday, I
promise to bring him his mail early tomorrow and visit him at about 8:00 in the
evening just so that we can see each other. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 18, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 7:15 in the morning I took Granny to the train in
Steyrermühl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Afterwards I picked up the
mail in Ohlsdorf and took it to Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I gave him Granny’s warm regards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She said he should sharpen his knife while she’s away; she’ll be back on
Friday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we’ll see right away
whether Granny’s waterproof and stab-proof, said Thomas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Because I was planning to leave for Vienna at three in the
morning, I told Thomas that I’d visit him at about 5:30 p.m., at 6:00 at the
latest, and that I’d then go to bed early.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because I had a ton of things to take care of, it was 6:30 p.m. sharp
when I knocked on Thomas’s door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
gate is locked from inside, and when after I’ve knocked twice there’s no sound
of anybody stirring, I went around to the back of the house to see if Thomas
had left the courtyard through one of the back gates, and to peer through the
crack in the gate to see if he was in the cellar or the stable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I observed that he wasn’t in the cellar
and hadn’t left the courtyard through the back, I continued circling around the
house to my car and drove off immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There wouldn’t have been any point in sticking around, because he would
have been in a bad mood when he came to the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He waited for me from 5:30 on, counting every
minute, and in my mind I can see him furiously locking the door just after
6:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I was driving away I felt that
he was watching me, and I didn’t look back at the house even for a second so
that he’d get the impression that I couldn’t have cared less whether he came to
the door or not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On top of that I didn’t want to see him in a peevish
mood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously he hadn’t had any
opportunities to vent his spleen anywhere lately, so that I myself was in more
and more danger of being a target of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 19, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I was planning to be back from Vienna at about 11 a.m.; but we
ended up not being back until six in the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we were walking in, our daughter Reinhild
said that Bernhard had stopped by a half an hour earlier and asked where I
was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he heard that I hadn’t yet
returned from Vienna he said that he was worried. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 20, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 1:00 p.m. Wieland Schmied and his three-year-old daughter
walk into my house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We shoot the breeze
for an hour so that we can drive over to Thomas’s together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Naturally Thomas wasn’t at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I realized this as soon as I noticed that the
key to the gate outside the house was in its usual “stowage space.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Dr. Schmied pulled himself all the way up
to the window-grates to see if the car wasn’t parked in the courtyard and
Thomas himself actually inside the house. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said he wouldn’t put it past Thomas to
stow the key to make people think he wasn’t at home even though he actually
was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I said to Dr. Schmied: That
really wouldn’t make any sense, because of course the only person who knows
where the key is stowed is me; he puts it there so that I can fetch cider, or
in case he’s been burgled, I can get into the house immediately if he isn’t
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doing that for strangers who
wanted to visit him wouldn’t make any sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well, I dunno, says Dr. Schmied; he knows I’m coming, so maybe he’s
taking cover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say that at the moment
Thomas tends to be in a fairly good mood, because he’s lucked out in purchasing
those woods over there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I say this I
point at the woods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, by then we’d
walked round to the backside of the house and were headed towards those woods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After this Dr. Schmied wanted to go to Gmunden to make a telephone
call.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I wasn’t sure whether he’d
run into Thomas in the course of the day, I told him that he and his wife
should come to my house at seven in the evening. Thomas is sure to show up at
my house around then, because by then we won’t have seen each other in a full
day; he’ll surely stop by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aha, said Dr.
Schmied, you’ve still got your usual time in the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, I said, at least when things are normal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Dr. Schmied said he wasn’t sure exactly
when in the evening he’d be able to stop by, because his wife was on the road
with her boss, Dr. Willi Keller, and he couldn’t come over until she got home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because he’s used to a nocturnal existence, I
said he could even stop by at 10 or 11 p.m., that it wouldn’t inconvenience me
in the slightest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said, I’d stop by and see him in Lederau in
the afternoon, because I had some stuff to do in the area. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By doing that I’d learn if he hadn’t already
run into Thomas in Gmunden.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then at about 4:30 I was in Lederau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Schmied showed me the new larch
floorboards in the hallway, in the ribbed vault, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He hadn’t run into Thomas yet; his wife
hadn’t gotten home yet either.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Afterwards I drove to Thomas’s house at
Nathal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He met me in the courtyard and
said: Mrs. Schmied is here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They ran
into each other on the street towards Ohlsdorf; Thomas was on his way home, and
Mrs. Schmied wanted to visit Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
was at about 5:15 when I walked into Thomas’s house, and so I got the
impression that the visit had been going on for a while already.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas was incredibly rude to Mrs. Schmied,
so that she eventually said: You’re really a monster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon I said: You’re saying that as
though he’s only become a monster just now; you’ve got to admit that he’s
always been a monster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He just keeps
becoming more and more of one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t
want the doctor, by whom I meant her boss, getting the idea that Thomas is just
being a monster today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That would be a
huge misconception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas Bernhard, I
said, will evolve into an even bigger monster from year to year; after all,
he’s getting older.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas nodded at my
words, and I noticed that he had no problem with being described as a proper
monster in the presence of this new visitor, the doctor who had arrived with
Mrs. Schmied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas poured Mrs. Schmied
and me some schnapps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The doctor, who
hardly said a word, declined to take any.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because he has a low tolerance for it, said Mrs. Schmied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then we got started talking about Aunt Hede, who’s
still in the hospital, who’s already been there for four weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wrote that she would have to stay there
another four weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said: She
simply hasn’t been eating enough; she only weighs 44 kilos now, so that her
little gastric ulcer has gotten bigger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I said: Because she’s been taking too little nourishment, the little
gendarmes have simply crawled into the bigger ones, so that they’ve still got
something to digest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon Thomas
gazed at me reflectively and said: What more is there to say about this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then—it was about 5:25—Thomas said that he still
had to mail an express letter at the post office before 6:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of that, after I’d told him about my
plan to have everybody meet up at my house after 7:00, he said that he was
already too weak for an evening get-together today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he might still just manage to stop by
Lederau very briefly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that he was
still feeling very enfeebled by his illness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is the reason that he still wants to send the express letter to
Mrs. Gertrud Frank from Residenz Publications in Salzburg today, to keep Elias
Canetti from coming to visit him this coming Sunday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he’s simply in no condition to entertain
Canetti and engage in a taxing conversation with him for several hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said that he had written that not
seeing him (Canetti) would pain him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
the same time, he said, he’d be glad if he didn’t see him, because incessantly
speaking about death with him was unpleasant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even though he likes him, Canetti, very much, he’ll be glad if he
doesn’t visit him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it’s
revolting to discuss your current problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everybody’s got to follow his own path and solve his own problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By then it was ten minutes to six and more than
high time to take the letter to the post office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because Thomas didn’t want to chuck us
out, he said that tomorrow he’d send a telegram in lieu of the letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I said: But you can’t write in a
telegram that it’ll pain you not to see him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It’ll be better if the letter is still sent off today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m ready to take it the post office right
away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I really found it quite pleasant to get away in
such an auspicious way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because in the
first place, Thomas was already getting quite annoying, and in the second place
I wanted to see at least the second and third periods of the international ice
hockey game between the U.S.S.R. and Czechoslovakia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’d still be able to see if the Czechs had
won the world championship after I’d dropped off the letter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 21, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 12 noon sharp Thomas came to my house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He likes coming by at midday on Fridays,
because he knows there will be a good desert then, and he’s a huge
desert-lover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After lunch Thomas talks
about what happened with Dr. Schmied yesterday evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that they had dinner at Roith’s
Tavern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole time, until two in the
afternoon, he heaps abuse on Schmied’s wife.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He says that she’s insufferably loud, that with the looks of a
40-year-old she behaves as ridiculously as a 20-year-old and deliberately plays
the role of a 20-year-old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he, Dr.
Schmied, plays along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He plays the role
of a 25-year-old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schmied has all the
charm of a ten-schilling plastic bucket; his opinions are just that trite and
stupid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their kid is spoiled rotten;
she’s been taught no manners whatsoever; she just keeps doing the opposite of
what her parents want her to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
parents bicker about her manners in front of her; each of them expects the
other one to make her behave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For him it
was a nightmare, this evening; he was scarcely able to endure it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t like saying anything against
Schmied, because he’s quite fond of him; but he says that this squabbling of
theirs is even worse than the squabbling between the Hufnagels, that he can’t
put up with it anymore either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What kind
of marriage is this, when they’re constantly saying you’ll have to let me have
this, and you can hold onto that, and constantly talking about divorce, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Just before 2:00 p.m., Thomas was lying on the
cushioned bench next to the stove, with his feet propped up on the chair in a
very comfortable position; I told him that I had to be in Wels at 3:00 and had
to leave no later than 2:30.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon
Thomas beseeched me to come with him to Nathal first so that I could help him
hang up the portrait of the French diplomat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He said that I’d hammered the nails for pictures into the wall so well
already a few times that he wanted me to hammer the nail into the wall this
time as well. We drove to Nathal right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I wanted to hang the picture about 5 cm higher, but he insisted on
leaving it at the height it ended up being, above the table in the little room
on the ground floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was persistently
of the opinion that the picture would have a better effect if it were hung
about 5 cm higher, but Thomas stuck to his guns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas showed me a telegram from
Klingenberg, the general manager of the Burgtheater, in which the latter wrote:
“Contract with Axer (the director Thomas had wanted) finalized, but no letter
will follow.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMLGnQv1eUPKGECTc4jhvh4bM8s0zs5gmrU_wioMgdi4BRjguaq2X4bpbNi_I3fwi7zKzvbCqtsB7C3VLlym898b5JSphQ7naZSxVEFqlsMjQa0-IAAj39bJv7f0APBuTGBxr1ew/s1600/Diplomat.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="361" data-original-width="540" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMLGnQv1eUPKGECTc4jhvh4bM8s0zs5gmrU_wioMgdi4BRjguaq2X4bpbNi_I3fwi7zKzvbCqtsB7C3VLlym898b5JSphQ7naZSxVEFqlsMjQa0-IAAj39bJv7f0APBuTGBxr1ew/s1600/Diplomat.PNG" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Obernathal 2: the ground-floor room with the portrait of the
French diplomat<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas said, Klingenberg has obviously realized that
I’m none too keen on receiving letters from him because I answered his
five-page letter so curtly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of
that I can’t help assuming he realizes I’ve got a sense of humor, because of
course otherwise he wouldn’t have added “but no letter will follow.” So far in
all his telegrams he’s always written: Letter will follow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now he obviously realizes that I couldn’t
care less about his letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because if
Axer’s going to direct the play, if he’s the one who’s going to be calling all
the shots from now on anyhow, what more have the two of us got to write to each
other about it? </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Now maybe <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boris</i>
at the Burgtheater will actually be good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On the top of that it’ll be included in the season ticket subscriptions,
so I’ll be getting my 450,000 schillings whether or not anybody attends the
performances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then Thomas showed me the literature section of the Parisian
newspaper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Monde</i> and a note from a
family in Brussels he’s friends with [the Uexkülls] that says, if you can’t
translate this, just come and see us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Under a banner headline there was a review of his novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gargoyles</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Very positive, said Thomas, at least as near
as I can tell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said his high school
French was so bad that he was always embarrassed when he was alone at their
apartment in Brussels and the telephone rang.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then he just stands there and can’t communicate with the caller at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then they think, What kind of dope is that on
the other end of the line?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most he
can be sure of is that the review is very favorable is because in the event
that there’d been a negative reaction there’d have been just a short note or
even nothing at all in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Monde</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’m running a bit behind schedule when I leave for Wels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before I took off Thomas showed me the script
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ignoramus and the Madman</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas is glad that it’s exactly 99 pages
long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I perused the conclusion, where
Winter the waiter is summoned and the diva asks: “Did you send the telegrams to
Stockholm, Copenhagen, etc.?” Winter says: “Naturally, madam.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said the word “not” was obviously missing
from the script.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said: No, I left
it out; it’s better that way; don’t mention it to me anymore; everything else,
the “Thank God” and the whole conclusion, is going to stay the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s dark, and nobody knows who’s sweeping
the glasses off the table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 6:30 in the evening Dr. Wieland Schimed comes with his
daughter Franziska and without his wife; he says she isn’t feeling well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas has already told me in the afternoon
that Schmied would probably be coming this evening; he said it was debatable
whether his wife would come, because he had insulted her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Schmied said that he was driving straight
to Thomas’s, that he just wanted to check in and would come right back with
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After supper everybody stuck
around till 10:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the way through
our conversation Thomas was tearing into Dr. Schmied in a massive way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that everything he exhibited and sold
was trash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That people were just being
talked into believing it was modern art, but that Dr. Schmied had absolutely no
understanding of his own business, that he was certainly no expert, because if
he were he’d never, ever sell such trash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>People only buy it because they’re being asked to shell out so much
money for it, and because they’re stupid, they think if it’s expensive it’s a
work of art, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the conversation
turned to Lehmden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Schmied didn’t
remember that he had once given me a book by Lehmden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then his castle in Deutschkreutz was
eviscerated by Thomas. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far he’s had
eight rooms refurbished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s lunacy to
live in a castle like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Vienna
they’ve got a tiny apartment; his wife never goes to see him anymore at
Deutschkreuz because she can’t endure being in that castle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it really is unbearable and sheer lunacy,
says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s constantly running
around from one place to another looking for subsidies for that castle, even
Schaffler’s stepped in for him, but a whopping white elephant like that will
never amount to anything.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When I asked Dr. Schmied what he thought of the painting from
the eighteenth century, the portrait of the French diplomat, Thomas said: “How
can you ask Wieland a question like that, when he doesn’t know a single thing
about paintings; he knows nothing about modern art and even less about old
art.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas subsequently got more and
more aggressive and vehement in his evisceration of Dr. Schmied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the latter just let it all wash over him;
he knows Thomas all too well and knows that there’d be no point in fighting
against it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of that I got the
feeling that Thomas was right and that Dr. Schmied just sells that trash for
the money and that he’s just talked himself into believing it’s art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only a few of Lehmden’s things were good,
Thomas said, and a he liked a few other individual pictures, but Thomas
eviscerated the vast majority of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas is scheduled to have lunch <span style="color: black;">at Pabst’s</span>
with the Hufnagls and O’Donells at noon tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said that Dr. Schmied should come
too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Schmied agreed to do so, but
not firmly, because he’s going to be leaving tomorrow, and probably he’d also
be “worked over” too heavily by Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Now, after scaring away his brother, Thomas the monster has found
another victim to get him riled up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Lately I’d been very careful not to let him get started on anything with
me, because he didn’t have his aunt around to argue with either, and I knew it
was high time for Thomas to be able to get properly “riled up” up again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He needs that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s also possible that that’s the reason he
asked Canetti not to come from Salzburg to visit him on 4/23, because he was
afraid that there’d be a quarrel or some friction on account of the state of
his health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 23, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Towards 7:00 in the evening Thomas came to my house in
consternation and said: “Now I’m going have to move away from Nathal for a
year.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My wife and I were utterly flabbergasted
to hear such a thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said that
he had just heard that they were going to be drilling for oil just next to Maxwald’s
property near his farmhouse. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That the
site had already been unplugged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
now of all times, when he was about to throw himself into his work again, he’d
be completely unable to deal with that kind of noise pollution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That on top of that, those workmen worked
with spotlights on all night long, which was something he really couldn’t be
expected to put up with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time
there had last been drilling, in Ruhsahm, when there had been some woods
between the drilling site and his farmhouse, he had been terribly disturbed and
unable to sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas conferred with
me about whether he should immediately write to the minister of culture and education,
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told him that approval would have
to be granted by the Ohlsdorf municipal government first and that no matter
what, a hearing with the neighbors about the drilling would have to take place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That during the time of that drilling in
Ruhsam I myself had received an invitation to the hearing about the
construction even though my property had been very far away on the street and
next to the woods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Thomas that
he’d surely be heard before the drilling site was approved and surely have the
opportunity to stall it in a few appeals courts, so that because they wouldn’t
be able to start drilling quickly, they’d switch to another site.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of course the drilling equipment will
have to be used, and the oil company surely won’t want to get involved in a
long string of appeals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas said he was going to sue them for expenses for a hotel
stay and lost income, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas spewed
abuse and argued with me until 11:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He had arrived on foot, and because I was already exhausted from our
conversation, I let him walk back home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On all other occasions I’ve offered him a lift in my car.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Before he left, Thomas asked me if I’d go with him to Ohlsdorf
Town Hall at 7:30 a.m., because he wants to learn more there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wants me to be with him then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 24, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 7:15 in the morning Thomas came to my house and said that
last night he’d hardly been able to sleep a wink, but today he was up by 5:00
and then wrote a letter to the Ohlsdorf municipal government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he had come to the conclusion that it
would be better to address the letter with all its arguments etc. to the
municipal government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, read it, he
said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a crowdedly handwritten page
with a few lines on its other side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas stated his entire case, which we had talked over the day before,
and informed the municipal government that he would be sending a copy of this
letter to Governor Wenzel and to Mr. Sinowatz, the minister of culture and
education.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I’d read the letter,
Thomas said, this way I’ll be saving myself the effort of writing two more
letters, because I’ll send the carbon copies to Wenzl and Sinowatz, and now the
whole thing will be ready to hand everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now for once the ministry of culture and education will have to show why
it exists and what it can do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’ll just
have to get down and dirty with the ministry of commerce, or whoever else is
responsible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Along the way Thomas told Granny that he had
already gotten over yesterday’s shock; and they were already once again talking
about how they wanted to stab each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Granny wanted to test the blade of his knife on Thomas, but Thomas said
he wasn’t going to stick it in because we was too much of a coward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granny said she wanted one good stab before
“the curtain falls.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “iron curtain,”
said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A “slime curtain” will fall
if the drilling takes place, I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did
you see the way the whole neighborhood and the trees looked the last time?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything was covered by a ten
centimeter-thick layer of slime, when an eruption of gray slime was shot out of
the borehole after the drilling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
fire brigade had to come to remove the slime from the courtyard and the trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can’t move away, I said to Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s no solution; obviously you’ve got to
stay here on account of the “slime curtain.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Any day something might happen that will require you to be here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas took this doom-mongering of mine very
unkindly, and later, after the letter had been mailed in Ohsldorf and we were
parting company, he said to me: You’re a monster, Hennetmair; see you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 26, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Today at 8:00 in the morning I ran into Thomas at the Ohlsdorf
post office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I reported to him that
yesterday I had been at the house of his 82-year-old female neighbor at 99
Grasberg and done some bargaining in connection with the acquisition of some
additional land next to the Krucka, an acquisition that he had asked me to take
care of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Thomas that she told me
that she had already told the “Krucka man” (she was referring to Thomas) that
she couldn’t say anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I
understood the mentality of these people, I said to Thomas, I patiently and
slyly tried to figure out what she “couldn’t say.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the course of further conversation with the 82-year-old
woman, it turned out that another male neighbor, namely Druckenthaner the
farmer, had also been interested in acquiring this piece of land for
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That Druckenthaner had even
offered to let the sellers settle for life in a house much further uphill, a
house that already had electric lighting and wasn’t as hard to get to from the
village, etc. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that on account of
their uncle from Salzburg, who comes from Salzburg every weekend expressly to
help them with the work, they didn’t want to sell it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Upon my declaring that this uncle surely
wasn’t going to move there and would surely sell the property, the old woman
said that the uncle wanted to move there himself and was planning to have
lighting installed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this, I said to
Thomas, I gathered that a sale of the land either to him or to any of the other
interested parties was out of the question during the old people’s lifetime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will be necessary to have a timely
discussion with the uncle and make him a proper offer to buy in the event of an
emergency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Originally we, especially
Thomas, were planning to “outplay” the uncle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But he’s got much more influence with the old woman than we had
expected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of the time “legacy
hunters” like the uncle from Salzburg fall by the wayside and come away
empty-handed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the old woman believes
that the uncle would like to live there himself, and she’s too heavily under
his influence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But Thomas and I are convinced that the uncle from Salzburg will
be glad to have Thomas buy the property from him in the event that he inherits
it, because nobody else will think it’s worth the price that Thomas will offer
to pay for it as a neighbor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas also
says: Since you’ve got gym class tonight, I’ll come see you tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, at the latest, I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d been firmly expecting you yesterday
evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas also asked me if I had stopped by his house, the Krucka;
he was curious to learn how it was looking. I walked up the hill and walked
back down the hill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I walked past Druckenthaner’s
tenants’ house with the four dogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
was a lot of fresh snow on the ground, and I found it too slippery, I said,
otherwise I would have stopped by your house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ah yes, said Thomas, it did snow a lot yesterday.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 27, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 11:30 a.m. Thomas came to see me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he saw me, he said he could tell that I
had been playing cards for a very long time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yes, I said, at 11:30 I stepped in for somebody; we had been planning to
play tarot until midnight, but before we knew it was two in the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All three partners swore and cursed about the
fact that we were stupid enough to play for so long when we left off at
two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, it’s always like that, said
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few days ago I played
blackjack with Mrs. Schmied at Pabst’s, and I stipulated the exact time, down
to the last minute, when we’d call it quits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And of course the winnings and losses aren’t paid back; rather, whoever’s
losing at the end has actually lost, said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won a thousand schillings, and when the
clock showed the exact minute, I took my winnings and said: I’m sorry we agreed
to do it like this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I don’t know
anything; to be sure, the Hufnagls don’t play it often, but whenever they do,
they play it like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then Thomas told me that he had also sent a copy of the letter
to the mayor regarding the oil-drilling to the mining office in Salzburg and to
Schaffler (at Residenz Publications).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
each case I only wrote a couple of additional lines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wrote that the nature of the problem would become
clear from a reading of the enclosed letter to the mayor, that they had to stop
this from happening, and a closing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
expected that eighty percent of the recipients would chuck the letter into the
wastepaper basket, ten percent would reply to it, and another ten percent,
meaning Schaffler, would actually do something for me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then I showed Thomas Mrs. Barbara Peymann’s letter of 4/23/1972,
which I received this morning and have also already replied to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even so, I didn’t show Thomas the text of my
reply and didn’t even tell him that the reply was already in the mail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas read the letter and said that he
wouldn’t write to Barbara Peymann, that of course he didn’t know her at
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he said he’d still write to her
husband, Claus Peymann, to inform him that the accommodations in Pfaffstätt were
ready.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it’s awfully cheeky of her to
write that they’ll be coming to Salzburg in the middle of the week and get in
touch with me from there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously the
first thing they should do is inform me directly that they’ll be coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On Wednesday of next week I’ll be in Vienna
and taking my aunt to Wolfsegg and not waiting here to find out if this lord
and his lady will be coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I seconded
Thomas’s opinion and said that the letter was ineptly written.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How so, said<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas, that’s the way they write out there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Didn’t you notice the closing, “For today I
am yours with very friendly regards, Barbara Peymann”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What does “for today” mean, I say, tomorrow
and nothing else? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a cliché, said
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, but a stupid, mindless
cliché; you wouldn’t write something like that would you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s never any call to write clichés, I
say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, most people could never write
a proper letter, said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eighty
percent of people would never be able to figure out how to write to me, and so
they don’t write to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ten percent
write me lousy letters, and at most ten percent of the letters I get are
good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those would be the short letters,
I said, and the telegrams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
laughed and nodded in agreement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
Thomas said: Yesterday I received another insufferable letter from the wife of
Ruepricht the actor, a man I’ve never liked to begin with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wrote: “I know that you don’t want
this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless, I’m coming to see
you this coming Saturday afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Get
ready for it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As we were speaking, I invited Thomas over for lunch, and
Thomas told me that yesterday he and O’Donell were over at Dr. Jungk from the
agricultural commission’s house, and that Jungk gave him ridiculous
preferential treatment there, as if he were some sort of prizewinning animal or
God only knew what sort of great personality, to such an extent that O’Donell
and he himself were astonished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well
now, I said, it’s not every day that he gets to hang out with a Büchner
prizewinner; in fact not even every year or ever again in his entire life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top that I know from my aunt that Jungk is
a very nice person, because he was the best schoolmate of my cousin who was
killed in the war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then Thomas told me that Ruepricht’s wife, the woman who’s
coming this coming Saturday, had ridiculously pompous stationery with a huge
letterhead with Attersee and Litzlberg Castle and that both her Vienna
apartment and her Litzlberger address were printed above it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mere sight of stationery like that horrified
him from the outset.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas also said
that he had written to his publisher Unseld that his new novel would be called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Correction</i>, and that even as he was
writing to Unseld he was nailing himself to the resolution that the novel would
be finished by the end of 1972 and published in 1973.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, he said, I need that; I’ve got to
set myself deadlines, otherwise I don’t manage to get any work done, otherwise
a novel never comes into being, if I haven’t got to write it, if I haven’t got
to meet a deadline.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So far with everything I’ve done, I’ve always
worked under duress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I’ve got to
work on my new novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Correction</i>, I’m
not going to get involved in anything whatsoever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kaut is in for a surprise when he throws a
reception and a certain person doesn’t show up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve delivered my play, I’ve also got the money now, and if the press or
television wants something on account of the forthcoming premiere in Salzburg,
I won’t show my face anywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I won’t
say anything at all or about anything at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If the play is good, they’ll want something from me again anyway, and if
it’s a flop, I’m done for whether I give an interview beforehand or not. Kaut
is now apparently worried whether he won’t have the nerve to go through with
what he’s signed up to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it makes
no difference to me, I couldn’t care less what they do with my play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hermann plans to come to see me
next week without letting me know beforehand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That just isn’t going to be possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>People can’t get away with thinking that just because they’re in
Salzburg they can drive straight to Bernhard’s house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something like that deserves to be scheduled
beforehand, but at the right time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next
week I’m going to be in Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
Tuesday Aunt Hede will be getting out of the hospital, she’s got an appointment
for a checkup at the Baumgartner Höhe on Thursday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll go to Vienna no later than Wednesday, if
not as early as Tuesday afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right
afterwards I’ll take Aunt Hede to Wolfsegg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She’s already told them she’ll be coming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I’ve received some cough syrup from Mrs.
Schaffler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I don’t know what it
is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t taste like anything at
all, and I don’t even know how much of it I’m supposed to take.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no note with it; she just sent me
the bottle on its own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course she’s
learned that I’m ill, because I wrote that I couldn’t receive a visit from
Canetti, and then she sent me the bottle right away. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Canetti is so far gone that anybody can
invite him over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s old and senile and
gives a reading in a different village every eight days.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By then Thomas had asked me several times what I
thought of the title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Correction</i>,
whether it was good or bad, or if I liked it, what I thought of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I kept saying that the title was a very good
flash of inspiration, that it couldn’t be better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That it was a title that let you write about
anything, that it didn’t tie you to a specific theme.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, exactly, that’s just what I’m planning
to do, says Thomas, so I can write completely freely about everything; on top
of that there will probably be a lot of corrections.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We talked so much that I was worried that I wasn’t
going to be able to notice everything well enough to write it all down
afterwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly I fetched a
number of courses of food from the kitchen myself and secretly took some notes
every time I was there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time I used
the back side of a congratulatory telegram as my notepaper. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 2:00 in the afternoon, as Thomas was saying
goodbye, I invited him to come over at 7:00 in the evening, and he said: Fine,
we’ll see each other again in a couple of hours.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After Thomas had left, I started taking down these
notes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whenever I’m working on these
notes, my wife’s standing guard so that she can warn me so that Thomas won’t
walk in on me and see that I’m writing about him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 3:30 my wife raises the alarm: Bernhard’s
coming, she shouts into the room at me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas still saw me clearing my stuff away, but to keep him from
noticing anything, I picked up a few business letters and receipts and
pretended that I’d been doing some business work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas said, now the catastrophe has started.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A Caterpillar has already pushed the dirt
away; they’re already working on the drill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What am I supposed to do? Thomas asked me to go with him to the post
office and to the mayor’s office right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He said that he wanted to call Schaffler in Salzburg right away, that he
would have to make the mining office stop the work immediately. We drove to the
post office; Schaffler was out of town, but the secretary knew the whole story
and said that a letter was on its way to Bernhard, that the mining office was
going to inspect the site and that until they had, no work whatsoever would be
allowed to take place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, if
the owner of the oil company has already signed the contract, it will be
somewhat difficult to cancel the job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No
matter what, a hearing about the drilling with all the neighbors will be held.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Armed with this news we went to the town hall
to ask the mayor to stop the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
we had to visit the mayor at his house in Ruhsam because he wasn’t at the
hall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that the work ought to be
stopped immediately, that he was going to send a certain municipal official, Siegerl
Pesendorfer, to the site to demand that the work be stopped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a telephone call to the town hall it
transpired that Pesendorfer was at a hearing about a water conduit and might
not be back in less than an hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because such a huge bulldozer can move mountains of earth in an hour, I
said: We’ll drive Pesendorfer to the entrance of the drilling site ourselves
and announce to the driver of the bulldozer that the work is being stopped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From time to time Thomas would say that his career
would be ruined if a drilling station were built there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the building site the foreman of the
bulldozing operation was already ready to finish the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told us that only yesterday his boss had
ordered him with the greatest urgency to get started and that a second
bulldozer was supposed to be arriving shortly, that then the work would be
finished very quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even as we
were speaking a flatbed truck arrived with a second bulldozer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This new man hesitated to follow the order to
stop, and so I gave him my card and also wrote Thomas’s address on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gave it to him and told him that before he
began he should go to the mayor himself and ask whether it was true that the
work was being stopped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he believed
us and made a very complicated U-turn so that he could drive back to Mondsee,
where the headquarters of Kothmaier the transport company is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But shortly after he left for Mondsee the
official, Pesendorfer, arrived, made the announcement to the two men, and the
case was closed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas was delighted,
and we went to Maxwald’s, a.k.a. Haumer’s, house to share the news of this
situation with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We drank five shots
of schnapps with Maxwald.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then it was
six in the evening, and Thomas said to me: We’ll celebrate this today; I’m
treating you to supper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can pick
where we go.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said: Fine, but we’ll
have to stop by my house first so that I can tell my wife where I’ll be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We stopped by Thomas’s even before that,
dilly-daddled and shot the breeze, so that it was a quarter to seven when we
got to my house, where I told my wife that I was leaving to have dinner with
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But by then I was already so
tired and exhausted that I told Thomas that I’d prefer it if we stayed at my
house, because here I could prop my feet up on a chair and be comfortable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas had no problem with this, and as my
wife was fixing something to eat, we were both overcome with fatigue; probably
the schnapps was also having its usual effect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Then the front doorbell rang, and the Hufnagls
came in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both of them were very loud and
brought commotion into the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
asked me to tell the Hufnagels all about what had happened today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the two of them weren’t immediately
sorry for Thomas on account of that and even started laughing, Thomas got more
and more irritated at the Hufnagls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
top of that they couldn’t grasp the thread of the whole thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Hufnagl finally said they’d come there
to find Thomas to invite him to dinner at Pabst’s, Thomas said: It’s
impossible, I’ve been invited to have dinner here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I added that my wife wasn’t ready to receive
visitors, that otherwise I’d gladly invite them to join us for dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the Hufnagels had left, Thomas said: I
don’t know how you could ever be prepared for that much commotion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tonight I couldn’t have put up with it a moment
longer; it was good that you didn’t insist on their staying; I never could have
put up with that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas very
courteously thanked me for having helped him in this fashion today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By then we had eaten, and I asked Thomas to write
his overdue letter to Peymannn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well
then, let’s get down to business, Thomas said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He typed it on my typewriter; I made sure to keep a carbon copy, which I
attach.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ohlsdorf 4/27/1972<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dear Cluas Peymann,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hennetmair and I have inspected the house in which you are all
supposed to lodge; I cannot imagine a more ideal refuge for your entire
collective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So please thank the man in
writing; he is a genius.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From Kaut I
hear that you’ve been phoning around in search of accommodations long after
we’ve found them for you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How stupid! From
Salzburg I’m getting nothing but lousy news, skimpy but lousy news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As far as I’m concerned the story’s over
until the rehearsals; at that point I’ll allow myself to surface once or twice
so that you can curse me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found proofreading
the play The Ignoramus very taxing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hermann and Bickel are bound to come, because I myself sagely
didn’t agree to their coming.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From May the second onwards I’ll be in Vienna for four or five
days, which means I won’t be here. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At the moment I’m throwing everything I’ve got into a heroic war
against an English oil company and the government, who are both determined to
drill for oil in the immediate neighborhood of my workhouse and to ruin me.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The excavator has already dug up all the dirt, but today thanks to
me the machine was stopped and pulled away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For the time being. I abhor the use of armed force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Especially against excavator drivers and oil
magnates.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Rest assured you are a horrible human being.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What sort of director you are remains to be seen.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Very sincerely,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas B. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas stayed till 11:00 in the evening, and we agreed that
early tomorrow morning he would bring me the documents signed by the owner of
the drilling site, Baldinger, for photocopying, so that we’d have the documents
that were signed there ready to hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 28, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 7:15 a.m. Thomas is at my house and hands me the documents
signed by Alois Baldiner in the envelope in which Uexküll had sent him the
review from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Monde</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I had things to do in Gmunden throughout
the morning, I told Thomas that he should come to my house at 2:00 p.m., that
then I would try to help him get Baldinger to withdraw his signature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I think that will be necessary even
if the construction project is halted for the short term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas saw that I had a pile of documents in
front of me, and I told him that I’d like to fetch the mail from the post
office at 8:00, but that I still had a lot things to take care of
beforehand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fine, said Thomas; of
course it’s still a bit too early for my visit to the town hall anyway, but I
don’t wish to disturb you any further.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ll come back at two in the afternoon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 6:00 p.m. I saw Thomas’s car in front of the town hall; I
went into the post office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There I ran
into Pesendorfer, the official.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told
me that everything had changed again today, that the work had already been
resumed and that the building contractor was asking the mayor for a damage
settlement for the unauthorized cessation of the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the presence of the contractor and
Bernhard the mining authority and Salzburg was phoned, and from there it was
explained that no official permission was required for the excavation of the
topsoil or for the bulldozing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That a
cessation of the work could not be ordered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I didn’t have time to go to Thomas at the town hall to help him, because
in the meantime I had learned that that at the tavern Baldinger was on the
verge of tears because the gentlemen at the oil company had threatened him with
a lawsuit if he didn’t sign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I also
learned that he had been absolutely opposed to having any drilling done on his
property, but that in order not to have to deal with the lawsuit, he had
signed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was clear to me that from
then onwards everything boiled down to getting Baldinger to withdraw his signature,
which had been extorted from him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in
order to do that it was necessary for me to go immediately to Gmunden to have
the photocopies of the originals in my possession made so that we could
undertake something by means of the photocopies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Gmunden I ran into Mrs. Hufnagl, who had
visited me with her ex-husband the previous day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked her to come immediately with me to
Tausch the tax adviser’s office, where I was having the photocopies made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Mrs. Hufnags that she would have to
follow me to Ohlsdorf in a taxi right away because Thomas was in a tight
spot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He needs help and the
documents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also said that on the way
she should keep an eye out to see if Thomas wasn’t already heading to Gmunden
on the other side of the road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Towards 11:00
a.m. I was back at home and preparing the text that Baldinger was to sign.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 1:30 p.m. Thomas came to my house in the company of Mrs.
Hufnagl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said to me that the
construction work had been stopped yet again at 10:00 a.m. because at 10:00 the
head of the mining office had called from Ohlsdorf town hall and stated that
not even any preliminary work was allowed to be carried out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He stated that he would take personal
responsibility for the cessation when the latter told him that he would be receiving
a bill from the construction company for the losses the cessation would
occasion usw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon Thomas said that
now it would be a good idea to go straight to Baldinger and ask him for the
retraction of his signature from the agreement of 4/15/1972 etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I showed Thomas my draft of the letter to the
oil company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas was elated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s exactly right, said Thomas; Baldinger
is just blind; he really couldn’t read it; that’s why it’ll be the way that you
say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m quite certain of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why Baldinger will also sign this
letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to keep me from operating as
an amateur lawyer, let’s go to the town hall and have Secretary Möser write the
letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We did this, and then Thomas
drove with Maxwald to Baldinger to get his signature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Maxwald’s house I waited for the two of
them with Mrs. Hufnagl, who accompanied us all along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fair amount of time passed before Thomas
came back with Maxwald, because Baldinger had had to be fetched from the woods
first. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Baldinger naturally signed and
in conversation confirmed that the gentlemen had threatened him with a lawsuit
if he didn’t sign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said to Thomas: now
the head of the mining office [Franz Prezelj] is completely covered, because
even his cessation wasn’t yet legally binding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He will be glad to find this letter available this coming Tuesday, on
which he has agreed to make a personal appearance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks to Baldinger’s signed letter of April
28, 1972, the mayor and the head of the mining office are covered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore before the end of the day I will
also leave a photocopy at the town hall and at the same time take the letter to
the post office.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">By then it was 4:30 p.m., and Thomas drove with Mrs Hufnagl to
Lederau to see Mrs. Schmied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were
all planning to meet in Laakirchen in the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before they could do that Hufnagl the
architect would have to get back from Wörgl, where he’s involved in the
construction of that school. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 29, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 8:30 a.m. my wife came into the bedroom and said to me,
Thomas is here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I want to, I should
get up, but I don’t have to; he’d like to speak to me, but only if it’s
convenient; otherwise he’ll come back later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Naturally, I jumped right into the shower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was fine with getting out of bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas wanted to know how things were going
to play out, whether the gentlemen from the oil company wouldn’t badger
Baldinger again and bring him round to signing, whether those gentlemen
wouldn’t insist on everyone’s sticking to the 4/15 and, and who would have to
reimburse the workers involved in the bulldozing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said to Thomas: I don’t know how things are
going to play out, because I’m not a clairvoyant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve hardly been the judge and jury of the
case; one again you want to know what’s going to happen and how things are
going to play out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One thing is
certain—that these gentlemen won’t insist on the legality of the signature of 4/15
and that they’re not going file a lawsuit about it either, because they
themselves will let sleeping dogs lie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because otherwise, it would of course come to light that in acting on
the agreement they had been in violation of the law.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because they hired the workers illegally,
they are legally obligated to reimburse them and will have to restore the
property to its original state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes,
says Thomas, but if Baldinger is bowled over again, if he doesn’t dare say that
they threatened him with a lawsuit and that he didn’t want the thing to happen,
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more, there are quite a lot
of witnesses here who know how it was realized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Baldinger can only tell the truth, as he told it to everybody and to you
and even to Maxwald.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having been
pacified in this way to some extent, Thomas left after an hour. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">April 30, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At 6:00 in the evening Thomas came to me and said he wanted to
stay till 7:00, when he would be meeting the Hufnagls and O’Donell for dinner
at Pabst’s in Laakirchen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I asked Thomas if he had run into Mrs. Rueprecht from
Litzlberg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ran away, said Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yesterday I was at the Hunting Lodge
Restaurant in Offensee with O’Donell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Archduke Johann was having a VW bus washed with a hose when we got
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were only four tables,
where lunch was being served.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole
building is execrable, both inside and out, and it doesn’t fit into the
neighborhood either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon I said to
Thomas, I said the same thing to my wife when I was there a few weeks ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you see that, you’ll say that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am entirely of your opinion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course, said Thomas, that kind of
architect talked the dopey boy into something, and he simply did it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in financial hindsight it’s turning out
to be a complete washout.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The food is
wretched, and everything about the décor and furniture is atrocious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To avoid coming home too early I walked
around the lake with O’Donell afterwards, and then we also went to the
Forellenhof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The staff there also just
stand around like at the Offensee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
whole thing’s a washout, there’s no business, how is something like that
supposed to pay off?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What enormous investments!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People just don’t want such pubs, everything
made out of glass, etc. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like an actual
woodcutter’s hut, that’s what pubs should be like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Small, a space in which the guests sit all
mixed together and where you’ve got to associate with the locals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The old Hunting Lodge should have been turned
into a guesthouse but also left the way it was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When I got home, said Thomas, there was naturally no sign of
Mrs. Rueprecht there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Erika (Dr.
Wieland Schmied’s wife) had thrown in a note to me stating that she had already
gone home to Germany. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When she got back
from supper at Pabst’s, there were six men in her bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People had already squatted in the house in
the past; probably once again people were thinking there was nobody in the
house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of that, Erika wrote, she
had been at the police station for four hours and had a minor accident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether she was there in connection with the
six men or the accident or as a witness, I can’t figure out why she was at the
police station so long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said to
Thomas: We should go over there in a few days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then at the office we’ll learn all about what was going on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it’s interesting, whatever might have
happened.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thomas also told me that he had seen the car accident that
happened between Steyermühl and Vorchdorf, which was reported in today’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kronen Zeitung</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas looked at the clock; it was 7:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re already waiting on me now, he said,
I’ve got to leave; otherwise it’s completely off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With that Thomas said good night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">END OF PART III</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="background: rgb(254 , 253 , 250); color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">Translation unauthorized but Copyright </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">©2019 by Douglas Robertson . Source: Karl Ignaz Hennetmair,<i>Ein Jahr mit Thomas Bernhard. Das versiegelte Tagebuch 1972</i>. Sankt P</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18.4px;">ölten: Residenz Verlag, 2014.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-5909764039480400812019-08-30T19:50:00.000-04:002019-08-30T19:50:43.694-04:00To Russia with Lunch--Part Four<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #FEFDFA; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">Somehow a
stop must be put to this perpetual cycle of violent enamorment and equally
violent disaffection, which has transformed virtually every last former or
potential hyperoccidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">person</i> into
an apparently incorrigible <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wanton</i>;
hyperoccidental humans must somehow come to engage libidinously with
commodities in a more redeeming—or at least less revoltingly damning—manner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They must come to feel no shame in employing
certain commodities that do indeed make their lives easier while being
decidedly unglamorous by comparison with more coveted objects either in the
same commodity-genus or in more coveted commodity-genera; and they must come to
covet commodities that they will wish to hold onto once they obtain them.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span> And as a complement to this recalibration of
the hyperoccidental consumer’s libido, the hyperoccidental producer must come
to keep his own libidinous energies blinkeredly vectored towards the designing
and manufacturing of products that invariably address the needs and desires of
consumers; he or she must come to keep these energies from pathologically running
off into any of the pernicious side-channels that I itemized and analyzed in
the middle part of this essay—viz., Sadism, cart-before-the-horse-ism,
Pygmalionism, and dilettantism masquerading as artisanship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The producer must come to know and feel that
he aut al. is making the consumer’s life easier or more enjoyable at least up
to a point and after some fashion, and to be satisfied with this
knowledge-cum-feeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because the
present system of hyperoccidental life is organized—or rather misorganized
(rather than disorganized, for it is certainly not quite chaotic)—in such a way
as to facilitate the pathological off-running of productive energies into the
above-mentioned productive side-channels, producers will at least initially
have to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">forced</i> to project their
energies along the above-mentioned wholesome, virtuous vector; they will at
least initially have to have the above-mentioned blinkers <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">imposed</i> on their temples and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">held
in place</i> there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The development and
implementation of the technical and administrative means of producer-coercion I
leave as an exercise for the wonkishly inclined non-DGR, who may after all find
his aut al.’s work much easier in the near future, and perhaps even in the
immediate future, than in the present; for the irrationalities and discontents
of the present hyperoccidental system of life are become so perfervid and
multifarious that a merely middling disruption of that system—say, a disruption
thereof on the scale of the so-called financial crisis of 2008—may suffice to
persuade producers of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">necessity</i>
of altering their diabolical ways, in which case one will be in the relatively
enviable position of merely breaking them of bad habits of whose perniciousness
they are already convinced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">form</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">structure </i>I envisage such a productive-cum-consumptive
dispensation’s eventually taking: in the first place, it would be completely
devoid (or, in the purblind eyes of wooly-minded sentimentalists, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bereft</i>) of all non-locally consumable
luxuries, such that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tourism</i> would
join <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">feudalism</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mercantilism</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fabianism</i>,
etc. in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ism</i> section of the
junk-heap or rubbish-tip of history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Air
travel both intracontinental <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and intecontiental
would be ruthlessly restricted to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">absolutely
indispensable</i> trips by governmental or commercial officials officially
designated as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">traveling</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">soandso</i>s (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">soandso</i> is to be understood here as a family-friendly alternative
to a certain less flattering title rather than as a placeholder for virtually
innumerable more flattering ones); this restriction would be all the more
bearable for being likewise imposed on the highest-ranking of all governmental
and commercial officials—on heads of state and so-called CEOs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Routine intercontinental travel would be
restricted to commercial maritime traffic—to the literal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shipping</i> of goods at very slow speeds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Routine intracontinental travel would be
restricted to locomotive transport—ideally at speeds no greater than those
attainable by the average mid-twentieth-century steam train.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Routine local travel—travel by ordinary
schlubs and schlubessess to and from their places of work, residence, and
recreation—would be restricted to shanks’s mares, bendy buses, trams or
streetcars (so no more Subways, Metros, Tubes, or U-Bahns), and taxis, with the
taxi-meters pegged to twice the average hourly wage; such that if the average
schlub or schlubess elected to take a two-hour taxi ride to and from, say, the
local zoo, of a Sunday afternoon, he or she would have to work four hours on Monday
to cover the cost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These restrictions on
travel would salutarily serve not only to curb the restrictees’ craving for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">redundant experiences</i>, for experiences
that may just as readily and fully be had at home as abroad (whether <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at home</i> be defined as one’s home polity
or one’s home ZIP-code or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">abroad</i> as
halfway around the world or halfway into the neighboring ZIP-code), but also to
quash the utterly unfounded and misbegotten sense of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">empowerment </i>a human individual tends to derive from being
transported at high speeds in machines to whose design, manufacture, and often even
(i.e., whenever he aut al. is not in the driver’s or pilot’s seat) governance
he aut al. has contributed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">absolutely
nothing</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Engines of data processing
and transmittal would be arrested at their present stage of technical development,
and the satellites that facilitate their functionality would be allowed to fall
into disrepair and thence into the bits of ocean and poor-sod’s-rooftop
classically fallen into by abandoned space junk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such an imposition of inertia on these
engines of whoredom and their extraterrestrial robot pimps would not only
immediately arrest the abominably dehumanizing cycle of mobile phone-purchasing,
upgrading, and discarding, but also quickly effect the salutary epiphenomenon
of rendering communication with people in distant locales as expensive and
inconvenient as it was before the mass-commercialization of email in ca. 1995,
and thereby making the multi-milliard-strong mob of addicts to so-called (and
indeed woefully miscalled) social media realize that there is nothing they give
less of a toss about than what some tosser in B*m***ktu supposedly thinks about
their taste in wombat guano-dip, anal-dilating calipers autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The minuscule minority of persons genuinely
desirous of carrying on long-distance correspondences may rely, as in the old
days, on the mail trains and ships, which will enable them affordably to
exchange dozens of paper letters per year with each of their pen-pals within
their home polity, and at least a good half-dozen thereof therein with each
thereof in other polities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once
salutarily deprived of the aeronautically-cum-electronically induced illusion
of agency via the two above-itemized measures, the hyperoccidental consumer,
who has in reality been but a sort of Ancient Mariner or wandering non-goy for
at least the past quarter-century, will at last be able to come back into his
aut al. own as a full-fledged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">consumer</i>,
as an habitual user of commodities, of tangible, edible, strokable, etc. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">things</i> that afford him aut al. genuine
pleasure and comfort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For consumer
libido-management’s sake I would restrict each of these proper, thingy
commodities to three lines, three models or versions-cum-prices—a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">budget</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">econo </i>line, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">midmarket</i> line,
and a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">luxury </i>line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In every case even the budget or econo line
would offer serviceable yeoman service–so there would be no more cheap
disposable ballpoint pens filled nearly to the tip with dried ink or cheap disposable
razors with blades blunter than those of butter knives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mid-market line would offer a few extra
whistles and bells, as they used to be called, and the luxury line would offer an
at-least-rough (and often quite-smooth-indeed) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">technical</i> quasi-equivalent of the version of the product available towards
the end of the twentieth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So,
for example, whilst the luxury line of men’s dress shoes would not necessarily
be constituted by Italians out of materials sourced from the upper Po Valley—or
wherever else in Italy the most select tanneries were sited in ca. 1990—they
would be made largely or exclusively by hand by someone, be that someone a
Poughkeepsiean, and largely and exclusively out of leather from somewhere, be
that somewhere the upper Hudson Valley, just as the most upmarket shoes of ca.
1990 were.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a rigidly three-tiered
hierarchy of commodities would salutarily restrict both consumers’ and
producers’ libidinous horizons and yet provide ample scope on both sides for
peering down one’s lorgnette at the sub-banausic tastes of the next bloke aut
al. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The brewer of the exquisite Sierra
Nevada pale ale-style luxury beer could look down his aut al. lorgnette at the
brewer of the yeomanlike National Bohemian lager-style budget or econo beer,
who could in turn look down his aut al. lorgnette at the upmarket brewer for
contenting himself with shaving with a mere pivot-headless old school Gillette
Good News-style budget econo razor, who could in turn be out-lorgnetted by the
user of the mid-market old-school Gillette Sensor-style midmarket razor, who
could in turn be out-lorgnetted by the producer of the luxury Colgate-style toothpaste
with stripes and breath-freshening crystals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The combinations and permutations of such thereby-enabled down-lorgnette-peering
are, if not quite infinite, then at least multitudinous enough to keep a Fibonaccianly
expanding human species busy until the Maxwellian extinction of the known
universe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Whether and how lorgnette-production
will be able to keep adequate pace with the production of all the other
commodities throughout this conceivably multi milliard-year period is
admittedly an open and sorely vexing question, a question subtended by the
genuinely frightening question of whether lorgnettes themselves will have to be
stratified into econo, midmarket, and luxury lines, and further subtended by
the downright terrifying question of whether such stratification will lead to a
conceivably nearly never-ending spiral of out-lorgnetting; but I trust the
abovementioned wonks will manage to sort out all these questions in a manner eventuating
sooner rather than later in impeccable and imperturbable pan-hyperoccidental comity.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a political-economic dispensation would
also afford producer and consumer alike ample encouragement and opportunity to
reflect, to meditate, on matters not exhausted by his aut al.’s immediate engagement
with the commodity immediately to hand etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>N.B. that I write of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">immediate</i>
engagement and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">immediate</i>
ready-to-hand etc.-ness, for such reflections or meditations would by no means
necessarily be utterly divorced from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Warenwelt</i>,
from the world of commodities, after the manner at least supposedly propounded by
Plato’s, Kant’s, et al.’s metaphysical writings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nosirautaleebob: for the present writer
envisages the typical scene of such reflections or meditations centering on a
grizzled, wizened octogenarian gent aut al. sitting at a tailor’s shop and
waiting to try on, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">à la</i> the heroine
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings</i>, his aut al.’s first
entirely bespoke, custom-tailored suit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As he sits there he cannot help thinking back to the day, some sixty
summers (or winters) earlier when he acquired his very first suit (barring the
birthday one, of course), a perfectly yeomanly serviceable off-the-rack ensemble
that, along with quarter-dozens of its fellows, stood him in yeomanly good
stead for decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Why, I remember</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">courted </i>[or<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> was courted </i>by]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Suzy </i>[or
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bob</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pat</i>] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in that first suit; I
remember how</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">she</i> [or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">he</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they</i>] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">made fun of how baggily
it sat on my a(*)**(e) and shoulders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
couldn’t say as I’d ever noticed so much as a bagette </i>[sic on the absent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">u</i>]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
of that bagginess before or could notice such a bagette even then, but at that
very moment I resolved to myself like a shot that, by golly-cum-haitch or cee,
for Suzy </i>[aut al.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">’s</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sake, when I’d made me fortune I’d get an
entirely bespoke, custom-tailored suit that fitted me like a bespoke,
custom-made glove, only with encasements for legs and arms instead of for
fingers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now at last I have made me
fortune and am at last being fitted for that bespoke, custom-tailored suit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pity </i>[here he aut al. man-aut al.-fully
stifles a sniffle] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Suzy’s no longer here
to see me togged out in the blessed thing, but at least I’ve still got the
jacket from that very first off-the-rack suit of mine hanging in her
wardrobe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, it did her serviceable
yeoman service as a bathrobe years after it had got too shiny at the elbows to
pass muster at the office </i>[here he aut al. man-aut-al.-fully stifleth
another sniffle]. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>To be sure, I dare not assume on trust
that every last man, woman, et al. in the hyperoccident will be capable of
assuming such a touching and redeemable long-range psychic-cum-affective engagement
with a given commodity-class as is instanced by this hypothetical gent aut
al.’s peri-sartorial reverie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, to
be sure, I dare say that an at-least-statistically-more-than-negligible proportion
of the pan-hyperoccidental populace will prove incurable of their (or should
that rather be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">its</i>?) appalling
addiction to the enamorment-cum-disaffection cycle; who, even once they possess
a manifestation of the most upmarket version of a given commodity-class will by
no means rest satisfied, who immediately upon being presented with such a
manifestation, will ejaculate, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Is that
all there is?</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Is there no Version
Umpteen-Milliard Point in the offing? </i>and thereupon void uninhibitedly from
every duct and orifice in an unregenerately infantile-cum-hysterical
combination of outrage and despair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
way of remedying this defect in my schema, I propose the institution,
construction, and operation of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hyperoccidental
gulag, </i>of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>a<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>group (albeit not necessarily specifically an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">archipelago</i>, for it may function equally well as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">network</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">congeries</i>, et-plurissima-c.) of production facilities to one of
which each such malcontent would forthwith be consigned and thereupon forced—if
necessary at gun-or-even-more-threatening-weapon-point—to participate—without
remuneration and in a decidedly menial capacity—in the manufacture of the
budget or econo line of a given commodity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After a few days—if not hours—of such participation, the o********ing
preponderance of these malcontents would undoubtedly cry <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uncle!</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oncle!, Onkel!, </i>autc.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">-</i>aut-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Auntie!</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Petite Tante!</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tantchen!</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>autc.,
whereupon they would be sent back <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to
their respective cities, towns, Gemeinde, autc. (respectively) of former
residence, where they would promptly revector their consumer libidos towards a
different commodity-class than the one whose dissatisfaction with which landed
them in the gulag; they would promptly begin yearning to upgrade to the
mid-or-upmarket line of some commodity-class with whose budget/econo or
midmarket line they had hitherto contented themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The former beer connoisseur would come to
take an interest in midmarket or luxury shoelaces, scones, sconces, autc.; and
the former shoelace connoisseur in midmarket or luxury beer, scones, sconces,
autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As to the treatment of the
recidivists, of that lamentable but doubtless inevitably still
more-than-entirely negligible residue of former gulag inmates who upon being
returned to the relative wild of the marketplace persisted in manifestations of
infantile-cum-hysterical dissatisfaction with the commercial status quo: these
patently incorrigible malcontents would be shipped or trained back to the gulag—but
this time round they would be obliged, and if need be, compelled, to enter the
premises not through the gateway or aperture labeled “PERSONNEL” but rather
through the one labeled “MATÉRIEL.” (Incongruously yet somehow fittingly
classy, ain’t it, that there <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">accent aigu</i>’d
capital ee?)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once inside their
allocated (and doubtless outwardly corrugated) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">usine</i>, they would be slaughtered no less humanely than cattle and
thereupon incorporated into the ingredients of whichever budget/econo line of
commodity-class to whose manufacture that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">usine</i>
was dedicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ideally, in the best of
all possible malcontent-reclamation schemata, each malcontent’s corpse would
contribute to the contents of the budget/econo line version of whichever
commodity-class whose luxury-line version he aut al. had petulantly affected to
find dissatisfactory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, and
for example, a toothpaste connoisseur who had found luxury-line stripes and
sparkles atop his brush-bristles not quite posh enough would end up having bits
of him-aut al.-self forced into tubes of stark white budget or econo-line toothpaste
(whose efficacy as an abrasive would incidentally be greatly increased by the high
human-bone content).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> sentimentalists would
doubtless raise a massive hue, cry, and stink over such a proposal, doubtlessly
([sic] on the appended <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ly</i>, for it has
at least traditionally made all the difference in the hyperoccident) under the
auspices of the blood-dripping-typefaced slogan, “REMEMBER ‘SOYLENT GREEN IS
PEOPLE; IT’S PEOPLE…!’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In doubtless
hopeless resistance to this cry (hopeless because I would doubtless be torn to
pieces and more than figuratively if decidedly politically incongruously
devoured in the midst of the aforementioned resistance), I would equably and firstly
remind these mawkish raisers to be chary of quoting secular dystopias as
scripture, lest they find themselves in the dock at history’s next reenactment
of the Nuremberg trials.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this
connection one salutarily recalls, for example, the history of the reception of
the Terry Gilliam-directed cinematic dystopia <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brazil</i>, which throughout the first decade of its 1985 release was unanimously
hailed as a masterly-ly damning indictment of a hyperoccident supersaturated
with consumerist gluttony and Thatcherite-cum-Reaganite political paranoia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when the destroyer of the Oklahoma
Federal Building in 1995 cited <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brazil</i>
as one of the principal impetus (sic on absence of a plural-designator [fourth
declension, natch]) to his act (principally, one supposes, on account of the
film’s by no means peripheral or understated polemic against <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bloody paperwork</i>), the film was
summarily expunged from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensants</i>’
mandatory viewing queue and re-designated an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interesting if ultimately ab*****e experiment </i>in the newspapers’
drafts of Gilliam’s obituary, wherein it had formerly been simply termed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the director’s masterpiece</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a fate may yet befall <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Soylent Green</i>—only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">negative</i>, such that
the scenario presented as dystopic in the film will come to seem downright
utopian by comparison with the by- then-status quo, such that the tactical
cannibalism decried in the film will come to seem much less barbaric than the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">strategic</i> cannibalism since imposed as a
reality by a power that I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dare not yet
name</i>, such that, indeed, the hyperoccident’s failure to actualize such
tactical cannibalism at a timely historical moment will come to seem a
catalytic precursor to the imposition of such strategic cannibalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the second place, I would point out that
in toothpaste we are dealing with a compound that when used properly is
ingested only in minute quantities no matter what it happens to be composed of,
such that the quantum of human remains ingested during the typical brushing
session employing this bone-enriched toothpaste would verge on the minuscule or
infinitesimal—certainly not significantly larger than the quantum of human
skin, spittle, nasal mucus, and blood snuffed up and ingested by the typical
present-day commuter during a typical bus, tram, or subway-actuated commute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As regards commodities plainly and
exclusively produced for ingestion—why, then, mere accuracy in labeling will
axiomatically ensure that nobody eats some portion of his or her grandmother or
second cousin twice removed by mistake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A sirloin, Porterhouse, or Delmonico steak is after all unambiguously a
cut of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> beef</i>, such that any vendor who
wished to hawk cuts of human flesh under the auspices of the typical butcher’s
lexicon would be obliged at minimum to label his aut al.’s cuts sirloin,
Porterhouse, Delmonico, etc.-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">style</i> long
pig-steak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in the third and final
place, literal corporeal incorporation into the body politic is simply and
unequivocally what such unregenerate backsliders would <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deserve</i>; it would be the most condign tit-for-tat-ish retribution for
(or of?) their manifestly incorrigible consumerist Whiggism, inasmuch as that
unless checked, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prontissimo</i>, the
present pan-hyperoccidentally pandemic spiral of libidinous consumerist
Whiggism will inexorably destroy us, the pan-hyperoccidental body politic, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in toto</i>, even in the absence of the destructive
intervention of a power that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I still dare
not yet name</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short and in full,
while consumer commodities as a general and relatively trans-historical class
can greatly enrich our lives by affording immediate creature comforts and
palliating the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tedium vitae</i>, they can
as yet do nothing in the way of alleviating the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dolor moribundi</i>, the ever-crescent somatic misery attending the
irreversible seeping-away of life with advancing age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Here of course I am going to be assailed by
a two milliard-strong horde of liver-spotted, elephant-hided old coots
screaming, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We’re all living longer!!!!!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t’ you understand that,
Godmotherfuckingdammit[?], WE’RE ALL LIVING
LONGER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!—</i>a remonstration that I believe bears
contesting, but even if it is as true as it would like to believe it is—i.e.,
even if we are not only merely being better preserved in our aged frailty [as
the present writer suspects], but also aging more slowly—it can at most and
best very slightly r*ta*d the encroachment of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dolor moribundi</i>; it cannot make even the average sexagenarian trillionaire
of the present [who invariably suffers from diabetes, hypertension, or the gout
and has no reasonable grounds for assuming that he will make it to seventy, let
alone to the post-centenary age still attained by only a minuscule proportion
of the hyperoccidental population] feel a jot less somatically or
meta-somatically miserable than the average quadraganerian millionaire of the
seventeenth century [who was as-yet unafflicted by such ailments and had all
reasonable grounds for at least hoping that he would exceed his Biblically
allotted threescore and ten by an additional decade].)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such being the incontrovertible case, the
social propinquity of the present state-of-the-art consumer commodity-gourmandizer,
the serial owner of manually portable engines of data
transmittal-cum-processing, cannot but be a vexation to the non-alcoholic spirits
of his aut al.’s less vicious contemporaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The quasi-Shostakovich of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Testimony</i>
wrote or said that living in the Soviet Union during the middle Stalin years
was like being continually beaten with a stick while being told, “Your business
is rejoicing; your business is rejoicing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But as the father in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cranes
Are Flying</i>’s disparagement of his daughter’s enthusiastic preparations for
May Day has shewn—admittedly in hindsight, from the vantage point of the
Khrushchevian thaw, and therefore possibly at least slightly contestably—even
in those middle Stalin years, at the very nadir of political independence and
so-called individual self-expression in the U.S.S.R., the hyper-optimistic
Party line was by no means doxa among the Soviet citizenry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contra quasi-Shostakovich, in those years
Vanya or Masha Stolichnaya apparently did <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not
</i>have to respond to the stick-beating by marching about and muttering, “My
business is rejoicing; my business is rejoicing,” except in officially
organized public settings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this
respect and to this extent, he or she was blessed by comparison with the
extremely rare present-day hyperoccidental who is not a dedicated slave to the
grind of gourmandizing manually portable engines of data
transmittal-cum-processing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For however lachrymosely these gourmandizers
may affect to be dejected, dismayed, or alarmed by this or that pseudo-political
issue–by, say, climate change or the increasing proportion of so-called
conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court or the so-called gender pay gap—the
truth is that to the very bottom of their spiritual boots they are dedicated <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rejoicers</i> who are convinced that the
future of the entire universe lies before them as assuredly as if they were
newborn immortals, that they are going to live more than figuratively forever
merely because they are in possession of the most up-to-date engine of data-transmittal-cum-processing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When these gourmandizers-cum-rejoicers are
appreciably younger than the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rara avis </i>of
a non-gourmandizer-cum-rejoicer on whom they inflict their propinquity or
presence, the RA finds that presence merely somatically irritating, inasmuch as
he can at least conceive of chalking it up to the usual, and indeed
quasi-traditional, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">étourderie</i> of the
young, to the same passions that at least supposedly gave rise to the hula-hoop
craze, Beatlemania, brand-name athletic shoe fever, and indeed brand-name fat
fluorescent shoelace fever, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not
that he expects more than the tiniest fraction of these younkers to give over
their addiction to such mechanical ignes fatui as they grow older, but merely
that inasmuch as he is unable to specify which of them forms a part of that
tiny fraction, he is willing—albeit so faintly as almost to be reluctant—to
give the entire horde of them the benefit of the doubt on that score; and then
he aut al. reflects that the smoothness and sleekness of the plastic engines
sorts well with the almost Pillsbury Dough Boy-worthy unwrinkledness of these
younkers’ rubbery flesh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a word, for
all the unbearable somatic intrusiveness of these younkers, the RA acknowledges
that there is a certain <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aptness</i> (NB,
ye younkers, that I didn’t write <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">app’dness</i>)
to their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gourmandise</i>-cum-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jouissance</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when they—the
gourmandizers-cum-rejoicers—are older than the RA, the RA experiences a degree
of dejection-cum-horror that no mere comprehensive tour of the municipal morgue
or catacombs could ever engender in his aut al.’s spiritual organism; this on
account of multiple discrepancies—the discrepancy between the novelty of the engine
and the decrepit ancientness of its eulogist, the discrepancy between the adolescent-like
if not child-like wide-eyed enthusiasm of the eulogist—the enthusiasm of
someone being astonished by something utterly new—and the incontrovertible fact
that he aut al. has already lived through hundreds if not thousands of such
fads and so by all rights ought to be as jaded to them as a sexagenarian
Clydesdale, the discrepancy between the antiseptically aromatic olfactory aura
exuded by the engine and the putrescently emetic aura of decay (a combination
of halitosis and sewage that no assiduous tooth-brushing-cum-ass-wiping can
ever even half-expunge, at least from the quadragenarian olfactory bulbs of the
present writer) exuded by the eulogist; and above all else, the discrepancy
between the eulogizing of this brand-new engine and the conduct <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appropriate</i> to a human individual <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">doomed to decay</i> in the imminent future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If engaging with the latest drone-operating
or A*r *&*-locating software would enable these revoltingly decrepit
saps-cum-sacks to avoid ascending “extinction’s Alp” a minute later, there
might be some plausibly commendable argument in favor of such engagement; but
of course nothing could be laughably truer than the absolutely mutual alienability
of degree of facility with techno-gizmo frippery and biological longevity: no
matter how high a certain nonagenarian scores at Candy Crush or Whateverdrones
Do-Competitively, he or she is more or less doomed to descend into the grave
earlier than even the poorest-scoring vicenarian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short if not full, the relatively young RA
cannot help feeling that it is his civic, religious, moral, and gustatory duty
to beat the elderly data-processing-cum-transmitting engine-gourmandizer with a
stick whilst screaming into his aut al.’s doubtless hearing aid-aided ear, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Your business is despairing; your business
is despairing!</i>; but of course there would be absolutely no point in doing
so, inasmuch as the aged gourmandizer’s uninterrupted adjurations to the RA to
buy the latest bit of techno-gadgetry are effectively unoutdrownable adjurations
to rejoice that are being dinned into the RA’s ear and his own ear simultaneously,
and inasmuch as the aged gourmandizer has the virtual entirety of the remainder
of the hyperoccidental world on his or her side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The RA ought not to waste a microjoule of his
declining vital energy on cherishing the faintest hope of talking his aut al.’s
contemporaries or elders into an awareness of their moribundity; rather, he aut
al. ought to be exploiting with ruthless jealousy every opportunity to take
cognizance in utter solitude of his aut al.’s own moribundity, of the
ineluctable ebbing away into nothing of all that he aut al. has held dear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the environs in which he aut al.
will ineluctably be compelled to entertain this cognizance-taking will ineluctably
fall short of the ideal environs therefor enjoyed by the heroine of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings</i>—at the most intimate resolution,
in place of a bespoke form-fitting suit he aut al. will at best be vouchsafed
an off-the-rack ensemble consisting of a so-called dress shirt and a pair of
chino-slacks; at a slightly less intimate resolution, in place of a late
nineteenth-century silk-upholstered fauteuil he aut. al will be sitting in a
barely self-supporting broke-back all-plastic office chair; and at the least
intimate but most intrusive resolution, he aut al. will be all-but-ineluctably
precluded from sustaining his aut al.’s meditations by the impossibility of
flushing his aut al.’s toilet or of blocking out the ever-recurring noise of
fire engines approaching his aut al.’s building for the umpteen-thousandth time
and carrying personnel flush with ever-crescent exasperation destined to
eventuate in a hose-aside-tossing ejaculation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fuck my motherfucking pension: let the motherfucking spoiled-rich cocksuckers
burn to death</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to be sure, he
aut al. will have no memories of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings</i>-worthy
heroism to cherish; he aut al. will be unable to solace himself with the
reflection that he aut al. has helped save his aut al.’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rodina</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vaterland</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">patria</i> from succumbency to an undeniably
atrocious enemy through life-threatening acts of stuntmanship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the same, he aut al. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">will </i>be able to solace—nay, congratulate; nay-squared fellate,
cunnilingulate, or analingulate—him aut al.([’s]) self with the reflection that
he aut al. spent his aut al. ([’s]) earlier life altogether more virtuously, altogether
more commendably, than virtually every single one of his aut al.’s living
contemporaries spent his aut al. ([’s]) own—that however objectionably he aut
al. may have trifled away his aut al.’s ([’s]) younger years, he aut al. at
least assuredly did <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> squander the
early 1980s on wondering whether to opt for VHS or Beta, the mid-1990s on mulling
over which relatives and pseudo-friends to include in and exclude from his aut
al.’s long-distance plan, the early 20-oughties on pondering whether or not to
put a second mortgage on his abode to facilitate the purchase of a Blackberry,
the late 20-oughties on ruminating which so-called avatar to cultivate in
so-called second life (’Member that vast moth-eaten old thing,
longest-in-the-tooth millennials?), or the mid-20-teens on hefting which of
18,000 genders-cum-sexual orientations to select on Tinder, and that
accordingly he aut al. is entitled to regard him aut al.([’s]) self as a
genuine hero, if not as an outright demigod, by the pantywaist Lilliputian
standards of his aut aut al.’s sub-degenerate pseudo-age. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, unlike the heroine of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wings</i>, he aut al. will never enjoy the
meta-aesthetic solace of knowing that his aut al. ([’s]) meta-heroism is at
least <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appreciable</i> somewhere, in some
conceivably empirical bosom, inasmuch as the system of life that most recently
sanctioned such meta-heroism, namely that of the U.S.S.R. in its later decades,
has been thoroughly and probably entirely universally discredited—i.e.,
discredited even within every last square <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">verst</i>
of land formerly constituted by the U.S.S.R. itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, in a not inconsiderable
proportion of those <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">versts</i>, there is
a not inconsiderable amount of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nostalg(h)ia</i>
for the Soviet days, but it is extremely difficult to determine how much, if
any, of this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nostalg(h)ia </i>is
orientated specifically towards the Soviet system of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pan-hyperocidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">idée reçue</i> that all hankering for the spirit of pre-1991 in
present-day Russia (not to mention Belarus and a duo or troika of Stans) is
simply a stalking horse for nostalgia for quasi-national geopolitical greatness
has already been put in its place in a heterodoxical sense earlier in this
essay; in other words, I have, I believe, already shewn that to the significant
but not necessarily overweening extent that such nostalgia is meta-geopolitically
based it is not entirely ill-founded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hic et nunc</i> I am exclusively concerned
with the non-quasi nationally, non-geopolitically orientated residuum of this
nostalgia, a residuum wherein I fear the former Soviets (or, rather, former
Soviets plus their post-Soviet progeny) are simply toking on the same
historical tunnelvision-inducing spliff as their hyperoccidental contemporaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No passion has proved less extirpatable from
the hyperoccidental psyche than nostalgia for the so-called swinging
sixties—for Beatlemania, Carnaby Street, flower power, Woodstock, Altamont
(sic), and all that; but the qualities of that micro-epoch that present-day hyperoccidentals
treasure most highly—viz. flamboyance, sensual indulgence, and social protest—are
by no means the ones that were most definitive in the eyes of those who were
living in and through it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to be
sure, the present writer is by no means the first to note that there is a
discrepancy between the swinging sixties as they were experienced and those
selfsame sixties as they have been more recently imagined, but the received
critique of the received view has in timeless Whiggish fashion selectively
singled out only those discrepancies that serve in hindsight to cast the
present pseudo-Leftist worldview of sentimental, consumerist quasi-inclusionism
in a favorable light—it delights in pointing out, for example, that back then
even the trendiest young radio DJs often spun the hottest new choons while
wearing the sorts of dour black three-button suits and ties favored by their
fathers, or that even in the trendiest districts of central London and downtown
Manhattan it was then impossible to find a restaurant that offered an edible
rogan josh, let alone an enjoyable awaze sigga tibs or mabyar kernewek</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">—at least after eleven p.m. of a Sunday-night
to-Monday morning.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, the received critique lays
into the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conservatism</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">austerity</i> of the microepoch, and
presupposes that all that was wanting to make that micro-epoch as virtually
perfect as the present one was a sort of MS Word format painter ([sic] on the
absence of satirical asterisks: for who has any reason to be afraid of
Microsoft in the light of its limping, laggardly, and, indeed, downright
arthritic performance qua hunter-devourer in the present pack of Big Bad
Wolves?)-esque application of the particolored flamboyant-cum-transgressive
bits of the micro-epochal picture to the monochrome [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">grayscale</i>, while perhaps more technically accurate, cannot be
employed here on account of the post-1960s {the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">terminus a quo</i> would fittingly appear to be a 1979 occurrence in
the aforementioned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Testimony</i>} skunking
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shades of gray</i> qua endlessly
self-renewing roll of self-exculpatory bum-fodder long before it was
post-flushingly incorporated into the title of the most notorious pornographic
novel in history to date] conservative-cum-austere bits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The received critique fails to recall that
much of that conservatism and austerity was but an epiphenomenon of decades-old
governmental policies that were then regarded as but the barest of fair-dealing
by the mainstream left and but mildly irksome by the mainstream right, but that
now would be regarded as both starry-eyedly idealistic and ruthlessly draconian
by the extremes of either stereo-speaker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the main I am thinking of the stratospherically high rates of
taxation of income in hyperoccidental polities on both sides of the Pond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the United Kingdom of the mid-to-late
sixties the top income-tax bracket rate was 95% (i.e., over twice the present
top rate of 45%); in the United States it was substantially lower, but at
within sniffing distance of 80%, it was still more than twice as high as it is
now, and in the cases of both polities, the shift from a top bracket above 50%
to one below 50% is highly significant, signalizing as it does a pan-political-spectroscopic
shift from a view that the very wealthy ought to be net benefactors of the
State to a view that they ought to be the State’s net beneficiaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the present writer were pressed to point
to a single index or catalyst (or even, it is to be hoped, index-cum-catalyst)
of this shift, he would point to the Beatles song “Taxman” from their 1966 LP <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Revolver</i>, a song where the lyricist,
George Harrison—presumably already the second-poorest of the Fab Four in the
light of his established third-place rank in the songwriting credit-queue—kvetches
about how terribly overtaxed he is, and pisses all over both the then-current
Prime Minister, Harold Wilson (Labour), qua reigning taxmaster and the then-current
opposition leader, Edward Heath (Conservative), qua taxmaster-in-waiting (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">et rien de plus</i> [i.e., very much <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> any sort of Margaret Thatcher <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">avant la lettre</i>]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is said that Harrison penned the song as a
consequence of being elevated to the aforementioned top tax bracket as a
consequence of the fresh inundation of his bank account with Beatles royalties;
that he wrote it because he was outraged at the discovery that now that he was
making serious money he was going to have to give most of it up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Never mind that the remaining five per cent
would still allow him to live more luxuriously not only than the average-heeled
British dustman or nurse or bus driver but even than the better than
average-heeled British doctor or lawyer or banker: he, George had—by his own
account as obliquely delivered in the song—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">earned</i>
all that l.s.d. (i.e., £.s.d., not the other LSD, although presumably he also
believed he had earned every microgramme of that substance that fell onto his
tongue) and was therefore entitled to keep every ½d. of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nowadays the Beatles are principally
celebrated as supposed working-class guttersnipes who supposedly proved for the
supposedly very first time in human history (albeit not quite single-handedly;
i.e., albeit alongside such supposedly likewise superlatively gifted British contemporaries
as Michael Caine and Georgie Best) that toffs had no monopoly on nous or (ugh!)
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">creativity</i> by transforming the entire
world (or at least the non-toffish sector thereof) into a mob of hallucinogen-gourmandizing,
nudism-affecting, flyswatter-detesting peacemongers by dint of the sheer
supposedly ineluctable, John Henry-defeating steam engine-esque, force of their
supposed innate genius, and their championing of hedonism and pacifism is now universally
assumed to have marched-hand-in-OPP with a rock-solid material and objective
solidarity with the supposed class they supposedly emerged from, a rock-solid
material and objective solidarity with the working class.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the truth, as “Taxman” shews, is that the
Fab Four’s ascent to superstardom and descent into hippified dissipation both
evinced and effected their utter and unequivocal repudiation of the working
class, a ruthless off-scraping of their former socioeconomic fellows like so
many Penny Lane dog turds from the crepe rubber soles of their Carnaby Street desert
boots—this inasmuch as they begrudged the contribution of the preponderance of
their wealth to the coffers of the welfare state of which the working class
were the principal beneficiaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
their attitude and behavior has become a pattern for all post-1960s
working-class aspiration in the hyperoccident, a pattern that has become
ever-more practicable to follow thanks to an ever-less financially taxing set
of income-tax codes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The de facto
life-plan for every sub-wealthy young person in the hyperoccident of recent
decades is to become phenomenally rich as a pop musician, athlete, or actor and
then, and only then, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">give something back
to the community he aut al. came from—</i>but only just as much as he aut al. chooses
and only to those people and institutions in that community whom he aut al.
happens to like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back in the ’60s there
could have been no question of such a person’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">giving back</i> his aut al.’s supposedly hard-earned millions, let
alone choosing how much of and to whom to give them back, because he aut al.
effectively never would have had them in the first place, because they would
have been instantly signed over to the Internal or Inland Revenue Service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I am trying to convey in this meta-hyperoccidental
digression is a sense that the ancient pre-1970 system of life for which I pine
so ardently is by no means even broadly socialist, let alone Communist or even
further alone Soviet, but rather <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">world-maintaining</i>,
in essence, and that the most supposedly radically redistributive of policies
on the hyperoccidental table–notably those put forward by the
Corbinistas—contain precious little of this essence even by comparison with the
most supposedly reactionary policies of the 1960s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the spoiled fat-cattish whinging of
“Taxman” sounds proto-Thatcherite or proto-Reaganite to present-day
hyperoccidental ears—or, at any rate, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i>
sound proto-Thatcherite or proto-Reaganite thereunto if any thereof could be
prevailed upon to have themselves syringed clear of Beatlemaniacal wax before
listening to the song—the truth(s) is or are both that the Margaret Thatcher
and Ronald Reagan of 1966 never—or at most very seldom—dreamt of reducing the
maximum income tax-bracket rates to their present low water-mark and that the Jeremy
Corbyn and ?? (by default I suppose the Stateside incumbent Jeremy Corbyn
counterpart is still Bernie Sanders) of 2019 never—i.e., not even very seldom—dream
of restoring that rate to its 1966 high water-mark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Corbyn et ?? dream no such dreams not because
they regard their realization as impracticable or (as I suppose even the most
punctilious student of philosophy would now be compelled alternatively to put
it) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unrealistic</i> but because the
metaphysical-cum-metapolitical assumptions that would perforce underlie such
dreams are no longer intelligible to them or to their presumptive constituents—much
after the manner of (as Adorno points out in his lecture on Kant via a citation
of [insert author cited by Adorno]) certain metaphysical-cum-theological
questions about the Devil that ceased to be intelligible over the course of the
seventeenth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1966 the avowed
principal goal of the hyperoccidental State was the maintenance of something
called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">society</i>, a term that back then
and there was more or less semantically coextensive with what I have been
calling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">world</i>, inasmuch as it was the
only portion or version of the world that most hyperoccidentals then seriously
contemplated trying to maintain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
hyperoccidental rich then voluntarily, if not exactly enthusiastically, relinquished
most of their earnings to the State because they believed in the paramount
importance of the maintenance of society and further at least hoped that the
State qua guardian-cum-caretaker of society would put these earnings to worthy,
society-maintaining use.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, even
back then and there, there arose acrimonious disputes aplenty over whether the
State’s collected revenues were being apportioned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fairly</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">justly</i>, and
even back then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fairly</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">justly</i> were often mere adverbial
stalking-horses for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whatever suits me
best</i>; but never mind that—the point to be made here is that back then and
there, however egoistic one’s goals may have been, the road to their attainment
would always have to pass through the semiotic tollbooth of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">society</i>; that back then and there, the principal
outcome of any given proposed or already-in situ policy would always have to be
represented—and, to the formidable extent that it was open to scrutiny, at
least half-truthfully so—as at least ultimately beneficial to society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Long before 2018, the notion of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">society</i> as a political rallying-point
became at least as unintelligible throughout the hyperoccident as the notion of
the Devil or Satan as an ever-present personal tempter had become throughout
the hyperoccident of 1700. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here again
there is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">weltansichtsbruchisch</i> “Taxman”-like
moment—the moment in 1980 when Margaret Thatcher notoriously asserted, “There
is no such thing as society.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
true <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Weltansichtsbrüchigkeit</i> of the
moment inheres not in the assertion itself but rather in the supporting
assertion that immediately followed it.—viz., “</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is a living tapestry of men and women and people” etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With this assertion, Mrs(.) Thatcher sought
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nominalize</i> the implacably
impersonal abstraction that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">society</i>
was, is, and ever will be; to reduce that abstraction to an aggregation of
particulars—in this case of particular human individuals. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mrs(.) Thatcher’s defenders among her fellow-Conservatives
often cite this supporting assertion in counterproof of her Leftist detractors’
contention that she was essentially a latter-day Scrooge in petticoats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Like
you southpaws</i>, the defenders counter-contend, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mrs</i>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i>) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thatcher cared about the day-to-day sufferings</i>
[or better yet<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, sooferings</i>]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> of Joe and Suzy Bloggs, so there! </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in promulgating this supporting assertion
nearly two-fifths of a century ago, Mrs(.) Thatcher effectively outed herself
as a member of the new-school Harrisonian politically pan-spectral pan-hyperoccidental
anti-societal Devil’s party, a party that Jeremy Corbyn had perhaps already
joined by then and in any case has obviously long since joined; such that in
citing this supporting assertion in remonstration with their Labour opponents
her present-day defenders are undermining and indeed annulling the polemical
force of their remonstration by proving that they are as staunchly loyal in
their membership of that diabolical party as Jeremy Corbyn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For in nominalistically fetishizing the
particular human individual at the expense—indeed, at the utterly bankrupting
expense—of an implacably abstract abstraction such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">society</i>, one automatically and axiomatically rejects every action
and indeed every impulse to action that is not somehow vectored towards the
immediate gratification of a specific person—and even more specifically towards
the immediate gratification of either the agent or would-be agent
him-autc.-self or some other person in immediate physical propinquity to him
autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so, however horrifying such a
revelation may look and sound to the empirically very probably nonexistent eyes
and ears of the present writer’s fellow society-oriented<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Weltanschauer</i>, according to the lights of each and every present-day
avowedly politically orientated hyperoccidental human individual regardless of
his aut al.’s official political allegiance, each and every hyperoccidental
human individual is a sort of bonobo Robinson Crusoe—in other words, a
quasi-sub human ever-alert to opportunities for both self-advancement and the
more-than-metaphorical orogenital gratification of his aut al.’s immediate
neighbors. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pan-hyperoccidentality of
this sea-change is evident in each and every shadow-governmental reprimand
uttered by Mr(.) Corbyn and his underlings and Ms. Pelosi and hers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, like their titular 1960s
predecessors, these Labourites and Democrats want the State to spend more money
domestically, but their pet domestic spending projects all center not on
reforming or otherwise modifying the body politic en bloc but rather on
new-modeling and indeed retooling the individual citizen, on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">teaching him aut al. new skill sets so that he
aut al. can be more competitive in an increasingly globali(s/z)ed labo(u)r
market</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally not one of these
projectors has yet got(ten) round to picturing to him-aut al.’s self the
ineluctable principal result of any successful such atomically apportioned mass
retooling–viz., an American or British version of the same sort of labor drain
that has beset such eastern-European polities as Rumania and Bulgaria; for it
is surely unreasonable to the point of madness to expect a person who has
single-mindedly and successfully maximized his or her economic competitiveness
not to shuffle off from Buffalo or Sheffield to Bangalore or Guangzhou or wherever
else he aut al. can be most munificently remunerated for the plying of his aut
al.’s newly acquired skills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the one Crusoean
hand, then, the present pseudo-left is merely intent on achieving the same hyperindividualistic
ends as its titular political adversaries, only by very slightly different
means (for for all New Old Labour and the Old Old Democrats’ superficial
hysteria about economic inequality, not a single currently serving Labour or
Democratic MP or congressperson has so far dared to hint at the advisability of
raising the maximum income tax bracket-rate beyond a few percentage points),
and on the other bonoboan hand, it is obdurately unwilling to implement any
sort of policy that would inconvenience even ever so slightly a single
practitioner or beneficiary of any of the arse-wiping sub-professions—nursing,
teaching, home-care provision, and social work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When, for example, Mrs(.) May included in her last election manifesto (the
right-Pondial equivalent of a Stateside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">campaign
platform</i>) a proposal to require wealthy elderly persons receiving
publicly-funded nursing services at home to offset some of the cost to the
State with some portion of the appraised value of their property, Mr(.) Corbyn
et al. pounced all over her and the manifesto-point with rabid tigerine
ferocity, denouncing it as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dementia tax,
</i>a ruthless assault on poor li’l auld nans and granddads without the physical
or intellectual wherewithal to wipe their own bums—and supposedly to be
deprived of the financial wherewithal to supplement the intellectual and
physical lacuna with paid help should Mrs(.) May have her way with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr(.) Corbyn et al.’s tigrine tirades against
this proposal reminded the present writer of nothing so strongly as the wave of
protests by the so-called notch babies over here in the States in the late
1980s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The notch babies were a cadre-cum-tranche
of retirees born within a certain year-frame who owing to some sort of verbal
glitch were receiving more than their legally entitled share of the Social
Security Administration’s pension-pot, and who petulantly insisted on
continuing to receive this unwarranted windfall of a surplus even after the first
cadre-cum-tranche of their juniors on the retirement timeline began receiving
the smaller legally allowed amount.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
notch babies’ cause was by no means a sizeable plank in the platform of the
Democratic opposition to the conservative Republican political hegemony of Reagan
and G.H.W. Bush; to contrary, the notch-babies’ harangues were scorned and
spurned by most non-notch babies of every political stripe, inasmuch as most
non-notch babies recognized that these harangues were founded on no firmer
grounds than the haranguers’ chronological seniority, on the grounds that they
were older than their prospective successors, and therefore automatically
entitled to a larger fund of pecuniarily evinced compassion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
notch babies were no poorer on average than younger Americans, and so requiring
them to receive no larger a share of the Social Securitarial pie than their
juniors certainly did not entail their making a greater sacrifice than these
juniors; it merely entailed, rather, their making a sacrifice equal in
magnitude to the latters’, and not being vouchsafed special treatment on
account of their more advanced age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly—or,
rather, identically, minus a single, purely formal transposition—Mrs(.) May’s
proposed tax, in being directed specifically at elderly rich people, and in
prospectively eventuating in their becoming merely slightly less rich, was not expecting
its prospective contributors to give up anything they actually needed, to make
any grievous, starvation-threatening sacrifices; it was merely expecting them
to contribute a share of their wealth more comparable to that contributed by
younger people with a level of financial wherewithal that was overall
comparable in magnitude but that happened prevailingly to take the as-yet-more
taxable form of income recently earned in work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But of course, sentiment cannot deny that it is more pleasant to be
young and rich than old and rich, and so in a political landscape dominated by
sentimental nominalism, any policy that proposes to treat even the richest
oldster primarily as a rich person rather than as an old person will be met
with howls of execration from the other side of the aisle or chamber regardless
of the party of the proposer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that
the prospective contributors to the so-called dementia tax were the only
sentimental bloc to wrest crocodile tears of mingled pathos and outrage from
the opposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The home-care providers
also elicited unreserved sympathy from the Corbynites, inasmuch as, so it was
argued, if rich oldsters were obliged to make out-of-pocket contributions to
their personal maintenance, some portion of them might very well opt to forego
home care altogether, and then dozens if not hundreds of bum-wipers would scandalously
be compelled to seek bum-wiping gigs elsewhere—and who, out of all the
practitioners of all the work-lines in human history, was less deserving of
being out of work, than a bum-wiper, in the light of his aut al.’s unquestioned
ability to deliver a palpation of the anus that in point of loving intimacy
could not be obtained even from the most upmarket massage-parlo(u)r masseuse? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last and perhaps not only not least but even
most, the offspring of these moneyed Methuselahs were commiserated with on
account of their prospective besetment by the imponderably excruciating dilemma
of whether to sack the home-care worker, affix a clothespin to the old shnoz,
roll up their aut al.’s shirt(y)sleeves, slip on the latex gloves, and apply
the wet-wipe to Ma or Pa’s schphincter themselves for the sake of inheriting a
property worth its originally assessed lower-seven-figure value or keeping the
old cul-swabber on the payroll at the cost of inheriting a property assessed at
a measly upper-six-figure value.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t
get me wrong old non-DGR-ian fruit or fruits: for all my sarcasm, in a deeply
Clintonian sort of way, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I feel the pain</i>
of all three blocs in the preceding scenario.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I appreciate that getting old and infirm is not only extremely
unpleasant but also in a cosmological sense extremely unfair; so unfair,
indeed, that all the money from all the treasuries of all the States in the
world can never make it seem bearable, let alone deserved, and that an aged
invalid cannot but feel that he aut al. is entitled to every last 1/2d.
contributed to his aut al.’s upkeep by any State with the power to make that
contribution at whatever cost to its other constituents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also appreciate that losing a position of
remunerative employment à la our counterfactual sacked bum-wipers is painful,
demoralizing, and even potentially life-threatening, particularly when the
position involves the application of a skill that one has grown accustomed to
practicing with generally acknowledged mastery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I even appreciate that it is painful to have to forego a
long-anticipated if ultimately gratuitous financial boon à la the dementia
taxees’ prospective put-upon offspring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What I do not appreciate is the universally assented-to assertion that
these three blocs—whose material interests incidentally and eye-burstingly
obviously do not converge, and indeed ultimately diverge as dramatically
centrifugally as oil, water, and Kryptonite—merely in virtue of collectively
describing a particularly violently tearjerking triadic tableau, are entitled
to privileged consideration by a State that perforce must, or at least ought
to, regard all its constituents as inhabiting and constituting a mighty
force-field of desiderata the potential gratification of each of which must, or
at least ought, only (to) ever be considered—within humanly compassable limits,
of course—in the light of its potential gratificational drain on the remainder
of the force-field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aging and death are
indeed indescribably horrible, but inasmuch as they are both destined to come
to all, and inasmuch as the moribund aged materially depend on the vital young
to prolong and ameliorate their lives, the State cannot be expected to favor
the moribund old unconditionally and unreservedly; it must consider whether some
proposed alleviation of some immediate financial burden on the moribund old will
be likely to impair the vital young’s ability to contribute adequately to the
sustenance of the entirety of The Entity Formerly Known As Society (a.k.a.
TEFKAS)’s constituents <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">including</i> the
moribund old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for prospective <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chomage</i> on the bum-wiping front, while
it indeed cannot be rationally denied that bum-wiping is an essential service
in any TEFKAS-type entity in which, say, more than 1% of the population is or
are unable to wipe his aut al.’s or their bum or bums him aut al.’s self or
selves, it also cannot be rationally asserted that even in such a TEFKAS-type
entity bum-wipers, merely in virtue of the ineluctably distasteful and
corporeally intimate nature of their work, are automatically entitled to
ever-more-remunerative employment as bum-wipers and automatically exempt from
the quasi-obligation to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">acquire new
skill-sets</i> that is relentlessly and remorselessly enjoined on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> economically uncompetitive
hyperoccidentals as a matter of course should their established métier not
routinely entail (pun unabashedly intended because incontrovertibly
irresistible) the wiping of a bum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, I cannot see why an out-of-work or economically downwardly
mobile bum-wiper is automatically entitled to a more effusive draught of pity
than an out-of-work or economically downwardly mobile practitioner of the most
ethereal-cum-least analocentric line of work–than, say, an out-of-work concert
violinist or theoretical mathematician.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For however direly TEFKAS-type entities may in general need bum-wipers,
in any TEFKAS-type entity there needs must at least occasionally arise situations
in which no further bum-wipers are needed and practitioners of super-ethereal métiers
such as concert violinists and non-applied mathematicians are in direly short
supply—for example, the inaugural planning-session of an international cultural
exposition to be exposed in an arena sited cheek-by-jowl with one of the world’s
largest and most highly accredited hospitals.</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the prospective
poor rich middle-aged sods who would have stood to finish up a rung or two or
possibly even three lower on the absentee landlord ladder under Mrs(.) May’s
schema—well, for all the present writer’s Clintonian commiseration with them,
he qua middle-aged hyperoccidental unable even to afford to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rent </i>two rooms (albeit decidedly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> sub-qua envier of their
already-outright-owned ten rooms in their first and second houses but rather sub-qua
demonstrator of the feasibility of surviving into middle age without owning a
square micrometer of property) is ultimately obliged to tender them a stern
adjuration of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grow a pair—or, indeed, an
au pair, if need be!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Seriously,
Schlöndorffs, we will assuredly have to wait until Moore’s law mandates the
invention of a quantum violin to express the precise quantum of compassion due
to these pampered jades of East-to-Southwest Anglia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet I must emphatically iterate that the
real culprit in point here is not the selfishness of the plaintiffs but the
entire personalizing mindset that has perforce drawn wildly disproportionately
close attention to their plaint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prima vista</i> sobering but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">secunda vista</i> invigorating truth that
all conscientious fillers of a labor-exacting position—conscientious bum wipers
very much included—must acknowledge is that one does immeasurably more good to
one’s fellow TEFKAS-members by simply reliably and dispassionately discharging
the duties impersonally and abstractly specified by one’s position than one
could ever do by considering each and every commissioned task as somehow
impinging on a specific living, breathing, s**ting, etc. human being with a
specific history of health complaints, athletic-club allegiances, dietary
preferences, favorite colors, etc. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
this truth has been utterly forgotten throughout the hyperoccident was made
appallingly evident to the present writer via a fairly recent (i.e., ca. May
2018) Radio 4 special panel program(me) on the topic of friendship, a
program(me) hosted by a purportedly eminent Harvard professor of philosophy
whose name lamentably but ultimately inconsequentially escapes me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The purported object of the discussion was to
determine whether friendship—defined as the cherishing of persons known
personally to oneself—was ultimately a good thing inasmuch as it perforce
interfered with one’s ability to cherish persons unknown to oneself who might
be far more needing and deserving of one’s cherishment than one’s friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The philosopher mediated on-air contributions
from people scattered throughout the hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both the philosopher and all the
contributors, no matter how vehemently any of them many have disagreed with any
of the others, seemed to conceive of the entire range of beneficent human
social life as being comprised and exhausted by two actions: the dumping of
cash directly onto somebody else’s physically propinquitous head or the
application of wet-naps directly to another person’s physically propinquitous
bum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in the eyes of all of them the
sole quandary or quasi-dilemma faced by present-day human beings as social
entities was the safe-for-under-sevens video game-like one of how and where to
dispose of one’s finite personal stores of cash and wet-naps. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The easiest, the most convenient, stratagem
(so every single person on the programme presupposed) was to bestow these
stores exclusively on the heads and bums of the people whose immediate physical
propinquity one routinely had the hardest time avoiding—i.e., one’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">friends</i>—inasmuch (and only inasmuch) as
one thereby spent less on transportation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On the other hand (so every single person on the programme also
presupposed), unless one happened to be the next-door neighbor of the most bum
wipe-and-cash deprived person on the planet, in adhering to the easiest and
most convenient stratagem one was at least in a relative sense bringing
monetary-cum-analitersive coals to Newcastle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Consequently, the immediately consequently-cum-subsequently emergent anti-localist
faction of the contributorship maintained, one was absolutely duty-bound to hop
onto the very next plane—be it a two-seater 1980s ultralight—to whatever
godforsaken (or perhaps, in the light of the well nigh-life threatening exorbitance
of the cost of living in certain parts of the present so-called First World,
ostensibly god-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">blessed</i>) corner of the
planet the most bum wipe-and-cash-deprived person thereon happened to reside
and to dump every last bucketful of cash in one’s possession onto his aut al.’s
head and wipe his aut al’s bum until one’s last canister <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>was empty or there was no longer any bum left
to wipe. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To which assertion an
immediately subsequently emergent retro-localist counter-faction of the
contributorship heatedly rejoined that inasmuch as long-distance travel itself
exacted a considerable outlay not only in cash but also in wet-naps (for who
can ever stay feeling truly fresh <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">down
there</i> by dedicated means of the mere quarter-dozen or so microliters of
soap and water exactable from an airliner toilet over the course of even a
battering ram-provokingly lengthy plane-trip loo break?), one might actually
and after all be able to do more good by staying close to home and nurturing
the heads and bums of one’s friends, inasmuch as caeteris paribus one would
thereby retain a larger store of cash and wet-naps than one’s globetrotting
fellow would-be do-gooders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At a
certain conveniently taped-Big Ben-chime-minus-two minutes-sited moment in the by
then well-nigh-life and death altercation between the two factions, the
philosopher-presenter stepped referee-esquely in with an ejaculation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Whoa, whoa, whoa; let’s just wet-wipe
ourselves off for a second!</i> and then proceeded to wring his auditorily
expressible hands underneath a to-all-auditory-appearances sincerely rueful
acknowledgment that the whole business of sorting out this whole cash and
wet-wipe apportionment sub-business was a deucedly if not c**tishly complicated
sub-business, and that perhaps in the light of this complicatedness the least
unethical course to take consisted in spending three-fifths of one’s time,
cash, and wet-wipes with the most bum wipe-and-cash deprived person on the
planet, the remaining two-fifths with one’s propinquitous so-called friends,
and donating the total of frequent-flyer miles accruing from trips to the
far-away person to one’s propinquitous friends in ratios directly (or was it
inversely?) proportional to their propinquity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At no point in the program(me)’s hour-long
duration did either the philosopher-presenter or any of the contributors evince
the faintest notion of—let alone make the briefest reference to—either a
version of propinquitous friendship that was not utterly given over to
cash-bestowing and bum-wiping or a version of bum-wiping-cum-cash-bestowing
that did not involve the immediate personal presence-cum-total subjective
involvement of the wiper-cum-bestower. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entire domain of work qua site of both avowedly
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i>voluntary aid-provision and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">graduated</i> personality and propinquity
was as conspicuous by its absence from the discussion as the absence from the
present Grand Canyon of whatever used to be in it when it was still the Grand
Smoothie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that I then attributed or
now attribute this absence to some deliberate, calculated, and purposive
exorcism of this domain by the agency of either the contributors or the
presenter—but the reflection that the absence presumably was not deliberate,
etc., that it was presumably instead a massive collective blind spot, was and
is all the more chilling. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For while I am
as inured as a bare-assed rodeo zebra-rider to present-day so-called
intellectuals’ universal and ineradicable <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">public</i>
subservience to moronic pseudo-thought, and even to their universal and
ineradicable <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">private will</i> to be
subservient to such pseudo-thought, I really do have quite a hard time getting
my head round the notion that the true and right way has simply never crossed
such so-called intellectuals’ minds, that these so-called intellectuals are
simply <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ignorant</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">oblivious</i> of that way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When, say, an eminent philosopher of law argues
that the U.S. Constitution’s provision of a right to bear arms cannot
conceivably be interpreted as extending to the possessors of semi-automatic
guns on the grounds that the so-called founding fathers (the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">so-called</i> is of course mine and not the
philosopher of law’s, who unlike the present writer is Paul-esquely duty-bound
to revere the ScFFs qua champions of Whiggism even if he aut al. is also
duty-bound to contemn them as rich white [and hence persumably 24/7
slave-cum-woman-beating] men) avowedly conceived of this right as dedicatedly
subserving “the maintenance of a well-regulated militia” and there are no
longer any such things as militias in the U.S. apart from self-styled bands of anti-federal
nuttos who have revived the term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">militia </i>in
tendentious opposition to the likes of our eminent philosopher, when, I say, an
eminent philosopher of law argues something to such an effect, the present
writer merely rolls his eyes and gnashes his teeth out of his genuinely utterly
politically disinterested resentment of the PoL’s patently feigned oblivion of
the ScFFs’ Article Five, which maketh provision for amending the U.S.
Constitution to make(n) the law of the pan-U.S.-ial land whatever is stipulated
in the text of the proposed amendment; such that if there is really no longer
any need of any such thing as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">militia</i>,
and consequently no longer any right to bear arms (very much <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inter alia</i> semi-automatic weapons), the
pan-U.S. constitution should be made to reflect this supersession of
exigencies—viz., an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">amendment</i>
stipulating that militias are no longer needed and that citizens should be
restricted to carrying popguns, slingshots, and so on, up to and inclusive of
whatever level of firepower the amending authority deems fit to be possessed by
Joe and Suzy Sixpack (or whatever else I last called them)—when, I resay, an
eminent philosopher argues something to the preceding effect, I do not so much
as dream that he believes in the logical cogency of the foundations of his
argument; I assume, rather, that he has not irrationally assumed that the net
benefit of semi-automatic rifles to the TEFKA(US)S-type entity is outbalanced
by their detriment thereunto and that a false awareness of the outbalancing
must somehow be massaged into the living text of the extant U.S. Constitution
lest yet another lone gunman unleash another cartridge of semi-automatic
grapeshot into the flesh of another gosling gaggle of schoolchildren.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I resent such an argument out of a love of
truth (and decidedly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> out of a
love of guns, which I really would like to see disappear altogether from the
United States [preferably along with cars {and, indeed, perhaps one could send
them all off at the same time by packing all the guns into all the cars and
remote-controlling the latter one by one off a cliff or collection of cliffs}]),
but I still <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">understand</i> it; I
understand why a person would wish to misrepresent the law for political
expediency’s sake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when such a
philosopher argues that all human social life exhaustively entails the
exchanging of personal favors, I cannot but conclude that he lives in a very
different <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lebenswelt</i> from or to the
present writer’s own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, the whole
notion of a contradiction between local altruism and global
every-man-for-himselfism strikes the present writer as preposterous in the most
etymologically strict sense, inasmuch as he has done his best to organize his
own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lebenswelt</i> along exactly
antithetical lines—in other words, to be ruthlessly egoistic in the electively
personal domain of his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lebenswelt</i> and
ruthlessly altruistic in the unelectively personal-cum-impersonal domain
thereof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In more concrete terms: the present writer has
done his best both to banish the bestowing and exacting of favors upon and from
his friends and to bend over backwards or go the extra mile, as they say, in
the service of the coworkers, near-strangers, and indeed utter strangers whom
his job-duties require him to service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The idea, for example, of setting a friend up to a drink or a feed or
being set up to a drink or feed thereby has long since been anathema to him; in
dining or drinking out with a friend he always ruthlessly insists on paying his
exact share of the bill, and not a Communist-or-pig-f**kerly cent more or less.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as for doing any of his friends what is
incredibly distastefully known nowadays as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">solid</i>—i.e., at least in his specific case, a favor that would
materially inconvenience him by, say, disrupting his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alltag</i> or occasioning any greater-than-average physical
exertion—why, he would now sooner do several (say, at least five)
multi-centiliter-sized <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">liquids</i>
through the traditional intrusive medical conveyance; complementarily, he at
least flatters himself that he would now sooner do an equal number of such
liquids through such a pipette than ask any of his friends to do a so-called
solid for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has come, indeed, to
conclude that, to the extent that human<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
corporeal</i> (i.e., as distinct from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">spiritual</i>,
and perhaps even more distinct from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">emotional</i>)
frailty permits, the quasi-institution of friendship ought to be given over to
the disinterested enjoyment- of each other’s (or one another’s) company—or at
least to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">attempts</i> at such enjoyment—and
devoid of exactions and performances of mutual service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For long and painful experience of varying
degrees of handedness has shewn to him that such exactions and performances
cannot but even in the short run lead to peevishness and resentment <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chez</i> both the exactee-cum-performer and
the exactor-cum-beneficiary and in the long run lead to the breakdown of the
friendship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And how could it be
otherwise?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For what is service without
pecuniary remuneration but slavery?—and who among us—at least among us <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nice people</i>—wishes to be either a slave
or a master to his aut al.’s friend; i.e. to a person that he aut al. is quasi-axiomatically
obliged to regard as his aut al.’s equal?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What is more, in TEFKAS-type entities such as ours (and I am pegging
this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ours</i> to an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">us</i> composed of most inhabitants of most polities since Hammurabi’s Babylon),
it is generally downright perverse to rope one’s friends into performing one a
service, given that there are generally ready-to-hand scads of strangers not
only willing but cheerful to perform that selfsame service, not only and most
(and quite unjustly) notoriously because they must be paid in hard cash in
recompense but also because—at least in the non-gig-cum-zero hours contract
economy, even in its least labor-friendly (i.e., most union-busting) sectors—there
is a determined temporal-cum-functional scope and limit to their
service-rendering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a waged employee
of the moving firm of Starving Students or Desperate Actors or, indeed, Enthusiastically
Omnipositional Whores, Inc. or Ltd., one can be certain—however hyper-meretriciously
the company brand name may suggest otherwise—that one will not be asked to do
anything but tote and lift boxes and crates or to tote so much as a boxlet or
cratelet beyond a certain previously stipulated time-limit whether the move one
has been commissioned to abet has been completed or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By contrast, as an unwaged dogsbody who has
been roped into helping one’s friend move house, one is expected to be present
and actively toting and lifting until the move has been completed, whether this
completion exacts an hour or a hundred hours or indeed a thousand hours; moreover,
qua dogsbody—i.e., laborer with no specific function—one cannot be certain that
once the move has been completed one’s friend will not extend the compass of
his aut al.’s lasso by commissioning some fresh task on the spot, by, e.g.,
exclaiming, “Hey, old chum, now that we (sic)’re all moved in, why don’t we add
an extra touch of class to the premises by spackling the ceiling?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just happen to have brought over a
ten-gallon spackle-tub from the old place: it’s now in Banker’s Box #87632 over
there at the bottom of that stack of five BBs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Would you be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ever</i> so kind as
to unpack it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while you’re at it,
love, would you be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ever</i> so kind as to
unpack my spackling knife—how I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wish</i>
I had a second one so that I could share this forthcoming pleasure with you—in
BB #98765 at the bottom of that stack of nine BBs?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tah-cum-cheers. You’re a real gem.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A famous <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seinfeld</i>
episode illustrates not only the scandalousness but also, and frustratingly,
the obduracy of the mutual bum-wiping model of friendship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the episode in which one of Jerry’s
baseball idols, the New York Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez, introduces
himself to Jerry as an admirer of his work as a standup comedian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jerry is delighted to meet Keith not only on
account of his prowess as a baseball player but also because he is reputed to
have other interesting interests—notably the history of the American Civil War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two men agree to meet for coffee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything is set for the blossoming of this
new acquaintanceship into a full-fledged friendship on the present writer’s
model—which is to resay, a dyadic forum for mutual entertainment via the
discussion of topics of disinterested interest to both parties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But before they have even properly begun to
discuss any such topics, Keith meets Jerry’s ex-girlfriend Elaine, and begins
to devote all his social energies to wooing her—ultimately unsuccessfully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immediately after the termination of his
liaison with Elaine and without having yet had a proper disinterested chinwag
with Jerry, Keith announces that he is moving house and asks Jerry if he would
be willing to help him shift the movables.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After a slight hesitation, Jerry ruefully but emphatically declines on
the grounds that he hasn’t known Keith long enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rejoinder elicited a collective
belly-laugh from the live studio audience, and presumably continues to elicit a
collective belly-laugh from the rerun-viewing domestic audience, because of a
universally presupposed assumption that helping even the slightest of
acquaintances move house is a minor imposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But Jerry is—and was—very much within his rights to decline to help with
the move, for from Keith he has hitherto been vouchsafed the merest skin or
husk, of a friendship, and been denied its very meat or pith, and therefore
owes him absolutely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nothing</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The vast mobility of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seinfeld</i> fans, together with the entire <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seinfeld</i> production team–very much including Mr. Seinfeld
himself—doubtless view Jerry’s spurning of Keith as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">locus classicus </i>of the purported notorious all-consuming
selfishness and egoism of the show’s quartet of protagonists, but the present
writer can never watch this episode without shuddering with horror at the prospect
of making a new acquaintance <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anywhere </i>outside
his place of work for fear of being conscripted into a lifetime of indentured
servitude to a mere name affixed to a sort of orders-barking zombie or animated
mannequin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with what unspeakably
immense relief does he flee from the social world of so-called free time to his
office job, wherein at least from nine to five-thirty five days a week he can
be sure that nobody will require him to do him aut al. a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">solid</i> and wherefrom he can be genuinely certain that he is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">making a positive difference in people’s
lives</i> in virtually directly inverse relation to his degree of personal
affective engagement with them!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He makes
this positive difference by simply doing what he is asked to do—not only by his
supervisors but also by a class of persons who in a different domain of service
would be known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">customers</i>—as
punctually and accurately as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, he cannot be certain that the work he performs is ultimately
vectored towards a noble or even harmless goal, but this is of absolutely no
concern to him, for he ultimately believes that it is neither at all worth his
while nor any of his business to ponder the merits of that goal; the tripartite
realization that he is not leaving other people in the lurch, that he is
helping to maintain the Johnsonian system of life, and that he is setting a
good example for others in his immediate propinquity who might otherwise get
the notion that it is acceptable to slack off, suffices to satisfy him that he
is not laboring in vain. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course
whenever anyone expresses satisfaction in doing his aut al.’s job well as an
end in itself as I have just done, he aut al. is immediately accused of
yearning to be the commandant of a Nazi death camp, but the accusers never stop
to consider that the Nazi-German system of life for the most part involved
people <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">just following orders </i>that had
nothing to do with the death camps and plenty to do with keeping unincarcerated
Germans alive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That a plurality if not
majority of these unincarcerated Germans were aware of the death camps is well
established, but that they each and every one of them deserved to die, and indeed
would from every point of view have been better off dead, as a consequence of
this awareness, is a contention that I dare say not even the most deeply
aggrieved survivor of the death camps has yet seriously proffered. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is that throughout the human history
of the world, people who have just followed orders out of whatever motive have
done much more good than their ethical antipodes, people who refuse to follow
orders as a matter of principle (i.e., generally, Whigs, proto-Whigs, or
neo-Whigs).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, the present
writer has no need to place himself in as reprehensible a place-cum-time as
Nazi Germany to imagine himself living in a polity in which his relatively
depersonalized deontological work ethic is more palpably reaffirmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can indeed imaginatively emigrate to any
pre-1970 post-World War II occidental polity, and preferably to the
post-Stalin-epoch U.S.S.R., a polity whose system of life was utterly given
over to such a work ethic, and in which the worst that could possibly happen as
a consequence of one’s following orders was the exile of some tetchy scientist
or writer to unincarcerated life in some Soviet analogue to a perfectly livable
provincial town like Rapids City, South Dakota or Moscow, Idaho. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether any currently extant polity within the
confines of the borders of the former U.S.S.R. is relatively impersonal deontological
work-ethic-affirming enough to serve him as an actual, non-imaginary
emigration-destination is to say the least highly debatable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Armenia, Georgia, the Baltic States, and
(the) Ukraine all strike him as being too consumed by Russophobia to
countenance, let alone reward, any exertion of effort that is not in some way
at least purportedly intended to offend or undermine Mr. Putin and the Russian
State; the present writer imagines not being able to phone-requisition an order
of paperclips in one of these countries without signing off with a heartily
yawped <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fuck Putin! </i>in the national
language, or signing an affidavit swearing that not a single one of these
paperclips will ever cross the border with Russia for the duration of its
functional existence in any capacity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The various Stans, in virtue of having apparently never arisen from a
condition of semi-savagery to one of full-fledged society-dom (and in this
respect incidentally resembling certain of their never-Sovietized neighbors
that I dare not name), most likely do not hold onto the relatively
depersonalized deontological work ethic even as a memory; one assumes that to
be a functionary in such a polity is to serve the State only in name, that in
reality one is always a fawning dependent of whichever warlordling or petty
chieftain secured one one’s position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
have heard a few encouraging things about Belarus—that it is no enemy of
Russia, that it harbors no yearning to join the European Union, and that it contains
a thriving tractor factory operating along <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exactly</i>
the same 100-percent State-actuated lines as those established at its founding
way back in nineteen-forty-something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I do not know how large a proportion of the productive sector of the
Belarussian political economy as a whole is organized along such lines, and
some more-than-faint rumblings I have heard about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">internet startup companies</i> in downtown Minsk suggest that however
large that proportion may be, it is diminishing in and at a predictable
tech-humpingly hyperoccident-aping way and pace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the mighty Snuffleupagus in the
former-Soviet room, the Russian Republic—well, by dint of listening between the
lines of the unremittingly Russophobic hyperoccidental media coverage of that
polity, the present writer fancies that he has been able, à la a
hyperoccidental intelligence service-employed eavesdropper on Soviet radio and
television during the Cold War, to divine that the present Russian State’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">raison d’être</i> is at least not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">completely</i> exhausted by the aim of
eradicating Mr. Putin’s personal enemies; to divine, indeed, that it continues
to carry out many of its Soviet-epoch world-maintaining functions, and, indeed,
to carry them out at a conceivably higher level of both effort and return than
any of its hyperoccidental quasi-counterparts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I have learned, for example, that a year or two ago Mr. Putin aroused
much public discontent by requiring government employees to work through the
so-called holiday season (i.e., not to work on Christmas Day itself but merely throughout
the week or so leading up to it), and more recently by raising the minimum age
at which a man could claim a retirement pension from something like 60 to something
like 62.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While of course in absolute
terms both of these retrenchments constituted a net loss for world-maintenance
and the deontological work ethic in Russia, in the light of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">base </i>from which they started, their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">modesty</i> of scale, and their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unpopularity</i>, they patently bespeak a
perduring world-maintenance standard comparable to the Soviet standard and far
superior to anything of the kind in the hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In hyperoccidental polities, the minimum
retirement age for both sexes has been being raised steadily over the past
twenty years from an average base age of 65 to 68 or 69 and is projected to
rise to about 75 within the next decade; and although governmental employees
constitute an enormous chunk of the workforce, announcements of austerity
measures imposed on such workers are met with near-universal applause and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">schadenfreud</i>-ian drooling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course, in reporting on <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">what they insufferably smugly term Mr. Putin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">woefully belated and inadequate reforms</i>,
the vile hyperoccidental propagandists have shamelessly represented the lower
baseline retirement age as but a manifestation of Russia’s contemptibly low
average life expectancy and the superior baseline working conditions enjoyed by
government employees as but a manifestation of muleheaded Russian inefficiency,
of Russia’s obstinate failure to get with the hyperoccidental program of lean,
mean, market-driven political-economic machinery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They, the hyperoccidental propagandists, at
least affect to suppose that the only reason Russian men are now allowed to
retire at sixty is because 999 out of a thousand of them is doomed to drop dead
before the age of sixty-five (and naturally to do so while guzzling his third
extra-dry Standart martini of the morning), and that nobody under any
circumstances ever chooses to be an employee of any government ever instituted
unless he aut al. is too stupid or lazy to participate in the so-called private
sector.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That the supposed fifteen-year
shortfall in male life expectancy in Russia is a Russophobic meta-statistical
exaggeration seems quite likely, but even if it is not—i.e., even if most
Russian men really do get to enjoy a mere five years of retired life—the
current 60-year-old Russian minimum retirement age bespeaks a more humane
attitude to the labor force than its mathematically nearly doubly generous
hyperoccidental counterpart (nearly [and only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nearly</i>] doubly generous because if the average hyperoccidental now
lives to be 80, as hyperoccidental meta-statisticians now claim [doubtless
autophilically exaggeratedly], and is allowed to retire by 70, his aut al.’s
retirement constitutes a full decade or one-eighth of his aut al.’s entire
lifespan, whereas the Russian man enjoys a mere five-sixty-fifths or
one-thirteenth of his aut al.’s entire lifespan, and one-eighth is a bit more
than 1.6 times as much as one-thirteenth), inasmuch as, as I have already
pointed out in this essay, the modest average increase in life expectancy throughout
the hyperoccident has not been attended by the slightest decrease in the rate
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aging</i>, such that while there may
well be more seventy-year-old living hyperoccidentals than seventy-year-old
living Russians, the average living seventy-year-old hyperoccidental is no less
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aged</i>, no less <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">decrepit</i>, than the average seventy-year-old Russian, or indeed than
his aut al.’s now-dead fellow-hyperoccidental seventy-year-old was two
centuries ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, unlike
its hyperoccidental counterpart, the earlier Russian minimum retirement age at
least still vouchsafes the Russian pensioner a few years of pre-decrepit
leisure; it recognizes that once one has done one’s bit for one’s entity
formerly known as society (or conceivably, in today’s Russia, even society
itself still), one is entitled to relax for a while in a corporeally fulfilling
way, to expend one’s still-vital corporeal energies in pursuits entirely of
one’s own devising and for one’s own gratification; it does not presuppose that
one ought to keep working in the service of some other entity merely because
one is physically still capable of doing so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the present hyperoccident, such a view of later life is no longer
intelligible, let alone fashionable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the present hyperoccident, the notion of having done one’s bit is no longer
active outside the minds of such universally derided dinosaurs as the Duke of
Edinburgh, because there is no longer any generally active notion of a social
whole to which this bit might belong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the present hyperoccident, one always conceives of oneself as an individual
working in the virtually or actually immediate propinquity of other individuals
(whence the universal contempt in which government qua intrinsically impersonal
institution is held); one is always a whore or a bum-wiper condemned to walk
the streets in search of tricks until one is no longer strong enough to push
one’s Zimmer frame or to wipe bum after bum after bum ad post-nauseam until one
is in immediate, dire need of a bum-wiper oneself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the extent to which Russia has resisted
falling into line with this hyperindividualizing, hyperpersonalizing tendency
of the hyperoccident (an extent vis-à-vis which I freely admit to being not
very well informed), I applaud it; and, indeed, I am prevailingly enthusiastic
about all the ways and registers in which Russia has not seen fit to keep
up-to-date according to hyperoccidental lights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I believe that liberalization of hyperoccidental laws on homosexuality
should have extended as far and no further than the decriminalization of
homosexual acts—in the U.S. this specifically entailed (and perhaps still
entails) the repeal of the anti-sodomy acts included in the statute books of
many States in the late 1990s and probably still included in a few of them
today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, these laws presumably have not
been even occasionally enforced in any State since the Stonewall police raid of
1969 (although of course with that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">presumably</i>
I presumably have retroactively brought into existence a 2018
incarceration-exacting enforcement of such a law in Texas or Alabama), but for
form’s sake it is fitting to get rid of them, not so much because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what happens between two mutually consenting
adults in the privacy of their own bedroom is nobody else’s business</i> as
because what happens between such a couple therein <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cannot become anybody else’s business unless some busybody is
determined to make it such</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did
not and do not approve of the extension of marriage rights and their attendant
tax privileges to homosexuals because I am suspicious of the extension of
rights and privileges of any kind to anybody (on the other hand, a universal repealing
or annulment of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">heterosexual</i> marriage
rights and their attendant tax privileges would have suited me to the ground),
and I am vehemently opposed to the creeping legal normalization of the entire
farrago of transsexuality, asexuality, and gender queerdom on metaphysical
grounds that I have mentioned above and explicated elsewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In general the pan-hyperoccidental turn from
mere <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">toleration</i> to outright <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">celebration </i>of formerly so-called
alternative lifestyles over the past-quarter century genuinely and thoroughly disgusts
me, and to the extent that Russia remains merely tolerant of such lifestyles I
believe I would find it a more congenial national polity of residence than my
present one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, in letter
Russia’s law against homosexual propaganda constitutes a very flagrant instance
of political <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in</i>tolerance, but I
cannot help being sympathetic to it spirit, for it was instituted in reaction
to representations of formerly so-called alternative lifestyles in the hyperoccident-originating
cinematic and televisual fare with which Russia is nearly as heavily inundated
as any polity west of the old Icey, and as I have already explained far above,
any positive cinematic or televisual representation of any so-called lifestyle
is intrinsically propagandistic, inasmuch as all lifestyles are intrinsically
self-commodifying and ever in search of a higher exchange value.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But my affection for Russia qua last (or, at its least
residual, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">antepenultimate</i>) bastion of
the old <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lebenswelt</i> of the greater
occident emphatically does <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not </i>extend
to those aspects of its system of life constituted by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">revivals </i>of specifically <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Russian</i>
(or, at their least parochial, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hypo-occidental</i>)
folkways and institutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most notably
among these revivals, the Russian Orthodox Church’s recent acquisition of
influence and prestige leaves me cold because, as I have explained at length
far above, the entire Orthodox strain of Christianity contributed remarkably
little of substance to the pan-Occidental intellectual tradition even in Russia
itself and because in its revived form the ROC is pandering to all the worst,
the most regressive, tendencies in present-day pan-occidental religious <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>life—hippiefied intellectual minimalism,
kitschy incense-saturated theatricalism, and stadium-church holy-rollerism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, it would perhaps be best to view the
resurgence of the ROC not as a properly religious phenomenon at all but rather
as a Russian-branded strain of the pseudo-religious sector of the consumer side
of the pan-hyperoccidental economy, an observation that prompts me to observe
further and more generally that I harbor absolutely no illusions about the
average Russian consumer’s overall sales resistance–that I by no means suppose
that the residuum of U.S.S.R.-style doing-one’s-bit-ism on the productive side
of the Russian economy has been complemented by any sort or trace of a residuum
of U.S.S.R.-style use value-orientated contentment with adequately serviceable
goods on the consumer side. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for
instance, while I despise Mr. </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">Zvyagintsev as an artist and
moralist, I suspect I have no good grounds for disparaging him as a
documentarian, and specifically no good grounds specifically for supposing that
the average present-day Russian materfamilias does not spend the preponderance
of her time on any more redeeming pursuits than searching for and purchasing
beauty remedies via her mobile phone, just like her hyperoccidental
counterpart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even this suspicion
affords me a kind of grim consolation, inasmuch as it suggests that the
old-school-ness, the oil and natural gas-driven-ness, of the commercial sector
of the productive side of the Russian economy has been no impediment to Vanya
and Masha Stolichnaya’s attainment of a high degree of affluence, or at least
whatever passes for affluence in the hyperoccident nowadays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I likewise suspect that I have no good
grounds for doubting the truthfulness of </span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Mr. </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">Zvyagintsev’s depiction of the inadequacy of world-maintenance in
present-day Russia, for believing that the average mid-sized Russian city does
not have a handful of abandoned buildings like the flooded high-rise in which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Loveless</i>’s juvenile lead meets up with
his best school chum and possibly meets his doom, or that the average Russian
police detective is not as helplessly resource-bereft, and consequently as
ineffectual, as the one assigned to finding that juvenile lead after his
disappearance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But complementarily I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">know</i> that the United States has
absolutely no good grounds for being smug about its world-maintenance record
given that there are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hundreds if not
thousands</i> of abandoned buildings within a five-mile radius of the room in
which I am typing the present essay, and the inefficacy of the police force of
the mid-sized city in which these buildings are sited is internationally
notorious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, as an
English-speaking person with a command of irregular past participles, I am
expected to be scandalized by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">oligarchical</i>
character of Russia’s commercial sector, by its dependence on a few big fat
cats who line their furry pockets with the hard-earned rubles of Vanya and
Masha Stolichnaya (or at least those of their compatriots who are sensibly and
decently hyperoccidental enough in their tastes and habits to drink top-shelf
white wine instead of Stolichnaya), but I surmise that it is safe to say that
there are few if any things about which I have ever given a smaller negative
toss than this Russian commercial oligarchy, inasmuch as I feel as though as a
citizen of the present-day United States I am already living in a commercial
oligarchy from which I derive absolutely no material or spiritual benefit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For after all, there are only four or five
U.S.-headquartered corporations about which one ever hears anything nowadays,
and I have absolutely no interest in any of those four or five corporations’
prosperity—no interest, that is, in both the sense that I couldn’t give the
smallest negative tosslet if each and every one of them vanished from the earth
to the fullest conceivable extent (i.e., if not only their corporate charters were
dissolved and their assets absorbed into the global body economic, but if every
chair, laptop, desktop, screw, widget, and Ben Wa ball at their headquarters
and branch offices were melted down into a single amorphous mass and absorbed
into the global body proctologic), and the sense that I do not own a single
cent, red or otherwise, of stock in any of those four or five concerns, or
indeed in any other concerns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this
respect, or to this extent, I am a model prospective Soviet citizen, a citizen
of a polity in which there is no need for a stock market because there is no
large-scale private enterprise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
why the sardonically rueful concessions of Trumpophobic econo-wags on NPR and
Radio 4 have no piquancy chez my ears’ palate, why I couldn’t care less about
the fact that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">despite being a clueless
nincompoop, Mr(.) Trump has somehow made the Dow soar to
umpteen-dozen-bazillion points, GDP grow at umpteen-dozen percent per annum,
gasoline prices drop to inflation-adjusted pre-Great Depression-levels, &c.</i>—because
none of this is reflected in or by the most minuscule improvement in my
personal quality of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet as an
English-speaking American with a command of irregular past participles, I am
(in Althusserian parlance) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">interpellated</i>
as a grand rentier by everyone else; whoever I encounter immediately <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">assumes</i> that I am living off some sort
of annuity or trust fund or portfolio; as an English-speaking American with a
command of irregular past participles I am universally implacably denied the
consolation of styling myself <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one of the
left-behinds </i>(i.e., one of those who have failed to keep up with the
Joneses, Patels, Gonzalezes, aut al; not one of the sinister bum-cheeks) in
which the steel-workers and pig-f**kers of the Rustbelt and Heartland theme
parks are positively encouraged to revel by professional bilge-spewers on both
the so-called left and the so-called right—this despite the eye-burstingly
obvious fact that in the most telling register of existence in a Golden
Calf-worshiping EFKAS such as ours,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
register of one’s consumerist <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">appetites</i>,
these steelworkers and pig-f**kers manifestly have not been left behind by so
much as a nanometer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure,
whenever a journalist happens to be in the room, they whinge and bellyache like
the professional beggars in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Threepenny Opera</i> about their plight as supposedly unemployable would-be
producers, but the moment they have been deprived of an audience of prospective
cash-shedders, all they do is whinge and bellyache about their financial
incapacity to purchase the latest A***e handset, or to upgrade to a warp-speed
Wifi connection, or to go on a month-long skiing holiday in Gstaad, just like
their armpit-f**king so-called elite counterparts in the big coastal
cities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the professional
bilge-spewers are by and large correct—albeit effectively only trivially
so—that the unemployed Rustbeltean and Heartlandian steelworkers and
pig-f**kers find it financially more difficult to purchase these commodities than
do the Coastlandian pseudo-elite armpit-f**kers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here the end of the professional
bilge-spewer’s commonwealth forgets its beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If in the end the unemployed steelworkers and
pig-f**kers were genuinely interested in getting back into steelworking or
pig-f**king for its own sake, qua métier, they would not care a jot about their
inability to purchase trendy commodities; rather, they would accept any
steelworking or pig-f**king gig that paid well enough to enable them to put the
cheapest adequately alimentary food on the flimsiest of tables (yes, that’s
right: store-brand food and flimsy store-brand tables and nothing but, not only
for them but also for their god-awful whelps—so, no vacations to the regional
casino or amusement park, let alone to sodding Gstaad or Disney World). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The abominable but undeniable truth is that not
only in the end but as close to the beginning as one can get without being at
the beginning itself, these steelworkers and pig-f**kers are solely interested
in getting back into steelworking and pig-f**king qua means of purchasing trendy
commodities, commodities that they desire above all else, and such being the
case they are as close to being as happy as a pig in shit as a pig can ever be
without actually being in the shit itself—into which they will in any case
almost inevitably soon tumble, albeit admittedly not quite as soon or swiftly
as their Coastlandian pseudo-elite armpit-f**king contemporaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer, by infinitely more
pathetic contrast, yearns insatiably for things that the present world cannot
supply at all but that the world of the recent past <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could</i> supply at least in a certain n*****dly measure, and such
being the case, he has been <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">left behind </i>to
a degree and in a sense of which neither the Rustbeltian and Hertlandian
steelworkers nor their professional bilge-spewing boosters can have the
faintest inkling, but of which he surmises at least a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kuchka</i> or two of extremely-long-in-the-tooth Russians still have
more than a mega-inkling, and such being the case, he, the present writer,
feels a certain metaphysical bond with present-day Russia that both t***ps and
transcends any metaphysical bond he may enjoy (or, rather, endure) with any
other polity, a metaphysical bond that he suspects is doomed to extend to the
term of his biological existence and that in any case is doomed to last until that
highly improbable moment when Russia becomes not only acceptable but hip in the
eyes of the hyperoccident, the moment when exactly the same sorts of Anglophone
hipster <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> assholes as are
now driving up the rents in Washington, D.C. and Baltimore are driving up the
rents in Moscow and Petersburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sad
and doubtless terminal incarceration-eventuating truth is that for the best
part of a generation the present writer, a wight ycleppt Douglas Robertson, has
regarded his native hyperoccidental world-segment as little better or other
than a gigantic Douglas Robertson-ignoring engine, and that inasmuch as he
began to notice the world-segment ignoring Russia at just about the same time
as it began ignoring him, he cannot but regard present-day Russia’s fortunes as
being somehow metaphysically conjoined with his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two of us seemed to have gotten firmly
metphysically hitched back in the late 1990s, during the so-called dot-com boom
or bubble, a micro-micro-epoch wherein it was constantly being said by
everybody and his grandmother (or rather everybody but the present writer and
his grandmother, whom he admittedly cannot recall saying anything to this
effect) that thanks to the apparently miraculously unstoppable expansion of the
interweb, high-paying jobs were available for the asking nationwide, that
indeed, if one wanted a job starting in the low six figures one had only to ring
up the HR department of any tech-orientated company and fart into the handset
of one’s telephone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer
was not finding this received nonce-wisdom borne out by his personal
experience; indeed, he was finding himself bouncing from one menial temp job to
another and barely scraping together a low five-figure income. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And bizarrely if in some sense explicably
(i.e., inasmuch he was in the habit of listening to news radio at work, to the
sporadic and unpredictable extent to which he was permitted to do so), he now
associates each of these miserable temp assignments with some specific setback
or slap in the face contemporaneously suffered by the Russian Republic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He recalls, for instance, a certain moment in
1998 when filling a copyediting position that he was destined to be offered
only to have it snatched away from him with shameless discourtesy when a woman
who had definitively refused it suddenly changed her mind, he heard a certain
snootifying male NPR commentator fly-swattingly remark that Russia’s economy
was then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the size of Illinois’(s)</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then in 1999, when he was working as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">researcher</i>—i.e., journal article-fetcher-cum-photocopier—at
the Baltimore medical institution that need not be named, a position in which
he enjoyed the singular distinction of being praised to his face by his
supervisor with the words <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">You’re like
furniture</i>, he recalled it being reported that then-Russian president Boris
Yeltsin had indignantly and apoplectically spluttered that NATO’s then-just-commenced
bombardment of Yugoslavia <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could lead to
nuclear war—</i>i.e., not that it would specifically provoke Russia to launch a
nuclear first strike against the United States, but that a nuclear exchange
between unspecified parties would somehow consequently just sort of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">happen</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Here, I readily perceived, the belligerence of Yeltsin’s tone had been
belied and ultimately t***ped by the vagueness and noncommittalness of his
phraseology: he believed that this non-Russia-involving attack on the
traditionally closest of Russia’s wholly non-Russian Slavic allies, namely
Serbia (for the entire Yugoslavian experiment that was coming undone at that
moment had merely temporarily marginalized the Russo-Serbian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">entente fraternelle</i>), not only entitled
but fairly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enjoined</i> him to utter the
sort of apocalypse-threatening threats that Nikita Khrushchev had uttered a
generation-and-a-half earlier, and in defense of a much fresher alliance with a
much remoter country (namely that with Fidel Castro’s Cuba), and he knew that the
still-world-annihilatingly formidable size of Russia’s nuclear arsenal <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enabled</i> him to utter such threats, but
at the same time he concluded that the present state of geopolitical public
opinion did not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">authorize</i> him to
utter them—this simply and brutally because, as mentioned before, a full <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">four-fifths of a decade</i> after the
dissolution of the USSR, Russia still had an economy the size of Illinois(‘s)
[or, rather, probably, that of some slightly smaller or larger US state like
Indiana or Ohio, given that we are now talking about 1999 and not 1998]; or, in
superficially entirely different but fundamentally exactly consubstantial terms,
because Russia had not yet managed to captivate the global consumer market with
any commodity that rivaled the captivatingness of the hyperoccident-originating
commodities whose inaccessibility had allegedly brought about the USSR’s
downfall–because it had not yet managed to come up with its own commercially
sexier version of a miserably uncomfortable plebian garment like blue jeans, or
of an unendurable sexually creepy pop star like Michael Jackson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gone throughout the hyperoccident was all
memory of Boris Yeltsin the visionary admirer of Houstonian
supermarkets-cum-deplorer of their Soviet counterparts, of Boris Yeltsin the heroic
resister-cum-reverser of the 1991 coup that had ousted poor Mikhail Gorbachev
(perhaps the noblest political martyr of the twentieth century who did not
suffer outright biological death for sticking to his convictions) and had
bidden fair (or foul) to plunge the U.S.S.R. back into the horrible old early
1980s when blue jeans and Michael Jackson records were still only available on
the black market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By 1999, in every last
pair of hyperoccidental eyes apart from the present writer’s, Boris Yeltsin was
first and foremost a mere loose-necktie’d booze-hound whose opinion on any
subject apart from the best means of getting <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">govno-litso</i>’d before lunchtime was not to be granted a microsecond’s
audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer had suffered
a drop in status and prestige as precipitous as—albeit less widely publicized
than—Mr. Yeltsin’s between the very early 1990s and the very late 1990s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the very early 1990s he had been the
golden boy of the academic humanities in Gulf-Coastal Florida, a lad who had
very nearly single-handedly garnered his county a third-place trophy in the
statewide high-school academic quiz tournament (and would have garnered it a
first-place trophy had he not, in answering the question “What was the native
country of the author of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Praise of
Folly</i>?” cavalierly—and hence quite knowingly—taken it upon himself to cut
through the ever-vexed Gordian knot of a question of whether to call the
Netherlands <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the Netherlands</i> or<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Holland</i> by proffering the patently
adjectival—and hence patently unacceptable—word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dutch</i> [to this day, he regards this ill-adjudged substitution his
most egregious tactical mistake and seldom lets a day pass without applying the
memory of it as a curb on his present inclinations towards cavalierdom]); by
1999, his academic achievements long since forgotten by every Floridian and his
grandmother (including, very probably, the PW’s own), he was one of the
lowliest and most obscure dogsbodies or peons in the entire State of Maryland,
if not the entire Mid-Atlantic, and no mean booze-hound either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could he avoid feeling sympathetic to or
with Mr. Yeltsin in that year?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be
sure, this sympathy had gradually been being stoked by a phenomenon that had
not provoked an apoplectic response from Mr. Yeltsin, albeit that it had set
the stage for the bombardment of Yugoslavia, namely the piecemeal but
inexorable expansion of NATO via its absorption of most of the former Warsaw
Pact countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even now, when my
Russophilia is perhaps at its all-time height, I must in all candor and
frankness confess that my outrage at this expansion has always principally
emanated from its violation of the fundamental laws of logic and nomenclature
rather than from its equally indisputable violation of the fundamental rights
of Russia qua geopolitical power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From
September 1991 at the very latest onwards, we in the hyperoccident were being
told by all the Sunday-morning talking heads and their respective
grandmothers—by each and every think-tank pundit (regardless of the political
orientation of his or her tank), retired or active U.S. general or admiral,
former or current White House official et al., that the Cold War was over, that
it was as moth-attractingly closed a chapter in world history as the Era of
Good Feeling, the Regency, and the Pornocracy—nay, as the Heptarchy, if not the
Tetrarchy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, by all
logical and nomenclaturial rights, the organization named NATO, an organization
whose foundation was consubstantial with the beginning of the Cold War inasmuch
as it had been expressly founded to resist potential Soviet territorial
incursions into western Europe, should have simply disappeared in a puff of
logic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, it was not only
surviving but growing—not so much like the most obvious metaphorical vehicle, a
cancer—even if in the moral register this expansion was indeed as pernicious as
the big C—as like one of those human freaks of genetics who suddenly start
increasing in height and strength in middle age, for whereas a cancer burgeons
in inverse proportion to its prospects of survival, the existential prospects
of this logically impossible expanding NATO seemed to be getting ever brighter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time, nobody in the present writer’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Umwelt </i>seemed to be at all bothered by
this absurdity, inasmuch as none of them ever, ever, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ever</i> talked about it; at the time he was obliged, nay, compelled to
suffer his botheration in absolute solitude—and even if he had gone farther
afield than his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Umwelt</i> in search of
consolation he would have come back with unshouldered lachrymal ducts, unless
he had happened to alight (as he would have been quite unlikely to do in those
days of [<span style="text-transform: uppercase;">specification of certain
technological limitations of those days omitted on the grounds that </span>ALL
SPECIFICATIONS OF PREVIOUS TECHNOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS ARE INEXORABLY
WHIG-FELLATING]) on a certain <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York
Times</i> interview with George F. Kennan, wherein the well-nigh-infallibly
wise nonagenarian retired diplomat logically decried NATO expansi</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white; mso-themecolor: text1;">on as “</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">the beginning of a new cold
war.”</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;"> And now, a full twenty years later…he is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">still</i> compelled to suffer his botheration in absolute solitude,
inasmuch as he has yet to meet a single hyperoccidental who believes that the post-1991
expansion of NATO was logically preposterous or indeed in any other wise a bad
thing, despite how egregiously bad a bad thing in every wise it has turned out
to be. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To a man, woman, gender-queer
pseudo-person, and child, every human individual he now personally knows lays
the blame for the present parlous state of the peace in Europe–and indeed for
practically every other present calamity down to his, her, autc.’s own personal
case of t</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white; mso-themecolor: text1;">oothache, lumbago,
or athlete’s foot—squarely and entirely on the shoulders of Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things have turned out <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exactly</i> as Kennan predicted just over twenty years ago: “</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">Of course there is going to
be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we
always told you that is how the Russians are – but this is just wrong.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wrong this may be and wrong this indeed undoubtedly
is, but this is what is now universally taken to be true throughout the
hyperoccident; this has become <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">doxa</i>—that
which goes without saying—across the hyperoccidental pseudo-political spectrum,
and this is nowhere more fervently championed as doxa than in that spectrum-eme
formerly most sympathetic to the old Soviet Union, the supposedly liberal wing
of the U.S. Democratic Party, by whom the arch-spouter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We always told you that is how the Russians are</i>, the only very
lately late Republican senator John McCain (whose uncannily apt alphabetical echoing
of Joseph McCarthy [whose corpse is in its own right doubtless undergoing
rehabilitation at many a supposedly left-wing think tank even as I type {a
rehabilitation that will doubtless be applauded most fulsomely by the members
of R.E.M., who 32 years ago explicitly railed against that corpse’s exhumation (“You’ve
got to understand,” the long-since-Rasputin-bearded Michael Stipe will
doubtless then intone, “back in ’87, we were just clueless kids; we couldn’t
appreciate what a wonderful human being Joseph McCarthy was because we didn’t
understand how incorrigibly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">evil</i>
Russia had always been”} ] has seemingly gone unremarked by anyone but the
present writer) has been canonized as a supposed champion of such supposedly
timeless and transnational democratic values such as gay marriage and
gender-neutral toilets; and in whose eyes the slaughtering of more U.S. troops
than served in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq between 1950 and the
present would be but a niggling price to pay for staving off a Russian invasion
of (the) Ukraine or the tiniest of the Baltic States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, for the past nineteen years, the
reins of the Russian State have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i>
if not always <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de jure</i> (for we must
not forget the 2008-2012 presidency of Mr. Medvedeev) been in the hands of Mr.
Putin, having been passed to him by Mr. Yeltsin at the exact dawn of the
millennium as reckoned in the vulgarian calendar (i.e., January 1, 2000, as
against the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">proper</i> millennium-advent,
January 1, 2001), and Mr. Putin is a bird of a very different feather (as the
aforementioned Mr. Kennan once described Franklin D. Roosevelt vis-à-vis
Herbert Hoover) from Mr. Yeltsin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to
be sure, he is a bird whose featherdom arouses a good deal less sympathy chez
the present writer than did Mr. Yeltsin’s, inasmuch as while for aught I know
he may drink enough Stoli or Standart before lunchtime to incapacitate a horse,
he gives the decided impression of being an absolut(e) teetotaler, a man who,
to invert and amplify Mark Twain’s famous expression, would rather decline one
drink than a hundred German adjectives; which is ultimately of course merely another
way of saying that he invariably plays his cards close to his chest, which is
admittedly the very same attribute that bothers my Russophobic adversaries the
most about him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the sad or alarming
truth is that in point of fact at least up until the annexation of Crimea, the
present writer tended to find his own opinions on Russia’s geopolitical
disposition jibing with those of Mr. Putin, not, to be sure vis-à-vis him qua
anti-Yeltsinian bird qua cold fish but rather qua head of a by and large
circum-occidentally beleaguered Russian State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In particular, he remembers bristling with well-nigh-porcupinal virtual
perpendicularity on Mr. Putin’s behalf when towards the end of his first term
or not long after the beginning of his second one—so, in 2012 or 2013—President
Obama soft-shoed with characteristic smirking glibness an anti-missile defense
system on the shamelessly ostended ostensible grounds that it was to protect
the United States against attacks from such only dimly prospective nuclear
powers as Iran and North Korea, despite the prospective deployment of the
system within closer striking distance of Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer admits to having been
highly put off by the annexation of Crimea, but not so much—and here one may
witness a beautiful counterpoise to his principal reasons for opposing NATO
expansion—because the Crimea supposedly rightly belonged to (the) Ukraine as
because, like that Russian bit of the Balkans including Kant’s home town, it
was separated from the rest of Russia by an expanse of intervening non-Russian
territory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer is, after
all, nothing if not a champion of the coextensiveness of political and physical
geography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poisoning of the Skripals
and the ensuing send-up travesty of a cover-up thereof are even more upsetting;
but they do not even vaguely adumbrate an exposure of Mr. Putin as the well-nigh-omniscient-cum-omnipotent,
implacably malevolent, and irredeemably evil James Bond villain as which
hyperoccidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpesant</i> received
opinion seems relentlessly determined to expose him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That Mr. Skripal, in virtue of his
intelligence-transmitting activities on the Continent, had pissed off Mr. Putin
in some significant way is readily inferable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That Mr. Putin had obliquely but ultimately unmistakably groaned for Mr.
Skripal’s liquidation à la England’s Kings John, Hank II, and Hank IV., though
not quite likely, is also not quite improbable. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that Mr. Putin ordered Mr. Skripal’s
liquidation via the nerve agent whose administration not only nearly killed Mr.
Skripal and his daughter, but also temporarily incapacitated a bystanding English
policeman and killed a remote Englishwoman, seems virtually impossible,
inasmuch as Mr. Putin’s personal and political interests are too closely bound
up with the City of London to elicit him to provoke a war with the UK for the
sake of liquidating a single personal enemy—as is, indeed, and complementarily,
suggested by the UK’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">materially</i> extraordinarily
muted response to the incident (cf., incidentally, Russia’s extraordinarily
muted response to American bombardments of ruling regime-held sites in Syria). But
of course underpinning all the outrage against the Skripals’ poisoning is the
matter of UK citizenship or British subjecthood or whatever; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> received opinion adduces as
apodictic the assertion that even if the attack had been executed via an AK-47
barrage on Mr. Skripal’s sole person, and at a site miles from any potential
collateral damage to another person, it, the attack on Mr. Skripal, would have
been grounds for a declaration of war on Russia, given that Mr. Skripal was
(and remains) a UK or British subject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But to assert as much is to fall painfully back on to the thousand cans
of worms long since opened by the innumerable phenomena of international immigration
and emigration besetting every single polity in the hyperoccident; inasmuch as
these phenomena have revealed that the choice of whether to grant or deny
citizenship or subjecthood of a given polity is invariably and ineluctably a
political choice, a choice invariably made at the instance of whatever sort of
figure the granting or denying polity wishes to cut either on the so-called
world stage or in the eyes of its domestic constituents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The current British (or UK) government does not
make it at all easy for the sub-professional Poles and Romanians resident in
Britain to become British (or UK) citizens or subjects because it does not find
the services rendered by any specific Pole or Romanian to be indispensable to
Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and it does not wish to alienate the
non-immigrant portion of the UK’s population.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The present writer knows nothing of the terms under or the process by
which Mr. Skripal obtained U.K. citizenship or subjecthood, but he suspects it
had little to do with any sort of Inland Revenue-replenishing labor he was
expected to perform in the ensuing years and decades and almost everything to
do with the fact that he was an enemy of the UK’s current Goldstein, Vladimir
Putin—in other and admittedly highly cynical terms that citizenship or
subjecthood was granted to Mr. Skripal with the express intention of touching
off just the sort of scandal that has been touched off by his attempted
assassination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the shameless
implausibility of the cover-up: yes, it was unspeakably offensive in its
unsurpassable smart-assedness, but in palliation of that smart-assedness one
must remember that from the moment of the discovery of the poisoning onwards,
the preponderance of hyperoccidental journalistic and governmental utterance on
it posited it as an act carried out at the direct and explicit behest of Mr.
Putin and in scrupulous conformity with his exact instructions (e.g., notably,
vis-à-vis the choice of N******k as the weapon and a perfume bottle as its
medium of conveyance), and hence as a de facto act of war on the United Kingdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the face of such penultimate-scene-of-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankenstein</i>-esque fury, in the face of
such furious convergent collective determination of such a large party of
accusers to find one wholly guilty of the worst charges, with no possibility of
adducing extenuating circumstances in one’s defense, what is the point in
concocting an even remotely plausible alibi, let alone of admitting the truth?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vis-à-vis the Skripal case, all the truth
that is so far publicly known is that the two men whom the UK police agencies
regard as the poisoners managed to carry a super-lethal quantity of N******k
into the UK.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because, as asserted above,
it is quite unlikely that Mr. Putin would choose to kill a single person with a
WMD, this successful exportation of the N******k suggests that in present-day
Russia either security controls on WMDs are remarkably lax or the people entrusted
with keeping these weapons under lock and key are extraordinarily corruptible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The revelation of such a genuinely horrifying
state of meta-military affairs in the Russia of twenty years ago, Boris Yeltsin’s
Russia, a Russia wherein the head of State was assumed to be a complete if
harmless f**kup, would have elicited much appalment but also much sympathy from
the hyperoccident; from Westminster, London, Paris, and Washington there would,
to be sure, have been stern calls for the immediate and massive upbeefing of
security at WMD storage facilities but also emollient offers of munificent
financial assistance in the effectuation of that upbeefing, and Mr. Yeltsin, in
virtue of having no face to lose, would have been none the worse for accepting
such succor, in the eyes of either the world or the Russian citizenry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If such a(n) SoM-MAs were revealed to be the
case in today’s Russia, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Mr. Putin, in virtue of having
been puffed up by the hyperoccident into a well-nigh omniscient-cum-omnipotent
clone of Satan, and consequently been not only obliged but compelled to represent
himself as such to the Russian citizenry, would have to abdicate immediately,
and perhaps even to commit instantaneous suicide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whence, it seems not only likely but
ineluctable to me, the recent travesty of a cover-up, or some other sort of
equally risible alternative travesty of a cover-up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth, no matter what it is, is so
more-than-merely-figuratively-fatally embarrassing to Mr. Putin, that he must
paper it over with something, no matter how implausible, and indeed the more
implausible the better, provided that it does not make him seem a jot less
fundamentally knowing and powerful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
this in way of partial exculpation of Mr. Putin’s recent conduct should not by
any means be taken to imply that he’s a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">great
guy</i> or indeed even a middlingly decent guy; that he is a jot less
reprehensibly megalomaniacal, petty, or vengeful—in short, any less of an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">asshole</i>—than even his most vituperative
hyperoccidental critics assert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it
is the present writer’s gamily pungent suspicion—admittedly a permanently
unverifiable one given that it reposes on a preterit counterfactual state of
affairs—that Mr. Putin’s assholishness qua assholishness has not played any
sort of substantially determinant role in Russian history; whichistersay, inter
mulitssima alia, that he suspects that had Mr. Putin been treated differently,
and mainly more kindly, by the hyperoccidental geopolitical establishment from
his initial on-taking of the reins of State back in 2000 onwards, he would at
this moment be, in the reputed phraseology of FDR qua booster of the head of State
of a certain banana republic, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">though a
son of a bitch, at least our son of a bitch</i> (TBS, the supersession of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">son of a bitch</i> by the no means
indisputably semantically coextensive <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">asshole</i>
as the chief pejorative in American English renders the equivalence dicey to
say the least).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Current <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> doxa holds that Mr. Putin’s
entire political entelechy-cum-ambition consists in reviving tsarism in letter,
spirit, and body during his present term of office, in getting himself crowned Tsar
Vladimir the First-cum-Fourth (cf. the accession of James the First-cum-Sixth
to the English throne in 1603, only the other way round).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the moment, in January 2019, this doxa is
conceivably well-founded after a certain fashion (i.e., after exactly the same
limited if not necessarily trivial fashion in which the less popular
supposition that Emmanuel Macron is striving to become another Louis XIV is
well-founded), but it would almost certainly not have been well-founded back in
2000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One must, after all, remember that
Mr. Putin was hand-picked by Mr. Yeltsin as the latter’s successor, and that
accordingly—i.e., that although Mr. Yeltsin was undoubtedly a booze-hound he
was equally undoubtedly not a complete moron—for all his patent
different-featheredness from Mr. Yeltsin in point of personal habitus and
ethos, the Mr. Putin of 2000 must by default be regarded as committed to a view
of Russia’s political <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Schicksal</i> that
was not radically different from that of Mr. Yeltsin, a view of Russia as a
proud and ambitious but by no means militarily imperialistic liberal democracy
with a capitalistically organized economy, a sort of genial commercial
rival-cum-political clone of the likes of the US, Japan, and the EU.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, not long after his accession to
office, Mr. Putin admittedly injudiciously remarked something to the effect of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The collapse of the U.S.S.R. was the
greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time, this remark was pounced all over
by Russophobic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i>
hyperoccidentals as supposed evidence of Mr. Putin’s ambition to<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>restart the Cold War at its coldest
point, perchance by means of a second invasion of Hungary and Poland; and ever
since then, the ever-swelling ranks of the Russophobic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> mobility have savored it as supposedly incontrovertible
evidence of the deep-seatedness of Mr. Putin’s tsarist ambitions, but in the
light of Mr. Putin’s hand-pickedness by Mr. Yeltsin, the present writer judges
it more rational to conclude that Mr. Putin was then quite disinterestedly lamenting
the demise of the Soviet Union qua unifying
political-cum-geographical-cum-linguistic geo-politico-historical to-be-reckoned
with force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Putin Doctrine, to the
extent that there ever has been one, is neither monarchical, nationalistic, nor
imperialistic: it prizes and takes retrospective pride in the Soviet Union as a
mighty, bi-continental polity comprising many nationalities yet united by a
single system of government and a common language or lingua franca, Russian,
that aspires to be no more than a second language in sub-polities wherein other
languages are more reflexively spoken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
Mr. Putin acceded to the Russian presidency over a mere but formidably
proportioned rump of the Soviet Union, but also inasmuch as within this Russian
rump the nationalistic-cum-linguistic discontents of avowedly non-Russian
collectivities continued to fester in little, he promptly set about doing his
best to keep his Russia as Soviet Union-like as possible—most conspicuously by
quashing Chechen paramilitary insurgencies and an effort by Georgian-speaking
Ossetians to be annexed by Georgia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whether Mr. Putin behaved even marginally ethically in effecting these
Soviet Union rump-preserving efforts is, to say the least debatable—but so are
most if not all chief executive-ordered exercises of military force within or
without any polity; domestic and peri-domestic military interventions have
lately been more scandalous in hyperoccidental eyes merely because they have
tended to occur less often in the hyperoccident—as is attested, for example, by
the pan-hyperoccidental uproar at Mr. Trump’s entrustment of the patrolling of
the U.S. Mexican border to the U.S. army, in contrast to the
pan-hyperoccidental quiescence that greeted his slightly earlier bombing of
Syria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, the fundamental
political divide in today’s Russia is rooted in causes that date far beyond the
quelling of the Chechen and Ossetian insurgencies, causes that date back to the
Soviet epoch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inasmuch as Mr. Putin
openly styled himself a nostalgist for-cum-restorationist of the old Soviet
system of political life, the post-2000 domestic political landscape of Russia
tended to be defined by the citizenry’s attitude towards the Soviet system;
those who had benefited from the old Soviet system in any net way whatsoever
tended to support Mr. Putin, and those who had in any net way whatsoever been screwed
by the old Soviet system of life tend to oppose him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever since then, of course, the proportion of
the Russian citizenry who retain personal memories of life in the Soviet Union
has been steadily diminishing and the proportion of that citizenry who have no
memory of life in a Russia not governed by Mr. Putin has been steadily
increasing; and consequently the Russian political landscape has become
increasingly defined by Russians’ attitude towards Mr. Putin qua head of State
in his own right, their attitude towards what he himself and specifically has
or has not done vis-à-vis this or that definitively post-Soviet matter of
political interest. (Case in flagrantly obvious point: the matter of same-sex
marriage, which, although a political flashpoint in present-day Russia, was
never even brought to the table in the Soviet Union, or indeed in any pre-1991 hyperoccidental
polity.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all that, the most
conspicuous figures in the pro-Putin and anti-Putin camps alike are still
pre-1991ers who seem to remain prevailingly guided by their attitudes towards
the old Soviet System.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, when some
four or five years ago the Putinite orchestra conductor Valery Gergiev led a
Russian organized-and-styled concert for peace during a brief truce in the
Syrian conflict, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i>
hyperoccidentals were up in all non-chemical arms about this dashing darling of
the hyperoccidental opera houses and concert halls’ supposed defection to the
supposed dark side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the present
writer scarcely dreamt of raising an eyebrow on hearing the news of Mr.
Gergiev’s participation in this event, for a year or so before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i>, he had heard a radio interview in
which Mr. Gergiev gushed about the superb opportunities for cultural enrichment
he had enjoyed as a tyke in the 1950s and 60s despite then residing in some
miniature armpit of a town in the hinterland of the Caucasus; in particular
about the frequency with which concerts by the illustrious likes of his future
fellow-conductor Yuri Temirkanov and the Leningrad Philharmonic were given
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously—so this gushing
revealed—Mr. Gergiev had never <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">defected</i>
to Mr. Putin’s side but had been on his side all along, had cleaved to him qua standard-bearer
of the old munificent Soviet cultural dispensation qua generous patron of the
great surviving Soviet-epoch orchestras and opera and ballet companies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Complementarily, and slightly later, the
present writer, thitherto almost entirely ignorant of any particulars about
Gary Kasparaov apart from his prowess as a chess-player and his passionate
loathing of Mr. Putin, came to understand whence the latter quality emanated
when on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Desert Island Discs</i> Kasparov devoted
quite a significant proportion of his interdisc patter to the misery he had
experienced as a minority half-Armenian growing up in Soviet Azerbaijan; and quite
a significant portion of that portion to some sort of anti-Armenian riot or
quasi-pogrom in which the Soviet authorities had declined to intervene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In thus adducing these two <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reductiones ad hominem</i>, I by no means
wish to call into question the sincerity or probity of either side<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of either army on the present Russian
political battlefield (let alone to redeem Mr. Putin and damn his opponents, as
my hyperoccidental detractors will doubtless accuse me of attempting to do),
but merely to inject what I hope is a salutary dose of nominalism into the
misguidedly ultra-essentializing character of every current—or at least every
famously current—description of that battlefield.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Putin is held to be incorrigibly abominable
by his opponents both within and without Russia because of his supposed
incorrigible embodiment and enactment of opposition to democratic principles,
institutions, and practices, but the truth is that even within the smugly
self-styledly democratic hyperoccident there is nothing even approaching a
consensus about either which sorts of principles, institutions, and practices
are inherently democratic or the extent to which the inherently democratic
character of a given principle autc. entails its indispensability as a
universally applicable political norm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At the moment the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is the global
poster-child of democracy, and there is nothing that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> hyperoccidentals dread more than her now-well-nigh
inevitable (because self-declared) abdication of the chancellorship, inasmuch
as her successor will well-nigh-inevitably be a person less strongly committed
than she to the present smorgasbord of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i>
political causes (a smorgasbord whose most coveted dishes are of course manically
unreserved xenophilia and grimly implacable Russophobia).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this selfsame Angela Merkel (whom,
incidentally, the present writer <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does</i>
regard as the most capable and virtuous of present major hyperoccidental
polity-leaders despite her poster-child-dom) would have long since become <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hors de combat</i> politically had she been
subject to the limitations on terms of office imposed on her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i> counterparts and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de jure</i> colleagues in many
president-headed republics—notably, in the United States and Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, it was a constitutional
two-consecutive term-limit on the Russian presidency that provoked Mr. Putin’s 2008
do-se-do with Dmitry Medvedev—a do-se-do whereby Mr. Medvedev temporarily
became president and Mr. Putin prime minister and that provoked outraged cries
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lip-service-cum-the cofounded cheek! </i>from
every corner of the hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
then, Mr. Putin had been president for a mere eight years, six years less than
the fourteen comprising the presidency of the thitherto longest-serving French
president, Jacques Chirac and (at least inclusively) Mrs. Merkel’s present
chancellorship; and even now, a decade after the do-se-do, his total stint at
the helm, inclusive of his four years as nominal first mate, has not yet
reached the two-decade mark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If limitation
of executive or quasi-executive power to periods of less than a decade is an
inherently indispensable democratic constitutional institution, then Russia is
an essentially and fundamentally more democratic polity than France, Germany, or
the United Kingdom; and Mr. Putin can indeed be blamed for merely paying
lip-service to it—but by this same token, Mrs. Merkel must be regarded as four-sevenths
as anti-democratic as Mr. Putin; if it is not, then Mr. Putin cannot be blamed
on democratic grounds for merely paying lip-service to such a limitation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, to my blasé if not insouciant
treatment of the electoral fortunes of the various hypo and hyper-occidental
polity-leaders as mutually fungible, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i>
hyperoccidental mobility will reflexively scream that Mr. Putin’s election
campaigns have been <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">riven or riddled with
corruption</i>, and hence that democratically speaking his electoral victories
have been but pseudo-victories, and further hence that in a polity conforming
to a truly democratic electoral process the citizenry would have sent him to
the Coventry of Russia (viz., Archangelsk) in 2008 at the latest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant
cri de coeur</i> the present writer is inclined to reply with a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">malpensant cri de cul </i>to the effect that
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Corruption!</i> has lately become the
principal rhetorical tool of the most pernicious of the hyperoccidental would-be
corrupters themselves, to the extent (admittedly nonexistent in the present
writer’s case) that one regards the will of the people as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i> sacroscanct, inviolable virgin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The eye-burstingly obvious case in point is the since-January
2017-never-ending judicial (or perchance <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">juridical</i>?)
hullaballoo over the question of the actuality or extent of Mr Trump’s
collusion, coition, etc. with the Russian government during the 2016
presidential election campaign.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even in
the event that Mr. Mueller’s investigation reveals that Mr. Trump signed his
soul over to Mr. Putin in blood and in quintuplicate, this revelation ought to
have no bearing on Mr. Trump’s present legitimacy as president, inasmuch as his
enamourment with Mr. Putin was no secret during the election campaign, and
indeed was not denied by Mr. Trump himself when his opponent, Mrs. Clinton,
took occasion to remind voters of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the tens of millions, Americans knew that Mr. Trump was a Putin-f**ker, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they voted for him anyway</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> would be-corrupters of hyperoccidental democracy have
been compelled to take their fury out on the very <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demos</i> of whom they style themselves the most dedicated and sole
legitimate collective champion; for although, to be sure, they are
guilty-conscious’d or prudent enough not to impugn this selfsame <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demos</i> for being simply <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stupid</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">porcifutuaceous</i>, they make no hummingbird’s eardrum bones about
declaring it to have been so gullible as to have been irresistibly misled and
seduced by Putin-fueled Trump-boosting rhetoric, to have been led as
ineluctably as the Pied Piper’s rats into the river Trump by Russian so-called
Twitterbots masquerading as Stateside pig-f**king Trump supporters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They would have us believe that Bob and Suzy
Pigf**ker were so abjectly beholden to their own pigf**kerly ethos-cum-habitus
that a Tweet of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yeehaw!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Gospodin Trump wuz pig Ya’d love him big
time </i>from Yuri Trumpf**ker would suffice to win them over to a presidential
candidate towards whom they otherwise would have been indifferent if not
downright antipathetic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They (i.e., the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">beinpensant </i>hyperoccidentals, not Bob
and Suzy Pigf**ker) would have us believe that the Trump-boosting half of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demos</i>—in presumptive utter contrast to
the presumptively thoroughly enlightened Trump-detracting other half thereof—was
so utterly indifferent to straightforward reportage from conventional media
sources that Trump advocacy from any old Trump-trumpeting Twatter would be
accepted by them as incontrovertible proof of Mr. Trump’s eligibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in this solicitation to belief they (i.e.,
again, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">beinpensant </i>hyperoccidentals,
not Bob and Suzy Pigf**ker) may very well be right—excuse me, not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right</i>, but, rather, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">correct</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the present
writer maintains that even if they are therein correct, the ultimate blame for the
above-described gulling of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demos</i>
is not to be laid at the feet of either Mr. Putin or Mr. Trump, or even at
those of Joe Twitter, but rather at those of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demos</i> itself—at the feet of its own seemingly abominably
incorrigible gullibility; a gullibility whose political weaponization antedates
Twitter by centuries if not millennia and might just as effectively have been
weaponized during the 2016 campaign if all parties to it and would-be
interlopers into it had been confined to operating via stagecoach and hand-operated
printing press, or even via ox-cart and cuneiform tablet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In every polity at every point in recorded
human history there have been people inclined to believe any assertion about
the political lie of the land that issues from the mouth, pen, etc. of any Tom,
Dick, Harry, Thomasina, aut al.; and in most occidental polities at least since
the invention of periodical journalism (i.e., since ca. 1700), there have been
political agents keen on capitalizing on this inclination by posing as
Tom…Thomasina, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>American
journalism has certainly never been any stranger to such imposture, and indeed
by the 1830s the reputation—whether warranted or not—of Americans as peculiarly
game for and adept at such a shenanigan was so strong as to compel Honoré de
Balzac to mis-dub our sometime newspaper-mongering founding father Benjamin
Franklin its inventor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Balzac referred
to the actual non-invention in question as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">canard</i>, and instances of it have been more than occasionally termed
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">canards</i> even in the Anglosphere, although
they have most often been designated by the less French-sounding noun <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hoax</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That the utterly gratuitous term <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fake
news</i> has lately been coined to describe this phenomenon in specific
connection with the so-called social media and been subsequently exploited as a
term of abuse by both sides of the present U.S. pseudo-political divide is, if
hardly surprising (i.e, in the light of the horrifying political amnesia that
has lately taken hold of the hyperoccident [as instantiated, by, for example,
the far-abovementioned semiotic switcheroo of red and blue qua designators of
political allegiance]), nonetheless deeply troubling, inasmuch as it suggests that
everyone in the United States but the present writer has forgotten that the ability
to gauge the probability of an assertion in relation to established facts and
probabilities has tended to be posited as a basic prerequisite not only for
citizenship, but also for mere <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">adulthood </i>in
virtually every sort of polity under the sun since Mesopotamian times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the entire industry answering to
the name of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">advertising</i> presupposes
that even the mentally ripest adults are entirely lacking in this ability, but
for that very reason neither this industry nor its victims have ever enjoyed
the slightest modicum of respect or sympathy in any polity under the sun since
Mesopotamian times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If a given
toothpaste purchaser has purchased a given brand of toothpaste because an
advertisement has represented a user of that toothpaste as ineluctably
erotically successful, and this purchaser subsequently enjoys no erotic
success, although we are outraged at the advertiser’s confounded cheek in
having imposed such an imposture, we do not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">principally</i>
react with outrage at the purchaser’s misleading by the advertiser but rather
with contempt for the purchaser for having been so easily misled by the
advertiser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We do not bewail the advertiser’s
interference in some presumptively preexistent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">commercial process</i> wherein would-be consumers are supposed to be
given nothing but the hard, cold, unadorned facts about the products that they are
presumed to have the wherewithal to purchase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now, if at the moment of purchase the cashier somehow ends up charging
the gulled toothpaste purchaser an amount ten times as high as what the tube is
actually supposed to cost, that is an entirely different s***y.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In such a case, whether the overcharging is
the result of a calculating error on the part of the cashier or a calculated
miscalculation by his aut al.’s commercial masters, it is patently the seller
and not the buyer who is to blame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
such a case, we may indeed legitimately talk of interference in the commercial
process, but here the commercial process consists entirely of non-mental
arithmetical operations, of the mechanical copying of data from one site to
another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The analogous situation in any
electorally driven political process is the tampering with ballots deposited either
virtually or actually at polling stations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At no point has it been even inconclusively shown that the Russians
engaged in such tampering in the 2016 election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Such being the case, Mr. Trump’s election to the presidency, however
regrettable, must be regarded as a fair cop in U.S.-Constitutional terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course, pseudo-left American doxa now
holds that these terms count for naught, that Mr. Trump should not be regarded
as the legitimate U.S. President, inasmuch as he did not win the majority of
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">popular</i> vote, the vote of the
preponderance of that very <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">demos</i> whom
the pseudo-left evidently regard in an even more contemptible light than shit’s
bastard younger brother; pseudo-left American doxa now holds that the electoral
college on which the securing of the presidency has always constitutionally
depended <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must</i> be abolished, inasmuch
as it (like the U.S. Senate, which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at the
moment</i> [i.e., solely because the Democrats failed to secure control of it
at the most recent midterm] is likewise held in disfavor by the American
pseudo-left) gives disproportionate political weight to small States and
thereby thwarts the realization of the will of the nationwide majority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here once again the end of the
commonwealth envisaged by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i>
bilge-spewers forgets its beginning, inasmuch as Mr. Trump notoriously or
famously secured the Republican nomination in the very teeth of the most
doggedly rabid resistance of the Republican establishment, of the GOP political
machine dominated by the very wolfish, cash-glutted fat-cats the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> mobility had done everything
in their power to thwart in the preceding presidential election; secured it,
namely, thanks to the nationwide hegemony of the primary system, whose gradual
adoption over the course of the twentieth century made the selection of
presidential candidates ever-more <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">democratic</i>
and thereby rendered the electoral influence of party-political machines
ever-more marginal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And hey, babe, it’s
not like I’m saying that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">malpensant</i>
American political mobility, the pseudo-right, the boosters and arse-lickers of
Mr. Trump, are any more consistent in their attitude towards democratic
institutions and practices than their pseudo-left adversaries, that they have
been any less prone to decry the supposed stolenness of an election that their
man, woman, aut al. ([sic] on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">aut al</i>.,
for for aught I know the Trumpites would go b**ls deep in campaigning for a
transsexual candidate provided that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">zhe</i>, aut al. were an avid-enough
gun-collector or zealous-enough proponent of a Mexican-border wall) has
happened to lose, or to ascribe deviations of the popular will from their own
notion of magnetic north to ineluctable brainwashing by some virtually
omnipotent individualized Pied Piper of a bugbear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>pseudo-left’s ascription of the supposed corruption of the political
consciousness of the pigf**kerly salt of the earth of the so-called heartland
by Vladimir Putin is neatly complemented by the pseudo-right’s ascription of
the corruption of the assf**kerly salt of the earth of the two coasts by George
Soros.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And hey, babe, it’s not even like
I’m saying on a more general plane that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">porqueria</i>
of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Staatslandschaft</i> that is the
present American political scene illustrates the inherent shortcomings of
democracy or the inherent superiority of an authoritarian system of government to
a democratic one—or, rather, in the specific context of the present essay, a
consistently pseudo-democratic polity like today’s Russia to an inconsistently
genuinely democratic polity like today’s United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All and what I’m saying, rather, is, that in
the present system of global life it is difficult to imagine any system of
government in which any less than a teensy-tiny bit less than half the
population governed by it would not be radically pissed off and perpetually
stroppy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doubtless a heck of a lot of
Russians are discontented as heck about being presided over by Mr. Putin, and
by now—i.e., several years since his last big coup on the international stage
(viz., the annexation of Crimea) and only a year or so since his most recent
c**k-up thereupon (viz., the Skripal poisoning)—that heck-of-a-lot probably
amounts to a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">most</i>, but it is almost
certainly not a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">most</i> large enough to
be converted into a so-called overwhelming majority by even the most
scrupulously monitored snap-presidential election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is, indeed, very probably nearly exactly
the same size as the modest most of Americans that now detests Donald Trump
thanks to the modest diminution of his so-called base since the 2016 election,
and it is therefore by no means straight-facedly convertible into the sort of
psychologically integrated personification of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the Russian people</i> whose will would automatically, categorically,
and legitimately be reasserted by Mr. Putin’s removal from office and
replacement by Mr. Kasparov or the most virtuous and sagacious Pussy Rioteer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, it is regrettable and disturbing
that several-to-many Russian citizens and former Russian citizens have ended up
in prison or even dead in consequence of non-violent political or journalistic
activity against Mr. Putin, but one is by no means within one’s rights either
to assume that it is fear of ending up imprisoned or dead themselves that has
principally deterred the presumptive modest anti-Putin most from making their
anti-Putinism more demonstrative, or to blame that most for not being more
visibly outraged by the homicidal ferocity of Mr. Putin’s personal vindictiveness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Presumably the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">main</i> reason that most of the slight majority of Russian people who
do not on the whole care for Mr. Putin do not publicly take up banners and
placards against him is that they that they do not care enough about not caring
for him to be arsed to stitch together an anti-Putin banner or Sharpie-and-staple
together an anti-Putin placard, which to say both that their quotidian life under
Putin’s presidency has not yet become so onerous that any short-term disruption
of that life bids fair to make it less onerous and that they cannot bring
themselves to be sufficiently vexed at the disruption of the quotidian lives of
strangers to put the restoration of these strangers’ quotidian well-being ahead
of the maintenance of their own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for
this political quiescence or lethargy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they
are, </i>I repeat verbatim (barring the change to the passive voice),<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> not to be blamed.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever since the Second World War it has been pan-hyperoccidentally
quasi-doxical—i.e., wholly doxical among the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensants</i> plus semi-doxcial among the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">malpensants</i>—that the slightest infringement of the State on the
civil liberties of even a single individual calls for immediately putting one’s
own life in immediate peril on the grounds that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tomorrow it could be me who is being tortured, imprisoned without
prospect of trial, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>But to the
admittedly debatable extent that one is entitled inductively to extrapolate
from the past, the grounds are utterly fallacious, inasmuch as in even the most
tyrannical polities of the past three-quarters of a century the persecution of
political dissidents has not tended progressively to impinge on the general
citizenry in an ever-widening dragnetical arc; inasmuch as even in such
polities a citizen has generally been assured of surviving—and indeed thriving
to the extent that the local system of life permits—to the very end of his aut
al.’s natural, provided that he aut al. does not go out of his aut al.’s way to
advertise his aut al.’s attitude towards the State or other Powers that Be (or
that then Be’d).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">has not tended</i> is a fudge that covers at
if not a multitude then at least several handfuls of egregiously sinful regimes
that have delighted in imprisoning and killing people just for the heck of it
(e.g., the Khmer Rouge and the Kims’ in North Korea), but Mr. Putin’s present
regime, like that of all post-Stalin Soviet regimes (and indeed Stalin’s own before
ca. 1936) emphatically is not one of these several handfuls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that tyranny of the sort exerted by Mr.
Putin is not intrinsically objectionable—albeit in the name not of democracy
but of basic human decency—but that sincere, wholehearted,
one’s-own-life-endangering objections to a tyranny can really only ever begin
at home, the home of someone immediately impinged upon by that tyranny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To adduce an analogous Stateside case that
will doubtless appear tasteless in the extreme to all but the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">plus</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">malpensants</i>
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">malpensants</i>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the present writer was genuinely horrified by
President George W. Bush’s establishment, in the aftermath of the attacks of
September 11, 2001 <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of the Guantanamo Bay
detention center—horrified, namely, by this establishment qua
roughshod-cavalcade over all sorts of national and international constitutional
rights, but he felt no impulse whatsoever to take to the streets in protest of
the establishment because he was not in the least bit afraid of being unconstitutionally
detained in the detention center himself, inasmuch as he sported neither a
traditionally Islamic forename or surname nor the merest ghost of a beard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(This was, after all, nearly a decade before
beardiness became the prime signifier of hipness among non-Islamic
hyperoccidental men.) When, on the other hand, a few years later that selfsame
President George W. Bush extended daylight saving time so sneakily and at such
short notice that the present writer became aware of the extension only when certain
of his electronic devices—but only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">certain</i>
of them (for many of the impinged-upon software designers had not had
sufficient time to implement the requisite so-called patch)—stole an hour’s
march on his wristwatch on that first accursed second Sunday in March (I
confess I am unable either to part or do anything clever with the repetition of
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">march</i> in the preceding clause)—well,
he was not only horrified but also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">outraged</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why? Well, in the first and more general
place because he was and is by either nature or habit a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nachtgeschöpf</i>, a creature of the night, who had and has long resented
daylight saving time altogether on account of its prolonging of the sun’s stint
above the western horizon; who loves the winter not least because it guarantees
that he will return home from work in the dark, and loathes the summer not
least because it compels him to go to bed if not quite “by day,” then at any
rate when day is still the freshest and hence most sleep-disrupting of
memories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the smartass who is now
thinking of pointing out to me that what daylight saving time adds to the
evening it subtracts from the morning I concede that, yes, were I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nachtgeschöpf</i> who kept a radically bohemian
quotidian schedule, were I some sort of week-round partier addicted to staying awake
from midnight till dawn, I would most certainly love DST as much as I now loathe
it, and would welcome each and every extension of DST as an augmentation of my chronographic
fund of pleasure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as I am a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nachtgeschöpf</i> obliged to stick to a
traditional bourgeois diurnal schedule, at least from Monday to Friday, I
relish an early-arriving evening as an attendant of something I am looking
forward to doing, namely, going home; and while I certainly do not enjoy an
early-arriving morning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eo ipso</i>, I
appreciate it as a means to a necessary if undesirable end: I appreciate it inasmuch
as it helps my alarm clock wake me into doing something that I am <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> looking forward to doing, namely,
going to work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This mention of an early-arriving
morning as a salutary stimulus brings me to the second and more specific of my
reasons for resenting W.’s extension of DST.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My apartment faces due west and has no windows facing in any other
direction; consequently, at home I do not benefit from direct sunlight qua
alarm clock-MSG even when the day is longest, at the summer solstice of late
June; and I do not benefit from the absence of direct sunlight qua harbinger of
recreation even when the day is shortest, at the winter solstice of late
December, and for the overwhelming preponderance of the year, namely from about
early February through early November—i.e., the entire nine-month period in
which days are not much shorter than average—I am compelled to have more or
less direct sunlight streamed onto my person from slightly past midday to
sundown, and it is always in the hour immediately preceding sundown that direct
sunlight becomes optically and thermally most oppressive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so, by extending daylight saving time by three
weeks, George W. Bush effectively added a minimum of six hours’ (i.e., one
hour- per-weekend day times three) misery to the present writer’s domestic
life—this on top of the at-minimum fifteen hours of extra-domestic misery
occasioned by the calendrical augmentation of the aforementioned unwelcome
daylight <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Heimkehr </i>on weekdays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway, who, or how, when the present writer
belatedly discovered the W.-mandated DST extension, he was for the first time
in his life more than figuratively galvanized enough to protest a politically
induced change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was unprecedentedly
biologically up and ready to take to the streets in a more than figurative
sense in support of a retrenchment of DST to its 1986-established
first-Sunday-in-April starting point.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But when he canvassed those persons whom he had formerly regarded as his
virtual <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">politikanschauungicshe</i>
clones, he discovered to his horror, consternation, and indeed outrage, that
they were no such persons, that, indeed, they positively <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">welcome</i>d<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>the extension
inasmuch as it gave them <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">more time to
unwind, take a load off, relax, throw yet another shrimp on the Barbie, enjoy
some extra quality experiences with the nippers</i>, etc., then fluttered their
accursed flip-flops (remember: this was in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Baltimore</i>
not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ocean </i>City [whence did anybody
get the idea that it is remotely acceptable to wear flip-flops anywhere but at
the beach?]) in a chorus of W.-fellating pedal applause.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so from then onwards the present writer
was obliged to nurse his W.-resenting rage in silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the present writer’s mind, the extension
of Daylight Saving Time was by far the Bush administration’s most egregious
violation of civil liberties and overreaching of executive authority; to the
present writer’s mind, the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention center
and the invasion of Iraq were mere playful pinches of the American body
politic’s bottom by comparison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet this
extension receives not a single frame of opprobrium in either Oliver Stone’s
cinematic anti-hagiography of the president himself or Adam McKay’s cinematic
hatchet job on his deputy, Dick Cheney, which just goes to reaffirm the
writer’s abovementioned sense that the world in toto has become a gigantic
Douglas Robertson-ignoring engine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
never mind that engine for the moment, for I adduced this example of the extension
of DST not qua exhibit in proof of the world’s indifference to Douglas
Robertson but rather qua example of the sort of polity-wide everyday
life-affecting change that has so far not typified Mr. Putin’s exercises of
executive authority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If one happens to
be gay, one may very well be outraged at Mr. Putin’s limitations on (or of) expressions
of gay identity, but as most Russians—like most people in general—happen not to
be gay, these restrictions are never going to touch off a revolution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mutatis
mutandis</i>, goes for Mr. Putin’s control of the so-called State media and the
attendant Putinization of the national television news broadcasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Now hold on there just a second, buster-cum-pardner-cum
pilgrim,” the robotic zombie cowboy DGR interjects, “Even supposin’ (and Ford
or Bezos perish the supposition!) that the faintest ghost of an infringement of
the liberties of our gay brothers, sisters, theysters, zhesters, autl al., does
not axiomatically constitute a non-oral mortal blow to the liberties of each
and every person on the planet regardless of his aut al.’s sexual orientation
(or lack thereof), you can hardly reasonably claim that Mr. Putin’s
infringement of the freedom of the press is of the same character as his
infringement of gay rights, inasmuch as the chief if not sole beneficiary of
freedom of the press is manifestly not some political or demographic niche but
rather <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the public as a whole.</i>”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the contrary, I can reasonably claim that
the two Putinian infringements in question are of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exactly</i> the same character, inasmuch as the principal if not sole
beneficiary of freedom of the press manifestly is and always has been not the
public as a whole but a specific political-cum-demographic niche that is even
more piddling than the gay so-called community–viz., that class-cum-set of
persons who style themselves <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">journalists</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You heard me aright robotic zombie cowboy
DGR: the very purpose, telos, and raison d’être of journalism, whence
axiomatically of all demands for freedom of the press, is to stoke the sense of
self-importance of journalists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If truth
be frankly and candidly told, the general public of no polity has actually ever
given a tinker’s toss about the news, and if truth be even more frankly and
candidly told, each and every non-journalist in every polity since the
aforementioned dawn of the pseudo-métier in ca. 1700, has yearned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">for the news in every available format and
medium simply to go away for good</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> to
perform the biologically impossible act</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Who but the most loutish, the most thick-bellied, of hyperoccidentals,
has ever looked with any emotion more flattering than medium-grade contempt
upon the stereotypical journalist with his perennially sweaty armpits, his
perennially unbuttoned top shirt button-cum-loosened necktie, his incessant
unreserved and unexcused farting, his unabashed retailing of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">histoires du cul</i>, his unregenerately inefficient
hunt-and-peck typewriting non-method, his recourse to some dumbed-down
abridgment of Merriam Webster for the correct spelling of the likes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ceiling </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">freest</i>, or the correct placement or omission of the apostrophe in
or from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it(’)s</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Of course it will be objected by the robotic
zombie cowboy DGR that my description of the stereotypical journalist is
unmistakably masculine, and therefore hopelessly anachronistic; to this
objection I will irrefragably point out that the sexual diversification of
journalism has simply afforded stupid and ill-mannered women a more publicly prominent
forum for the indulgence of their stupidity and boorishness than they formerly
enjoyed in the hospital ward or the grade-school classroom.) In short, who of
any intelligence in the hyperoccident has ever regarded a journalist by default
as anything but a person of exceptionally low genius whose presence in the
world is a blight on the latter’s existence?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the answer to the preceding question presumably being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No one</i>, who of any intelligence in the
hyperoccident cannot fairly yearn to be resident in a polity such as the
present Russian Republic wherein the chief organ of journalism, in being known
to be a directly and immediately governed mouthpiece of the State, is openly
discreditable from the outset?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this
connection I am reminded of that never-famous but by no means <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">halbweltgeistig-</i>ly marginal 1988 song “Lies”
by the American (and more specifically Milwaukeean) folk-punk power trio The
Violent Femmes (yet another set of old-school <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> persons who would presumably be at daggers drawn with
me on every contention made in this essay, but never mind that), wherein the
lyricist ruefully itemizes two duplicitous verbal constructs, a poem by a “very
famous poet” and the sermon of a television preacher, whose rhetorical
slickness has very nearly managed to hoodwink him into believing patent
untruths, and then goes on to concede that “he never had this problem,” the
problem of sorting truth from falsehood, in taking in the pronouncements of “of
nobody [i.e., anybody] in the government” inasmuch as “I guess I always figured
they’d never mean what they meant [i.e., actually mean what they purported to
mean {the formal oxymoronity of the conjecture is obviously an homage to Yogi
Berra}].”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ultimately and conclusively, the
song implies that the entire field of discourse in the hyperoccident is (or at
least then was) uniformly pervaded by a tendency towards hucksterism, towards
(in the lyricist’s own words) “mixing up the truth with something funny.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It implies subsidiarily that the average
hyperoccidental has always sagaciously expected the persons governing him aut
al. to be hucksters by default and is to be blamed merely for not extending his
aut al.’s application of this sagaciousness beyond the ambit of government, for
not assuming that non-governmental entities are just as strongly inclined as
governmental ones to lie to him aut al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While by no means setting a low premium on truth, and indeed implicitly
setting the highest premium on it in virtue of explicitly treating of the topic
of lies polemically, the song implies that one should not fetishize any entity <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ici bas</i> qua promulgator of veridical
pronouncements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I adduce the song here
principally because qua production of a perennial topper of what were then
called the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">College Radio Charts</i> (this
because they ranked songs, bands, and albums according to the criterion of the
amount of airplay they had received on radio stations owned by American
colleges and universities and prevailingly staffed by American college and
university students) it cannot but give a fairly reliable picture of the
meta-epistemological lie of the hyperoccidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> land just before the fall of the Berlin Wall and
consequently highlights the seismically dramatic transformations of that
land-lie that have taken place in the intervening thirty-plus years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the song indicates, back then as
now, the spokespeople of organized religion, and specifically of the Christian
religion, came in for harsh meta-epistemological criticism <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chez les bienpensants</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
this mistrust of the truth-claims of ecclesiastical authority was counterpoised
by an equally keen mistrust of the truth-claims of its secular counterpart, the
purveyor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">au courant</i> so-called high
culture, the famous (and presumably still living because otherwise <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">great</i>) poet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the least trusted entity of all back then
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chez les bienpensants</i> was the
government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fast-forward, as they say,
to 2019, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chez les bienpensants </i>it
is only the first of the three entities, the spokesperson of organized
Christian religion, that is still regarded as a huckster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The poet is of course now required to be
revered as epistemologically infallible because he, she, aut al. is a
practitioner of one of the so-called fine arts, and the fine arts now no longer
have any other function in the hyperoccident than celebrating <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> values.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the U.S. federal government, to each and
every extent that it dissociates itself from the current chief of its executive
branch, is likewise required to be revered as epistemologically infallible
because from a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> point of
view the current chief of that executive branch can do no right, or rather, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unwrongness</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most conspicuously in contrast to the olden
days, the U.S. military now commands unqualified meta-epistemological adulation
from the American <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensanterie</i>,
inasmuch as it happens generally to be at loggerheads with Mr. Trump.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Mr. Trump happens to be in favor of a
diminution of American military presence in a given country, any general of any
branch of the armed forces can now recommend the smart-carpet-bombing of each
and every orphanage and hospital in that country and he (or she? [one assumes
there are no transgender generals <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yet</i>])
will be applauded by each and every <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i>
for his (or her?) supposed sage counsel solely on the ostensible grounds that
he (or she?) is a professional soldier and hence a sort of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">expert</i>, because of course in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i>
eyes expertise of any sort now counts as a warrant of epistemological
infallibility, because of course Mr. Trump happens to be the antithesis of an
expert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Never mind the question of the
intrinsic justice or prudence of the proposed military action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course many if not most of these <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> tank-humpers were more than
figuratively begging to be water-cannoned for their opposition to George W.
Bush’s invasion of Iraq back in ’03.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Anyhow, Russocentrically speaking, the upshot of everything I’ve been
saying and resaying since the sentence beginning “Mr. Putin is held to be
incorrigibly abominable…” is that I just wish—and doubtless wish in vain—that
in the light of its manifest own inability to distinguish the contours of its
own fundament qua supposed fundament of democracy from those of the average
hole in the ground even in the historical very-short term, the hyperoccidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensanterie</i> would comport itself
towards the present-day forestering of the Russian political game park with a
tad or smidge more <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">humility</i>, with a
tad or smidge less disdain or horror for or at the shifts, feints, grabs, and
subterfuges resorted to by Mr. Putin and the lack of resistance thereto by the
Russian masses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the loathsome,
pestiferous, garlic-reeking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i>
pseudo-elite (who are in reality but a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mob</i>
of only slightly demographically smaller proportions than their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">malpensant</i> heartlandian rivals) had
clung to a single genuine principle for ten years in succession, they might
indeed—albeit only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">might</i> indeed—be
entitled to claim the moral high ground vis-à-vis the likes of Mr. Putin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, it seems to me vis-à-vis their
current championship of supposed progressive forces in present-day Russia that
they would do well preemptively to sop up an egg or ten bound by default for
their faces by reflecting on the recent-to-current state of States wherein
persons and factions who could do no wrong in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> eyes under former, openly autocratic, political
dispensations eventually assumed full political hegemony by democratic means—notably
the current state-of the-States of Myanmar and South Africa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a course of reflection would teach them
that a polity wherein the government oppresses the people directly is not
necessarily to be rejected in favor of one in which it smugly acquiesces in the
people’s oppression of one another, and that in practice democrats are no less
prone to be kleptocrats than the autocrats who are their supposed political
antitheses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, even in the
unlikely event that Mr. Putin does manage to annul the Russian constitution and
acquire executive power in theoretical perpetuity, his actual hold on that
power is destined to be much shorter, and indeed likely to be not much longer
than the run of a moderately successful pre-millennial American sitcom,
inasmuch as he is very near to completing his seventh decade as a biological
entity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, yes, my formerly evoked
sexagenarian or septuagenarian friend, I well remember that WE’RE ALL LIVING
LONGER NOW!!!!!!, but although I concede to you that chief executives of State
as old as you are slightly more common than they were thirty or forty years
ago, you must concede to me that even an octogenarian chief executive of State
is still a comparative rarity, and that the world’s sole even-remote approach
to a nonagenarian chief executive of State, Queen Elizabeth, has been
delegating her extra-domestic duties to her sexagenarian-to-septuagenarian
eldest son for several years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
light of these demographic tendencies, I give Mr. Putin another butcher’s-dozen
years max—in other words, I am conjecturing that he is substantially closer to
the end of his national-gubernatorial political life than to its
beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the meantime, of course,
he may appoint a successor hand-picked to act as a mini-Putin until the cows of
human history come home, but then one must remember that Mr. Putin was himself
hand-picked to act as a mini-Yeltsin until those selfsame cows came home, and
we are now well aware of the utter invisibility of this bovine homecoming to
the most powerful meta-historical telescope ever since the moment, some
nineteen years ago, when Mr. Putin showed himself to be a cow of decidedly
different markings than Mr. Yeltsin’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alternatively,
and more likely-ly, after Mr. Putin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disparation</i>
no later than 2032, the helm of the Russian State will pass into the hands of
the current <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant </i>opposition,
or, rather, into the hands of some grotesque metastasis thereof, in which case
on the legislative plane the political landscape will doubtless become
receptive to every manner of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">queerdom</i>
(doubtless including by then not only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">species-queerdom</i>
but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">kingdom-queerdom </i>[i.e., not only
outwardly human-seeming persons self-identifying<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>as, say, snow-geese or wombats but also outwardly human-seeming
persons self-identifying [and quite justly, indeed, at least vis-à-vis their
intellectual capabilities!] as plants, fungi, bacteria, slime-molds, etc. [or,
rather, by then, et al.]), while at the same time, and in reaction to this queerification,
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pseudo-national</i> insurgencies
within Russia will become ever-more stroppily belligerent and militantly
secessionist along increasingly fine-grainedly exclusionary lines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recall that immediately after Russia’s
annexation of Crimea from (the) Ukraine back in 2014 a certain <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rarissima avis</i> of an at-least-would-be
farsighted pundit conjectured that inasmuch as a substantial minority of the
population of Crimea did not regard themselves either as Russians or as Ukrainians
but rather as Ta(r)tars, it was only a matter of a fairly-to-very small time
until the Crimean Ta(r)tars secured the establishment of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ta(r)taristan</i> encompassing not only a substantial minority of
Crimea but also a veritable <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">archipelago</i>
of hundreds if not thousands of bits of southern Russia in which self-identified
Ta(r)tars outnumbered self-identified non-Ta(r)tars by a factor of more than
1.00000000000000001 to 1.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That the
securing of such a monstrous abortion of a polity has not so far taken place is
presumably entirely owing to the ever-cooling but never-quite-dying afterglow
of the glory accrued to all non-Ukrainian Crimeans by the annexation, an
afterglow which presumably is in turn owing to Mr. Putin’s perduring authority
as an anti-Ukrainian chief executive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once this authority is gone—i.e., and in more general terms, once the
Russian chief executive is not by default seen as a would-be restorer of the
Soviet or even pre-Soviet status quo ante–there is no telling how many
abominably picayune yet insatiably self-important self-styled nations-cum-polities
will emerge from the excremental ruins of the long-since-worm-devoured Russian
political woodwork and successfully demand to be recognized as independent
States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doubtless every village and
municipal precinct in the Russian Republican with a majority of non-native
Russian speakers will then successfully transform itself into a micro-Quebec
insisting on its distinctness from the polity-wide linguistic majority while
self-servingly declining to be annexed by or indeed be officially affiliated
with its linguistic mother country in any way apart from qua mendicant recipient
of monetary handouts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even to
speculate about Russia’s long-term future qua political entity <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">an sich</i> seems vicariously self-indulgent
and navel-gazing when one considers Russia’s short-term future qua geopolitical
agent, a S-TF principally conditioned by Mr. Putin’s admittedly short-standing
but for all that seemingly firm military alliance with what used to be called
(and IHOP <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ob multas causas</i> should
still be called) Red China.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure,
the alliance makes absolutely no sense when contemplated in any register or
from any angle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Russians have little
or nothing to offer the Chinese, and the Chinese, while having much to offer
the Russians, are unquestionably better served by actually presenting that
selfsame much to bigger players like the United States or to significantly smaller
players, notably several African polities, who bid fair to serve China as
client States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, China would
find it inestimably beneficial to have Russia’s colossal military materiel at
its disposal, but only on unconditional terms, and the idea of Mr. Putin (or
any subsequent Russian leader)’s handing over the keys of Russia’s nuclear
arsenal, air force, naval fleet, etc. to Mr. Xi (or any subsequent Chinese
leader) is so manifestly laughable as to oust the aviation of pigs from its
post as top-ranking metaphorical vehicle of well-nigh-impossible improbability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, Mr. Putin’s presumably utterly
cynical effort to ground the alliance in a common<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Weltanschauung, </i>in some supposed pan-Asian antidemocratic
political worldview, is scarcely less laughable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Regardless of the admittedly formidable
extent to which present-day Russia’s political landscape is anti-democratic, at
bottom Russia is mired in the same meta-political quagmire in which each and
every other polity within the geographical space that used to be called Christendom
now likewise finds itself mired—the quagmire of the intrinsically
meta-democratic question of the extent and frequency to and with which the
populace’s—a.k.a. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the people’s</i>—voice
must be heard and heeded by its or their appointed or arrogated proxies in the
ship of State.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>China is mired in no such
quagmire and indeed never has been and further-indeed may very likely never be
mired therein because for at least as many headache-inducingly umpteen
god-awful millennia as China has existed in some form or other, human life has been
almost literally—and in some epochs probably quite literally—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cheaper than dirt</i> there, and so the
notion of a Chinese <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">people, Volk, </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">narod</i> in the pan-occidental sense has
never emerged there [yesyeyesyesyeysyesyeysyes, zombie cowboy DGR, I know that
the official English name of the present non-Formosan Chinese polity is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">People</i>’s Republic of China, but mere
mechanical mimesis of a word in the name of an entity is no proof that that
entity instantiates the thing denoted by that word, as is eloquently attested
by the resounding failure of Miller Lite to displace Veuve Clicquot as the
preferred vehicle of New Year’s toasts and ship-christenings], and failing (apologies
for the repetition of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fail</i>) the
miraculous supervention of some sort of nature or human-invented plague that
affects only whichever strain of the human genome is most prevalent on the
Chinse mainland, it never <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">will</i> emerge
there, inasmuch as the very notion of a people [as against the notion of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nation</i>, which is more nearly quite a
different thing than political theorists, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i>
or otherwise, have yet imagined] can emerge only in conditions of demographic
scarcity, in conditions wherein even the cheapest human life has an effectively
registrable value [and to be fair to the god-awful Chinese, pan-occidental
society has been t(r)ending towards the opposite demo-econo-graphic state of
affairs, one wherein human life is cheaper than dirt, for the past two-thirds
of a millennium—i.e., since the end of the so-called Black Death in the
late-mid fourteenth century].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>China’s
sole geopolitical aim is global hegemony in the fullest and deepest sense; as
the smug and unchallenged bearer of the oldest national brand-name in human
history, that of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Middle Kingdom</i>,
it views itself as the rightful ruler of humankind <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in toto</i>; unlike, say, Nazi Germany, it has no need to rationalize
its geopolitical ambitions by fabricating a factitious national genealogy linking
itself to past empires, and now that it has attained pride of place in the
geopolitical economy it has absolutely no need of a collateral myth justifying
its alliance with Russia on grounds consubstantial with those via which Nazi
Germany justified its military alliance with Japan—viz., that the Japanese were
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">their yellow Aryan cousins</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, the whole notion of a pan-Asian
geopolitical worldview emanates entirely from Russia and will inevitably die
with the ineluctable third stirrings (for in the recent diplomatic tussles with
Japan and the U.S. over the South China Sea we have already witnessed the first
and second stirrings thereof) of the realization of China’s geopolitical
ambitions in military terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Chinese, like Hamlet’s royal ape, are keeping the Russians in their jaw for
swallowing in advance of their prospective engulfment of the rest of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Whether this engulfment bids fair to succeed
is quite needless to say the topic of a separate and very probably even longer
and even more hate crime act-prosecutable essay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far the cheeriest prognosis I have managed
to glean on this matter comes from a Punjabi Indian friend of mine, who has
laughingly opined: “Of course they’ll have to adjust to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ve got no choice: they’re <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chinese</i>!”—by which he presumably means
that we non-Chinese are so much more like each other than like them that
together we effectively constitute an unassailably solid demographic majority.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mr. Putin is if not quite doubtless then at
least very much quite likely aware of all this, but by now he really has no
practicable choice other than to keep the ruse of a Sino-Russian alliance going
as long as possible, because the only thing about Russia that anyone in the
hyperoccident any longer respects in any register is its prowess in military
espionage, and the only major power who stands even metonymically to benefit by
association with such prowess, even in the short term, is China.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Not that China actually <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">needs</i> Russia as a partner in espionage, for it is doing quite well
on its own in that department, thank you.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Obviously nothing could be more desirable vis-à-vis the hyperoccident’s
material interests than for it to woo Mr. Putin away from China, but nothing is
ultimately less likely than such a wooing because the hyperoccident has yet to
commit itself even half-heartedly to the cause of Sinophobia qua
resistance-campaign against the Chinese qua would-be world-dominators (as
opposed to mere umpteenth geopolitical exponent of anti-democratic principles) and
because by now the hyperoccident has little or nothing to offer Russia materially
speaking even if Russia were to stoop to being a mere junior partner rather
than insisting on being regarded as a major power in its own autonomous right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a net supplier of petroleum and natural
gas it has no need of either of these from any exogenous supplier, and while it
is certainly burgeoning in the hyperoccident’s darling economic sector, that of
so-called information technology, opportunities for commercial cooperation with
it in that sector are scarce, in the light of the conceivably warranted
assumption that the entire Russian electronic-informational infrastructure is
fundamentally and irreversibly geared towards the undermining of its
hyperoccidental counterpart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But let
there be no word mincing-occasioned mistake about this: while Mr Putin’s
obdurate and ineluctable refusal to extract his fingertips from the
hindquarters of the Chinese is undoubtedly an error and a sin from every point
of view but that of Russia’s very short-term geopolitical interest, while Mr.
Putin is undoubtedly very foolish and vicious even to dream, however
inefficaciously, of souping up his anti-hyperoccidental machinations with
Chinese aid, it is the hyperoccident and not Mr. Putin that is principally and
ultimately to blame for this refusal-cum-reverie, inasmuch as it was the
hyperoccident that generated the conditions that led to Mr. Putin’s national-political
efflorescence, first qua preserver of the residual glory of the U.S.S.R. and
then qua gadfly of the hyperoccident qua turbo-powered engine of Russophobia in
incessant action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ardently though one
hates to drop <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the other H-bomb</i> into
any discussion of current political realities, it is impossible not to remark some
uncannily nearly exact parallels between the gormlessness with which the
hyperoccident of ca. 1991 to 2011 engendered and nurtured today’s virally
virulent Putin and the gormlesssness with which the World War I allies
engendered and facilitated the rise of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hitler</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here I again have occasion to quote George
Kennan, this time from his 1961 conspectus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Russia
and the West under Lenin and Stalin</i>: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">In 1917, the Western powers, in their
determination to inflict total defeat on a Germany far less dangerous to them
than that of Hitler, had pressed so unwisely for the continuation of Russia’s
help that they had consigned her to the arms of the Communists. Now, in
1939, they were paying the price for this folly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">In 1917, they had cultivated an image of the
German Kaiser that was indistinguishable from the reality of the future Hitler.
Now they had a real Hitler before them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">In 1917, they convinced themselves that
Russia’s help was essential to their victory, though this was not really true.
Now, they had a situation in which Russia’s help was indeed essential;
but the Russia they needed was not there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .25in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">You see in this example what happens when
people make policy on the basis of exaggerated fears and prejudices.
Those dangers they conjure up in their own imagination eventually take on
flesh and rise to assail them—or if not them, then their children. And
they waste, in their overanxiety before the fancied perils of the present, the
assets they will need for the real ones of the future.</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">On reflection this passage shews that what I just described as a
succession of parallels would better be described as a contrapuntal texture
partaking of both parallels and antiphonal complements, with a complement
getting the first pair of melodic lines in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The situation alluded to in the first paragraph is that of the last year
of the First World War, which coincided almost exactly with the first year of post-Tsarist
Russia’s existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point the
Western alliance—which in by now including the United States was almost exactly
geographically consubstantial with the present hyperoccident minus Germany—conceived
of the German State as the absolute and ultimate embodiment of despotism and
tyranny, and took Russia’s opposition to this despotism-cum-tyranny for granted
and expected Russia to contribute to its quelling financial-cum-military hand
over financial-cum-military fist, even though Russia’s own system of government
had been manifestly far more despotic and tyrannical than Germany’s when it
entered the war on the Western side, and even though it had begun to fashion
that system into a democratic one at the very moment its commitment to the
alliance had begun to falter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
complementary antiphonal contrast, in 1991, the hyperoccident conceived of the
just-deceased U.S.S.R. as the absolute and ultimate embodiment of despotism and
tyranny, and took Russia’s and the other bits of the former U.S.S.R.’s
opposition to this despotism-cum-tyranny for granted and expected them to
contribute financial (albeit not military)-hand over financial-fist to the
quelling of the very memory of that despotism-cum-tyranny <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simply because</i> these post-Soviet polities had begun to fashion that
system into a democratic one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
salient parallels between the two cases, the 1917 one and the 1991-2011 one, are
the hyperoccident’s nurturing of a pet project, and its taking for granted of
Russia’s willingness to contribute thereunto. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Essentially it is a single pet project in both
cases, a pet project centering on political-cum-economic liberalization, with
there being but an admittedly far from trivial shift in emphasis during the
intervening three-to-four-and-a-half-score years: back in 1917, emphasis was
placed on the political register of the project, on the need for universal
suffrage, elected legislatures, etc.; in 1991-2011, emphasis was placed on the
economic register, on the need for free markets, incentives to entrepreneurship,
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But from the point of view of the mandatorily
prospective implementers of the project, the upshot of the two cases was
exactly identically superlatively cheeky and read as follows: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">within five minutes ago at latest, you must
become exactly like us entirely under your own power and entirely at your own
expense, however few of you may be receptive to the transformation or the
attendant pecuniary outlay</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
salient difference is the concetratedness in 1991-2011 of the project on a
single polity, on Russia, a concentratedness that by all rights ought to elicit
a credit of indulgence to the present Russian system of life, albeit not
necessarily to Mr. Putin specifically, inasmuch as, however undemocratic things
may be in present-day Russia, they are by no means or by a long chalk as
undemocratic as they were in Nazi Germany.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In short, while Russia from 1991 to 2011 deserved a second Marshall Plan,
to the admittedly debatable extent to which it had to be made <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">au courant</i> with hyperoccidental
so-called developments in any register, it was then effectively delivered and
administered a second Treaty of Versailles, a prescription to hawk itself into
terminal debt (for whence else were the gap-stopping tens of trillions of
rubles to come at the Dee of an Haitch<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>?)
for the sake of becoming at best a sort of economically glorified Italy, a sort
of which, according to a writer generally none too sympathetic to Mr. Putin, it
has long since not only effectively but exactly become under Mr. Putin’s
helmsmanship, which observation leads me to my final bit of remonstration with
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant </i>gulag-incarceration-worthy
mobility—viz., that to the formidable extent that Russia has managed to drag
itself or be dragged into this mobility’s version of the twenty-first century,
they, this mobility, owe this achievement largely if not entirely to Mr. Putin
and accordingly by all rights should fellate him on all fours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For proof of the formidability of the extent
one need look no further, afield, askance, or a-pitch than BBC Radio 4’s
coverage of last year i.e., (2018)’s World Cup, coverage which, despite that
network’s unregenerate Russophobic slant, as instanced by its loud-pedaling of
the UK’s boycotting of official participation in the event-collection during
its run-up, contained not a single titter of dissatisfaction from a single
hyperoccidental, either immediately via a vox pops, or indirectly via a report
on any sort of so-called incident, coverage which indeed attested unreservedly
to the uniform warmth and pleasantness of the welcome and sojourn received and
enjoyed by hyperoccidental spectators to a man, woman, et al.; coverage that
contrasted most favorably, for all that network’s unregenerately favorable bias
towards any Hisapanophone or Lusophone cranny of the globe, with its coverage
of the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which made the entire
event-collection sound like a veritable Mickey Mouse circus minus the Disney
sponsorship, with stadia signally left half-empty during traditionally
stadium-packing fixtures for lack of reliable transportation thereunto.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the light of this glaring recent
meta-sportivic longcoming of Russia vis-à-vis a polity purportedly as
hyperoccidental as one can get, and that, indeed, ought by many if not all
rights to be regarded as the most hyperocidental polity of all, barring the
United States of America, ought not the hyperoccidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> mobility to vouchsafe Mr. Putin at least a
geometrically infinitesimal tipping of their respective Lenin-caps?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that the present writer is even capable,
let alone inclined (figurative overtones of this participle overdetermined,
natch), to join them in such a Lenin cap-tipping, inasmuch as in the first
place the headgear he sports in his mind’s hattery is either a top-hat or a
tricorn—i.e., a chapeau bespeaking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">contempt</i>
for the masses, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> or
otherwise, rather than solidarity with them; and in the second, he has no
interest in being up to date in any register and if he had his druthers would
roll back the clock of supposed progress far beyond 2011 or indeed 1991 or
indeed 1917 or indeed 1789—all the way back, indeed, to the hyperoccidental
pre-French revolutionary epoch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Accordingly, from the present writer’s point of view the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">entire </i>history of Russia from the
beginning of the twentieth century onwards has been a lamentable farce,
inasmuch as it has brought Russia qua last great bastion of pan-occidental pre-industrial
conservatism ever closer to the hyperoccidental anti-ideal of a pseudo-society
awash in increasingly shoddy industrially generated trash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, within the confines of the
present essay, he has expressed a nostalgic yearning to dwell in the U.S.S.R.,
but the U.S.S.R. would at best have afforded him a mere <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pis aller</i> of an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Umwelt</i>,
inasmuch as the libidos of his fellow Soviet citizens would have been vectored
towards the same trashy anti-ideals as those of their hyperoccidental
counterparts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly further, the
present writer effectively has nothing to hope for from today’s Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, he admires its government’s
reactionary stance on sexual ethics, but of what account is this stance by
comparison with the Russian <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">narod</i>’s trend-humping
stance towards informational-technological gadgetry?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hyperoccidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensanterie</i> now recoil from Russia like a vampire from a cross
on account of its supposed political paleolithicity, but of what account is
this recoiling to the present writer, given that even the most officially
politically reactionary of present-day Russians would be as keenly inclined as
his aut al.’s hyperoccidental counterpart to desecrate the present writer’s
corpse by forcing it to cup a so-called smart phone to its worm-eaten remnant
of an ear with its worm eaten remnant of a hand, or to upload an endless succession
of Instagram photos of its coffin-interior via its other hand-remnant?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you (and, yes, I am addressing you
specifically, zombie cowboy DGR) cum right down to or into it, in the final
analysis, when shove is saluted by push, etc., present-day Russia is as little
a country for the potty-trained, let alone for old men, as the present-day
United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such ultimately and
incontrovertibly being the case, the present writer is strongly inclined to
send the whole kit and caboodle of this gallimaufry of a present-day world,
hyper-occidental, pan-occidental, hypo-occidental,
sub-cum-trans-cum-super-Saharan, o****ntal, etc, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>packing to Coventry—nay (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">horrible enim vero dictu</i>), to Detroit!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has lately become apprised of this
inclination thanks to his changing disposition towards a phenomenon of
hyperlocal provenance, viz. the civil defense sirens of Baltimore City.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He first heard one of these sirens going off within
a few weeks of his removal to the city back in August of 1994, and it would
probably be no exaggeration to say that this off-going more than figuratively
scared the bejesus out of him (he writes merely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">probably</i> merely because he is not quite sure what a bejesus or its
precise locus or function in the human organism or psyche is, not because he
wishes by any means to underrate the negative intensity of the experience in
question), and with what he flatters himself is a good pair of reasons, namely,
1), that unlike perhaps the majority of his seniors and not improbably the
majority of his juniors, he first heard—or, which then came to the same thing,
first remembered hearing—the almost unsurpassably distinctive timbre of such a
siren not via some WWII flick set during the so-called Blitz but rather via <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Day After</i> (q.v.), in the seconds
leading immediately up to the detonation of the first Kansas City-leveling thermonuclear
incendiary, such that the sound of such a siren was virtually Pavlovianly bound
to elicit not a Linklaterian smirk from his upper unpaired sphincter but rather
a Munchian howl from his lower one, and b) it happened to be blaring not, as in
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Day After</i>, from some claxon or
tocsin presumably sited several miles away but rather from one presumably sited
a mere few-dozen meters from his dwelling space-cum-point of audition (i.e.,
the Homewood Apartments, at 31<sup>st</sup> and Charles Streets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A sort of audiomnemonic trigonometry deployed
after multiple auditions of this same siren from various audition points and
operating concurrently with bargain-basement powers of deduction has since
enabled him to establish the precise housing of the claxon or tocsin in
question as the eastern-more of the so-called physical plants of the Homewood
Campus of the University that Cannot be Named, a building sited just north of
the intersection of Charles Street with Art Museum Drive.) In the light of
these two reasons, his immediate impulse on this first audition was to deliver
a succession of passionate smooches to the abovementioned lower sphincter, but inasmuch
as he continued to exist as a non-ethereal being in the minutes and hours following
the sounding of the siren, he concluded that this sounding must have been the issue-cum-instantiation
of some sort of false alarm; and inasmuch as in his subsequent weeks, months,
and years as a Baltimorean, he came to hear such non Armageddon-inaugurating
soundings of the civil defense sirens in various parts of the city, he came in
turn to conclude that these soundings were generally instantiations (and merely
instantiations) of a testing of the city’s civil defense warning system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Why such testing was being carried out in
Baltimore and had never, to the best of the present writer’s recollection, been
carried out in his native city of Tampa, was and remains a mystery to him,
especially in the light of the immediate propinquity of a strategically significant
U.S. Air Force Base [i.e., MacDill Air Force Base, the site of something called
United States Central Command, which for reasons inscrutable to the present
writer’s admittedly eighth-assed researches, has served as the control center
of most if not all of the U.S.’s abominable-cum-deplorable interventions in the
Middle East from the 1991 Gulf War onwards] to Tampa’s city center.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually, on beginning to work an orthodox
office schedule in the late 1990s, and consequently being obliged to be at
certain places in the city center at certain times of day with a quasi-Kantian
degree of consistency and regularity, he realized that the tests were carried
out with a corresponding degree of consistency and regularity, that they always
occurred at about one in the afternoon on Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with this realization, all but the last
soupçon of a trace of his former lower sphincter-dilating Pavlovian horror at
the sound of the sirens vanished—not, to be sure, that he simply took it for
granted that that sound portended no danger whatsoever; especially not after
the Great Howard Street Tunnel Fire of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wednesday</i>,
July 18, 2001, at whose start, according to a friend of his who then likewise
worked in the city center and happened to be outdoors at the time, the sirens
were activated in earnest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But once he
had verified through a mental spot-check that the day in question was a Monday
and the time in question was within chronographic groping distance of 13:00, he
would complacently return to the nursing of his cigarette, or, from June 2008,
when he quit(ed) smoking, onwards, to doing whatever he tended to be doing in
lieu of smoking when he happened to be outdoors on or of an early weekday
afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whatever</i> tended to be is now very much a
mystery to him; this very probably because the routinized testing of the sirens
evidently ceased too shortly after the aforementioned smoking-cessation to
establish a Pavlovian connection of the spot-checking with this other activity;
indeed, the very most recent siren-testing that the present writer can recall
occurred on Columbus Day of either 2008 or 2009, i.e., within either five or
seventeen months of that smoking-cessation (my inability to pin the event down
to a specific year is indeed horrifying, but the deterioration of chronological
precision with advancing age even <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chez</i>
a person as hell-bent on chronological precision as the present writer
constitutes a topic, or nexus of topics, of at least one separate essay).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Columbus Day is of course a government
holiday, and as the writer was then (as is now) both an employee of a
government agency and a resident of the Tri-Zip Code Area, the same T-ZCA in
which the Homewood Campus’s physical plant is sited, and happened to be hoofing
it to his liquor store or off-licence of second resort via the campus of the
University that Cannot Be Named during the early afternoon of that particular Columbus
Day, he has been treated to the privilege of hearing the testing for the (at
least as yet) last time via the same claxon or tocsin as the one via which he
was treated to his first audition thereof nearly a quarter-century ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For perhaps as many as a quarter-dozen years
after this most recent audition, he would hear certain sounds that he fancied were
emanating from one of the sirens, but that always turned out to be emanating
from something else—the up-sucking mechanism of some industrial hoovering
operation, say, or the engine of a particularly noisy distant motorcycle (you
[i.e., not any sort of DGR but a mere second-person placeholder] see, since
2003 he had been resident in his present apartment at the intersection of
University Parkway and St. Paul Street, a hundred or so decimeters farther from
the physical plant than back in 1994, such that he had tended to find himself
sited at a site from which even when the siren had sounded, he had not
immediately identified its sound as that of itself).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first, during perhaps the first third or
two-fifths of those quarter-dozen years, and especially on non-early Monday
afternoons thereof, his discovery that the siren-like noise had a non-sirenic
source invariably came as a decided relief to him; but for the remaining
two-thirds or two-fifths thereof, he somehow felt slightly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disappointed </i>thereupon; and when, after those circa quarter-dozen
years had elapsed, he ceased to mistake any sort of sound, however sirenic, for
a civil defense siren, he began to find himself somehow slightly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">missing</i> the siren-soundings, and over
circa the past half-decade this slight missing has grown into a full-fledged <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sehnsucht</i>, a hankering or yearning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This transformation, and indeed, revolution,
in present writer’s somatic disposition towards the sirens is evidently merely
shadowing or registering a parallel revolution in his affective disposition to
the world <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">en bloc</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">insgesamt</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in toto</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the
present writer has never felt exactly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at
home</i> in the world he was born into, but way back in 1994, he still felt
closely enough attached to that world to wish to see it preserved rather than
destroyed, and to be wholeheartedly dismayed and alarmed by the prospect of its
destruction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In part, this attachment
was of course merely a manifestation of the selfishness of youth: as a younker <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with his whole life</i>, or at least nearly
the whole of that life’s adult portion, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ahead
of him</i>, he wished for the world to survive qua medium for the unfurling of
that life. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there was a bit more to
it than that—namely a general sense that the world was finally, to some small
but encouraging extent, beginning to fall in(to) line with his expectations of
it, for not only was the Cold War long over, but the White House was finally
occupied by a Democrat, by a member of the party that had heroically resisted
Joseph McCarthy’s Russophobic Red-baiting and Ronald Reagan’s demonization of
the Soviet Union as an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">evil empire</i>
and that accordingly could presumably be trusted to transform the U.S.’s mere
non-enmity with Russia into a full-fledged friendship; the party that,
moreover, was a proud standard-bearer of book-learning, the arts, and all other
things highbrow and hifalutin, in contrast to the Republican Party, whose
membership seemed to care about nothing but guns, sports, and pigs (the last
both qua agricultural commodities and qua prospective co-coitionists, natch).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, even by then, there were sub-factions
of the officially styled American left whose comportment put him off (though he
never would have confided this off-putment even to the pages of his
lock-clasped diary, let alone to the bosom, whether organic or prosthetic, of
another person); notably the gay activist faction (I do not know if it even
styled itself <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">LGB</i> by then), with its
boorish <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">outing </i>of celebrities and endless
gluttonous carping about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">heteronormativity</i>,
under which opprobrious heading the gays appeared to subsume each and every
last physical molecule in the U.S. that did not personally welcome and
accommodate them as a de facto majority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But he regarded such sub-factions as almost beyond the fringe in a non-Bennett,
Cooke, Moore, and Miller-referring sense, and attributed their admittedly
strong presence in his own lifeworld to this lifeworld’s centering on the
academic humanities since his matriculation as an undergraduate in 1990; for
after all, people were constantly bandying about all sorts of nutty ideas in
the academic humanities, whose precincts, unlike those of the academic natural
sciences were classically (at least within the Anglosphere) regarded not as a testing
ground or la-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bore</i>-a-tree for ideas destined
to be implemented in the world at large but rather as a padded room for the
containment of ideas destined to go nowhere; and even within the academic
humanities the notion of non-binariness or gender-fluidity, a notion whose
championing and indeed ramrodding up the collective anus of the American
electorate, has become one of the main planks, if not the principal plank, of
the Democratic Party, was regarded with a condescending, marijuana
pipe-setting-aside, smile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course,
the present writer of 1994 was greatly mistaken in his complacency about the
prospective fortunes of the alternative-lifestyle lobby, a complacency perhaps
engendered by a failure to give due consideration to the long-established obligatory
Anglospheric fraternization of the academic humanities with the academic social
sciences, and of the academic social sciences in turn with the academic natural
sciences, a veritable conveyor belt of cubital frottage thanks to whose nearly
friction-free efficiency once a certain notion has been established as a
metaphysical entertainability it is an easy transition {as easy, indeed, as the
transition from cisgenderism to transgenderism to gender-queerism according to
current <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> received opinion}
to its adoption as an anthropological, sociological, or psychological reality,
and thence to its adoption as a supposed biological reality, whence it
ineluctably, and most significantly, demonically metamorphoses into a political-cum-
administrative reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the very-late
twenty-oughties, the micro-micro-epoch of the civil defense siren-soundings’
apparent cessation, the present writer had longish since abandoned all hope in
the world even qua grudging gnawed-bare bone-flinging humorer, let alone obliging
fellator, of his expectations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the
very early late 1990s the Democrats and the Republicans alike had been unremittingly
treating Russia like the ghost of a dog turd in all the ways specified and
enumerated far above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then, the
cultural wing of the Democratic Party (by-then abscessed-pigeonholeable as the combined
producership-cum-listenership of National Public Radio) had turned out to be
dedicated champions of the abysmally sub-subcultural pseudo-productions shat
out by the post-ca. 1970 hyperoccidental pseudo-peasantry (a pseudo-peasantry who—or,
rather, which—for all its factitiousness, looked, sounded, and smelled as
unregenerately noisome as its genuine counterpart in the so-called Middle Ages
had purportedly looked, etc.), and to respect earlier super-excremental
productions only to the extent to which they could be distorted, however
implausibly, into typologies of that post-ca. 1970 hyperoccidental
pseudo-peasantry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then, the
alternative lifestyle lobby’s hyperoccidental political-cum-administrative
victory was all but a done deal, as they say, and the present writer’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lebenswelt</i>-cum-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alltag</i> seemed to have deteriorated into a sort of waterlogged sub
bog-standard loo roll of uncooperativeness thanks to all the organic
perversions of consumer capitalism specified and enumerated even farther above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all that formidably demoralizing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i>, the present writer fondly
continued to cherish fond hopes of establishing some sort of world apart from
the sub-asinine official world, of establishing and maintaining
social-cum-intersubjective ties with people who did not receive the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant idee reçues</i> as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">idee reçues</i>, who admired, respected,
dreamt about, yearned for, loftier things than a sort of remorselessly
ineluctable and predictable <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>expansion of
the circumference of the Americans with Disabilities Act towards the end of
encompassing ever-more marginal and contemptible frontiers of wantonness and
imbecility under its protective skirts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But by the early 20-teens, the beginning of the half-decade mentioned,
he had given up any hope of establishing such a world apart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then, he had come to resign himself to
being an irredeemable social pariah and an unregenerate cultural
cemetery-haunter (a type that is by no means to be confused with a cultural <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">necrophile</i>), inasmuch as all his
person-to-person attempts to state his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">weltansichtig</i>
case in even semi-frankness and semi-candor, whether in writing or viva voce,
had been met with, at best, a chicken-livered pretense of sympathy founded on the
old “I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sort</i> of understand where
you’re coming from, on account of all the ultra-right-wing brainwashing I was
subjected to on account of my dad’s being the sergeant-at-arms of the John
Birch Society” soft-shoe routine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More
typically they had been met with disgusted counter-rants leading in turn to
irreparable social ruptures, and occasionally they had even been met with
threats to his person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entirety of
this wave of antipathy, he must emphasize, had all along been composed of the
sentiments of people whom he had come to regard as among those nearest and
dearest to him, such that his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bouleversant
</i>thereby like the puniest of bonsai trees by the mightiest of tsunamis, or a
mere inch-high Strolling Bowling-pin by the most expertly thrown
sixteen-pounder, could not but greatly diminish his hopes of retaining, let
alone strengthening, his ties to the empirical world of the present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the feeblest extent that he has since
retained the most tenuous of ties thereunto, this retention has entailed his
keeping his lips sealed shut with a hermetic exactness well beyond the dreams
of Belinda Carlisle or </span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">Borge
Madsen; it has entailed his listening to an interminable and ever-renewing
stream of what he cannot prevail upon himself not to regard as utter bilge in a
silence that he can by no means or shift redeem by describing it as merely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">good-natured</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">indulgent</i> inasmuch as it is invariably obliged to make the most
desperate shift or means to seem to be downright <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">affirmative</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">encouraging </i>of
the continuation and indeed augmentation of the bilge-stream; such that he
cannot but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">despise</i> himself for
dwelling in such a silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But dwell
therein he must ineluctably continue to do if he wishes to continue dwelling
anywhere—or, at any rate, what effectively comes to the same thing for a man (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sic</i> on the scandalous gendering of the
noun) of his age and financial wherewithal, anywhere in the present
hyperoccident—inasmuch as his notion of how the world ought to be run is so
scandalously reactionary that there is perhaps even more than figuratively no
room for it on the present hyperoccidental political spectrum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By present hyperoccidental meta-political standards
he could only be described as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fascist</i>,
inasmuch as he believes that restrictions on human beings’ liberty of action
are often a very good thing regardless of whether indulgence in or of such
liberty bids fair to eventuate in physical or psychic harm to others or to the agent
himself, that indeed it is not even necessarily the actions most likely to be
most deleterious to human well-being that are in direst need of legal and
administrative curbs (whence his decisive difference from the whingers about
Global Warming, high-calorie pizzas, and the lack of minimum prices for
alcohol, every last man, woman, et al. Jack, Jill, and Pat of whom is a
dedicated champion of and ardent propagandist for the sexual eyechart [i.e., L/</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">GBT</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">/</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-themecolor: text1;">QFEZ/</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 8.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">RAUPM </span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">etc.] set).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He believes that human beings must be got and
kept in the habit of not doing what they want to be doing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">most of the time</i>—this, first, and not necessarily more, because recent-to-ancient
human history hath shewn (to him if to no living body else) that even
sub-bargain basement, sub-bog standard world-maintenance exacts no less costly
a price than the average human individual’s spending the majority of his aut
al.’s time doing things that he aut al. would rather not be doing; and second,
and not necessarily less, because recent-to-ancient human history hath likewise
shewn that the failure of the average human individual to be got and kept in
such a habit does not so much eventuate as soonuate in his aut al.’s
degeneration into a creature that, however ecstatically self-contented it may
be, cannot but arouse a more than figuratively gastric revulsion in others who
have not suffered (or, perhaps rather, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enjoyed</i>)
the same degeneration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, in
principle it is possible to get people to do things they don’t wish to do via <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">incentives</i>, via the application of the
proverbial carrot rather than the proverbial stick, via the psychological
mechanism of deferred gratification, but in practice incentives on their own do
not suffice to inculcate the requisite degree of personal industriousness—this for
the eye-burstingly obvious if scandalous reason that once a person has begun to
nibble at a carrot he aut al. will be loath to leave off doing so and will
indeed be more and more inclined to wish to turn his aut al.’s entire existence
into a carrot-eating festival, and when finally compelled to return to his aut
al.’s place of labor, to sulk in idleness over the absence of carrots<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>in the<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> present</i> rather than to work sedulously towards the acquisition of
carrots in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">future</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(This is why capitalism would be disastrously
evil even if it really did work on its producer side in the far-above debunked
manner—even if, that is, each and every person involved in the production of a
ballpoint pen or a tube of toothpaste really could look forward to a bonus or
pay rise by making that product the best damn ballpoint pen or tube of
toothpaste in the world.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so in
practice the stick must be applied judiciously, which in practice means rather
more harshly than mercifully, via penalties that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prima vista</i> seem disproportionately severe, given that (as
ancient-to-recent history hath shewn) when an offense is punished lightly—say,
through small fines—people will tend to commit it freely and simply budget for the
penalty as insouciantly they do for their yearly outlay on loo rolls, ballpoint
pens, or toothpaste.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the present
writer had to distill his political-philosophical credo down to a slogan, that
slogan would probably in all seriousness be a certain one propounded in
manifest jest by Steve Martin in his stand-up act back in the 1970s—viz., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The death penalty for parking violations!, </i>were
it not for the counterfact that of course in the present writer’s preferred
version of the world there would be few if any parking-spaces and few if any
motorcars to park in them because, as specified far above and inferable from
the very near above, the human individual does not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deserve</i> the power of self-governed high-speed transportation and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cannot be trusted</i> to employ that power
responsibly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even as he types the
present words, the present writer cannot forbear (from) shuddering in
anticipation of the misery and terror that he will have to suffer at the
manually actuated wheels of the overwhelmingly mentally defective and
overweeningly bloodthirsty automotively aurigational mobility within the next
few hours <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simply</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as part of the price that must be paid for getting by from day to day
in any sort of fashion as a pedestrian in</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">virtually every Enn and Cee of the present hyperoccident; </i>a<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>shudder at the reflection that for
example (and but one example among dozens) even as a permission-to-walk signal brazenly
invites him to stride confidently forward like a kilted Highlander going
uninhibitedly commando, he will once again<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
</i>be compelled to squeeze his knees hobble skirt wearer-esquely between the
bumpers of two cars well to the fore of and, blocking, respectively, the
pedestrian crosswalk that he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must</i> traverse
on his way to work, knowing even as he always does that at that moment there will
be no entity in the world that the driver of the rearmore of those two cars will
loathe, resent, or despise more ardently than the present writer on account of
the latter’s obnoxious, incomprehensibly ESA protected rat-like insistence on blocking
his (i.e., the rearermore driver’s) potentially otherwise speed of light
exceeding-dash to the next green stoplight (for the foremore car may indeed be
afforded a way-paving such dash by the traffic flow at any picosecond, and
certainly well before the rat-like creature has cleared his [i.e., the rearmore
driver’s] front-left fender), and dreading even as he (i.e., the present
writer) always undoubtedly warrantedly does that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> will be the day on which that rearmore driver throws immediate
self-interest to the wind and mutters to him-aut al.-self, “Fuck it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As in fifth-century Ireland, as in
thirteenth-century Hamelin, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">somebody</i>’s
got to take a decisive, example-setting stand against such vermin” and
immediately thereupon floors it, as they say, into the aforementioned foremore
car’s rear bumper, leaving the sub-patellan portion of the present writer’s body
at least momentarily standing proudly independently erect like a pair of riding
boots while at the same time sending the super-patellan portion thereof flying
into the rear window of the foremore car, thanks to which catapultion that
portion will with any luck be spared the agonies of bleeding to death by an
instantaneously fatal cranial concussion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But even all this meta-pedestrian degradation might ultimately be
redeemed, might ultimately prove to be worth something, were it succeeded, once
temporarily surmounted, by some less phenomenally abhorrent state of affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But alas,no: no sooner has he arrived at his
destination, or at any rate, some place at or in which his basic corporeal
integrity is not threatened by a car, than he is brought face-to-arse with some
statelet of affairs that is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in its own
ever-so-charmingly infungible way as abhorrent as the prospect of automotive
annihilation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I should make it clear
here that when I describe such a statelet-of-affairs as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">infungible</i> I would by no means be understood as invoking any
version of nominalism; I would by no means wish such a statelet to be
understood as a unique, one-of-a-kind event or entity, like, say, an unhappy encounter
with a single animal organism—some reptile, amphibian, or insect—whose like one
has never seen before but which one instantly discovers to be poisonous; for, indeed,
to the contrary, these statelets consist prevailingly and perhaps even entirely,
of events or entities that are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prima
vista</i> exact carbon copies (or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scans</i>
or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">clones</i> or what have you) of earlier
events and entities; such that their infungibility consists, first if not
necessarily foremore, in their distinctness from other classes of affair-statelets
in in that they are demoralizing in peculiarly shitty sort of way (as against
the unpeculiarly unshitty sort of way in which one may be demoralized by, for
example, being kept in solitary confinement [not that the present writer’s
plight does not effectively amount to such confinement in numerous respects]),
and second if not necessarily rearmore in the greater depth and nuancedness of shittiness
that they acquire with each of their respective iterations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for instance when the present writer was
first accosted by the expression <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moving
forward</i> a scant fortmonth ago at the least recent, he was entirely
disgusted by it in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">grammatical</i>
register, disgusted by it qua expression intrinsically dependent on that ancient
grammarian’s bugbear, a dangling or unattached participle, disgusted by it, in
other words, as slipshod shorthand for such more grammatically punctilious but seemingly
semantically identical constructions as “As we move forward.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In such a register this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moving forward</i> was admittedly abhorrent to the present writer,
inasmuch as he has always been unashamed to close ranks with the ancient English
grammarians in regarding the unattached or dangling participle as among the
gravest of solecisms, and each and every new generally accepted instance of it
as a severe blow to the forces of linguistic probity (and consequently to the
forces of probity<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> insgesamt</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with
the passage of very little time</i> (a phrase that itself is probably damned to
replacement by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moving forward</i>) he
heard <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moving forward</i> employed in more
and more specific linguistic contexts, he realized that in pegging it as a
solecism he had merely touched the tip of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MF</i>-comprising shitberg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
in these contexts—whose specific empirical specifications the present writer
dares not specify—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MF</i> was
unquestionably being employed as both a crypto-Whiggism and a crypto-buck
passer, towards the fulfillment of which loathsome twin capacities its
grammatical unacceptability was patently instrumental.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the pee of tee he discovered that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MF</i> was actually being used in contexts
wherein one would have formerly mainly employed the expressions <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">from now on</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in (the) future</i>—both of which expressions convey an entirely
neutral, and indeed almost Doris Day-esquely fatalistic attitude toward <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">l’avenir</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eo ipso</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas before one
would have written , say, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">From now on</i>
[or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in (the) future</i>], please dot
every eye and cross every tee on your 21-B-stroke-6 form,” and thereby first
and foreomore merely conveyed a sense that eye-dotting and tee-crossing were
things that had to be done now and would continue to have to be done for some
time, and thereby secondmore made no bones either about the fact that one was
effectively inculcating an administrative <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">holding
pattern </i>or the fact that it was the addressee’s and not the addresser’s
duty to maintain that holding pattern to the extent that such maintenance
entailed punctilious eye-dotting and tee-crossing on 21-B-stroke-6 forms; nowadays
one writes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moving forward</i> and thereby
implies that progress is an intrinsically good thing, that simply following the
established rules will result in the achievement of that progress, and
that—thanks to an uncircumventable grammatical ambiguity occasioned by the abovementioned
grammatical solecism—any failure to dot every eye and cross every tee on the
part of the addressee is to be shared 50/50 with the addresser in some sort of
assassination-pact-like fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
perhaps the present writer’s discovery of this more diabolical version of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MF</i> is owing less to his own
slow-wittedness than to the bacteriologically rapid evolution of the
connotative implications of the expression in the greater Anglosphere; such, at
any rate, he conjecturally infers from the more palpable transformation of the
connotative fortunes of another god-awful presenteme that he recalls having
first heard at about the same as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moving
forward</i>, viz. the metaphor <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to throw</i>
somebody <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">under the bus </i>(a metaphor
whose vehicle {in exactly two senses, natch} he confesses to admiring on
account of its acknowledgment of the formidable homicidal capabilities of the
automobile, although if he had his druthers, the bus would be replaced by a
so-called smart car by way of inculcating the vital lesson that even the smallest
of automobiles is more than figuratively a deadly weapon}).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On first hearing it he concluded that it had
acceded to the position formerly (and perhaps still residually) occupied by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to throw</i> somebody to<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> the wolves</i>—viz., that of a signifier of a sudden act of
abandonment virtually guaranteed to lead speedily to the termination of the
abandonee’s career at a given organization or in a given line of work; thus,
according to this acceptation of the phrase, one might <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throw somebody under the bus</i> by exposing a finance officer’s
embezzlement of tens of thousands of dollars in company funds or an admissions
officer’s reception of tens of thousands of dollars in parental bribes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But over the ensuing months he started
hearing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to throw under the bus </i>employed
as a referent to less dramatic and deleterious betrayals—to a one-off
misattribution of an off-the-record statement on a matter of sub-minor
significance, and even to the CC-ing of the recipient’s supervisor in an email
requesting the performance of some routine task, a CC-ing that in the event of
the non-performance of the requested task would at worst have eventuated in a
casual, sloe-ginnishly slowly good-natured query of “So how ’bout that routine
task you were asked to perform in that there email?” from the aforementioned
supervisor. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the exact turn of the
millennium, an author with a long-established reputation of kicking with the
pricks of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Weltgeist</i>—for
celebrating free love in the late 1960s, bashing material acquisitiveness in
the late 1980s, and so forth—published a collection of essays called the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">War Against Cliché</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having never so much as glanced inside the
book, the present writer cannot say whether it is any damn(ed) good or not, let
alone whether or not it practices the linguistic jihad it affects to embody,
but neither of these epistemological lacunae is of any moment in the light of
the sheer, cussed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">quaintness</i> of the
aura its title has acquired in less than twenty years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the end of the second decade of the
twenty-first century, any would-be sane-cum-decent person should be so far from
warring against clichés as positively to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cherish</i>
them qua repositories of linguistic stability, qua idioms vis-à-vis which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you at least always know where you stand</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">At the
end of the day </i>that is this decade, any would-be sane-cum-decent person must
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">leave no stone unturned </i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">strike while the iron is hot</i> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">taking up arms </i>in the admittedly
undoubtedly hopeless war against the god-awful ever-mutating <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">moronic neologism</i>, lest he, she, aut
al., perish by quasi-legal fiat courtesy of a dossier of misused or
misunderstood <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">twerks</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">big-up</i>s, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">woke</i>s, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shade</i>s, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">zhuzh-up</i>s, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man-spreading</i>s, and a zillion other appallingly uninventive turns
of speech that haven’t been thought up yet but that will become mandatory and
seemingly un-devaluable linguistic currency within the next se’enmonth (if we
are so unfortunate as to make it that far).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The present writer is certainly no admirer of Theresa May except perhaps
on the couturial plane (whereupon he can indeed appreciate her striking of a
near-perfect balance between ostentation and restraint for a woman of her age,
personal unprepossessiveness, and political position); and qua the sort of
person he has obtruded himself most prominently as in the present essay, viz. a
Russophile, he has quite a sound motive even for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">despising</i> her qua official author and deliverer of perhaps the most
vituperatively anti-Russian piece of rhetoric to have emanated from the
hyperoccident since Ronald Reagan’s abovementioned designation of the Soviet
Union as an “Evil Empire,” viz., her “We know what you’re up to” speech of 2017,
but he cannot help not only feeling sorry for her qua fellow subject (in the
philosophical not political sense, natch [and in any case, Britons have been <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">citizens</i> rather than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">subjects</i> since the year of the “Evil
Empire” speech]) but also, and more materially, feeling alarmed and disgusted
at the formidable extent to which her admittedly otherwise perhaps condign
diminution in political clout has been actuated by her entirely creditable ignorance
of the linguistic trash of the present microepoch. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When, during a recent (recent as of the
present writing, April 2, 2019) prime minister’s question time, the arch
description of her Brexit deal as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">friends
with benefits </i>(whether the description came from a supporter or an opponent
of the deal escapes the present writer’s memory and is in any case of no moment
inasmuch as Mrs. May’s failure to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">get
woke</i> to the linguistic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Zeitschengeistchen</i>
is decried even by her closest cronies) elicited nothing from her but a nervous
titter betraying her unawareness of the phrase’s meta-sexual context, a much
larger proportion of the House than the majority needed to vote down the deal erupted
into peals of laughter; and even more recently, MPs amused themselves exactly after
the infantilely loutish fashion of schoolchildren teasing a foreign exchange
student by successfully wheedling her into to saying <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simples</i>, an argoteme that really ought to hang itself in shame for
being homonymic with the plural of a by no means entirely superannuated word
meaning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a herbal ingredient of a medicine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>The present writer had encountered <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simples</i> in its argotic guise for the
first time not much more than a score of months earlier, in a radio comedy
sketch show sketch that made it plain that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simples</i>
was something that was being said with an evidently non-medical denotation quite
a lot thenadays but did not shed so much as a chinklet of light on what that denotation
was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a score of ensuing months the
present writer resisted the ignobly masochistic impulse to track down that denotation,
knowing as he virtually did that it would be so ineffably sub-asinine as to
deal a by no means trivial non-remunerative blow to his already dangerously
plague-compromised mental hygiene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
shawnuff, when the PM’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simples</i>-actuated
playground degradation finally precipitated his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man with the Golden Arm</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trainspotting</i>-esque<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>shattering of the interwebbial barrier separating
him from a knowledge of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simples</i>’
current semantic essence, he was both horrified and unsurprised to discover
that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">simples</i> was merely a gratuitous
and more infantile synonym of the already super-execrable <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s a no-brainer</i>, or what amounted to the same shitty thing via a
different route, of the pan-Anglospherically semantically transparent (albeit
admittedly oh so arduously arse-shiftingly multisyllabic) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What could be simpler?</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
in inveighing against specifically linguistic trash as I have been doing for
the past several hundred words I am risking the conveyance of the dangerous misimpression
that I am merely the umpteen-thousandth English usage-curmudgeon to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">come down the pike or pipeline</i> (what a
lovely cliché-and-a-quarter that is!) since Sir Ernest Gowers, the
misimpression that it is exclusively or at least principally linguistic abuse
that puts me off my lunch with the present world when I am beyond immediate
flattening distance of an automobile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
be sure, many if not quite most of my my pet(s) bêtes noires of the immediate
present have a linguistic component, but my aversion even to these is generally
not exhausted by their linguistic dysfunction(ality).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On linguistic grounds I deplore <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man-spreading</i> as an idiom because, like
almost all other argotemes of the past three-quarters of a century, it conveys
by default to the general user of the language a sense or image that does not
even remotely resemble the purportedly intended one—in this specific case, the
idiom suggests (and I defy anyone who dispassionately tortures his aut al.’s
linguistic palate with the phrase for a second or two to produce an alternative
resultant construction) an action habitually engaged in at soirées hosted and
attended by cannibals—viz., the application to a canapé of a dollop of a pâtè
with a human-flesh base.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously, to
the admittedly highly debatable extent to which an argoteme of any sort is
needed to denote the phenomenon in question, it should draw attention
specifically to the spreading, or more precisely, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">splaying</i>, of a pair of male knees or legs—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">male spread-eagling down under </i>is an at least semantically
serviceable alternative; I personally would prefer something that injected a
bit of evocativeness into the idiom by in some fashion bringing in the
above-referenced hobble skirt, altho’ I confess that the best coinage along
those lines that I have so far managed to produce, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">masculine hypohobskirtedness</i>, is far too much of a mouthful at its
very best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wie gesagt</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>it is not
simply or even necessarily mainly the inaccuracy or slovenliness of the
linguistic formulation that is in point here for the present writer; and in
this specific case, as in the cases of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man-flu</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man-cave</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>it is the idiom’s axiomatic stigmatization of the phenomenon in
question as a specifically, intrinsically, and pandemically masculine one that
mainly exasperates him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idiom
suggests that whenever seated every man Yakov of a man on earth will spread his
legs as far apart as possible by default, and can be persuaded to keep them
together only by virtually incessant cane-raps to his nether-knuckles, and that
every seated woman Yillova of a woman on earth reflexively keeps her knees
demurely-cum-hermetically clasped together, when in point of manifestly
empirical fact observable by any regular user of any form of public transit
administered by any sort of agency in the panoccident, the habit of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man-spreading</i> is most prevalent in men of
the god-awful lumpen proletariat, only very slightly less prevalent in women of
the G-ALP, and only distantly thirdmost prevalent in men of more respectable social
strata. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The present writer has yet to
witness a woman of a more respectable social stratum man-spreading, but in the
light of the Brazilian [!] pepper tree-like spreading [!] of the shamelessly
revelatory <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yoga pants</i> [q.v. almost
immediately below] qua de facto lower garment of middle and upper-class women,
the day whereon he spectates on such an abominable spectacle [yesyeyesyesyes,
zombie cowboy DGR, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not entirely
unwillingly</i>, but what of that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just
because I relish the smell of hot pizza it does not follow that I would be
prevailingly grateful to have that aroma air-cannoned into my nostrils] cannot
be long in the offing.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course
the present writer is if anything even more revolted by the behavior in
question than are the formulators-cum-propagandists of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man-spreading</i> idiom themselves, whence his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">super-main</i> exasperation at the ineluctable inference that precious
psychic and perhaps by now even financial energies are being squandered on
combatting so-called man-spreading on the wrong front, that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unisex-lumpen-prole-spread-eagling-down-under</i>
enjoys no currency whatsoever qua elicitor of poker or parasol-brandishing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enfin</i>,
my beef with man-spreading is not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laxissimo
sensu</i> a purely linguistic one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
there are idioms of the immediate present that I deplore because they are not
only imprecise but insufficiently pejorative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yoga pants</i> ought by all rights,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stricto sensu</i>, to denote whatever
waist-to-ankle garment is customarily worn by persons of either autc. sex
during, and only during, the wearisomely over-inculcated practice of the
physical fitness regimen known as yoga.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
all rights, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stricto sensu</i>, yoga pants
should only be donned immediately before a yoga session and always doffed
immediately thereafter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps at some
point in the history of yoga or of pants <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">YP</i>
did indeed denote such a garment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
present writer, being a proud near-total ignoramus of the history of yoga and a
shamefaced semi-ignoramus of the history of pants, cannot say if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">YP</i> ever did do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All he, the present writer, knows, is that
it, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yoga pants</i>, now denotes a waist-to-ankle
garment worn exclusively by women—whether <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cis
</i>women exclusively or trans women as well, he cannot say, as he is a proud
total ignoramus of the state of the art in artificial labia—in public settings patently
having no pertinence whatsoever to yoga, and publicly worn indeed by women of
all ages and social strata in such numbers that he cannot imagine more than a
tiny fraction of its wearers have ever been within spitting distance of a yoga
studio; a garment that in his admittedly immediately (albeit admittedly not
entirely reluctantly) blushingly averted eyes is virtually indistinguishable
from a pair of what he would have very recently (i.e., as recently as the
mid-20-teens) described by default as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">black
pantyhose</i>, a garment that he had (and indeed still has) always expected to
be semi-to-mostly concealed by a skirt or the lower part of a dress, even when
worn by the most shamelessly self-touting prostitute. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, the only decent and
truthful meta-linguistic course would seem to be to retro-christen these Yoga
pants <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">black pantyhose </i>and to
acknowledge that it has lately become acceptable for women to wear black
pantyhose without the occlusion of the vulva and buttocks afforded by a skirt
or dress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the present writer
vehemently objects to this normalization of vulval-cum-buttockial display <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eo ipso</i>, and to be sure, this objection
is bound to elicit from the zombie cowboy DGR the counter-objection <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Why, if it were up to you, you worthless
embodiment of the patriarchy </i>[sic {i.e., inasmuch as the present writer has
neither spouse nor progeny}]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, hyperoccidental
women would still </i>[sic]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> be required
to wear burkas 24/7, 7/52, just like in the Middle Ages </i>[sic]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>and this counter-objection, while far
from fair, is nevertheless grounded in a certain irrefragable form of logic .<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is indeed ultimately impossible to specify
exactly how much of the body should be concealed for civic (or civil) order’s
sake, and the subsistence—note I write <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">subsistence</i>
and not, say, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prosperity</i> –of civic
(or civil) order despite the unrelenting uphiking of the hemlines of both (sic)
sexes since the very early twentieth century suggests that business as usual might
continue to be transacted even in a state of complete and universal nudity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if a substantial relaxation of couturial
standards is to be accepted as normal—and the popularization of so-called Yoga
pants seems to the present writer’s eyes etc. (!) to constitute the most
substantial such relaxation in his lifetime—it ought to be frankly acknowledged
as a relaxation and not euphemized as a continuation of existing couturial
standards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The devisers of the miniskirt
did not make any bones about wanting to make many a boner with their invention;
they did not call it a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tennis floor-grazer.</i>
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wearing of a miniskirt in itself indisputably
constituted an act of coquetry, in that it invited a degree of general
masculine ocular attention that it intended to gratify in tactile terms only
highly selectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Coquetry in itself
is indisputably a vice and by no means among the most minor ones according to
the present writer’s lights (remember, zombie cowboy DGR, in the present
writer, you are dealing with an unregenerate cis-male in favor of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the death penalty for parking violations</i>),
but also perhaps one whose indulgence is unavoidable by anyone of either etc.
sex in any pseudo-society <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dans nous jours
et, peut-être, toujours</i> seeking a somatically bearable co-coitionist, by
anyone determined not to be celibate and yet equally determined not to be on
the receiving end of the succession of (let us not mince words or gloss over
semantic asperities here) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rapes</i> that
any coitional arrangement—whether it be styled a marriage, a relationship, a
civil partnership, etc.—is centered on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">by
default</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order for Suzy or Bob
Average (not to be confused with Plain Jane or Blane [for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">plain</i>—and I seem to have to remind someone of this more often than
I enjoy or even tolerate warm dinners–is a euphemism for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ugly,</i> not a synonym for<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
average-looking</i>]) to distinguish herself from her or his fellow-Suzy or Bob
Averages in the eyes of Prince Charming or Cinderella it is perhaps necessary for
her to invite and endure the overtures of every Quasimodo or Margaret Peel
(N.B., I write <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">overtures</i>, not
assaults) and corollarily necessary to invite and endure the envious sniping of
every Margaret Peel or Quasimodo, to put up with, for example, overhearing the
muu-muu’d old bag in the maisonette next door saying of her literally just
behind her back, “Did you see Suzy walking by one of them there new <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mini-skirts</i> just now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell you, that girl’s no better than she
should be.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may be necessary for her
to put up with these inconveniences but it is also most certainly entirely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fair</i> to expect her to put up with them,
inasmuch as no-one enjoys the right to a desirable co-coitionist and everyone
enjoys the option of avoiding serial rape by opting out of the athletic institution
of coition altogether.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Historically, as
in the case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mini-skirt</i>, the semantic
precision of the nomenclature of cosmetic and couturial instruments of coquetry
has kept in place a kind of ethical force-field, wherein or whereby the desires
and demands of both the coquette and of her or his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Umwelt</i>—the people with whom she or he is regularly in propinquity
in the course of his or her <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alltag</i>
[look it up, for HRH JHC’s sake!]—are met to a partial extent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the advent of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yoga pants</i>, this force-field has been completely neutralized
entirely in the coquette’s favor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With
the advent of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yoga pants</i>, perhaps the
most radical sartorial unveiling in modern pan-occidental history (i.e.,
inasmuch as even the naughtily betighted gentlemen of the Italian Renaissance
had the decency to conceal their L&Ps [rhyming slang of some sort for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">c**k-and-b**ls</i> terminating in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lea and Perrins</i>, natch] behind that
frontal coin-purse known as a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">codpiece</i>)
is expected to be greeted with a(n) universal yawn, and every non-Yoga bepanted
beholder of a Yoga-bepanted person to behave like a sort of mute antitype of
the boy in “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” to refrain from ever hinting that he
aut al. is aware that this person is all but naked from the waist down; as such
an expectation cannot be met in a pseudo or post-society in which near-total
nudism is not an official norm, the beholder must be prepared to take on the
chin (or some more sensitive body-part) the full uncensored brunt of the
yoga-bepantee’s libido, whether negative or positive, and depending on which of
the above-described figures he aut al. embodies in relation to that
libido.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the coquette regards him aut
al. as a Quasimodo or Margaret Peel qua prospective suitor, he aut al. must be
prepared, at minimum, for an ejaculation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">What
the hell are you looking at, creep? </i>and perhaps on average for an eyeful of
pepper spray.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If she regards him aut al.
as a Quasimodo or Margaret Peel qua envier he or she must be prepared at
minimum for an ejaculation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Like you
wouldn’t flaunt it too, if you had it, bitch!</i> and an eyeful of sputum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if she regards him as a Prince Charming
or Cinderella, he aut al. must be prepared to treat her as if she were the
belle of a ball bedizened in all her- genital-occluding finery—to ask ever-so-bashfully
with eyes pointedly averted from her own gaze (and pointedly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> averted from her Australian
aperture) for the privilege of kissing mademoiselle’s hand etc.—on extremely
acute pain of receiving an ejaculation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Well
I never!</i> and a knee in the groin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So,
to say the least, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ob multas causas</i>, I
have strong reservations about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man-spreading</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yoga pants </i>and th’ilk, about the hyper-recent
proliferation of quasi-officialized misnomers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But really my chief present megabeeves are with present phenomena that
lamentably lack a verbal label altogether for the presumptive reason that
everybody but the present writer simply regards them as being, like the present
writer in one of his preceding alimentary capacities (q.v.), part of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">furniture</i> of the present world, or,
rather, whatever the present literal furniture of the world—its aggregation of
chairs, tables, etc.—would actually be if it functioned properly and durably.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer thinks, for example, of
the seemingly panoccidentally universal (or at least more-than-seemingly
pan-Eastern Seabordial [for he admits to having witnessed this in both Maryland
and Florida, if nowhere else]) habit (or at least in some cases, a
manifestation of a phenomenon whose social perniciousness I have adumbrated in
“Against Linguistic Diversity”—viz., an affectation<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> become </i>habit ) of sneezing or coughing into the crook of one of
one’s arms rather than into the palm of one of one’s hands (incidental query:
does the choice of which arm or hand depend on whether one is left-handed or
right-handed, and if so, in which direction?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The present writer is well aware that this habit has been promulgated
and inculcated by the highest medical, para-medical, and meta-medical authorities
(although exactly when and by which medical authorities now escapes him) as the
latest-but-umpteen of the umpteen- thousand personal cum public-hygienic
commandments, but about the august provenance of this
promulgation-cum-inculcation the present writer gives not a tinker’s toss, not
only because the highest medical etc. authorities change their opinions as
often as a Kansan weatherschlong changes direction and thereby make a perpetual
mockery of their own deontological remit, but also, and mainly, because like
most other promulgations-cum-inculcations issuing from our barbarian rulers, it
mandates the supplanting of a well-established and eminently practical decorous
practice by an egregiously indecorous and impractical one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the present writer fully
comprehends the meta-hygienic rationale behind the promulgation-cum-inculcation
of into-the-crook-of-the-arm sneezing-cum-coughing—viz., that inasmuch as
infectious animalcules are hyper-readily spread by hand-to-hand contact, the
propagation of such animalcules can be substantially reduced by alienating the human
hand as efficaciously as possible from the human body’s most productive engines
of such animalcules barring (perhaps) the human anus—viz., the human nose and
mouth; but he is singularly unimpressed by into-the-crook-of-the-arm
sneezing-cum-coughing as a medium of such alienation, inasmuch as he is aware
of a well-established medium thereof that is not only more decorous but also at
least as efficacious—viz., sneezing or coughing into a handheld handkerchief or
Kleenex ([sic] on the absence of a trademark marker) and then washing one’s own
hands before locking either of them with either of those of another human
being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, the maintenance of
this manner of stirnutation-cum-exscreation requires a modicum of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">discipline</i>, a modicum that is easily
attainable by the average five-year-old and that the present writer was indeed
forced to attain as a five-year-old a scant generation-and-a-half ago, but our
barbarian rulers, being well-nigh- clairvoyantly mindful of the well-nigh-inscrutable
fact that at least a whopping .08% of the present hyperoccidental human
population consists of under-five-year-olds, five-year-olds of less than
average tractability or mental acuity, and five-plus-year-olds of less
tractability or mental acuity than the average five-year-old, have come up with
sneezing-cum-coughing into the crook of the arm as a medium of germ
spreading-prevention that is proof against the public-hygienic inadequacies of at
least a whopping 80% of that ≥.08% (as for the remaining probably
by-no-means-unwhopping ≤20%, a percentage presumably consisting mainly of
newborns, toddlers, and hydrocephalics, one presumes some sort of both
incredibly expensive and incredibly marginal improvement on the gas mask or
S&M-hood is being developed to neutralize them qua potential Public Health
Enemies No. ≤7,000).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our Barbarian
Rulers forbid that per annum a few thousand more people come down with a cold,
or a few hundred more contract influenza, or even a sub-literal handful more die
of that malady, as a consequence of a modus <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sternutandi-cum-exscreandi</i></span>
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-themecolor: text1;">that happens to make the quotidian
existences of the vast swarm of healthy and productive living humans much more
than marginally more comfortable!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Far,
far better, according to Their well-nigh-clairvoyant lights, that every last person
in that swarm should go through each and every one of his aut al.’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alltag</i>s burdened with a shirtsleeve
accumulating an ever-thickening crust of snot, phlegm, and spittle!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course an ever-crescent majority of
hyperoccidentals are all too happy to shoulder, or, rather arm-crook, that
burden, as it dovetails, or, rather, arm-crooks, all too smoothly with their
own unregenerately unrepentant desire to void freely from each and every
orifice the very microsecond the reflex or impulse to do so arises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, the normativization of sneezing and
coughing into the crook of the arm is but one of thousands of instances of the
overall pan-hyperoccidental normativization of the vice of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">valetudinarianism</i>, the vice of placing one’s own immediate somatic
well-being above all other goods, a vice that Dr. Johnson long ago recognized
as an underminer of the very microfiber of civilized social existence: “</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I do not
know,” quoth Dr. J., “a more disagreeable character than a valetudinarian, who
thinks he may do any thing that is for his ease, and indulges himself in the
grossest freedoms: Sir, he brings himself to the state of a hog in a stye.” (A
smaller but by no means trivial part of the impetus towards valetudinarianism
on both sides, both from on high and from down below [i.e., from down the
gullet and up the arse], may be owing to a desperate yearning to keep up to
speed, or rather, yield down to laxity and torpor, with our imminent masters,
our Barbarian Rulers’ sub-barbarian successors, the god-awful Chinese [q.v.],
to our hopeless attempt to curry favor with these successors like the lamb with
the butcher by mimicking their viscerally revolting habit of urinating,
expectorating, voiding snot, and even [in the case of their god-awful bairns] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">defecating</i> in public and onto or into
the nearest surface or cavity to-relevant organ, a habit that their god-awful
increase in affluence has by all—and I almost really do mean <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i>—accounts done <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">absolutely nothing</i> to curb, as is altogether unsurprising, inasmuch
as panoccidental history hath conclusively shewn in the fleapit constituted by
Norbert Elias’s teeth that there is nothing intrinsically civilizing about an
augmentation of material wealth.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of
course nowadays it is not only in the meta-somatic register that
hyperoccidentals behave like hogs, as witnessed by their basic, general
meta-verbal comportment towards each other, their mode of entering into,
engaging in, and exiting from interlocution with one another in propinquity to
third etc. parties who have no stake or interest in their conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prima
vista</i> it might be thought that here I am merely flogging the by-now not
only dead but sterilely stuffed horse of public mobile phone conversations, but
I am in fact flogging a thrivingly live horse which, although it indeed
probably never would have even been foaled in the absence of the bad habits
nurtured by the mobile phone, has no intrinsic connection with that engine and
will doubtless survive its supersession—viz., the practice of conversing in the
flesh with an interlocutor who is separated from oneself by the fleshly persons
of other human individuals or an expanse of air ample enough to accommodate
more than several such fleshly persons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And I am not just talking here</i>, as they
say, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">about</i> a brief exchange of
salutational salvos; I am talking, rather, about a veritable mutual cannonade of
small talk generally segueing into a further MC of what would be termed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">big talk</i> were <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">big</i> not a de facto denoter of grandeur as well as of empty tumdity
(irritatingly enough, the idiom <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to talk
big </i>conveys the full burden of semantic fatuity that its sub-idiomatic nominal
complement sadly lacks), all carried out in utter heedlessness of the readily
inferrable likelihood that the ejaculation of each and every word thereof is scattering
potentially lethal shrapnel into the meta-intersubjective goodwill of every non-participating
would-be decent person within earshot—i.e., that it is not merely distracting such
a person from his aut al.’s proverbial mental tabulation of that evening’s grocery
list, but additionally and much more gravely tending to undermine his aut al.’s
faith in the worthwhileness of interlocution tout court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">If, </i>such
a person will inevitably tend to reflect as he aut al. resignedly sets aside
the just-mentioned mental grocery list,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Persons
A<sub>umpteenthousand</sub> and B<sub>umpteenthousand </sub></i>[so nominated
because by now our would-be-decent person can recall having umpteen-thousand-minus-one
such interchanges foisted upon his ears] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">care
so little about whether the words they are nominally addressing exclusively to
each other are heard and understood more clearly by each other than by persons
to whom they are not addressed, is it not altogether probable that
interlocutionary utterances are never (or at least never any longer) more-than-nominally
addressed to </i>anybody<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, that what passes
for conversation nowadays is merely a sort of </i>obbligato recitative <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">or feeble mimicry of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the formulae of conversation absorbed via, I
dunno, or, rather, </i>don’t know<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">,
fleetingly-cum-anciently viewed reruns of say, “Perry Mason” or “The Andy
Griffith Show,” or, indeed, “Amos ’n’ Andy”?</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The zombie cowboy DGR will doubtless—nay,
undoubtedly—pounce over that last item in the catalogue, that reference to the most
notorious supposed radiophonic-cum-televisual instance of cosmetically abetted
minstrelsy west of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Black and White
Minstrel Show</i>, as proof that what I am objecting to is a phenomenon evinced
exclusively by A*****n-A******ns and therefore thoroughly unobjectionable and
indeed eminently fellatable qua manifestation of some <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">l’ecrivain present-qua-M. Blanqui </i></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">[</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">a.k.a., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wh*t*y</i>]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> ne saura jamais quoi</i>, whereas<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
en point de fait</i> I included <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A’n’A</i>
merely qua televisual bearer of the old formal formulae of conversation, a
capacity in which I believe it, along with all its televisual
contemporaries-cum-congeners, must now principally be regarded, however many umpteen-thousand
malapropisms-qua-supposed-r***al shibboleths may have been forced into its
cast’s respective mouths.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
demoralization induced by this phenomenon—the phenomenon of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">non-telephonic long-distance interlocution</i>
(a clunkily verbose formulation, to be sure, yet for all that an immeasurably
more graceful and enlightening one than the likes of any of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man</i>-prefixed neologisms, for all their
terseness)—is comparable in force and analogous content to that induced by the
phenomenon that used to be called a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">public
display of affection</i> (a term whose recent apparent disappearance from the Anglophone
vernacular is somewhat mystifying, although the present writer conjectures that
this disappearance has little or nothing to do with any diminution in the
prevalence of the phenomenon denoted by it and much or everything to do with
the usurpation of its popular quasi-acronymic abbreviation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">PDA</i>, by the so-called personal digital
assistant round about the turn of the millennium, a usurpation which, like many
a political usurpation, precluded the restoration of the usurped title even
after the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">disparation</i> of the usurper
[which in this case<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>occurred in ca.
2012, owing to the personal digital assistant-displacing quasi-universalization
of the so-called smart phone], owing to the latter’s skunking of the title
during the interregnum); like that phenomenon, it elicits from the bystander
the temptation to ejaculate, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Get a room,
for HRH JHC’s sake! </i>not on account of its publicity <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eo ipso</i> but because that publicity undermines the claims of the
genre of interpersonality it instantiates to be regarded by default as an
expression-cum-embodiment of intersubjective intimacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But whereas whilom-called public displays of
affection were and remain largely confined on the displaying end to teenagers
and unregenerate lumpen proles (this, the present writer conjectures, not
because more upmarket demographic strata have failed to acquire the requisite
shamelessness, but because they have concurrently become more reserved about
engaging in any potentially legally actionable activity in the presence of
witnesses), non-telephonic long-distance interlocution can routinely and
horrifyingly be observed chez person-pairs hailing from each and every demographic
bloc, and each and every lifewalk in the socioeconomic gamut or spectrum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course non-telephonic long-distance
interlocution is but one of megascads of formerly ultra-downmarket habitus-emes
to have spread upwards into the very socioeconomic stratosphere in recent
half-decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One thinks, for instance,
of the manifest refusal of 97.876% of men to wear a necktie when appearing in
front of a television camera or an assembly of spectators-cum-listeners, even
if some inabrogable antient protocol requires every last man in the audience to
be attired in white tie-and-tails; a refusal that at least a good 49.999992% of
those men combine with an insistence on refraining from wearing any sort of
undershirt, be it the most low-collared and coarsely reticulated string vest,
and unbuttoning the overshirt down almost to nipple-disclosing depths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At its most decorous, this practice
transforms every man who practices it into a virtual sartorial clone of that
god-awfully insufferably smug Iranian president from about a decade ago whose
name I not only can’t be arsed but can’t even be enabled to G****e, as my
recollection of it amounts to nothing presumably more orthographically
propinquitous than a washing machine rinse-cycle-esque succession of a
half-dozen or so ems and jays terminating in a Midwestern-American <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">John</i>; at this practice’s most typical it
transforms the practitioner into an unregenerately downmarket <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">greaser</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">guido </i>of the sort rightfully and eloquently disparaged by that
wonderfully upmarket WASP senator in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i>
otherwise god-awful <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Godfather II </i>(a
film of which in my to-say-the-least heterodox view this selfsame senator
constitutes the hero and moral center).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course the zombie-cowboy DGR will introjectvely demur here that
fashion is always changing, that to oppose changes in fashion is invariably as
hopeless as to oppose the incoming tide like that medieval king of Norway
(sic), that in any case the necktie in particular is a sartorial accessory of
relatively recent invention, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
these demurrals I shall to my mind conclusively counter-demur that while
fashion is indeed always ineluctably, Canute-proofedly changing, it is never
merely arbitrarily or capriciously changing, that like every other constituent
of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Weltgeist</i>, it is subject to a
certain logic and mediated by the exigencies of that logic, and that the ever-crescent
vanishing of the necktie from the male oratorical neck is incontrovertible
evidence of the further progress of the logic of slovenliness (or regression of
the logic of spiffiness) in the first two decades of the second millennium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the necktie qua mandatory feature
of the masculine sartorial ensemble is a relatively recent invention, having
been introduced into the mainstream of pan-occidental men’s fashion (supposedly
from Croatia, as tradition doubtless falsely has it) in about the year 1660.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But theretofore the gentlemen who then more
than figuratively took the necktie to their bosoms had not been lounging about
open-collaredly in shirts surmounted by completely unbuttoned sport-jackets or
blazers; no: theretofore they had been sitting stiffly upright in shirts
covered from the collar downwards by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">doublets</i>—essentially
extremely posh-fabricked business jackets buttoned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all the way up to</i> [sorry, would-be-spanner-in-the-works-throwing
adducers of the Nehru jacket or Mao tunic] the chin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The advent of the necktie coincided with
Charles II’s enforced supersession of the doublet by the suit coat-cum-vest (or
-waistcoat), a supersession that left a good square quarter-metre of thereunto
invisible shirt-frontage exposed—and beneath this shirt-frontage nothing was to
be seen or otherwise sensually apprehended than the bare masculine breast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, to the underratedly formidable extent that
the bare masculine breast had to be concealed from view, touch, etc., some
garmenteme or other had to be substituted for the absent square quarter-meter
of doubletage. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whence the emplacement of
the cravat or necktie, and whence the deplorablility of the recent off-casting of
that garment, an off-casting which has unprecedentedly exposed the naked
masculine gorge to general public spectation and thereby fatally derogated from
the public masculine orator’s formerly unchallengeable aura of authority and
dignity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the discarding of the
necktie had been offset by some authority-cum-dignity-recuperating sartorial measure
(as, for example, the discarding of wigs was gradually offset by the
marginalization of such gaudy suit-hues as scarlet and saffron in the early
decades of the nineteenth century and the discarding of the waistcoat by
mandatory suit-jacket-up-buttoning in the middle decades of the twentieth), the
zombie cowboy DGR’s meta-couturial relativism would not necessarily be entirely
ill-founded, but as it has not been so offset, quasi-universal masculine public
tielessness cannot but quasi-universally give the impression that male orators
have generally forsaken all title to be taken seriously as earnest and
knowledgeable espousers of whatever cause they are undertaking to promote, that
they have just rolled into the studio or auditorium only minutes after rolling
out of bed after a hard night of so-called clubbing and throwing on whatever garments
happened to be hanging nearest to hand in the closet or wardrobe, and from this
slovenliness it will be an easy and doubtless ineluctable transition to such men’s
showing up without even having thrown <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anything</i>
on, to their appearing at the podium attired in nothing but an antient hole-ridden
band-tour T-shirt and so-called tighty-whities brimming over with pubic hair
and scrotal skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This masculine
couturial trend might conceivably be bearable were women—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nice</i> women, that is, the only women that matter <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in any respect whatsoever</i>—still
fulfilling their hitherto on-countable remit to keep up the tone on the
couturial front and thereby setting a good example for the men, but of course
even they are letting themselves go on this front in innumerable utterly
abominable ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So-called yoga
pants-wearing is almost undoubtedly the most abominable of these ways <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eis ipsis</i>, but as I have already stated,
at this point in the argument we are dealing explicitly and specifically with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">unnamed</i> phenomena, and yoga
pants-wearing, in virtue of being yoked to a neologism, viz. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yoga pants</i>, at least leaves open
(naturally the present writer averts his eyes at the breach [!] of gallantry
intrinsic to the phrasal verb <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">leave open</i>)
the practicable possibility of a challenge in the form of some
even-more-neologistic christening of some less revealing alternative
waist-to-toe covering garment—e.g., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tai
chi slacks</i>; whereas these other, nearly-as-reprehensible practices, in
virtue of being as-yet-(and therefore presumably always)-unnamed, admit of no
practicable alternatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is one to
do about, for example, the unnamed by-now-utterly-routine phenomenon of
nominally nice women being shod—or, rather, pseudo-shod or half-shod—in
so-called flip-flops in locales as remote from the beach in tone, brute
material constitution, and geographical distance as Baltimore City, even in the
deadest, frostbite-inducing dead of winter?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The present writer flatters himself that he is in a position to hold
forth on this topick with super- (or is it rather <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sub</i>-?) Mixalotian bottom in having been born and raised in a part
of the U.S.—namely west-central Florida—that especially prides itself on its
love of the beach and its treasuring of even the most picayune, pissant
folkways that cling or cleave most closely thereunto or thereinto; for he
cannot recall having at any point during his residence in that part—a residence
that lasted from 1972 to 1994, and hence came to an end well to the fore of the
end of the previous millennium—beheld any <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nice
</i>person pseudo-shod or half-shod in flip-flops at any site from which the
Gulf of Mexico was not in immediate view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To the best of his recollection, each and every such flip flop pseudo
shod or half-shod hominid he beheld at such a site (typically a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">7-11</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Circle K</i> at which he or his parents had been obliged to stop for
refueling [for Florida has never been a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right
to full-service</i> state]) during that residence was a combination of
wider-than-tall, unregenerately stroppy, visibly intoxicated, and either
ignorant or wantonly heedless of irregular past participles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course it was no accident that such a
hominid of all hominids favored the flip-flop as an article of footwear,
inasmuch as a flip-flop requires next to no effort to slip on and even less
effort to slip off—indeed, unless it is particularly ergonomically well-matched
with the foot it has been obliged to accommodate (a decided unlikelihood given
that the notion of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bespoke</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">handmade</i> flip-flop is a virtual
oxymoron), its wearer will <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have beau</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>as the French say, to avoid losing it
in the course of an ordinary leisurely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">flâneur</i>’s-paced
walk, a consideration that leads one to wonder why one would ever even dream of
wearing flip-flops in any setting in which losing one’s footwear was more
nearly to be regretted than welcomed—in other words, effectively, in any
setting but at the beach—and further to the no-less-apodictic conclusion that
those who favor flip-flops <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hors de la
plage</i> are unregenerate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">morons</i> in
whichever sense—whether popular, clinical, or otherwise—is most pejorative; and
furthermorely to the no-less-apodictic conclusion that, inasmuch as the
genuinely (as opposed to proverbially) overwhelming majority of formerly nice
people are all too fain to wear flip-flops <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hors
de la page</i>, are all too fain to place their feet within immediate danger of
a nasty and incapacitating cut—not to mention<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>a potentially gangrene, tetanus, or STD-inducing injury—we genuinely
underwhelming minority of genuinely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nice</i>,
properly shod, hyperoccidentals are surrounded by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">morons</i> in that selfsame super-pejorative sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And indeed, in
extrapolating-cum-interpolating-from this conclusion, we may infer that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all </i>the tendencies inveighed against in
the above butcher’s-thousand-or-so sentences effectively amount to the
ever-crescent and seemingly ineluctable ascendancy of the stupid over the
clever—i.e., in Hegelian parlance, of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ungeist</i>
over <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Geist</i>—chez the hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the self-evident case, and the
only alternative destiny for the hyperoccident of the hominids of the present
(I will not besmirch the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">humanity</i>
by associating it however loosely with such abortional creatures as have
usurped its title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">par ici</i>) being
their assimilation to the spiritual-cum-intellectual regime of sub-stupidity (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Untergeist</i>) instantiated by the
god-awful Chinese, inasmuch as the rump of the occident by now effectively comprised
exclusively by the Russians has conjoined its fortunes LS&B, HL&S, with
the latter, and inasmuch as the remainder of the hominid-inhabited world,
meaning essentially Africa, Latin America, and the Indian subcontinent, however
promising certain <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Geist</i>-affirming trends
therein may be, bids extremely foul to get its s**t together any-sufficiently-China-thwarting-time
soon, the only morally significant conclusion that a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nice</i> person can reach regarding the present human race (here I am
obliged to revert to one of the god-awful <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hu-</i>words
for fear of playing into the intellectually-opposable-thumb-bereft quasi-hands
of the bonobo-f**kers) is that it must be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">utterly
destroyed</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such a conclusion
having been reached by, inter alia (?), the present writer, the present writer
cannot but absolutely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">yearn</i> for the old
once-familiar and still fondly and precisely remembered elephantine
crescendo-cum-diminuendo of the sounding of a civil defense tocsin—not at all,
to be sure, qua potential Proustian resuscitator of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">temps perdu</i> (for what do or does <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">temps perdu</i> matter in a world wherein it or they are generally
shamelessly commandeered as either toilet paper or the raw stuff of
present-fellating papier-mâché dummies?), but rather qua harbinger of the
immediate realization of his most ardent and dearly cherished <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hope</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THE END</span><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-42466865609023901912019-08-09T19:43:00.000-04:002019-08-16T19:16:21.500-04:00To Russia with Lunch--Part Three<br />
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<span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I shall have occasion to
expatiate on the wellsprings, confluences, and effluences of this genre,
bad-cop porn, slightly later--in the filet, so to speak, of this
peroration--but first I must neutral-good-coppishly (i.e., firmly but
dispassionately and ever-so-gently) quash a demurral whose subsistence would
undermine the plausibility of this aforementioned expatiation, a demurral that
I dare not gratuitously demean by putting it into the mouth of a DGR-type
figure inasmuch as I know it has the preponderance, if not the totality, of
received Russological-cum-Sovietological opinion behind it, a preponderance or
totality to which no small number of persons of indisputable parts, as well as
learning and experience derived from Russia and the former Soviet Union, have
contributed; and indeed <i>the</i> demurral that the recent-to-present wave of
Eastern-Orthodox Christian kitsch is but the natural resumption of the force
and course of a well-established EOC-humping current whose flow was
artificially dammed and diverted for seven decades by the atheistic Soviet
regime, a current in which each and every one of Russia’s pre-Soviet c******l
leading lights (apart, of course, from such good-old so-called liberals as
Turgenev and Chekhov) enthusiastically participated to some degree or other,
such that, for example, </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Zvyagintsev’s Christ-fixation</span><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> is to be regarded merely as a resumption of
Dostoyevsky’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this demurral I must,
I say, neutral-good-coppishly counterdemur first that a far-from-soft-and slow
distinction must be drawn between the theology, liturgy, and politics of the
post-Soviet Eastern Orthodox churches and the religious, intellectual, and
political habituses of even the most flagrantly EOC-humping exponents of
novels, symphonies, plays, films, and so forth—modes or genres of c******l production
that were firmly regarded as secular even in pre-revolutionary times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Eastern Orthodox churches undoubtedly are
and always have been not only politically reactionary but also, and more
significantly for the present writer’s PPs, utterly lacking in anything like a
proper theology, which is to say any sort or form of philosophical orientation
towards their own faith, and indeed, positively hostile to each and every sort
and form of ratiocination (in such a context the oft-bandied about quasi-honorific
<i>mysticism</i> is but a euphemism for embarrassingly willful inanity).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, hyperoccidentals find it
all too tempting to presume that a Russian’s intellectual heft (as
tendentiously opposed to his <i>spiritual</i> heft, which can always be employed
<i>ici</i></span><i><span style="background: #fdfeff; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">-</span></i><i><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">deçà </span></i><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">to cover a multitude of <i>sottises</i> <i>au-delà du vieux rideau
de fer</i></span><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">) varies in inverse proportion
to his degree of enthusiasm for the Russian Orthodox Church, such that anyone
who has ever been an ardent adherent of the ROC is or was at best an intellectual
toddler, and further that the official re-legitimation of the EOC churches and
their attendant resumption of pre-revolutionary business as cassocked and
incense-hazed as usual cannot have but been subtended by a <i>Volksgeist</i>-wide
<i>regression</i> to an intrinsically infantile pre-revolutionary ROC-humping <i>Volksgeist</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Few if any things can be further from the
truth than this presumption—not because the latter-day exponents of ROC kitsch
have not regressed, for they undoubtedly have done, but because their
regression has consisted in an assimilation to the non-theological,
non-intellectual <i>Weltansicht</i> of the ROC itself rather than in a return
to the pre-revolutionary ROC-orientated intellectual tradition, which always
saw itself as distinct from the ROC even when it yearned (or affected to yearn)
most ardently for assimilation thereunto--and quite rightly saw itself in those
terms, inasmuch as it freely and relentlessly engaged in philosophical
reflection on that church’s tenets and practices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most salient and germane case in point: as
hinted not far above, Dostoyevsky is regarded in hyperoccidental literary-critical
lore as a kind of secular apostle of the ROC qua standard bearer of the
spiritual entelechy of the human race, and this reputation is by no means
undeserved--and yet (as my employment of the meta-metaphysically top-shelf
hellenism <i>entelechy</i> hints) D.’s ROC-championing emerged from and always
remained in tension with a ponderously minute consideration of each and every
other intellectual habitus available to him not merely qua citizen (or <i>subject</i>,
if philological-cum-translational consensus has made this the preferred term)
of Tsarist Russia but also qua citizen of the larger, and by no means
necessarily less ponderous, c******l-cum-quasi-political<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>entity that ought to have been and indeed
ought still to be known as Panoccidentia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most salient and germane case in sub-point: the ROC monk-in-training
Alyosha is both avowedly (i.e., by D. himself) the hero and indisputably (i.e.,
by any attentive reader of the book) the moral center of <i>The Brothers
Karamazov</i>, and yet D. gives plenty of floor-time to the views of A.’s
brother, the atheist Ivan, and indeed, via the famous story of the Grand
Inquisitor, he allows this atheist to tender the notion that Christ’s
visitation of the earth was both a complete waste of time, on account of the
utter incorrigibility of humankind’s wickedness, and utterly inadequate as a
means of expiation on account of that wickedness’s super-Satanic
monstrousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course any
readerly predisposition to regard Ivan simply as the baddie of the story, as
not only the devil’s interlocutor but also his complacently quiescent
mouthpiece, is put paid to both by Alyosha’s fraternal compassion for him and
by his prostration by a potentially terminal case of brain fever immediately
after his recounting of the anecdote of the Grand Inquisitor—a prostration that
bespeaks both the inconceivability and the plausibility of his atheistic
argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All four-to-seven of
Dostoyevsky’s major works critically engage with the ROC and the Christian
religion in toto--and specifically with them as participants in a sort of vast
Panoccidential intellectual Town Meeting (in the Ivesian sense) whose venue
must by default be regarded as being bounded on the east by
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and on the west by Sitka (or Novo Arkhangelsk,
depending on whether the major D. work in question hails from before or after
1867), Alaska.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having already made my
e.g.-ial point adequately enough, I have neither a need nor a wish to dwell on
D.’s most celebratedly or notoriously Christological work, <i>The Idiot </i>(which,
incidentally, might just as plausibly be Anglophonically entitled <i>An Idiot</i>
[and, indeed, I am surprised that the god-awfully ubiquitous Richard Pevear and
Larissa Volokhonsky, the Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale of present-day
Anglophone Russian translation, whose entire corpus is essentially one awful
unreadable antigraph of the most illustrious productions of their predecessors
{C. Garnett, D. Magarshak, et al.} did not entitle it that if only to
complement their article-swapping<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>re-Englishing
of <b><i>A</i></b><i> Raw Youth </i>as <b><i>The</i></b><i> Adolescent</i>]),
but I really must point out that for all his canonization as the great holy man
of Russian literary fiction, that book’s eponymous idiot, Prince Myshkin,
arrives in his native Russia in the opening chapter as a quasi-alien who has
just spent four years—those of the intellectually formative early-to-mid-twenties—in
the capital of Calvinism, Switzerland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And then of course one must not, not <i>remember—</i>for one
axiomatically need not remember something of this kind--but, rather, give due
prominence, to that unforgettable passage in which Myshkin effectively concedes
that the differences of worldview between believers and atheists may after all
be merely semantic in essence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such
meta-epistemological ambiguity is part and parcel of the nineteenth-century
Russian Christian intellectual habitus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is obviously equally pronounced albeit in an entirely different way
in Tolstoy—who started out a kind of ROC-Christian democrat and ended up a
nominally post-Christian ascetic who had circumvented Christianity only by
making himself into his own Christ; and its theistic facet is present even in
the work of such supposedly thoroughgoing secularists-cum-cosmopolitans as
Turgenev and Chekhov, neither of whom ever would have dreamed of toeing the
supposedly progressive hyperoccidental party line by dismissing the faithful
ROC-adherents as mere superstitious yokels who just needed to get with the
Darwin-humping secularist program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I
submit that this strain of ambiguity-drenched, panoccidentally
born-cum-vectored meta-epistemological Christian intellectuality not only
subsisted but thrived well into the twentieth century and indeed into the
post-revolutionary period, in the work of writers from Bunin to Bulgakov to
Tsvetaeva to Akhmatova, and of filmmakers such as Kozinstsev (whose ecumenical
Christological <i>Bildschaft</i> is to be stridently contrasted with the
bigotedly ROC-humping <i>Bildschaft</i> of his older colleague Eisenstein) and
the pre-emigration Tarkovsky, on whose decidedly non-kitschy treatment of
broadly religious and more specifically Christian themes I have already
descanted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I must further submit
that the highly favorable reception with which works in this strain were met in
the hyperoccident from the very get-go, beginning with that metaphysically
tormented soul Matthew Arnold’s gushing review of <i>War and Peace</i>, is
attributable to a far nobler impetus than the appetite for religious kitsch, an
impetus arising not from a mere banausic craving for answers, for the <i>something
to believe in</i> with which the vilest bomb qua turd succedaneum
slinging-ethos of a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>comme-il-faut</i>
ethnic provenance is reflexively endorsed (at least condescendingly) <i>dans
nos petits pseudo-jours</i>, but rather from a craving for genuinely engaging
metaphysically vectored <i>questions</i>, a craving that was left utterly
ungratified by the dreary cock-measuring contests that passed for theological
disputation in the contemporaneous late-nineteenth century hyperoccident, by
the squarings-off of chest-thumping macho Protestant Muscular Christians
against self-preening poncey papist Oxford Movementalists (squarings-off with which,
incidentally, today’s conflicts over such religio-political matters as hijabs
and burkas make no improvement whatsoever in point of metaphysical interest,
for all their heftier admixture of so-called cultural diversity).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Mais bien entendu, dans nos petits
pseudo-jours, tout cela est foutu depuis longlonglongtemps. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Dans nos petits pseudo-jours </i>the
much-stultified intelligentsias of Russia and its fellow EOC-orientated
polities have long since ceased to be capable of pedaling anything more
intellectually or morally edifying than religious kitsch, and the
contemporaneously stultified intelligentsias of the hyperoccident are
complementarily uninterested in-cum-incapable of absorbing anything more
intellectually or morally edifying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
have already tentatively proposed if not quite an efficient cause of, then at
least an impetus, an inaugural push, towards, the stultification on the
EOC-orientated side--namely, the self-shunting of the Soviet intelligentsia
into the bed of the EOCs by the institution of a more liberal cultural
dispensation from on high--and perhaps less tentatively asserted that this
stultification has persisted largely on account of its appeal to
hyperoccidental culture-consumers, but that this appeal has been largely misgauged
from the EOC-orientated side, that what they are pedaling as religious kitsch
has been received over here principally (albeit favorably) as <i>bad-cop porn</i>,
a genre that I have already defined in perhaps unduly abstract terms, and that
I consequently hereby concretely exemplify by naming some of its most
illustrious instantiations--viz. (i.e., emphatically <i>not</i> e.g.), the
Shostakovich biopic <i>Testimony</i>, the Idi Amin biopic <i>The Last King of
Scotland</i>, the Hitler biopics <i>The Bunker</i> and <i>Downfall</i> and last
(on account of chronology) if not quite (albeit very nearly quite) least, in
terms of aesthetic merit, <i>The Death of Stalin</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What all these have in common is their
up-close-and-personal presentation of the inner circle of a posteriorially
universally detested dictator as a social formation wherein savage cruelty runs
wantonly amuck, and indeed gratuitously amuck even in relation to the
intrigants’ sole aim of getting as many living human bodies into their
immediate control as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a
bad-cop porn flick, all political misery of the polity of the diagesis is seen
to flow directly from the intrinsic, total, incorrigible, and implacable malice
of the leading political figure and his vicegerents, deputies, satraps,
myrmidons, henchmen, and flunkies--each and every one of whom, not excluding
the big headcheese himself, is a rival of all the others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a bad-cop porn flick, the dictator and the
other inner-circular personnel relentlessly and not merely figuratively go for
each other’s jugulars (typically not via a proper flesh-carving knife but
rather via some implement like an envelope-opener whose comparative intrinsic
gentleness guarantees a slower, and therefore more pornographically gratifying,
jugular-slicing session), while at the orders of one or another of them or a
coalition therefrom roughly two-fifths of the poor li’l auld sawl’-ovve-earf
masses are being fed by the postcodeful into furnaces and the remaining
three-fifths starve, futilely wave flags in the face of impassible gun-muzzles,
or otherwise deep-freeze their heels in terminal political irrelevance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bad-cop porn flick is essentially a
moral-cum-<i>gesellschaftsbildlich</i> negative (or visually mediated
antigraph) of the abominable Hollywood gangster flick from <i>The Godfather</i>
onwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the abominable <i>Godfather</i>-type
gangster flick the head honcho and his rivals likewise behave with ruthless
brutality towards one another, but this habitus of brutality is understood to
be heroic if not saintly rather than utterly bestial, inasmuch as it is has
supposedly been ineluctably imposed from without-cum-on-high upon the gangsters
qua <i>salla della vecchia terra</i> qua immigrants <i>dal vecchio paese</i> by
a coalition of the god- awfully god-awful nativist WASP politicians down in
Washington and the no less god-awfully god-awful nativist WASP bankers slightly
less down in Wall Street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Godfather</i>-type gangster flick the
gangsters in the full flower of their brutality are understood to be morally
superior to the politicians and bankers because as a combinatorial function of
their down-troddenness and their hailing from a so-called culture that
supposedly places a higher premium on frankness (<i>la franchezza</i>) in
virtue of its predilection for gratuitous gesticulation (<i>il parlando
gratuito con le mane</i>), they give material expression to their wills (<i>gli
willi</i>) more <i>honestly </i>and hence less hypocritically than their
tight-assed (<i>con culi raggrinziti</i>), well-heeled (<i>con buoni tacchi</i>)
WASP contemporaries-cum-compatriots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
of course, this presentation of brutality as a wooden nickel for honesty has in
the past generation-and-three-quarters become a sort of Get Out of Jail for
Free card-esque topos of the pan-occidental rhetorical landscape, by which I
meantersay that virtually every cinematically schooled male, female, gender-queer,
or species-queer human individual not born and raised in China, North Korea, <i>aut
paucissima cetera</i> (that <i>cetera</i> very much excluding Russia [an
exclusion that very much ought to be taken into account, and probably even
greater account than is reflexively accorded to the intellectually lazy, purely
domestically derived, political genealogy that posits the current Russian
president as Tsar Vladimir I/IV-cum-Josef II, when speculating on Mr. Putin’s
aims and motives]) now carries within himself, herself, or theirself, a sort of
hissing, flattened-eared cat [naturally, the partisans-cum-ostensible
instantiations of a certain especially stroppy sub-species of the species-queer
will justifiably demur here that they have no need to contain such a cat, inasmuch
as they already <i>are</i> such a cat] that he, she, or they judges himself,
herself, or theirself, not merely permitted but positively obliged to unbag at
any moment at which he, she, or they judges his, her, or their pride or
interests to be threatened, rather than be regarded as the sort of tight
assed-cum-cowardly person or animal who keeps his, her, or, their feelings to
himself, herself, or theirself, and plays his, her, or their cards close to the
chest; an unbagging that allows himself, herself, or theirself to enjoy the
twofold pleasure of simultaneously indulging the righteous plain-spokenness of
Kent and the wanton bloodlust of Cornwall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That dude who served for all of ten minutes as the present U.S.
president’s public liaison officer (a position, incidentally, ranging from
myrmidon to flunky on the servility spectrum), the dude with that ludicrously
appropriate commedia-dell’arteic name that I blush to drop herein, presented
this wooden nickel with especially steely brazenness (yet equally especially
deadening woodenness) when, after being dismissed for being apparently
incapable of mentioning any person but his boss except as part of a kenning
containing some depreciative inflection of <i>f**k</i>, by way of unfavorably
comparing the power-corridors of Washington, D.C. to the supposedly hyper-mean
streets of whichever actually completely anodyne, virtually knife crime-free
township of New Jersey or Long Island he grew up in, he averred, “Back there,
we stabbed each other in the chests, not in the back.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At any event, for the present writer’s
present purposes, the most interesting thing to remark in connection with the
connection between the <i>Godfather</i>-type gangster flick and the bad
cop-porn flick is the moral three-card-Monte switcheroo that takes place during
the transition between the two genres, given that both are equally ardently
admired by hyperoccidental <i>bienpensants</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When Joe Pesci as a mobster boss stomps a harmless snitch to death in <i>Goodfellas</i>,
the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i> viewer salivates with admiring envy of a
class of individuals who have the courage to be forthright in the expression of
their grievances, but when Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev curses the
burning corpse of the secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria after having had him
executed without a trial, that same hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant </i>viewer
shudders with morally outraged horror as he, she, or they takes a generous hit of
his, her, or their own fart fumes from the hookah of self-satisfaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How is this possible?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant </i>find
it perfectly acceptable, and indeed praiseworthy, for human beings to mete out
the most sanguinary punishment to one another in the hyperoccident and yet take
the darkest umbrage at such out-meting in extra-hyperoccidental climes?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to answer this question, we--or,
rather, the present writer (who, after all, cannot take for granted the
existence of a single empirical Anglophone reader sympathetic enough to his
sympathies to have read this far)--must indite a sort of pocket (or potted?)
genealogy of the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i>-ility’s orientation towards
an entity that I hereby dub or christen Authoritariania, a realm encompassing
all post WWI-extant polities that mainstream hyperoccidental opinion (within
which mainstream hyperoccidental <i>bienpensantism </i>is generally if not
invariably content to swim) has deemed insufficiently democratic, from
Mussolini’s Italy to Putin’s Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>From the post-WWI outset right up on through to the present, the
hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i>-ility have been implacably hostile towards
any form of authoritarianism that justifies itself solely or principally by
recourse to the principle of <i>the necessity of maintaining social order--</i>thus
in the <i>bienpensant</i> mythos the average politically unreflective post-WWII
Italian’s apologia for Mussolini, <i>At least he made the trains run on time</i>,
stands cheek-by-jowl with the Nazi death camp administrator’s self-exculpatory
assertion that he was <i>Just following orders</i> as a verbal synecdoche of
all the evils of so-called fascism. In the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i>
mythos, the political curtailment of classic bourgeois liberties of any kind
has always been too high a price to pay for such quotidiana as punctual train
service, and from the comparatively modest restrictions on freedom of
expression, assembly, and so forth, exacted by Mussolini’s dispensation (NB: my
standard of comparison is the entire political landscape of Europe, Asia, and
North America of the past half-millennium, not that sub-sub-sub-entire one of
the Anglosphere plus the Eurozone since the dawn of the present decade) it is
not so much a slippery slope as a few square inches of friction-free skating
rink-ice to the Holocaust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i>-ility have never been opposed to
authoritarianism <i>eo ipso</i>, and at least in the early days they were
inclined to welcome it with OAs when it justified itself by recourse to the
principle of <i>the redistribution of wealth</i>, as it was notably doing in
the newly established U.S.S.R.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
redistributive U.S.S.R.-affecting strain of <i>bienpensant</i>-ism matured in
the 1930s, during the so-called Great Depression, when questions about the
viability of so-called capitalism were being raised if not quite all the way
then at least three-fifths of the way across the so-called political spectrum
(one is precluded from adding the appropriate sequel <i>from red to blue</i>
[i.e., from avowed Communists to middle-of-the-road Republicans] by the
god-awful tellingly amnesiac recent [i.e., ca. 2008?] inversion of the
chromatic polarities, which has made <i>red</i> a signifier of implicitly
anti-Communist rock-ribbed [a.k.a. <i>true blue</i>] Republicanism), even in
the capital of so-called capitalism, the United States, because for the first
time in that pseudosystem-cum-pseudophilosophy’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>history, the provision of the basic means of
day-to-day biological subsistence was becoming problematic even in places long since
saturated by the most advanced big business-spearheaded techniques of
production and distribution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present
writer admits to finding--and to have long since found--one and exactly one of
the two (for there are only two) facets of this strain of <i>bienpensantism </i>quite
attractive, for he is decidedly repelled by its whole
robbing-the-rich-of-their-last-in-pissable-pot-esque facet, reeking as it
cannot but do of the deadly sin of <i>envy</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is the other facet, the facet orientated towards the provision of
wealth, or, more precisely the somatically orientated fruits thereof, with
which he is--and has long since been--smitten, as the attentive reader, DG or
otherwise, will hardly be surprised to learn in the light of his, her, or their
familiarity with the second section of this essay, the one treating of the
deficiencies of present-day so-called capitalism qua provider of quotidian
comforts and conveniences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is,
finally, a third strain of <i>bienpensant-</i>ism that one might term the
hedonistic (If you’re out there, Elena, I apologize for obliging you to grab a
dictionary) or better yet <i>sensually libertarian</i> strain, a strain that
seeks its bliss beyond, or, perhaps, rather, <i>beneath</i>, the purview of the
classic bourgeois liberties, in the realm of sensual satisfaction, a strain
that was engendered during the Prohibition years of the late-teens through
early thirties but really attained its first maturity only in the immediate
post-World War II years, a micro-epoch when the older redistributive strain of <i>bienpensant</i>-ism
had largely died away (or at least gone into hibernation) owing, <i>ob multas
causas</i>, to the evaporation of the threat of famine towards the end of the
1930s, the ensuing wartime boost to production, and the ensuing further
upramping of production owing to renascent consumer demand both at home and in
renascent Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This micro-epoch was
of course also the micro-epoch of so-called McCarthyism, when Communists,
former Communists, friends of Communists, and former friends of Communists,
both actual and suspected, were being genuinely persecuted--albeit in a
generally comparatively benign way (again, my standard of comparison is
semi-millennial and well-nigh global)- -by the House Unamerican Activities
Committee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A large proportion--if not
the preponderance--of those ha(u)led before HUAC were officially being
subjected to its scrutiny on account of activities that they had engaged in
during the so-called Great Depression--in other words, during the high season,
and therefore presumably in the name, of, redistributivism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the actual catalyst or efficient cause of
both the HUAC investigation and the <i>exactly</i> concurrent backlash against
it (and a glance at a very-early 1950s number of even so now-notoriously
anti-Communist a periodical as <i>Life</i> will make it plain that there was
such a backlash, that long before Joseph Welch and Edward Murrow a large
proportion if not the preponderance of the American public did not appreciate
McCarthy et al.’s so [i.e., by this selfsame preponderance]-called witch hunt)
was not the committee’s subpoena-ees’ then-former redistributivism but rather
their then-current sensual libertarianism--i.e., chiefly, their predilections
for illicit drugs, jazz music that was too complicated or chaotic to be readily
danced to, and extramarital and homosexual sexual relations, predilections that
were deemed particularly menacing by both its assailants <i>and its devotees</i>
on account of its concentration in the nationally influential sectors of
Broadway and Hollywood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The starchily
ascetic congresspeople from the so-called American heartland quite rationally
resented and feared the influence of littoral sensual libertarianism on their
constituents, and the bicoastal sensually indulgent hipsters equally rationally
resented and feared the harshing of their respective mellows and the
attenuation of their collective influence by the starchy heartlanders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>But what the D***l of a sort of role</i>,
the sufficiently (for the PW’s PPs) historically uninformed reader, DG or otherwise,
is doubtless wondering, <i>did Communism and the U.S.S.R. play in this perverse
waltz or do-si-do of starchy congresspeople and sensually indulgent
hipsters?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>The conveniently apt
answer to this question is that the U.S.S.R. played to the hilt the role of the
D***l to both parties, and did so under the auspices of its official
self-designation as an <i>atheistic State</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The essentially starchy and at least contingently church-goingly
Christian HUAC members quite rightly regarded the littoral sensual hipsters as
card-carrying atheists but quite wrongly--if quasi-understandably, as will
become clear long before the end of the present sentence--regarded their
atheism as flowing from or paying tribute to the Soviet State, mainly because,
although demographically speaking the much closer polities of central and
western Europe had been bristling with atheism for donkey’s decades, the
U.S.S.R., together with its newly established client States in eastern Europe,
was the only occidental State that had been founded in explicit opposition (as
opposed to mere indifference) to religion; and the littoral sensual-libertarian
hipsters complementarily blamed their persecution on the Christian
religion--rightly in one technically correct if immaterial respect, given that
their persecutors were B&L card-carrying Christians; and yet wrongly in
another, materially incorrect, respect, perhaps, given that it was essentially
qua starchy heartlanders (i.e., qua <i>people who just didn’t go in for that
sort of thing and would on the whole rather be as far away as possible from
those who did</i>) and not qua Christians that their persecutors were wielding
the Congressional scourge; and yet rightly again in a
more-than-technically-yet-ultimately-immaterial respect, inasmuch as at that
time most of the predilections they prided themselves on indulging were
consistently categorically regarded as <i>sins</i> or <i>vices </i>by most
Christian churches albeit not necessarily categorically or consistently by the
New Testament--and sought <i>vindication</i> in the Soviet State qua sole
avowedly atheistic major occidental polity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They, the littoral sensual-libertarian hipsters, fetishized the Soviets
qua atheists in perhaps conveniently feigned but in all probability
conveniently genuine ignorance of the fact that except in a sub-<i>kuchka</i>
of sociopolitical domains--for example, those of so-called reproductive rights
and inclusion of women in the so-called workplace--the U.S.S.R. of the early
1950s was on the whole a more socially conservative polity than its
hyperoccidental counterparts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the
whole, despite their admittedly probably cheerfully received exemption from church-attendance,
even the hippest of early-1950s Soviet citizens--meaning the least conformist
(i.e., most dissident) strata of the Soviet intelligentsia--were probably not
much less square than the starchiest of Bible-thumping American Heartlanders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Certainly there was no so-called groundswell
of enthusiasm for homosexual coition and illicit drug-use in early-1950s Soviet
hipsterdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally, the early
twenty-first-century hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i>, true to his, her, or
their Whiggish roots (and in the hyperoccident Whiggish roots are the only
genuine ones, the only ones that have veritably engendered a tradition of
loyalty to the founding principles that has veritably been handed <i>down from
generation to generation</i>) will here demur that the Soviet dissident
intelligentsia were in point of fact champing at the bit for the opportunity to
use illicit drugs and engage in homosexual coition, and doubtless his, her, or
their demurral has some basis in mid-century Soviet reality, inasmuch as there
doubtless were certain mid-century <i>intelligents </i>who more than
figuratively dreamed of indulging in either or both pleasures--but obviously
not very many, or we would have heard as much about <i>intelligents</i> being
carted off to the gulag for writing novels and poems about people lighting up
spliffs or anally penetrating each other, as for writing novels and poems about
heftily moustached dudes behaving in a capriciously tyrannical manner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I by no means wish to make light--or at
any rate more than relative light--of the plight of homosexuals (to call them <i>gays</i>
here would be quasi-anachronistic, as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gay</i>
did not become the preferred term of homosexual self-identification until 1969
at the earliest)--in any part of the mid-twentieth-century Occident, at the
same time I think it is important to recall, or, rather, chez most people,
bring to mind for at least the effective first time (for, as with so many other
topicks addressed in the present essay, even those who are biologically old
enough to know better seem to have memories-cum-experience records
interchangeable with those of people born within the past decade-and-a-half)
that a lack of enthusiastic Occidental sympathy with or for this plight was by
no means confined to the snake-handling Bible-thumpers of that micro-epoch,
that, indeed, it was then very much in the mainstream of<i> </i>proto-<i>bienpensant
</i>(i.e.,<i> progressive</i> or <i>liberal</i>) thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus that most unabashedly zealous of
Uranists, Leonard Bernstein, once at least wounded the joy of a particularly
uproarious NYC breeder-free blowout by lugubriously exclaiming that it was a
terrible pity that everyone present was a homosexual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus in one of his later essays, Lionel
Trilling--who was after all both a bosom chum of that leading light of Fire
Island, W.H. Auden, and active exculpator of the patron saint of Christopher
Street, Allen Ginsberg--sternly averred that he by no means wished to be
thought to be countenancing homosexuality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thus in his mid-1960s memoir of his years as a prisoner of the Nazi
Germans, <i>The Mind’s Limits</i>, did that most ardent fan of that
arch-Uranist Marcel Proust, Jean Améry, unsparingly disparage those who
regarded their deprivation of the opportunity to coit with members of their own
sex as an affront to their human dignity by classing them with those who
regarded the unavailability of a daily bath as a consubstantial outrage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally here the twenty-first-century
hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i>, true again to the broader Whiggish
root-system albeit only by half selling out his, her, or their commitment to
the specific Whiggish root-complex known nowadays as <i>science</i>, will demur
that it was the utterly reprehensible official medical <i>pathologization</i>
of homosexuality that accounted for these otherwise upstanding souls’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>presumably merely feigned lack of sympathy
for their homosexual brothers, sisters (and presumptive al. [for this selfsame
presumably presupposes that millions if not tens of millions of transgender,
gender queer and species queer persons-cum-subjects were likewise languishing
in the presumptive concentration camp basement of sexual unfulfillment]), for
after all, <i>homosexuality</i> was removed from the <i>A.P.A. Handbook of
Exorcism-Worthy Diseases</i> only in 1999 or some other ludicrously
post-Stonewall year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this demurral
will hold no more water than a grapheme gossamer sieve--in the first and more
general place because as the medical-historiographical record of the past
half-millennium hath shewn, official medical pathologization is by no means an
insuperable (or even grapheme gossamer-thin) barrier to a rich and fulfilling
life, to the extent that a rich and fulfilling life consists in discharging <i>boulversant</i>
trumpet-blasts of fart gas into the faces of one’s fellow men, women,
et-f**king-al. ad libitum; and in the second and more specific place because as
the non-psychoanalytically couched terms in which the above-cited
quasi-strictures suggest, it was not principally in medical but ethical and
social terms with which homosexuality was taken issue in the hyperoccident at
mid-century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Améry presumably had no
quarrel with bathing and presumably was as well-scrubbed as the next
hyperoccidental of the mid-1960s, but he believed that not having a bath each
and every day was something one could ultimately live with as a more or less
self-respecting human being, inasmuch as having a daily bath was not something
one <i>needed</i> in either a material or a spiritual sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granted (so Améry, as extrapolatively
channeled by the present writer), being forced to miss a daily bath was
undoubtedly an irksome inconvenience; granted, one might be deprived of one’s
daily bath entirely unjustly, by, for example (an example taken directly from
the present writer’s recent-to-present experience), one’s landlord’s willful
and indeed smug refusal to maintain minimum plumbing standards; all the same,
missing one of these daily baths could hardly be compared in point of
dehumanization to having one’s shoulder-joints dislocated as Améry’s own had
been by the Gestapo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For mid-1960s
Améry, simply being deprived of something one merely <i>desired</i> in order to
be spiritually or even somatically <i>satisfied</i> or <i>fulfilled</i> did
not, regardless of the grounds or means of the deprivation, constitute
sufficient grounds for moral outrage, because <i>chez lui</i> the minimum
threshold for moral outrage was the deprivation of the means of maintaining
organic homeostasis, and being denied coitional partners of one’s own sex did
not in any way or to any extent obtrude upon those means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bernstein’s plaint by complementary contrast
seems, on the evidence of his biography, to register a dissatisfaction with
homosexuality on account of its alienation from the procreative component of
the system of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As near as the
present writer can tell, Bernstein’s existence as a paterfamilias was no mere
so-called beard for his homosexual inclinations; as near as the present writer
can tell, he both enjoyed and valued being the husband of a woman and the
biological father of her children even though his prevalent amorous
inclinations drew him towards coition with other men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>ANatPWCT, an act of homosexual coition,
although sensually and even spiritually gratifying to Lenny, simply didn’t do
the same thing for him as a frolic in Central Park with Felicia and the kids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when I say <i>the same thing</i>, I mean
exactly that--viz., not that the paterfamiliasial aspect of his <i>Lebenswelt</i>
was the more essential, fulfilling, or vital of the two aspects, but merely
that the two were essentially and ineluctably incommensurable with each other,
that according to Lenny’s ultimately laser-guidedly precise lights, there was
no way of pretending that the one was simply a different means of attaining
certain ends or obtaining certain goods equally readily attainable or
obtainable by the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course
it is this very laser-guidedly precise sense of the mutual incommensurability
of heterosexuality and homosexuality that has utterly vanished from the
intellectual (or, rather, subintellectual) landscape of the hyperoccident in
the past quarter-century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This <i>evanouissement</i>
has been facilitated, if not engendered, by the pan-hyperoccidental promotion
of homosexuality from the merely demimondial rank of a mere <i>subculture </i>to
the plenimondial rank of a full-fledged <i>lifestyle</i>, to the rank of a <i>modus
vivendi</i> that can be taken up at the dee of an haitch by all
citizen-consumers who have sufficient funds to buy the kit and gear inalienably
associated with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, in
synchrony with this promotion, homosexuality has retained, and indeed ramped
up, the whinging, carping tone of bereaved entitlement that Améry resented in
it--but how could it have done otherwise in the light of its unrelenting
treadmill-like need to keep pace in point of singularity with lifestyles,
racial, sexual, ethnic, mental-hygienic, somatic-hygienic, <i>et ad nauseam
certera</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is after all a Hobbesian
state of (at-minimum) third nature out there in the jungle of competing
lifestyles, and no lifestyle, however popular and lucrative at a given moment,
can afford to rest on its laurels for so much as a microsecond, inasmuch as
one-upping, together with its gaping-walleted reception by smouldering-pocketed
consumers, is as easy and instantaneous as lying, such that the next,
purportedly even more envelope-pushing, lifestyle is always “breathing down” a
given lifestyle’s “neck”<i> </i>like “the furies.” For the moment--and I really
do mean <i>moment</i> in its most vulgar sense: i.e., 8:50 a.m. EDT on April
28, 2018--gayness evidently remains ever-so-slightly hip, inasmuch as a movie
about the so-called coming out of a high-school student has made it into the
current cinema offerings and not been universally panned as the naffest turkey
since <i>Howard the Duck</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But signs
of gayness’(s) consignment to at least contingently permanently irredeemable
naffdom are not far to seek, at least if the gayscape of the present writer’s
municipality of residence--a municipality wherein the so-called gay community
has admittedly occupied a more prominent and ancient public footprint than in
[some Deep-Southern, Midwestern, or Great-Plains municipality that I dare not
name by the throw of a dart lest the dart alight on some so-called progressive
so-called college town wherein so-called gay marriage has been legal since
18-ought-nuttin’]—be taken as a near-enough-to-hand sign-collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A pair or trio of months ago, a club or bar
styling itself G.A.Y. with eye-bursting unambiguousness if belief-beggaring
unimaginativeness closed after perhaps at most eight months in business (I like
to think its initials stood for Get Another Year), and a quartet or quintet of
months before that, the Hippo, Baltimore’s preeminent gay dance club, an
establishment that had been in existence for Hippo’s aeons when I moved hither
in 1994 and that I had always expected still to be in business long after the
statue of George Washington atop our monument to the so-called father of our
country was kissing the paving-stones of Mt. Vernon Place, shut its doors,
which were immediately thereupon converted into those of an instantiation
of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that most pestiferous of present-day
American proprietarially named commercial retail establishments, the <i>CVS
pharmacy</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is surely only a matter
of a handful or fewer years until hyperoccidental gayness undergoes a kind of
semiotic heat death--until, in other words, it becomes a concept with no living
significance, a concept that will require extensive historical research even to
become vaguely comprehensible to living minds, much as such anciently obsolete
concepts as socinianism, phrenology, and metempsychosis do now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the light of this impending post-shopworn
obsoleteness of gayness <i>par-ici</i>, it is but small wonder if
hyperoccidental <i>bienpensants</i> are baffled to the point of scandalization
by the faintly controversial status gayness still suffers from (or perhaps,
rather, <i>enjoys</i>) in present-day Russia, especially given that present-day
Russia, unlike its Soviet antecedent, is not an officially atheistic polity,
given further that in the hyperoccident of the past quarter-century atheism has
transmogrified from a sort of default metaphysical habitus for people who were
dissatisfied with officially chartered religions for any number of reasons into
a quasi-officially chartered religion in its own right, and indeed the <i>bienpensant</i>
religion of sole resort, a religion whose priesthood is populated by the
insurpassibly intellectually pedestrian likes of Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker,
and Neil De Grassi Junior High School Tyson Chicken and whose creed comes
pre-bundled with a wearisome liturgy in celebration of so-called science qua
infallible out-churner of wondrous new gadgetry-cum-rubber stamp for whatever
the androgynous-dog deity Evolution has allowed to pass muster among the most
contemptible of animals--and so we must accept homosexual coition as completely
natural and therefore positively <i>virtuous</i> on the grounds that most sheep
have engaged in it at least a few times [although of course we mustn’t even
dream of countenancing incest or p********a even though precious few sheep are
strangers to either practice].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of
course, as hinted not far above, concurrently with the metamorphosis of gayness
from a subculture into a lifestyle and atheism from a habitus into a religion,
we hyperoccidentals have witnessed, and participated in to varying degrees, the
ascent of <i>ethnicity</i> as a lifestyle marker, an ascent vis-à-vis which
Sicilian-Americana and the god-awful <i>Godfather</i> movies, together with
their Scorsesean peers, constitute a quasi-veritable Cape Canaveral.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this I mean that the efflorescence of
cinematic Sicilian Americana did not so much encourage members of non-Sicilian
ethnicities to be more open about the preexisting features of their respective <i>Scheinvolkschaften</i>
as that it encouraged each and every hyperoccidental man Jack, Jill, Schlomo,
Serafina, Krishna, aut al. with a less WASPy surname than <i>Smith</i> to
espouse some facet of the Sicilian-American cinematic habitus as an
inalienable-cum-ineffable feature of his, her aut al.’s own <i>Scheinvolk</i>,
and consequently his, her, aut al.’s personal orientation--or, very much
rather, <i>hyperoccidentation</i>--to the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have already mentioned brutal frankness as
an attribute of this habitus, and the only other two that have since occurred
to me, after an exhaustive mental screening of the entire canon of Sicilian-Americana
are obtuseness and n*****liness (the last of which indeed is stridently at odds
with the classic pan-Italian virtue of <i>abbondanza</i>, but then one must
account in some habitual register for the Sicilian diaspora’s <i>Umgang</i>
with a certain other diaspora<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[i.e.
{nudge-nudge; wink-wink}, the <i>Scotch-Irish</i>]), and in all cando(u)r and <i>franchezza
brutta </i>I cannot think of a single hyperoccidental <i>Scheinvolk</i> that
since 1972 has not helped itself to a heaping helping of side from one or more
of these three buffet vats or ventured a micrometer beyond them in its
side-gourmandization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the
respective <i>Scheinvölker</i> have not partaken in equal measure from all
three vats; to be sure, there has admittedly been some admittedly
ever-diminishing margin of marginal variation among the consumption patterns of
the various <i>Scheinvölker</i>--so, for instance, those hyperoccidentals with
so-called roots in the Indian subcontinent tend to fetishize frankness above
all other pseudo-virtues, whereas lily-pinkish-white so-called working-class
inhabitants of the British Isles--with the obvious exceptions of Scotland and
Northern Ireland--pride themselves especially ardently on their
obtuseness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At all events, the
androgynous-dog deity Negative Providence, to whom all other androgynous
dog-deities, very much including Evolution, are subservient, has seen fit via
the pan-occidental popularity of cinematic Sicilian Americana, to ensure that <i>most</i>
occidentals enjoy an unlimited license to behave abominably, to indulge
unreservedly that universal urge to let off anal steam that was first
pinpointed as the curse of our age by John Cassavetes in his 1976 masterpiece <i>The
Killing of a Chinese Bookie</i> (a film that incidentally cannot but be read as
an emphatic critique of <i>The Godfather</i> and associated cinematic Sicilian
Americana inasmuch as its protagonist is an Italian-American non-gangster
hounded by a WASP-headed cartel of gangsters [not that it is <i>solely</i> a
critique thereof, inasmuch as its Chinese eponym’s dyadic depiction as both a
monkishly demeanored harmless old man and the kingpin of the most powerful
crime syndicate on the North-American West Coast also cocks a snook at the
contemporary fetishization of the Chinese as instanced by the very existence of
the television series <i>Kung Fu</i> {and presumably catalyzed by President Nixon’s
rightly called groundbreaking visit to China (<i>rightly called</i> inasmuch as
it broke ground on the occident’s ever since-deepening grave [more on this
anon, Negative Providence Willing])}]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I italicized<i> most </i>in the immediately preceding sentence by way of
acknowledging that there are some occidentals who in virtue of their
national-political affiliation are <i>not </i>vouchsafed this carte-blanche
license to be abominable on<i> scheinvolkisch</i> grounds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At present the most ruthlessly policed and
consequently most conspicuously bashful of such unlicensed souls are most
certainly the citizens of the Federal Republic of Germany.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A present-day German quite certainly cannot
get away with telling off a non-German in R-rated language, or obtusely leaving
a non-German coworker in the lurch, or expecting a non-German to cover the
entirety of a restaurant-bill tip, by disarmingly ejaculating, “Hey, babe, what
can I tell you?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am, after all, a <i>German</i>”;
for such an apologia of an ejaculation would be instantaneously met by the
non-German prospective hit-taker’s implacably frosty rejoinder (every
Kelvin-degree of its frostiness being in turn underwritten by the equally
implacably frosty authority of local, national, or international legislation
against so-called hate speech) of “Oh, I see, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mein Freund</i>: you’re just looking for a bit more<i> Lebensraum</i>.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But by and large--i.e., notwithstanding all
the recent shakeups in the <i>Bundestag</i> and the ever-recrudescent flare-ups
of Neo-Nazism--the present-day German does not find the obligation to keep his
German bunghole hermetically corked especially or even marginally onerous
because by now the Federal Republic has been placidly leading a post-Nazi
existence, and, even more significantly, punching above its demographic weight
on the economic front, for nearly three-quarters of a century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By and large, the Germans have weathered the <i>Furzesverbot</i>
on laxative expressions of their Germanness as placidly as a
multimillionaire(ss) weathers the VAT or sales tax on his, her, or their
monthly capital outlay on chewing gum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
various Slavic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scheinv<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">ölker</span></i> are technically in a much
more enviable sphincteral position than the Germans, inasmuch as all their
forebears are at least speciously retrospectively redeemable as opponents or
victims of the bad guys during the Second World War, but in material practice
they are the most sphincterally constrained of all the occidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scheinv<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">ölker</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">—not, to be
sure, because of negligible demographic representation among the Stateside
twentieth-century Eurpoean diaspora either off-screen or on, for a plurality if
not majority of that diaspora hailed from Slavic countries, but because a
majority of that plurality or majority were Jewish and a virtual totality of
that Jewish sub-majority opted to style themselves Jews, or Jewish Americans,
rather than Russian- Polish-, Czech-, autc. Americans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus in the lectural portion of a Young
People’s Concert propounding the undeniably charming if ultimately preposterous
thesis that American music owes its peculiar genius to the ethnic heterogeneity
of its producers, Leonard Bernstein (the present writer sincerely surmises that
Bernstein’s up-cropping in the present argument for the second time in scarcely
twice as many pages is preeminently a function not of the present writer’s
admittedly fervent Bernstein obsession but rather of Lenny’s intrinsic
seminality-cum-pivotality-cum exemplarity in numerous facets of
twentieth-century life), described himself as a child of Jewish rather than of
Ukrainian immigrants—this even as he designated his fellow musicians’
progenitors as English, Italian, Mexican, Ruritanian, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, any non-Jewish Slav who
exacts license for bad behavior qua Slav is ineluctably exposing himself,
herself, or theirself, to a charge of anti-Semitism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At most or best he, she, or they can get away
with merely mock-bellicosely asserting to a non-Slav that he, she, or they <i>haven’t
lived until you’ve tasted a proper borsch or bublik</i>, but statistically
speaking, even this utterly anodyne assertion of ethnic singularity is bound to
be met with the akimbo-armed remonstration, <i>We Jews have also got borsch,
and a version thereof whose ineffable chutzpah-imbued feistiness makes Russian
autc. borsch taste like sickbed piss, and as everygoy knows, the bublik is just
a shoddy goyish knock-off our proud Jewish bagel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>To be sure, there is a certain Slavic
polity-cum-nationality that enjoys a considerable amount of ill-informed
sympathy in the hyperoccident—namely, (the) Ukraine [the present writer insists
on parenthetically retaining the definite article on grounds specified by him
more than four years ago; together with the grounds of a highly plausible
conjecture that he has since formed, the conjecture, namely, that the
Ukrainians’ resentment of the definite article springs from no nobler motive
than <i>unregenerate racism</i>, given that the only other singular-numbered polity
whose name is traditionally prefixed by the definite article is the sub-Saharan
African country known as <i>(the) Gambia</i>].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But it enjoys this sympathy only in virtue of its militarized opposition
to the most longstandingly geographically extensive-cum-populous, and hence the
<i>de facto</i> hegemonic, Slavic polity-cum-nationality—namely, Russia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In
shorter, at bottom, the present stigmatization of Russia across the
hyperoccidental media—i.e., in both the day-to-day reportage on things Russian
in hyperoccidental journalism, and in the month-by-month dramatization of
Russian life both past and present in hyperoccidental cinematic and televisual
offerings–is owing less to any longstanding or recently emergent
characteristics of Russian society, let alone of the Russian mentality, <i>Weltanschauung</i>,
psyche, soul, or what have you, than to certain changes that have taken place
throughout the hyperoccident in the past three-fifths of a century and that have
not taken place in Russia at all or have taken place at a slower pace than in
the hyperoccident, and <i>often for the better</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To put this another way: in many respects and
domains Russia has cleaved, if only by inertia, to a mid-twentieth century
panoccidental norm, a norm within whose confines certain behaviors and
practices were rightly openly stigmatized and certain others, while perhaps
unjustly officially<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>proscribed, were
nevertheless in practice free to seek their own demographically adequate, and
hence just, level of expression; while in other respects and domains it has
merely and at worst strayed from this norm no more extravagantly than its
hyperoccidental peers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The thoroughgoing
marketization of subcultures and ethnicities that has displaced this norm in
the hyperoccident over the past three-fifths of a century wrongly rewards certain
behaviors and practices and, while perhaps justly rescinding the proscription
of certain other practices, at the same time unjustly both valorizes (to use a
term made fashionable by a perhaps-unwitting conduit of this marketization,
Michel Foucault) and trivializes these behaviors and practices by stipulating
that they are intrinsically both no less desirable than the demographically more
significant alternatives and no more desirable than the demographically less
significant (and indeed even than the demographically utterly insignificant
[because heretofore <i>nonexistent</i>]) alternatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The extra-juridical comportmental facet of
this norm, a facet that enjoined a habitus-cum-bearing of supposedly <i>stiff,
uptight</i> [or, in obligatorily more earthy parlance,<i> tight-assed</i>]<i>
politeness </i>was an unquestionably unalloyed good, and up until ca. 1965 it
was in equally flagrant evidence qua comportmental norm on both sides of the
Icey, among all strata of the societies (and no, not just the <i>geriatric</i>,
<i>bourgeois</i>, or <i>middle-class</i> ones) thereon, and it is now no longer
in flagrant, or indeed even quiescent, evidence on either side of the
former-cum-resurgent Icey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The juridical
facet of this norm, a facet signalized by the proscription of homosexual
activity and of the use of hallucinogenic and narcotic drugs, was complementarily
in force in most polities on both sides of the Icey through ca. 1965; the
pharmacological sub-facet of this norm has been gradually crumbling ever since
on both sides of the extant-to-former-to resurgent Icey, while the meta-sexual
facet of it has all but utterly vanished from the hyperoccident and is now in
force only on the east side of the former-cum-resurgent Icey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, even over there this meta-sexual aspect
is only weakly in force, inasmuch as it only ever dares express itself obliquely,
which is to say not through the immediate impedance of homosexual activity, but
rather through, for example, the banning of the screening of certain movies
(and that only in officially licensed cinemas, such that there is no attempt
[as far as the present writer has heard] to impede distribution through, say,
international file-sharing networks) that allegedly advocate such activity,
that allegedly function as <i>homosexual propaganda</i> by allegedly presenting
allegedly homosexual characters in an allegedly unduly favorable light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here in the hyperoccident the very notion of <i>homosexual
propaganda</i> cannot but elicit a condescendingly wry smile from all but the
most rock-ribbed, snake-handling so-called Christian Fundamentalists, an <i>all
but</i> among which or whom the present writer cannot pretend to exclude
himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the present writer
cannot but concede, the notion that a person who has never given a thought to
doing so will up and coit with another person of his or her own sex (<i>Down
male, female, gender-queer, or species-queer doubtless-only-contingently-and-therefore-tragically-non-essentially
canine canine!</i>: remember that however lamentably antediluvianly, we are after
all treating here of <i>homosexuality</i>, a concept that, however lamentably
antediluvianly, exacts a merely <i>binary</i> [as against wondrously <i>infinitely
multifarious</i>] <i>division</i> <i>between the sexes</i> [as against the<i> </i>wondrous
<i>prismitization of infinitely numerous genders</i>]) merely and immediately
upon watching an evidently male cartoon mouse, vole, stoat, or what have you,
address a fellow equally evidently male cartoon mouse, vole, stoat, or what
have you, as <i>girlfriend</i>, is ludicrous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All the same, the present writer cannot but hazard the conjecture (and <i>hazard</i>
is very much the <i>mot juste</i> here, for the conjecture is one fit to cost a
hyperoccidental of the late twenty-teens his aut al.’s livelihood if not his
aut al.’s liberty, such as either may be) that this notion is founded upon a
sub-notion that is far less risible, the notion, namely, that homosexuality may
be being given more than a pale-complexioned Arab grandee under the auspices of
its hyperoccidental marketization; for as I have already hinted not far above, one
of the notable ineluctably instantaneous effects of marketization is the
placement of the marketed good on a so-called level playing field (or in a supermarket-style
shelving system) whereon (or wherein) in point of availability-cum-admissibility
it enjoys absolute parity with every theretofore-available marketed good in its
commodity-genre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once upon a time in the
hyperoccident, ibuprofen was an obscure prescription-only drug with few
advocates as a painkiller among the valetudinarian mobility (at any rate, the
present writer does not recall having heard it mentioned by any of his valetudinarian
contemporaries or elders in those days); once it was legally allowed to be sold
in drug stores, it became one of the three or four standard over-the-counter
pain relievers, and more or less every hyperoccidental headache-sufferer,
however loyal an aspirin or paracetamol user, felt obliged to try it at least
once.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Within a year of this
over-the-counterization of ibuprofen, one seldom encountered a proper <i>ibuprofen
virgin</i>,<i> </i>whether abashed or defiant, in the valetudinarian mobility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the older alternatives to
ibuprofen retained a strong share of the over-the-counter pain relief market thereafter,
and retain one to the present day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
none of us can ever go back to a moment of ibuprofen-free prelapsarian
innocence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At some point not long after
the over-the-counterization of ibuprofen, homosexuality acquired a
post-over-the-counterization ibuprofen-like status in or on the lifestyle
market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To pinpoint the precise
chronological site of this point is neither possible nor necessary—certainly it
was already visibly in the offing as early as 1993, with the airing of the <i>Seinfeld</i>
episode “The Outing,” with its tag line <i>Not that there’s anything wrong with
that</i>, endlessly iterated by the show’s heterosexual characters like a counter-homophobic
exorcistic formula, and it was palpably in the bag no later than 2012, when
President Obama said that gay marriage was a good thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In setting down these bookends, I have
deliberately refrained from mentioning any legal landmarks because in the lifestyle
market, in contrast to the over-the-counter pain-relief market, there is seldom
if ever a moment when a given market choice instantaneously and unequivocally
passes over from the realm of the impermissible to the realm of the permissible;
or, rather, to be more precise, in the lifestyle market the so-called law of
the land is but one of several-to-many laws in play, and by no means the most
important of these laws (and yet again by no means perforce not the most
important, let alone perforce the least important [of course the orthodox
hyperoccidental intellectual petit-bourgeois party line on this entire
legalistic constellation is that the so-called law of the land is but a
laggardly poop-scooping camp follower of the utterly un-rule-bound extralegal elephant
of so-called national (or, in the case of diasporas, subnational) culture, but
this party line is as moronic a line of thought as they come {in two or more
senses?}, for reasons whose exposition is probably genuinely and not merely
factitiously beyond the scope of the present essay]), as may be seen in the
case of recent changes in the norms governing traditionally illegal and
recreational drugs (to be sure, with the recent explosion of synthetic opioid
use the distinctions between legal and illegal and medical and recreational
drugs have become increasingly difficult to maintain).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Between the late 1960s and the late 1990s,
the only must-take illegal drug in the hyperoccident was marijuana—and by a
must-take drug I mean exactly what I seem to mean; viz., a drug that one
refrains from taking at one’s immediate social peril, at the peril of
ostracization from what passes for decent society in the micro-epoch one
inhabits for the time being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although throughout
those three decades marijuana use was illegal and subject to juridical
penalties in every hyperoccidental polity (save the Netherlands, albeit only up
to a point even there), throughout those selfsame decades it was extremely
difficult for a hyperoccidental adult to travel in mainstream hyperoccidental
social circles without at least occasionally partaking of a hit from a bong or
a spliff, and to out oneself as an unrepentant <i>weed virgin</i> was
tantamount to social suicide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet,
to these decades’ credit, they did not require their hyperoccidental
inhabitants to indulge in the consumption of stronger drugs than the old Tee
Haitch Cee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, if one opted to
be a full-fledged hippie, one would be required to supplement one’s marijuana
intake with liberal lashings of LSD or so-called magic mushrooms; and if one
opted to be a full-fledged yuppie one would be expected to transition from a
regimen of marijuana to one of cocaine—strictly <i>powdered</i> cocaine, of
course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to opt to be an habitual
user of the (then) hardest drug of all, heroin, was genuinely to <i>walk on the
wild side</i>,<i> </i>as that drug’s then-most dedicated champion and ardent
propagandist put it (albeit in a song in which the eponymous <i>wild side</i>
referred not to heroin use but to homosexual transvestitism, a song that, in
other words, would presumably elicit a ban from the Kremlin were it released
today).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By now, in 2019, although
marijuana has been fully legalized in only a few U.S. states and remains fully
criminalized in many other parts of the hyperoccident, in lifestylistically
juridical terms it is effectively on par with alcohol and caffeine throughout
the hyperoccident, which is to say <i>partout-ici</i> one cannot score any
so-called Brownie points (hash- or otherwise) by either using or forbearing
from using it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While a hyperoccidental may
now be required to swear off or embrace caffeine, alcohol, or marijuana as part
of the adoption of a lifestyle regimen of some current standing in the market, he,
she, autc. now neither seems a jot more or less hip or square in virtue of
being a user or non-user of caffeine, alcohol, or marijuana <i>eo ipso</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any sort of nudge-nudgish, shifty-eyed Five-O
raid-anticipating reference to <i>smoking a bowl</i> or <i>firing up a spliff</i>
is now met with not a yawn but a laugh even in hyperoccidental polities wherein
one could in official juridical principle <i>do some serious time</i> for
engaging in either act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Powdered cocaine
in its turn has moved into the position occupied by marijuana a generation ago,
or, perhaps, indeed, to a position of slightly greater lifestylistically licit
standing, inasmuch as while in 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton felt
obliged to subjoin his admission that he had smoked marijuana with the
qualification that he had “not inhaled,” in 2008, a full decade ago,
presidential candidate Barack Obama did not feel obliged to subjoin any sort of
qualification to his admission that he had taken powdered cocaine (and if it be
objected that powdered cocaine use, in being intrinsically and exclusively an
affair of snorting—i.e., of a form of inhalation—does not admit of a parallel
qualification, one must consider that in order to be properly absorbed cocaine
must travel the full length of the nasal passage, such that Mr. Obama could
have more than serviceably distanced himself from his cocaine use by remarking,
“The stuff never reached my olfactory bulbs”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Heroin, in a sort of poorly synched chain gang couple-like simultaneity
with the relatively recently invented crack cocaine (granted, the middle 1980s,
the microepoch of crack cocaine’s first heyday, are a very long time ago
indeed, but also nearly a full two decades after Woodstock and the Velvet
Undergound albums) has in turn moved into a position of exactly the same
specific gravity if not quite the same substance (pun unintended but also unretracted
because on reflection only partly a pun) as powdered cocaine: while it is not
exactly good form for, say, a trentagenarian or quadragenarian librarian or
quantity surveyor, to be a current regular heroin user, a person in such a
petit-bourgeois quasi-professional position stands to garner considerable
credit from his, her, aut al.’s vague-to-exact peers and contemporaries via a
CV entry of, say, <i>May</i> <i>1999-July 2002—Unregenerate Unemployed Heroin Addict
at Fuck You for Even Dreaming of Asking Where, Inc.</i>; and any person in such
a position who admits that he, she, aut al. has <i>never shaken hooves with the
horse</i> ensures his, her, aut al.’s immediate quasi-professional ostracism, and,
failing a speedy retraction, the none-too-dilatory reception of a pink
slip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, all this marketization
of pharmacological vice has recently begun encountering what is trendily (and
hence inevitably, albeit admittedly contingently, vulgarly) known as <i>pushback</i>
from the new valetudinarianism, a lifestyle genus that regards an ordinary loaf
of bread—even a gluten-purged wholegrain loaf thereof—with infinitely more
abhorrence than a comparably shaped and massive mass of the most concentrated
state-of-the art opioid, and a five-minute session of the contiguity of a pair
of buttocks with a terrestrially supported surface as super-tantamount to the smoking
of an entire pack of unfiltered full-flavored cigarettes during the same of
twelfth-of-an-hour interval, and it will be extremely interesting (almost as
interesting, indeed, as watching the drying of a fresh coat of paint on a
lean-to in Papua New Guinea [or, to be sure, whichever polity in the tropics
reportedly enjoys the highest standard of living therein] during the rainy
season) to see how this battle of the lifestyle-genres pans out, as they say—always
supposing, of course, that it is afforded the luxury of doing so (q.v., LW).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, even if bread has become the new
smack throughout the hyperoccident by the time this essay enters the
G*****esphere, this SOA will neither blunt nor dilute the piquancy of the
two-pronged assertion that I have been building up to for Dunciadical donkey’s
pages—namely, that <i>all</i> officially juridical and unofficially juridical
(i.e., so-called cultural) changes that have taken place in the hyperoccident over
the past three-fifths of a century, together with <i>all</i> their so-called
economic epiphenomena, have been effected solely at the behest of an utterly
unreflective infantile market-driven craving for novelty, and that consequently
the Russia of the present has become the arch-bugbear of the hyperoccident <i>solely</i>
on account of its residual resistance to succumbing to this infantile impulse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note well that I have just written of
Russia’s <i>residual</i> resistance to such succumbation, for I would by no
means have it thought that I regard present-day Russia as uniformly embodying
and effectuating some sort of mid twentieth-century hyperoccident-style idyll
behind the sort of impermeable spatiotemporal force-field as which not even the
old Icey was ever imagined by even the most fanatical mid twentieth-century hyperoccidental
Sovietophobes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I concede that in many
departments of the system of life, and perhaps even in the most important of
such departments, Russia has succumbed as gluttonously and unreservedly as its
most ignobly childish hyperoccidental contemporaries have done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Certainly, to judge by their tastes qua
cinema goers-cum-television viewers, as well as by the admittedly largely
secondhand accounts of their comportment towards non-fellow countrypeople, the
Russians have embraced the post-<i>Godfather</i> hyperoccidental
ethos-cum-habitus of non-negotiable brutal frankness with a well-nigh Willisian
vengeance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to judge by the
comportment of at least one of the characters in </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Zviagentsev’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Loveless</i>, its perpetually
smartphone-transfixed housewife, they have no less greedily embraced the
asinine pseudo-social networking engines whose pernicious vacuity I have in all
modesty quite serviceably trounced many thousands of words ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And finally, however ardently a reflectively
religious hyperoccidental may cling to the notion of Christendom and therefore
cheer for any institutionalized version of Christianity that preserves any of
that religion’s most morally noble and intellectually profound elements, he,
she, autc. cannot in good faith (whether Christian or meta-Christian) smile
upon the present resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church, obdurately
centering as it seems to do on the most ignoble and shallow abracadabral claptrap
of a branch of Christianity that never had anything whatsoever of its own
invention to recommend anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it
seems to me that in their resistance towards the marketization of certain lifestyles
and modes of production the Russians have much to teach us hyperoccidentals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vis-à-vis the Russian Republic’s official
proscription of homosexuality, while the present writer, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qua</i> not only person but also <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man</i>
who has always loathed and despised all chest-thumping, air-humping expressions
of macho arrogance, who has never either openly or privately disparaged another
male as a f*g(g*t)—no, not even in the 1980s, when even the now-most evangelically
pro-LGBT aut BL-E-A-A-CH! of my male contemporaries were by their own admission
bandying about the three and five-letter eff words as if there were no LGBT aut
BL-E-A-A-CH!-friendly tomorrow—cannot by any means countenance the proscription
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eo ipso</i>, at the same time <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">qua</i> specifically chastely single heterosexual
man he also cannot but feel a hankering for a hyperoccident in which, as in
today’s Russia, homosexuality was by and large still understood to be a more
than relatively marginal proclivity that the average (and hence non-homosexual)
man or woman (but by no means the average minor) was expected to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">humor</i> in others (e.g., by clinking
glasses with a paired pair of new homosexual acquaintances as cheerfully as one
would do with a heterosexual couple whom one likewise hoped never to see again),
instead of as a lifestyle whose adoption each and every man, woman, unequivocally
prepubescent child autc. not previously engaged by another coitional lifestyle is
obliged to entertain as a compelling possibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is true that nobody is, as they say,
holding a gun to my head or even twisting my arm (at least not yet) to take up
a regimen of fellatio and anal coition with persons who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">look like me</i> from the waist down; on the other, onanising, hand
(the left one in my case, appropriately enough), it is also true that virtually
everyone is now standing alongside me at the by now sub-sub Olympic-sized
swimming pool of gayness (for by now it has after all ceded a great deal of its
territory to trendier coitional lifestyles) and repeatedly sweeping his, her
autc.’s non-onanizing arm towards it with a gesture significative of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How bad could it be?</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seriously, Volker(in, autc.), just the other
year, a friend I had befriended way back in our elementary school days, a man
who had been privy to virtually every one of my crushes and amorous
entanglements from the age of 11 onwards, sought to brief himself on the
then-current state of my sentimental life by asking me <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in allem Ernste</i>, “Have you been dating any girls lately—or any
dudes?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Presumably this man, who by then
had been married to a woman for a decade, had not undergone any alteration in
his opinion of my erotic tastes; presumably after thirty years of hearing
exclusively of my infatuations with certain females he did not expect me
suddenly to begin unbosoming myself of infatuations with certain males;
presumably what had changed was rather his attitude to the copular state <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">eo ipso</i>; presumably by then he had come to
reckon being part of a coitional couple as such an essential prerequisite of a
worthwhile existence that in his view a man who loved only women would be much
better off by hitching himself to another man than by remaining single.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To be
sure</i>, he must have reflected at about that time, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I was lucky enough to meet a woman willing to coit with me, but if I
hadn’t been so lucky, who knows if I might not have settled for wearing Dick’s
hatband?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Better Dick’s than none at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For to wear no f**kbuddy’s hatband, to be
part of no coitional couple, is to be nothing less—or, rather, more—than
NOTHING.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>But that was way back in
’14 at the latest, when the minty aftertaste of the official normalization of
gay marriage was still pleasantly fresh in the mouth of every non-
snake-handling, opposable-thumbed hyperoccidental human but the present writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, of course, as more than hinted above,
that taste has long since evaporated, and the present writer is additionally confronted
by all butcher’s-dozen odd addenda to the old, and now ludicrously
quaint-seeming, LGB quasi-acronym, qua options to which he is obliged to give
serious consideration qua prospective hoisters out of the abyss of the de facto
nullity of himself qua inhabitant of the hyperoccidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hic et nunc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>To be sure, the
present writer finds these other coitional lifestyle choices even less
appealing than gayness, convinced as he is that even considered in isolation
from their political-economic context, they are all founded on or in grave metaphysical
fallacies, fallacies to which the present writer, inasmuch as he has recognized
them to be fallacies, is incapable of succumbing (the reader can find my
explication of these fallacies in the essay entitled “<a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2017/01/kripkean-metaphysics-and-personal.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Kripkean Metaphysics and Personal
Eschatology</span></a>”), but in any case, the alacrity and demographic
abundance with which these formerly highly alternative-to-nonexistent coitional
lifestyle choices are being embraced suggests that purely market-driven
trend-humping rather than metaphysical confusion is the principal efficient
cause of this embracement, that those who have chosen one of these lifestyles
out of some notion, however fleeting or ill-founded, that such a lifestyle
uniquely and infungibly services <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">who they
really are</i>, are outnumbered by those who cannot bear not to be associated
with a coitional lifestyle of tumescent valuation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Case in to my mind-ever so piquant point: just
the other month I was dining or supping in an absolutely mainstream Baltimore restaurant
(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Exactly how mainstream was it?</i> even
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">most genuinely and dependably</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dearest</i> of DGRs is entitled to query
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And by way of giving this reader a
sense of the absoluteness of this mainstreamness I cannot do better than to
inform him, autc. that the restaurant was none other than the recently
reincarnated and un-rechristened classic Baltimore seafood restaurant mentioned
in “<a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2016/06/every-man-his-own-w-g-sebald.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Every
Man His Own W.G. Sebald</span></a>”), and from my place at a table that exactly
bisected the entire dining space and consequently afforded me a view of the
entire bar and at least a dozen tables downwind of it, I could not behold a
single pairing or grouping of persons betokening a heterosexual coitional
lifestyle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw plenty of stubbly dudes
in dresses, plenty of trousered dudes chewing the fat with persons who may have
once been women but were, or affecting to be, no longer, and plenty of women (both
dressed and trousered) chewing that selfsame fat with persons who may have once
been men but were, or were affecting to be, no longer, but nary a single
pairing of a seemingly unapologetically unreconstructed man with a seemingly
unapologetically unreconstructed woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As I was wrapping up my survey my eyes alighted on a grave old
turtleneck-pullovered gentleman chatting up (or perhaps merely with) a woman of
a so-called certain age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ah, here, at last, </i>I exclamatorily
sighed to myself, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is proof that the
heterosexual kernel of the Abendsgeist has not been utterly extirpated!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then the gentleman stood up to go to the
loo, and from the play of the folds in the turtleneck’s pectoral zone that
thereupon ensued, I readily discerned that for all his gravitas he, or, rather,
she, was no kind of man, gentle or otherwise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course a thoroughly awful old-school DGR could here demur that I was
after all afforded only a view of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">half</i>
of the restaurant’s dining space and that for all I knew the other half was chock-full
of heterosexual couples intrastitially mooning and spooning as unreservedly as a
passel of heterosexual teenagers at Lover’s Lookout in Anytown, U.S.A. in
1955.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this demurral I must
counter-demur, first, that while I admittedly retain no memory of the clientele
of the other half of the restaurant on that evening, if the coitional-habitual
character of that half had markedly differed from that of the bar-ward half I
surely would have picked up on the difference, inasmuch as the layout of the
joint mandated my passage by a good two-fifths of this half during my own
none-too-seldom peregrinations to the loo; and second, that even supposing that
other half was (or were) full of rabidly heterosexual couples, the proportion of
alternative coitional agglomerations was (or were) still far too statistically
high to be explicable as the belated expression of multi-aeonically ancient organically
ineluctable libidinal impulses, for surely if a full half of the human
population had been compelled to keep their alternative coitional-lifestylistic
impulses under wraps for all those ca. pre-2015 aeons, some high mucky-muck or
other, some pharaoh or sultan or emperor, would have got verbal wind of their
discontentment by the dawn of the present millennium at the very latest, and
have endeavored to placate that discontentment in some fashion—for surely the
brute laws of Newtonian physics render it inconceivable for a force of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> x</i> newtons (such as heterosexuality as
conceived in the thoroughly awful old-school DGR’s most heteronormative
scenario) to overpower another force of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">x
</i>newtons (such as the massed extra-heterosexual mobility as conceived in
this selfsame scenario).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No-sir/ma’am/my
LGBTGQFWZX liege–ee, every salient demographic indication suggests that these
post-gay lib coitional lifestyles are of a radically different character from gayness
in its Stonewall-to-Act Up heyday, that they have far more in common with the lifestyle
choices that we associate with, say, a classic lumpen-bourgeois masculine
midlife crisis, or (for post LGB-opting at such tender years is now lamentably
common), a classic single-digit-aged child’s adoption of a new
natural-scientific object of obsession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A generation ago, a middle-aged man of more than modest means (i.e.,
inter alia, a middle-aged man far richer than the present middle-aged male writer)
expressed his dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of his subjective imprint
upon the world by buying an expensive so-called sports car, and a
single-digit-aged child expressed his or her boredom with dinosaurs or
volcanoes by taking up an obsession with black holes or sloths; now such a
middle-aged man expresses such dissatisfaction by undergoing an expensive
genital-reshaping operation, and such a child expresses such boredom by
declaring that he, she, aut supposedly c. is a member of the opposite sex, or
both sexes, or no sex at all, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
just as even in the old days the commodities inextricably associated with these
lifestyle-switchovers were very much moving targets—just as back then MG
yielded to Porsche as the most-favored purveyor of sports cars, and wombats to
meerkats as the most cuddleable exotic mammal—so are the coitional lifestyle
choices of today by default destined to cede to even more eldritch and outlandish
ones in the appallingly near future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
after all, with each passing day, mainstream hyperoccidental received opinon is
drawing an ever-broadening proportion of what used to be called creation within
its ever-widening lasso or fishing-net of sentimental induced empathy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A generation ago, even the most soppily animal-besotted
vegan would break down and eat a kipper or a rock and chips twice or thrice a
year on the grounds that it was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">okay to
eat fish ’cause they don’t have any feelings</i> (as a certain so-called deep
cut on a chart-topping record album of the microepoch put it); now the
ingestion of beef, pork, and chicken is semi-taboo even among those who would
not stick at coiting with a cow, sow, hen, bull, steer, hog, or capon (and the
mere mention of lamb-consumption qua long-proscribed practice can be whispered
only once the ears of all children within earshot have been covered), and we
are even being asked to take the civil rights of insects into account before
tucking into our popcorn bucket of fried ants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(The present writer’s view on the entire bucket of regrettably
soon-to-be-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">hors-de-table</i>
worms—namely, that inasmuch as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i>
matter, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral in essence or provenance, in
being potentially sentient, should be treated with kid gloves [whether of the caprine
or yahooine variety makes no difference], any line drawn between acceptable and
unacceptable foodstuffs is devoid of ethical significance, has been expounded
in detail in the essay “<a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2013/09/gluttony-and-panpsychism.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Gluttony and Panpsychism</span></a>.”)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And inasmuch as this lasso or fishing-net
widening cannot but—even as the present writer writes—be being accompanied by
the usual present hyperoccidental elision of the difference between induced
empathy and outright self-identification, it is by default inevitable that
large numbers of hyperoccidentals will soon declare that they are not and never
have been members of the human race (or, rather r**e), but rather are and
always have been members of a certain animal species; that, for example certain
children, upon watching a documentary about the Canadian snow goose, will
delightedly announce that they are snow geese to their mummies and daddies (or
LGBZTYVAWXZ guardians, all types of which presumably have their respective
pet-honorifics that the present writer cannot be a***d to look up), who will
thereupon tearfully embrace them while ejaculating, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’m proud as avian gonads of you, gosling</i>, and that certain middle-aged
people will have genetically accurate fins, gills, hooves, tentacles, autc.
grafted onto or into their organisms (for surely if those boffins can make a
mouse grow a human ear they can make a human grow muscine whiskers, and then
some); and that later still, equally large numbers thereof will declare themselves
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">species queer</i>, and demand to be
treated by their ever-so-backward, ever-so-tyrannical, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">homininormative </i>contemporaries-cum-geozonemates, as a member of one
animal species at 21:59 GMT, another at 22:34 GMT, and so on, until the cows
would have come home in the days when there were still enough traditionally
homeward-yearning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cis-bovine </i>cows to
outnumber the stampede of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">trans-bovine</i>
(i.e., human) cows determined to make it big in the big city, under the
auspices of a so-called diversity rider, qua representatives of a demographic
niche that has more than figuratively suffered <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">under the yoke</i> of human repression for literally dozens of
millennia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the reader (hereupon
reconceived as a genuinely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nice</i>
reader) dare smile at the immediately aforementioned scenario, he or she (the
dropping of the “et al.” signifies the banishment of all levity, of all even
ironic deference to the etiquette exacted by my enemies) should be informed
that I assuredly am not smiling at it, that it makes me downright po-faced if
not sourpussed, for I regard the realization of that scenario as a genuine de
facto inevitability, and I do not regard that realization as being a jot more
or less objectionable than the already-realized one of pan-hyperoccidental endorsement
of all forms of fancy dress and make-believe on the coitional-lifestylistic
front.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seriously, sir or ma’am (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sir</i> if and only if you can have a
prosthetically unaided slash without sitting down, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ma’am</i> if and only if you cannot), I find it no more pleasant or
less offensive to doff my hat and give up my seat on a bus to a W.G.
Grace-bearded bloke of 22 stone (139 kg) upon his barking <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Excuse me, male chauvinist asshole</i> in a falsetto voice, as I am now
all but required to do by law, than I will to murmur<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Excuse me, Rover </i>(which will doubtless be the most that the law
will allow me to do) when I discover a similarly physiqued bloke (and more than
likely the very same bloke) masturbating against my leg five years (at the
latest) hence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hyperoccident has long
since reprehensibly sold its soul Ell Ess and Bee to the cartoon Chihuahua
demigoddess Hipness, in other words, to the kneejerk compulsion to regard the
normalization of the heretofore socially outlandish as praiseworthy; and
whereas while the blood was still drying on the contract this compulsion at
least gave vent to certain genuine, full-fledged urges (however socially
undesirable that venting may have been),<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>in recent years it has produced nothing more even conceivably redeemable
than the celebration-cum-sanctification of silliness for silliness’ sake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whence the present utility of Russia qua
prospective savior of the occident (of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">greater</i>
occident, encompassing all the nations and polities geographically coextensive
with what used to be called Christendom)—not, to be sure, exactly as Gogol and
his nineteenth-century successors imagined it, as a beacon inviting the
Benthamite materialist European and North American portion of Christendom back
to the faith of their pre-nineteenth century fathers; but rather, as a beacon
inviting the Hipsterism-besotted twenty-first century hyperoccident back to the
faith of its nineteenth-and-twentieth century fathers—to that selfsame creed of
Benthamite materialism that Gogol at al. wished to lure it away from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For present-day Russia is nothing if not
unregenerately, defiantly unhip: never mind its risible conservatism on the
coitional-lifestylistic front; infinitely more risibly, it principally sustains
itself on exports of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">petroleum</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">natural gas</i>, grossly material substances
that were first discovered to be commodifiable as anciently as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">two centuries ago</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can one conceivably get more unhip than that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, this defiantly unregenerate
unhipness is as of now nothing short of a scandal in the hyperoccident: indeed,
it is now virtually impossible to get any hyperoccidental so-called expert on
Russia, any of the termite-like mass of neo-Kremlinogists, to do anything but
fulminate against it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A month or two ago
as of this writing (Decoration Day 2018), one such wag was interviewed on BBC
Radio 4 regarding the Skripal poisoning case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The gist of his communication vis-à-vis the case <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stricto sensu </i>was that it bore all the earmarks or what have you of
a classic KGB-style job executed by whatever the successor of the KGB is called,
but the impartment of this gist was chronologically minuscule by comparison
with his ostensibly merely parenthetical rabid disparagement of Russia qua
oh-so-unhip dispenser of petroleum and natural gas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entire segment from ess to enns really
did go something very close to as follows: “INTERVIEWER: So what do you think
the cause of the Skripals’ poisoning was, Dr Siliconvalleyfellator? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>EXPERT: Well, it obviously bears all the
earmarks or what have you of a classic KGB-style job executed by whatever the
successor of the KGB is called.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
there’s one thing the Russians are good at, it’s clandestine poisoning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granted, that’s the only goddam thing they’re
any good at; granted, from fifteen-ought-nought onwards they’ve made an
absolute bollocks-hash of everything else they’ve turned their hands to, or,
rather half-arsedly pretended to turn their hands to…[FIVE MINUTES LATER]….flogging
petroleum and natural gas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean, for
Chrissakes, get with the geoeconomic program, Vladdy &co.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That shit went out with piano rolls of the latest
Paul Dresser ditty—”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>INTERVIEWER: --I’m
sorry, that’s all we’ve got time for, Dr Siliconvalleyfellator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other news (sic), how recently have you
updated your F****k profile?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I sincerely
(if none-too-warmly) apologize for any offense caused to any genuinely nice
reader by the preceding bit of burlesque, I cannot in good faith take the blame
for its offensiveness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That blame lies
squarely at the doorstep or what have you of the hyperoccidental punditry,
inasmuch as they are more powerfully scandalized by Russia’s unhipness,
gormlessly or willfully misconstrued as economic backwardness, than by the
genuinely horrific consequences of any sort of vindictive machinations the Kremlin
and its henchmen and myrmidons may be involved in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am as horrified by—and, indeed, probably
much more horrified than—the next hyperoccidental man, woman, or child by the
unprecedented infliction of an undiscriminatingly lethal nerve agent on an
agglomeration of hyperoccidental civilians</span><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I admittedly
perhaps regrettably cannot sympathetically luxuriate in the pan-hyperoccidental
Russophobic lather generated by the Skripal poisoning because the by-now eighteen-year-old
hyperoccidental animus against the Russian government has been erected (and
continues to rise ever-higher with each passing day) on such a flimsy
foundation—viz., the foundation of handkerchief-to-nose clutching aversion to
unabashed Russian cultural-cum-economic unhipness–that it is impossible for a
would-be objectively minded hyperoccidental even to suppose, let alone
conclude, on the evidence, or rather bare assertions, presented by the governments
and traditionally most reputable news agencies of his or her (sic [q.v.]) geozone,
that that other government was in any way or to any extent responsible for that
poisoning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These traditionally most
reputable news agencies and governments simply expect their publics and
citizenries to take their words for it that the Russian government was
responsible for any nefarious act with some conceivable causal link to Russia because
<i>this is what all non-would be hyperoccidental Russians are like; this is the
sort of thing they get up to, because they are culturally-cum-economically
inept, because they’re perversely pooping the unbounded swingers’ party of
global capitalism as though it were still 1989.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entire line—or, rather, chasm-leap—of argument,
is precisely consubstantial with the sort of argument that is denounced—and, indeed,
prosecuted—as criminally racist in a local hyperoccidental setting, an argument
to the effect of <i>Well, of course one of </i>those people<i> was responsible for
that murder at 27<sup>th</sup> and Honeysuckle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After all, </i>those people<i> still eat animal flesh at least once a
week and think </i>Qinoa <i>is pronounced like an ess haitch-less homophone of </i>Kenosha.
<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What ever are we going to do with
them?</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if to the immediately
preceding assertions, it be demurred—again by a <i>nice</i> reader, albeit one
whose reflexive disinclination to swim with the current of my argument bids
fair to see him or her transferred in a trice from my Nice List to my Naughty<i>
</i>List—that the present hyperoccidental pandemic of Russophobic rabies is by
no means founded entirely on phantom guns that may not even be smoking in their
phantom universe; that however disputable this or that hyperoccidental
attribution of this or that nefarious non-sandwichial cloak-and-dagger misdeed to
the agency of the present Kremlin may be, the present Kremlin has on more than
one occasion <i>quite openly</i> behaved in a manner eye-burstingly seemingly
brazenly calculated to circumjactate its weight and antagonize the
hyperoccident—most signally in its annexation of (the) Crimea—if, I say,
something to the immediately preceding effect be demurred—I must obdurately
insist that even the hyperoccident’s resistance to such admittedly
internationally-legalistically dubious acts is ultimately founded not on a
pious reverence of (or for?) international law but rather on the same utterly
contemptible aversion to the present Russian Federal Republican polity qua
virtual incarnation of unapologetic hiplessness that actuates its (the
hyperoccident’s) most kneejerk attribution of every non-Russian case of infant
colic to the personal poisoned sparrow-fall-tallying intervention of Mr. Putin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For after all, even the most cursory
comparative examination of the recent political histories of the Russian
Federal Republic and the Ukrainian Sovereign State of no specified political
constitution (the very THIS SPACE AVAILABLE-esque absence of specification
speaks volumes of fence-sitting whorishness)—and the present writer freely
confesses that such an ultra-cursory CE is the only one the present writer has
undertaken (as if a more lingering survey would be worth the
arse-haulage!)—makes evident that since their early-1990s origins the two
polities have essentially shared a <i>single</i> oligarchical-cum-kleptocratic
political habitus wherein he or she (and at least as applied to Ukraine the <i>she</i>
has often not been merely rhetorical) who happens to command the greatest share
of national wealth at a given moment calls the domestic-cum-foreign political
shots; that, indeed, the only facets of Ukraine’s political habitus that
distinguish it from Russia’s are an aversion to any closer ties with the RFR (a
facet that Russia itself is evidently logically incapable of adopting) and a
yearning to be a member of the European Union.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course the Ukrainian government has always couched this yearning as a
yearning for the <i>rule of law</i>, but what could be more brazenly
paradoxical than a yearning for such a rule <i>chez</i> a political
establishment that has never even aspired to embody this rule in the material
life of its own institutions?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in any
case, even supposing this yearning were sincere, it could not but be
accompanied by an awareness that the imposition of the abovementioned rule of
law on a polity habitually recalcitrant to that rule would take several if not
many years, an awareness that would perforce palliate the yearning to a much
gentler and more intermittently mentally present sort of desire, to the sort of
desire a young hyperoccidental just setting out on his or her so-called career
path feels (with ever-diminishing justification, to be sure) for a sailboat or
summer beach cottage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Ukrainians’
yearning for EU membership is of course by contrast about as intense a sort of
yearning as a human subject-cum-organism—whether individual or collective—can
have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have made mention earlier of the
Cassavetean desire to fart qua metaphorical vehicle for the averaged metaphysical
desires of humankind as a whole; the Ukrainians’ desire to be a part of the EU
is more like the desire to have a wee (that’s <i>wee</i>, the micturational
act, by the way, not <i>wii</i> the video game system [the latter of which of
course <i>nobody</i> any longer desires to have, although a scant half-dozen
years ago the desires for the two homophonic objects were on average
somatically interchangeable]) after the consumption of six liters of beer (<i>Baltika</i>
is the only conceivably apposite brand name that springs to mind; perhaps by
now a politically appropriately inward-looking beer named <i>Chornoye</i> has
supplanted <i>Baltika</i> in Ukrainians’ potational affections, although I
rather doubt it [what with loyalty to beer brands generally both transcending
and outlasting loyalty to nations, at least in historically unhip polities]) on
an empty stomach; and the intensity of this yearning is, I submit, owing entirely
to the instantaneousness and potency of the payoff, the specifically
metaphysical payoff, that such membership would deliver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For in becoming a member of the European
Union, Ukraine, for all its immediate propinquity to Russia and its distance
from France, Germany, Benelux, and Ireland (which, let’s face it, together
comprise the <i>totality</i> of the EU in a strong sense, the totality of subordinate
polities in which the necessity of retaining EU membership is still orthodox
received opinion if by no means axiomatically or even statistically doxa) would
automatically become part of the same place in which rock band-names
incorporating slang terms for the female genitalia are ten eurocents a <i>dizaine</i>
(i.e., one eurocent apiece), a place in which gender-queer yupster-hipsters
with braided pubic hair extensions dine on funky offbeat reworkings of
pseudo-local comfort food like free range agouti-stuffed Qinoa bubliki out of
Edsel hubcaps while playing Higgs-Boson laser-tag in artificial zero-gravity
environments—a place, in short, wherein all the most garishly obnoxious hyperoccidental
trends are at least supposedly indulged and indulgeable in by all and sundry ad
libitum, a place in which there will supposedly be no more seemingly endless
dreary weekend winter weekend nights miserably whiled away in solitarily or merely
heterosexually copularily nursing or chugging one’s Baltika autc., playing the
local or national version of pool, snooker, or billiards, and munching on plain-old
unstuffed wheat-flour bubliki off plain-old earthenware plates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then of course it must not be forgotten
that with the attainment of EU membership Ukraine would straight-away benefit
from what the present writer likes to call (and hopes other people will soon
also like to call [provided, of course, that they credit him by name and
uniquely identifying pseudonym each and every time they use the term]) the <i>Jacksonville
Effect,</i> so eponymized in honor of a one-and-three-fifths-horse unregenerately
pig-f**king Florida town [here the genuinely nice reader will, I am afraid,
have to excuse a certain amount of lorgnette down-peering from a native son of
a two-and-two-fifths apologetically regenerately pig f**king Florida town] that
became the geographically largest, and demographically ca. 12<sup>th</sup>
largest, city in the United States when, a half-century ago, it merged with the
light suburban-cum-rural county of which it had been the seat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The <i>Jacksonville Effect</i> is to be
distinguished from the superficially identical but really quite different and
much less reprehensible <i>Alaska Effect</i> mainly if not exclusively on
account of the much more modest [albeit presumably by no means at all less
cupiditous] motivations, aims, and outcomes of the push for Alaskan
statehood.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Owing to an ambiguity in
words denominating magnitude that I am virtually sure is common to all
Indo-European languages, a(n) EU-affiliated Ukraine would be able and entitled
to boast without qualification that it was <i>the biggest country in the EU</i>,
and if reminded by a prospectively statistically nonexistent <i>kuchka</i> of pesky
hairsplittingly truth-loving gatecrashers that size matters in other dimensions
than the geographical, it would still be able and entitled to fall back on the
boast that it was, say, the <i>fifth most-populous country in the EU</i>; such
that it would, at least for the first few years of its membership (at the end
of which it would naturally expect, however romantically, to have established
enough zero-gravity bubliki-parlors to hoover every last touristic euro,
dollar, etc., west of the Urals into its GDP), enjoy absolutely undisputed
rhetorical pride of place in the Grand European-Unionian Chamber of Commerce—that
officially nonexistent, yet for all that supremely significant, corporate
entity by means of which the European Union shamelessly (yet ever-so-snootily,
qua self-styled last bastion of 1700-style <i>bon ton</i>) whores itself to the
rest of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course the
above-mentioned core EU member-polities are all-too-keenly aware of the
rhetorical losses they would thereby perforce collectively and individually
suffer, and so the question of Ukrainian EU membership has long since been kicked
into the long (i.e., post-post-Brexitial) grass, as they say, by that abstractly
indomitable central-hyperoccidental football-side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, then, have I made so much of a muchness
of Ukraine’s aspirations to EU membership?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why, simply because I suspect that all of Ukraine’s recent-to-present
beeves with Russia—not just some of them, but all of them—spring principally
from its frustration with the long-grassed prospects of that membership, because
I suspect that its Russophobia is nothing other or nobler than a stalking-horse
of a <i>pis aller</i> for its frustration with the short-term impossibility of
its participating in the EU’s (and, more, broadly, the pan-hyperoccident’s)
cultural meat-grinding-cum-hamburger marketing industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, I am aware that this suspicion
flies in the face of the full spectrum or gamut of received opinion on
Russo-Ukrainian relations like the aforementioned empty-stomached
beer-chugger’s-bladder-ful of urine discharged into the windward of a so-called
Category 5 hurricane or typhoon; aware, in other words, that every single
goddamn soul and pseudosoul in or on the entire goddamn <i>Erdkugel</i> but me [I
do <i>so</i> love these <i>goddamns</i>, which make me feel as though I am channeling
the ghost of some would be-crapulously cantankerous but fundamentally wholesomely
teetotal middlebrow male mid-twentieth century American science fiction-writer
like Ray Bradbury or Philip K. Schlong] believes that the Ukrainians are
fighting for <i>national self-determination</i>, and that even the most
Russophile shaft or strand of this spectrum or gamut believes merely that
Ukraine should put a bit more elbow-grease into holding its Russophobe horses;
and yet, however many milliliters of urine I may be thereupon compelled to
inhale or swallow, and however futilely my pissy ejaculation may be thrown back
upon-cum-into my own ears and no others, I will and shall insistently aver that
I suspect this desire for national self-determination to be but an
epiphenomenon of a yearning for a durable lucrative stall for the P.T.
Barnum-worthy shameless hawking of kitschy pseudo-national bric-à-bric, a
suspicion grounded on the to-my-mind watertight grounds that Ukraine has been a
full(y)-fledged nation-State for barely a quarter of a century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The adducing of these grounds will of course
raise every hackle-set and hoist akimbo every pair of arms associated with
every empirical reader of this essay, and to those ERs—or, rather, and more
likely, gruesomely unanalyzable fraction of an ER—who have devoted more than
ten minutes to studying Russia’s pre-1917 history, I must if not quite
apologize then at any rate tincture the remonstrative sternness of my <i>I’ll
deal with you later</i> with a smattering of sympathetic approbation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The remainder deserve and are about to
receive an excoriating tongue-lashing in virtue of their assumption—the
well-nigh universal assumption among hyperoccidental so-called elites [how my
gorge rises at terming them such, despite the counter-emetic <i>so-called</i>]—that
the inclusion of Ukraine in the U.S.S.R. was a consequence of specifically
Soviet imperialism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For it is indeed well
nigh-universally assumed among the hyperoccidental so-called elites that with
the collapse of the Soviet Union all the polities within that Union simply reverted
to borders that had been fixed only as late as November 1917 and that
accordingly all those former Russian Federation-bordering polities who are now pushing
back, as they say, against Russia are doing so entirely as an expression of
resistance to the prospective restoration of a specifically Soviet (or at the
very least-cum-best semi or quasi-Soviet) <i>status quo ante</i> of less than
thirty years’ antiquity—hence a <i>status quo ante </i>well within living
memory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is that apart from some minor
modifications occasioned by Stalin’s annexation of the Baltic
republics—portions of which had been governed from Moscow or Petersburg
beforehand anyhow—and perhaps some fringy bits of a sub-handful of sub-Russian
territory ceded or gained during the big civil war of ca. 1915-1917, the Soviet
Union at the moment of its 1991 demise was exactly geographically coextensive
with the Russian Empire at its 1917 demise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And such being-cum-having been the case, almost all of Russia’s specifically
Russocentric discontent with its immediate former-Soviet neighbors axiomatically
springs from these neighbors’ lack of respect for a <i>status quo ante</i> of
trans-Soviet antiquity-cum-standing, and these neighbors’ discontent with
Russia equally axiomatically springs from a nostalgia that transcends both
living memory and the imposition of the Soviet system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe it is worth drawing this
indisputable syllogistic conclusion to a member of the hyperoccidental
so-called elite, to the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant,</i> first, inasmuch as
to the extent that he or she gets off the <i>Game of Thrones</i> throne long
enough to take in a bit of old-timey kulchur, he or she is likely to turn to a
production hailing from pre-Soviet Russia’s so-called liberal period, to the
period leading up to and succeeding the Revolution of 1905, to a short story or
play by Chekhov or an early concerto or ballet by Prokofiev or Stravinsky, and
he or she really ought to be made to realize that even as Nijinsky was
executing his <i>pas de chat</i> at the Mariinsky and—even more pertinently—as
that licentious young lady was walking along the Crimean seashore at Yalta with
her dog, dozens of millions of Ukrainians, Georgians, et al., were grunting and
sweating under the yoke (or around the spiked cast-iron dildo) of Russian
government as miserably as they ever would subsequently do between 1917 and
1991; and secondly, as specifically regards Ukraine, by 1991 this yoke (or
dildo) had been in place for a full two centuries, inasmuch as Ukraine figured
among the territorial acquisitions of Catherine the Great (reigned 1762-1796),
which is as much to say that Ukraine in 1917 was as well established as a
constituent of the Russian empire as any of the former 13 colonies was then
established as a constituent of the United States, and considerably more
integrally Russian than Florida and Missouri, to say nothing of Arizona and New
Mexico, let alone Alaska and Hawaii, were then American.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, since 1991 Ukraine has been a
sovereign independent polity, but a sovereign independent polity whose
existence was established not but by the mutual-agreed-upon revocation of a
governmental charter but by a unilateral act of <i>secession</i> from a larger
polity of which it, the Ukraine, had formed an organic, integral part for two
hundred years, a polity that had formerly withstood at least two radical
constitutional changes (for let it be remembered that Ukraine remained part of
Russia under the government of the emphatically non-Soviet hyperoccidental-style
bourgeois republic of pre-November 1917).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And to be frank, Ukraine’s present beeves with Russia, to the extent
that they are specifically nationalistic beeves, are fundamentally expressive not
of the resentment of a formerly temporarily occupied independent nation (à la
the present Russo-orientated beeves of the Baltics and Georgia) but rather of the
<i>jealousy</i> of a usurped foundation-site-cum-headquarters, for it was in
Ukraine that people who called themselves Russians first settled, and it was
Kiev that these ur-Russians designated their capital city—already very much a proper
<i>metropolis </i>by the standards of the day, in numbering several-dozen
inhabitants—when Moscow, the future Russian imperial capital, was but a
piddling fishing village.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly,
if the Ukrainians were really to be granted what they conceive of as their
birthrightical if not God-given druthers, they would <i>annex</i> all six-and-sixth-fifths-million
square miles of the present Russian Federation, along with, very probably, all
eighty thousand square miles of Belarus (the third of the self-styledly Russian
nations [whose contrastingly quiescent attitude to the Federation, while
undoubtedly rather puzzling, is perhaps ultimately quite prosaically
upchalkable to its being dwarfed both geographically and demographically by
Ukraine qua potential challenger to Russia, and to its bordering eastward and
southward exclusively on other Slavic polities rather than, as Ukraine does,
via the Black Sea, on the quasi or semi-oriental Georgia and Turkey]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having taken in the preceding two sentences,
the above fraction of an empirical reader with some knowledge of Russia’s
pre-1917 history is doubtless aching to rush into my arms and plant his or her
tulips on mine immediately prior or posterior to exclaiming, <i>Darling, I knew
you were one of us all along!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That you
were one of the knowledgeable few enlightened enough to stick up for the
Ukrainians qua monstrously poo-pooh’d scions-cum-rightful heirs of a
millennially ancient imperium!</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I
must unregrettably forestall the soothing of this ache with a stern
schoolmasterly index finger (by no means to be confused with a gloatingly
defiant bad-copperly middle finger) and calmly if ungently say to that F of an
ER, “I told you I would deal with you later, and guess what, sirrah or missy? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later is now <i>now</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let you not kid yourself, sirrah or missy: I
am</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> not now nor at any time have I ever been</span><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> one of you-all, youse,
you guys, you lot, or yinz.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no
intention or desire to champion a territorial claim whose charter dates from,
at most recently, four-and-a-quarter centuries ago and has long since been
superseded by incommensurable territorial claims ratified by subsequent
charters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the two sentences in
question I merely wished to impart a sense of the terms in which the average
nationalistic Ukrainian—Boris or Natasha Grinko (I suppose I am on safe enough
grounds in surnaming this couple <i>Grinko</i> because that was the surname of
a presumably pan-Sovietically famous Ukrainian who appeared in prominent roles
in all five of Tarkovsky’s pre-emigrational features)—probably figures to
himself or herself the Ukrainian national cause after downing a few growlers of
Baltika or a pair of extra-dry Stoli or Standart (here, by way of forestalling
a by no means necessarily figurative hangover, I take for granted that all over
the world the same lackadaisical political latitudinarianism prevails among the
consumers of spirits as among those of malt liquor) martinis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I by no means wish to endorse these terms, as
the F of an ER doubtless would have realized if his or her sentimental
attachment to Eastern Slavic kitsch qua alternative to athletic team-fandom had
been matched by a 1950s primary-schooler’s knowledge of the history and
prehistory of the United States. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bit
before the two sentences in question I analogized Ukraine to one of the
original thirteen ex-colonies comprising the United States at its foundation;
now I must at once coarsen and refine that analogy by positing the Ukraine as a
kind of Eastern-Slavic New England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Comprising as it does the first bit of the present United States that
got itself up and running apart from Mother England (sic [for we must remember
that until 1707 there was politically speaking no such thing as Britain]), the
bit thereof known as New England, comprising the present States of
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire,
has always had, as they say, a chip on its grotesquely padded shoulders and a
lorgnette high atop its grotesquely steep snout vis-à-vis the rest of the
republic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New Englanders have always
thought themselves better than the rest of us Yankees to the abominable extent of
bogarting the very concept of Yankeedom itself, such that those of us hailing from
the <i>lower 42-cum-upper one-cum-outer one</i> (as they habitually ever-so-snootily style
our sub-polity over old-fashioneds and Emporia cheroots at that Boston bar that
furnished the exterior shots for the sitcom <i>Cheers</i>) can never be sure
whether we are being excluded or included by a reference to a Yankee (e.g., the
one to “a little Yankee boy” in that Connecticuter Charles Ives’s song, “He Is
There,” wherefrom it is impossible to infer whether the boy in question is
being celebrated generally qua generic American [i.e., one of us] or
exclusively qua New Englander [i.e., one of them]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course they have clung, at least in
their snootiest enclaves, to a peculiar non-rhotic accent that is meant to
distinguish them from the arr-affecting southern-cum-western rabble in virtue
of more nearly resembling that of the English (even though, as I have to my
mind-persuasively argued in the essay “<a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2015/05/against-intralingual-diversity.html" target="_blank">Against Linguistic Diversity</a>,” the ascendancy
of non-rhotic pronunciation in England postdated the disembarkation of the
Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock by much more than a century), and the capital
and metropolis of New English snootiness, Boston, has had the confounded check
to style itself <i>The Hub</i>, as in the hub of a wheel that is the universe round
which the supposedly piddling remainder thereof supposedly circles with
quiescent ineluctability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, we
grubby, banausic lower-42-cum-upper-one-cum-outer-oners have never been willing to have any
truck with this popinjayish New English self-puffery: the instant one of these
transatlantic toffs tries to give himself or herself the merest barleycorn of
side, we rhetorically body-slam him or her by mock-servilely addressing him or
her as <i>your Lordship</i> or <i>your Ladyship</i> in Mockney accents whose varying
numberings on the DvD Scale (the DvD Scale being a scientifically tested means
of measuring the linguistic fidelity of assumed East London accents, a scale
whereon Dick van Dyke’s accent in <i>Mary Poppins</i>, being the least
plausible on record, has been assigned the terminal number of 10) are of no
moment vis-à-vis the conveyance to him or her of the message that this just
won’t do, that he or she had best shut his or her Pepperidge Farm cakehole lest
he or she find himself or herself starring as a crate of oolong in an impromptu
reenactment of the Boston Tea Party; indeed, there is quite a popular term of
abuse for self up-puffing Massachusites, <i>Masshole</i>, and I daresay the
equivalent term for self up-puffing Connecticuters enjoys less currency only
because it incorporates a word as yet deemed unfit for broadcast by the FCC and
Ofcom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet these rhetorical
resources work so efficaciously against their target, against ever-resurgent
New English snobbery, only because they are underwritten by a political
dispensation—namely, that of the U.S. Constitution—that is indifferent to New
England as a political entity and that relegates each of the New English states
to a position of exact base political parity with the 44 other sub-polities comprising
the balance of the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I
write <i>base</i> political parity because of course two of the New English
states, Massachusetts and Connecticut, enjoy above-average political power in
virtue of having larger-than-average populations and therefore a
larger-than-average number of congresspeople in the U.S. House; and the remaining
New English states, in virtue of having smaller-than-average populations, enjoy
less than average political power [a disadvantage that is, however, partly offset
by their each having two senators like every other U.S. state].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in constitutional terms there is nothing
to prevent Massachusetts and Connecticut from becoming politically
consubstantial with the seven states so lightly populated that they have only
one congressperson, or Vermont from becoming more politically powerful than
California.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If for whatever reason the
U.S. Constitution were discarded (and the prospect of such a discarding is by
no means a laughably improbable one, as that Constitution’s many and seemingly
ever-more-frequent recent failures to register anything remotely approximating
the will of a clear popular majority [notably in connection with two of the
last five presidential elections and the so-called hot button issues of abortion
and gun control], together with the apparently universal lack of interest in
remedying these failures via that Constitution’s own prescribed process of
amendment, suggests that Americans are at least leaning towards tossing out the
whole supposedly damned supposedly moth-eaten 231-year-old parchment-sheaf),
there would be nothing to stop the New Englanders’ snobbery from attaining the
McKinleyan (I confess I cannot stomach the toponymic adjective <i>Denalian</i>)
if not Everestian political altitude that it already enjoys in its own imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so New England might very well declare
itself an independent nation-state no longer bound to contribute to the
infrastructural upkeep or military defense of any of the other 44 states, no
longer obliged to submit to legislative or judicial fiats issued from
Washington, D.C., and finally, and even more significantly, for the present
purposes of the present argument, fully entitled to resist with all its might any
interference in its internal affairs by any power of extra-New English
provenance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such, the present writer
argues, was the political position assumed by Ukraine in 1991, out of virtually
consubstantial motives and with exactly consubstantial immediate consequences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does this mean that the present writer
believes each and every one of Russia’s subsequent interventions in Ukraine to
have been morally and politically justified?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not by any chemically enhanced stretch of the imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It merely means that he believes that
hyperoccidentals should regard Ukraine’s often legitimate grievances against
the Russian Federation a trifle more dispassionately—namely, as the grievances
of a sovereign state <i>tout court</i> of twenty-eight years’ standing rather
than the grievances of an eight-hundred-year-old organic and intrinsically peace
and freedom-loving nation-state only even formerly contingently subject to the
political influence of its intrinsically freedom-hating and incorrigibly domineering
larger neighbor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the main and in
particular, this dispassionateness would be most salutarily manifested in a
realization that Mr. Putin’s claim that his infringements on Ukrainian
sovereignty are guided exclusively by concern for the welfare of ordinary
Russians is not pure eyewash, not merely a pretext for his own material and
reputational self-aggrandizement; and further that the self-identified Ukrainian-resident
Russians in whose name he is infringing have legitimate grievances in their own
right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, Mr. Putin wants to
stay in power, and if possible to become ever-more powerful, and presumably
everything he does on the so-called world stage, including the Russo-Ukrainian
sector thereof, is calculated to serve this power maintaining-cum-augmenting
end, but however unslakeably power-thirsty he may be, he is presumably not so perversely
sadistically narcissistic as to forbear from doing himself a good turn merely
because it does certain other people who pose no threat to him a good turn as
well, and Ockham’s Razor suggests that when he says he is looking out for
ordinary Russians, he really is doing just that, whether he actually gives a Tveran
tinker’s toss about them or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As to the
question whether these self-identified Ukrainian-resident Russians’ grievances
are entitled to anything approaching parity with the carte-blanche indulgence
of grievances enjoyed here in the hyperoccident by the Ukrainian government, I
can hope for a modicum of sympathy with my rejoinder of <i>Yes</i> to this
question only by appealing to the reader’s counterfactual experience, by asking
him or her how he or she would now feel if he or she, a native New Yorker,
Illinoisan, Alabaman, aut al. [the post-risible degeneration of each of the
seemingly infinitely multipliable and ever-proliferating U.K. regions’ hostility
to <i>them citified folk</i> <i>from citified region t’other soide o’ that
there hedge </i>into pure shittified panto sadly precludes my even bothering to
try to take any U.K. natives with me here] who had been living in Boston,
Montpelier, Bangor, autc. for several decades, were suddenly, thanks to a New
England secession of the type described above, to find himself or herself
regarded as an alien in a place that he or she had regarded as home and had
expected to go on regarding as home until his or her dying day?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps the constitution of the new New-English
nation-state would simply have converted him or her into a New English citizen enjoying
all the legal rights of a native Bostonian, Montpelierian, Bangorite, autc. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what of that? Had not the history of the
old republic conclusively shewn that mores and attitudes are agonizingly slow
to submit to the yoke of the law, that certain genres of persons granted
certain rights de jure have often had to wait long years to enjoy them de facto?
Would he or she not accordingly feel an impulse to associate more closely with
his or her fellow natives of the former lower-43-plus-one than he or she had
done before the secession, and would he or she not also be more inclined to
look to Washington than to Boston (to be sure, other capitals of the two
polities are conceivable, but for the PW’s PPs there is no point in conceiving
them) for material reinforcement of his or her right to maintain residence in his
or her beloved townhouse, bungalow, or condominium apartment?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, perhaps he or she indeed would not, and
in all candor and frankness, I myself in such a situation would probably be
inclined to put up with being dislodged into a basement flat, a veritable
Dostoyevskian cubbyhole <i>under the floorboards</i>, by the New English
authorities, provided that even on condition of keeping my trap shut about <i>the
time before the great change</i> I were otherwise allowed to skulk about my
daily rag-and-bone-mannish business unmolested(ly).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the same, I am sympathetic to the
grievances of self-identified Russian Ukrainians because they are rooted in
living memory, because they bespeak a certain kind of attachment to the
particulars of one’s own remembered past, a certain kind of attachment to which
I myself—admittedly perhaps for my sins—am apparently also in thrall. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel a certain kind of attachment to my
native city of Tampa; to my quasi-native pseudo-village, Keystone, and my
equally quasi-native ZIP code-designator, Odessa (Florida, not Ukraine!), in both
of which I resided from the ages of three to eighteen, and in which my mother still
resides; to my adopted city of Baltimore, in which I have resided since 1994,
and hence for more than half my life; and, last if not necessarily least, to my
native polity, the United States of America, whose borders I have never crossed;
and I would be at least mildly annoyed if the names, institutions, or boundaries
associated with these places were to be changed without my consent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, I have recently, almost exactly a
year ago as of this writing (Midsummer Eve Eve Eve 2018) had to contend with
such a change in the form of a materially superficial yet semiotically
devastating reorganization of the local (i.e., Baltimorean) public transit
system, a reorganization wherein (and whereby) a diabolically shameless (albeit
mild) retrenchment of services was laughably—albeit equally
diabolically—camouflaged by a bewilderingly chaotic new-modeling of
nomenclature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This reorganization
principally entailed stripping about half of the four dozen-odd bus routes of
the numbers by which they had been designated for donkey’s decades and
replacing these numbers with colors in flagrantly obvious mimicry of the
color-coded lineation scheme of the nearby Washington, D.C. subway system (and
hence in flagrantly pathetic symbolic compensation for the non-color
code-exacting one-linedness of our own subway sub-system) in apparent
obliviousness of the human (or at least American) mind’s inability to
discriminate among very many more than the half-dozen colors designating the
six lines of the D.C. Metro except as shades of the more basic hues, such that
we now have a <i>lime</i> route that is impossible to distinguish from our <i>green</i>
route without the aid of a spectrograph (fortunately I don’t have to use either
verdant route); and reassigning the numbers of the remaining quasi-half by
tombola, such that my former beloved No. 61 is now the No. 95, and my no less
slightly beloved No. 11 is now the No. 51.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, as a commuter I have long since adjusted to this sub-Kakanian
tomfoolery, but as a city resident of nearly a quarter-century’s standing I
have by no means <i>acclimatized</i> myself to it, and I suspect that the odds
of my future acclimatization to it are slim even if I finish up living here even
longer than a further quarter century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In my mind, the bus that takes me to work entirely via St. Paul Street is
still the No. 61 and the bus that takes me to the suburb of Towson mainly by
Charles Street is still the No. 11, and there’s an end on’t, and a very
probably permanent end on’t at that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
be sure, if the reorganization had entailed any substantive changes to the
service, whether convenient to me or not, I could at least have reconciled
myself to it after a fashion—reconciled myself to it as the realization of some
ingenious or addlebrained policy wonk’s <i>vision</i>; or opposed it in some
fashion guaranteed to garner support from a demographically significant segment
of my fellow-commuters qua people likewise forced to make radical changes to their
<i>modi vivendi</i>; but precisely inasmuch as it has <i>not</i> entailed any
substantive changes it is exponentially more infuriating to me than if it had
done, for in thereby willy-nilly rearranging a mighty panel of my
long-established <i>Weltbild</i> to no apparent purpose, the powers that
locally and regionally be (and they know very well who they be) seem to have
gone out of their way to deliver a middle-or two-finger salute to me <i>personally;
</i>not, of course,<i> </i>that I am actually so paranoid (although I am indeed
probably much too paranoid for any of my empirical contemporaries’ comforts) as
to believe these powers had me specifically in mind when they concocted this
sub-asinine transportational-cartographic mash-up of darts and finger-painting,
but rather and merely that I am much of a mind to suppose that they, the
powers, conceived this mash-up as a dedicated celebration-cum-vindication of
change for change’s sake (in other words, as a celebration-cum-vindication of
the intrinsically pointless hipsterist strain of Whiggism that I have already
vehemently inveighed against in the present screed) at the deliberate and
vindictive expense of every single person accustomed to and satisfied with the
way things already were, and that inasmuch as I am cut off from open
commiseration with my presumably tens of thousands of fellow-sufferers owing to
the preemptive force of more politically respectable lobbies (notably the lobby
that a few years ago agitated to have the No. 61 route abolished [and succeeded
in having its schedule slashed in half] on the utterly spurious but locally all-but-ineluctable
grounds that all those who regularly used it owned limousines driven by their
personal manservants and were merely using the route as a sort of tour bus for
spectating on how the other 99.99 percent lived), I am more than effectively
nursing my transportational-cartographic mash up-sustained wounds in utter isolation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway-cum-in short-cum-obviously, I am
inclined to conceive of the plight of the present Ukraine-residing
self-identified Russian—or at any rate, the plight of the present middle-aged U-RS-IR—as
a fairly close analogue of my own plight as a regular user of mass transit in
Baltimore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In being inclined to conceive
of that plight in those admittedly dire terms, I by no means wish it to be
thought that I believe this plight to be direr than that of self-identified
Ukrainians forced to suffer displacement or even death as an immediate or
collateral consequence of Russia’s recent-to-present interventions in Ukraine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, I do very much wish it to
be thought that I believe the middle-aged U-RS-IR’s present plight to be
worthier of respect and sympathy than either of the pseudo-plights under whose
auspices the cause of Ukrainian resistance to Russia is almost invariably
championed in the hyperoccident—viz., as mentioned before, Ukraine’s lack of brand-name
recognition as a hyperoccidental polity in consequence of its lack of EU
membership, and Ukraine’s historical priority as <i>Ur</i>-HQ of Russianness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer is so bumptious as to
submit that neither of these pseudo-plights is worth the butcher’s
quarter-dozen cubic centimeters of air requisite to bestowing on it a
contemptuous snort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As to the first: in
every conceivable department of existence (very much including the political
department, wherein Ukrainians have shown themselves to be every bit as
kleptocratically corrupt as their Russian contemporaries), Ukraine obviously
has far more in common with Russia than with any of the present EU member
States, the former Eastern-Bloc ones very much included.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, it is patently perverse in
or of the Ukraine to seek to solve its difficulties with or even salve its resentment
of Russia by petitioning for EU membership—or, indeed, by otherwise seeking to get
to Paris (for it is after all Paris and not Brussels that is at the spiritual
heart of the Continental European sector of the hyperoccident) without first
passing through Petersburg and Moscow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If a present-day Ukrainian hipster finds Kiev too naff by half, he or
she should swan off not to Paris or even Warsaw but to Moscow or Petersburg, both
of which, while admittedly unspeakably naff by hyperoccidental standards, are a
zillion times hipper than Kiev (for example, whatever the laws of the
respective Russian and Ukrainian lands might have to say on homosexuality, <i>par
ici</i> one hears ad nauseam of a “burgeoning Moscow gay scene” and not at all
of any sort of gay scene in Kiev), and in both of which he or she will benefit
immeasurably from his or her native fluency in Russian—however vociferously
linguistically ignorant Ukrainian W*******a editors may argue that their
language has far more in common with Hungarian or Elvish than Russian, or
Russian stand-up comedians may brazenly send up the Ukrainian accent while
engaging in alarmingly verisimilitudinous simulated coition with real, live
pigs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(While the present writer presumes
that there are numerous unofficial and official boulders blocking the actuation
of a Kiev-to Moscow hipster-conveying conveyor belt, he likewise presumes that
these boulders are smaller and lighter than the unofficial and official ones
blocking the actuation of a Kiev-to-Paris H-CCB of comparable conveyance.) As
to the second: in securing the genuinely nice reader’s participation in my
scorn for it I need only recall to his or her mind the far-above-discussed mid-1960s
Soviet time-travel farce <i>Ivan the Terrible</i>, wherein the eponymous
sixteenth-century tsar is seen to cut a hopelessly pathetic figure in twentieth-century
Moscow not so much on account of his eponymous terribleness as on account of
his presumption that the old feudal hierarchy is still in place—his presumption
that Shurik et al. are <i>boyars</i>, petty warlords either plotting to usurp
him by killing him or bound by oaths of fealty to do his bidding on pain of
death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, at this point the <i>god-awful</i>
empirically prevailing reader, the long-former DGR, will crypto-waggishly or
melodramatically demur that <i>in point of fact nothing had changed in Russia
between the late sixteenth century and the mid-twentieth, </i>that far from
being a fantastic farce uninhibitedly reveling in the genuine improvements to
the system of Russian life introduced over the course of the intervening third
of a millennium (i.e., not necessarily exclusively <i>Soviet</i> improvements),
<i>Ivan the Terrible</i> is a chillingly objective exposé of the early Brezhnev
regime’s genuinely unreconstructedly med-ah-eval treatment of dissidence and
dissents; and of course for such confoundedly enormous cheek he or she will
deserve to be knouted by Ivan the Terrible’s chief knouter—naturally made
available for employment by the kind offices of Shurik’s time machine, un-mothballed
especially for the occasion—until that cheek is dwarfed by either of his or her
weal-augmented buttocks—not least because this demurral is as egregiously impertinent
in the archaic or specialized juridical sense as in the more generally current buccal
one. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the point I am trying to make
here is simply that any conceivable Ukrainian analogue to <i>Ivan the Terrible</i>,
any time-travel picture entitled <i>Vladimir the Great</i> and centering on the
transportation of that analogous founding potentate into present-day Kiev—whether
the Kiev of the mid-1960s or late-20-teens makes absolutely no difference (<i>Scandalous,
isn’t it</i>? I ferociously snarl at you <i>bienpensant</i> hyperocccidental reflexive
up-suckers to present-day Ukraine, thereby prompting you to spill tea all over
your heretofore immaculate dickies and shirtwaists in reflexive scandalization)—would
perforce be obliged to cast a comparably risible light on him, and indeed,
perhaps even to make him look more ridiculous than Ivan in the Shurik film; for
after all, not only had late sixteenth-century Moscow long left Kiev trailing
in the dust in bald demographic terms, but it also had a half-millennium of
established Christianity behind it and was benefiting—however fitfully and
minutely–from the opening up of Europe to classical learning and the
discoveries brought over from the New World.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Transported into recent-to-present day Kiev, Vladimir the Great would
very probably commit gaffes that would make Ivan the Terrible’s belly convulse
with scornful laughter as violently as that of the hippest, most Whiggish
present-day hyperoccidental, gaffes like swearing by the Sun God, rushing to protect
a smoker from immolation by his freshly ignited cigarette (for one assumes that
despite their yearning to join with the tobaccophobic hyperoccident the
Ukrainians continue to smoke as fiendishly as Russians), and expressing
wonderment that travelers to North America or East Asia didn’t fall off the
edge of the Earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, the system
of life in place in Ukraine at the moment of its (and Ur-Russia’s) foundation
was undoubtedly as alien from that of present-day Russia as any system of life
in place anywhere in the greater occident since Hellenistic times. And such
being the case, any assertion of Ukrainian identity that is founded on this
tenth-century founding moment is at best unregenerately kitschy in essence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that I doubt that many if not most of the
most besottedly nationalistic present-day Ukrainians can trace their lineage all
the way back to the tenth century, and even to the loins of Vladimir the Great,
but what of that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fairly recent (ca.
2015) genetic survey of the population of Great Britain found that in spite of
more than two millennia of Roman, Saxon, Viking, and Norman conquests, and even
the most recent, post-millennial, wave of non-conquistive immigration, some
ludicrously high super-majority of the island’s inhabitants were of
predominantly Celtic ancestry, and hence were direct descendants of the
pre-Roman Britons, the selfsame pre-Roman Britons whose religious officers were
styled <i>druids</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the
survey itself was presumably quite attention-grabbing, in that at least five
minutes of reportage were devoted to it on BBC Radio 4, it apparently did not
engender any comparably attention-grabbing interest in Celtic nationalism,
inasmuch as the present writer did not subsequently hear via Radio 4 of any
sort of swelling of attendance figures at Stonehenge, let alone of a nocturnal
descent thereupon of multimillion-strong hordes of outlandishly attired carving
knife-wielding Britons longing to reassert their newly rediscovered Celtic
nationality by sacrificing any living mammal ready-to-hand to the moon goddess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to the present writer that
present-day Ukrainian nationalists would do well to take a page, as they
say—a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>comparably immaculately <i>blank</i>
page—from present-day Britons’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>apparent
utter indifference to their Celtic genetic heritage (not that I wish either to
deny or valorize the fervor of the Scots’, Welsh’s, Cornish’s (!), and Manx’s
(?) wearisome assertion of their factitious Celitc birthrights, but merely that
I wish to point out [quite damningly, in my view] that the recent discovery of
the pan-Britannic continuity of the Celtic bloodline has not altered the
character or prominence of these quasi or pseudo-nationalities’ public profile
a jot).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to the present
writer’s lights, <i>every</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> claim to
nationalistic solidarity founded in or on some appeal to biologically
genealogical continuity with a more or less utterly alien historical
epoch-cum-system of life is about the hugest load of vocational clones of his
maternal grandfather from 1976 to 1995 (see soonishly below) as can be imagined.</span><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly these lights are furnished to him
exclusively by the lightscape of his attitude to his own biological genealogy,
a genealogy he flatters himself he could milk as productively as Ukraine’s
leading Vladimir the Great impersonator presumably elects to milk his
biological-genealogical cow, radically reaching as it (i.e., the PW’s own
genealogy not the VtG impersonator’s cow) does back into at least three
continents and at least five quasi-nations, two of them sitting very close
indeed to the top of the totem pole (tho’ I presume throughout the
hyperoccident the totem pole qua metaphorical vehicle is banned in what would
affect to be called polite circles if the term <i>polite circles</i> now
enjoyed any currency therein) of quasi-nations prized here in the United States
(albeit none too close thereto in most other polities).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the present writer has lately mentioned,
he feels a certain amount of affective attachment to his native city, and this
attachment naturally involves a certain amount of affective attachment to that
city’s history—but this attachment extends barely a century back, to the birth
year shared by the two of his grandparents (viz., his maternal grandfather and
paternal grandmother) born in that city—viz., the year 1916; for this year
marks the utmost chronological limit of his attachment to the history of that
city via his material-experiential connection to people who dwelt therein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When his grandparents were alive, he
cherished their company and conversation, a measurable (although by no means a
full-fledged <i>goodly</i>) proportion of which alluded palpably—albeit most
often obliquely—to their city-resident childhoods and adolescences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that they are long since dead (his
grandmother since 1982, a few years after having retired from several decades
of work as a nurse; his grandfather in 1995, a few months after having retired
from many decades of work as a shoe-repairman or <i>cobbler</i>, he cherishes
the memory of their company and conversation and cherishes the precincts of the
city in which they worked and dwelt—most especially those in which he spent
time with them as a child or youth (e.g., the shopping center in which his
grandfather’s shoe repair shop was formerly sited), but also those in which he spent
little or no time with them but that he knows them to have frequented long
before his birth (e.g., the neighborhood in which both of them were born and
raised).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He cherishes these places
because, having heard numerous scraps of anecdotage about his grandparents’
period of frequentation of them, both from the two of them, his grandparents, themselves,
and from those (notably his parents, the son of the one and the daughter of the
other) who personally knew either or both of them longer than he did, and
having himself known well and in person what they, his grandparents, were like
in their old age, and having seen photographs of them as younger people, he is able
to conjecture—admittedly unverifiably but also admittedly unfalsifiably—at
considerable length and in considerable detail how they might have spoken or
otherwise behaved in these places during these earlier phases of their lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as for the birthplaces of these two
grandparents’ parents—some village in Sicily in the case of the grandfather’s,
some utterly undetermined locale or pair of locales in Cuba in the case of Cuba–why,
to these places the present writer could not be more indifferent, and indeed if
the entirety of the one were buried in volcanic ash from Mt. Aetna or the
entirety of the other submerged in a hurricanic storm surge, he would greet the
news of the catastrophe as coldly as he would do one of comparable magnitude befalling
Zimbabwe or Indonesia. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Not that
hyperoccident-wide doxic <i>fauxblesse oblige </i>would allow him to forbear
from pretending that such a Zimbabwean or Indonesian catastrophe affected him
as unpleasantly warmly as the application of a tureen-load of molten lead to his
<i>couillons</i>.) He has no affective choice but to be so indifferent to these
places inasmuch as he has not even the faintest ghost of a vicarious share in
any direct experience of them, inasmuch as neither of the two grandparents ever
breathed a word about them in his presence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, he is no position to assume that all or even most other of
his contemporaries are as compulsorily indifferent to their pre-grandparental
biological-genealogical heritage as he is; to be sure, indeed, he can easily
imagine that there are now people with the same biological-genealogical
heritage as his own who are genuinely enthusiastically brimful of anecdotage
about Cuba and Sicily at the turn-of-the-century before-last, owing to the
serendipitous fact that their grandparents sedulously pumped their own parents
for such anecdotage and subsequently recounted every syllable thereof to their
bairns and their bairns’ bairns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
there cannot be very many such people, and as for people vicariously
participating in the experience of yet a further generation back, in the
experience of their great-great grandparents, why they must be virtually if not
actually nonexistent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For for all the
incessant nearly eardrum-burstingly loud ballyhoo about the supposed vitality of
this or that <i>rich oral tradition</i> (each and every one of which in the ears
and eyes [and above all <i>nose</i>] of the present writer ought by all rights
to be rechristened [!] a <i>feculent north-anal</i> <i>sub-pseudo tradition</i>),
the sad but by no means utterly dispiriting fact (see soonishly below, if it
please the non-Rhode-Islandish Providence) is that living testimony of
quotidian experience (as opposed to dopey pseudo-epic nationalistic swill about
gods, heroes, and pranksters, which in virtue of its experiential
contentlessness can always be manufactured anew on the spot by any three-card-Monte
artist of a yarn-spinning old crone or codger) hardly ever survives within families,
let alone nations and polities, beyond two generations, that</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> too much of every individual human life has always “been
spent in provision for the day that was passing over” whoever happened to be
living it to allow that liver to bestow much time on recounting the minutiae of
his or her life-history to an amanuensis, and that, as each of these amanuenses
needs must be spending no smaller a proportion of his or her own life than his
recounting forebear did on his or hers, the fund of anecdotage must perforce peter
out completely sooner rather than later on a(n) historiographical scale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such being the case, any wearisome blighter
of a scribbler who takes it upon his or her gormlessly bumptious self to compose
some sort of novelistic text about his or her greater-than-merely-great
grandparents qua embodiers-cum-representatives of this or that invariably
cheek-pinchably winsome <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Volk </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Narod</i> is obliged perforce to have
recourse to the historiographical archive, to the same jumble of newspaper
cuttings, photographs, bills of mortality, property leases, laundry receipts,
etc. that is always at least in principle and quite frequently in practice
available to each and every one of his or her contemporaries regardless of his
or her place of immediate origin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus
in principle—and not improbably in actual, already-achieved practice—a
Zimbabwean’s or Indonesian’s or indeed a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tampan</i>’s
account of everyday life in the (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sic</i>
to all the pinheaded definite article-proscribing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">canaille, </i>whom I have hitherto sedulously fellated in defiance of
my own contempt for their linguistically unfounded pernickitiness but whom I
refuse to fellate in this instance, inasmuch as here this pernickitiness cannot
even be defended on grounds of article-circumcision envy {as a moment’s comparative
consideration of such established expressions as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the New York of the 1970s</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the
Paris of the Belle Epoque</i>, etc., will make extensively plain}]) Ukraine of
even the very late nineteenth century, to say nothing of the Ukraine of nine
centuries earlier, may very well convey to us a more vivid and more nearly true
sense of what it was like to live then and there than a parallel account of the
same place and time supplied by the abovementioned top-ranking Kievian Vladimir
the Great impersonator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The genuinely
sympathetic reader doubtless sees whither I am going with this, as they almost
say, but before I take him or her with me to our shared destination, I must say
something further about my own geographical and temporal situation, inasmuch as
the utterance of this something will inevitably alter and improve the
destination to an extent that I flatter myself will be well worth the delay.</span><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, then, re-regarding my situation vis-à-vis
my grandparents qua mnemic bearers of historical experience: while it is
presumably true that my memories of these two people have been deteriorating
and will continue to deteriorate with the passage of time, that I now remember
their voices, gestures, utterances, and, to a more limited extent, persons (for
however philistine this sentiment may sound, photographs do an admirable job of
preserving all but the most high-resolution and non-visual aspects of a human
individual’s superficies) more spottily and less accurately than I did twenty
years ago and less spottily and more accurately than I shall twenty years hence
(if the Lord or the Almighty Scots Demiurge vouchsafe me [or any of us] a
further score thereof), it is also <i>undoubtedly</i> true that with that
selfsame passage of time I am becoming more and more like these
grandparents<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="background: rgb(253 , 254 , 255); color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">from both
a subjective and objective historiographical point of view—which is to say, not
that I am assimilating an ever-greater share of their idiosyncrasies à la
Proust’s narrator’s mother’s up-picking of her deceased mother’s habit of
quoting Madame de Sévigné (although that may be true as well, albeit only
epiphenomenally so), but rather that, for all my persistence on this side of
the millennial divide, I am becoming more and more of what they have had no
choice but to be for 37 and 24 years, respectively–viz., a relic of the <i>twentieth
century</i>, much as Winston Churchill <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>came to be regarded by the British people as a
relic of the nineteenth even after having guided them through the definitive
twentieth-century military conflict, and Charles Chaplin as a <i>Victorian</i>
by his own daughter Geraldine despite having done more than any other single human
individual<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(barring perhaps Henry Ford)
to actualize a definitively <i>post</i>-Victorian world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no choice but to become such a relic
inasmuch at the turn of the millennium I was already twenty-eight (as the grandfather
in point here had first made me cognizant I would be back in ca. 1980), such
that my horizon of expectations had long since been formed and fixed by then,
such that no matter how long I live into the twenty-first century, my
understanding of what is reasonable, equitable, desirable, attainable,
expectable, and so forth, will be delimited by what I already believed to be reasonable
etc. by the end of the twentieth; and inasmuch as failing (<i>sic</i> on the
failure qua failure [see as far as possible below, Lord etc.]) a global
catastrophe of genuinely apocalyptic proportions, with each passing year the average
horizon of expectations of an inhabitant of the present century will diverge
ever further from my own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To cite just
one such component, a mere arc-second, of this horizon <i>chez moi</i>,
vis-à-vis the comparable arc-second <i>chez eux</i> (a.k.a., essentially, even
by now, <i>chez vous autres</i>): as a youngster, from my earliest walking days
onwards I wore leather shoes with replaceable soles, and my parents would have
the soles of each such pair of shoes replaced by my grandfather the shoe-repairman
until I outgrew the pair or its uppers fell apart from wear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My parents, who by the standards of their
time and place would have been much more aptly described as poor than as rich,
were able to keep me shod in resoleable footwear not only because my
grandfather was a shoe-repairman but also because at the time resoleable shoes
were by no means luxury goods, because the shoe stores and department stores,
even the most downmarket among them, sold resoleable shoes at reasonable
prices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually, in the mid-1990s, as
mentioned before, my grandfather shut up his shop and died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a year or so afterwards, my parents would
have my shoes resoled by a former assistant of my grandfather who was still
(albeit presumably just barely) in business at his own shop, but the
family-wide consensus was that he was a poorer cobbler than his former master,
and in any case, by then I was living up in Maryland and thinking it was high
time I started having my shoes resoled myself and in my own <i>Umwelt</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But from the outset the realization of this
highly timely project was metaphorically hamstrung by a potentially quite
literally hamstringing obstacle–viz., the conspicuous dearth of shoe repair
shops in that selfsame <i>Umwelt</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The only verifiably <i>proper</i> such shop—the only one wherein the
buzzing of semi-visible machinery proved that shoes were indeed being repaired
on the premises—was sited at the shopping mall known as Towson Town Center, some
eight miles or a ninety-minute round-trip bus ride from and back to my ZIP-code
of residence, a bus ride through which I never would have dreamt of putting
myself twice in a single year, let alone twice in the single week that
presumably would have given the shop more than enough time to do its work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so I had recourse to a pair of hyper-local
drycleaners with tiny neon SHOES REPAIRED signs in their windows, shops that
presumably sent and received their shoes to and from gosh knew where—although
it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the repair-site was no more remote than the
Towson shop just mentioned or that very shop itself, for neither establishment
made me wait more than a few days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
alas! Rapidity of turnaround proved to be these establishments’ sole virtue
(pun on <i>sole</i> unavoidable but as regrettable as ant mound-sized pile of
dog poo or brain-sized wad of chewing gum on account of its tenor-ific
irrelevance [and no, I am not going to go back and replace <i>sole</i> with <i>only</i>
just to avoid stepping into that pile or wad, for in the register of linguistic
register <i>sole</i> was there far preferable to its more popular synonym]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first pre-donning sight of the first pair,
the work seemed much better than I had expected; for it consisted of the same
combination of rubber heels and leather soles that my grandfather had favored
in place of the all-rubber job that I had assumed had become the order of the
day among his successors in the trade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
after walking around in them for a day or so, I noticed something very strange
and indeed uncanny beginning to happen: the leather surface of the soles,
instead of evincing the familiar pallid whorls of fresh abrasion, was simply flaking
away like the bark of a paper-bark tree and revealing beneath its away-flakage
something even more paper-like than such bark, namely a mass of wadding or
stuffing composed of <i>actual</i> paper of a dehydrated mâché-like
consistency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally, I had to replace
that pair of shoes with a new pair lest I should wind up on my uppers in a more
than metaphorically non-amphetaminical sense within a very few days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when the soles of that pair required
replacing, I naturally took them to the other dry cleaner and disappointingly
if not entirely surprisingly received the same merely leather-veneered
paper-stuffed solar results.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By now
(viz., July 10, 2018) <i>cold death</i> has taken so many<i> citadels </i>from
me that an American football team of secretaries (whose services I could now
doubtless secure for free and in perpetuity via the top-trending app <i>Hireaslave</i>)
would doubtless be required to rank these takings in chronological order from
earliest-cum-most primal to most recent-cum-most post tertiary, and in temperatural
order of proximity to absolute zero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
all that, I am inclined to wager that the moment at which I discovered that the
resoling of shoes no longer meant actually providing them with more or less
profoundly perfect replicas of their previous soles—replicas that not only
looked right but wore well right up to the upper—with entirely visual simulacra
thereof, with soles that presumably would not bear wearing even entirely
indoors as slippers for more than a week, marked both one of the coldest and
most primal of such takings inasmuch as it pointed up to me the flagrant <i>shamelessness</i>
and <i>shoddiness</i> of the chicanery to which commercial interests were
already-by-then (and have been increasingly since) willing to resort for the
sake of turning a so-called fast buck. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Happily, within months if not weeks of my
discovery of the superficiality of the second resoling, the department stores
and shoe stores—even the most upmarket among them—discontinued selling
resoleable shoes altogether and thereby compelled me to take up the regimen of
consumption of disposable shoes that I have adhered to, <i>faute de mieux</i>,
ever since. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever since then, some two
decades ago, despite being a daily hair-washer, I have been obliged to go
through pairs of shoes scarcely more slowly than through bottles of shampoo, a
ratio that would be ever so slightly less disheartening if over that selfsame
decade the price of a pair of shoes had fallen ever (and however slowly) closer
to that of a bottle of shampoo, rather than, as it in fact has done, maintained
if not increased the 30-to-one price-differential it enjoyed in the Golden Age
of resoleability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even more lamentably,
over the second half of that twenty-year period, I have had to reckon with an
even more dismal chausseureal dispensation, viz. the ever-crescent displacement
of even unresoleable leather shoes by those of an entirely synthetic
composition, a displacement that doubtless any month now will compel me to make
the stark choice between joining the shameless trainer-and-flip-flop-shod
mobility and joining whichever (if any) order of popish monks still requires
its members to go barefoot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For as far
back as September of last year (i.e., 2017), upon visiting an outlet of the
chain department store known as <i>Marshall’s</i>, qua sole (pun disabled on
account of non-chausseureal purport of present clause) chain department
store-outlet in the entire city safely accessible to me qua non-driving whiteperson,
with the intention of buying exactly two pairs of leather-uppered shoes, one
black-uppered, the other brown-uppered, in deference to my multi-decadally ancient
quasi-Sinatran bifurcation of my wardrobe between brown shoe-friendly and black
shoe-friendly outfits, I found that in a certain brown pair of desert boots I
had exhausted the outlet’s <i>entire stock of men’s leather-uppered shoes</i>
in my size—viz., nine-and-a-half, <i>the type O-Positive of men’s shoe sizes</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During this selfsame trip to Marshall’s, I
was also hoping to find a leather non-martial arts-affiliated black belt
(thankably, I already had a still-functioning brown one), and a few pairs of
prevailingly cotton dress socks of various colors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found the store’s sole specimen of such a
belt only after searching through an entire Portuguese eel market-sized
collection of plastic impostors, and the sock search was a complete washout,
what with the most cotton-rich of their dress socks still turning out to be 65%
orlon or spandex or what synthetically have you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I began shopping at Marshall’s, along
with its two rival discount chains, T.J. Maxx and Ross, back in the late 1980s,
the sole drawbacks of such chains vis-à-vis their most upmarket mall-anchoring
counterparts—e.g., Macy’s, Nordstrom’s, Lord & Taylor, or back then, in my
home metropole, specifically and exclusively <i>Burdines</i>—were the
comparative antiquity of their stock and the comparative obscurity of their
roster of brand names.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back then, if you
wanted the current season’s couturial offerings from Ralph Lauren or Izod or
(…I confess to be at a loss for a third comparably upmarket brand name of the
microepoch [although perhaps Calvin Klein, although a comparative parvenu, will
do in a pinch]) you were indeed obliged to repair to an outlet of one of the
posh mall anchor chains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if what you
ultimately cared about was the quality of the materials that constituted your
clothes, you were every bit as well served by these discount chains, where you
could count on finding more prevailingly or entirely cotton shirts, entirely
silk neckties, and prevailingly cotton sock-pairs than you could have shaken
Ralph Lifshitz’s American Express card at.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nowadays these discount chains are brimming over with merchandise
sporting the most upmarket brand names—e.g., Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, [and
again I am stumped for a microepochally appropriate third example, though
perhaps Calvin Klein, although a comparative has-been, will once again do in a
pinch]—but in its very warp and weft this merchandise constitutes the sort of
more than figuratively plastic tat that would have got one laughed out of the
naffest singles bar in New Port Richey, Wolverhampton, Blue Ash, Norristown, or
Luton in my day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course in my
resentment of the unavailability of rosoleable leather shoes and natural-fiber
garments at discount retail outlets I am by default at daggers drawn with the
entire present-day <i>bienpensant</i> hyperoccidental <i>Untervolksgeist</i>,
which, like one of those poor (yet potentially very dangerous!) subjects of a
botched brain operation that leaves his or her right brain hemisphere utterly
oblivious of the operations of the left, is constantly remorselessly employing
one hand in chastising me with a scourge that it would do far better to apply
to its other hand, which is up to far greater mischief than I am according to
its own irreparably bifurcated lights. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Oh, so you fancy resoleable leather
shoes?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jolly good show, old cove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jolly good for the environment, innt?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And jolly good venue for the exertion of the <i>craftsmanship</i>
of authentic <i>artisans</i>, ever-so-patiently turning some saw-or-lathe-like
thing in well-nigh-stationery slow motion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Allow me to present to you the card of my personal cobbler-cum-farrier,
Mr., Miss, Ms. Mrs., or Mx. *******.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(My
personal shoemaker is a different chap, chappess, or chappex, with a different
card, which I would likewise be happy to present to you.) He autc. can get your
shoes back to you within eighteen weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Charges a mere a $10 a stitch or $800 a sole, whichever’s cheaper (with
deals like these it’s almost like he’s <i>giving his labor away</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Works out of Erdenet via Amazon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No, you fucking dumbass, Erdenet’s the name of a <i>town</i>, not of a
data-transmitting protocol.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Haven’t you
ever heard of it? Erdenet, Mongolia? [Rolls eyes exasperatedly] It’s only the
world capital of fermented Przewalski’s horse milk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You mean to tell me you’ve never tried
Przewalski’s horse milk?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where have you
been living, Outer Mo….erm, rather, Outer <i>Moscow</i> [whether Russia or
Idaho makes absolutely no sodding difference]? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, I should rather ask, where have you <i>pretended</i>
to be living, for a life without having tasted fermented Przewalski’s horse
milk is at best a dying death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hey, what
are you up to there with the collar of my shirt, asshole?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Just checking something</i>, you say?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well you’d better watch what you check from
now on, ’cos I’m filming all this on my phone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What do you mean, <i>You should have guessed</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, <i>of course</i> it’s a hundred percent
polyester. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course I know that it’s
not biodegradable and that a bit of it leaches into the water supply every time
I wash it, but what choice have I got?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
can’t jolly well make a poor (yet unsurpassably noble) shorn sheep shiver in
the arctic (sic) Shetlands for the sake of making a mere contemptible (yet
immortal and inexhaustibly wealthy) human like me a dust-mite mite’s more
comfortable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, I’ve never heard of
this <i>cotton</i> to which you refer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Doubtless it’s some especially cute species of mink or agouti, you willfully
spitefully anthropocentric turd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh,
it’s a <i>plant</i>, you say?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A plant
with white, fluffy flowers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, now I
remember—<i>cotton</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the
stuff they made slaves pick in the Deep South, wasn’t it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, in that case, I absolutely cannot have
anything to do with it—why, to wear a shirt made of such material would be
tantamount to going about in blackface.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As an unregenerate dyed-in-the Shetland wool (wool that I remorselessly
wear in colder weather) child of the twentieth century, I don’t think I should
be expected to have my shoes resoled by mail at ten times the price of the
shoes themselves (or what a pair of resoleable shoes used to cost and by all
rights ought still to cost), or to wear synthetic-fiber clothing under any
circumstances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As an unregenerate child
of the twentieth century, I believe it is my God-given and inalienable <i>right</i>
to have affordable immediate retail access to resoleable shoes and
natural-fiber clothes, a right of which I have been unceremoniously divested as
of the very all-cotton string vest on my back without so much as a <i>bend
over, chump</i>, let alone a <i>by your leave</i>; a right, moreover, that I
have good reason to suppose would have been more ably maintained in the Soviet
Union than it has been here in the hyperoccident for decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly, I have yet to see a
Soviet-produced film in which a pair of resoleable shoes is purchased at a GUM
store or resoled at a state shoe-repair shop while the customer waits, but I
cannot imagine that a society that did not regard a custom-tailored suit as an
extravagance beyond the reach or deserts of a mere school principal like the
heroine of <i>Wings</i> would compel even the humblest, the lowest-stationed,
of its members to make do with disposable footwear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the plenitude of natural-fiber clothing in
the old USSR I have direct proof: in the 1979 contemporary Leningrad-set film <i>Autumn
Marathon</i> (a film I felt obliged to exclude from my survey of Soviet cinema
on account of the dubious morality and verisimilitude of its main plotline,
which, like numerous hyperoccidental films of the same microepoch [notably
several of Woody Allen’s] centers on an unprepossessing middle-aged man
inexplicably relentlessly pursued by several women each of whose attentions he
inexplicably takes for granted [as I said, it is all quite morally and
verisimilitudinously dubious, but the mere fact that a film with such a
plotline was made then and there suggests that the hypooccident was then vying
with the hyperoccident in point of decadent affluence]) a character by no means
represented as a dandy or clothes-horse, a character who is indeed the film’s star
churl, a tubby, perpetually inebriated male neighbor of the protagonist, is
seen wearing a highly stylish-looking casual cool-weather jacket of which he
remarks, “I found it in the dumpster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Someone had thrown it away just because it had a small tear in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a hundred percent cotton.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this episode one reflexively and most
rationally infers that the Brezhnev-micrepoch Soviet Union was a kind of
textile Land of Cockaigne wherein all-cotton garments were so plentiful and
inexpensive that the moment such a garment exhibited the slightest flaw its wearer
would literally chuck it into the nearest waste-receptacle with one hand and
reach for its replacement with the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course frowardly cynical wags will inevitably propose an alternative socio-descriptive
gloss on the bibulous churl’s boastful appropriation of the discarded jacket—viz.,
that it is, to the contrary, proof of the <i>rarity</i> of all-cotton garments
in the USSR of 1979, that the discarder was presumably some trans-Icey tourist
who had prudently packed an extra all-cotton jacket before crossing into
cis-Iceyana, and that its appropriator had fished it out of the dumpster only because
he found his domestically produced factory-fresh polyester insufferably
naff-looking cool-weather jacket insufferably, stiflingly hot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to such wags I demur, “And what if –in the
impeccably straight and gapless teeth of reflection and rationality—this
episode is to be taken as an illustration of the rarity of natural-fiber
clothing in the late-former USSR?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For is
it not accordingly likewise an illustration of the high premium that was placed
on natural-fiber clothing in that selfsame USSR, an illustration that even the
naffest of the naff in that polity cherished the distinction between garments
of a natural and garments of an artificial basal constitution?—this in
well-nigh-apotheosizingly flattering contrast to the hippest of the hip in the
present-day hyperoccient, each and every last Jack, Jill, and Pat of whom is
content to be clad cap-à-pie in materials that would instantaneously transform
him autc. into an anthropomorphic candlestick were he or she ever compelled (as
the present writer is hundreds of times a year in virtue of being a fulltime
non-driver [in contrast to 99.99999% of the tree-hugging mobility, each one of
whom fondly fancies he autc. is performing a decoration-worthily generous act
of analingis on the so-called environment by performing multiple round-trips to
the moon per annum behind the wheel of a so-called hybrid vehicle]) to endure
more than ten minutes of a temperature in excess of 90 degrees Fahrenheit (i.e.,
32 degrees Celsius)?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this
meta-couturial dispensation by no means exhausts the catalogue of amenities of
late-Soviet life with which <i>Autumn Marathon</i> contrives to coax oceans of
envious saliva from the inner face-cheeks of the unregenerate child of the
twentieth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the
exterior of the building housing the protagonist’s apartment looks almost
exactly identical to the one housing the present writer’s present apartment—viz.,
in consisting of a surface of multi-storily undifferentiated red brick
punctuated, both seemingly haphazardly along the horizontal axis and quite
evidently regularly along the vertical, by moulding-less windows (at some point
in the earliest years of the present writer’s residence in the latter building,
a fellow-rider of one of its elevators, a tipsy so-called frat boy [to be sure,
the present writer puzzles over his own preference of the elevator to his
beloved stairs in this episode, but perhaps at the time he himself was tipsy
enough to deem it prudent to break with routine], described it as an exemplary
specimen of <i>Stalinist</i> architecture, as in one sense it is not, in having
been built in a polity wherein the buck stopped not at Josef Stalin but Harry
Truman, but in another very much is, in having been built in a microepoch whose
pan-occidental architectural tone was set by Generalissimo Stalin as assuredly
uniformly as that of the late nineteenth century had been set by Queen Victoria),
but <i>inside </i>the two apartments the contrasts could be neither more
striking nor less flattering to the system of life determining the material
appointment of the present writer’s flat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To move from the bottom up, whereas the floor of the <i>AM</i> apartment
is composed of wooden parquetry of an intricacy of patterning that the present
writer has previously seen with his own eyes (as against the borrowed eyes of a
camera) only in palatially dimensioned pre-mid 20<sup>th</sup> century houses
built for the <i>haut bourgeoisie</i> (albeit subsequently occupied by much
socioeconomically lower types), the floor of his own apartment—or doubtless
more precisely the upper few millimeters thereof (beneath which Cor only knows
what lurks) is composed of mutually identical squares of lacquered corkboard—a
discrepancy that, in the light of the two buildings’ presumptive mutual near-exact
contemporaneity, suggests that in point of interior design (or whatever site
between architecture and interior design is occupied by the construction of
floors) the Soviets were already way ahead of us Yanks way back in the early
mid-twentieth century (and yet again, by comparison with the equally mutually
uniform squares of vinyl imitation linoleum with which he has had to content
himself underfoot in every other abode since his infancy [apart from a summer
in one of the aforementioned former <i>haut bourgeois</i> palaces], this
corkboard floor is positively artisanal and, indeed, visitors of a so-called
certain age to his present abode seldom fail to aver wistfully that <i>it’s
impossible to get a floor like this one done anymore</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as for the furniture—well, in the <i>AM</i>
apartment it consists entirely of basally or entirely wooden articles—a dinner
table, bedside tables, desks, deskside tables, armchairs, other sorts of
chairs, and, indeed, an upright grand piano—replete with the sorts of
inexhaustibly winsome swellings and taperings that can be imparted to a stick
or plank only by a master turner working entirely on his inexhaustibly
winsomely artisanal lonesome—in short, this apartment looks very much like an
extension of the genteel boarding-house sitting room of <i>Wings</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer’s apartment by decidedly
unflattering contrast is furnished entirely with or by factory-produced <i>veritable</i>
<i>pacotille</i>, by tables, chairs, bookshelves, and nothing else, all basally
composed of compressed sawdust and plastic and exhibiting nothing but flat
rectilinear shapes and surfaces, shapes and surfaces eminently impartible to
even the most amorphous diarrheac turd by a robot die-casting machine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the present writer’s domestic-furniturial case
the robotic die-cast hyperoccidental glossing of any aesthetic shortcoming in
the lifeworld of a single man, namely that it is all a function of his
bachelorhood, that his lifeworld simply lacks <i>a woman’s touch</i>, is evidently
inapplicable, for if he were genuinely indifferent to the charms of gracefully
turned furniture he would neither envy the possession of such furniture by
others nor resent its absence from his own lifeworld.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer is surrounded <i>chez lui</i>
by such shoddy and hideously monotonous furniture solely and simply because
such furniture is the best that his commercial environment has ever afforded
him at prices that he has been able to afford—admittedly qua someone who has
always been much closer to the bottom than to the top of the hyperoccidental
per capita-GDP-al heap, but by that same toke-fest also (at least so our
Whiggish masters assure us) qua someone who merely in virtue of residing within
four hyperoccidentally sited walls is nominally a thousand times wealthier than
Leonid Brezhnev to the power of Louis XIV.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And if it be objected by the <i>bienpensant</i> hyperoccidental that the
furniture in the <i>AM</i> apartment is in the highest of all probability of
pre-Soviet vintage; that, indeed, this furniture quite probably consists mainly
or entirely so-called family heirlooms, the fruits of the immeasurably better
fortunes enjoyed by the central couple’s ancestors under the auspices of the
old imperial regime—if this be objected by the <i>B</i>H, then I can and must
soundly trounce this objection by first reminding him autc. that the regime
that permitted the accumulation of all these fancy <i>meubles</i> was one that the
present Russian Federation under the presidency of Mr. Putin is chiefly taken
to task by hyperoccidentals for have having supposedly resurrected—viz., a
brazenly autocratic undemocratic, imperialistic, nationalistic, protectionist
regime, a regime that supposedly ruthlessly dominated and bled dry their
beloved Ukraine, etc.; and then pointing out to him autc. that if these articles
of furniture were of pre-Soviet manufacture, they obviously did not survive
sixty years of Soviet rule by shuffling from house to apartment to apartment,
etc. entirely on their own power like their contemporaries as represented (but
of course merely <i>represented</i>) in the silent so-called era of cinema
thanks to the newly discovered pseudo-miracle of stop-motion photography, that
some Soviet somebody or other, or a collectivity of such Soviet somebodies,
must have decided that they were worth preserving and transporting and organized
the manpower requisite to effecting such preservation-cum-transportation, that
throughout the Soviet epoch there quite evidently subsisted a <i>love of the
beautifully made newly old </i>that has by now quite evidently entirely
vanished from the hyperoccidental <i>Untervolksgeist</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(And no, just in case you’re wondering, you
hyperoccidental <i>Schweinhund</i> [and I have virtually no doubt that you are],
the protagonist of <i>AM</i> is not a Politburo member or otherwise a member of
the Soviet ruling class—he is, rather, a decidedly low-ranking member of the
Soviet intelligentsia, a literary translator who is obliged to make ends meet
by lecturing at the university to microscopic classrooms of apathetic and
essentially brainless teenagers; in short, basically the same sort of Greenwich
Village barely cat-swingable walkup flat-inhabiting schlemiel or schlub who
constitutes the hero of every Woody Allen film in which Mr. Koenigsburg has a
go at limning the lifeworld of someone with the same petit-bourgeois background
and middle-highbrow <i>Weltanschauung</i>-cum-habitus as himself who has not
been lucky enough to become a world-famous film director.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a figure slightly albeit not
substantially lower on the Soviet socioeconomic scale than the physician hero
of the almost exactly contemporaneous <i>Irony of Fate</i>, who in virtue of
being a member of a highly respected profession is allowed to live in a
brand-new flat with brand-new furniture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, this furniture is presumably not as well made as the
furniture in the <i>AM</i> apartment, but the aesthetic brilliance and
serviceability engendered by its newness (in flattering contrast to the
aesthetic drabness of the present writer’s rickety fifteen-to-twenty-five-year
old ultra-modern furniture) at least temporarily counterpoises its ugliness and
lack of durability and to a certain extent this preference for the new and
streamlined was a product of the tastes of the pan-occidental times: <i>IoF’</i>s
protagonists’ exact American contemporaries-cum-socioeconomic peers, Bob and
Emily Hartley, a clinical psychologist and schoolteacher, likewise lived in a
high-rise apartment with all-modern furniture in presumably marked contrast to
their contemporaries-cum-slight socioeconomic inferiors on the faculty of the
University of Chicago (I allude here, of course, to the assistant professors
and newly tenured associated professors, not to the full professors, some of
whom who may very well have been the Hartleys’ upstairs neighbors), who quite
probably lived in older lodgings filled with older and drabber but sturdier
furniture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the patent inferiority of
the present writer’s immediate <i>Lebenswelt</i> to that of the late-Soviet
lower intelligentsia were confined to the aesthetic register, if the worst he
could say about that <i>Lebenswelt</i> was that it could be filled with
prettier furniture, his complaints thereabout might justly (albeit only just
justly) be dismissed by a genuinely just judge—i.e., one not blinkered by <i>bienpensant</i>
hyperoccidental Whiggism—as so much whingingly petulant pie slice-atom
splitting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in point of outrageous
fact, this immediate <i>Lebenswelt </i>is pervaded with or by material shortcomings
with which the late-Soviet lower intelligentsia, or indeed any other stratum of
Soviet peacetime society, was never expected to cope.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most frequently intrusive, and so perhaps
the most vexing, of such shortcomings is the ever-increasing intermittency of
access to running water in his apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the course of the first ten years of his by now fifteen-year-long
residence in this dwelling he had to contend with, at most, five emergency
water shutoffs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, beginning in about
year eleven of this residence, such shutoffs became more frequent, and by ca.
2014 so frequent that a fellow longtime resident of the building in which his
apartment is sited, the perverse reader of Chaucer in French mentioned in “</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2016/06/every-man-his-own-w-g-sebald.html"><span style="text-decoration-line: none;">Every
Man His Own W.G. Sebald</span></a></span><span style="background: rgb(253 , 254 , 255); color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">,” could not forbear from remarking to him, <i>There’s
something wrong with the water in this building</i> during one of the
parallel-ly ever-more-frequent fire evacuations (q.v., LW).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, just over a year ago, the management
of the building dropped all pretense that the shutoffs were emergencies and
issued to the residents a theoretically conveniently magnetically adhesive (for
in practice the stinking thing resiles from a fridge door as reflexively as
beauty from an ape [ !/I’m so scared]) <i>maintenance calendar </i>brazenly highlighting
in each month of the year a date in which the water would be shut off from 9:00
a.m. to 5:00 p.m. as a matter of invariable course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How endless fellation loop-worthily conscientious
of them to let one know in advance so that one can be sure to be at work or out
of town on each of these days, or, failing that, to fast both solidly and
liquidly on each of their eves so as to obviate the inundation of one’s entire
living-space by the effluent of one’s toilet!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Not that even the most scrupulous provision for the day of maintenance
safeguards one against such an inundation, for unscheduled water shut-offs are
even more frequent than before the institution of the calendar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this increase one cannot but conclude
that the calendar was simply and fundamentally the building management’s way of
saying, “Look, you f**king little s**ts, we’re going to be shutting the water
off pretty much whenever we want to at the dee of an haitch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider yourselves lucky that we’re even
bovvering to give you advance notice of <i>any</i> of these shutoffs, you
f**king little s**ts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Christ, you’d
think you f**king little s**ty lot were actually <i>paying</i> to live here.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The management’s handling of trash collection
has degenerated along chronologically parallel lines and to materially and
ethically comparable depths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At my
move-in back in ’03 each floor of the building had two trash chutes down which
one could chuck one’s full trash bags; each chute would convey the trash down
to the basement and hence well beyond nostril’s reach of the chucker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not very many years after that, the management
sealed up the trash chutes and simply had the trash collected directly from
their encasing closets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was a
lamentable declination, but ultimately a bearable one, inasmuch as the trash
was collected promptly enough not to occasion much olfactory distress—at least
for the first several years of the new dispensation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then in circa ’12, the management started
both contracting out its trash collection service and charging residents for
this service as an <i>addition</i> to their rent, and ever since then, the
trash has tended not only to pile up in the closets but also to spill out into
the adjacent hallways, often to the extent of several yards, thereby both
hampering residents’ passages to and from their apartments and filling their
noses with a stench so pungent and wide-ranging that it cannot but pervade even
the interiors of dwellings sited at the uttermost remove (i.e., several
dozen-meters) from a trash closet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last
but ultimately most egregious, the management’s handling of fire emergencies
has proved not only woefully but terrifyingly defective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the past five years, scarcely a week has
passed in which at least one firetruck has not pulled up in front of the
building while the present writer has been at home (Lord knows how many have
appeared in his absence).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it is
indeed plausible on one so-called level to interpret these visitations as
evidence of the municipal fire department’s impeccable professionalism-cum-good
Samaritanism, on another, and to my mind more materially pertinent, level, one
must interpret them as evidence of the building management’s execrable fire
prevention-cum-containment strategy, as evidence that at least in recent years
they have simply not done a good enough job of making fires more preventable,
detectable, and locally extinguishable, that the municipal emergency services
have been being called upon to deal with emergencies that never would have
arisen at all had the building management had its pyro-prophylactic s**t
together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ultimately, though, one would
be able to tolerate the apparition of the firetrucks equanimously if one had
ever been given a clear sense of the connection between their appearance and
the advisability of leaving one’s apartment and heading down the nearest
stairwell (there are indeed four of these on each floor, but each floor is well
nigh-persective defyingly broad, and one must remember that these stairwells do
after all date from the time of Stalin).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure-ish, albeit not axiomatically sure, the building is equipped
with a general alarm system (albeit not with a sprinkler system), but this
system has so far proved far too sluggishly responsive for the present
building-resident’s peace of mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>During a fire in 2016, by the time the alarm went off, the main hallway
of his floor was visibly filled with smoke, and the smoke got ever thicker the
farther he descended the stairs to the designated evacuation area, the lobby on
the first floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turned out that the
fire had started in the laundry room—in other words, in the basement, a full
seven floors down from his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
end, the fire was put out before spreading beyond the basement, but what of
that, given that the telltale bearer of what we are told is the killer in the
majority of fire-related deaths, namely, carbon monoxide, was already in
abundant visible and olfactory evidence before we residents were notified of the
fire’s outbreak?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At bottom, all three of
the recent lacunae in basic world-maintenance <i>chez moi</i> that I have just
described would have been adjudged <i>scandalously unacceptable</i> in each and
every corner of the late-twentieth century Panoccident, the Soviet Union very
much included, and each of them by all rights ought to be adjudged scandalously
unacceptable therein now, inasmuch as each of them is vividly evocative of some
classic limit case in the Panoccidental system of life, of some event that the
Panoccidental mind can in good faith countenance only as a manifestation of the
most fleeting of temporary concentrations of bad apples in the most marginal
nook of the apple-barrel, or as the equally most fleeting of temporary failures
of the Panoccidental will to cope with the most ineluctably deleterious forces
of nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, to start with the trash
pile-up as the least egregious of the three: it is manifestly evocative of
Britain’s 1978-1979 so-called winter of discontent, of an episode that bade
fair to confound the very distinction between the hyperoccident and the
remainder of the occident on the other side of the Icey, of an episode that
made a demographically significant number of hyperoccidentals set their arms
akimbo and not merely rhetorically ask, “If capitalism can’t even manage to
keep mountains of rubbish from piling up in the streets, mightn’t we more than
just as well switch to Communism?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of
course this selfsame episode made an even more demographically significant
number of hyperoccidentals set their arms akimbo and not merely rhetorically
ask, “If socialism can’t even manage to keep mountains of rubbish from piling
up in the streets, mightn’t we more than just as well set our time machines
back to the days of Darwinian laissez-faire capitalism?”—whence the election of
Mrs. Thatcher as prime minister in the spring of ’79, but the Whig-gratifying
outcome of the episode is of no moment in this context, and of central moment
herein is the fact that the so-called winter of discontent was perceived by all
Britons across the so-called political spectrum as an episode in which the
barest essentials of world-maintenance were not being adequately seen to, that
it was by no means shrugged off with the equanimous utterance of <i>These things
happen</i> with which an inhabitant of the hyperoccident classically greets
minor disruptions to his autc. <i>Alltag</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Regular rubbish collection was something that Britons of the late 1970s
were accustomed to take for granted, and if the rubbish wasn’t being regularly
collected, then by Golly, Jove, aut al., they were going to make a more than
metaphorical stink about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I
am placing it in the middle of my catalogue for argumentative efficiency’s
sake, the shamelessly cavalierly administered rash of water shutoffs is
undoubtedly the most troubling item therein, inasmuch as it is instantly
evocative of a certain scenario associated with locales and events that figure
among the most world maintenance-threatening ones of the present century to
date—namely, certain Middle Eastern countries riven by military assault and
occupation by foreign powers and rancorous civil war in the wake of their
occupation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scenario has played out
numerous times over the past fifteen years: a foreign power’s military force devastates
a country’s material infrastructure; the foreign power devotes a woefully
inadequate amount of time and money to restoring that infrastructure, then
withdraws its troops, leaving the country nominally in charge of a government
of its—the foreign power’s—own selection and the infrastructure still in a
semi-shambolic state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The government
wants to complete the work of infrastructural restoration but is unable to do
so because it lacks sufficient legitimacy in the eyes of the people to muster
sufficient resources, and at the same time such meager resources as are
available are precluded from being put to their intended use by
extra-governmental political factions who, however implacably opposed to each
other they may be in their ultimate aims, are united in their immediate wish to
forestall any improvement in the government’s fortunes even at the cost of
inflicting further material hardship on their own constituents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a consequence of all this, the government
is obliged to institute a system of geographical and temporal rationing of
basic utilities, a system wherein the country or its principal metropolis are
divided into a certain number of sectors, each of which receives electricity,
water, etc., at certain times of the day or days of the week while the
remainder of the country or city languishes in thirst and darkness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally, the government hopes that this
system will be of very temporary duration; naturally it aims to restore
round-the-clock provision of services to all regions and citizens, but
practically speaking, in even the best of cases—cases, that is, in which the
government manages to maintain its existence rather than being annihilated by
the fissile collision of the abovementioned factions—the system is extended
into effective perpetuity and is accepted by the populace, however grudgingly,
as part of everyday life, as part of the way things are and the way they must
be; although it continues unfailingly to be represented in the hyperoccidental
news media as utterly scandalous and unthinkable—i.e., impossible to be imagined
as a system that would ever prevail here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, throughout the hyperoccident, and perhaps preeminently in
the North American hyperoccident, natural so-called disasters have not infrequently
deprived hundreds of thousands of people <i>en bloc</i> of the basic amenities
of late-modern civilization, but here this deprivation has traditionally not
been submitted to qua anything but an interruption of a version of life as
usual in which these basic amenities could be taken for granted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the very frequency and longevity
of these intervals of deprivation bespeaks a lamentably general and
longstanding disregard of a minimum level of world-maintenance, inasmuch as
most of the deprivations could have been forestalled by the implementation of
tried-and-true and none-too-expensive prophylactic measures—the erecting of an embankment,
the burial of a network of overhead power cables, autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at no point until the low-water mark very
recently demarcated by the scheduling of water shutoffs in the present writer’s
building of residence has any provider of one of these basic amenities simply
thrown in the towel or J-cloth on the provision of these amenities with
downright Falstaffian shamelessness, as if to say (in the G-rated and more
articulate version of <i>Look you f**ing little s**ts </i>etc.), <i>If you want
to have round-the-clock water or electricity you’ll just have to fetch it or
generate it yourselves with your own hands autc</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with this in-throwing it seems to me that
we have crossed a significant threshold on this side of which we should at the
least charitable-cum-barebones intellectually honest refrain from describing
any non-hyperoccidental polity as part of the <i>third world</i> or <i>developing
world</i>, let alone (in the present U.S. president’s words) as a <i>s***hole
country</i>, inasmuch as the very notion of a developing-cum-third world
country implies an effort to catch up with the so-called first and second worlds
(the second world, lest we forget, being the pre-1989 Communist world [more on
this anon, LW]) in point of the provision of basic amenities, and although
numerous polities within the so-called third world, notably and perhaps
uniquely numerous sub-Saharan African countries, continue (often in highly
resourceful from-the-bottom-up ways [e.g., door-to-door peddling of solar power
kits and the local tailoring and manufacturing of garments in resistance to the
provision of moth-eaten used <i>Star Wars</i> T-shirts and parachute pants by
the hyperocidental charity industry] that recall the long-bygone golden age of Yankee
ingenuity) to develop along such a trajectory, we in the so-called first world
ourselves are now patently moving in the opposite direction, patently pursuing
a policy of <i>un</i>-development, of the scaling back of the provision of
basic amenities to sub-third world levels of availability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As mentioned before, according to the present
writer’s lights, the scheduled water shut-offs are intrinsically the most
exemplarily troubling of the recent degenerative changes in his lifeworld, but
the building management’s inadequate handling of fire outbreaks is obviously
more deserving of rhetorical pride of place, first in centering on a problem
more immediately threatening to life and limb and second in recalling a
calamity that is still quite fresh in the hyperoccidental imagination—namely the
Grenfell Tower conflagration of June 2017.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Obviously, despite all this evocativeness, the respective outcomes of
the two phenomena bear no comparison, for in even the worst of the fire
emergencies the present writer has had to contend with, despite the
laggardliness of notification, he and all his fellow-residents managed to
survive the event, and even if none of these residents had ever been notified
of it at all, the fatality count presumably would have been much smaller than
at Grenfell, where the fire spread so quickly, and so far in advance of the
firefighters’ capacity to combat the blaze, that all those who stayed put in
their flats were ineluctably doomed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
by the selfsame or at least very similar token, the horrifying lethality of the
Grenfell tower fire was owing entirely to an ill-adjudged architectural
modification—namely the affixing of combustible cladding to the exterior of the
building—that bespoke no more intrinsically egregious degree of negligence than
that relentlessly evinced by the management of the present writer’s building of
residence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems reasonable to assume
that a residential building management that allows evacuation-worthy fires to
break out within its bailiwick several-to-many times per year, and neglects to
inform its charges of the desirability of evacuation until at least half that
bailiwick is filled with smoke, would not stick at having a façade of
combustible cladding installed <i>even after Grenfell</i> (perhaps out of mere
utter ignorance of the disaster, but more likely and reprehensibly out of a
failure to register the significance of words such as <i>cladding</i> and <i>combustible</i>
in their purdeaf assimilation of broadcast accounts thereof); and, indeed, so
shamelessly gormless has been this management’s fire-prevention policy that I
shouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow during my approach to the building entrance
from the outside I found myself having to hopscotch around several flaming
cladding tiles discarded or inadvertently dropped by cigarette-smoking cladding-appliers
overhead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I apologize if this all seems
to be in the poorest of poor taste—but speaking of poor (and the shamelessly
echolaliacal character of the transition is of course itself a manifestation of
poor taste)—the main and indeed exclusive reason I think it worthy to point up
what I believe to be patently significant parallels between Grenfell and my
building of residence is that received opinion across the so-called political
spectrum holds that the <i>ultimate</i> efficient cause of the fire was the
comparative indigence of Grenfell’s residents, was the fact that despite being
sited in one of the poshest postcodes in the United Kingdom the building was
after all a council tower block, or what we in the States would term a <i>public
housing project</i>, and hence simply and ultimately the habitation of people
who <i>mattered less</i> than their better-heeled peers-cum-fellow subjects
from the point of view of the various public administrative entities to which
they were most materially subject; and further holds by complementary
implication that anyone in the hyperoccident<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>with the supposedly axiomatically better fortune not to live in publicly
subsidized housing has never and will never have to deal with a degree-cum-kind
of negligence sufficient to precipitate a disaster remotely comparable to Grenfell;
and that in this regard received opinion seems to be lamentably mistaken,
inasmuch as, despite being apparently as materially negligent as the public
entities in charge of Grenfell, the administration of the present writer’s
building of residence is entirely in the hands of a private for-profit
corporation, and inasmuch as by and large its residents, although decidedly
unrich to the extent that one’s present annual net income is a measure of
richness, do not occupy any demographic nook that Bob or Suzy Hyperoccident
would regard as a traditional nesting-spot for outright poverty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In brief: almost everybody in the building
apart from the present writer seems to be either a student at the extremely
expensive university sited two blocks west of it or a junior doctor (or <i>resident</i>,
as we Yanks may still term them, for all I know [for I defaulted to a term I
have picked up from BBC Radio 4, which has been my sole source of medical
terminology for the past five years]) at the fairly expensive hospital sited
one block to its south.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it is not
as if by pan-hyperoccidental standards, it is by any means cheap to live here:
as of his most recent lease (and the rate rises substantially with each lease
renewal) the present writer is paying $1,045 per month for the privilege of
residing in a one-room apartment—a pittance, to be sure, by comparison with the
monthly outlay exacted by a one-room apartment in Brooklyn (New York, not
Maryland), but also—and to the present writer’s mind, far more materially
significant—a fortune by comparison with the $600-per-month or so clams exacted
by his friend’s two-bedroom apartment in Bozeman, Montana or (proportionately)
the $1,100-per-month exacted by his late father’s friend’s three-bedroom house
in Tampa, Florida.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If current received
hyperoccidental opinion is to be given the abjectly genuflective head that it peremptorily
exacts as a matter of course, the present writer’s fellow residents of his
building of residence should have long since at minimum taken to the streets
with placards and AK-47s several years ago, for that selfsame received opinion
presupposes that anyone well-off enough not to live in government-subsidized
housing is a sort of latter-day pea-princess who cannot bear to cope with the
most minute disruption of his or her material-cum-somatic comfort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in point of fact, as far as the present
writer knows, he is the only resident of this building—apart, that is, from the
oldish gentleman who remarked that there was <i>something wrong with the water</i>
several years ago—who has taken any umbrage whatsoever at these ever-increasingly
frequent interruptions of basic services.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And from this building-wide apparent indifference to its management’s reprehensible
inattention to the most basic amenities of civilized life, he, the present writer,
concludes that his fellow-residents—who in an eleven-story building of fifty
apartments per story must number into the thousands—have simply come to take the
maintenance of their world so brazenly-cum-blasély for granted that only the
most immediately and acutely palpable menace to their corporeal safety—say, a
blowtorch-flame licking the soles of their feet, or a rat gnawing at their inner
genitals—would be capable of rousing them from their virtual coma of
complacency. <i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So what</i>, each of
them must have said to himself, autc. at some recent point,<i> if my apartment
reeks of unflushed urine and</i> <i>fecal matter?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So what if I haven’t been able to take a
shower in three days?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So what if I had
to tread through a truckload of dirty diapers just to reach my front door
today? So what if I nearly suffocated during yesterday’s fire evacuation?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My withers are unwrung, for I am in constant
command of a friendly voice-activated lady robet for whom my wish is her
command and who will unhesitatingly and instantaneously deduct every last penny
from my bank account if I simply pronounce her name and ask her to do so.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Complementarily each of the twelve-year-olds ensconced
in the building management office must at some recent point have remarked to
himself autc, <i>So what if the hallways of this building incessantly reek of
dirty diapers? So what if I haven’t a clue as to when a single one of the
500-plus toilets in this building will next be flushable? So what if every
inhabitant of this building was within minutes of death by asphyxiation
yesterday? My withers are unwrung, for I am clearly marked out by destiny to
discharge a loftier office than that of keeping these snivelingly ungrateful squatters
alive and comfortable, for I am in constant command of a friendly
voice-activated lady robuht for whom etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></i>And from this horrifyingly symmetrical scenario one may safely
conclude that as a consequence of their besottedness by the digital false
sublime, hyperoccidentals have simply lost all inclination, and perhaps even all
capacity, to attend even ever so negligently or intermittently to world
maintenance either qua providers or qua beneficiaries thereof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>World-maintenance simply isn’t hip enough for
Bob or Suzy Hyperoccidental to pay any mind to nowadays—indeed, it is perhaps
the naffest, the least hip, activity on offer <i>á</i>-cum-<i>chez eux</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are no <i>apps</i> associated with it;
or at any rate, such apps as are associated with it avail themselves of
decidedly démodé graphic interfaces, of the sort of patchwork of coarse-grained
pixellation that fairly compels the user to ejaculate through a guffaw, <i>Let
me set my time machine for July 2012, if not as far back as November 2011</i>!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In today’s hyperoccident, one can garner outright
stratospheric levels of kudos and respect by quite literally and actually
whoring oneself out as a master practitioner of quite literal and actual anilingis
provided that before setting up shop one has meticulously mapped a sufficiently
impressively diverse array of offered tongue motions (a.k.a. <i>pas de la
langue</i>), gradations of targeted anal arc, texture, etc. onto a sufficiently
impressively complicated and responsive piece of so-called smart-phone software.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But woe betide the present-day
hyperoccidental who out of a presumptively misbegotten sense of duty brings some
so-called smart phone-unmediated fragment of knowledge, however tiny, to bear
upon a facet of the world that (unlike the ever self-renewing supply of fresh
anuses) existed before the advent of so-called smart phones; for, after all, it
now goes completely, absolutely, and categorically without saying that only a <i>total
loser</i> could waste a microsecond on anything so antediluvianly ancient by
means of such no less anciently antiquated means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>What’s your job, Pops?</i> the typical present-day
hyperoccidental, regardless of his autc. chronological age, or the addressee’s
sex or gender, bumptiously accosts a typical sub-pitiful sod engaged in such
work by such means<i>. Oh, I see: checking to see if the plumbing in this here
sexagenarian multistory building is meeting the minimum standards set by the
municipal building code of 1950. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
with a ruler and a set of feeler-gauges you say. But weren’t the ruler and the
feeler gauge invented by the ancient Romans </i>[sic]<i>? And didn’t indoor
plumbing go out of fashion in the very early 1900s </i>[sic] <i>at the very
most recent? And such being the case, given that it’s 2019, why for the ever-loving
axiomatically non-heterosexual fuck aren’t you fucking dead yet?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Admittedly, the present writer cannot in
good faith speak on or in behalf of world-maintenance from the perspective of
such a sod, for he is by no means immured in the very trenches of the
productive end of world-maintenance; he is by no means working with the literal
and actual nuts and bolts upon whose watertight mutual complementariness the
continuity our world quite literally and actually continues to be
superstructed, centuries after the technology securing this complementariness
was effectively perfected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the very
best and most, the present writer can pride himself on championing and
embodying world-maintenance as a generalizable ethos-cum-habitus by discharging
his duties as a menial clerical functionary, a so-called bean-counter or
pencil-pusher (or is the correct term <i>paper-pusher</i>?), with a
conscientious regularity and punctuality that admittedly bely his overriding
and fundamental contempt for the ultimate cause of his conscientiousness and
punctiliousness—i.e., for the so-called goal or so-called mission or of the
organization by and at which he is employed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He flatters himself that in doing his job so conscientiously and
punctiliously and not leaving the constituents (in either an intrinsic or
extrinsic sense) of his employer in the lurch, he is in some small way, as they
say, helping to keep the world from falling apart, even if these constituents are
fundamentally and ultimately working for the Devil; inasmuch as, although their
aims are fundamentally and ultimately Satanic, were their immediate exigencies
not supplied, the world would fall into the inner genitals of the Devil (for it
has patently long since fallen into His hands if not armpits) ever so slightly
more speedily than if these exigencies were denied them, inasmuch as general
faith in the actuality of world-maintenance would thereby be undermined ever
more slightly, inasmuch as even if a 21B-stroke-six form is intended to set in
motion a train of events ineluctably eventuating in the demolition of the
entire system of life, a bloke or blokess who fails to receive a 21B
stroke-six-form in time to meet a certain deadline of urgent material significance
to the maintenance of his or her particular nooklet of the world is more than
marginally likely to throw in the towel or J-Cloth of this nooklet; to
ejaculate, <i>Fuck it, I’m off</i>, and immediately thereupon repair to some
sort of world maintenance-corroding wilderness<i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>The present writer further, and more
gently, flatters himself that in not calling in sick every third day of the
work week as everybody else not only at his own organization but also at every
other organization in the hyperoccident seems to do nowadays he is setting a
good example, as they used to say, for the butcher’s quarter-dozen or so people
in his <i>Umwelt</i> who happen—admittedly presumably pathetically
fleetingly—to remark the distinction between his presence and his absence in
the that <i>Umwelt</i>; that he is, so to speak the Cal Ripken of a sort of
five-a-side world-maintenance team (if baseball were as amenable to downscaling
as soccer) consisting largely or perhaps even entirely of players unaware of
each other’s existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is above
all in virtue of his perhaps unrivaled subjective continuity as a <i>connoisseur
of world-maintenance</i> that the present writer believes he is entitled to
enter—or, rather remain within—the lists as world-maintenance’s most dedicated
champion and informed propagandist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
is this subjective continuity that signally distinguishes the present writer’s
ethos-cum-<i>Weltanschauung</i> from that of a mere <i>cantankerous old fart</i>,
of a mere bigoted, historically blinkered booster of the institutions,
folkways, gadgets, etc. that happened to be in their heyday when he was a
younker [the most recent <i>locus classicus</i> is Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old
Man, but the type has been satirized since at least the mid-seventeenth
century, when it elicited uncharacteristically vituperative scorn from Dr. Sir
Thomas Browne]-cum-disparager of the contingently different preoccupations of
his younger contemporaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present
writer believes himself to be secure against pigeonholing as such a type in
relation to both vertical sides of the projected edifice, for even as a younker
he contemned all the fads, all the totems of the juvenile <i>hic et nunc</i>,
cherished by his contemporaries, and cherished everything evincing any sort of
continuity with previous microepochs, epochs, and eras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As early as the age of 14, he disdained <i>The
A-Team, Miami Vice, </i>Def Leppard, and Michael Jackson and sought solace and
inspiration in <i>Candide</i>, <i>Bleak House</i>, Mozart, and Mahler; and stroppily
made do with 60% cotton Oxford shirts and twill slacks while disdaining Members
Only jackets and dreaming of an excuse-cum-opportunity to don white tie and
tails (an excuse-cum-opportunity that he eventually alighted upon in his
high-school senior prom [albeit, lamentably, without the aid of a single
natural textile fiber]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And perhaps not
quite needless to say, at the age of 14-plus-23, he retains an attachment to <i>Candide</i>
etc. and has yet to acquire a scintilla of nostalgia for <i>The A-Team</i> etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If at least in the meantime the subjective
development of his contemporaries had conformed to the bit of hyperoccidental
received philosophy of history according to which, à la the abovementioned
Grumpy Old Man, each and every hyperoccidental human individual clings
tenaciously to the folkways etc. of his autc. own microgeneration until death,
the present writer might conceivably still find his existence as a connoisseur
of world-maintenance at least just barely bearable, for although in such a
case, he presumably would never succeed in convincing any of his near-to-exact
contemporaries that Mahler’s Ninth Symphony was a superior artistic achievement
to Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar on Me” or that he aut al. should discard his
moth-eaten Members Only jacket in favor of a well-preserved double-breasted
Yves Saint-Laurent blazer à la <i>Late Night</i>-period David Letterman, he
would at least be vouchsafed the intersubjective pleasure of luxuriating in
their communal indifference to the at-best non-world-maintenance-inimical regressive
pseudo-innovations introduced by persons of later birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What has in fact happened in flagrant
contravention of this received philosophy of history is that, owing to the
willful inimicality of the hyperoccidental system of life to world-maintenance,
not only the present writer’s contemporaries but also his elders have to a man,
woman, autc. embraced the regressive, pseudo-innovative tat originating from
the younger generation-and-three-quarters (for in all <i>justesse</i> a
generation should last exactly twenty-five years, such that in the forty-seven years
since the present writer’s birth exactly one generation has come to term and a
second one come within five years of doing so [this because although in the
quasi-official nomenclature the present writer is a so-called Generation Xer
and everyone born since ca. 1978 is a millennial and a member of a separate
generation, of his juniors it is really only the younger half of the so-called
millennials’ tranche or persons born since October of 1986 {i.e. 12-and-a-half
years after the present writer’s birth} who have even half a right to describe themselves
as hailing from the generation after his and only persons born since April of
1997 {i.e., a full twenty-five years after the present writer’s birth} who have
a full right to describe themselves as hailing from a completely different
generation, with the third generation yet to be born only in 2022 {provided we
make it that far}, or fifty years after the present writer]), and have moreover
arrogated the effrontery of high-hatting him for not embracing this tat with
commensurately fellationary zeal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
segment of BBC Radio 4’s flagship cultural affairs programme [i.e., flagship
dedicated flogger of the nappy deposits of oversized lumpen-prole babies
styling themselves artists {the exact Stateside analogue is NPR’s <i>Fresh Air</i>}]
<i>Front Row</i> that aired only a few days ago (i.e., on August 9 or 10, 2018)
quite pithily encapsulated the state of affairs by which the present writer is
so grievously afflicted (albeit from one of his afflicters’ point of view and
consequently with an unforgivable air of triumphant smugness only going through
the feeblest motions of masquerading as chagrin): in attempting to account for
the supremacy of the turn-of-the-millennium American sitcom <i>Friends</i> in the
viewing figures of so-called video streaming services, one of the commentators
remarked that the show now <i>unites the generations</i> in hailing from the <i>twilight
of pre-digital culture</i>, from the last years in which <i>we actually sat
around just talking to each other instead of staring into our phones each and
every minute</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer
respectfully begs to have his name stricken from the mailing or calling list in
which he has been included via this instance of the utterance of <i>we</i>
(along with countless other more or less contemporaneous-cum-consubstantial
arrogations of the first-person plural pronoun), inasmuch as he spends zero (0)
minutes per week, month, etc. staring into his phone, inasmuch as until six
months ago the only phone he owned was a coil-corded touchtone so-called landline
unit that repaid staring into as poorly as—albeit admittedly no less richly
than—its late-1980s ancestor, and he now that he has at long last had a smart
phone forced on him spends more time brushing his teeth than staring into it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has not an iota of sympathy for any of his
contemporaries’ multi-myriad hair-shirted (or rather unbiodegradable
macro-fiber imitation hair-shirted) eponymized-1980s-diet-esque regimens for
limiting so-called screen time because he has never spent a minute face-to-face
with an electronic screen doing anything that he would have felt a jot more
luxurious or self-corrupting in doing vis-à-vis a sheet of old-fashioned
acoustic paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His withers are legitimately
unwrung by the very notion of being corrupted by so-called social media because
such corruption is not a vortex that he could ever dream of coming close enough
to being sucked into, any more than (à la Voltaire to Rousseau) he could ever dream
of being prevailed upon to stop walking on two legs and resume crawling on all
fours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is by no means to say that his
heart is as adamantly obdurate as freeze-dried quartz towards the blandishments
of a prospective <i>Friends</i>-watching session, for although he was certainly
no fan of the show during its original run, he fancies he might just feel a
ghost of a suspicion of <i>Gemütlichkeit</i> on being sucked into the
admittedly ineluctable (albeit hitherto <i>chez lui</i>-unprecedented) vortex of
a <i>Friends</i>-viewing session; but he further fancies that his enjoyment of
the viewing-session would be radically different in spirit from that of his
fellow-viewers, for whereas they would perforce be looking on these proxies of
their former selves—on Ross, Joey, Rachel, Chandler, Monica, and Phoebe—with
the mixture of self-satisfied bemusement and condescending mirth with which a
hyperoccidental twenty-something adult classically spectates on home movies of
his autc.’s fifth birthday party, I would be spectating on them in a spiritual
attitude hailing from quite a different sector of the hyperoccidental spiritual
atlas, spectating them with the mixture of full-throttle horror-cum-lugubriousness
with which a middle-aged adult—perhaps, indeed, an exact contemporary of my
empirical self—watches home-movie footage of his now drool-drenchedly senile parents
in their twenties and thirties, with all their faculties self-evidently
as-yet-unimpaired; or, perhaps, more precisely if less evocatively—because
drawing on a topos that has been exploited less frequently if ever at all—in
the attitude with which in a world taken over by zombies the last unzombified
human while sitting in a roomful of zombies watches home-movie footage of these
selfsame zombies’ prezombified selves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The present writer’s sense of alienation from his contemporaries–very
much including his closest friends and kin—is just that extreme<i>, </i>appalling,
and<i> unheimlich.</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No one he knows
is someone he knows.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the oldest
and formerly gravest persons in his <i>Umwelt</i>, veritable white-bearded
Nestors who formerly would have blushed even to be seen absentmindedly glancing
at a hit television program or heard whistling a Billboard chart-topper, are
now habitually and incessantly engaged in activities that the most airheaded
cheerleader at his high school would have regarded as <i>so eighth-grade</i> in
point of sentimentality and trend-humping desperation; and even more
horrifyingly-cum-outrageously, they appear to retain no memory of their quondam
gravitas and habitually and incessantly take the present writer to task for his
refusal to join in the wantonly lighthearted desecration and demobilization of
everything they used at least quite convincingly to affect to cherish and
revere most ardently and devoutly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nevertheless, while acknowledging that the present hyperoccidental <i>Übervolksgeist</i>
is unprecedentedly infantile and zombified, and further surmising that more or
less contemporaneously with its passage into the new millennium the
hyperoccident crossed a sort of Rubicon of infantilization-cum-zombification—that,
in other words, in the current universally subscribed-to culture of
phone-worship we are dealing with a phenomenon that in contrast to previous
episodes of down-dumbing will prove to participate in (note well that I write <i>participate
in</i> and not <i>cause</i>, for the destroyer of the hyperoccident is a
many-anused beast) our complete and irreversible undoing—the present writer
cannot pretend that this Rubicon has been crossed in consequence of some wholly
contingent adjustment of our itinerary, that our itinerary might just as easily
and much more felicitously have taken us across the Rhine, Danube, or Elbe
(i.e., towards a hyperoccident in which universal phone worship had been preempted
by some incontestably more attractive alternative-cum-salubrious <i>Übervolksgeit</i>-defining
phenomenon like universal natural clothing fiber-worship, universal
automotophobia, or universally peremptory universal insistence on consistently
functional indoor plumbing), for as he has already taken considerable pains to
shew in the present essay, the misery in which we (or at least the present
writer and any other surviving non-child zombies) are presently immersed and
stewing is an ineluctable consequence of the entire modern commercial-cum-industrial
sub-system of life at its very origins in the seventeenth century—i.e., at the
moment at which this sub-system came to be simultaneously dominated and defined
by the dreams and exigencies of quasi or semi-enlightened Christian Protestantism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this very outset, quasi-or-semi-enlightened
commercial Christian Protestantism was signalized not only by its so-called
work ethic—by its veneration of labor <i>eo ipso</i>, its assumption that one
was <i>caeteris paribus</i> always better employed exerting oneself than in
relaxing—but also and no less signally by its intrinsically amoral nominalized
teleology and its downright unethical collective sociopathy, by its assumptions
that certain aims were worth pursuing <i>eo ipso</i> regardless of their social
implications and that the effects of one’s labors on persons outside the
circumference of the community of the faithful, of the would-be elect, were of
no moment whatsoever, that such persons might as well have been rats as human
beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not one of these ethicules is
perforce conducive to world-maintenance, and the last of them is manifestly
toxic to it, inasmuch as it is ineluctably productive of charlatanism,
hucksterism, and every other variety of con-artistry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet it was this last ethicule, the
ethicule of collective sociopathy, that kick-started the great pan-occidental
commercial-industrial takeoff take-off—a take-off that has long since been
enshrined throughout the hyperoccident as the unimprovable <i>ne plus ultra</i>
of world-maintenance—by providing sufficient material and spiritual fuel to
other two.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first generation of great
Anglo-Protestant merchants and industrialists, the generation of mercers,
fullers, tailors, brewers, vintners, distillers, drapers, printers,
booksellers, butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, et al. who supplied the
court of Charles II with all the pomp and luxury that afforded it its even-as-of-now-uncontested
reputation as the most decadent court in Europe since Nero’s, knew full well
that at least according to the terms of their own creed and its highly ascetic interpretation
of Scripture they were facilitating Charles and his courtiers’ access to vices
whose habitual practice more or less guaranteed these persons’ eternal
damnation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that was perfectly fine
and copacetic with these Puritan procurers because in their view the king and
his courtiers were already of the Devil’s party in virtue of being at least de
facto champions of episcopacy and hence crypto-champions of the papacy, such
that supplying them with the means of more speedily packing themselves off to
the grave and hence to Hell was all to the good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And considered as an act of mass-poisoning
this commercial-cum-industrial venture was enormously successful; for one by
one in quick succession the members of the Restoration court, including the
king himself, succumbed to venereal diseases and other ailments brought on by
sensual overindulgence, and from that time forward every British monarch has
had to cultivate at least the appearance of austerity and inculcate the same
habitus in his or her entourage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Meanwhile the priggish peddlers of poison, first in Britain and then in
all other elsewheres in the greater occident, have had to seek their prey in
ever-humbler quarters—the landed aristocracy, the grand bourgeoisie, the petit
bourgeoisie, and even the lumpen proletariat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the more widely and concentratedly their poison has spread, the less
capable they have become of sequestering themselves from it as pure producers
and the more prone they have become to consuming it themselves and consequently
to falling victim to their own crime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
long as there subsisted in the hyperoccident a formal and semi-rigorously
enforced distinction between work time and free time, a distinction succinctly
articulated in the German proverb <i>Schnapps ist Schnapps</i>,<i> und Dienst
Dienst</i>, it was at least theoretically possible and in some rare cases even
practicable to be a net producer, meaning generally a net poisoner but also
sometimes (owing to the sacrosanctness of the institution of the <i>job</i>,
which subsumes commercial and non-commercial undertakings alike) a net-world
maintainer, rather than a net consumer, meaning universally a poison victim and
world-maintainee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course
consumption of so-called leisure goods during non-working hours has been quite
a serious business indeed throughout the hyperoccident since at least the
mid-twentieth century, and with the so-called smart phone’s insinuation of
infantile play into every hour and minute of the hyperoccidental <i>Alltag</i>
we have reached a point at which virtually every living hyperoccidental person
brazenly associates himself aut al. primarily with what he aut al. consumes
rather than with what he aut al. produces or at least affects—or at least
formerly affected—to produce. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Officially
speaking (not that even the notion of officiality any longer carries any
rhetorical weight whatsoever) Bob or Suzy Hyperoccidental may be Company A’s Sales
and Distribution Manager for Region B or Governmental Agency X’s Branch Chief
in Charge of the Allocation of Service Y, but both materially and phenomenally
speaking, he or she is first and foremost Generic Exchanger No. 2,222,447,584 (or
some other number in the low-to-mid {and soon to be upper} ten figures) of Baby-Talk
with the Universally Available Voice-Activated Friendly Female Personal Bank
Account Balance-Erasing Robuht.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which
would be all fine and dandy if the world did not have to be maintained in the
meantime; but of course the hyperoccident’s officially appointed
world-maintainers, however pompously they may public preen themselves on their
indispensability and howl like newborn babes dipped in rubbing alcohol the
moment this indispensability is, I do not say <i>called into question</i>, but
merely relegated to a position of slightly less than paramount supremacy;
however highly, I say, they may rank themselves in the world-maintenance
pyramid, they secretly positively hug themselves with positively orgasmic
complacency in their assumption that the world is actually being maintained
elsewhere by others, by immeasurably more menial souls in immeasurably distant lands
and immeasurably more subordinate walks of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as we have seen in the case of the
perpetual breakdown of basic services in my building of residence, a goodly
proportion of the maintenance of the hyperoccidental portion of the world still
has to be superintended and undertaken by inhabitants of that portion; and to
the greatly overrated extent to which this is maintained by the inhabitants of
other portions, even these extraterritorial persons’ collective contribution is
diminishing in force with each passing minute, as ever-increasing numbers of
such persons acquire so-called smart phones and promptly metamorphose into
latter-day Peter Ustinov-in-<i>Quo Vadis</i>es imperiously bidding A***a to
fetch them ice from the peak of some distant mountain range eighteen times per
sweatshop-shift, and in so doing not only bankrupting themselves but also and
(and perhaps even more objectionably) leaving dozens of hyperoccidentals quite
literally shirtless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abetting this
intrinsically and irredeemably vicious dispensation to an unquantifiable but
undoubtedly significant degree are the political economists, who probably
occupy an even higher echelon in the clerisy of our age than the natural
scientists, and who in incessantly assuring us hyperoccidentals that <i>consumer
spending is </i>(that’s <i>is</i> not qua actually shoddy, worm-eaten
balsa-wood placeholder of some very probably temporary state of affairs but
rather qua supposedly adamantine titanium lynchpin of an eternally perduring
SoA)<i> the largest sector of the U.S. economy </i>(an assurance which,
inasmuch as the United States, in being the Holy Land of so-called
laissez-faire capitalism, remains the hyperoccident’s political-economical good
[i.e., from my perspective, <i>evil</i>] angel, amounts to an unchallengeable
reprimand to every polity that would seek its bliss in other economic sectors)
all but literally goad us into taking it for granted that if consumer spending
is <i>up</i>, all is right and bidding fair to be ever-righter with the United
States, and that the greater proportion of not only Bob or Suzy American’s
income but also of his or her securable credit, is being squandered on
intrinsically corruptive garbage, the greater cause each and every American,
and indeed hyperoccidental, has to thank his, her, autc. lucky stars (i.e., of
course, the political economists themselves) for living in the hyperoccident of
all political-economical-geographical sectors at this moment of all moments in
the entire history of humankind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
actual truth, the only hope for the subsistence, let alone prosperity, of the
U.S. over the long term lies in the displacement of consumer spending from atop
its political-economic (a.k.a. GDP-al<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>perch) by producer selling; i.e., by a situation in which what Bob or
Suzy American is producing is of greater value on the so-called global
marketplace than what he or she is consuming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Certain purblindedly far-sighted American political economists have
recognized the necessity of this displacement, but their proposed means of
achieving it bear(s) witness to their laughable and typically present-day
American intellectual petit-bourgeois addiction to soap operas set in hospitals
and forensic laboratories, this means being the retooling of every last goombah,
yokel, and unregenerate pig-f**ker in the Union into a physician, computer
programmer, or natural scientist—i.e., into a producer whose product is so
highly valued on the so-called global marketplace that however lavishly and
cavalierly he aut al. may splurge on intrinsically corruptive garbage he aut
al. need never fear figuring as a net consumer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That such a retooling is utterly impracticable is—or ought to
be—obvious, first and very much foremost, on the self-evident evidence of the
insuperable disinclination of the preponderance of American goombahs et al.
(like all non-American goombahs et al.) to any sort of labor requiring any sort
of mental exertion whatsoever (and yes, by these goombahs et al., I am thinking
<i>inter multissima alia</i> of <i>you</i>, you <i>Threepenny Opera</i>-esque
beggars masquerading as biologically ordained steelworkers in the tediously
shopworn theme park rustily known as the Rust Belt [on the longstanding
phoniness of which see far above]); that it is highly undesirable is perhaps
less obvious but still very much true, inasmuch as at least under the auspices
of our present system of life, physicians, computer programmers, and natural
scientists are preeminently concerned not with <i>maintaining</i> the world but
<i>changing</i> it (admittedly <i>very</i> occasionally even in changing it for
the better in non-delusory terms, but even then they proceed under the
assumption that <i>somebody else</i> will ensure that the inadequate but
indispensable status quo will go on maintaining itself over the course of the
years or even decades exacted by the development or implementation of their
world-changing stratagems), and, perhaps even more perniciously, inasmuch as
even a United States composed <i>entirely</i> of net-producers would still be
obliged to offload its products somewhere, and hence be obliged to strengthen
the concentration of consumptive poison in the collective bloodstream of the
remainder of the world to presumably you-ain’t-seen-nothin’-yet-esque levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This scenario of a thankably laughably
unrealizable utopia of a smoothly along-chugging boffin-driven United States
surrounded by a world suffocating or drowning in its own consumptive juices
brings me to the shortcomings of the second of the trio of the mainstays of the
modern commercial system of life—namely, nominalized teleology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the pan-hyperoccidentally sacrosanct cant
of industrialized pedagogy this mainstay is idolized under the auspices of the phrase
<i>realizing one’s full potential</i>, and every pedagogical institution in the
hyperoccident is in principle dedicated fundamentally and foremost to this full
potential-realization vis-à-vis every pupil in its charge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Implicit in this full-potential-realization
mission is the assumption that every stinking brat on the Devil’s dun Earth would
inexorably develop into an Einstein, Eisenstein, ’Eisenberg, or
Eisenstadt—i.e., into a world-class scientist or artist—if only he, aut al. were
steeped lengthily and deeply enough in a sufficiently concentrated bath of
dollars, euros, etc.; and this assumption has of course (been) met with a fair
amount of polemical scepticism (although obviously not nearly enough thereof to
deconsecrate the phrase or dislodge the assumption), scepticism founded on the well-attested
and reasonably compelling evidence that even after being steeped in almost
lethal concentrations of cash a fair proportion of school graduates have turned
out not to be able to locate their own anuses without the help of a private
dick (cf. my almost immediately preceding tiradelet against goombahs aut al.)—all
cracking good stuff to be sure, but even these sceptics take it for granted
that a world in which everyone realized his aut al.’s full potential would be
an immeasurably better world than the presently extant one: they undoubtedly
disagree with their opponents about the means but are in full agreement with
them about the ends; they dream of a world in which the money being pointlessly
lavished on the predestinedly gormless own-ass non-finders were instead
productively lavished on the actual potential Einsteins et al. , who would then
come all the closer to realizing their respective full potentials, by achieving
commensurately greater things at a commensurately earlier age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Much as I sympathize with the anti-lumpen
prole-fellating spirit of these critics, I cannot in good faith affirm the
letter of their program, inasmuch as history hath incontrovertibly shewn that the
full potential-realization of specific individuals often eventuates in outcomes
that are downright inimical to world -maintenance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By way of obviating the unsealing of the
biggest can of worms of all time, I shall skip the most obvious counterexample
in favor of the second-most obvious one—viz. the most obvious counterexample’s
long-distance bromantic partner, Henry Ford.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By any sane measure, Mr. Ford was undoubtedly a genius, a genius whose
potential was geared towards the expedient production of motorcars, which
potential he was ultimately suffered to realize in full, in so doing inflicting
on the world a phenomenon that is <i>undoubtedly</i> (are you going to lower
those eyebrows yourself, DGR Mark Umpteen, or am I going to have to introduce
them to your chin?) the second-greatest menace to world-maintenance that the
world has yet seen (the first being of course the various nuclear-powered
explosives), inasmuch as this menace—viz., of course, near-universal motorcar-ownership—has
imparted to almost every human being in the hyperoccident (not perhaps to
mention ever-growing numbers of human beings in the rest of the occident and
extraoccident) the <i>instantaneously</i> executable power of life and death
over each and every other human being in his or her <i>Umwelt</i>, a power that
in deplorable contrast to that imparted by weapons of every sort is exercised <i>by
default</i> rather than virtually exclusively by an act of will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, it is possible to injure or even
kill someone accidentally with a weapon, but generally only by handling it an
egregiously negligent way–by, for example, twirling and flinging about a loaded
gun while it is fully cocked; whereas in the case of a car, once the accursed
machine is up and running and has been shifted out of neutral gear, its driver
will begin causing damage to life and limb (either human or arboreal) with it
as a matter of course unless he aut al. deliberately chooses <i>not</i> to do
so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In recent years we have of course
been witnessing the automobile’s alarmingly destructive power with seemingly
ever-crescent frequency, as <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>one
disgruntled dickhead after another has deliberately veered off a
hyperoccidental city street and onto the adjoining sidewalk and maimed or
killed several-to-dozens of pedestrians (or into a crowd of merrymakers and
maimed or killed dozens to hundreds), but the tens of thousands of
automobile-induced injuries and deaths in so-called accidents tallied every
year of the past century and counting would testify just as eloquently to that
power were the taken-for-grantedness of near-universal car-ownership recognized
for the moral abomination that it actually is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But this selfsame century-and-counting of near-universal car ownership
has entirely blinded us to the abominableness of this abomination, as can (or
at least should) be plainly seen in the assignment of blame in legal cases
centering on automotive death or injury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When a person has inadvertently injured or killed another person by
means of an automobile, the judiciary always blames the so-called accident on
some supervenient non-automotive cause operating on the injuring or killing
driver—alcohol, a mobile phone conversation, a reckless disregard of right of
way—or, perhaps just as frequently, on a comparable non-automotive cause
operating on the killed or injured pedestrian or other driver; which is quite
absurd given that in non-automotive life the supervening events are both common
(in some cases unavoidably so) and laughably harmless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If, for example, while negotiating a left
turn round a corner described by two faces of a cubicle in a typical semi-open-plan
hyperoccidental office, a pedestrian is too absorbed in his aut al.’s thoughts,
as they say, to stop for a quick left-and-right gander in case somebody is
approaching alongside the as-yet-invisible other face or its equally invisible resumption
via the cubicle across the passage from which he aut al. is emerging, he aut
al. stands a fair chance of suffering-cum-inflicting a mildly discomfiting but
physically utterly undamaging collision with a fellow pedestrian, or at worst—i.e.,
if the fellow-pedestrian happens to be carrying, say, a tray laden with canapés
(or a canapé laden with trays)—a highly discomfiting but no more physically
injurious episode of slapstick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If, on
the other hand, while negotiating a left turn round the corner of a street
intersection, a driver is too absorbed in his aut al.’s thoughts to stop for a
quick left-and-right gander, he aut al., along with any passengers he may be
conveying, stands a fair chance of suffering-cum-inflicting an injurious or
fatal collision with a couple of tons of metal in motion within which are
invariably included one or more other human beings who is or are almost
inevitably also injured or killed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
sufferer-cum-inflictor of a thought absorption-occasioned pedestrian collision
in a fully pedestrian environment thinks almost nothing of that collision even
in its immediate aftermath and certainly does not allow to it so much as a
moth’s fart of weight on his aut al.’s conscience , whereas the
sufferer-cum-inflictor of a thought absorption-occasioned automotive collision
is haunted by remorse over that collision for months, years, or even decades
afterwards—as he aut al. jolly well should be, but not for the reason for which
he aut al. invariably is so haunted and is universally acknowledged to be jolly
well rightly haunted, viz., his aut al.’s inattentiveness in the microseconds
leading up to the collision, but rather for his aut al.’s having ever assumed
guidance of a moving automobile in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course to this assertion my FrankenDGR,
mechanically channeling a precept inculcated in(to) him by his high-school
driver’s education teacher, will demur that a higher, more concentrated level
of attentiveness is exacted of the driver of an automobile than of the
pedestrian, that it’s all very well to be ambling gormlessly along on shank’s
mare while chomping on a Big Bite and surrendering your ears to the <i>Klangumwelt</i>-obliterating
tuneage supplied to them by your Walkman, but once you’re behind the wheel of a
car, sonny boy or buster, you’ve got to have all five of your senses honed and
on permanent DEFCOM 1 (q.v. far above) alert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No sirree, sonny boy or buster, once you’re behind that wheel and aloft
of those four other wheels, you can’t take your eye off the ball that is the
road for a microsecond, lest you be instantly thwacked, or thwack some other
hapless son [(sic on the genderism {this was after all the ’70s, ’80, ’90s,
oughties, or tweenies-to-mid teens}] of a bitch, into the bleachers or a sand
trap (depending on whether the FrankenDGR’s driver’s ed teacher’s favorite
sport was baseball or golf).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But <i>eis
ipsis</i> the hysterical terms in which this demurral is couched testify to its
flagrant unreasonableness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The human
organism is capable of such finely honed, dedicated, multisensorily vigilant
concentration on a specific activity for only the briefest of intervals, and
even then only when the activity in question is at least relatively unfamiliar and
consequently exacts such concentration in order to be performed without the
immediate betrayal of an egregious degree of incompetence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The moment a person has become habituated to
a given activity—be that activity ever so intrinsically hazardous—he aut al.
will begin to find himself aut al. devoting the preponderance of his aut al.’s
attention to other matters while engaged in it., and consequently will require
more than occasional goading reminders of its exigency (such as this may be) in
order not to begin performing it as egregiously imcompetently as he or she did
when first learning its rudiments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
accounting, such inattention will tend to express itself, in, say, a numerical total
rounded to the wrong nearer decimal point or a sum assigned to the wrong fiscal
category, and be corrected by a sternly stroppy email tendering a derisive suggestion
that the blunderer enroll in a course in remedial math(s) or spreadsheet
software usage at the nearest adult high school; in automotive aurigation it
will tend to express itself in a non-stop sign heeding turn or unsignaled
lane-change, and be corrected by an injurious or fatal collision with a
pedestrian or another vehicle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Accountancy is rightly seen as one of the most prosaic of occupations
precisely on account (pun once again unintended but unavoidable) of, <i>inter
paucissima alia</i>, the at least <i>immediate</i> inconsequentiality of even
its most egregious errors (to be sure, an accounting error can have serious[ly]
adverse consequences, but these consequences, in being mediated by the present
global monetary system, and consequently to some extent by the mental processes
of people sitting [or increasingly, and lamentably, standing] at desks in
stationary rooms, never entail any immediate corporeal injury to the affected
party, and only very seldom even the most trifling of disruptions of the AP’s <i>Alltag</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the erroneous complete erasure of one’s
bank account balance in theory spells mortal starvation, in practice the full
balance of one’s account, and consequently one’s immediate access to
alimentation, can usually be restored before one’s tummy undergoes its first
monetary outlay-exacting rumble [All these generalizations are of course
predicated on the by no means to-be-taken-for-grantedness of a degree of
world-maintenance sufficient to maintain the present global monetary system]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet each and every accountant who is also
a regular driver regularly assumes a position that in point of immediate
world-menacingness soundly trounces even the most hazardous of jobs—say, the
manual conveyance of unspent Uranium fuel rods into the core of a nuclear
reactor—in the stationary pedestrian world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The eye-burstingly obvious yet apparently
universally unrecognized truth is that the degree of concentration properly and
fully exacted by automotive driving—i.e., a degree thereof that would take
cognizance of every material-cum-moral obstacle to the vehicle’s de facto inexorable
progress in time to avoid that obstacle—is unattainable by any human being who
has yet lived, that it is, indeed, a degree of concentration exactable only of
a kind of demigod or perhaps even only of a full-fledged god.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, one would reasonably
presume that the aurigational mobility—the 99.9999…% of the present writer’s fellow
hyperoccidentals of the past century and change who have been regular
motorcar-drivers—had entered into some sort of <i>Julius Caesar</i>-esque
compact (not a car in itself, but easily metaphorizable as such, i.e., as a
TARDIS-esque innumerable clown-including vehicle), wherein they had washed
their arms in the blood of their prospective victims and agreed to regard one
another as moral peers or brethren—indeed, as fellow-Lucifers—in having
unanimously agreed to arrogate the divine privilege of governing such engines
of slaughter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead, they have set up
a moral scale of downright Laputanesquely pedantic precision according to which
those drivers who handle these slaughtering-machines with a materially
minusculely greater degree of control than certain others are to be classed
with the non-fallen angels, and these certain others are to be cast into the
ninth circle of Hell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this
Laputanesque scale I of course—and here for perhaps actually once I can use <i>of
course</i> in good faith—mean in the main the laws, and even more significantly
the moral stigma, attached to so-called drunk driving (or <i>drink driving</i>,
as it is solecistically styled in the United Kingdom), a scale according to
which the injury or fatality occasioning accident-involved driver who has
consumed even the most minuscule amount of alcohol in the immediate foremath of
the accident is to be irredeemably consigned to an immeasurably lower moral
plane than any driver who has not consumed any alcohol in the corresponding
foremath; this entirely regardless of any other supervening organic impediments
to the safe direction of a motor vehicle to which the alcohol-free driver may
have been subject (barring, of course, illegal drugs, which from the point of
view of the law are merely alcohol on steroids)—most notably and typically
fatigue induced by lack of sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any
person who has more than a scintilla of experience as a consumer of both sleep
and alcohol—i.e., inter alia and for our PPs, every 999<sup>th</sup> person out
of a thousand among the abovementioned 99.9999…%--knows full well that the
functioning of his aut al.’s faculties is more severely impaired by a night
free of lengthily uninterrupted sleep than by one or two or perhaps even three
alcohol-containing drinks consumed within an hour of eight straight hours of
slumber.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Notwithstanding this well-nigh-universal
knowledge, both our judicial and moral law perversely treat the well-rested, unflaggingly
open-eyed recent tippler of a driver well-nigh-immeasurably more harshly than
the only intermittently open-eyed sleep-deprived automotive aurigationalist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course the perverseness of this dispensation
of Get-out-of-Jail Free cards to non-sleepers at the expense of
alcohol-consumers is compounded at least a thousand-fold by the fact that at a
full 100% of hyperoccidental drivers admit or at least claim to be chronic
sufferers of sleep deprivation-induced fatigue, and are axiomatically thereby
compelled to concede that they are chronically less fit to drive than the
average well-rested hyper-recent tippler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Presumably this hyper-perverse juridical off-the-hook-letting of
somnolent alcohol-free semi-corpses at the expense of super bright-eyed-and
bushy-tailed alcohol-nearly free incarnations of vitality is a touching if
irredeemably fatuous relic of the hyperoccident’s (or at any rate the
hyper-hyperoccident’s) veneration of the so-called Protestant work ethic,
inasmuch as however slight a tipple of booze’s effect on its imbiber’s
automotive skills might ultimately turn out to be, there is no denying that booze
is something classically partaken of for pleasure alone; whereas fatigue, no
matter how deleterious a given instance of it might be to its sufferer’s
ability to operate the button-and-zipper of his aut al.’s trouser-fly, let
alone a quasi-proverbial ten-ton(ne) truck, is a physiological state
classically induced by overwork—whence, presumably, in the minds of the
original framers of drunk-driving laws, by a subordination of pleasure to
business, and perhaps even a subordination of world-destruction to
world-maintenance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course (q.v.
semi-immediately above plus one), in actual empirical hyperocccidental fact,
especially twenty first-century EHF, fatigue is far more likely to have been
occasioned by an overindulgence in pleasure, or what is regarded as pleasure,
than by work of any sort—most often by all-night sessions of up-catching on the
latest installment of a Tits & Dragons boxed set, but not quite rarely by
all-night drinking binges at stag parties, hen nights, leaving dos, autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is unreasonable and indeed downright
foolish to demand intellectual consistency within the purview of a genuine mass
psychosis (while I do so hate to employ terms taken from the industrial
abattoir of clinical psychiatry, in this rarest of all cases the giant
industrialized pig brain-jelly shoe fits to a turn) of more than a century’s
standing: in the hyperoccident the consensus of not only the living but also
several generations of the dead has determined that the ownership-cum-habitual
pilotship of a motor vehicle is the minimum condition of personhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the supervention of this psychosis is
entirely owing to a certain Mr. Henry Ford’s having been allowed to realize his
full potential, inasmuch as had automobiles not become mass-produced, they
never would have become consumed <i>en masse</i>, and automotive aurigation
would have remained what it quite rightfully was in its earliest infancy—a
statistically harmless hobby accessible only to the highest and least chinful
and most bellyful strata of the aristocracy and <i>nouveaux riches</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such is the dispiriting truth about all
the other artificial industrial-age woes that afflict us, from the airplane to
F****k—that they are all F&F the unfortunate result of their devisers’
having foolishly been allowed to realize their respective full potentials; and
in an ever-increasingly cluttered-cum-ingrown landscape-cum-system of
commodities, full potential-realization ever more often takes the less dramatic
but equally pernicious form of the vice of publicized Pygmalionism, of
modifications of existing inventions that gratify the modifier’s ingenuity at
the expense of the consumer’s ease and productivity of use of the invention in
question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course the FrankenDGR
will demur that it’s all very well for me to inveigh cherry-pickingly against this
or that personal pet peeve of an invention of the industrial era qua
misbegotten result of full potential-realization, but that what full-potential
realization hath taken away from me with one hand it hath likewise given to me
with another—if not with many thousands of others à la some sort of Hindoo
deity (at first blush an utterly inapposite comparandum, but at second blush a
highly apposite one inasmuch as the production of a literally thousand-armed
Hindoo deity could only ever be achieved on some sort of Fordian assembly
line); that while I may manage at least to delude myself into believing that I
am living happily—or, at any rate, less miserably—without the use of a motorcar,
I cannot in good faith assert that my life would be materially enriched rather
than impoverished by being deprived of many another product of full-potential
realization—for example, the electric light bulb, an invention of perhaps an
even greater and more famous exemplar of full potential-realization than Mr.
Ford (not to mention what’s-his-name who cannot be mentioned), namely Thomas
Alva Edison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To which demurral I can in
good faith rejoin that while there are indeed numerous—although I would wager a
fairly large sum (albeit not quite so large a sum as the sum presumably soon to
be exactable on auction by one of my all-cotton shirts) that there are not
thousands—of full potential realization-actuated inventions with whose use I
would not immediately gladly dispense, my attachment to most if not all of
these inventions is of a largely-to-wholly superficial and contingent character
and would very speedily vanish were I furnished with the conditions for
enjoying the habitual use of their immediate or even distant predecessors on
the techno-commercial evolutionary timeline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Vis-à-vis the electric lightbulb versus its predecessors—viz. (in
reverse chronological order) the gas lamp, the oil lamp, and the candle: I
would be only too happy to revert to any one of these for my personal lighting
needs were material conditions in place for my enjoying as ready and reliable
access to them as was enjoyed by their average respective users in their
respective heydays, but of course no such access is available or even remotely
forthcoming in my <i>Lebenswelt</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
haven’t the foggiest, sodium vapor-lit, notion of how or where one would go
about finding an oil lamp, let alone the oil and wicks needed to keep it
lighted; gas lamps are now highly costly contraptions requiring constant
replenishment from wee aqualung-like tanks owing to their absolute material
alienation from the governmental-cum-commercial infrastructure that still
supplies a substantial portion of the pan-occident with its heating and cooking
(to the infinitely smug, ill-founded whiggish amusement, let it be said, of the
by-now-perhaps-preponderant portion of the hyperoccident that has gone
all-electric in these domains of quotidiana [I have, incidentally, inserted
this parenthesis by way of giving my fellow hyperoccidentals in the gas-zone,
arch-Whigs to a man et al., a tastelet of the specific flavor of misery that
was one of the principal impetuses to the composition of the present essay]);
and as for candles, the only ones within my immediate commercial reach are my
local grocery store’s butcher’s double-dozen of those aluminum-hooped half dollar
coin-circumferenced discs known as tea lights (and known as such for a reason
unknown to me [certainly this reason can having nothing to do with singeing so
much as a single leaf of tea, let alone boiling an entire cup of it!]), each of
which contains just barely enough wax, and gives out just barely enough
illumination, to allow one to read the cover of the matchbook with which one
has just ignited its wick before it sputters out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I were to undertake to illuminate my
dwelling-space with candles now, I would be obliged to order the tapers from
A*****n, and to make do exclusively with those god-awful scented mason
jar-ensconced monstrosities targeted exclusively to women of a certain age-cum-<i>modus
vivendi</i>, and consequently to suffocate in a miasma of doubtlessly
chemically mutually counterindicated perfumes before reading a single octavo
book-page by the aid of those tapers’ combined light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By contrast, throughout the golden age of
domestic candle-illumination—an age stretching from some presumably preteenth century
to the early nineteenth—I would have had access to an almost dizzying array, as
they say, of affordable broad-wicked, long-burning candles, at my local <i>chandler’s</i>—that
is to say, a shop principally or perhaps even wholly dedicated to the vending
of candles (and the fact that I cannot repress a snigger in writing <i>chandler</i>
with a lowercase cee, so reflexively am I reminded by its uppercase version of
the waggish <i>Friends</i> character, testifies to the fundamental lameness of
the present writer qua irredeemable Edison-bulb addict), and would have
consequently had no trouble whatsoever in reading from dusk till dawn, till the
perhaps actual and literal bovine homecoming, by the exclusive and dedicated
illumination of <i>bougies</i> or <i>chandelles</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same sort of demurral applies to my dependence
on air conditioning, a dependence that is likewise conditioned by the
conditions in which I have been compelled to live against my will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When, a full one-and-twenty years ago, I
shared a large three-story ca. 1900 Baltimore row house with five other people
for a semi-summer (and the brevity of my residence in that house attests to the
longstanding general impracticability of residing in such massive old houses as
a renter) I was always quite comfortable lounging on the house’s ground floor
with its tightly shuttered windows and ten foot-high ceilings, and it was only
upon being obliged to retire to bed in my pokey eight foot-ceilinged, naked-windowed
room on the third (British: <i>second</i>) floor (obviously some sort of
converted cupboard or pantry not originally intended for human habitation) that
I was further obliged to have recourse to a so-called window-unit air
conditioner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that I live in a ca.
1950 Baltimore midrise apartment block, I am contending with eight foot-high
ceilings and naked windows (or, rather, strictly speaking, <i>semi-naked</i>
windows, but the diaphanous barrier of mini-blinds and curtains with which I do
my best to block out the summer sun is laughably ineffectual by comparison with
the shutters that I am presumably prohibited from installing by my lease
agreement) during not only every sleeping but also every waking <i>chez moi</i>-spent
hour and so am obliged to have recourse to air conditioning—specifically to
another so-called window unit—for each of those hours from May Day to
Michaelmas, and many a such hour on either side thereof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the hyperoccident of ca. 1950,
although substantially more barbarous in point of world-maintenance than the
hyperoccident of ca. 1900, was substantially more civilized in point thereof
than the hyperoccident of ca. 2020 (<i>sic</i>, incidentally, on the <i>ca.</i>,
for although the year of this writing is but 2019 [and it is presumptuous in
the extreme to presume that 2020 is a year that we will reach as a matter of
historical course], when employing <i>ca.</i>s in connection with years one
must always round to the nearest fourth-place nought by way of distinguishing
oneself from those churls who barbarously mistake <i>ca.</i> for a more
upmarket version of <i>A.D.</i> [or whatever the current <i>Guardian</i> style
guide’s M*******n-cum-C******n-fellating alternative abbreviation is]), such
that when the present writer moved into his present <i>Wohnung</i> he enjoyed
the usufruct of a slatted outer door which, when the unslatted inner door and
the windows facing both doors were left open, allowed a cross-breeze to
traverse the apartment, a cross-breeze that on many albeit not quite most of
the abovementioned early May-to-late September days allowed him to be quite
comfortable in the absence of air conditioning despite the eight-foot-high
ceilings and inescapable sunbeams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
then, some butcher’s half-dozen years ago—most likely at about the same time
they sealed up the trash chutes—the building management tore away the slatted
outer door, along with all ca. 300 other slatted outer doors in the building
(presumably for uniformity’s sake, inasmuch as the remaining ca. 200 apartments
already lacked slatted doors, presumably in turn because the slatted doors they
had previously possessed had suffered some form of damage that could not be
repaired onsite and that the building management had been d****d if it was
going to shell out so much as an extra penny to have them repaired offsite),
and the present writer was obliged to rely on air conditioning for each and
every minute of the long summer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
such for donkey’s decades has been the fate of every established technology in
the industrialized hyperoccident: here and from time semi-immemorial, out of
horror of the old and for the sake of short-term financial expediency, every
such technology simply <i>must</i> be discarded in favor of something newer
that does the job more barbarously, wastefully, and, in the long run, more
expensively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perversely, if utterly unsurprisingly,
it is the so-called environmentalists—the class of ostensible world-maintainers
who wear their passion for world-maintenance on the broadest of dayglow toffee
apple-green sleeves—who are the worst offenders in this regard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quite recently, meaning less than four months
earlier than this writing (9/9/2018), The UK Green Party’s most prominent organ
of propaganda, a BBC Radio 4 program(me) called <i>Costing the Earth</i>—which would
be much more aptly titled <i>Whinging about Global Warming</i>, so brazenly and
insistently does it advertise its subordination of literally every other
concern under the sun to the goal of controlling the average terrestrial
temperature—devoted one of its thirty-minute installments to the environmental hazards
posed by clothing made of synthetic fibers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As some more than negligible proportion of every synthetic garment
currently on the market leaches into the environment each and every time that
garment is washed, and synthetic fibers are intrinsically non-biodegradable,
the program(me’s) presenter lamented, some alternative system of clothing must
be pursued.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inasmuch as in a sartorial
context the antonym of <i>synthetic</i> is<i> natural</i>, the presenter was
inevitably if presumably regrettably compelled to consider a natural
fiber-based sartorial alternative and thereupon perversely if ultimately
unsurprisingly went straight to a sheep-shearing farm arm in arm with a
sheep-f**cking animal psychologist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
our anthropocentric complacency we may suppose, the beast-shrink sententiously
intoned, that because shearing does not result in the death of the sheep that
the sheep does not suffer from the shearing and that we may accordingly wear
our woolen garments without guilt; but empirical data hath incontrovertibly
shewn that shorn-ness inflicts an incalculable degree of psychological trauma,
that the shorn sheep almost invariably experiences body-image problems that not
atypically eventuate in eating disorders that only slightly less typically
eventuate in premature death and at minimum eventuate in long-term if not
permanent ostracism from the unshorn portion of the herd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the time the psychologist had finished her
lecture, there was only just enough time left in the programme for the
presenter briskly to perorate, <i>Well, that about settles it—unless we want to
end up on the dock at the Hague, we’re stuck with synthetic-fiber clothes, and
we’ve just got to put every last pound, dollar, euro, etc. in our
synthetic-fibered pockets and drop of bionic elbow grease in our elbows into
developing more-environmentally friendly synthetic fibers, and in the meantime abstain
from washing the clothes we’re already wearing until we fall down unconscious
from the stench of our own bodily exudations.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At no point during the preceding thirty minutes
had my beloved cee word, <i>cotton</i>, or indeed the name of any other
plant-based natural fiber, been uttered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Any being from another planet listening to this installment of <i>Costing
the Earth</i>—and such a being really needs must have hailed from another
planet, inasmuch as vegetable fiber-based clothing is something known to <i>every
living human soul on earth</i>—could not but have assumed that no favorer of
natural-fiber garments had ever enjoyed the contact of any fabric more finely spun
than woolen gabardine with even the most delicate parts of his aut al.’s body,
that before the advent of synthetic-fiber garments all of humanity was or were perpetually
tottering about ever-so-stiffly, with unbending knee, like the robuht in <i>The
Day the Earth Stood Still</i>, for fear of contracting gangrene of the genitals
from excessive chafing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, even
if there were no such things as vegetable-based natural fibers, even if wool <i>were</i>
the only non-synthetic source of sartorial textiles, not a single living human
soul would ever lose a moment’s sleep over his aut al.’s sartorial dependence
on wool, not a single living human soul would be compelled to count a single
sheep on account of having occasioned the shearing of as many as a milliard of
them, because for the lamb of God’s sake <i>they’re only sheep</i>; but this
consideration is of absolutely no moment to the environmentalist lobby, who are
obliged by their incorrigible Whiggism to contrive some means, however
laughably implausible and brazenly heedless of the most brazen evidence, to
represent the retention of any less-than-state-of-the-art aspect the status quo
in the domain of production, however tried and tested that aspect may be, as a
nullity or unpardonable atrocity; and to represent the most pernicious aspects
of that status quo as the only conceivable starting point for a supposedly
direly exigent advance into the supposedly infinitely titillating (but
invariably at-best snoozeworthy and most often even more pernicious)
technological frontiers of pseudo-world maintenance, merely because these
aspects happen to be the most up-to-date from a narrowly technophilic point of
view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One sees evidence of this
crypto-Whiggism in each and every so-called eco-friendly initiative that one is
peremptorily adjured to adopt by the ineluctably increasingly pubic hair-littered
reusable shopping bagful by these fatuous t**ds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To revert illustratively yet again (but only
because yet-again aptly) to the misery of my own immediate quotidian <i>Umwelt</i>:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>some three years ago the washing and drying
machines in my building of residence were replaced with flagrantly more
environmentally correct (obnoxiously but predictably enough, their <i>start</i>
buttons are all green) models.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the
old models I could wash and dry two weeks’ laundry in three washers and three
dryers; with the new ones I must apportion a single week’s laundry among four
washers and four dryers—hence, quite apart from the in-itself-vexing and
Whig-repudiating tripling of pecuniary expense ([sic] on the arithmetical
discrepancy, for whereas I was charged a mere $1.50 for each cycle of the old
machines, I am charged $1.70 for each cycle of the new ones), I am incontestably
using some appreciably greater amount of electricity, natural gas, and water;
for if the new machines were truly more energy- efficient than the old ones—if,
in other words, they did not merely use less energy per cycle but with that
lesser expenditure of energy also accomplish at least as much work as the old
machines—I would now be able to wash and dry larger loads in fewer of them
rather than being obliged as I am to wash and dry smaller loads in more of
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How, I wondered for several months
after the inauguration of the new lavational dispensation, could such an egregious
imposture, such a switcheroo as brazenly unconvincing as a cinematic cut to a
stunt double in the most brazenly uncrafted B-grade movie, ever pass muster,
let alone cut mustard, with thousands of presumably neither immortal nor inexhaustibly
pecunious clothes-wearers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at length
everything clicked into place, as they say, thanks to a single concisely
revelatory image—namely, that of one of my fellow laundry room-users, a
diminutive and by no means mesomorphic young person, tumbling a single load of uniformly
sleek, springy, and bone-dry garments from a single dryer into a laundry bag
perhaps twice as capacious as the storage tub in which I laboriously convey my
four loads (and which, incidentally, some one of these thousand nitwits
unfailingly mistakes for a trash bin each and every week), and shouldering the
entire Santa-worthy burden without so much as a grunt of disgruntlement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was instantly evident from this
micro-episode that the new machines were being ungrudgingly, and perhaps even
reflexively, accepted by every resident of the building but me because they
were doing a perfectly fine and affordable job of cleaning and drying the sorts
of garments that each and every one of these people was wearing on each and
every square micrometer of his or her person at each and every non-nude minute
of his or her day—namely, garments made not partially or even prevailingly but <i>entirely</i>
of synthetic fibers—i.e., <i>the very sorts of fibers that, according to the
environmentalists, whose whims were supposedly being catered to by the
institution of these new machines, were irreparably damaging the natural
environment thanks in no small part to the effluence of washing and drying
machines!</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only in a counterfactual
version of my building qua microcosm of the sartorial-cum-lavational hyperoccident,
a version thereof in which each and every one of my thousand fellow-residents
had cloven as tenaciously as I have done to natural-fiber garments would any <i>genuinely</i>
more environmentally friendly consignment of washers and dryers—a consignment
thereof that less natural resource-wastingly washed and dried such
intrinsically environmentally innocuous garments–have found its way into our
laundry room. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is this way with
every supposedly environmentally friendly initiative in the hyperoccident: the
full-tongued oral salute to the environmental anus is always superstructed on
an incalculably more longstanding, and therefore incalculably more penetrative,
middle-finger salute thereunto.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
virtually each and every day of the past ca. 70 months I have been relentlessly
adjured by some hyperoccidental organ of mediatic suasion to forego the use of
some object traditionally supplied by commercial retailers and committed to
their care or disposal after use in favor of a functionally comparable reusable
object of my own acquisition-cum-storage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For the first ca. 42 of those ca. 70 months I sportingly tried to
imagine what the incorporation of each and every one of these extra bits of
gear—a pubic hair-attracting carrier bag (q.v.), a spoon, a cup, a glass, a
mug, a drinking straw, a plate, two forks (one for salads, one for meat and
bean curd-based meat alternatives), a soup tureen, a spittoon etc.—might
entail, and eventually formed in my mind the image-sequence of my miserable
helpless self first staggering along the abominably ill-maintained sidewalks of
Baltimore with a Transamerica (formerly Legg Mason and more formerly USF&G)
Tower-surmountingly tall version of one of those steel-scaffolded backpacks
that one tends to see confined to the backs of outdoorsmen embarking on some
hike that may see them isolated from reliable sources of food and liquid
refreshment for weeks at a stretch, then back at home being obliged to sleep
out in the hallway after having disburdened myself of the whole K&C, what
with there being not enough space left to accommodate even my puny recumbent
form in my pitifully poky apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Surely, I assumed, nobody in his aut al. RM and with the usual dyadic
complements of arms, legs, and shoulders could actually be even attempting to
put this downright Laputan (q.v.) scheme into practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then one of these adjuring voices had the
confounded temerity to perorate his case for the self-owned reusable ass-wiping
rag or whatever it was with the insufferably <i>certain you’ll approve</i>-imbued
pseudo-sop to convenience, <i>And when you’re through with it for the day, you
can just chuck it in the trunk </i>[or<i> boot</i>]<i> or the garage, </i>whereupon
I realized that this entire diabolical campaign of asininely impracticable
asceticism was being all too efficaciously if mutually unwittingly orchestrated
entirely by a congeries of owners of cars and houses, by people with enormous
resources of storage and transportation at their disposal at each and every
moment of the day and night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not, to be
sure, that even their resources of these sorts were so enormous that they would
be able to accommodate the diurnally crescent list of <i>chez soi</i>-must-haves
indefinitely; to be sure, eventually even they would run out of storage space
and transportational wherewithal to have every desiderated object ready to hand
at its desiderated moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for the
immediate and indeed fairly long-term future they would indeed continue to enjoy
the luxury of lingeringly compiling a laundry list of the day’s essentials from
their garage’s inventory of quotidiana before setting out onto I-95, the M1, autc.
of a workday morning—<i>Let’s see: I’ll be going to S*****k’s for coffee, so I’ll
obviously need the coffee mug, then I’ve got that meeting with the
chewing-hashish lobbyists, so I’ll need the spittoon, and they’ll want to have
lunch at the Daal House, so I must bring along the tureen, etc.—</i>and alternately
availing and divesting themselves of the items on this list at leisure, the
luxury of chucking the spittoon autc. into the boot of the Volvo autc. before
driving the eight miles of U.S. 40, the A1, autc. separating the chewing-hashish
lobbyists’ headquarters autc. from the Daal House autc., chucking the tureen
back into the boot before driving the 16 miles of U.S. 40, the A1, autc.
separating the Daal House autc. from their employer’s office, etc.—in short, in
carrying on the most wasteful and world maintenance-inimical <i>modus vivendi</i>
imaginable by any person in his aut al. RM.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet in these wastrels’ eyes the present writer, who is in fact leading
the simplest, least wasteful <i>modus vivendi</i> still practicable in the
laughably misnamed developed world, was and is a monster for desiring a modicum
of convenience in his unexacting quotidian transactions with the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly a system of life —or anti-life—that
rewards such wastrels and punishes such virtuously abstemious souls as the
present writer is in exigent need of discarding and replacement by an
alternative system of life that places world-maintenance in its fullest sense,
as a maintaining of a specifically <i>human</i> world lived by organically
particularized human beings, front and center, as they say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the only such system that has both presented
and implemented itself in very recent centuries is Soviet-style Communism;
i.e., Communism as practiced in Russia and the other sub-polities and
territories of the U.S.S.R. between 1917 and 1989.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In making this claim on behalf of Soviet
Communism I by no means wish to propound an assertion that is patently absurd
even in my own Sovietophile eyes, an assertion that that system was <i>perfect</i>,
that it left no room for improvement in point of world-maintaining capability;
but I by every means do wish to propound an assertion that will doubtless
appear only slightly less patently insane in the eyes of each and every one of
my fellow present-day hyperoccidentals, the assertion that such a system was
infinitely preferable to the present hyperoccidental one, inasmuch as it was
monomanically driven by and centered on the question <i>What do people need?</i>,
or in snootier but to my mind no less legitimate or redeemable terms, <i>What
is best for people? </i>rather than, as in our present and longstanding
hyperoccidental system, by a welter of other questions that can only ever
contingently, temporarily, and patchily supply people with what they actually
do need and what is actually best for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Under the Soviet system of world-maintenance, those in charge made to
themselves and to each other such prosaic but efficacious pronouncements as–<i>OK,
we’ve got 10,000 people moving to District X, so we need to build enough living
space to house them, make enough clothes to clothe them, and grow and stock
enough food to feed them. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
didn’t each individually query him-autc.-self, “<i>OK, so I’ve got a 10,000
tons of radioactive wombat shit on my hands; how can I get hold of enough
people to foist this RWS on as caviar? </i>or <i>OK, so I’ve discovered an
amazingly efficient and productive technique for irradiating wombat shit, and
I’m proud as wombat’s balls about it; how can I get the rest of the world to be
as wombat-shit about radioactive wombat shit as I am about radioactive wombat
shit? </i>or <i>OK, I’ve discovered that radioactive wombat shit is the
greatest threat not only to the human species or even to life on earth or even
to life itself but to the very existence of the entire universe: how can I
convince everyone else to dedicate his autc.’s every last waking, sleeping, and
formerly wanking moment to the eradication of radioactive wombat shit? </i>or<i>
OK, I’ve discovered that un-irradiated wombat shit is the cure for every
conceivable human ailment; how can I persuade the rest of the world to lavish
all their ducats on aphrodisiacs and laxatives for wombats? </i>or <i>OK, so
I’ve discovered that as a canapé spread wombat shit manifests an immeasurably
more nuanced spectrum of palatal colors than does caviar; how can I convince
all the grocery retail outlets in the world to replace their caviar sub-aisle
with a wombat-shit sub-aisle?, </i>etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If to my starkly favorable presentation of the Soviet world-maintenance
system it be demurred that on average those in charge of that system seldom
succeeded in getting, say, even half of every bloc of 10,000 people fully
ensconced in its designated apartment block within years of the targeted
ensconcement date, I can justly counterdemur with Calvinist breast-beating
righteousness (albeit seemingly only largely via the words of a man who, via
the international propagation of his subculture and its sexual-political mores
over the past quarter-century has doubtless contributed more than a fair amount
to gratuitous political strife both within Russia and between Russia and the
hyperoccident), <i>At least they were f**king trying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What the f**k have you or any of your
hyperoccidental contemporaries done?</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The notion on which our hyperoccidental system of pseudo-life is founded
(a notion whose formulation dates back far beyond Adam Smith to John de
Mandeville’s early eighteenth-century tract <i>The</i> <i>Fable of the Bees</i>),
the notion that individuals pursuing their egoistic interests ([sic], for
reasons that should presently become clear, on my preference of <i>egoistic</i>
to the other P-word) will in the aggregate produce the best possible outcome
for the social collective, was and remains valid to the extent that any very
large and complicated social formation such as that of the present hyperoccident
must be sustained by individuals who are at most only very slightly and vaguely
guided by the aim of attending to the wellbeing of the social collective, to
the extent that in such a social formation one must attend to the tasks, goals,
whims, cravings, etc. that have immediately been set for one or that have been
thrown in one’s way by whatever <i>Lebenslauf</i> one has ended up pursuing,
whether in conformity with or athwart one’s own inclination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to the extent that this notion relies on
individuals doing whatever they respectively please it has been both laughably
and horrifyingly invalidated—not, I must emphasize by way of obviating my
consignment to the junk heap of intellectual history as the latest and puniest
of neo-Puritans, because pleasure in itself is a bad thing; but rather because
from the outset (i.e., at the very latest the very early eighteenth century qua
birth-epoch of the notion in question qua ideology-fragment, although the
notion may very well have been subcutaneously effectual long before then) the various
teloses of pleasure have been at socially destructive loggerheads and because,
as I have endeavored to shew in this essay, the social destructiveness of their
loggerheadedness has markedly increased as each telos has acquired ever-greater
social force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even at its most advanced
and smoothly functioning stage, a planned national economy on the Soviet model
may fail to deliver adequately functional consumer commodities owing to the intrinsic
and permanent absence of competition-induced incentives to product-improvement;
but an unplanned international economy on the hyperoccidental model will
inevitably eventually (and inasmuch as we are already living in this <i>eventually,
</i>any reflection on such an economy’s <i>initial </i>virtues can now afford
but scant consolation) fail to deliver adequately functional consumer
commodities owing to the evaporation of competition-induced incentives to
product improvement and indeed to these incentives’ supersession by incentives
to product degradation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such being
the case, any attachment on the part of any present-day hyperoccidental
consumer—at least any such consumer mindful of his aut al.’s own personal
comfort—to an unplanned economy cannot but be as delusionally sentimental as
the attachment of a sports fan to an athletic franchise regardless not only of
its personnel (à la Mr. Seinfeld’s critique of sports fandom as loyalty to a
set of shirts) and performance-record, but even of its locale of residence
(i.e., the very-probably-empirically-unattested attachment of a Baltimorean to
the Colts even after their relocation to Indianapolis, or of a Wimbdledonian to
Wimbledon FC after their relocation to Milton Keynes)—in short, such an
attachment cannot but amount to the craven worship of mere <i>names</i> that
Edmund Gibbon quite perceptively and rightly decried as one of mankind’s most common,
pernicious, and intractable vices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If my
personal budget mandates my shaving with a razor that leaves me with a
blood-drenched five o’clock shadow after a quarter-hour of face-raking, why
should I care whether that razor has been christened a Gillette Sensor or a
Schick Felchor or a Government Razor R2?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And vis-à-vis the Soviet-style planned economy’s undoubtedly frequent
failures to deliver the goods in the most literally material (or materially
literal) sense even during its most productive phase, one must consider that these
failures may by and large be legitimately regarded as failures only in relation
to a blinkered and fundamentally vicious hyperoccidental standard of success—a
standard according to which the greater amount of brute kinetic horsepower is
placed in the average consumer’s hands (and at best and most only literally in
his aut al.’s <i>hands</i>, exactly after the fashion in which the power of a
team of coach-horses is placed in the hands of someone who has never driven a
horse-coach upon his aut al.’s taking hold of the reins) the better—and that
accordingly by and large these failures may actually be legitimately regarded
as successes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One incessantly witnesses
hyperoccidental auto-fellationists swooning with outrage over the fact that,
for example, in the U.S.S.R. only members of the so-called Party elite could
afford to own automobiles, or that the first cars to become available on a
trans-IC-al mass-non-market, specifically that of East Germany of the 1970s,
were made of plastic, lacked fuel gauges, and immediately overheated if driven
above some risibly low speed—this as if ownership-cum-immediate command of a
reliably high-performing car were an entitlement-cum-accomplishment instead of
the felonious transgression of world-maintenance that it actually is!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is likewise perennially peremptorily
adjured by these vile Whigs to weep one’s eyes out over the fact that
throughout the so-called Eastern Bloc air travel even within the Bloc was an
exceptionally expensive luxury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
indeed, the cinematic record seems to bear out the factuality of the state of
affairs referenced in this adjuration; for in the dozen or more Soviet films
with contemporary settings that I have seen I can recall only one
representation of the kind of mass civilian air travel that is at least
conceived of as a routine component of hyperoccidental life—namely the episode
in <i>The Irony of Fate</i> in which the doctor-hero ends up on a passenger
plane to Leningrad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One assumes that if
such travel had been very common one would have seen more representations of it
in Soviet movies, as the Soviet authorities presumably would not have missed an
opportunity of showcasing such an instance of the U.S.S.R.’s dubious parity
with the hyperoccident in such an upmarket sector of mass consumption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course the vile Whiggish adjurer will not
be tardy to add that the scandalousness of the rarity of air travel within the
Soviet Union owing to the lack of competitive pricing was exponentially
compounded by the virtually total non-occurrence of travel to polities outside
the Soviet Bloc owing to official political proscription—owing to the fact that
the Soviet government hardly ever issued foreign travel visas to Soviet
citizens out of fear that the travelers would either defect to the
hyperoccident or return bearing dangerous commodities or ideas (i.e.,
essentially and exclusively, Levis jeans and Michael Jackson LPs or rumors of
the ready availability of Levis jeans and Michael Jackson LPs).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this appended adjuration I can only rejoin
that <i>by whatever cause, however intrinsically eluctable, or in justification
of whatever principle, however intrinsically objectionable, </i>the curtailment
of travel <i>tout court,</i> and hence axiomatically of international travel,
is a virtually morally insuperable <i>good</i>—meaning in turn that however
intensely or unjustifiably a person or group of people may be suffering on
account of the curtailment of his aut al. or their liberty of movement, the
world will almost certainly be a net gainer, an instantiation of the proverbial
<i>better place</i>, for this person’s or these persons’ being kept within the
confines of the locale—i.e., not merely the polity but the <i>locality</i>—in
which they now reside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In point of
inimicalness to world-maintenance, the present-day hyperoccident’s
fetishization of international travel—meaning at bottom and in virtually all
cases international <i>tourism</i>, inasmuch as almost all officially
non-touristic travel is effectively tourism masquerading under false colors
(inasfurthermuch as the charitable ends to which it is ostensibly dedicated
could be much more expeditiously achieved from afar, such it cannot but be
wholly actuated by a vile touristic craving for <i>having been in an exotic
place </i>[or, indeed, and all too often, as evidenced by such recent scandals
as the one centering on Oxfam’s sexual exploitation of the natives in Haiti, <i>having
been in a multitude of exotic intimate places</i>])–is perhaps the single
greatest, the single most-destructive, abomination in human history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In world-maintaining terms, and in the light
of the current state of the forces and relations of production, there is quite
simply no need for <i>any </i>present-day hyperoccidental to travel beyond,
say, a five-mile radius of his aut al.’s place of birth <i>at any point in his
or her life-trajectory</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the
hyperoccident’s addiction to automobile-drivership, its addiction to air <i>tourism</i>
is a <i>vice</i>, and indeed a vice that bids fair to be far more destructive
to the hyperoccident than any of the vices that are actually recognized as such
in the hyperoccidental imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whereas in the case of driving the scapegoated stalking-horse of a vice
is bibulousness, as we have seen; in the case of air travel it is poor sexual hygiene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we all know, for nearly the past
two-fifths of a century—i.e., more or less since, and on account of, the
initial outbreak and spread of AIDS (while acknowledging the severity and
significance of the spread of that disease vis-à-vis the disease’s longstanding
untreatable terminality, I refuse to use either the <i>E</i> word or the <i>P</i>
word in connection with AIDS on the grounds that whatever the official thresholds
of demographic prevalence for designating outbreaks e******cs and
p******cs<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>may be [and I cannot but
strongly suspect that these thresholds have markedly fluctuated over the
decades], in a rhetorical context the word <i>e******c</i> or <i>p******c</i>
exacts mortal terror from every human individual in any community to which it
has been applied, and I do not believe a disease as mildly contagious as AIDS
has ever merited such a pitch or prevalence of fear, even in communities
wherein it was most prevalent)—penetrative coition, whether vaginal or anal, absent
the interposition of some sort of latex barrier, has been regarded as just
about the most reckless, damn-fool, hygienically perilous, and morally callous
activity a human being can engage in—perhaps, indeed, an even more reckless,
etc. activity than driving within an hour of consuming a beer, or even a
beer-and-a-half (although decidedly not two, let alone two-and-a-half).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the present late-tricenarian hyperoccidental
imagination, if you knowingly engage in so-called unprotected coition even a
single time you are axiomatically both an absolute goner and an irredeemable
monster who must be prepared to yield unprotestingly to whatever death, however
painful or degrading, that nature has in store for you or whatever penalty,
very much including the most painful and degrading form of capital punishment,
with which humanity will see fit to punish you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The well nigh-universally lauded mid-1990s cinematic teen melodrama <i>Kids
</i>eloquently instantiates this doxical pan-hyperoccidental hysteria about
unprotected coition in dramaturgically hinging on the question whether its
central female character, a guileless waif, will acquiesce in coition with its
central male character, a feckless lad who has just learned that he is
HIV-positive and has no intention of divulging his test-results to anyone or
taking up the wearing of condoms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
buildup to the unprotected coition-act is actuated by the sort of montage
sequence one most typically sees in political thrillers culminating in the
assassination of some insuperably high mucky-muck or the terroristic
obliteration of scads of so-called innocent civilians (i.e., a sequence in
which the villain’s attainment of his goal is tantalizingly nearly obviated by
a succession of mundane obstacles like a funeral procession or an altercation
with a passerby over an untied shoelace), and when the act finally occurs there
is some sort of cinematic analogue to the earthquake that ensued upon Christ’s
giving up of the ghost—this all despite the even-by-then empirically
demonstrable fact that the odds of contracting HIV from a single act of
heterosexual coition were only slightly greater than those of contracting lung
cancer from the smoking of a single cigarette (I owe this singularly felicitous
comparison to a friend whom I would be happy to name in the unlikely event that
he ever happens upon this essay and desires the credit).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet—and <i>yet</i>, I say—when some five
years ago the horrifyingly extremely contagious and generally fatal disease
known as ebola was spreading across Africa with alarming rapidity and already
spottily manifesting itself in such mutually far-flung hyperoccidental polities
as Spain, Great Britain, and the United States, the notion of imposing even the
most lenient and selective restrictions on travel from the affected polities
was laughed off throughout the hyperoccident with the same nauseating flavor of
peremptory complacency as would have been administered to a proposed travel-ban
on elves or hobgoblins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the very peak
or climax of this epidemic [the asterisks may come off here, inasmuch as I
really do believe worldwide mortal terror was justified by the outbreak in point]
a certain physician, presumably a leading e*********gist [here the asterisks must
be punctiliously reapplied, inasmuch as one cannot but assume this
e*********gist earned his professional stripes by nominally presiding over a
welter of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hummingbird flu outbreaks
confined to handfuls of households within single postcodes] blasély maintained to
the BBC that <i>in today’s globalised world, it’s simply inconceivable </i>(not
<i>undesirable</i> or <i>impracticable</i> or even <i>impossible </i>but rather<i>
inconceivable</i>)<i> to prevent people from travelling whithersoever they
please, howsoever they please, whensoever they please.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And upon hearing the sage leech intoning
these words, I could not forebear imagining a thirty-years’ younger version of
him qua spokesman of some 1985 anti-AIDS taskforce quite logically (albeit
quite inconceivably) intoning no less blasély, <i>In today’s world of unlimited
freedom of sexual choice, it’s quite simply inconceivable to prevent people
from f**king whomsoever they please, howsoever they please, whensoever they
please, via whichsoever orifice they please, </i>and immediately thereupon
stuffing his erect, brazenly un-condom-swathed <i>membrum virile</i> into the
anus of the nearest passerby (preferably an octogenarian granny for maximum
expression of insouciance’s sake).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
with automotive driving, the hyperoccident is so utterly besotted with international
air travel that it cannot see the mightily erectile public health-inimical wood
for the helplessly, languorously quiescent consumerist trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It regards international air travel as a
combination of a veritable and inalienable <i>entitlement</i> and a veritable
and impermeable <i>force-field </i>separating each of its quasi-citizens from
any harm that any constituent of the pesky old terrestrial world (very much
including the extra-hyperoccidental portion thereof) might be so confoundedly
cheeky as to presume to hope to visit upon his aut al.’s person-cum-organism. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>If I can be flown from (say) Poughkeepsie
to Vegas to Tokyo to Istanbul to London to </i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Reykjavik</span></i><i><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
to New York (or, rather, Newark [natch, for one’s frequent-flyer plan would
never allow one to dream of touching down at JFK]) and back multiple times each
year on the wings of mighty jumbo-jets</span></i><span style="background: rgb(253 , 254 , 255); color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">, so Bob or Suzy Sub-Plebian Hyperoccidental
Jet-Setter queries his or herself, <i>what harm can some wee li’l </i>[sic on
the proper placement of the apostrophe qua designator of a glottal stop, albeit
very much in the teeth of verisimilitude, inasmuch as the Bob and Suzy in
question, like each and every one of their Anglophone contemporaries apart from
the present writer, doubtless purposelessly place the apostrophe at the end] <i>pesky
virus do to me, or indeed to any other member (male or otherwise) of the
mile-high club, to anyone else who enjoys conveyance by these virtually
anaerobic virtual angels on demand?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Of
course, the Bob and Suzy in question would never verbalize their unwarranted
smugness in such brazenly aeronautophilic terms; rather they would speak—or
rather splutter—some at best-semi-articulate blather about <i>antibiotics </i>and
<i>the latest medical technology</i>, and <i>superior sanitation</i>, but only
in miasmic defiance of their knowledge that neither antibiotics nor the latest
medical technology nor even superior sanitation is in point here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For as yet there exists <i>no drug of any
kind </i>that reliably prevents contraction of ebola or palliates its virulence
a jot once it has been contracted; such that a Poughkeepsiean exposed to the
virus is every bit as much virtually doomed as a Monrovian exposed
thereunto.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the latest medical
technology, while state-of-the-art engines for regulating the intake and
outflow of bodily sustainers and impurities (such engines mainly but presumably
not exclusively consisting of dialysis machines) demonstrably prolong the lives
of ebola patients, sometimes (though probably not often) long enough to allow
them to weather the virus’s course and consequently achieve a complete recovery;
and while the hyperoccident presumably possesses more such engines per capita
than does any other sector of the world, one must remember, first, that even
with the benefit of such machines the survival of the patient is very much a
touch-and-go affair, and second, that even in the hyperoccident such machines
have as yet been produced and installed only in sufficient quantity and
locality to service the almost minuscule proportion of the hyperoccidental
population who habitually have need of them—viz., mainly, although undoubtedly
not exclusively, persons with renal disorders, such that even accommodating the
first wave of a hyperoccidental ebola outbreak would necessitate the
to-say-the-least controversial move of dislodging the customary users of such
machines from their accustomed perch, and that accommodating subsequent waves
would necessitate, to say the least, quite a formidable industrial undertaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Here one could adduce comparisons to the
megaton of industrial elbow grease exacted by the American war effort after the
bombing of Pearl Harbor, but one won’t, because one presumes from the outset
that the present U.S. would be incapable of bringing to bear a milligram of
such elbow grease.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for superior
sanitation, even setting aside the dubiousness of any notion of such
superiority in the light of everything I have said so far on the deterioration
of the provision of water, sewage, etc. in the hyperoccident, one must remember
that the ebola virus is unstoppable by the most exactingly disinfectant system
of sanitation that has been implemented to date in the hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unlike, say, cholera or ecoli, the ebola
virus is not spread by the drinking of contaminated water or the eating of
contaminated food; it is spread, rather, by epidermal contact with such minute
quantities of blood as are not infrequently emitted in the quotidian, dust
mote-occasioned sneezes of uninfected persons—in other words, quantities of
blood to which the average hyperoccidental is presumably semi-routinely
epidermally exposed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Liberia, Mali, et
al. suffered the brunt of the death toll of the 2014 ebola outbreak merely
because they were geographically closest to the nesting-place of the non-human
carriers of the disease—a community of chimpanzees, it is assumed—and
consequently already beset by thousands of contagious cases by the time they
learned of the first one; and were this chimp-community secretly parachuted
into the Schwarzwald or Epping Forest or Acadia National Park it could not but
precipitate an outbreak with a comparably high death-toll in Germany, Britain,
or the United States, no matter how swiftly and stringently the most
wide-sweeping and draconian public health measures were subsequently
implemented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It must be remembered that
the U.K.’s first and thankfully so far only ebola patient was an elite medical
care-worker who had been clad cap-a-pie in a sort of hermetically sealed
beekeeper’s outfit, and that her infection had been occasioned by only the
minutest of fissures or gaps in this outfit; consequently, the only public
health measure truly adequate to an ebola outbreak needs must consist in togging
out each and every one of the at-least-thousands of persons in the potentially
exposable community in a beekeeper-esque outfit more nearly impermeable than
any as-yet accessible to the hyperoccident’s elite medical care-workers.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When one comes right down to it, as they say,
the hyperoccident’s not merely epidemic or even pandemic but downright
near-universal insouciance about ebola and other highly contagious infectious
diseases is founded on no medical or infrastructural reality whatsoever and
merely on the average hyperoccidental’s for-the-moment (and very probably
merely for the moment [i.e., the next decade at the longest]) still
well-founded but patently altogether irrelevant presumption that he or she
enjoys far greater commercial horsepower as a consumer than the average African,
southeast Asian, Micronesian, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
poor woman who recently lost her job for satirically tw*tting that she had no
fear of catching AIDS during an imminent holiday in Africa<i> because I’m white
</i>captured the hyperoccidental <i>Übervolksgeist</i> on this matter to a turn
(although of course for <i>white</i> she should have substituted <i>hyperoccidental</i>
[as a satire-connoisseur I do not fault her for opting for AIDS in lieu of
ebola in the light of the non-coincidence of her visit with an ebola outbreak
and AIDS-fear’s substantially longer pedigree]), inasmuch as black
hyperoccidental visitors to Africa cannot but partake of the very same flavor
of smugness, however stringently their blackness m</span><span style="background: rgb(253 , 254 , 255); color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">ay
preclude their explicitly expressing it).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Way back in 2005, <a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2005/10/theses-on-concept-of-history.html"><span style="color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-themecolor: text1;">the
present writer sententiously lamented</span></a>, “</span><span style="background: rgb(254 , 253 , 250); color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">In ancient times, on being
confronted by the spectacle of a natural disaster or some other great calamity,
people used to say, ‘There but for the grace of God go I’; now they say, ‘There
by the grace of the commodity I need never fear going.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As an observation this sentence is
undoubtedly every stonelet as well-founded now as it was then, but the state of
affairs it laments is now arithmetically if not geometrically more lamentable,
given, first, that the commodities in which hyperoccidentals (I hope that a
combination of then-still-globally-just-barely-plausible Occidentocentrism and then-hyperoccident-wide
indifference to Russia condones my cavalier, globally besmirching employment of
the other P-word a baker’s-dozen years ago) discover their grace are in general
a thousand times more disgraceful; second, that disgraceful
trinket-gourmandizing now occupies a far greater share of the world’s
political-economic energies than it did back then; and third, that the economic
fortunes of the hyperoccident from 2008 onwards—i.e., since the so-(and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">probably</i> rightly)called great financial
crash or crisis (the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">probably</i> being
an only-too-fair sop to the perspective of the PW who, having then [as now] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">no assets whatsoever</i> to lose, spectated
on the crisis with tap-water sipping, rusk-nibbling complacency)—have
incontrovertibly shewn that the hyperoccident is no longer in any even remotely
rational position to suppose that under the auspices of its retail
consumer-driven political-economic dispensation it can escape going the way of
all collective as well as individualized flesh, that there is no way that any remotely
rational hyperoccidental can any longer pretend that, in Mandevillean parlance,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">private vices lead to public benefits </i>in
ineluctable perpetuity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back in 2005,
the world’s wealthiest commercial corporation, Microsoft, although
celebratedly-cum-notoriously utterly dedicated to the so-called virtual world
of digitized electronic activities and transactions<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>rather than to the laying of bricks on layers
of mortar or the screwing of nuts onto bolts (or bolts into nuts), was also
principally dedicated to at least allegedly facilitating the means by which <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">governmental and fellow-commercial concerns</i>
carried on the sorts of activities and transactions they had been carrying on
for donkey’s centuries by more primitive electronic and pre-electronic means—e.g.
if not i.e., account-reconciliation, textual and graphic document-generation,
archiving, and interstitial and extrastitial communication of information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure by then, Microsoft was also a
notable presence in the household of the average hyperoccidental consumer, thanks
to the semi-ubiquity of its Windows operating system in a hyperoccident in
which virtually every household housed at least one personal computer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the home-consumer market remained a
sideline for Microsoft because the average hyperoccidental home consumer’s
libido—the libido of Bob or Suzy Shiraz, or, more likely, that of the
Shiraz-couple’s daughter, Twinklebell Shiraz (tho’ assuredly not their son,
Buster Shiraz)—was not then principally vectored either towards his aut al.’s
personal computer either directly qua upgradable commodity or indirectly qua
vehicle of the purchase of other commodities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At that time the average hyperoccidental domestic consumer was
principally infatuated with the so-called mobile phone (a.k.[albeit by now only
to the PW]a. the so-called cell-phone) in its pre-smart (a.k. albeit only
retrospectively a. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dumb</i>) incarnation,
when it was restricted to the transmission of sounds that Thomas Edison or
Alexander Graham Bell would doubtless have found too lo-fo, too shamefully
unfaithful, to merit a patent (and TBS, on the live-sonic front
mobile-technology has progressed scarcely a micrometer since, but nobody but
the PW seems to mind this) and sub-telegraphically minuscule text messages;
but, hard-cheesy though it may be to believe in these head-cheesy days of instantaneously
phone-accessible [makes farting noises in lieu of utterly gratuitous
specification of phone-accessible content], all considerations of the painfully
straitened content transmittable by these contemptible engines were tsunamically
overridden by jaw-gaping admiration of the free-floating portability of the
transmissions, an admiration that proved so pan-hyperoccidentally enthralling
that even hyperoccidentals who could not have been dragged by steroid-doped Clydesdales
to make a personal phone call in the landline-dominated telephonic age (my
locus classicus of such a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">damals</i>-phonophobic
hyperoccidental is a certain gentleman, now a septuagenarian, who in ca. 1990
[and hence when a mere quadragenarian or quinquagenarian] hectored his son to
get off the phone with a certain male friend, and upon being met with the
filial demurral, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">We’ve only been talking
for an hour</i>, stonily retorted, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’ve
never spoken with another man over the phone for an hour</i>) went out of their
way to ring up and talk the ears off friends, neighbors, acquaintances, and
even outright enemies, for the mere sake of reveling in the pleasure of doing
something that they had ineluctably been precluded from doing a scant butcher’s
half-dozen years earlier; concurrently, hyperoccidentals who never would have
dreamt of composing a personal email, let alone a personal paper letter, began furiously
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">texting</i> to friends et al. –plus-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">total strangers</i> out of an infatuation with
their wee data-transmission engines, as the mere thrill of knowing that
something one had just typed into an engine being cabbed (remember [here those
over 30 may wish to cover the eyes of under-20s]: there was no U**r then!) past
the 92<sup>nd</sup> Street Y, had been almost instantaneously received by
another engine being camel-backed along the dunes of the upper Sahara, rendered
the contents of what was being transmitted from engine to engine virtually
irrelevant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It seems to me that the
proliferation of mental-cinematic montage engendered by the mobile phone is a
much underrated contributor to its disproportionate success vis-à-vis earlier engines
of instantaneous communication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Compared
to the flabbergastingness of the utterly mobilephonically stereotypical juxtaposition
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mises en scène</i> I have just tendered,
the sequence of two people [however mutually smitten they may be] typing to
each other at more-or-less-interchangeable desks or shouting at each other from
more-or-less interchangeable telephone booths [even if those two desks or phone
booths happen to be sited at 92<sup>nd</sup> Street and the upper Sahara,
respectively] makes for decidedly dull mental viewing.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally, the dumb-phone’s deflating-cum-garbling
of speech into instantly-audible yet prevailingly unintelligible gibberish and emparcellment
of writing into minuscule chunks of character-stringage favored the subject-matter
and linguistic norms of the very worst elements, the very dregs of the dregs,
of hyperoccidental pseudo-society, namely those comprised by its mass of
defiantly illiterate lumpen-proletarian young varmints, which norms were
reflexively adopted even by those hyperoccidental mobile phone users who knew
better and indeed best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And thereby the
hyperoccidental <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Übervolksgeist </i>regressed
into an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unterübervolksgeist </i>(neither
of which is to be confused with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">U**runterübervolksgeit
</i>of about the past five years) wherein, as mentioned before (only in
slightly more personalized terms), even the very-recently gravest, most
cultivated, and most reflective of adults comported themselves as only the very-recently
most frivolous, most loutish, and most spastic of teenagers had done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there-further-by the hyperoccidental
populace was groomed for its willingly dilated<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>anused-cum-chameleon tongued reception of the unprecedented inanity
offered and elicited in presumably equal measure by so-called smart phones—for
all the videos and photographs of dancing cats and human genitals and cats in
the shape of human genitals and human genitals in the shape of cats (i.e., of
course, defigured <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">p**sies</i>) and
dancing cat-genitals and stationary human genitals masquerading as cat genitals
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole ever-enlarging globe of
cat excrement was far, far worse than Detroit, even in Detroit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now we hyperoccidentals—along, perhaps,
with even the majority of non-hyperoccidental earthlings —have reached such an
unprecedentedly low nadir of inanity that three of the wealthiest commercial
corporations in the world are prevailingly-to-solely dedicated to the multiplication
and propagation of images and videos of dancing cats and human genitals,
together with instances of the admittedly formidable number of combinations and
permutations thereof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, I know
that the meejia-pundits who allegedly have their fingers on the pulse or in the
air vis-à-vis the present ascendancy of F******k, G****e, Instamatic, etc (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">siccissimo</i> on the joined <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">c</i> in lieu of the disjoined <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">al</i>). assure us that these companies are
fundamentally less interested in spreading stationary and kinetic imagery than
in harvesting data—i.e., in collecting statistics on just who is posting and
viewing pictures of what.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And these
pundits further assure us with feigned teeth-chattering tremulousness—a
tremulousness that poorly conceals their actual viscerally orgasmic delight in
the phenomenon—that thanks to their data-gathering logarithms or algorithms or
whatever these companies are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">getting to “know
everything about each of us”</i> (i.e., themselves and perhaps every other
hyperoccidental apart from the PW) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">just
like in the song </i>(i.e., “Data Control” by Hüsker Dü [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Land Speed Record</i>, 1981], natch), and this data-gathering spree <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">constitutes an egregious invasion of privacy
of truly Orwellian </i>(ugh! [i.e., inasmuch as Orwell was a contributor to the
evil in question, in having posited the assertion of individual will as an
unconditional good]) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">proportions.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if everyone is only posting images of dancing
cat genitals and so forth to these platforms, of what does the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everything</i> of one t F******k, G****e ,
Instamatic, etc., user consist that materially distinguishes it from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everything</i> of the next F******k, G****e,
Instamatic, etc., user?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An invasion of
privacy ceases to be an invasion of genuine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">privacy</i>—i.e.,
of the inner world of an authentic autonomous or even quasi autonomous
subject—when the contents of the invaded space are materially indistinguishable
from those of all other invasible spaces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And such being the case, even at its most diabolically quasi-omnipotent,
the data-harvesting power wielded by the likes of F******k, G****e, and Instamatic.,
is utterly unworthy of the faintest tremor of pathos or outrage, or at any rate
no bolder tremor than that worthy of elicitation by the quiescently relentless
up-hoovering of krill and other plankton by some massive comb-toothed cetacean;
and yet complementarily, inasmuch as the human individual ought to harbor any
aspirations whatsoever to generating or transmitting anything more substantial
than images of dancing cat genitals, the global commercial supremacy of the
likes of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>F******k, G****e, and
Instamatic, is worthy of Richter scale-defying cataclysms of pathos, outrage,
and most materially of all, of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shame</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it is ultimately and fundamentally on the
grounds of this shame that I found my appeal on behalf of a Soviet-style
command (or controlled) economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the
very beginning of the fairly recent (i.e., early 2018-released) docudrama <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All the Money in the World</i>, the film’s
protagonist, John Paul Getty III, in reflecting on his early-1970s abduction
qua heir apparent of his grandfather’s fortune, says in voiceover something to
the effect of (and very nearly verbatim),<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
My grandfather wasn’t just the richest man in the world; he was the richest man
in the </i>history<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> of the world</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The screenwriters who placed these words in
the third JPG’s mouth really should have spared us the histrionics, for under
the auspices of a geo-politico-economic dispensation such as the one that has
been imposed on humanity as a default for roughly the last three centuries, a
geo-politico-economic dispensation that for very much worse rather than better
has come to be known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">capitalism</i>
(worse because of course it should be known as a strain—and only one strain
[for every other domain of human thought and activity has likewise succumbed to
the plague in question’s pestiferous influence]—of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">applied</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Whiggism</i>) the
distinction between the richest man (wo or otherwise, for sooner or later [and
much sooner in the light of the pan-hyperoccidental mania for sex-change
operations] this man is bound to be a woman) in today’s world and the richest
man in history has become trivial to the point of fatuity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Under the auspices of this dispensation, the
richest man in the world is almost always and quasi-axiomatically the richest
man in history, because the dispensation sees to it that on a global scale, wealth,
at least according to the dispensation’s own dubious Dean drive-esque definition—namely,
exchange value as quantified by the most generally esteemed currency—is more or
less constantly (i.e., barring the occasional mildly embarrassing blip like the
so-called Great Depression or the so-called Financial Crisis or Great Recession
of 2008-?) increasing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the early
1970s, John Paul Getty III’s grandfather, being the richest man of his time,
was unsurprisingly and quasi-axiomatically also the richest human being in
history; at present, in the late 20-teens, the richest men in the world—and
hence the richest human beings in history—are the head honchos of A***e,
G****e, and F******k.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the
realization that these men are the richest human beings in history entails the corollary
realization that at least according to the meta-historical logic of the
capitalist so-called system all politico-economic activity of the past several
hundred years has constituted but a semimillennium-long preparation of a
launching pad, a scaffold, a staging ground, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Schauplatz</i>, for the present commercial activities of the
incomparably loathsome likes of Mr. Zuckerberg et al., that all those hundreds
of thousands of miles of railroad tracks and trillions of rivets and hundreds
of billions of barrels of petroleum (along with all the millions of gallons of
human sweat and millions of pounds of human corpses that went into their laying,
riveting, pumping, etc.) were all laid and riveted and pumped etc. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">solely</i> in order to allow billions of
morbidly obese shitting-machines to watch movies of dancing cat genitals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such not merely seeming but very much <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">being</i> the case, the replacement of the
present so-called market-driven politico-economic dispensation with or by a Soviet-style
governmentally administered politico-economic dispensation must be seen as
morally exigent not only inasmuch as it will provide living and future
hyperoccidentals with what is best for them in every conceivable sense but also
inasmuch as it will at least bid fair to expiate the inexpressible <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shamefulness</i> of A***e-cum-G****e-cum-F*****k
qua daemonic culmination-cum-anti-apotheosis of the so-called capitalist system
qua virtually dedicated purveyors-cum-transmitters of movies of dancing
cat-genitals by retroactively demonstrating that all those tens of trillions of
hours of track-laying, etc. were not destined to culminate in a phenomenon as
ignominious as near-universal dancing cat-genital spectatorship (or, rather, in
something even more ignominious than near-universal dancing cat genital-spectatorship,
for the immanent logic of capitalism ensures that the next Biggest Thing Ever
will make dancing cat genital-spectatorship look like the audition of a string
quartet in a Belle Epoque salon), that the mania for dancing cat
genital-spectatorship was but an episode of collective infantile dementia from
which humankind was at long last snatched free and at least re-vouchsafed the
chance, the possibility, the opportunity of redemption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such re-vouchsafing need by no means entail
a return to a state of nature, or at any rate to any sort of primeval nature, but
rather and merely a return to a state of second or perhaps even third or even
fourth nature—a return to whichever stop along the Tube line of alienation at
which such words as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wealth</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">luxury</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">health</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">comfort, poverty</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">illness</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deprivation</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">discomfort </i>most
recently still denoted or connoted states of mind, body, and soul befitting a
human being hoping to plot an intelligible, pleasurable, active, and
significant life-trajectory in some sort of conjunction with other human beings
(and largely disregarding non-human nature as a thing-in-itself, as something
meriting preservation and cultivation in its own right).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Traditional advocates of Soviet-style command
economies tend to find their advocacy snagged on the distinction between
use-value and exchange value, the distinction between what is valuable because
it serves a genuine human need and what is valuable only because it can be
exchanged for a certain quantity or mass of other non-human things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They find themselves snagged on it because as
their opponents quite justly point out (often in tandem with a judicious
citation of Lear’s “Why reason the need” speech) in every as-yet-known human
social formation almost everything is valued at least partly for qualities that
contribute not a jot to the biological sustenance of the human organism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But having quite justly pointed this out,
these opponents typically go on with the unforgivable cavalierness of a
draughts-stroke-checkers player hopscotching the board with whatever pieces his
fingers happen to alight upon, regardless of c**(*)*r or position, to argue
that whatever happens to be valued in exchange-terms at a given moment in a
given social formation should be effectively treated as being as intrinsically
valuable as the scrap of cloth “which…keeps [a person] warm,” such that the
lack of possession of such a highly valued thing should be treated as a
manifestation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">poverty</i>, such that
any means to remedy this lack, however ruthlessly violent, is to be not only
pardoned but applauded, nay, fellated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">locus classicus</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> of such
a supposedly distinction-obliterating case (a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">locus classicus</i> inasmuch as it dates at least as far back as my own
middle-school days, i.e., to the mid-1980s) is a diptych iconographically
unified by a certain especially popular brand and make of athletic shoes (i.e.,
trainers or sneakers).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the left panel
of the diptych, one beholds a so-called inner-city youth in possession of a
pair of such shoes being knifed or shot to death by another so-called
inner-city youth who does not possess a pair of them; on the right panel one
beholds a corridor-full pupils quiescently cakewalking their way to class at
the posh suburban school five miles up the road, with each and every juvenile
pair of feet in sight proudly yet fearlessly sporting a pair of the sneakers in
question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The upshot of the diptych,
according to the distinction-obliterators, is that nowadays sneakers of this
particular brand and make have effectively become as preciously necessary as food
and water, such that we are both morally and prudentially obligated both to
refrain from imposing any kind of legal penalty, however mild, on the knifer or
shooter in the left panel and to do everything in our $-(i)al power to ensure
that every last pair of juvenile feet in the (so-called) inner city is or are
shod in a pair of the brand and make of sneakers in question, just like each of
its or their counterparts in the right panel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To this inference-cum-adjuration the distinction-obliterators’ classic
opponents—viz. , the commonsense champions of use value</span><span style="background: rgb(254 , 253 , 250); color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">—invariably appalledly
demur that what is most appalling about the left panel of the diptych is that
it involves a death occasioned by a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mere
pair of shoes</i>, and that we are therefore not only morally but prudentially
(but mostly morally) obligated to do everything in our <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>$-(i)al power to teach the youth of the
so-called inner city that there is more to life than shoes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when pressed by the
distinction-obliterators to specify what that something more to life is, they
invariably adduce will o’ the wisps whose pursuit will lead the so-called inner
city youth away from the man-trap of exchange value only over the very short
run, whose pursuit, indeed, and even in the medium-short run, will lead him aut
al. straight back into that trap’s ineluctable jaws. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They adduce, for example, a meaningful
work-career, and place computer programming at the tippity tip-top of their
list of meaningful work-careers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(This
abject worship of computer programming qua exit ticket from the ghetto is
instanced by the truly nauseatingly self-righteous CP-popularizing campaign
known as Year of Code and the unanimous approval by so-called progressive
educators it enjoys throughout the Anglosphere.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at least <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dans notres pseudo-jours et pseudo-sociétés</i>, computer programming
is a dedicated lubricant of the engines of exchange value: it is suffered to
flourish solely as a component of certain apparatuses (e.g., the wee nauseating
software engines of administration all-too-aptly known as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">apps </i>[although their actual long form, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">application</i>, has Preparation-H-ial overtones that are quite <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">app</i>osite in their own right]) whose sole
purpose is to facilitate the sale and purchase of such tat as name-brand
sneakers or trainers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(To be sure, if,
like the Puritan vice-peddlers of old, the former ghetto-residing young
computer programmer has enormous reserves of self-control, he aut al. can
forbear squandering his computer programming-garnered ducats on name-brand
sneakers and set the money aside for some future purchase [though for what purchase
of intrinsic value could he aut al. set it aside in a society governed by exchange
value?], but the commonsense champion of use-value does not believe in any sort
of Elect and therefore cannot rest satisfied with any system that allows former
inner-city youths to prosper only at the expense of present ones.) <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, as a combined defender of a Soviet-style
command economy and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">x</i>th nature, what
the present writer finds most reprehensible in the diptych is not the actuation
of the homicide depicted therein by shoe-envy but rather the tattiness and
ephemerality of the actuating shoe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
kill someone for the sake of possessing a pair of handmade full-brogue all-leather
Oxford dress shoes (or even a pair of machine-made resoleable leather-upper’d-and-rubber
soled penny loafers such as the present writer was able to afford as recently
as the mid-1990s) while lamentable, is at least understandable, for with proper
care such shoes will allow the killer to go about the world in style and
comfort for the rest of his life (or at least the rest of that rest that precedes
his arrest for the killing and the attendant presumptive confiscation of the
shoes as contraband).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To kill someone
for the sake of a pair of name-brand sneakers or trainers, on the other hand,
is not only lamentable but asinine, inasmuch as the shoes in question, no
matter how expensive they may be, are shabbily constructed, hideously
unflattering to the wearer’s feet, and—in being unresoleable—intrinsically
disposable; and inasmuch as these shoes are destined within a year at the very
most to be superseded qua most-coveted so-called inner-city commodity by
another brand or make of shoe-pair that will in no even relatively intrinsic
sense (i.e., in point of comfort, comeliness, or durability) be superior to
themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course such murderous
fervor over instantly superseded brand-name commodities is very much par for
the coarse (sic) in the present hyperoccident, although here and now this
fervor is preeminently lavished not on shoes but rather on electronic engines
of data processing-cum-transmittal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
of course it will be argued by the tech-humping faction of the champions of use
value that electronic engines of data processing-cum-transmittal, in contrast
to shoes, generally increase in usefulness as one brand or model of them after
another supersedes its predecessor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
I do not on the whole agree with this faction on this point should go almost
without saying to anyone who has read even the preceding 500 words of the
present essay (i.e., on the evidence of my very recent micro-polemic against
so-called apps) and entirely without saying to anyone who has read the essay
from the beginning (i.e., on the evidence of my fairly ancient mini-polemic
against the incapacity of state-of-the-art present-day personal computers to
deliver some of the barest amenities of the stone age of personal computing).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my disagreement with them on this point
is not in point, and indeed is entirely beside the point, at the moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the moment, as far as I am concerned, the
commodities in question could increase exponentially in utility without fail or
pause and still be insufferably objectionable on account of the grotesque
rapidity with which they arouse appalling heights (or depths) of envy,
smugness, and contempt in the human individual who covets, purchases, and
discards them, respectively and successively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When a given data-processing-cum-transmittal engine first appears on the
so-called market, each and every milliard or so would-be purchasers of the
engine falls prey to spasms of ecstasy elicitable by no mere orgasm or heroin
high and concomitantly launches into a panegyric thereunto fulsome and tedious
enough to make Nero ([sic] {i.e., qua insatiable flattery-gourmand, not
Caligula qua insatiable proto-Sadist, Moz fans}) blush and his largest pet
elephant’s ears fall off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once one
of these spastics-cum-panegyrists has managed to acquire one of these
data-processing-cum-transmittal engines, he cannot forbear showing it off to
everyone in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Umwelt</i> at every
opportunity—or, rather, at every opportunity plus every sub-opportunity; in
other words, not only at every moment of so-called downtime but also at all but
the uppest moments of so-called (if it is indeed so-called; if it is not, I
hereby plant my personal motto [viz., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Factor
aquae nisi fractor venti</i>]-bearing flag on the patent thereunto) uptime, at
any moment at which the other person is not engaged in some activity whose most
fleeting interruption will immediately occasion at least several human deaths. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is very much like the sort of
photograph-viewing ordeal one is submitted to by a new parent, only a thousand
times more importunate, not to mention ridiculous (i.e., inasmuch as the
photographed entity and the camera are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">one
and the same</i>). But no sooner (i.e., six months later at the latest) has the
given data-processing-cum-transmittal engine been superseded by a new model
than it disappears from the hands and chat of its former most dedicated
advocate and ardent propagandist, who, should one be so churlish to inquire
from him aut al. (who in the meantime will have begun singing the praises of
the new former-latest model’s replacement) where it has got to, will immediately
avert his aut al.’s face, take the longest imaginable of drags on a cigarette
ever ready to hand in case of such an inquiry, and mutter through the drag’s
exhalation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">If you have la consideración
más pequeña for my honor or safety, señor aut otro aut otra</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I beg you,</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">por favor</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do not ever
mention that motor malditor in my presence again.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course this entire cycle, in being a
thousand times more normative than Tupperware parties and gray flannel suits were
three-fifths of a century ago, is reflected in cinematic and televisual comedies
and farces, wherein no figure is more mercilessly held up to ridicule, or
elicits more vociferous laughter, than the doddering, palsied old codger still
using an old-fangled flip-top dumb mobile phone. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dans les mises-en-scène-cum-montages
de nos pseudo-jours et pseudo-sociétés</i>, the lingering dumb-phone user is
effectively a reincarnated Pantaloon or a M. Hulot purged of every last conceivably
redeeming trait.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when one spins the
dial of one’s wayback machine back a further butcher’s half-decade to the use
of data processing-cum-transmitting technology dating from the first few years
of the present millennium—why, then, one moves from comedy and farce to a sort
of horror movie or video nasty that is conceived to be too horrifying and nasty
even to be allowed within the view of a camera.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whenever I witness one of my contemporaries being spoken to of a
pre-2005 computer, let alone being brought into the presence of such a machine,
I cannot but be reminded of Norbert Elias’s signalization of the unprecedented
revulsion from feces towards the end of the Middle Ages as a watershed moment
in the civilizing process, for these persons do indeed recoil from the mention
of the obsolete engine as viscerally and violently as a modern pedestrian from
a dog turd on the sidewalk; and indeed it is very much debatable—especially in
this loathsome pseudo-age of yellow-snow cotton candy and toilet-themed
restaurants—whether the immediate propinquity of an early-oughties desktop PC
with all its obligatory peripherals would be suffered more readily by the
average present-day hyperoccidental than that of a heap of dog shit of
comparable size and heft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, should
some present-day Allen Funt revive (or, as I suppose one must put it now, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reboot</i>) that wonderful old cavalcade of
televisual japery, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Candid Camera</i>, he
aut al. would doubtless get the new version of the program off to a hilariously
successful start <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>by purporting to offer
a married couple some exorbitant sum of money—a half a million dollars would by
no means be too much to be effectual—provided that they allowed, say, a 2003
Dell desktop computer to be prominently, immovably displayed in some room of
their abode in which they regularly received company.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“So do you mean,” one of them would
ever-so-tentatively ask on taking in the offer, “that we have to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">use</i> the machine regularly, that it’s got
to be the main computer we connect to the internet, shop, F******k, and so
forth with?” “Oh, Heaven forfend!” the host would scandalizedly rejoin: “by all
means continue using whatever machine you’re currently using.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You need never switch this one on, or even
plug it in.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“B-b-but what if someone
should ask what that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thing</i> is doing
here, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in our living room</i>?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That’s entirely up to you, sir, madam, autc.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could reply to them, for example,
that you somehow just haven’t gotten around to getting rid of it, to taking it
down to the charity shop.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But that
would imply either that we’d been using it recently, in the last few months, or
equally horrifically, that we’re the sort of people who leave <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">garbage</i> like that sitting in our living
room for decades on end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course
no charity shop would ever take it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“What can I say?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have to
decide if it’s worth it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember: you
could buy an awful lot of [latest-model A***e-branded gadget]s, perhaps as many
as a dozen of them, with 500 grand.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Shaking
his aut al.’s head in the negative while shedding tears of pride only very
shabbily masquerading as tears of regret:] “I’m sorry, sir, we can’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We just can’t.”</span></div>
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<span style="background: #fefdfa; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">END OF PART TWO.</span></div>
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Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-61721163903880676872019-06-14T19:03:00.000-04:002019-07-12T18:20:06.292-04:00A Translation of Ein Jahr mit Thomas Bernhard by Karl Ignaz Hennetmair. Part II: February<b style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;">A Year with Thomas Bernhard: The Sealed 1972 Diary</span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 1, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 2:15 p.m. Thomas comes to my house to collect me for a
walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s brought along a large green
15 x 18 cm marble slab with a fist-sized piece of quartz glued onto it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A metal plate reads: Rauris Literary
Conference 2/14-2/17/1971.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gives the
slab to me and says: I did some tidying up today; I’m giving you this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say, this makes me very happy, because you
just got it from Rauris and not from Thomas Bernhard, like me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For me it’s valuable because it belonged to
you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We set off on our usual circuit—to
Ohlsdorf, then the forester’s lodge, Aupointen, Sandhäuslberg, and back to Weinberg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today I’ve received no congratulations;
yesterday I got some more from just one person, Herberts (the head of
production at IFAGE Cologne).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I might
hear something from Radax, says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I say: I’ve been expecting news from him by today at the latest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas would like to speak with Radax at all
costs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He would like to tell him what he
must do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He must try making <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frost</i> in Germany if the ORF doesn’t
agree to take it on immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
says he’s going to write to his publishing firm to tell them to withdraw his
consent if a contract with the ORF doesn’t materialize immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say, you’ve got to give them a grace period
of, say, eight days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By law there’s got
to be a grace period; otherwise you can’t back out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas also tells me that as he was tidying up
he came across Dr. Klaus’s invitation to Salzburg and that that actually wasn’t
all that long ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was in 1968.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zuckmayer is actually a very nice guy; he’s
very effective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remind Thomas how
nicely Zuckmayer pronounced “Jew boy” in talking on television about how people
had shouted that at him when he was a young man.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Next come the usual war anecdotes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas tells me that when his foster-father
arrived home on foot from Yugoslavia in June of 1945, he was lying in the sun
on a hot tin roof in Traunstein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he
saw his foster-father coming, he ran down from the roof as fast as he could to
give him a rousing welcome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the man
walked right past him without even looking at him and lifted his son, Peter,
Thomas’s half-brother, up into the air with both hands and took no notice of
Thomas even afterwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once you’ve
taken something like that in, you can never get it out of your mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was fourteen years old at the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just imagine how something like that affects
you at that age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said this just
before we went into my house, and I made a mental note of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m frantically trying to remember what I had
wanted to make sure not to forget. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It was so good and
it’s slipped my mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We covered so many
topics in the course of our two-hour walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At 5:00 Thomas leaves, and I start writing immediately afterwards,
because he’s planning to come back towards half-past seven. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes, I still
recall that Thomas said that at home he had found a Grimme Prize winner in a
list in which some authors were quoted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’s the author who wrote the play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In
the Matter of Oppenheimer</i> [Heinar Kipphardt, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the Matter of Robert Oppenheimer</i>].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve seen this play on German and Austrian
television; Thomas hasn’t, so I tell him a bit about what it’s about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas says that this writer received four
prizes for this play, including a Polish prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Italian</i> will certainly
also be broadcast in foreign countries, because the translations won’t present
any difficulties, because there’s no dialogue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even in North Germany nobody understands hoibafünfi [probably an
Austro-Bavarian pronunciation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">halb
fünf</i>, meaning half-past four (DR)] etc. anymore, and in the end there isn’t
much to translate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That could be a big
plus for screenings in foreign countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What’s more, most outstanding plays are also shown in foreign countries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">February 2,
1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas ended
up not coming again yesterday evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This morning I received a written reply from Governor Wenzel in the
matter of Thomas Bernhard [Wenzl confirms receipt of Hennetmair’s letter,
promises to seek further information, and says he plans to get in touch with
him again].<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oberösterreichische Nachrichten</i> there’s
an announcement: Reading by Thomas Bernhard, Thursday, 8:00 p.m., Jägermayrhof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I had invited Thomas to have pheasant for dinner
with us on Thursday but I want to go to the reading at the Jägermayrhof, at
10:00 in the morning, I drive to Thomas’s house at Nathal and tell him that today,
Wednesday, I’ll be skipping my gym lesson so that we have can have our pheasant
dinner today, and that I’d like to set out on a walk at 4:00 in the afternoon
so that we’ll have a hearty appetite by 4:30. My proposals are fine by
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also tells me that this
article about the reading at the Jägermayrhof is shameless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I clearly and curtly cancelled back in
December.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knows perfectly well that I
won’t be coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say: Yes, of course,
I obviously know that; that’s why I plan to be there tomorrow no matter what.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d like to hear all the nonsense that’s
going to be said about you there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 4:00
Thomas steps in. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve already been the
victim of another screw-up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can you
believe it, the names of all the winners of the Grimme prize have been made
public; they’ve been printed really big in all the newspapers, but my name isn’t
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve brought along the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Frankfurter Allgemeine</i> so that you can see
for yourself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas wants to show me
the article; he can’t find it and realizes that in his agitation he brought
Tuesday’s paper; in other words, the one from the day before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t matter, he says, and he tells me
that such and such names are listed, and that there are precise descriptions of
what the prize was awarded for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that
it doesn’t bother him. Because some girl in an office made the mistake, and now
he’ll just have to be announced on his own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We set off on our walk from Ohlsdorf to the forester’s lodge to
Aupointen to Sandhäuslberg to Weinberg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By the time we’re passing the forester’s lodge it’s already dark, it’s
3:45, but the road is marvelous, and we decide not to take any short cuts and
to walk the full length of the route.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
talk again about the prizes and about the screw-up he suffered in connection
with the Grimme Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas hopes
that his publisher or Höfer from WDR, who have of course already wired
congratulations, or Falkenberg in Marl, will call and demand the
announcement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of course that’s
publicity and business for them; they’ll already be reacting against the
omission. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 6:30 we
have pheasant and red cabbage for dinner and drink red wine with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After an hour we take the two-liter bottle
into Granny’s living room and watch the news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After the end of the German news magazine show, Thomas asks if we can
turn off the television and talk amongst ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among other things Thomas says that really so
far almost all the prizes he’s received have been awarded to him only
reluctantly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because of this he
really needn’t decline them, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
laugh almost to the point of tears when we start talking about his accident,
and my mother says Thomas could have very easily wound up dead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My spouse, my daughter Reinhild, and son
Wolfgang are also present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everybody
laughs loudly when Thomas says, OK, now you’re going to have do all your
laughing on your own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We talk about
fancy coffins, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An undertaker’s is
one of the best businesses, says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because some of the customers spend lots of money on the dead person
because they actually loved him, and the rest also do because they’ve got a
guilty conscience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In every case there’s
an outlay.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas tells
some downright silly stories.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something
always pops into his head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He tells us
that he once attended a writers’ conference in Luxembourg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Writers from all the nations of the world
were gathered there; each of them had an earphone at his seat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly he had to pay a visit to the
toilet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A bit later, when he was back in
the conference room, he noticed they were talking about something completely
different now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He looked around and
realized he was sitting next to [Walter] Hallstein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, at the same time in the same
building, a meeting of the European council was being held, and he had wandered
into the wrong room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because the room
looked exactly the same and “his” seat was empty, it took him a while to
realize that he was attending the wrong conference.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Thomas
starts talking about Lassl again and says that twenty years ago in Salzburg he
had written a scathing review of Dr. Lassl’s and his girlfriend’s poetry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas had written of Lassl: He makes poems
the way someone else would make a pantry box.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As a result, Dr. Lassl and his girlfriend invited Thomas to pay them a
visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They thought Bernhard would be a
strange character but came to the conclusion that he was really just a nice
young man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they proceeded to
“soft-soap” him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was still very young
then, and he let himself be “coopted.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The two of them did it very adroitly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And now Lassl’s bragging about how he’s known me for 20 years, which he
has, but it’s all owing to how things were way back then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now that he’s on the subject of
his youth, he goes on to tell us about how in 1945 at the age of 14 he spent a
fortnight hunkered down in a four-room apartment to keep it from being occupied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did this pending the arrival of his
stepfather and mother from Traunstein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once
they had acknowledged their Austrian citizenship, they were required to leave
Traunstein within a fortnight. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas therefore located the vacated
apartment of a German who complementarily had to leave Austria within a
fortnight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had to stay in the
barricaded apartment round the clock for a fortnight, because otherwise the
apartment would have been immediately occupied by some foreigner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Relatives looked after him by bringing him
bread, and then he would have to clear everything away from the door because he
had piled up everything against it as a barricade out of fear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After his parents arrived from Traunstein,
more and more relatives moved into this apartment, so that eventually thirteen
people were living in four rooms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
meanwhile his bed had ended up in the hallway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because his uncle [Uncle Farald] would get up as early as four in the
morning and he’d never got any peace and quiet in the hallway otherwise, he had
never gotten a good night’s sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
fine morning he told his mother that he wouldn’t be going to school anymore,
that instead he was going to start a commercial apprenticeship right away to
quiet his hunger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That very day he
started working as an apprentice at a grocery store.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon his family and all his relatives
started constantly nagging him “to bring something home with him.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They would explicitly nag him to do this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They didn’t give a hoot about the trouble
they would be getting him into by making him do them this favor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas talked in detail about how
ridiculously small the inventory of the store had been, and about how as a
result “nothing much had happened.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There had scarcely been a morsel even for him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then Thomas tells more silly stories, and since I’m avoiding
pouring him too much wine, every time his glass is empty, Thomas asks: You got
any more?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only once he had started
asking for it did I pour him more several times. If I kept pouring him more
wine automatically and forcing wine on him, he would be cross with me for a
good while afterwards for having made him tipsy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I prefer to be asked to pour and then I’m
safe from an attack of ill humor if he “ties one on.” It sounds paradoxical but
in the interest of friendship I’ve got to offend against the laws of
hospitality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas is such a strong
personality that he can even control how tipsy he gets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By just before midnight we had drunk the
second two-liter bottle dry, but he drove home just fine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 3, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 9:30 this morning Thomas brought my mother the knitted
trousers and blue work trousers he was wearing during the accident in order to
have them patched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yesterday Thomas said
he was going to bring the trousers to his cleaning-woman, Mrs. Braun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had immediately suggested that my mother
would like to do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had done this
because I wanted to save the torn-up part of the trousers as a memento.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mother got the picture and immediately
declared that she was ready for the job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas immediately consented, saying he would naturally be honored by this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuFqpGpDQYBRi0hyH0pYHdUhHhPNEyIBl4-_th48UdvfktpLCiAaVSJVfvhvMH5ccf1aC5ngHHchmgzjaQ5ocbmNwvusvuWoS9OSW20AjaRA65hNELQAr2rlhR1Sr1zYqvPVy8yw/s1600/YTB272.01.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="396" data-original-width="560" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuFqpGpDQYBRi0hyH0pYHdUhHhPNEyIBl4-_th48UdvfktpLCiAaVSJVfvhvMH5ccf1aC5ngHHchmgzjaQ5ocbmNwvusvuWoS9OSW20AjaRA65hNELQAr2rlhR1Sr1zYqvPVy8yw/s1600/YTB272.01.PNG" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 1:00 in the afternoon I myself showed up at Thomas’s house
in Nathal to give him 800 schillings’ worth of groceries from my shopping spree
in Wels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas had just finished
writing his letters and gave me two to read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The first one was to Mr. Donnepp in Marl and read more or less as
follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Dearest
Mr. Donnepp!<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In your
letter you notified me of my receipt of the Adolf Grimme Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Via the card enclosed with your letter I have
declared my intention to participate in the events of March 9 and 10.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you entreated me to put this news
exclusively to my own personal use, because you were planning to wait until
1/31/1972 to give an announcement about my receipt of this award to the press.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why should I keep this a secret?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To my astonishment, while the names of the
Grimme Prize recipients have indeed been announced in the newspapers, my own
name does not figure among them.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The whole
thing reminds me of an experience I had at school, when my name had been
written on a blackboard along with those of other recipients of a college
scholarship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I subsequently showed
up and stood in line in my brand-new suit to receive the scholarship, all the
envelopes with their money had already been handed out when I was just about to
receive my own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to admit to myself
that merely having had my name up on the blackboard really wasn’t enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My name had apparently slipped into the list
by mistake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems to me that to act
on your invitation would be ill-advised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This
matter is especially embarrassing to me in the light of the many expressions of
congratulations that I have been receiving via telegram.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yours very respectfully,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas
Bernhard<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The second letter Thomas snatched out of my hand and loudly
read out himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Dear Mr.
Siegfried Unseld:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s been
two months since I last heard any news from you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the meantime, I’ve decided not to write
about Holl. In preparing the new edition of Frost, you should make sure that
the typos in the old INSEL edition aren’t repeated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You should assign the completion of this task
to a conscientious, diligent person, to the extent that you have such a person near
you; otherwise the publication of the new edition won’t be doing me any favors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I find myself to be in the finest fettle.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yours,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas
Bernhard<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">P.S.</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> [1]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’ve still got to write a sentence about the Grimme Prize
after this P.S., says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I
didn’t wait for that. Because I’m tired and want to take a good long nap before
this evening’s event at the Jägermayrhof in Linz, I leave right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’ll have to take the walk alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll come with the mail at 8:30 tomorrow
morning and brief you on the Jägermayrhof, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fine, thanks, goodbye!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This afternoon’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salzkammergutzeitung</i>
includes an article with the headline: Thomas Bernhard, Eight-Time Prizewinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I coordinated the inclusion of this article
with Mr. Kihs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From 7:45 to 11:15 p.m. I
am at the Jägermayrhof in Linz with my mother, spouse, and daughter Elfriede.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we’re leaving I pick up two posters as
souvenirs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My daughter and I take notes
on the reading.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 4, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 8:15 a.m., I’m at Thomas’s house with the mail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s received a thick letter from Radax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas would like to read the letter from
Radax before I brief him on the Jägermayrhof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As he’s doing so, I read my own mail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It also includes a letter from Radax.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas gives me the gist of Radax’s letter and says that he’s
not going to get belligerent about it, because he’s staking everything on the
videotaping at the Salzburg Festival, on his making a big noise at the ORF.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I brief him on the reading at the
Jägermayrhof in Linz. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We sat by the table where Dr. Lassl was sitting with his
fellow-speakers, Herbert Baum and Pervulesko.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Before the reading, my daughter Elfriede could hear Herbert Baum saying:
I’ve taken the liberty of stealing a word from Bernhard; I can’t manage to get
the sentence right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody notices this,
not even the man himself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then Dr. Josef Lassl starts by excusing Bernhard’s absence,
saying it’s for reasons of health.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
writer must write and not work, he says.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bernhard’s poetic arc is wide, but his world is damaged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bernhard is standing way up high; nobody
knows when the air will get too thin for him, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’ve got to brief Thomas very thoroughly on everything
mentioned in the program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told him
that Herbert Baum had read better than he himself did (I was referring to an audiotape
recording of Thomas).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Dr. Lassl had
finished, I went up to him and said: Thomas Bernhard has once again received a
prize, the Grimme Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I then handed
him the article from that day’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salzkammergutzeitung</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Lassl says furiously: What, another prize
already?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, after all, he still needs
a third house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because Dr. Lassl was
being thronged by members of audience, I waited until he was alone in the lobby
with his girlfriend to continue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say:
Do you really begrudge him the Krucka?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All right, all right, says Lassl, he obviously needs the prizes; they’re
his livelihood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He obviously can’t get
by on seventeen-hundred schillings a month.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I said, I’m a neighbor of Bernhard’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He invests everything in his houses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I also happen to know for a fact that Bernhard cancelled his participation
in this reading way back in December.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lassl
was highly irritable from the start, and now he was getting more and more
hot-tempered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know anything
about any cancellation, I don’t about anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As I just smile at this, he adds, look, what the hell am I supposed to
do; what the hell do you want; I only sang hosannas to him in any case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t say anything unkind about him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To which I said: Bernhard very much jokingly
asked me to give you his regards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps you aren’t at all aware that Bernhard likes you; I was lying,
because he never lets on to anyone if he likes him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>O-o-o-h, I could tell that, said Dr. Lassl’s
escort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>O-o-o-h, we know he likes us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Please give him some very sincere
regards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She offered me her hand, and as
she observed that I was cutting her an inquisitive look, she added: Bernhard
knows full well who they’re from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lassl
also said his goodbyes in a friendly tone, asked me to give some regards.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
evening of February 3, 1972 at the Jägermayrhof in Linz, from a manuscript page
retained by Karl Ignaz Hennetmair<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas kept wanting to learn further news and details.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then it was 11:00 a.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I consoled him with the prospect of a
continuation of the briefing in the afternoon, as we were planning to meet at
the Krucka at 2:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next I gave him
his mail and a telegram from Radax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
2:00 I reach the Krucka on foot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a
ten-minute walk from the street to the house; the only way to drive there is by
tractor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas has heated the house
well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He shows me the lumps of ice from
the frozen bucket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas entreats me to
let the place continue warming up for another hour before we set off on our
walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says he wants to warm the
Krucka up properly, because he’d like to move back into it for a few days
starting tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we don’t set out
on our uphill march from the top of Grasberg to Neukirchen to Reindlmühl until
3:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have our cars parked at
Reindlmühl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We get there at 5:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the way Thomas instructed me to purchase
Asamer’s woods for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m supposed to
speak with Asamer later today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s
supposed to come see me at 7:00 p.m., because he’d like to know for sure
whether or not the woods are acquirable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 7:00 p.m. I can report to Thomas that I’ve proposed a
price.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell him Asamer wants to have
until Monday to think about the sale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’d like to speak with his wife first too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because Asamer was making some quite major
investments in his guesthouse, I opted to approach Asamer right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not in a pushy way, to be sure, but like
this: Bernhard wants to buy something now; he’d also like to get a patch of
woods in Reindlmühl, but it makes no difference to him, it could also be in
Ohlsdorf, I said to Asamer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After I’d
briefed him about Asamer, Thomas handed me a telegram, saying: Look, from the
hypocrite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The telegram read as follows:
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">EVEN IF THE GREAT WRITER WASN’T
PRESENT HE WAS UBIQUITOUS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>SINCERE
REGARDS FROM YOUR VISITORS IN MAY. STRIEGL(?) LASSL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas stayed till 10:00. He said he wasn’t going to bother
going to Marl for the Adolf-Grimme Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My briefing on the reading at the Jägermayrhof was giving him the creeps
about such things. You never know what people you’re going to run into there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He loathes the film people, he hates all
these functions, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because he’s
planning to pillory all these “things,” he doesn’t want to get too deeply
involved in them by participating in them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas shows me the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salzburger
Nachrichten</i>, an article about the French translation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Verstörung</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other countries are much more important to
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s written in other countries
means more than what’s written about me in Austria or even right here.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>February 8, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas comes at 1:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As he still hasn’t eaten, I invite him to join us for lunch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During after-lunch mocha my spouse hands
Thomas a linzertorte with the number 41 baked onto it and congratulates him on
his 41<sup>st</sup> birthday, which is tomorrow, on having completed his 41<sup>st</sup>
year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas is very surprised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He tells us that on the morning of Saturday,
2/5, he acted on a sudden whim by driving to Vienna and that he only got back
home about an hour ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he only
quickly looked through his mail and came over right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says thatthere I’ve got to come with him,
that he wants to show me a piece of mail he’s received from Donnepp [Dr. Bert
Donnepp, founder of the Adolf Grimme Institute].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an insolent letter with a ton of
leaflets attached to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those leaflets
from Marl horrify him so much that he isn’t going to go there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Vienna Thomas met with Radax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From him he’s learned who all is going to be
in Marl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing but fat-faces,
impossible, execrable people, all of them characters he dislikes, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas said his aunt in Vienna was going to
have to have nine teeth pulled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
can’t chew well, feels bad health-wise, bad in general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said he couldn’t bear being there for more
than an hour straight, because that was always more than long enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His aunt couldn’t understand that; she said
that she wanted to spend more time with him, but that he was always roaming
about. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that he couldn’t have
stood to stay a day longer in Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That now he’s astonished that he was able to live in Vienna for so
long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The snow is muddy, the parked cars
covered in filthy snow; the parking spaces couldn’t be cleared.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because lots of cars weren’t being used; it
looked awful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Radax was very reasonable this time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, he only spent an hour with him,
but this time he was very pleasant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
really made a good impression on me then, said Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After two hours, at 3:00, Thomas says I’ve got to come along
with him and bring a bottle of cider and a bucket for nuts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also wants to show me his letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At his house at Nathal he shows me the
letters; one of them is from Agi, and there’s also a card from Agi’s mother,
Baroness Handl, a birthday card.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Regarding these, Thomas says he’s going to go to Almegg again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he emphasizes that he’ll only be visiting
Agi’s mother, because she’s actually just a simple old woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say: then you’re really going to have to
shout at her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During my last visit
there, two years ago, I already had to shout at her so that she could
understand me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I read the letter from the Grimme Prize Foundation and glance
at the leaflet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an adult education
center and calls itself “The Island.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
show Thomas the photo of the lecture hall and say: That looks exactly like the
sort of thing you hate most of all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes
of course, says Thomas; in about sixty years the entire town will be put on
display as an example of what impossibly awful buildings architects used to
design.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With these words, he began
furiously tearing up the leaflets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They’re no good as anything but kindling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he drew my attention to several
sentences in Donnepp’s letter and read them out to me: You see that I’ve been
very busy; otherwise I would have replied to you a couple of hours earlier,
writes Donnepp, and he continues: We haven’t got a bulletin board; we don’t understand
in what way the telegram of congratulations was supposedly embarrassing, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What incredibly trashy behavior, says Thomas,
as if it were all my fault.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple of
hours, he writes, and we haven’t got a bulletin board.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the Germans are all like that; they’ve
got no sense of humor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ve got such
a wretched sense of humor that they think it’s funny if somebody pinches
somebody else’s bum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in any case I’m
not going there; I don’t want to see those execrable people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say: Radax will have to accept the prize
for you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, for him it’s important to
be there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because he’ll meet all the
movers and shakers there; he’ll have an opportunity to initiate something
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For him it’s something like a film
and television business convention, says Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">By now it’s 6:15 and I ask Thomas to come round for a mug of
mulled cider at about 7:00. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 7:00 Thomas shows up at my house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we discuss Schranz’s homecoming reception,
Thomas gets more and more miffed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
says he’s going to write an article about how stupid that all is, about what an
enormity it is to organize such a party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He says that it’s just popularity-mongering of the worst possible sort,
that he’s going to give it a proper tongue-lashing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That in general he should take up his pen and
speak his mind in full more often. That he could no longer keep mum about such
enormities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People have just turned into
total zombies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we’re sitting in
front of the television and watching the hurly-burly at the Ballhausplatz, I
say: It’s no different than when they celebrate a prizewinning bull in Ried.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of course Schranz is just an overbred
athlete, every bit as overbred as the cattle-breeding association’s bulls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s nothing having anything to do with
brains for miles around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So why should
anybody celebrate him by seriously comparing him to people who have
accomplished great things with their minds?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas is livid with anger about this Schranz reception, so that I don’t
tell him what I’d really also like to say: that here a guilty man is being
celebrated as innocent by other guilty people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Perhaps there was also another reason why Thomas was in a bad
mood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This morning my wife and I were
planning to visit Thomas at Nathal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of
course we didn’t know that he’d gone to Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We thought he’d been at the Krucka for two days and hoped the mail had
lured him back down here and that we’d find him at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An official car was parked in front of
Thomas’s farmhouse at Nathal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I asked
the driver whether anybody from his office was at Bernhard’s place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Are you from the BH [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bezirkhauptsmannschaft</i>
{i.e., something like a county commission or county council (DR)]?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Has your boss got much more to do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No, he’s already been in there for a quarter of an hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, then, I don’t want to disturb him, and
we’ll wait until the visit is over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
I notice that the key of the gate isn’t in the keyhole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I reach for the place where the key is
“stuck,” and it’s completely stuck, frozen, in its stowing space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I say to the driver, it’s simply not
true that your boss is in there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He most
certainly is, says the man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, I say,
he most certainly is not in the house, I’m sure of that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more, Bernhard obviously hasn’t opened
the gate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We know that, says the driver,
but he’s most certainly in there; he’s been in there for over a quarter of an
hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re from the agricultural
commission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah, I say, I’m very well
informed about this; it’s about the survey for the property-tax exemption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, that’s it, says the driver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I’m sure Thomas isn’t in, I’m about to
drive off right away when Panholzer the graduate engineer returns to the car
via the gap between the two farmhouses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I stop, and Panholzer says he’s obtained the necessary information from the
next-door neighbor, “Haumer.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says an
exemption from the property tax is out of the question, because Bernhard would have
to have a family, and the preponderance of the acquired property would have to
be devoted to the maintenance of a family via an agricultural enterprise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon I open the gate with the stowed key
and show the engineer the agricultural machines and the newly built stable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Panholzer is surprised that everything is so neat,
and I explain that Bernhard would like to buy a few heads of cattle in the
spring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That what’s more, he’s gone so
far as to fit out a self-contained, secluded apartment with a bathroom in case
he’s ever in a position to hire a married couple as agricultural workers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then Panholzer immediately states that
he’s going to have to give a negative opinion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because this negative opinion means that Thomas is going to have to pay
about 20,000 schillings in property taxes, he’s in a really foul mood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Unfortunately I must also report on the subject of the sale of
Asamer’s woods that Asamer is demanding 170,000 schillings, and the offer of
120,000 schillings was described as adequate to the value of the property by
Asamer himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all that, Asamer
said that Bernhard would have to pay a “collector’s price” if he wanted to get
hold of the woods.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas once again gets indignant about the
Schranz reception and says: we’ll be a laughing stock abroad; this is something
that just can’t be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How is somebody
who actually brings home a gold medal supposed to be honored now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or how are people who actually do something
for Austria supposed to be honored?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
I say to Thomas that I’d like to show him something that I’ve kept a secret
from him until now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was hoping to
soothe his spleen by doing this, and now if ever was an auspicious moment for
pulling out a carbon copy of my letter to Governor Wenzel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So as to avoid “cutting straight to the
chase,” I say: I wrote to the governor; I have his reply here, and I first hand
him the governor’s written reply of 1/28/1972. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: black;">He obviously can’t
make head or tail of it, and I give him my letter to Dr. Wenzel from
1/24/1972.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He reads it, then says: You
shouldn’t do things like this; you know I don’t want any honors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They can’t give you any more honors; they can
only honor themselves if they give you the Stifter Prize, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s go upstairs and watch television; it’s
already five minutes past half-past seven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We sit in front of the TV until 10:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We watch the press conference with Schranz.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I top off Thomas’s glass of mulled wine, make
remarks and comments several times, but Thomas maintains his icy silence for 2
½ hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t believe it’s impossible
to dispel his sullenness; I’m intent on at least getting a peep out of
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the announcer on the
television says that Karl Schranz is going to be flying to Innsbruck, I say:
Schranz should have a fatal crash tomorrow; he reached his high point now; that
would be the finest exit for him. Because in the future things can only go
downhill for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was expecting at
least a nod from Thomas, because death is his pet topic, and Thomas smiles or
smirks like a shot at everything that has to do with death or has some
connection with death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He remained
icy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 10:00 he stood up, said “Good
night” to my family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I accompanied him
to the front door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ordinarily I walk
with him to his parking space as we chat; this time I stayed put at the front
door and said “Good night” only belatedly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You see, he left without making any kind of salutation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .45in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I can hardly sleep and ponder
how to go about reestablishing contact in about a fortnight, for I’m counting
on Thomas’s not coming over for rather a long time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for my part, I assume it’ll be pointless
for me to show up at his place before this fortnight has elapsed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope I can come up with a good excuse
within a fortnight… and I think through all the possible excuses I could
make.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mustn’t go chasing after him in
less than a fortnight; that would put him off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m now reproaching myself most severely for having shown him my letter
to the governor, especially since I’d resolved not to show him this letter
until it had met with success. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">February 9, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas not here at all today;
my apprehensions were well founded; am really devastated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">February 10, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">At 1:30 p.m. I’m just about to
set out with my wife to do some shopping when in walks Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With a friendly smile he says, if you want to
go on a walk with me you’ll have to be quick; I’ve come on foot from Nathal; I
can’t interrupt my march.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m already
warmed up; you know how that is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
you’re warmed up you just want to keep going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I say, I can only postpone my departure for an hour at most.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, that’ll be enough, says Thomas; I’ve
been on the road for 15 minutes so far; after an hour I’ll spend another 15
minutes walking home; by then I’ll have walked a total of an hour and a half,
which is enough for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally I’m
overjoyed that Thomas is here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He acts
as though nothing had happened, and so do I.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Naturally we don’t speak much; neither of us knows where to begin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re headed towards the forester’s lodge; I
keep looking at my watch, so that I don’t forget to turn around after 30
minutes, because my wife is waiting to leave back at the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only tense, plodding conversations
develop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After an hour we’re back, and I
get the impression that this hour has lasted longer than the typical
two-and-a-half hour walk with Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
we’re parting I invite him to come over in the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Purely out of courtesy, he accepts: Perhaps,
if my visit doesn’t last too long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s
got to receive a visitor at 5:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for
visitors he’s never yet shown any consideration, as little consideration as he
sometimes shows for me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">February 11, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">At 12:30 I get back home from a
round of inspections and meetings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
spouse informs me that Thomas was here at noon and that he plans to stop by at
1:00 to set out on a walk with me then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">At 1:00 Thomas arrives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He tells me about his meetings at the
agricultural commission and the farmers’ association this morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas struck the following bargain there: if
he can produce written confirmation from Ohlsdorf Town Hall that he is running
his farm personally, the farmers’ association will recommend his exemption from
the property tax, and the agricultural authorities will endorse the
recommendation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, he’ll save
20,000 schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The big question now
is: Will Thomas receive written confirmation to that effect from Ohlsdorf Town
Hall?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, this morning Meindl, the
secretary of the farmers’ association, had phoned Ohlsdorf Town Hall in
Bernhard’s presence, and Moser, the secretary of the town government, told him
that according to their records, the grounds of Bernhard’s farm were being
rented out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This statement was obviously
inaccurate, because Thomas has never rented out his farm but rather given feed to
one of his neighbors or other every now and then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas asked me to divide up
our walk in such a way that we could also stop by Ohlsdorf Town Hall and the
post office so that he could take care of a few things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m supposed to come with him to the town
hall and help him to obtain the required written confirmation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before setting off on our walk, a walk that
this time was a “walk” in quotation marks, we discussed what we were going to
do at the town hall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas kept wanting
to know what to do if the desired confirmation ended up not being written out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each time I cut him off and said: There’s no
point in mulling over a situation we’re not involved in; what we’ve really got
to do is concentrate on our visit to the town hall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We bandy back and forth whether and he or I
should begin stating the case and how to begin the conversation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas allays my misgivings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He even says: My brother could do something like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously a man can only write such a letter
if he knows the person. In any case, you don’t praise me, but simply write
what’s only fair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not even somebody from
the cultural office could have done it better; it’s really nothing like
patronage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would only be like that if
you introduced exaggerations, but somebody’s got to be the one who makes the
initial suggestion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What you’ve done is
completely right and proper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had a bad
day three days ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was in such a foul
mood that I didn’t notice at all how good your letter is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon I say: Thank god, in a letter in
1965 you wrote to me that you hadn’t received such a rational letter in quite a
number of years; I’m still proud of that today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And that simply forced me to write the letter to the governor; I
couldn’t hold myself back anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now
there’s a file labeled “LH.Tgb.Nr.3278/72-Sp/sch”; what they’re doing now is
all the same to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as I sent off
such a letter in January, I can’t imagine that anybody else could receive the
Stifter Prize, and if somebody did it would be an enormity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’m not going to let such an enormity
happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wenzl has already written to me
that he’ll keep me posted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll wait
until the end of April; then I’ll send my school friend Hillinger, the mayor of
Linz, who’s answerable to the cultural office, a photo where you’re seen with
my schoolmates at a class reunion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since
you were the only person in attendance who wasn’t a school chum, he’d have to
remember you, just as you remember his bowtie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ll inform him that you were “up and coming” back then and that if I
had introduced you as a writer then, you would have run away immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, I’ll bring in Hillinger before
an enormity happens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of course
most of the time it’s already been established who’s going to receive the prize
a few months before the ceremony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’m
going to ask for clarification in May at the latest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been considering writing to Salzburg,
but I don’t have such good arguments for Salzburg, apart from the fact that
you’ve deserved to receive the prize for years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What’s more I say, if I obtain the Stifter Prize in Upper Austria,
they’ll also have to move in with a prize, they’ll be practically forced to
then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, says Thomas, but then I’ll
decline it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been planning to
decline a prize for a long time, but until now that wouldn’t have been very
smart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if Salzburg comes forward
with a prize so late, I’ll decline it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But of course in order to decline a prize, you’ve got to be offered it
first.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’m very glad that my unauthorized step with regard to the
Stifter Prize is no longer a cause of any misunderstanding between Thomas and
me, and we walk past the forester’s lodge and onto Ohlsdorf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On the way, Thomas makes up his mind to be the one to start
the conversation with Moser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moser is
the man he loathes so much that he called his secretary in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gargoyles</i> Moser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back then,
the mayor of Ohlsdorf asked his secretary to sue Bernhard because this
execrable character was based on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Which it indeed was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
Bernhard asked me to smooth things over with Moser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It wasn’t easy for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only when Moser saw to his delight that the
book was a novel did he abandon his plan to sue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said that a novel was just a novel, that
there was no point in saying anything against it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That it would be going too far to attribute
the execrable traits of this Secretary Moser to the real Moser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I was reckoning on having to deal with
his execrableness as we were forming our “plan,” and so I declined to get
involved in any discussion about what would happen if Moser didn’t write out
the desired confirmation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before we
stepped into the town government office, I informed Thomas that yesterday Moser
had declared to the “Haumer” in Nathal, Maxwald, that Bernhard had registered a
protest against the enclosure as a single individual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told him that I had kept this to myself
until then to avoid making him angry unnecessarily, because I know that he
hasn’t registered a protest, because otherwise he obviously would have told me
about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I simply didn’t think it was
necessary to ask him whether the secretary’s assertion was correct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it isn’t possible for Thomas not to
tell me something like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When we stepped into the office, Moser was present; as we had
prearranged, Thomas said that this morning the district farmer’s association
had phoned the town hall and had been wrongly notified, indeed emphatically misinformed,
that Bernhard had rented out the tillable portion of his property.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That this piece of misinformation had
allegedly been imparted by Secretary Moser.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moser categorically refuted this, hypocritically asked a clerk whether
this piece of misinformation had ever been delivered, and said: Obviously
nobody can ever have asserted that, because it isn’t true that the land has
been rented out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas now asked for a
confirmation from the town government that he was running his farm personally;
he wanted to present this confirmation to the district farmers’
association.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, said Thomas, he
had not registered a protest against the proceedings towards an enclosure as
this Moser fellow had maintained to Haumer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the meantime Moser had already inserted a piece of paper into his
typewriter and typed this out like a machinegun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like a shot, Moser pulled the sheet out of
the typewriter and stamped it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He handed
it to Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter only skimmed it
and pocketed it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Give it to me, I say,
let me see it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted to be sure that
this confirmation was adequate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
gives me the slip of paper and I read:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS06nP8AMYoPNVMHoyjLCvGuUYqVJo6abuE6dTWZiVABJIGWqDh8ZcdpWS1sTOqr2KvJIaahNHKM74zVEu9EPcLJ7xevrllz0R5idXHFZb6CE6McAL7hbdJ_AxPRd45VFMqgJtBQ/s1600/YTB272.03.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="314" data-original-width="592" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS06nP8AMYoPNVMHoyjLCvGuUYqVJo6abuE6dTWZiVABJIGWqDh8ZcdpWS1sTOqr2KvJIaahNHKM74zVEu9EPcLJ7xevrllz0R5idXHFZb6CE6McAL7hbdJ_AxPRd45VFMqgJtBQ/s1600/YTB272.03.PNG" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Municipal Government of Ohlsdorf,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<u><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Gmunden
District_</span></u><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 6;"> </span>Ohlsdorf,
February 10, 1972.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To Whom It May Concern!<o:p></o:p></span></u></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
municipal government of Ohlsdorf confirms that the landowner Thomas <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bernhard</i> <u>personally runs his farm</u>
at Obernathal No. 2, the 1.19 hectare (now 2.5 hectare) plot of land purchased
by him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Mayor:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">[stamped signature]</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Obernathal 2, bulldozing
operations, 1968<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As I could
only make out the words “personally runs his farm,” which were underlined, I
was content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I was thinking about
how I could come into possession of this confirmation so that I could add a
photocopy to my notes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In a buoyant
mood we go to the post office; Thomas mails two letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We walk back through the woods via the
forester’s lodge of the Puchheim estate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas was delighted about this confirmation and said: at no point in my
whole writing life have I ever aimed at anything like becoming that sort of
hardscrabble farmer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My writing came
much easier to me than being a farmer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
said: Yes, that’s a valuable confirmation; you shouldn’t let it out of your
sight without making a photocopy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve
already introduced you to my tax accountant Tausch, so you can wait for
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas agrees with me; he says
he’ll do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moser isn’t any better on
account of this, I say; he’s corroborated his execrableness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without asking a lot questions, he started
typing at this typewriter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knew
exactly what it was all about, and underlined the words “personally
farms.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the thing is mentioned, he’ll
say he’d seen you in your work clothes all along or that he didn’t know what
the confirmation was needed for, and so he didn’t ask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at the same moment I realize that this
view of Bernhard could count as a strike against him, and I now maintain that
Moser wrote out this confirmation with good reason.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And specifically because now everything will have
to be seen in the context of the running of a farm, if the farm is put into
working condition, if a stable and a manure shed are built, the roof, etc., is
repaired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of course until that’s
done nobody can demand to have the animals moved in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this point of view it would be downright
wrong to maintain that you’re not running the farm personally, because in the
eyes of all 0ther farmers these work-projects are regarded as part of “running
a farm.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this respect, the written
confirmation is justified.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Wieland Schmied, Thomas
Bernhard<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then Thomas tells me that the day before yesterday, the ninth,
he was in Salzburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then I feel
better, because that was the day we didn’t see each other and I believed this
was on purpose. On the way to Schaffler’s, which he’d been invited to for
lunch, he ran into Kaut (president of the Salzburg Festival).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was evidently very happy about the
Grillparzer and Grimme Prizes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said
he wanted to interview Bernhard for television before the festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas consented on condition that only “the
old days” would be discussed, that there would be no talk about his current
work or his recent works, but only about the preceding ten years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I say: Kaut’s really landed himself in
the soup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because of course those were
the days when you had quite a few choice words for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knowing you, you’ll ruthlessly talk trash
about those days then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas refuses to
admit this, but I stick to my guns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
won’t show Kaut any mercy whatsoever; after all, I say, at the Grillparzer
Prize award ceremony he said he only knew as much Grillparzer as he’d read in
school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kihs’s wife thought that this
was outrageous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That a prize-winner
couldn’t get away with saying something like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he said it, without any mercy for his own
personal reputation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so he won’t
show any mercy towards other people either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He says what’s true, even if it doesn’t even boost his own reputation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can’t act like a hypocrite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I’m expecting him to, he actually won’t
dish all that much dirt on Kaut.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
Thomas also always likes to do what other people aren’t expecting him to do in
a specific instance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas says that he received from Schaffler a s</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">ilver leg as a
birthday present; it’s the kind people used to hang in church as a votive
offering.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">It’s meant as a souvenir of
his accident and his fortunate recovery from it.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">His tax return for 1970 has turned out well;
he’s already sent off the amount due (you see, Schaffler is quite helpful to him
when he’s sorting out his tax returns).</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">From Schaffler he’s also learned that Suhrkamp Publications would like
to buy the publication rights for a paperback edition from Residenz
Publications.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I say to this: these are
of course the ones that Schaffler’s already sold for 30,000 schillings.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yes, says Thomas.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Yes, I
say.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">(Since I started taking notes, I’ve
been keeping better track of this sort of thing.)</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">He’s also received a letter from Martin
Wiebel (the head of drama at West German Channel 3), says Thomas.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">He hopes that I won’t misunderstand Donepp’s
letter and that I’ll still come to the award ceremony.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Today I wrote a letter to Unseld.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">At the beginning of the letter I advise him
to read the French newspaper [sic] the </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Nouvel
Observateur </i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">of 1/31.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Moreover, I
wrote to him: You’ve mentioned the ridiculous Grimme Prize, probably because it
comes from Germany; the Grillparzer Prize you completely ignored, because it
comes from Austria.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I wrote to Unseld
about everything that wasn’t to my liking.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I only wrote to him because a payment that he’s got to remit to me is
due.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Otherwise I wouldn’t have written
to him.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I also wrote that he should only
reply to my letter if he had a sense of humor.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">In my last sentence I wrote: Think of me whatever you like, Thomas
Bernhard.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">This was followed by an orgy
of abuse directed at his publishing firm, but I was going over the gist of the
letter in my head, because later on in my own missive I will have to match the original
at least in its essentials, and so I stopped listening.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">I just know that some more very good
sentences came out of this rant.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">But I
thought it was more important to retain the gist of the letter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Immediately afterwards, Thomas says that this morning on his
way from the bathroom to the kitchen he got the idea for his new novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The beginning, the plot, and the end, the
entire gist of the thing was suddenly there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The kind of thing you sometimes wait for for months or years was there
in a flash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course it’s now standing right
in front of him like a skeleton.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it
isn’t at all difficult to fill in the details when the skeleton is there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s now just a matter of time and patience
and his being in the mood to flesh out the individual sections of the
thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the individual sections, you
can fill things in in a more or less detailed sort of way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he’ll end up doing that in the way that
strikes him as most appropriate; he’ll flesh out the individual sections in
greater or lesser detail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that
the most important thing is for him to have an exact idea of the main gist of
the book, that he’ll work out the individual details in the way that suits his
fancy at that particular moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s
not tied down to anything in that area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
there’s so much stuff still to be added to this skeleton that you can’t say
anything at all about that now; that that comes automatically as you’re
working, when you know what you want; when you know how the novel is supposed
to look overall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure, I say, it’s like
when you’re standing right in front of the shell of a house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The house, its overall structure, is
something you can’t change, but in the execution of the shell there are also
lots of variations, from bargain to luxury models.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can stick whatever you like into such a
shell; it’ll always end up being the house it was supposed to be from the
beginning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Despite the long march, at 4:00 at my house Thomas can’t quite
manage to polish off his Linzertorte over coffee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As long as I’ve known him, this is only the
second time that he hasn’t managed to clean his plate!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For eight years I was wondering if I’d ever
witness this, and it’s just now happened for the second time in no time flat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Thomas leaves at 4:00, he says he’ll
come back again today, and I can see he means it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just hope I manage to get enough down on
paper between now and then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as I’m
“getting enough down on paper,” I suddenly remember something else that’s
important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among other things, Thomas
said that he wasn’t going to present the written confirmation to the farmers’ association
until Tuesday, because when he did that he would also have to speak with
Stadlmayr, the chairman of the local chapter of the association.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He still wants to try to get him to recommend
his exemption from the property tax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
jumped in immediately and said that I had some things to do in Gmunden on
Monday, that I could make a photocopy for him then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas gives me the document, and so now I
can make a photocopy of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As I’m in the midst of writing, the doorbell rings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ringer can only be Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I quickly fled into the office while carrying
the typewriter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The room isn’t
heated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas never goes there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I started writing about Thomas, I’ve
been ready to flee at a second’s notice, because if he were to catch me in the
act, it would all be over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve known
each other for seven years; five years ago we swam buck naked together in the
Alm, but it’s only in the last few weeks that our acquaintanceship has reached
a stage where we fart out loud in each other’s presence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sometimes I get the feeling that he knows what I’m up to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at the same time I get the impression
that he actually expects it of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would
unhesitatingly credit him with the ability to have gathered what I’m up to, to
be slyly egging me on, and to have been constantly discussing his letters with
me as a way of doing that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he most
certainly doesn’t credit me with any great abilities, because I’m certainly
writing more than him right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When on
our way to Ohlsdorf today he showed me a telegram from Werner Höfer, a telegram
that he suddenly pulled out of his coat-pocket and asked me to read, I got the
feeling that he guessed that something was up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In any case he is has been keenly struck by my keen interest in
everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course that’s no
reason to bring along a telegram for me to see when he could just as easily
have told me about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a telegram as
long as a letter Werner Höfer, the director or head of West German Channel 3,
says that he would be very sorry if the misunderstanding with Donepp, the
blackboard, etc., were to keep him from seeing Bernhard at the award ceremony,
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The usual soft soap, says Thomas,
like every time Höfer’s being talked about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is the man who said he didn’t want to hear my name anymore after he
saw <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Italian</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now look how hard he’s trying get on my
good side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say: Perhaps he’d be the
only person you could enjoy yourself with there, perhaps he’s genuine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, he’s a monster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you know him personally?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, only from international Sunday champagne brunches
on German television, says Thomas; that’s enough for me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As he walks in at 6:00, Thomas says: I’m a bit early
today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, I got a feeling
something bad was going to happen; I was worried that the Hufnagls were about
to pay me a visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The light from the
headlights of a car had already fallen on my neighbor Hoffmann’s house; I
thought it was Hufnagel; I might have driven away just barely in time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want to see them today; I don’t want
any visits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I thought I’d drive
straight to your house; I can get away with that, I can get away with staying
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, but they’ll see your car and
follow you here, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that’s fine,
no problem; I’ll invite them in, and you’ll have the advantage of being able to
leave whenever it suits you, whereas you can’t throw them out when they’re at
your house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas gave me a bottle of
red wine for Granny and asked me to make sure to keep the bottle warm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I ask him if I shouldn’t bring us one of
my own bottles of wine at room temperature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because whenever we drain one of Granny’s bottles off the bat, as we’ve
done more than once, she’s unhappy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Granny will surely treasure this bottle as a keepsake and souvenir for
ten or twenty years, because it came from him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She’s already let some chocolates get moldy because she was keeping them
as a souvenir of the person who had given them to her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas emphatically states that he won’t
be drinking any wine today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That it’ll
be better for him not to drink, that for this reason alone it would be a
mistake to open this bottle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We eat some
mini-bratwursts and drink a beer with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We come to an agreement to have peppermint tea later on, because we’ll
obviously have to drink something between now and 10 or 11 o’clock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the course of our debate about beverages,
I learn from my wife that upstairs in Granny’s apartment an unopened bottle of
red wine has been sitting beside the stove for several days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By now it’s 7:00; the doorbell rings, and the
Hufnagls, a divorced couple (Mr. Hufnagl’s an architect in the Blutgasse in
Vienna), come in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tell my son to put a
second bottle of red wine by the stove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>From the Hufnagls Thomas receives hearty congratulations on his
birthday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon I say: I’m proud
that I didn’t congratulate him, that I made that happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course he won’t have any of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the congratulations, it transpires during
our conversation that Thomas was supposed to meet the Hufnagls at the Brandl in
Gmunden today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They waited for him for
two hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas says he stuck his head
in and didn’t see the Hufnagels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally
Thomas says: All right, you’ve found me out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Let’s go upstairs and watch the evening news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immediately afterwards comes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mainz, How it Sings and Laughs</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I drank two liters of red wine with the
Hufnagls; Thomas stubbornly sticks to peppermint tea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now it’s also becoming clear to me why Thomas
didn’t want to let the Hufnagls into his house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hufnagl is a chain-smoker; he devours cigarettes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After two hours the room is so stinky that it
may take days to get the smell out of the curtains etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 10:15 Thomas and the Hufnagls say their
goodbyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally Granny accepted the
bottle of red wine from Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the
label I wrote that Granny had received this bottle from Thomas Bernhard on 2/11/1972.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m writing that for you on it to make it a
keepsake, I say to Granny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m planning
to drink the bottle dry with Thomas and Granny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then I’ll write the date we drain it; then Granny will have two fine
keepsakes of Thomas Bernhard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Granny gets
indignant, I’ll simply say that she can show this bottle to her
acquaintances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To show guests a full
bottle as a memento and not offer them its contents obviously wouldn’t be good
manners.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 13, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 11 a.m. Thomas comes and asks me if I’d like to take a walk
with him after 1:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 1:45 Thomas turns
up with Mrs. Hufnagl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her ex-husband,
Hufnagl the architect, comes a few minutes later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas bluntly tells me that he wanted to
ditch the Hufnagls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he explained to
them that he had already agreed to take a walk with me, but that he couldn’t
shake them off and now they wanted to tag along with us on the walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I just say: “The usual route.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so we take the roughest path via the
grotto at the forester’s lodge; from there we walk uphill all the way up to the
Eybls’ house and then take the same path back downhill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We soon get started talking about shoes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereas Thomas and I have strong shoes on our
feet, the Hufnagls’ footwear isn’t up to the demands of the path.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To their veiled reproaches Thomas says: you
obviously can’t set off on a walk like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I don’t travel to Vienna in rubber boots either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On our way back, by which point I’d just
thought up a detour, my son Wolfi rode up on his moped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A prospective customer has been waiting for
me for a whole hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ride the moped
home; my son walks back with the group in my place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I get back from a few tours of houses
and lots with Mr. Lamberty from Styria, the Hufnagls and Thomas are just leaving
my house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mrs. Hufnagl had to take a hot
footbath and change her stockings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granny
had placed a pair at her disposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hufnagl says it’s been a year since he walked so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas didn’t even take the detour
through Aupointen and Sandäuslberg with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He said that once I’d left he didn’t want to walk anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It just wasn’t any fun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We couldn’t keep up the usual fast tempo, and
the conversation was worse than the walk.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 14, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When at 8:30 a.m. I ask the postman for Thomas’s mail, he
says: Bernhard took it himself at 8:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I take care of several errands in Gmunden and also have the confirmation
from the Ohlsdorf Town Hall photocopied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 1:45 Thomas comes by, says I’ve got to go on a walk with
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s a storm raging outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s raining and snowing cats and dogs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say: I’d rather not today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas browses my newspaper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After ten minutes, he says: You sissy,
because there’s a storm, you won’t come along, but I’m still going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s nothing I enjoy more than storms and wetness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the meantime I had woken up a bit more
from my midday nap and said: I’ll come along.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Despite the storm I put on a cardigan under my coat and a scarf over my
open shirt-collar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea was that
this would force me to keep up a fairly fast tempo in the cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wanted to give Thomas something to look at.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As we were heading towards Ohlsdorf and
nearing Peiskam on a path running through a field, a tractor with the rag-clad
Ohlsdorf village band is driving into the village.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was Shrove Tuesday, when the village band
drives from house to house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To avoid
this hustle and bustle, we cut a broad arc across fields and meadows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the west the wind hit us hard in the
face, and when we got to the fork in the road at the forester’s lodge, Thomas
said today he wanted to walk even farther, to Unterthalam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, he could tell that I didn’t like
having the wind in my face, that slushy snow in the right half of my face, and
that if we had turned off at the forester’s lodge, we would have had the wind
at our backs at first, and hardly felt it at all in the forest later on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I agreed to go on the walk on the condition
that it wouldn’t be broken off before two hours had passed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If that’s the way he wants it, okey- dokey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, Thomas thought we might take a short
cut in the forest, skip Autpointen and Sandhäuslberg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just said: we’ll see. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we need two hours to do that, then
yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I increased my tempo even
more, and it was only once we were entering the forest at Unterhaltham near the
mouth of the Traun that we were able to speak again, which had hardly been
possible on account of the storm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then I told Thomas about my countermarch in my first winter in
Russia, when in contrast to today nothing was weighing me down but my
haversack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I still remember this quite
vividly, because I had to carry it slung diagonally over my chest and back and really
sweat like a pig.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas told me again that he had been in Brussels a year ago
on his birthday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unseld visited him
there and congratulated him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said
that he was glad that he had written the most necessary letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he still had to write a couple of lines
to Falkenberg. That he was going to ask him to give his regards to Werner
Höfer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I’ll be spared the trouble
of replying to Höfer’s telegram.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At the fork in the road past Aupointen, I veered to the right
so that Thomas could finally get a proper enough beating from the storm as he
walked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He followed me without making a peep, and
after two hours and twenty minutes we had arrived at my house soaked to the
skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There Thomas said: I’m not coming
in with you today; on account of my wet clothes I’m driving straight home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we certainly both got our jollies; first
he got his, then I got mine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 15, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 10:00 a.m. I learn from the postman that Thomas already
took his mail at 8:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shortly
afterwards, Thomas runs into me in Ohlsdorf on his way back from Gmunden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He tells me that he’s been at the farmer’s
association and at the agricultural commission and that he sneaked through
Gmunden like a thief so that he wouldn’t cross paths with any acquaintances: He
didn’t even go into the coffeehouse; he doesn’t want to see anybody.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m supposed to come to his house for a walk
in the afternoon; once again he’d like to walk towards Desselbrunn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since I’m expecting clients in the afternoon,
I say: it’s impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’m going to
pick up some cider from him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I can
get away before 4:00, I’ll also take a walk with him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas firmly says: Sure, fine, no pressure at
all; if you’re there, you’re there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
won’t set a time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Right afterwards I run into Mrs. Hufnagl in Gmunden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where is Thomas?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve been looking for him; he isn’t at the
Brandl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he definitely had things to
do in Gmunden today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could at least
have lunch with me, she says.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was
already heading back home at 10:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s
got so much work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A half an hour ago I
ran into him and reminded him that he had been invited to have a Valentine’s
Day drink with Mrs. von Levetzow in Salzuburg yesterday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that he hasn’t forgotten about it but
that he’s got no time; that he’s got so many tasks to attend to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(In preference to having a Valentine’s Day
drink, he chose to take a walk in a snowstorm.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I now recall that during our walk yesterday Thomas told me
that at 9 p.m. last Saturday Mrs. Hufnagl had arrived at Thomas’s house in
Nathal in a taxi she’d taken from the Attnang-Puchheim train station.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But O’Donell was still visiting with Thomas
then, and so he couldn’t go with her to Gmunden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next day Thomas thanked O’Donell for
having paid him such a long visit because that had allowed him to get rid of
Mrs. Hufnagl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>O’Donell wanted to do his
friend Hufnagl a “friendly turn” and told him why Thomas had thanked him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hufnagl confronted his ex-wife with this, and
she told everything to Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
said: you’ve just got to find the strength to fess up to something like that
once it’s been passed on that far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
you can easily imagine how tired I am of being dragged into these squabbles
over and over again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because every time
one of them says, “he or she said this,” “what do you think of that?”; I don’t
know what sort of position I’m supposed to take, because if I tell one of them
they’re right, the two of them join forces against me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After ten minutes I’ve convinced Mrs. Hufnagl that Thomas has
no time, and she sets off on her way again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She’s got a terrible cold!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At five in the afternoon I drive into the courtyard at
Thomas’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t even check to see if
he’s in the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course he might
have just gone for a short walk since he’s left the gate open so
invitingly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I go straight down into
the cider cellar, fill my two bottles and reflect that if he’s there, he’ll
have come in through the courtyard door in the meantime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I’m coming back from the cellar, Thomas is
standing in the doorway of the courtyard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He tells me he was just briefly out in the sun before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says he had a high temperature, 37.5
degrees Celsius and a cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I laugh and
say: the day before yesterday we helped Mrs. Hufnagl catch a cold; yesterday it
caught you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas disputes this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His cold isn’t from yesterday; rather, Mrs.
Hufnagl gave it to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During our walk
with her, she was already coming down with a cold, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then I tell Thomas that my son Wolfi marveled at his wine
collection when he was fetching cider on Saturday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say, I’ve only ever seen such a large heap
of bottles in Frankfurt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1940 a
vintner in Alsace poured me some fifty-year-old wine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had come from southern France; I had
brought him home from the Sélestat train station and in his delight that his
house was undamaged and his cellar hadn’t been plundered he uncorked a
fifty-year-old bottle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was obvious
that nothing was being plundered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
French wouldn’t do that in their own country, and the Nazis wanted “the
Alsatians to speak Alsatian German.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
everyone was taking great pains to make sure that nothing was plundered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But every last one of the Alsatians told me,
Even when we’re speaking German we’re acting like Frenchmen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so when we started talking about his wine
collection and the colossal value of such collections, Thomas told me that Deutsch
the Jew, who was being investigated for embezzling millions from West Germany,
ordered two bottles of sekt at 600 francs apiece for him (Thomas) and the
leading lady in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Party for Boris</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that the allegations couldn’t be
proved; that everything</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> was in order and Deutsch was going to found a cultural
center on Lake Geneva.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I was at Thomas’s until 7:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’s planning on not leaving the house tomorrow; he wants to nurse his
cold; I’m supposed to bring him newspapers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m also supposed to rustle up a piece of property or woods for him,
either here or in Reindlmühl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m
supposed to sound out the neighbors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He’s got to buy something; he needs something to force him to
write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As long as he knows that a fairly
large sum of money isn’t necessary again, he can’t write well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When everything was in place, when no desires
were unsatisfied–those were always the worst times for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he’s got to place new demands on himself
and buy something else; then everything will be back in order with his writing
as well. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then I told Thomas that I had been at Dr. Erasmus Schneditz
Bolfras’s house and that he was very sorry that he wasn’t personally acquainted
with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schneditz found Thomas a very
interesting man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said he would very
much like to meet him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Thomas
that I told Schneditz that he ought to be glad that that had never happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That Bernhard spent enormous sums of money on
lawyers; in Gmunden he’s already lavished money on Dr. Buchberger, Dr. Ornter,
and Dr. Meingast, and one of them in Vöcklabruck has already kicked the
bucket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among the things he asked me
about was Bernhard’s wife.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he hasn’t
got a wife?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here Thomas interrupted me
and said: From now on if anybody asks you anything like that, tell him he can
kiss my ass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Feel free to deliver that
message to such snoopers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said to
Thomas: This time I remembered my prefabricated answer, and I told him that you
only ever approached very decently married women, so that nothing would be seen
on the surface.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You even beat your good
friends about the haunches.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas declared to me that he’d get himself a wife at the drop
of a hat, but that she would have to be like a farm-girl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For more than ten minutes straight, and as he
had so often done before, he listed all the things a wife of his wouldn’t be
allowed to be or do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A wife like the one
his grandfather had; that’s the kind of wife he would need.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She used to scrub the floorboards (wooden
ones, every week); she could receive guests, paid unpleasant visits to the
authorities, wrote good letters, was patient enough to put up with his
grandfather not saying a word to her for a week and not ask him why, and on top
of that the two of them had three children together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course I’d like to have that too, a woman
for my bed, but then I’d have to let her down so much in every other department
that I’d drive her out of the house on the second day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The right woman for me doesn’t exist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if she did it would all be over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wouldn’t be able to write anything anymore
then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas goes on to say: This is why I’m going to put some
livestock in that stall soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says he
can’t take looking at the empty stall anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I advise him to get some steers, because they’re easier to look after.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’ll have to buy the livestock from a
stingy, sloppy farmer; that would feel pretty much OK even if the deal were
shady.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of that, he says, he
doesn’t feel tied to a particularly regular work routine here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s exactly what I’ve got to force myself
to get into.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Into a regular daily
schedule filled with work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far Thomas
has finished all his works under duress, either temporal duress or financial duress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s hoping to obtain this sort of duress
from day-to-day “forced labor.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
only one day at a time, over and over again, through temporal duress, that he
can compress his thoughts and write well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s why he only ever writes letters at the last minute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he has letters to reply to, he discusses
the contents of each reply with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
first there’s a great deal of detail; he says he’s going to add this and that
bit, etc. and I do exactly the same thing; I say this and that’s also got to be
included, etc. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas doesn’t write
the reply.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Day after day he keeps
abridging it in his mind, and then, when it’s almost too late, he replies to a
letter in one or two trenchant lines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
made it really terse, he tells me, so nothing can be wrong with it, because of
course it’s so terse and what’s most important has been said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So in order to be able to write under pressure again he
charged me with purchasing property from the neighbors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because he doesn’t want to be constantly
hassled by financial pressure, he wants to get himself some time pressure by
dealing in livestock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he’s really got
quite a lot planned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this reason
I’ve held off telling about an article about literary stipends that the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oberösterreichische Nachrichten</i> ran
today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The education minister is
awarding 5,000 schillings a month for a year to eight writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I start telling him about it, Thomas thunders
against them even longer than usual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because such a stipend would stop him from keeping his eye on achieving
good results, and he’s surely right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
I were to get 5,000 shillings a month for my scribblings, I’d sometimes stop
working at one in the morning instead of at five in the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I work of my own accord, and because
something new is always occurring to me, I keep writing, because it spurs me
on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I were getting 5,000 schillings,
perhaps nothing would occur to me; my memory would weaken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That sum of money might irritate me; the
amount seems too high for just writing down incidents in the usual way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the sum might seem ridiculously small to
me, when I consider that I could earn that amount in a fortnight in fresh air
and mindlessly at a construction site.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I simply write for myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What Thomas maintains about himself seems to be even much truer of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For years Thomas has been saying that he
would write even if his books were never going to be read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he really couldn’t care less if his
books aren’t being read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or about how
many are being sold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s why he’s
always declined invitations to go on tours from town to town signing books in
bookstores.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even at the Frankfurt Book
Fair, where all the authors hog the cameras, he just makes a brief appearance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Regarding February 13, 1972 and our walk with the Hufnagls
that day, I’d like to add that on the subject of recently built buildings
Thomas and I maintained that we could only hope for a war in which all those
buildings would be destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
himself would issue orders to have them blown up, and at the first sight of the
ruins he would start using “positive words” like splendid, magnificent,
wonderful, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We even discussed the
particulars of the attachment of the explosive charges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the case of tall buildings the charges
would have to be attached to just one side so that they would fall over and get
smashed to pieces that way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We discuss
how to blow up these buildings with small charges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Thomas would like to destroy Hufnagl the
architect’s buildings.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We also ended up
talking about why Thomas is against christening ceremonies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because you don’t whether you’re holding a
future mass murderer over the basin, of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I said probably Thomas won’t procreate for the same reason, because he’d
be anxious about how his offspring might turn out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas answered that to the contrary if
he had a guarantee of siring a mass murderer he’d do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said that in his case anything better would
hardly be likely to happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, says
Thomas, but I’d have to have a guarantee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 16, 1972</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">When I show up at Thomas’s with his newspapers at 10:30 a.m.,
he also asks me for his mail.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">But I
wasn’t there yet at 8:00, when the postman left Ohlsdorf, and I didn’t run into
the postman on my way.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Since I’m
supposed to bring him his newspapers tomorrow, I promise him to bring his mail
as well.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">But since I won’t be in
Ohlsdorf by 8:00 a.m., I’ll take his mail from the postman when he’s at my
house.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas has his grandfather’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jodok Fink</i> open in front of him, and he tells me that his cold has
its good side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he hasn’t read his
grandfather’s book in 20 years, and that he’s just now realizing that since back
when his grandfather was publishing books, no prose as good as his has come
out. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve just now realized that I’m
carrying on my grandfather’s work in a modern form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything that was published between my
grandfather’s time and mine should be chucked into the trash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s good that Schaffler’s coming; I’m going
to discuss a new edition with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s got to come out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course
my grandfather was a Salzburger; the novel takes place in the Flachgau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My grandfather describes the way everything
was in the countryside before mechanization, so Residenz Publications can’t
very well say no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more I might
benefit from the fact that a student at the University of Salzburg is now
writing a doctoral dissertation on my grandfather [Georg Unterberger, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Johannes Freumbichler</i>, 1977].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I learned this from Neuhuber (an academic
painter who used to live in Gmunden).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
heard it by chance at the coffeehouse in Ischl.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But do you think my foster-father would tell me something like
that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was there recently, I told
Fabjian (his foster-father) that a student was writing a doctoral dissertation
about my grandfather.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he said to
me: Yes, he’s already been to see me twice and asked me about your grandfather;
he didn’t have the courage to approach you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There are five books, continues Thomas, which ought to be republished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The best one is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philomena</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s about his
grandmother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course she had a
different name; that’s an alias for her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So that I can say something of my own, I interject that I had an aunt
who was actually called Philomena and that we just called her Meny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas says: Mena’s the only right short form
of that name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I stand by Meny,
because we actually did call my aunt that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so we bicker about Mena and Meny for a while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I changed the subject and say: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jodok Fink</i> is a good title; there’s an
actual Jodok Fink in Vorarlberg; he’s an MP or something like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was even chancellor, says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He died only a couple of years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say: Mr. Freumbichler came up with a good
title, Jodok Fink, I like the name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely
you’ll furnish the new edition with a good preface.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas says he doesn’t want to wire
Schaffler not to come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I do, he’ll
think I’m not willing to give him any cider.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You see, he’s going to give him a large bottle of cider.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he’ll have to drive back right away; of
course I can’t hang out with him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
don’t even want to shake hands with him for fear of his catching my cold, just
as I caught my cold from none other than Mrs. Hufnagl.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After a good hour, shortly before noon, I leave Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got things to do in Wels in the
afternoon, and because Schaffler’s coming in the evening, I don’t want to
disturb him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas adds that he’ll lie
down soon and take a sleeping pill, so that at least during the night he won’t
be troubled by sniffles and a sore throat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He really doesn’t want to lie awake with these unpleasant symptoms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I add: your cider is at the peak of
perfection; it’s so good that Schaffler won’t have cause to complain even if he
brings the worst of it home with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is because his cellar is so cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because of this his cider lasts longer and is as in fine condition as
that of the other cellars at the beginning of the year.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 17, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 9:30 a.m. my wife collects from the postman Bernhard’s mail
along with our own, and because his mail includes a telegram, I stop by
Thomas’s house on my way to Gmunden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
don’t stick around long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In addition to
the newspapers, I am supposed to bring Thomas a loaf of burebrot and two
quarter[-kilo? (DR)]s of butter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
11:00 a.m. I’m back at Thomas’s with bread, butter, and newspapers in hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right off the bat he asks me if he might ask
me to do him yet another favor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, of
course, whatever you like, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
Thomas tells me that the telegram is from Suhrkamp Publications, that in it
Rudolf Rach asks if can come on Saturday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d like to ask you to do me the favor of going to Ohlsdorf and sending
him a telegram saying that I’m expecting him on Saturday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did he say “Saturday” or “Sunday Eve” in his
telegram? I ask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Saturday, says Thomas;
Wieland (Dr. Wieland Schmied) is the man who says Sunday Eve instead of
Saturday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All perfectly fine; Rach goes
with the flow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas writes the
text of the telegram on the back of an invitation to the Austrian book week in
the context of Austria Week in Vienna, which he received today from the
Austrian Society for Literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hopefully I can read it, I say when he hands it to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I notice that he’s written very
neatly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wouldn’t be able to read your
usual handwriting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But take a look at my
signature, says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says this
because it’s in his usual handwriting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
immediately drove to Ohlsdorf, put carbon paper under the telegram sheet, and
took the pad of telegram forms away with me, so that in future Thomas can write
telegrams even at home, possibly using his typewriter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got some of these forms at home myself,
I said to him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas also tells me that he has received a letter from
somebody named Foelske at 37 Grüner Hof in Cologne.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Thomas leads me into his little old
farmer’s nook.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s got the tiled stove
there burning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s very warm
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they wanted to take this
stove away from me, says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How
nice that he’s only legally required to have the stove caulked round the edges.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I would do that myself, though.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can do that better than anybody else; you
don’t need anybody else to do that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can
caulk by just sticking your fingers into the joins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, I’ve loaded up on loam and
fireclay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll do that myself, says
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I step up to the stove,
inspect it more closely, and even take the lid off the copper pot on top of
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re just like hundreds of
thousands of other people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They all
think a writer’s a lummox who starts a fire in a stove without filling the pot
on top with water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was just making
sure you had water in it now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wouldn’t
dream of accusing you of not having put any water in it to begin with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But soon it’s going to boil and overflow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I go on to ask, So what did Schaffler think
of the idea of the new edition?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
hasn’t come yet; he’s coming today, says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do you mean, I ask; wasn’t he supposed
to come yesterday?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, and I said
nothing of the sort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I
misunderstood you, I say; I thought he was supposed to come yesterday;
otherwise I would have paid you another visit in the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: black;">But I didn’t want
to disturb you when he was here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That
would have been really stupid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I went to
bed early and took a pill so that I could sleep through the night and be
completely insensible of all the rubbish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Today I’m substantially better, but I don’t dare go outside yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tomorrow if I feel the same, I’ll briefly go
to Gmunden to stop by the café.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah, I
say, and I was so curious to find out what Schaffler thought of the idea of a
new edition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah, says Thomas, as I read
more I detected some weak passages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everything is much too beautiful, is represented as much too
beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything that I experience
as execrable my grandfather finds beautiful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As he said this, Thomas got a bit softer, a bit shamefaced, as if he
were speaking more to himself than to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But oh well, we’ll see. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You shouldn’t just see everything with your eyes,
I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you’re healthy again, we
could schedule a tour for next week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps for Tuesday, but tentatively with no commitment yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if nothing comes my way in the meantime,
we could stick to Tuesday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would
propose a departure time of seven in the morning, so that we can buy the wooden
rings for your curtain rods in Stadl-Paura.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then visit your brother’s house in Wels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He wants you to do that; you’re supposed to give him some advice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Afterwards we should visit the antique shop in
Eferding your brother recommended to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then I’d like to go to Ottensheim via Aschach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s also an antique store there, one that
we haven’t been to yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then we could
have coffee with my Aunt Camepstrini if we’ve got enough time for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because at 11:30 we’ve got to be at the
Dorotheum in Linz, so that I can get a few more things done at the office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll have to take Granny with us as far as
Ottensheim, because she wants to spend a few days with her sister.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, sure, says Thomas, but will we be able
to find the antique store in Eferding?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That’s quite a task in Eferding; it’s difficult to find a place there if
you don’t know exactly where it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well,
just as I took it for granted that you didn’t have any water in the pot on your
stovetop, you need to take it for granted that I don’t know where the antique
dealer is, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, then, where is
he; who is he? says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve written
down the address; I haven’t memorized it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hörsdorf is the name of the place; that just popped into my head, but
it’s even more important for me to know where Hörsdorf is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s on the way to Eferding, and as you know,
I don’t drive into the unknown, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Yes, says Thomas, I really should know that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then from his little old farmer’s nook we go back
into his living room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll also wheel
and deal with Schaffler and Rach in the old farmer’s nook.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s the best room in the entire house,
Thomas says and pours me a glass of schnapps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You see, Rach is my man at the publishing firm, who’s written that
they’ve received a ton of inquiries about my play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ignoramus and the Madman</i>, and he doesn’t know who he’s supposed
to allow to stage it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course you know
that as I told you I wrote back to him that he should regard our situation like
a bowling alley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The theaters are the
pins, and we, the publishing firm and I, have got the ball in our hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And now we’ve got to bowl this ball straight
down the middle of the lane and into the pins, into the theaters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why Rach is coming to see me; he’s
coming here to talk about this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That it would be silly to keep the play “hidden”
any longer when so many theaters are vying with one another to see it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because later on maybe they won’t want it
anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve got to take advantage of this
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve held onto the play long
enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the publishing firm is really
stupid and can’t make up its mind about which theaters to give the play
to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more they need my explicit
consent, and I’m going to discuss all this with Rach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs-Kj9_80-pDn7SvhSQNZLtZO_u5M2wzIv602Z316Lxsttr5QzYXuISOI7HjYdj_NSLUniJoYXx3mzrV4At9vu6NV9rDeDLlrQ1UAs4D1qezOfFXSeE2GxTEMT0KY4n6NIxal1Ng/s1600/YTB272.06.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="362" data-original-width="531" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs-Kj9_80-pDn7SvhSQNZLtZO_u5M2wzIv602Z316Lxsttr5QzYXuISOI7HjYdj_NSLUniJoYXx3mzrV4At9vu6NV9rDeDLlrQ1UAs4D1qezOfFXSeE2GxTEMT0KY4n6NIxal1Ng/s1600/YTB272.06.PNG" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The old farmer’s nook in the farmhouse at Obernathal 2, the “best
room in the house” in Thomas Bernhard’s opinion<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">By the way, today I received a very polite letter
from Unseld.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s impossible for me to
offend that man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He replied to my letter
very politely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here I interject: Of
course you wrote to him that he should only reply to you if he had a sense of
humor, and that he could think whatever he liked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now during Carnival season he found it easier
to understand that you didn’t seriously mean to offend him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course you left it up to him in what
spirit to take your letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a change
he reacted appropriately to your joking and understood it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He also writes to me that they, Unseld and
Rach, spent a long time debating which of the two of them should come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end they agreed that Rach would come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I get the feeling that either in his head or on
paper Thomas has already progressed pretty far in the comedy he’s
planning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I don’t dare ask about
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only if I manage not to ask him
about it will I learn something about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because it’s simply unthinkable to “interrogate” him about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With a single word I could touch off a fit of
sulking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s more, in asking a
question like that I’d be cutting him off “in mid-flight.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I didn’t have this sense of tact, I’d
learn next to nothing from Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
I’m sure that as a sharp thinker and observer he knows perfectly well that I’m
deliberately not asking such things and that he also appreciates this about me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The expression “Let sleeping dogs lie”
probably originated in criminal slang.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After a while Thomas picked up this expression from me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s an expression that often hits the mark,
and I believe that in this situation I can get away with “letting sleeping dogs
lie.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I glance at my watch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By now it’s 12:30, and I say: “When will we
see each other again?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today Schaffler’s
coming; tomorrow you yourself are going to Gmunden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Come have dinner with me at 4:45 tomorrow
afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So if we don’t run into each
other earlier, let’s make it 4:45 so that we don’t have to do any rushing
around until the evening TV news.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas
also asks me if I hadn’t seen Mrs. Hufnagl in Gmunden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I had seen her, I would have acted as if I
hadn’t seen her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I just find it
impossible to speak with her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I
should tell her about your illness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She’d think she’d have to visit you right away, and your bad spell would
be over. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A few hours later, at 4:00, Mrs. Hufnagl stops by
my house in a taxi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She brings back
Granny’s stockings and wants to say her goodbyes, because tomorrow she’ll be
traveling back to Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s planning
to drive straight on to Thomas’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I
tell her that Thomas is ill and that for the past two days I’ve been supplying
him with newspapers, because he can’t leave the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I go on to tell her that Thomas is expecting
Schaffler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s planning to send the man
straight back home, because he’s doing his best to recover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s easy to see that Mrs. Hufnagl realizes
that she’s picked a bad time to pay Thomas a visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m already curious [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">neugierig</i>] about what I’m going to learn tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Whenever I hear or write the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gierig</i> [greedy] or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">neugierig</i>, I remember that I once told Thomas that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Regierung</i> [government] is spelled with a
long <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ie</i> because it is supposedly
derived from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gierig</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Meanwhile I’ve switched back to spacing my lines
more widely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I saw that Thomas always
used this spacing, I started using this spacing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later I asked Thomas if this spacing was
required by his publishing firm, and he said: No, it’s not required.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I space them that widely anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I’ve got to make a ton of corrections,
make big changes to entire sentences, etc., I think it’s better to stick to
this wide spacing, because it lets you find room for the corrections between
the lines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 21, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Because on Friday the 18<sup>th</sup> Thomas
didn’t come to my house as scheduled, I pay him a visit at 10:00 a.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why haven’t you come to see me in such a long
time? Thomas asks me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re the one who
hasn’t come to see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Right, I didn’t know whether it was set in
stone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought you’d come by at least
once beforehand, says Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, on
Thursday you were expecting Schaffler; on Saturday you were expecting Dr.
Rudolf Rach from Suhrkamp; on Friday you were supposed to come to my house. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the only day you were free, and if I
know you’ve got a visitor, I don’t want to disturb you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You never disturb me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you’d come you would have lightened the
mood of the whole thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Mrs. Hufnagl came to see you Thursday
afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t let her in, says
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw the taxi, and then I heard
her knocking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she rode off again
very quickly, and so then I could say I had put on a record upstairs, and when
I heard her and was about to open the front door, the taxi had already driven
off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately I got there too late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, on Saturday I ran into the Hufnagels,
and Mrs. Hufnagl told me that you wanted to keep her away from me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not at all, I say, I didn’t say anything
about her staying away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, of course
not, says Thomas, but she told me that you said Schaffler was coming and I
wouldn’t shake hands with you because I was so sniffly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s quite good that you told her that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least the business about the visit was
cleared up a bit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was really still
pretty unwell, and Mrs. Schaffler had to go into the cellar herself and fill
the ten two-liter bottles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had quite
a long job to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Meanwhile, Ferdl, his bricklayer, has shown up,
and we discussed the demolition of the tower of the fire station.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fire station has been in Thomas’s
possession for quite a number of years, ever since the disbandment of Nathal’s
local fire brigade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas would prefer
to demolish the tower piecemeal; Ferdl would prefer to loosen up the earth
underneath one side of the tower and bring the whole thing crashing down on
that side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For months, Thomas says,
Ferdl has been mulling over how he’s going to knock down the tower; but because
he’d get an incredible kick out of that and so many things can go kaput in an
operation like that, I won’t let him do it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In any case, it’s better to postpone the job till spring, when we can
count on longer spells of good weather.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvImTWjtey-9G7_jjq5Bxz1OLcTMZWol0-HqB4Dyoh5IeAfVG8dHqPsWSSNbvhvTdGsIRGVrO1hlZAb29Oxg2VoROTfVx5m-4MX50fw41ggemHjXHXGLJV6BSm5lDReNmGqTXQmw/s1600/YTB272.07.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="393" data-original-width="557" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvImTWjtey-9G7_jjq5Bxz1OLcTMZWol0-HqB4Dyoh5IeAfVG8dHqPsWSSNbvhvTdGsIRGVrO1hlZAb29Oxg2VoROTfVx5m-4MX50fw41ggemHjXHXGLJV6BSm5lDReNmGqTXQmw/s1600/YTB272.07.PNG" /></a></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Obernathal 2: the cider press in a disused pigsty<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So how did things go with the “bowling-pin boy?” I
ask Thomas, because Dr. Rach’s name happens to have slipped my mind just then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, can you believe it?, he was supposed to
show up at two o’clock Saturday afternoon; he actually got here at six.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had, however, notified me of his arrival
time in an express letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I received
that letter today, Monday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rach was
about to see my play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boris</i> in Zurich;
people were already queued up at the box office; then suddenly somebody hung up
a sign reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cancelled</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The leading lady was nowhere to be found, and
after an hour she came into the bar completely plastered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so the show had to be cancelled. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incidentally, the play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Party for Boris</i> isn’t going to be performed at the Burgtheater in
Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s out of the question for
Judith Holzmeister, who hasn’t acted at all well in performances of my play, to
ride my play to success in Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rach
told me that the director was supposed to be really lousy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can imagine how bad he must actually be
if even the “bowling-pin boy” is saying this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No, I’d rather pay 2,000 marks in fines for breach of contract, but in
Vienna I won’t be fined for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You
know, what’s more, a first-class director has already been hired for the
job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Rach, I’m glad I won’t have
to see Unseld’s face when you share this with him for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course it needn’t affect him
personally at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’ll be personally
unpleasant for me, of course, but he’s not personally involved in the thing at
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the only places that will get
the Salzburg play are Zurich, Hamburg…Thomas mentioned two more German theaters
that I’ve since forgotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I actually
said my proper goodbyes to the “bowling-pin boy” on Saturday, as if we weren’t
going to see each other after that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
was planning to catch the train at half-past ten on Sunday morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then on Sunday I felt quite a bit better
and drove to Gmunden to meet him for breakfast at the Swan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I ran into Hufnagl, and I made the
following proposal: if Hufnagl gives us a ride to Salzburg, he can go to
Salzburg with us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I myself was feeling
too weak to drive. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, in Salzburg,
Peymann was staging the dress rehearsal, and I wanted to see it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in Salzburg it turned out that the dress
rehearsal had been staged the night before, after midnight, after Saturday’s
performance had taken place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Peymann was
quite satisfied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that the crew
of about thirty workers had worked well, and that the costume designer Moidele
Bicker had also immediately established a good rapport with her Salzburg
colleague [Magda Gstrein].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, in
the theater you’ve really got to be prepared for everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because sometimes really tremendous rivalries
develop, and then the one person often wants to ruin everything completely for the
other person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So you’ve really got to
keep your fingers crossed for a good collaborative effort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incidentally, Peymann would like to get hold
of a house for his entire commune; it can be old and thirty to forty kilometers
from Salzburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can be quite old and
dilapidated, but they’ve got to have fairly warm running water and somewhere to
do their cooking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’ll also have two
small children with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’d like to
have the house for just two months; they’ll pay for everything as a group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps you could get hold of something; it
could be an old “Joe Bloggs’ cabin,” as you’re always saying.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">An hour later, at 11:00 a.m., I left Thomas, and
at 3:00 I was back at his house to trim his living fence with my large pair of
shears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Last year Thomas cut the spruce
saplings himself, and cut too much off on the topside, and his neighbor must
have scattered some sort of caustic fertilizer or other sort of poisonous
powder next to the row of trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
probably emptied out whole bags of the stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This poison almost killed off the saplings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was soon finished with this job, and Thomas
once again told me about his publishing firm, Suhrkamp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Rudolf Rach’s secretary there pushed the
panic button when she read through Thomas’s letter to Dr. Rach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Usually they review their huge pile of mail
as slowly as can be, but she shared Thomas Bernhard’s letter with Rach
immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter immediately
consulted his boss, Unseld, and the latter said he had received a letter from
Bernhard at the same time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon
letters from other people were also read and commented upon, because it really
was quite an unusual subject they were dealing with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But eventually Unseld singled out a few
sentences and declared: These are really quite good too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon it was resolved that Dr. Rach should
go to see Bernhard at Nathal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I was at Thomas’s almost until
5:00, and towards 7:00 he paid me a return visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After “Zeit im Bild” [the Austrian nightly TV
news] and “Tagesschau” [the West-German nightly TV news] there was a lousy
program, and so we could resume our chat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thomas said inter alia that his play certainly won’t be taken on by the
Burgtheater yet, that somebody doesn’t want to have the play staged yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I said to the “bowling-pin boy” that
Klingenberg (the general manager of the Burgtheater) had said: After the
Grillparzer Prize this is “a sho’ thang” [“a gmahte Wiesn,” which I tentatively
read as a dialectal variant of “ein gemachtes Wesen,” for which “a sure thing”
seems a reasonable rendition (DR)]. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
first had to explain to the “bowling-pin boy” what “a sho’ thang” means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granny gazed inquisitively at us for a good
long while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She didn’t know what a
“bowling-pin boy” is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I said to her,
Dr. Rach from his publishing firm has set up a bowling pin, a contract, at the
Burgtheater, and Thomas has knocked the bowling pin down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 11:30 Thomas went home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His cold has gotten a bit worse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s going to take a valium to help him get
to sleep.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 22, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Towards noon I bring Thomas his
newspapers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had asked me to do this yesterday,
because he’s planning not to leave the house today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">He’s trying to take it easy and recuperate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I’ve got things to do in the
afternoon, I don’t stay long and invite Thomas to come to my house at
7:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the way back from Wels I look
in on Thomas with my wife to ascertain if he’ll come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he hears me knocking, I hear him say,
“Aha.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a fairly long time before he
drowsily opens the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the absence
of our agreed-upon knocking pattern he certainly wouldn’t have budged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I apologized for disturbing his sleep, but he
said that now was just the right time for him to stop sleeping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I say to my wife: Mrs. Hufnagl really
was right when she said that Thomas can be the most perfect, most polite human
being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he wants to be, I added at
the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I continued: But he rarely
shows that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Turning to Thomas, I said:
But I hope that you’re not “declining”; it would really be terrible if you were
constantly running around with good manners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’ve even sent back the suit I wore at the Grimme Prize [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sic</i>, and evidently a slip by Hennetmair;
presumably Bernhard actually said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grillparzer
Prize</i> (DR)].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It didn’t fit me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The man who’s wearing it now has no idea of
how richly his suit has already been honored, Thomas said suddenly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas asks us into the old farmer's nook, saying it’s
well-heated there and extremely cozy there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We go on to discuss what color he’s going to choose for the paint for
the doors, and the colors of the curtains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But there’s no longer any possibility of our making a shopping trip this
week, because his cold keeps refusing to go away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After about an hour we leave; Thomas follows
us an hour later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">During supper Thomas asks me what I would do in
his situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is about to explain
this to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During Peymann’s first visit
it so happened that Thomas was coerced into lending him 2,000 schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s met with Peymann several times since,
but the latter has never made the slightest move to repay him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s really annoying me; there’s always a
bill at the tavern, but Peymann never makes the slightest move.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What would you do in my shoes; what would you
do to get the 2,000 schillings?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I
say to him: It’s quite simple; when you’re meeting with him next time, I’m sure
you remember the words he used when he broached the subject of money with you;
I’d use exactly the same words to ask him to help you out with a quick loan of
2,000 schillings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve already thought
of doing that, said Thomas, but I wanted to know what you would do. Then we
talk about the fact that Peymann would like to rent an entire house for his
commune, that Moidele Bickel, Karl-Ernst Hermann, the set-designer, and two
small children would all like to live together in one house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas can’t give me exact details, and
so we agree that tomorrow I’ll come to Thomas’s with the mail and he’ll then
give me Peymann’s address so that I can inquire as to the minimum number of
rooms that’ll be needed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas also
tells me that in Salzburg he ran into his former boss from his commercial
apprenticeship [Karl Podlaha] and that the latter said to him: at least one of us
has amounted to something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover,
tomorrow he’s going to write to Falkenberg that he won’t be coming to the award
ceremony for the Grimme Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s
going to write, “it isn’t possible for me to come,” and nothing else, with
absolutely no explanation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
expression, “not possible to come,” is very propitious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It can mean anything, it can mean that I’m
ill, but it can just as easily mean that I’ll find the people there revolting, because
that’s also a reason why you can’t come. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It isn’t possible for me” always hits the
mark, and you don’t need to substantiate it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At 10:30 Thomas drives home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 23, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">From 8:15 to 8:45 a.m. today I was at Thomas’s
house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has received from London a
postcard with Erika Schmied’s congratulations on the Grimme Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She asks what he’s going to do with so much
money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She doesn’t know that this time
there’s no money attached to the prize for a change, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas feels ill and enfeebled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t want to admit it, but I tell him
straight out: You don’t need to put on a show for me; I know what it’s
like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re weak, and you couldn’t care
less about a lot of things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So then he
finally admits it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because he can’t leave
the house, he asks me to bring him back seven newspapers in the event that I go
to Gmunden later on today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I say to
him: so between one and two I’ll bring them to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Then I wrote a letter to Peymann; I had gotten the
address, 1 Berlin 31, 44 Landstrasse, from Thomas.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I bring Thomas the newspapers at about one
o’clock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He feels weak and miserable and
immediately asks me to call his brother Peter in Wels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says he’s absolutely got to come as soon
as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The doctor’s sample pills
that he’s been gulping down so far will only last for three days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s already gulped down three packs of
samples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that this has got to
stop, that he wants proper medicine and not constant sample pills, even if they
don’t cost anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That Peter must
come soon enough to pick up something from the pharmacy as well if need
be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Wels a certain Sister Annemaria
answers the telephone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She said that Dr.
Fabjan wouldn’t be reporting for duty until four, but that she would most
certainly pass the message on to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She was aware that Thomas Bernhard is his brother, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told Thomas this later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He reckoned that Peter might show up at any
time after 6:30, because he went off duty at six.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so Thomas left both sides of the gate
open and the lights on in the courtyard when I left him to spend my regular
hour at the gym.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have promised to stop
by with his mail at 8:15 tomorrow morning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 24, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When I stepped into Thomas’s
house with the mail at 8:15 this morning, I was planning to set off again
immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas immediately demanded
that I take off my coat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that
something horrible had happened, something that he had to tell me about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You know, Thomas said, that
yesterday I was expecting Peter and kept the courtyard lit so that when he came
he could see that he was expected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
expecting him by 7:00 at the latest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because in Vienna when a doctor has to make a house call on a patient in
Floridsdorf, he’s also got to drive half an hour, so it’s really no big deal for
Peter to drive from Wels to my house in his Volvo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And at 9:00 I was still sitting there waiting
for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then I was beginning to find
the whole thing too pointless for words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I thought, there’s no way he’s coming this late; I took a sleeping pill,
opened all the windows to air the house out, then I shut the gate and the
windows and went to bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was just
tired enough to start falling asleep and was already halfway there, I heard
Peter calling me, calling me when I was half asleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just picture it: at 9:30 at night I’ve got to
get dressed when I’m still half asleep, open the gate, which involves crossing
the cold courtyard; I’d already turned off the stove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he’d come a half an hour earlier, fine,
but now!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without so much as a by your
leave he came into the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Already
with a certain bad feeling about what was coming next, I asked him, why have
you come so late?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was just now in
Linz, he said, sit down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said this
“sit down” in the kind of tone they use in the hospital when they say it to the
local yokels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know what I’m talking
about, sit down, open wide, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then I say, what the hell did you
have to do in Linz that was so important that you had to come here so late and
snatch me out of an excellent snooze?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Well, you see, said Peter, I took my Hungarian friend to the
theater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, I didn’t need to hear any
more than that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he’d at least not
said it to my face; if he’d come in looking sad and said that he was sorry,
that he’d been planning to come earlier, etc., but since he’d put it that way,
I simply exploded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What, I asked, is
your friend more important to you than I am?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The sisters (the Sisters of Mercy) knew full well why they voted against
your appointment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They could clearly see
how undependable you are. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You must have
treated people at the hospital they way you’re treating me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t want to have anything more to do with
you; I don’t want to see you anymore; you’ll always be more like your father in
all his execrableness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Put your coat on
and get the hell out and don’t you ever set foot in my house again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s right, don’t give me that look…put
your coat on and get the hell out right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Without saying a word, he put on his coat, and walked across the
courtyard and out of the gate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There he
paused for a bit beside his car and hoped I would perhaps say that he should
come back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then I pointedly closed
the gate loudly and loudly bolted it, which I normally don’t ever do, because
of course I lock it with the key.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="color: black;">After this incident Peter really should keep out of my
sight for the rest of his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
something like what happened to him had happened to me, I’d be through with him
for a lifetime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’m not in the least
bit sorry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This time I’m going to stick
to my guns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t summon up any
sympathy for him, nor can I…excuse the way he behaves with his fellow-Fabjans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m just surprised that he’s so popular in
certain circles and has even entertained an entire room full of people with his
accordion many times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that he even
sings and can be very clubbable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
Peter I know is simply awful and out of my life for good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m really serious this time; I’m sticking to
my guns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that I’ve treated him so
terribly and execrably he’ll have to keep out of my sight from now on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I know for sure that I can’t deal with
him as a doctor, and of course he’s never shown any sign of understanding my
works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But so far I’ve always forgiven
him, over and over again, and…blamed that on the Fabjans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you know, of course I mostly hate him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But today I feel so fine and fresh and
healthy that I look like a bit of a monster in my own eyes, because I called
him just on account of a cold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’m
still not in the least bit sorry, because of course no matter what had been
wrong with me, even if just a matter of minutes might have made a life-or-death
difference, he would have acted in exactly the same way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve got to find myself another doctor,
because not even the worst doctor from around here would have done what Peter
dared to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure I’d be able to get
hold of one of them faster. Then I gave Thomas the regards of Dean Kern, the
parish priest of Ohlsdorf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I ran into
the dean at the post office, and as I was asking for your mail, I told Kern
that you were ill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dean Kern asked:
Who’s taking care of Bernhard anyway?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then I said: Just as he doesn’t want to have anyone else around at other
times, he can’t stand having anyone taking care of him now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, said Thomas, that’s right, it’s good
that you told it like it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Give him my
warm regards in turn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I said to
Thomas: now I’ve still got to give him the Dean’s regards a second time
belatedly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s already been about a
year since he also asked me to give you his regards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because about three years earlier I had
given you his regards and at the time you didn’t tell me to give him your
regards in turn, I didn’t give him your regards a year ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I’ll give him your regards three
times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I run into Kern on the street at
least every other day or during my tarot game, and every time he asks me how
the tarot game is going.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He himself is a
passionate tarot player and used to play nightlong games of it with me.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, said Thomas, I can recall that you gave
me his regards a couple of years ago, so by all means give him my regards three
times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He surely won’t bless you,
because of course you want to be buried in Neukirche, I say, but nevertheless
it’s important to keep on the right side of Dean Kern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, you know, nobody knows what’s going to
happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I haven’t made a will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that’s bad, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Fabjan will show up and prescribe
arrangements and savor your glory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
at least a minister will show up, along with lots of people from the publishing
houses, from the film world, from the academies of sciences, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only then would Fabjan properly come to appreciate
who you are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody will come, says
Thomas, not a soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously there’s nobody
here who would take charge of the thing properly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who the hell would notify the people and
institutions; there’s obviously nobody here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The only person who could do that is my aunt (Stavianicek).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody more famous would be at my funeral;
obviously nobody would know about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But of course news of it would leak out right away, I say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, of course you know it wouldn’t travel
very far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s why I’m glad, I say,
that I wrote to the governor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because if
I nominate you as early as January, they can’t maintain that the nomination
came too late for this year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if
they’ve already got their eye on somebody else for the Stifter Prize, with my
letter, which has earned a “reference number,” I’ve thrown down a mighty boxing
glove of a gauntlet at the feet of another candidate, and nobody will be able
to get over having had that boxing glove thrown at him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure that now that I’ve done this, you’ll
get the Stifter Prize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, says Thomas,
and then no matter what, I’ll decline that Salzburg prize; that’ll be more
useful to me than if I accept it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s already getting on for 10 o’clock when I leave
Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At about six in the evening I
visit Thomas again </span><span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">in order to bring him</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> back with me to my
house for supper right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Thomas
has got a ton of brochures about electrical heating and shows me every single
place in the house where he’ll have an auxiliary electric fire installed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are to be 11 electric fires for
overnight heating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was thanks to his
being ill that it occurred to him that he had to stop heating with oil; it
occurred to him then that he was in no fit state to be constantly crossing the
cold courtyard to fetch oil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of
spending money on an extra piece of property or a bit of woods, he’s planning
to invest 100,000 or 150,000 schillings in a new heating system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It takes us a full two hours to inspect and discuss
all eleven of the stove’s vents, and so we don’t get back to my place for
supper until 10 o’clock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Later on, Thomas is in a very merry mood, and he
tells me that he’s written to Unseld a letter ordering him not to allow any of
his plays to be staged anywhere in Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In this letter he says that the time for such performances hasn’t yet
come.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if the contract with the
Burgtheater is irreproachable and there’s no longer anything I can do to stop
such a performance, I’ll make sure to inform the newspapers that I as an author
never agreed to the staging of the plays in Vienna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But hopefully in the letter to Unseld you
haven’t written that you have that in mind, because he’ll drop you if you
have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well of course I haven’t, Thomas
said, I’m only telling you this, that I’ll do that if it eventually becomes
impossible to stop a performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ve
also written to Unseld that he’s at least got to answer one of my questions
concretely for a change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His replies are
charming but exasperating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then once
again the entire office will come together and confer about this letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you know, they won't able to do a damn
thing to me if I write: charming but exasperating. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[2]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After 10:00 I bring Thomas home with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I warn him against going right back outside
tomorrow even if he feels better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
winter is very dangerous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You think it’s
nice and healthy outside, but in our neighborhood mothers have been confining
their children to their rooms and warning them that they’ll catch the “March
calf” [“Märzenkalbl”] out there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this
they mean colds and flulike illnesses that are easy to catch this winter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas wasn’t yet familiar with this
expression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He liked it very much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told him that tomorrow, for which I’ve got
a lot planned, I’d come round to his house at about five in the afternoon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 25, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 5:00 p.m., when I came to see Thomas, he was
very much out of sorts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Physically he
felt well, but Stadlbauer the electrician from Laakirchen had promised to come
and give him an estimate for the electric heating at 1:00 p.m., and he hadn’t
yet shown up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he wants the work to
get started right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because whenever
he’s decided in favor of something, he wants it right away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I say to Thomas: At 5:00 the workers at
Stadlbauer’s shop will be going home for the day, so he can hit the road
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can phone Wels, and I’d also be
happy to summon Stadlbauer by phone if he likes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas is fine with that, and Stadlbauer is
on the spot in a few minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During
their final discussion of financial terms at 7:30, I had invited Thomas to come
to my house at 7:30 [(sic) on the repetition of the time (DR)]; Thomas asked me
to set out by myself and told me he’d be heading over right behind me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But shortly after I drove off, I suddenly realized
I was in no mood to watch the news by myself, and so I turned around and waited
for Thomas at the entrance to the courtyard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After a half an hour I saw that Stadlbauer was already in his car and ready
to drive off but still chatting with Thomas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So I went in and said that in the interval I’d gone for a walk and that
we could leave now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas was glad that
I’d brought an end to that and left with me immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had already worked up an appetite for the
apple strudel that I’d announced we’d be having.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas went on to tell me that the whole
thing including the connection fee for 50kW would come to about 150,000
schillings and that Stadlbauer was going to install the heaters where we had
discussed putting them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the kitchen,
where Thomas and I had not been of one mind about the spot, Stadlbauer
determined that the place I had proposed was a better spot, and so it will be
put in the spot I proposed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Afterwards Thomas was very funny; he imitated the
speakers and commentators on the television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even his impression of Zhou Enlai’s Chinese was marvelously
successful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We got so engrossed by our
own conversation that we soon switched off the set.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Towards midnight Thomas asked me to drive him
home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But then we also ended up talking about his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Italian</i>, which was going to be broadcast
on television on March 22.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Schaffler
from Residenz Publications has sent him some reviews of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Italian</i> the book from Dutch and Rumanian newspapers and
journals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were very positive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The screenplay was very highly praised, and
the reviewers maintained that Bernhard could make a good film out of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This led us to talk about the fact that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Italian</i> the film contains very
little dialogue and is therefore very easy to dub into other languages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that Radax absolutely had to speak
with him before going to the Grimme Prize award ceremony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This because he would have to be persuaded to
take advantage of the general good mood at the ceremony to work out a deal with
the bigwigs to have the film dubbed into several languages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said to Thomas that Radax would have an
easier time bringing these favorable reviews from abroad to people’s
attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That Thomas couldn’t very
well blow his own horn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But such a talk
with Radax would have to take place immediately, because it’s already the 25<sup>th</sup>;
the ceremony is a fortnight from now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Radax
might be going out there a bit beforehand, either because he’s got some other
reason for going there or because he wants to savor the whole thing a few days
in advance. And so I propose to Thomas my phoning Radax at 8:00 a.m. to ask him
to see Thomas and also to tell him what is going on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas immediately accepted my proposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I said that I might not call until 10:00,
because Radax might not even have gone to bed by 8:00.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Radax hardly ever goes to bed before three or
four or five in the morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 10:00 he
still needs a minute to figure out what’s what, because he’s still
half-asleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I’ll call Radax
tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because I’ve got so many
other things to do, I told Thomas I wouldn’t be visiting him until 6:00 in the
evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 26, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At ten in the morning I try to phone Radax.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the other end of the line at the
Rotenturmstrasse Mr. Tamare answers and says that Radax moved out about four
weeks ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He says that Mrs. Hedi
Richter, the principal dancer in the ballet, who lives at 1-3 Untere Augartenstrasse,
knows where he is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hedi Richter answers
the phone and says that at the moment Radax can be reached at 366-306, the
phone number of his wife’s house in the Chimanigasse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Radax says he’ll come see Bernhard on
Saturday, March 3, at 2:00 in the afternoon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’m planning to share this news with Thomas at 6:00 p.m., but he ends up
not being at home then; the key is in its hole.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">February 28, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7190184" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Our neighbor Auinger tells me that at 12:15 p.m. Thomas rang
our doorbell for about ten minutes and didn’t come into the house to see me,
even though my car was there and I was at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At that time we were all watching the coverage of Nixon’s visit from
Peking, and so we happened not to have heard Thomas’s doorbell-ringing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">END OF
PART II<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Translation unauthorized but
Copyright </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">©2019 by Douglas
Robertson . Source: Karl Ignaz Hennetmair,<i>Ein Jahr mit Thomas
Bernhard. Das versiegelte Tagebuch 1972</i>. Sankt P</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">ölten: Residenz
Verlag, 2014.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; tab-stops: 4.75in;">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">[1] Cf. the actual letter (</span></span><span class="c3"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">No. 181 in </span></span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1VyCRjfN4fz0DQxdVe3NXR_8Nguth-_5f47OSm8-HiVI/pub"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">DR’s
translation of the Bernhard-Unseld correspondence</span></a><span class="c3"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">)</span></span><span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">, which
reads in full as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; tab-stops: 4.75in;">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Dear
Siegfried Unseld, <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Two
months ago I wrote you a letter to which I never received a reply.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c3"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">In
answer to your most recent lines: I am not going to write about Hohl.</span></span><span class="c18"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">1</span></sup></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c3"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Here
and especially in my brain a great deal of animosity towards the hair-raising
brainlessness of your employees’ correspondences pertaining to me has been
accumulating; more on this preferably or <i>exclusively</i></span></span><span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> viva voce.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c3"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">When <i>Frost</i> is
being prepared for reprinting, please see that the original Insel edition is
reviewed with both great care and absolute precision and that the task is
entrusted to a person capable of great concentration (if there is any such
person still left in your vicinity), lest the house should be inundated by a
deluge of typographical errors. Nobody will have done me any favors if
that happens; the whole thing will have been pointless, and so if it can’t be
done with extreme precision, it would be quite better if it weren’t done at
all.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">I
myself haven’t the merest scintilla of time to devote to comparing variant
readings.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">I am
in very fine fettle.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Sincerely,</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c0"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Thomas
Bernhard</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c3"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">P.S.
Four times over the past few days I have received an unvarying specimen of
printed matter; to be punctiliously specific, a three-line announcement that
the new play is going to be performed in Salzburg (there have been hundreds of
such announcements)</span></span><span class="c18"><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">3</span></sup></span><span class="c3"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">, and in the accompanying “Press Kit No. 1” it is stated
that I received the Grimme Prize for</span></span><a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-translation-of-der-italiener.html&sa=D&ust=1550432978997000"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></a><a href="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-translation-of-der-italiener.html&sa=D&ust=1550432978997000"><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">The
Italian</span></i></a><span class="c3"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> </span></i></span><span class="c3"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">(the screenplay) <i>based on the novel of the same name</i>.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span class="c7"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">[2] Cf. the corresponding passage in the actual letter (No. 184 in
</span></span><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1VyCRjfN4fz0DQxdVe3NXR_8Nguth-_5f47OSm8-HiVI/pub"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">DR’s
translation of the Bernhard-Unseld correspondence</span></a><span class="c7"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">): <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c7"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Now,
an addendum doing duty as a confirmation: please do not under any circumstances
allow a performance of my <i>Boris</i></span></span><span class="c2"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"> at the Burgtheater in Vienna to take place; I am dreading
the worst and the worst is something I refuse to get involved with.
Retract all offers if they have not been put in writing, and even if they
have been put in writing, to the extent that such retraction is still possible.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c2"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">I
attach precious little value to having anything performed at this theater under
current circumstances. The time for putting on my play at the Burgtheater
(or anywhere else in Vienna) has not yet come. Who knows whether it will
ever come. Nothing but the thought that I am not being staged in Vienna
can put my mind at ease.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c7"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tomorrow,
after an accident and a spell of the flu, I shall be getting back to work.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c2"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">As
you can see, I am back in my element.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c2"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">If
only you would concretely respond just once to one of the points raised in one
of my letters!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="c15" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span class="c2"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Your
letters are charming and exasperating.</span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="c1" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<b style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: medium;"></span></b>Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-33475123224885138152019-06-07T18:30:00.000-04:002019-06-14T18:41:47.729-04:00To Russia with Lunch--Part Two<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?rinli=1&pli=1&blogID=7190184" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Enfin</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> and in short, the present hyperoccidental
political-economic schema, system, mare’s nest or whatever one cares to call
it, is a veritable <i>porquería </i>(or <i>porcheria </i>if you swing to the
southeast) wherein asininity, frustration, futility, and exploitation are the
ineluctable organic order of the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Consumers, perpetually and dedicatedly gulled by the will-o’-the-wisp of
the <i>digital sublime</i>, are content to make do with the shoddiest products
servicing the most somatically basal domains of their existences provided that
they are in possession of electronic gadgetry attested—largely by the all-too
dubious authority of the kingpins of the electronic gadgetry industry itself—to
be faster and more globally integrated than any such gadgetry previously
produced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Producers are either so
heavily besotted by the digital sublime themselves that they submit to the most
ignominious conditions of production for the sake of nominally participating in
the DS at the giving end, or so frustrated by their inability to fulfill
themselves as producers in the strong sense that they condone the manufacture
of the shoddiest products, or so blind to the prosaic yet existence-sustaining
character of their own products—or so besotted by the non-existence sustaining
pet outlets of their own so-called creativity—that they render these products
all-but-unusable by their targeted consumer demographic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And last and yet not necessarily least,
circulators make everybody miserable by insinuating the most in-one’s-face
advertising into every N and C of every transaction with quasi-literally every
product not bespoken, purchased, and hermetically sequestered before 2010 or
thenabouts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the light not only of all
the stupidity and misery nurtured and induced by this political-economic
schema—and not only qua political-economic status quo (for if this status quo
could be maintained indefinitely or quasi-permanently it would be intrinsically
redeemable in at least insuring that the world’s unprecedentedly tiny
Geist-furthering loopholes would shrink no further) but also qua foreplay
session or warm-up act for some kind of <i>proper</i> political-economic
catastrophe (i.e., one in which all existence-sustaining products simply pack
up completely or cease to be provided at all—as against such factitious
political-economic catastrophes as the so-called global financial crisis 0f
2009, wherein a super-passel of something for nothing-seekers with members
hailing from every stratum of the so-called socioeconomic so-called hierarchy
received a salutary knee in its collective gender-neutral genitals), should one
not be permitted to ask, at least hyper-tentatively, <i>Is there not, or could
there not yet be, a better-cum-easier way?</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Is it not permissible at least to countenance, however faintly, a system
of life in which the products that have proved most useful and creature
comfort-sustaining to us are regularly, consistently, and universally provided
at a price affordable by the poorest among us?—a system of life wherein,
moreover, the producers of such products need not pretend that their wares are
anything more or other (an other that is in any case often less and worse) than
creature comfort-sustainers?—a system of life wherein, moreover, the
relatively-to-absolutely tiny number of producers and would-be producers of
products that actually do bid fair to displace sliced bread from its <i>since</i>-perch
are afforded sufficient time and resources to work on their product designs?—a
system of life, in short, answering in all its essential particulars to the
system of life that was at least intermittently aspired to in the former Soviet
Union or U.S.S.R. under the auspices of what hyperoccidental bourgeois
political economists sneeringly termed a <i>planned economy</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly no such system of life is now even
intermittently aspired to in or by any polity on the old dirt
ball-cum-yo-yo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The few surviving
avowedly socialist (a.k.a. Communist or Second-World) polities, polities whose
constitutions have not been radically new-modeled or rewritten as non-socialist
from scratch, have brazenly abandoned all aspirations to such a(n) SOL.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course in China the hyper-infernal,
unsurpassably god-awful, Satan blush-inducing national Communist party
continues to exert a considerable influence on the country’s economic cursus,
but this influence is effectively more consubstantial with the influence
exerted by the Nazi regime on the German economy of 1933 through 1945 than with
that exerted by the Soviet Politburo under Lenin-through-Gorbachev.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Incidentally, any attempt to merge the
pre-1991 Chinese Communist Party’s political-economic program with that of the
Soviet Union in any year is instantly made problematic by the consistently
unabashedly agricultural and rural orientation of the former and the
consistently at least-halfheartedly industrial and urban orientation of the
latter.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Chinese Communist Party,
while affording ample stimulus to commerce and industry, makes no pretense of
doing so solely or even principally towards the end of improving the material
lot of the Chinese people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the
official and quasi-official managers of the pseudo-great powers of the
hyperoccident, in political-economic matters the Chinese Communist Party is
interested solely in growth as a supposed thing cum end-in-itself, and its one
true and abiding domestic-policy passion is GDP-engorgement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same, mutatis mutandis, is true of the
Communist leadership of Vietnam; North Korea is of course merely a dynastic kleptocracy
whose ruling family almost brazenly prides itself on starving the populace; and
even the Cuban Communist regime, which has managed to keep the private economic
initiatives of its citizenry within nominally perestroika-like limits, would
have long since collapsed without massive GDP-augmenting transfusions of
revenue from exogenous capitalist entities thanks to its ever-burgeoning
tourist industry, which for the past quarter-century has been able to draw
freely on the patronage of every hyperoccidental polity except the U.S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Essentially, the State qua self-sustaining
cradle-to-grave furnisher of the quasi-proverbial seven esses (i.e., [as if I
need specify!] sausages, spirits, shirts, slacks, shacks, shows, and shoes) is
an entity-cum-notion that seems to have gone south, foutred the camp, joined
the choir invisible, or what have you, with the dissolution of the Soviet
Union.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, it can be and indeed
presumably has been ad-nauseam argued that the Soviet State never was such a
State, that Lenin et al.-cum-seq. were always essentially as ardently and
gluttonously in it for themselves as the North-Korean Kims; that in the absence
of grain subsidies from the U.S. in the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet people would
have starved or at least been embarrassingly skinny; that across the decades
the Soviet leadership invested far more heavily in the maintenance of the
Union’s military prowess and profile than in the maintenance of even the most
bottom-shelf consumer products on the topmost shelves of its consumer retail
outlets (e.g.-perhaps-verging-on-i.e., the aforementioned GUM stores); and
finally, and most damningly, that it, the Soviet State, never managed to
produce the seven esses in sufficient quality or quantity to satisfy and
gratify the majority of Soviet citizens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All this, and possibly more (depending on whether <i>etc.</i> counts as
part of <i>this</i>) has doubtless been argued ad nauseam and indeed with more
than a heaping or super-sized dollop of plausibility, but however plausible
this argument may be, it ultimately does not tell a jot against <i>my</i>
forthcoming argument in favor of a planned economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I assert this because first(ly), if less
significant(ly) (and yet meriting pride of place in the catalogue on account of
its susceptibility to being overlooked entirely) even in a polity such as the
former Soviet Union with a highly concentrated executive-cum-administrative
apparatus, the aims and motives of those at the heart of that apparatus at any
given moment are never entirely consubstantial with the aims and motives of the
<i>Staatsgeist</i>-cum-<i>Volksgeist </i>as a whole<i> </i>even at that
selfsame given moment, let alone over the long run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However little <i>Gospoda</i>-cum-<i>Tovarishchi</i>
Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Kosigyn (remember him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t think so), Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko
(remember the preceding two?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t
think so either), and Gorbachev, together with their less
illustrious-or-notorious fellow-Politburo members, may have cared about the
welfare and comfort of the Soviet people (and the present writer is enough of a
sentimentalist-cum-Sovietophile to conjecture that at least three out of those
eight men, together with at least three-eighths of their less
illustrious-or-notorious fellow-Politburo members, cared a great deal
thereabout) they had in their employ tens of millions of citizen-workers whose
official remit was to attend to the welfare and comfort of their fellow
citizen-workers in some manner or other, and to assume that, for example, the
typical Soviet doctor was in the habit of selecting prescriptions for his her
patients by dartboard, the Soviet shoe assembling assembly-line worker was in
the habit of hammering his full complement of sole-securing tacks into the dead
center of the shoe-bottom rather than around its periphery, or the official
Soviet instant kasha recipe-realizing cook was in the habit of throwing just
any old combination ingredients together pell-mell into a vat, merely because <i>Gospodin</i>-cum-<i>Tovarishch</i>
Lenin aut seq. could not have cared less about the resulting diminution of the
quality of life of Vanya and Masha Stolichnaya (remember them?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t think so) is as irrational and
unfair as to assume that the present personnel of the United States Federal
Government have universally adopted a policy of mailing Social Security checks
to the wrong addresses, propagating erroneous military intelligence,
green-lighting substandard health-and-safety standards, and so on, merely
because they happen to be serving under the nominal supervision and at the
ultimate pleasure of a president whom by all accounts they by and large
heartily despise, abhor, and detest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
official aims and remits of a given political constitution have, as they say, a
life of their own that can often be sustained with remarkably little
encouragement and even downright discouragement from on high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the Soviet domestic economy’s
dependence on U.S. grain subsidies, any hyperoccidental-originating assertion
that this dependence undermines the tenability of the notion of a planned economy
tout court amounts to nothing less contemptible than the most brazen—or,
perhaps rather, cast-iron—potcallingthekettleblackery, for as I have already
shewn, the United States’ domestic economy is itself at present abjectly
dependent on the financial ministrations of a polity—namely, China—whose
political-economic philosophy-cum-infrastructure is every last bit-let as alien
to its own as the U.S.’s was to the Soviet Union.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, I am inclined to rechristen the
species of effrontery in question potcallingthecharcoalgraykettleblackery inasmuch
as while the Soviet Union’s grain-dependence on the U.S. did not produce a jot
of improvement in the agricultural sector of the U.S.’s domestic economy and
therefore did not eventuate in the accrual of a jot of net gain to the U.S. at
the expense of the U.S.S.R., the U.S.’s present commercial, financial, and
industrial dependence on China is producing gobfuls of improvement in the
commercial, financial, and industrial sectors of China’s domestic economy and
therefore is eventuating in megagobfuls of net gain to China at the expense of
the U.S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Soviet Union’s dependence
on domestic grain subsidies was indeed regrettable, but unless or until the
economically unplanned United States manages to regain a position of fiscal
autonomy vis-à-vis China it is in no position to pooh-pooh the Soviet Union’s
agricultural heteronomy qua case in point in illustration of the
unsustainability of a planned economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And as for the final and most damning of the above-adduced points in
illustration of this unsustainability, namely the failure of the Soviet State
to supply the seven esses to the majority of Soviet citizens, I would—and
indeed am going to—venture to guess that it is by no means as obdurately
irrefutable as it is seemingly universally seen to be; this, in the first
place, because it is founded entirely on anecdotal evidence and is therefore
vulnerable to all the logical shocks that the principle of induction is heir
to, and in the second place, because it has almost always invariably been
adduced in relative terms—that is to say, in juxtaposition with some parallel
instance in the contemporaneous hyperoccident–rather than in the absolute terms
in which any such argument really ought to adduced if it is to serve as a fair
gauge of the adequacy of a planned economy to the needs and wishes of the
generality of those<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>people participating
in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course the terms in which I
have couched this bipartite ventured guess are as off-puttingly abstract as
those of a preface of a Soviet Five Year Plan (albeit no less off-puttingly
abstract than those of the preface of a present-day <i>Fortune</i> 500
company’s mission statement or annual report), so please allow me to concretize
both arms of that couch a bit by way of an historically appropriate example,
namely that of Boris Yeltsin’s visit to a Houston supermarket in 1989.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to his official biographer, on
taking in the abundance and variety of stuff on sale in this supermarket, Mr.
Yeltsin exclaimed-cum-queried something to the effect of “<i>Bozhe moi!</i>
(i.e., <i>Mein Gott!</i>) What have they been doing to our poor people?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <i>they</i> to which he was presumably
referring was of course the Soviet Communist Party, and the thing that <i>they</i>
had been doing to the Soviet People—at least according to Boris Nikolayevich,
according to his biographer— presumably was failing to offer plausibly
proximate near-analogues to most of the goods on offer at that Houston
supermarket at the nearest Soviet analogues to that selfsame supermarket
(again, e.g.-perhaps-verging-on-i.e., the double-aforementioned GUM
stores).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is said by the biographer
that this Houston supermarket-visit catalyzed Mr. Yeltsin’s rejection of Soviet
Communism as a political-economic system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course, as I have already hinted, the biographer may have been
putting words into Yeltsin’s mouth (albeit most likely with his subject’s
consent, as the book was published in 2000, seven years before that subject’s
death), and even supposing the words to have been uttered by BNY, BNY may have
retrospectively overrated the Houston supermarket visit qua Soviet Communism
rejection-catalyst.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my argument can
safely dispense with such meta-epistemological cavils and take the accuracy of
the exclamation-cum-query and the worldview transformation-catalyzing effect of
the visit as givens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can, shall, will,
and indeed by now do, assume, that BNY was indeed decisively bowled over by the
splendor and luxuriance of that Houston supermarket and that that over-bowling
did indeed catalyze his rejection of the Soviet Communist system; but my concession
of this assumption by no means authorizes any present-day inhabitant of the
United States or any other hyperoccidental polity to pat himself, herself, or
theirself on the back (let alone pet himself, herself, or theirself in or on
more sensually gratifying zones of his or her person) for participating in the
one true viable-cum-virtuous system of political economy, inasmuch as the
circumstances of Yeltsin’s visit were circumscribed by certain historical
forces and phenomena that were not uniformly in play throughout the period of
the U.S.S.R.’s existence (remember: 1917-1991), such that the shortcomings of
the Soviet Communist system at the moment of that visit ought not simply to be
reflexively appropriated as a synecdoche for either the absolute or the
relative shortcomings of that system across the decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Redoubled apologies for renewed abstraction
in the midst of my self-avowed concretization.) After all, Yeltsin’s visit was
paid in 1989, when the economic state-of-the-Soviet-art was not pre-Gorbachevian
total State control, but rather limited private enterprise under the auspices
of perestroika, a quasi-system that was at best and latest in the midst of its
growing pains (growing pains that it would of course not be suffered to
complete) and hence could not fairly be expected to furnish, let alone hold, a
candle to the U.S. economy seven-ess-supplying-wise; and when perhaps even more
significantly the regional-chain American supermarket was at the acme of its
heyday, when the typical American supermarket, in figuring among perhaps fifty
stores thickly scattered across a single state or small cluster of states, was
able to offer its customers most of the advantages of scale while not utterly
forsaking the <i>gemütlich</i> <i>bienséances</i> of the independent Main
Street grocery store from which it had evolved within the span of at most two
generations, and to which it retained ties in living memory thanks to its
perduring proprietorship by the business’s founding family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer was if not exactly <i>privileged</i>,
then at least ultimately <i>unviolated</i>, to work as a so-called bagboy at a
Floridian instantiation of such a supermarket during the year of Yeltsin’s
visit to its Texan contemporary, and in hindsight he (the present writer, not
Yeltsin) boggles at the well nigh-regimental attention to dress that was
exacted from him in diurnal preparation for that crummy $3.75-an-hour (or $.40
above the then-minimum wage) job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
company furnished the bagger with a chest-to-ankle apron and proper non-clip-on
necktie, both in the company-designated shade of chocolate brown (qualified by
just enough orange in the necktie to supply a minuscule-typefaced ticker
tape-banner loop of the company name in lieu of the usual diagonal pinstripes);
he was expected to wear these in combination with slacks (never jeans) and
penny-loafers or lace-up dress shoes (never sneakers or trainers) in the same
shade of brown, and a long-sleeved white dress shirt, all of his own
acquisition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember one day I showed
up for my shift in a shirt that strayed just a few nanometers from white into
the yellowish-brown or isabeline sector of the color spectrum—not, as I recall,
because the shirt had not been thoroughly washed beforehand but rather because
the iron filter attached to the well that fed my family’s washing machine had
been malfunctioning—and the manager on duty told me that the shirt <i>just
wouldn’t do</i> and that I would not be allowed to clock in until I had donned
a spectroscopically accurate white shirt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whereupon, as I had no spare shirt stowed away in my car, I had no
choice but to drive all ten miles back home, and once there, as I had no spare
white dress shirts stowed away in my wardrobe (solid-cerulean, solid-canary,
broad red-striped, beefsteak-tartan, and graph paper gray-checked dress shirts
aplenty, yes, but nary a <i>white</i> dress shirt), I had no choice but to slip
the inorganically isabeline shirt off and chuck it into the washer—this time
pouring a heaping dollop of non-chlorine bleach atop the usual capful of
ordinary laundry detergent—thence into the dryer, and thence again onto my
torso; and finally drive all ten miles back to the store, where, <i>Slavo Bogu!</i>,
the still-on-duty manager-on-duty now found the shirt spectroscopically
acceptable, and I was allowed to clock in and begin accruing the measly $10.25
or so that by then remained of the princely $15.50 I would have been eligible
to garner had that gentleman averted his eyes from the dun anti-nimbus, the
veritable brown hole, that I had had the confounded cheek to presume I would be
allowed to obtrude upon the fastidious gazes of the noble clientele of Kash ’n’
Karry Store No. 878.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even at the time I
didn’t blame old James “Jim” Carlino (for that was his name) for his
spectroscopic uncompromisingness—although, to be sure, if <i>I</i> had been in
charge then I would have sent <i>him</i> home for having the confounded cheek
to obtrude a double-textured prevailingly polyester dress shirt (for he never
wore any other sort of shirt) on <i>my</i> fastidious gaze—and now I cannot but
view him as a veritable saint—nay-cum-moreover, as a veritable martyr, for
every textbook published since circa 1999, if not since circa 1995, would have
been or would be handsomely enriched by the inclusion of the well-nigh
regimental Kash ’n’ Karry-employee dress code as an example of a <i>lost cause</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Step into any purportedly state of the
art-cum-uppest of upmarket American supermarket of 2019, or indeed, if you have
access to a navigationally reliable TARDIS, of 2009 or perhaps even of 1999,
and you will almost certainly find the bagging staff—supposing there even is or
are a dedicated bagging staff—attired in shapeless, untucked, open-necked
shirt-jacks in the company colors plus whatever loin-swathing non-shirty togs
they have managed to scrounge from their respective laundry hampers that day
(typically a pair of jeans or cargo shorts), plus their respective oldest,
mingiest pair of sneakers or trainers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the decline in liverial standards has naturally been accompanied by
declines in the quantity and quality of service exacted and consequently
offered by supermarket staff to customers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At Store No. 878 in my day, no cashier was ever expected to do any
bagging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Baggers were retained in sufficient
number to ensure that one would be in sentinel-like attendance at every open
register even throughout the typical post 5pm-to-7pm rush; during especially
busy periods the stock-lads would be called up to the front to bag, and if
shove was paid an impromptu visit by push, the manager on duty himself or
herself would <i>assume the position</i> behind one of the
double-steel-tipped-flaccid-dong sporting bag-dispensers at the end of each
checkout chute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, every bagger
was required to offer to convey even the lightest of bagged purchased
loads—say, a single packet of rice cakes or Kleenexes—to the customer’s car,
and prohibited from accepting a tip for his yeoman-cum-longshoremanlike
services (even if in practice an almost insultingly meager pourboire of a
dollar [and never more than a dollar] was occasionally offered and not refused).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In contrast, at the state of the
art-cum-uppest of upmarket American supermarkets today one will see at most one
bagger for every five cashiers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Presumably this minuscule-at-largest bagging staff are on hand only in
case of emergencies, as a prophylactic bulwark against that tiny minority of
checkout-lane-hours wherein enough customers have been insolent enough not to
assume the position them-or-their respective selves (preferably astern of their
respective own ineluctably soot, pubic hair, and E. coli-infested nominally
reusable carrier bags, of course) to cause the queue to exceed old-school
pre-nuclear apocalyptic lengths (for such lengths themselves are merely par for
the off-peak weekend course now, as the surge of envy experienced by every present-day
viewer of the supermarket scene in <i>The Day After </i>eloquently attests)
despite the cashier’s Clydesdale-knackering intervention <i>en baggeur</i>; or
even, H.R.H. J.H. Christ forbid!, some post-septuagenarian retiree has been
brazen enough to feign to be too frail or feeble to convey some puny five-stone
cartload to his or her vehicle on his or her own supposedly weak-hammed
lonesome (for of course now that <i>we are all</i> [and I really do mean <i>all</i>]
<i>living longer </i>there is no excuse whatsoever for not schlepping every
last ounce of one’s own stuff well into one’s second century).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suppose Mr. Yeltsin’s first encounter with an
American supermarket had been with <i>this</i> kind of supermarket, the
American supermarket of the present: would he then have felt half so eager to
wail, gnash his teeth, and rend his two-button GUM suit-jacket as he felt upon
encountering the American supermarket he actually did encounter, the American
supermarket of 14/50ths of a century ago?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course, short of traveling back to 1989 in a navigationally reliable
TARDIS, kidnapping Mr Yeltsin immediately before he crossed the presumably
automatic door-serviced threshold of that 1989 Houston supermarket, and
immediately setting him before the still automatic door-serviced threshold of a
2019 Anytown (including Houston), USA supermarket, there is no way of
determining the answer to this question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But I would confidently and even smugly wager that to the extent that
his attention was absorbed by every accoutrement of the 2019 supermarket other
than the holdings of its shelves, he would have been inclined to ejaculate, “<i>Slovo
Bogu!</i>-cum-<i>Hot Dog! </i>Our rich people back in the U.S.S.R. don’t know
how <i>bosh</i>-darned lucky they are!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But suppose—under the aegis of a thought experiment that somehow seems
much more modest and low-budget than the preceding one even though it is
predicated on an event that is not a jot more effectable than the construction
of a navigationally reliable TARDIS –suppose, I say, that Mr Yeltsin, having
visited the Houston store in 1989, were still alive today and somehow, for some
reason, amenable to paying a follow-up visit to the typical American
supermarket of 2019.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it not at least
a smidge conceivable that upon taking in the slatternly-cum-n****dly state of
customer service in this store he would now ejaculate something to the effect
of “<i>Bozhe Moi!</i>-cum-<i>Svyatoyo</i> <i>Govno! </i>What have they been
doing to their poor people?”—the <i>poor people</i> in question <i>now</i>
being us gormless American consumers and the <i>they</i> being the congeries of
rogues, megalomaniacs, louts, vampires, imbeciles, nincompoops, and f**k-ups
now in charge of our most powerful and prestigious commercial concerns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, it is not a smidge less conceivable
that he would be virtually or entirely blind to the evidences of decline in
customer service since 1989 owing to his ocular captivation by evidences of the
indisputable concomitant increase in the range and quantity of products on
display; by, say, the quintupling of the number of shelves devoted to bread,
and the number of varieties thereof from, say, 5 to 25 and 50 to 250,
respectively, and the emergence of entire aisles devoted to products that were
entirely absent in 1989—to kimchi, quinoa, larb, poutine, and <i>huîtres de
montagne</i> (much as one aches here to rib Yeltsin’s notorious dipsomania via
a mention of <i>an actual wall of 99 bottles of beer</i> <i>or, doubtless more
appropriately, vodka</i>, one’s knowledge of the heterogeneity of so-called
blue laws in this country precludes one’s assuaging this ache in good
faith).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But is it not equally not a
smidge less conceivable that, having taken due and comprehensive ocular stock
of this superaddition of superabundance, BNY would yearn for the comparative
simplicity and traditional American-ness of the 1989 store—this out of a
combination of incuriosity about or outright aversion to the newly introduced
products (“What, after all, is this quinoa but a poor <i>muzhik</i>’s kasha,
and this kimchee but a rat-<i>svoloch</i>’s borsch?”) and a suspicion (one
perhaps nurtured by parallel developments in the by then-thoroughly privatized
post-Soviet Russian consumer sector) that the proliferation of varieties of the
old products had been attended by a decline in their overall quality?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or suppose, in an equally infeasible if likewise
non TARDIS-exacting scenario, that Mr Yeltsin had paid his first visit to an
American supermarket not in the late 1980s but in the early 1960s, a microepoch
wherein even the twice-aforementioned super-Sovietophobe Barry Goldwater was
obliged and possibly even fain to aver that everyday life behind the so-called
Iron Curtain, although still palpably lagging behind its counterpart in front
thereof in point of the <i>abbondanza </i>of<i> </i>its consumerist
smorgasbord, was on the whole eminently bearable and constantly improving: may
we not plausibly conjecture that in such a scenario the then-perforce barely
trentagenarian Mr Yeltsin, although doubtless even more decisively bowled over
(or, perhaps rather, <i>positively floored</i>, if decisive-overbowling be a
logically insuperable threshold) by the complaisance and sartorial
regimentation of the staff (the humblest of whom, to extrapolate backward from
my own experience as a bagboy, must have been required to wear three-piece
suits, if not instantiations of that white Eton-jacketed modification of men’s
full evening dress sported by all bellhops and bartenders in pre-World War II
Hollywood movies) than his non-counterfactual 1989 counterpart, would have been
at most very mildly impressed by the selection and presentation of products,
that at the sight thereof he would have merely shrugged and muttered (rather
than outright ejaculated), “<i>Go-gum</i> [this either in accommodation of the
Russian language’s lack of the aitch-phoneme or in encouragement of the
aspirations of the Soviet State’s umpteen times-aforementioned flagship
supermarket chain]!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will bury you in
soup-cans soon enough.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly the
present writer, having been born in the early 1970s, has not been privileged
(and in this case he does not hesitate, however commonsensically unwarrantably,
to term the counterfactual term of duty in question a privilege rather than a
mere non-violation) to work in any capacity in an early-1960s American
supermarket, but he flatters himself that he has seen enough still-photographic
and cinematic representations of American supermarkets of that microepoch to
form a kind of composite image of the layout and inventory (albeit not, as
previously acknowledged, of the personnel-comportment) of such a supermarket,
and that image, while certainly appealing enough to the present writer, who
would be content to live on cold baked beans on untoasted Wonder Bread (while
other brands of white bread are certainly available, none has been so thickly
and well nigh-irremediably blackened by the tar-brush of whiteness as the
bad-old polka-dotted WB) for the rest of his natural provided he could wash it
(or them) down with plenty of booze (and the booze can be Everclear chased with
Hamm’s for all he cares), is certainly no trans-epochally alluring poster
supermarket-child for the consumerist wonders made available by so-called
free-market capitalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Take (as if you
had a choice, <i>tovarishch!</i>) as an example the Texan (albeit not
specifically Houstonian) supermarket frequented by George Peppard in the 1960
Vincente Minelli-directed and Robert Mitchum-starring pork opera <i>Home from
the Hill</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its aisles are almost
impassably cramped, its products piled up <i>au hasard</i> (emphatically not to
be confused with <i>willy-nilly</i>) either in shapeless heaps or, where occasionally
(i.e., in the case of boxed and canned goods) possible, makeshift
pyramids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its perishable readymade
section would appear to consist solely of a dwarf armoire-sized freezer stocked
with nothing but personal-sized frozen pizzas—evidently, to judge by Peppard’s
decidedly unballetic hefting of his weekly quota thereof into his trolley,
those of the petrified-crusted sort that are now to be found only in the
frost-burnt back-corners of low-slung, top-opening oblately orientated coolers
in the most down-market liquor stores and off-licenses offering a smattering of
groceries qua booze-absorbent for the substantial proportion of their clientele
habitually too soused to stagger even to the nearest convenience store or
corner shop, let alone supermarket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
I digress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or do I?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the ineluctable salience of the <i>Home
from the Hill</i> supermarket scene qua succedaneum for firsthand experience of
American supermarkets of the early 1960s uncannily both anticipates and
ratifies the principal mode of persuasion that I have all along been
determined, for lack of a more compelling alternative, to employ in my argument
in favor of a planned economy on the Soviet model—namely the <i>argumentum a
picturis moventibus</i> or <i>argument from movies</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The name of this <i>argumentum</i> almost
says it all, but not quite; whence the following explication: I am going to
attempt to persuade the reader that life under a planned economy is preferable
to life under an unplanned one by citing scenes from movies produced under the
auspices of the most successful thoroughly planned economy in human history so
far (remember: the present Chinese model, being only strategically planned,
does not count)—viz., the Soviet Union-ian one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The employment of such an <i>argumentum</i> is of course and as they say
<i>fraught with difficulties</i> (or <i>dangers </i>[I am unable to determine
which <i>fraughteur</i> is more applicable in this case]), the stickiest and
most ineluctable of these being that of being mistaken by some
intellectual-lumpen proletarian f**k for a clinically infantile imbecile who
has not yet learned, and presumably never will learn, that <i>there is a
difference between the movies and real life</i>; who assumes, for example, that
<i>Star Wars</i> is a documentary presentation of certain military transactions
that actually took place <i>a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away</i>;
that there are genuine accredited old-school British public schools that award
diplomas in non-pointy-hooded wizardry, and that the likes of Nicole Kidman,
Benedict Cumberbatch, and Brett Gelman are competent actors [one must always
round out such a snarky triplet with such an utterly unprepared, differently
veined snarky sub-triplet (whose third member must in turn be someone not
particularly famous who is in any case not at all notorious for the stigmatized
shortcoming {albeit genuinely long-overdue for stigmatization therefor})]; and
the second stickiest and ineluctable one being that of being mistaken by some
intellectual petit-bourgeois f**k for an actionably hyperignorant ignoramus who
has yet to learn (and yet someday may learn [i.e., via a lecture {the
ineluctability of which leads me to ponder whether this difficulty or danger is
not after all the first-stickiest}]) that those in charge of the Soviet Union’s
film industry were not absolutely disinterested promulgators of an absolutely
objective and candid view of everyday life in their country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is fraught with such difficulties or
dangers, and yet one must soldier on like whatever stereotype of plucky
military fortitude is most appropriate in this setting (for in the first place,
I am unsure whether an American or Soviet stereotype is preferable herein; in
the second, I am unsure which historical micro-epoch to pluck this plucky
fellow from; and finally, and most materially, I am almost completely unschooled
in the argotic lexicon from which stereotypes of plucky military fortitude must
be plucked), albeit not before obligatorily albeit undoubtedly futilely
chucking into one’s intellectual lumpen proletarian and petit-bourgeois
adversaries’ shared armored tank-path the puny (yet plucky) grenadic
remonstrations that all-too-candid glimpses of the local historical
circumstances of a movie’s production are often afforded in diametric defiance
of its so-called production team’s intentions and that these glimpses tend to
become more frequent, more vivid, and more gaping with the passage of
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the mid-twentieth-century eyes
of Mr. Minelli &co. the frozen pizzas at the <i>Home from the Hill </i>supermarket
were merely and entirely metonyms of feckless bachelorhood, the feckless
bachelorhood of the George Peppard-portrayed wastrel whose fetchingly
femininely undersized trolley they threatened to overflow; in our early
twenty-first-century eyes they are merely and entirely synecdoches of the
appallingly primitive state of mid-twentieth century ready-meal
technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, <i>Home from the
Hill</i>, unlike the films I am about to consider, was the product of a
privately rather than governmentally owned cinema studio, but this distinction
is of far less material heft than the typical intellectual petit-bourgeois
Anglo-Saxon Russo-ignoramus would suppose, for in general and at bottom the
makers of movies in the U.S.S.R. were no more interested in or dedicated to
celebrating the supposed wonders of Communism than their Hollywood counterparts
were in or to celebrating the wonders of Capitalism; rather, like those
counterparts they were mainly interested in and dedicated to entertaining their
viewers via the combination-cum-alternation of slapstick, tragedy, farce,
melodrama, suspense, sex, historical period-knick knackery, etc., such that
even the original viewers of their productions would not in general or at
bottom have regarded them as advocating any specific political or
political-economic program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this
consideration impels me to issue yet another caveat before I press onto my
conspectus proper—namely, that this conspectus is going to be something of an
analogue of the famous Seinfeldian (or, rather, Kramerian) coffee table book
that is itself a coffee table, inasmuch as a movie, being every bit as much of
a staple consumer product as a disposable razor and a photocopier, cannot help
likewise serving as a synecdoche for whatever political-economic system under
whose auspices it was manufactured, and hence cannot help redeeming that system
to the extent that it, the movie, has been well-made or damning it to the
extent that it has been poorly made; and I have found the products of the
Soviet cinema to be very well-made indeed, and although of course the proof of
the cinematic popcorn (or its U.S.S.R.-ian equivalent [regrettably I cannot now
call to mind what, if anything, any of the viewers were eating in the
sub-handful of Soviet-made depictions of a Soviet cinematic audience that I can
now call to mind]) is ineluctably in the viewing, I flatter myself that my
accounts of these flicks alone will convey a sense of the technical finesse
with which they are uniformly instinct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is not to say that I am going to be implying that even a
minority—let alone all—of them are so-called great works of art, but merely
that I am not going to have occasion to draw attention to any facet or element
of any of them that would seem outré or bungling or otherwise off-putting in
the setting of a canonically classic Hollywood movie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Pace</i> the protestation to the contrary
implied by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s motto (at least vis-à-vis its 15 to 20 percent
share of the films made in Hollywood before, say, 1970), even the most justly
critically acclaimed films in the classic Hollywood canon—your <i>Citizen Canes</i>,
your <i>Vertigo</i>s, your <i>Nutty Professor</i>s, etc.—are highly or deeply
problematic <i>sub specie</i> the in-itself highly problematic category or
concept called <i>art</i>, and the highpoints of the Soviet cinema are no less
problematic <i>sub</i> <i>eadem</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Like even the very best classic-epochal Hollywood films, even the very
best Soviet films may be impugned for pandering to an essentially
petit-bourgeois <i>Weltansicht</i>, a <i>Weltansicht</i> according to whose
lights the social ties emerging from and feeding into the so-called nuclear
family are the measure of all things, such that any shortcoming in or of the
world is ultimately and solely redeemable and reparable via the rectification
or reinforcement of such ties—by, essentially, the saving of a parent’s,
spouse’s, or child’s life; a reconcilement with a parent, spouse, or child
whose life is unsalvageable; or the replacement of an unsatisfactory parent,
spouse, or child with a satisfactory surrogate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Perhaps not quite needless to say, the entire purportedly
dark-cum-subversive strain of American cinema-cum-television [i.e., the
noir-cum-gangster strain] from <i>Beast of the City</i> to <i>Breaking Bad</i>
boils {hardly} down to a single tireless and tiresome stump speech in favor of
the third and last mode of rectification-aut-reinforcement.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that the present writer wishes to be
taken to be tendering the antithetical thesis that the nuclear family and its
near kindred are intrinsically utterly worthless, but merely that he wishes it
to be observed that history has shewn that humankind is at the mercy of forces
(yes, forces largely of its own making [oh, the pathos!]) that cannot be evaded
by hunkering down within the nuclear-familial bunker, and that since probably
ca. 1917 and certainly since 1945 (<i>sic</i> on the absence of the <i>circa</i>)
the discrepancy between the magnitude of these forces and the minitude of the
nuclear familial-fetishism has been nothing short of laughable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The paleo-ancients—in whose calcified ranks I
include all human beings deceased between the dawn of recorded history and the
first French Revolution, the one of 1789—thoroughly understood both the
intrinsic limitations of the nuclear family and the nature and scale of the
forces then impinging upon it—whence the unabashed wrangling over jointures,
annuities, half-pay commissions and the like in their memoirs, plays, and
novels; the neo-ancients, i.e. the Biedermeierians and Victorians, while aware
to some extent of the forces <i>then</i> impinging thereupon (i.e., those of
revolution and repression), by withdrawing into the nuclear family qua
cocoon-cum proto bunker allowed certain others (e.g. and above all, consumerist
commodity fetishism) to germinate and burgeon under their noses; and the
moderns, the post-ca.-1917ers, carry on an unprecedentedly sanctimonious
charade of the sacrosanctness of family life while brazenly pretending certain
of the impinging forces (e.g. and above all, the threat of thermonuclear
annihilation) are not in play at all and allowing certain others (e.g. and
above all, consumerist commodity fetishism) to stay in the master bedroom of
the family domicile free of charge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i>Nineteen
Eighty-Four</i> George Orwell represented the nuclear family of the future as
one wherein children would be rewarded by the State for catching their parents
out in minute lapses in patriotism, and in this, as in so many other registers
and respects, Mr Blair (as I must call him, for a mere pen-name ought never to
be granted the civilities exacted as a matter of course by the legal name of a
tax-paying citizen or subject) was painfully lengthily behind the times—not, as
one inevitably assumes, vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and other supposedly
totalitarian polities, but rather vis-à-vis the entire greater Occident, in
which the child qua domestic Fifth Columnist had been a demographically
significant phenomenon since at least the 1920s—not, to be sure, qua mole of
the State but qua whip of a no-less-imperious entity, namely, youth-orientated
fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At some point during that
decade, one of the major American newspapers published a feature headlined
something at least very close, and possibly identical, to “The Flapper’s
Apologia,” wherein a young woman, a self-identified member of the factitious
tribe of flappers and espouser of the factitious flapper modus vivendi,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>self-righteously apostrophizes her parents in
defense of her predilection for wearing her hair very short or <i>bobbed</i>,
dancing the so-called Charleston, and so on—mainly or perhaps exclusively on
the grounds that this is just the way things must be from now on and that if
they, Mom and Dad, have any reservations about it, they had best keep them to
themselves, lest they should be not merely figuratively trampled to death by
the ineluctable and irreversible course of history (one wherein presumably
flapperdom at length becomes the modus vivendi of every man, woman, and child
in the world à la that <i>Mr. Show</i> sketch in which a cadre of 1970s
so-called streakers envisages a version of the 1990s wherein everyone is
perpetually naked like themselves [and wherein, naturally, they themselves qua
pioneers in the streaking revolution are at the top of the socioeconopolitical
totem heap]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And by 1950, only a year
after the publication of Orwell’s swansong-cum-greatest hit, David Riesman
(q.v.) could report on this sort of imperious adolescent bumptiousness as an
absolutely mainstream American sociocultural phenomenon, as the signature-cum-vanguard
exemplar of his long abovementioned flagship sociocultural phenomenon,
other-directedness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wrote of parents
servilely vying with their children’s school chums for compliance in even the
traditionally most non-negotiable departments of their everyday domestic lives;
of publicly impassable justices of the peace and captains of industry being
outflanked on the domestic-management front by bubblegum-popping Perry Como and
Frank Sinatra-affecting teenyboppers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With homebred friends like these, one assuredly did not need—and indeed
still does not need—enemies implanted from abroad-cum-on high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quasi-ironically yet completely
unsurprisingly, and Orwell-debunkingly, paterfamiliases and materfamiliases on
the other side of the so-called Iron Curtain were most likely on the whole less
subject to this sort of domestic subversion, given first that, except perhaps
during the so-called NEP period of the late 1920s, sycophantic loyalty to the
Soviet Communist Party was never exactly hip, and second that their bairns were
less mercilessly exposed to (or more mercifully insulated from)
youth-orientated pop so-called culture than their hyperoccidental
counterparts—at least until the late 1960s, when the State-owned Melodiya
record label foolishly began pressing their own editions of platters by the
likes of the Beatles and the Monkees, whereupon every Soviet citizen over 30
was effectively instantaneously transformed into a hypo-occidental Archie or
Edith Bunker; and thence it was an easy transition to the god-awful likes of
Billy Joel performing to an idolatrous crowd of a butcher’s-score-thousand in
downtown Moscow, and thence further to the god-awful collapse of the entire
Soviet system of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I am getting
ahead of myself, <i>way</i> ahead of myself; or perhaps, rather, way behind
myself, in which case it will not be amiss to restate my point about the shared
petit-bourgeois orientation of the Soviet and Hollywood cinemas in the
phraseology of the Sting song quoted near the very beginning of this essay: the
super-subtextual upshot of a typical Soviet movie, and indeed almost all Soviet
movies, is simply that <i>the Soviet Russians (and their fellow citizens in the
non-Russian F.S.S.R.s) loved their children too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>The present writer, suffering as he does
perhaps more acutely under the tyranny of the of petit-bourgeois ethos than any
of his contemporaries on the almighty dirt-ball, cannot but regard this upshot <i>eo
ipso</i> as a demerit of, a black eye on, a strike against, the Soviet cinema;
at the same time, qua champion of the Soviet way of life he cannot help being
grateful to it qua instance in proof that even when most materially beholden to
the Soviet State and most abjectly duty-bound to champion or at least not
undermine its official agenda, the Soviet Russians et al. were no more
obsequious to the powers that officially were (or, perhaps, rather, <i>be’d</i>)
than their hyperoccidental contemporaries; at the same time-prime qua that
selfsame champion, he cannot strongly enough emphasize that what he will be
looking to emphasize ever so strongly in his conspectus of these movies will <i>not</i>
be their political sins and virtues—whether of omission or commission—but
rather their aura of a way of life that is more pleasant, even more <i>gemütlich</i>,
than any of its counterparts elsewhere before, then, or since at both the most
fine-grainedly and coarse-grainedly creature-comfortly resolutions; and at the
same time-sub-prime, he cannot but grudgingly acknowledge that the
creaturely-comfortly comforts brazenly advertised by the first, because
chronologically earliest (Do you want to make something of my prima-vista
hyper-pedestrianness in opting for a chronological organization of my material
non-DGR?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If so, save that something for
its postscript, when it will be more apparent whether that something has legs,
wings, or your alternative propulsive member of choice) movie in his
conspectus, 1957’s <i>The Cranes Are Flying</i>, are difficult to disentangle
from its no less brazenly advertised political virtues of omission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By which I meantersay that…well, perhaps the
most concise, most punch-packing way of putting it (albeit that some
not-uncircumstantial unpacking of that selfsame punch will perforce have to
follow its delivery) is to say that <i>The Cranes Are Flying</i> is the
second-best human interest-orientated non-documentary movie about World War II
ever made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hyperoccidental chauvinists
will of course assume that I have relegated <i>The Cranes Are Flying </i>to
this argentine or three(?)-star rank in deference to <i>From Here to Eternity</i>,
but I have done no such thing, inasmuch as according to my lights, such as they
are, <i>From Here to Eternity</i> is at best the third-best such movie (for it
may after all be outranked by <i>Mrs. Miniver</i>), the first-best undoubtedly
being Andrei Tarkovsky’s <i>Ivan’s Childhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></i>Why, then, have I not—if not in deference to textual economy (a
supposed virtue to which the present screed, in now exceeding the single-spaced
100-page mark, has patently already long since bidden defiance) at least to
intellectual vanity, the vanity of one who notoriously (at least in the
doubtless empirically nonexistent eyes of anyone who has read his publicly
available non-translational corpus in its entirety) prides and preens himself
above all else on his presence of mind (<i>Besonnenheit</i>)—opted to discuss <i>Ivan’s
Childhood </i>in place of<i> The Cranes Are Flying </i>in this conspectus?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, simply because at bottom the entire
Tarkovskian oeuvre, whether regarded en bloc or film by film, evinces a
different <i>Weltansicht</i> and points up a different truth or fact about Russia
(and, yes, specifically Russia; not the Soviet Union) than the one to be
spotlighted in the present conspectus, and will therefore be addressed (touch <i>would</i>)
in a separate conspectus. <i>Ivan’s Childhood</i> is first and foremost and at
bottom about the disruptive effects of war in general—or of a war that is only
contingently the Second World One–on a specifically Russian psyche, <i>Weltansicht</i>,
and system of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>The Cranes Are
Flying</i> is first and foremost and at bottom nothing but a film about the
disruptive effects of a particular war, the Second World War—or as it was known
in the Soviet Union (and probably still is, not only in Russia but also in all
the other former F.S.S.R.s, even the most Russophobic ones), the Great
Patriotic War—on the purportedly organically natural rhythms of a <i>single</i>
typical <i>Soviet</i>, and most assuredly not specifically Russian, family; and
such being the case, the likes of <i>From Here to Eternity</i>, in touting for
the viewer’s sympathy via the diffuse presentation of the heterogeneous vicissitudes
suffered by a motley passel of non-consanguinous blokes, or even <i>Mrs.
Miniver</i>, in taking as its eponym the consort of a latter-day rural grandee
and consequently devoting a goodly portion of its footage to the miseries of
that eponym’s extended <i>Umwelt</i>, cannot hold a candle petit bourgeois
human interest-wise to <i>Cranes</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Both its dramatis personae and its plot are simple to the point of
delivering a two or middle-finger salute to the very notion of the necessity of
a synopsis (not that a synopsis can be entirely forgone or hence will fail to
materialize to the right of the next colon): a beautiful young Muscovite couple
are presumed to be engaged when war is declared against Germany.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The male of the couple, being both a model
plyer of some unspecified trade and a model patriot, enlists in the army,
leaving the female, after her parents are conveniently (albeit, to be fair,
doubtlessly not improbably) killed off in an air raid, obliged to lodge with
her fiancé’s family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dude, having
been posted to some god-awful mud-pit, is fatally wounded in a trice, but in
the final half-minute before his expiration, he dreams of the now-never-to-be
wedding to his beloved <i>Squirrel </i>(an endearment by which he has
repeatedly addressed his sweetheart before their parting), and the dream is
conveyed to the viewer in a panoramic slow-motion sequence with all the
appropriate hymenal fixins (blindingly white wedding dress, sober but
impeccably well-fitting groomish attire, perspective-defying lines of
applauding guests, etc.) that would not fail to jerk a veritable cataract of
tears from pre-visitational Scrooge himself, were he as ancient as cold-balled
Nestor himself at the time of the viewing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So forceful an impression did this sequence [along, perhaps, with certain
allegedly spectacular sequences in his Castro’s-flesh-cigar-puffing
pseudo-documentary <i>I Am Cuba </i>{which the present writer freely owns he
has not seen owing to his allergy to all non-gustatorily oriented things Latin-
American}] make on viewers on both sides of the old Icey that <i>Cranes</i>’s
director Mikhail Kalatozov went on—not as a defector, mind you, but as a loyal
and unrepentant ankle tag-sporting Soviet citizen—to direct an expensive
English-language (albeit Soviet and Italian-financed) cinematic Zep-opera
called <i>The Red Tent</i>, starring Sean Connery and Peter Finch and featuring
its own slow-motion whirligig connubial pre-death dream sequence—only this time
against the diagetic backdrop of politically unclaimed Arctic snow rather than
Soviet-Russian (or perchance Byelorussian, Estonian, autc.) mud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to take up again the thread of the
plot-synopsis of <i>Cranes</i>: meanwhile, i.e., since Squirrel’s
endomicilement at her prospective in-laws’, her fiancé’s draft-dodging brother,
a purportedly promising piano student, has been aggressively and unsuccessfully
courting her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When an air raid leaves
him, her, and his concert grand piano alone together in the familial apartment,
he decides not to take No (now underscored by a succession of unambiguous
face-slaps) for an answer any longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Very little in the way of immediate interpersonal contact—let alone
explicitly sexual contact—is shown, and yet thanks to a deft intercutting of
shots of the pianist’s face with shots of both the piano keyboard and
Squirrel’s face, the viewer immediately perceives what is happening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, while I by no means wish to make light
of the calamity obliquely depicted in this scene—which is as ineluctably
bone-chilling as the above-described wedding-montage is ineluctably
tear-eliciting—I must aver that for the purpose of the present argument the
chief element of interest in it is its presentation of the rapist’s piano,
specifically of the portion of it just above and at a right angle to the
keyboard (no diagram I have been able to get hold of seems to think this
piano-part worthy of a name), on which the maker’s mark of STEINWAY AND SONS
can be seen and read in full and in daylight-bright illumination (courtesy,
within the film’s diagesis, of the German Wehrmacht) multiple times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such brazen showcasing of an American
proprietary name in a Hollywood blockbuster from, say, the late 1970s onwards,
would be instantly flaggable as <i>product placement</i> and transparently
up-chalkable to a payoff from the named corporate entity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This showcasing’s presence in a Soviet movie
of the late 1950s is less easy to flag and upchalk, at least by hyperoccidental
eyes of the late 20teens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pedestrian
academic champions of <i>Cranes</i>, who regard it principally as a skillful
adaptation and streamlining of the techniques of Italian neo-realism, have
doubtless accounted for this presence to their own satisfaction as a bare
registration of the global prestige of the Steinway brand as a metonym of
pianistic excellence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dude, so these
PACs (no DGRs they, let it be said!) must have reckoned, is supposedly an
accomplished pianist, and so new-model Italian neo-realism demands his playing
a Steinway concert grand, an instantiation of the most highly regarded brand of
piano; if he were supposedly instead, say,an accomplished yo-yo-ist, he would
have to be seen slinging a Duncan Imperial, an instantiation of the most highly
regarded brand of yo-yo--and there’s an end on’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer tends to agree with these
conjectural PACs that within <i>Cranes</i>’s historically straitened
intentional horizons, the emblazonment of STEINWAY AND SONS is meant to serve
as such a metonym, and he will even go so far as to throw to them a doubtless
unlooked-for bone in support of their boneheadedly formalist thesis in the form
of a conjecture that the emblazonment was received as exactly and nothing but
such a metonym by the cinemagoers of not only 1957’s Moscow, Leningrad, East
Berlin, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, etc. but also of 1957’s New York, St.
Petersburg (Fla.), Milan, Dieppe, etc.; but he emphatically disagrees with them
that there’s an end on’t, for the simple and eminently respectable (if prima
vista hyper-pedestrian) reason(s) that <i>Cranes</i> has been watched on both
sides, and later former sides, of the old Icey, since 1957, and the semiology
of pianism has undergone some pretty seismically significant changes over the
course of that half-century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suppose one
were making a movie about or at least including a promising young pianist now,
in 2019, in any corner of the almighty dust-ball.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would one then show that promising young
pianist playing an unmistakably Steinway and Sons-manufactured concert grand in
the family living room in Poughkeepsie,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Jodhpur (a city perhaps better known by its unshakable nickname of <i>Hitlerhose</i>),
Addis Ababa, or, indeed, Moscow, et al.?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Most likely one would not, and not at all because Steinway and Sons is
an iota less prestigious a piano manufacturer than it was back then (for if
anything it is even more prestigious to the tune of several mega-iotas), or because
Steinway and Sons would not be an iota less grateful for the publicity (for if
anything, &c., <i>mutatis mutandis</i>), but rather because unless the
promising young pianist happened to be the son or daughter of an Emir,
oil-oligarch, Hitlerhosen-manufacturing magnate, or some other sort of person
worth more than the combined GDPs (not that this invocation of GDP qua
financial yardstick constitutes anything like an endorsement by the present
writer of GDP qua purported noumenon) of, say, the world’s poorest countries,
he or she would not be likely to have the usufruct of a Steinway concert grand
at home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most likely, indeed, he or she
would be habitually tickling the ivories of a wee spinet piano manufactured by
some humble Midwestern-headquartered firm with insufficient means to secure so
much as a microsecond of name-exposure, or an untuneable upright grand turned
out by some long-defunct firm a century-and-a-quarter ago, or at best a baby
grand of almost comparably obscure—and hence well-nigh comparably impecunious—provenance
to that of the wee spinet, or at most efficiently and hence <i>super</i>-most
likely, some sort of closet-storable touch-sensitive electronic keyboard
manufactured by some company like Yamaha or Casio that had (or has) its fingers
in so many product-lineal pies that it would not have been statistically likely
(or would not bother) to single out this particular one for onscreen
flogging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words-cum-in short, a
Steinway concert grand, despite being the ideal vehicle for the cultivation and
exhibition of his or her talents, is evidently not <i>affordable</i> by the
average promising concert pianist of 2019 in even the most supposedly
hyperdeveloped precincts of the supposedly hyperdeveloped world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet, if <i>Cranes</i> is to be believed,
a Steinway Concert grand was affordable by the average promising Soviet concert
pianist of 1941.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Carping Whiggish
cavilers across the present hyperoccidental so-called political spectrum, from
the most tight-sphinctered free-marketeering Tea Partyists to the most
loose-sphinctered governmental money tree-mongering Corbinistas, will doubtless
carp and cavil that the pianist in <i>Cranes</i> doubtless did not <i>own</i>
the Steinway concert grand in diagetic question, that any such piano in any
such setting doubtless would have been present merely as a long-term loan from
the Soviet State, but such carping and caviling merely gormlessly carries my
point over the finish line—for if the Soviet State was indeed willing to lend
such an expensive piece of furniture out to one of its citizens on trust, and
in the middle of a war jam-packed with furniture devastating air-raids, no
less, it must have had a very high regard both for the trustworthiness of that
citizen qua guardian of such an expensive piece of furniture and for the end to
which that piece of furniture was to be applied (viz. the attainment of
pianistic excellence); and, indeed, a much, much, much higher regard therefor
than is presently evinced by any government or piano manufacturer in the hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the Soviet system of life-redeeming
virtue of <i>Cranes</i>’s showcasing of the Steinway and Sons brand name does
not end here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh no: for what vice (if a
vice it indeed be) is the Soviet system of life most harshly vituperated for if
not its abhorrence of both private enterprise and foreign-made products?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the Soviet State at the time of <i>Cranes</i>’s
production (or indeed of its setting, about fifteen years earlier [the
distinction is not as important as it might initially seem, for reasons that
the parenthetical nature of this passage precludes me from disclosing but that
will be disclosed as soon as the thread of the extra-parenthetical argument
permits]) had been chauvinistically dedicated to Communism in
general-cum-Soviet economic autonomy in particular, it would at minimum have
seen to the concealment of the name of the piano’s manufacturer and at a pinch
would have replaced its <i>Steinway and Sons</i> with the Cyrillic-character’d
name of some real or even fictitious Soviet-state pseudo-firm, a piano-manufacturing
analogue to the pseudo MGM-analogue, Mosfilm, under whose quasi-factitious
auspices <i>Cranes</i> was produced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That it did neither such perfidious thing is proof of its high regard
for realism in two senses—the aesthetic one celebrated by the aforementioned
pedestrian cinephiles, and the popular-philosophical one that is virtually
indistinguishable from the popular-philosophical version of pragmatism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First to the popular-philosophical sense:
doubtless the Soviet State was always aiming at complete meta-pianistic
autonomy, at having even not only its promising young pianists but also its
most accomplished old ones (Yudina, Gilels, Richter, et al.) performing on
domestically manufactured pianos, but pending the attainment of this aim it
evidently was willing to allow all its pianists from those of middling promise
upwards to use Steinways rather than allow the development or exhibition of
their talent to be impeded by substandard instruments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it seems inconceivable that by 1957—which
was, after all, the year of Sputnik (and yet also and consequently, to be fair
to my anti-Whiggish other hand, presumably also the year of the dawn of <i>they-can-put-a-man-on-the-moon-but…-ism</i>,
a mini-school of thought for which the very notion of a State-industrially
produced piano seems tailor-made to serve as an incorrigible, perennial
whipping boy)—the Soviet State had not attained if not complete meta-pianistic
autonomy (for I am virtually certain that the accomplished pianists played
Steinways uninterruptedly until 1991 and beyond) then at any rate sufficient
M-PA to allow its middlingly promising young pianists to make shift with
mass-produced MOSKLAVIER claviers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet
even assuming such a middling meta-pianistic idyll had been achieved by 1957
(here is where realism in the second sense kicks in), when Mikhail Kalatozov
&co. came to script and storyboard the <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">mise-en-scène</span> of the rape scene of <i>Cranes</i>, they refrained
from availing themselves of a MOSKLAVIER piano out of their scrupulosity on the
score of realism in the pedestrian cinephiles’ sense, on the score of showing
WWII-time Moscow life as it had actually been lived, warts (or, perhaps,
rather, in the case of such constituents thereof as Steinway concert grands, <i>imported
beauty spots</i>) and all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
impartial commitment to old-fashioned realism in the aesthetic sense is perhaps
even more patently in evidence in the movie’s second half depicting Squirrel
and her adopted family’s forced emigration from Moscow to some unspecified
hinterland, where they work in a military hospital beset by all the torment and
slenderness of means to relieve it typical of such a Soviet hospital during
WWII, and where Squirrel eventually learns that her fiancé is dead from the man
who saw him die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in the film’s final
moment, its aesthetic realism is transfigured into a kind of epistemological
magnanimity—for whereas at the conclusion of the typical war film of any
political provenance or persuasion, or indeed in the peroration of any typical
meta-military eulogy (think, for example, of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address) the
sacrifices of the dead are posited either as already redeemed or at least still
potentially redeemable in virtue of upholding or propagating some lofty
political ideal—the maintenance of “government of the people, by the people,
and for the people,” for example, or in a specifically Communist context, a
world in which “workers will enjoy the fruits of their own labor”—here,
although there is a speech, one made by the fiancé’s comrade to a train
platform crowded with people hoping—some successfully, others, like Squirrel,
unsuccessfully—to welcome their husbands, fathers, et al. home from the War,
that speech makes no promises of redemption; it promises, merely, that the dead
will not be forgotten and that the Soviet people will do their utmost to
prevent a war on such a death-exacting scale from ever again taking place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In consequence, while Squirrel’s personal
tragedy is indeed contextualized—put into perspective, as they say—by being
juxtaposed with the personal tragedies of others, it is by no means transformed
into a triumph through subservience to some cause of interest merely to the
living, as death never should be but almost invariably is, in defiance of every
survivor’s experience of bereavement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
refusing to endorse the consolation afforded by such subservience, <i>Cranes</i>
is far more realistic than even the allegedly most harrowing and uncompromising
cinematic treatments of the Second World War produced in the
hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, in making no
mention of the Soviet Union’s main adversary in the War, either concretely or
abstractly, either as <i>Germany</i> or <i>fascism</i>, <i>Cranes</i>’s
concluding speech quietly but eloquently bespeaks an ethos of cosmopolitanism
and latitudinarianism, one wherein war is decried for the damage and death it
inflicts on human beings tout court rather than on those of specific polities
or political philosophies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Kalatozov’s
next feature film, 1959’s <i>Letter Never Sent</i>, takes up this
cosmopolitan-cum-latitudinarian thread by opening with a scrolled message
reading, “To those who in any field of endeavor—be it in the settlement of
wild, desolate lands on in the daring rush into space—follow in the path of the
pioneers [i.e., the earliest discoverers and achievers in that field]—and to
the Soviet people, this film is dedicated.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Inter alia, this dedication effectively states, <i>The Soviet people en
bloc are important, to be sure, but they are less important than individuals of
whatever polity who manage to extend humankind’s power over nature</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the 95 minutes of utterly captivating
footage that follow this message bear out the hierarchy implied by the
dedication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For <i>Letter Never Sent</i>
you see, depicts the efforts of a quartet of Soviet scientists to find a
diamond mine—not, as in hyperoccidental films on the same theme (e.g., notably,
the Burt Lancaster-starring <i>Rope of Sand</i>), for personal enrichment but
rather to further the disinterested cause of the exploration of outer
space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this pocket-synopsis the
hyperoccidental cynic will doubtless be inclined to retort, “Personal
enrichment-versus-disinterested cause, schmersonal
enrichtment-versus-schmisinterested cause!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This flick was made only two years after the launching of Sputnik, two
years before Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth, and a full three years before John
Glenn did—in other words, at a time when the U.S.S.R. reigned unchallenged in
outer space and the Soviet State must have been ruthlessly exploiting every
opportunity to crow about its extraterrestrial supremacy.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unquestionably <i>LNS</i> was made at such a
crow-worthy juncture, and very likely the Soviet State was exploiting numerous
crow-worthy opportunities, but as such opportunities go <i>LNS</i> is
manifestly at best (or worst) a badly (or virtuously) underused one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A strictly Soviet-regarding sentiment is
given an airing only once in the entire film; namely, at the pivotal moment
when, having at last found a source of diamonds, the four explorers are
drinking a series of toasts, the first-proffered of which is, “To the
liberation of our motherland from dependence on foreign diamonds!”—hardly an
expression of the most aggressively imperialist of aims, and in any case it is
immediately succeeded by a toast to the conquest of outer space that is couched
in universally human terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is
more, as in <i>Cranes</i>, the bigger picture is always vying for pride of
place with the characters’ immediate preoccupations with one another as
fellow-subjects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The leader of the
expedition, Sabinine—played by Innokenty Smoktunovsky (whose surname, in being
a virtual homophone of <i>Smoked-enough-ski</i>, positively begs for the
composition of a Monty Python sketch pairing him with Eric Idle’s champion
windbag Mr Smoketoomuch), who later played the title role in Kozinstev’s <i>Hamlet</i>,
which in the present writer’s view vies with the same director’s <i>King Lear</i>
for the accolade of best Cinematic Version of a Shakespeare Play Ever—is
constantly thinking about his far-distant wife Vera and periodically
apostrophizing her in a letter that he never gets an opportunity to post
(whence the film’s title).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile a
far-from-bizarre (and therefore all the more painful) love triangle is
simmering among the three remaining—and substantially younger—members.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tanya (played by the Galina Kozhakina, the
same marvelous actor who played Squirrel in <i>Cranes</i>) and Andrei (Vasili
Livanov, an actor whose uncanny resemblance to the notorious 1990s television
comedian Andy Dick unfortunately undercuts the present-day hyperoccidental
viewer’s sympathy with him [though presumably the future hyperoccidental
viewer, if such a being comes to be, will judge his performance more
impartially]), met and fell in love while studying geology together at
university and are now presumably engaged to be married, just like the central
couple of <i>Cranes</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
expedition’s beardy, burly, plain-speaking guide, Sergei (played by the perhaps
not entirely aptly surnamed Yevgeni Urbanski) is also in love with Tanya, but
she gives him no sign of reciprocating his affections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Predictably, he takes his frustration out on
Andrei, berating him for his eggheadishly scrawny physique and feeble
constitution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scene of this
tongue-lashing is worth singling out to the present-day hyperoccidental viewer
(and indeed would have been worth singling out to a hyperoccidental viewer of
1959) because it shows that the Soviets were neither blind to the fact that the
Revolution had failed to abolish class distinctions nor too politically
house-proud to reveal this failure to the rest of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sabinine, Andrei, and Tanya are all examples
of what were known during the Soviet epoch as <i>intelligenti</i> ([pronounced
with a hard <i>g</i> and an accent on the final syllable] a word from whose
singular form the thoroughly Anglicized word <i>intelligentsia</i> is derived),
people earmarked by their heritage and education to perform intellectual rather
than manual labor. It is unclear whether Sergei has had any scientific training
or indeed any sort of university education at all; at any rate, the film makes
it clear that he is valued principally for brawn rather than brains, and that
this is something that he resents—unjustly, perhaps, but ineluctably
nevertheless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As in <i>Cranes</i>, the
dynamic of frustrated suitor and uninterested suitee builds to a <i>tête-a-tete
éclat</i>—this time not in an apartment but rather in a muddy pit where Sergei
and Tanya are digging for diamonds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Happily, here there is no assault; Tanya, inferring Sergei’s intentions
from the miasmic glaze on his eyes, gently but sternly adjures him to take a
break from his labors—which he contritely does, just in time (and here one
cannot but marvel at Kalatozov’s sense of form) for Tanya’s discovery of the
diamond <i>Fundgrabe </i>for which they have all been searching.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this point onwards it ought to be smooth
land-sailing for the quartet, as they have nothing further to do but radio for
a plane to collect them qua carriers of a map marking the place of the
discovery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unhappily, nature seemingly
perversely throws them a curve-ball or googly in the form of a
thunderstorm-induced forest fire that almost immediately kills off Sergei and
renders their radio incapable of transmitting while pathetically allowing it to
continue receiving, such that they are mercilessly bombarded by a torrent of
unanswerable plaudits and queries from Moscow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In a trice, the material bases of both the love-triangle and the
fulfillment of the mission have been destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Soon fire qua nature’s executioner yields to snow and ice, which prompts
a lame (and probably gangrenously)-footed Andrei, who wishes not to be burden,
to set off on his own, leaving Sabinine and Tanya trudging on in search of a
river that might take them to warmer climes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In order to avoid perishing from exposure, the two of them are obliged
to sleep pressed close against each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As they are both trying to fall asleep, Sabinine urges the
understandably demoralized Tanya to recite the oath she took upon joining the
Young Pioneers (i.e., either the Soviet Boy-cum-Girl Scouts or the Soviet
Hitler Youth depending on one’s political persuasion, supposing one is not
enough of a tiresome hyperoccidental pseudo-radical to void the field by
regarding the Boy-cum-Girl Scouts as but an Anglo-Saxon offshoot of the actual
Third-Reichian Hitler Youth).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She gets
no further than “I swear, as a member of the Young Pioneers to…” before conking
out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The typical present-day
hyperoccidental viewer, who has been taught by four generations of oversexed
sitcoms and rom-coms to regard every scenario involving two people of mutually
complementary sexual orientations as a life-and-death struggle against the urge
to rip each other’s clothes off, and by six of decades of de facto Dulles-ism
(a.k. in its less overtly sectarian form a. <i>Orwellianism</i>) to regard all
things Soviet-Russian in provenance as sinister at best, will doubtless find
Tanya’s and Sabinine’s chaste co-recumbency laughably lacking in verisimilitude
(presumably in compliance with the prudish old prunes at the Soviet analogue to
the Hayes Office), and Sabinine’s evocation of the Young Pioneers’ oath as but
a chilling adjuration to the Soviet citizenry to sacrifice themselves to the
State with lemming-like passivity; but in my Kalatozov-admiring eyes, K.’s
presentation of the two elements in concert strikes an entirely plausible
balance between—or, rather among—the three potentially mutually contentious
claims of loyalty to one’s actual or prospective spouse, loyalty to one’s
fellow-citizens (not qua fellow passive receptacles of the will of the State
but qua fellow maintainers of what Samuel Johnson termed <i>the system of life</i>),
and loyalty to oneself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sabinine and
Tanya sleep together quite literally and chastely because each of them finds it
the best way to prolong his or her own life; but the wish to prolong that life
is partly bound up with the wish for reunions with their respective beloveds,
and so they refrain from copulating; at the same time, not only as would-be
re-seers of these beloveds but also as parties to a kind of contract with the
Soviet people, they must at least try to check the suicidal impulse suggested
by the quasi-Arctic environment in which they find themselves, the impulse
simply to lie down uncovered in the snow and painlessly die of exposure—whence
the calling to mind of the Young Pioneers’ oath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end, Tanya’s contractual obligation to
the Soviet people proves inadequate on its own to keep her pressing on: upon
their discovery of a boot that proves almost beyond a doubt’s ombre that Andrei
is dead, she pitches over dead herself in a fit of hysterical despair, as is
quite fitting in a young person as ardently in love as she is, but it was also
quite fitting in Sabinine-qua-Kaltozov mouthpiece (and also qua older person no
less ardently in love after his own more hard-bitten fashion) at least to
attempt to get her to entertain the notion that the realization of conjugal
love is not the only thing worth living for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But in his depiction of Tanya’s very last moment Kaltozov pulls back
from an apotheosization of any sort of <i>raison de vivre</i>: we see the lids
of her skyward-pointed eyes flutter in a final spasmodic assertion of
biological defiance, then the camera cuts to what is being seen just then
through those dying eyes of hers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
engulfment of the <i>mise en scène</i> by treetops here makes it impossible not
to draw a parallel with the very-end-of-life dream sequence in <i>Cranes</i>,
but here the treetops neither spin nor dissolve into a montage of connubial
bliss; rather, they simply tower statically and blearily overhead for a few
seconds; then the camera cuts back to Tanya’s eyelids as they fall still.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this movie love manifestly does not
conquer all, even on the astral plane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Like Countess Geschwitz in Alban Berg’s opera <i>Lulu</i> (though
utterly unlike the same character in the play on which the opera is based),
Tanya spends her penultimate moment grieving for her beloved, and yet, like
Geschwitz’s, her <i>final</i> moment is vouchsafed to nature, death itself, or
what have you, as it makes her a part of itself, absorbs her into its own
indifferent quiescence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But after
Tanya’s death, the film’s dialectic of desire and obligation continues to play
out as Sabinine presses on on his own, eventually finding the river and
sailing, barely conscious, downstream on a makeshift raft; when he is just on
the point of succumbing to starvation and exposure, his wife Vera appears to
him in a vision and urges him to live not for her sake but rather for the sake
of all those other Soviet citizens who are counting on him to bring home the
map locating the diamond find.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And just
after he seems to have closed his eyes for the final time, a helicopter
discovers him; the viewer sees him lying prostrate and utterly still from his
rescuer’s point of view for several seconds, at the end of which, though he
gives no other sign of life, his eyes tentatively flutter open, whereupon he is
lifted into the helicopter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>End of
film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to my lights, this is a
perfect ending, but I am sure every man Jack and woman Jill of my fellow
hyperoccidental viewers will or already does disagree with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Either each of them will or already does view
the diamond-finding mission from the outset as an irredeemable, ruthless
cannibalization of infungible human individuals by the State, in which case
they will or already do find Vera’s apparition not only sinister but outrageous
and regard the ending as an affirmation of an outrageously antihuman,
State-centered worldview.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, even
supposing they have been broad-minded enough to swallow or set aside their
Dulles-ism or Orwellianism for the picture’s duration and accordingly have come
to regard the diamond-finding mission as worthwhile after a certain
transnational pan-human fashion, they will see both Vera’s apparition and
Sabinine’s survival as schmaltzy, saccharine betrayals of the transnational,
pan-human essence of the mission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
the present writer, while conceding that the apparition participates in the
petit-bourgeois worldview whose pervasiveness in cinema of every national and
political provenance he has already excoriated, is convinced that in
association with Sabinine’s survival it inculcates a significant metaphysical
and moral truth—namely, that in the absence of some thread of continuity of
living experience, no human achievement at the material world’s expense can be
regarded as an achievement at all, as something wrested from that world by the
human will rather than quiescently yielded to it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Sabinine is presumably carrying the
find-pinpointing map among his belongings, from a purely teleological point of
view it is presumably a matter of indifference whether he survives or not, but
insofar as the find is to be regarded not as one of a thousand inert and
impassive pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of the Soviet Union’s conquest of space,
insofar as some sense of the human cost of the find must be conveyed to the
world, his survival is utterly indispensable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To put this another way: <i>Letter</i>’s denouement epitomizes and
apotheosizes the film’s main driving tendency to demystify the consumer
commodity-like character of technological advancement through scientific
discovery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such advancement, <i>Letter</i>
argues, does not simply happen automatically, like the debouching of products
from some endlessly self-retooling and self-perfecting rotbotized assembly
line; rather, it invariably exacts great sacrifices of human energies and often
involves confrontations with a hostile natural world that ultimately has the
power to put paid to its human counterpart and that, because it is utterly
impersonal and apparently insentient, cannot be propitiated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the whole, there is neither much use nor
much virtue in belaboring the <i>relevance</i> of this argument to the
hyperoccident of the late 20-teens, as it is an argument whose relevance was
already in force on both sides of the SCIC at the time of the film’s production
and has since perforce ripened with the inexorability not of a robotized
self-improving assembly line, but, rather of a vintage port, and will doubtless
continue to ripen until the last, and yet in some ways the
strongest-heretofore, remaining pillars of commodity fetishism, those of the
digital and medical sublimes, collapse (and indeed possibly not even then, if
stronger pillars have been introduced in the meantime).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the light of a certain kind of
synthetic hysteria that had not yet been discovered in 1959 but that now rages
through the collective pseudo-political sensorium of the hyperoccidental
pseudo-left with a virulence and perfervidness exceeded only by that HP-L’s
scandalization at Vladimir Putin’s homophobia, namely the hysteria about
so-called global warming, the starkness and historically transcendent character
of <i>Letter</i>’s presentation of the Man-vs.-Nature conflict is potentially
freshly instructive to the present micro-epoch’s tree-swiving environmentalist
crypto-Whigs who would and indeed do lay all the blame for present and future
natural-phenomenon-involving calamities at the feet of hyperoccidental
consumers and policymakers, the selfsame tree-swivers who would have everyone
believe that if only we had foregone air conditioning and refrigerated foods
and carried our moldering groceries home in carrier bags woven out of our own
pubic hair throughout the twentieth century, not a single human being or
human-erected structure would have suffered the slightest inconvenience, let
alone death or destruction, during or consequentially following a hurricane,
flood, forest fire, blizzard—hell, why, not, as long as we’re on a
roll?—earthquake, solar flare-up, or meteor-descent in the present
millennium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eo ispo, the notion that
since the year 2001, hurricanes, floods, etc. have been more frequent and
severe than they would have been had emissions of various heavy-industrial
effluvia been radically curtailed at some point closer to the beginning than to
the end of the twentieth-century seems, if not indisputable, then at least
highly gratifying and serviceable, to the present writer, who would like
nothing more than to roll the clock of the conditions, forces, and relations of
production back to 1788 A.D. at the most recent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the environmentalist crypto-Whigs do not
stop at the maintenance of this notion; they would have us believe that every
man, woman, et al. supposedly god-awful Jack, Jill, aut al. hyperoccidental
born since ca. 1920 has been a kind of turbo-charged Prospero who can alter the
global climate-scape at will, who can command the sea to drown entire
continents or the sun to shrink-bake the earth into a desiccated tortoise-turd,
merely by taking a shower of more than thirty seconds’ duration under a fixture
dispensing water more forcefully than a dandelion-misting mister, or flushing a
toilet while its flushing-handle is not yet utterly engulfed by a Devil’s Tower
of feces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, these
environmentalist crypto-Whigs apparently have never even heard of, let alone
ever believed in, the all-powerful lightning-and-elephant-commanding<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mother Nature whom hyperoccidentals of my
micro-generation were taught, courtesy of a certain run of margarine
commercials, that “it” was “not nice to fool”; in these crypto-Whigs’ view,
premillennial nature was a sort of globally immanent Oliver Twist, an innocuous
puny, abject waif of an urchin who never would have dreamt of raising a finger
against humankind had not the latter ruthlessly turned it into its
spreadeagled-buttocked kept boy by not only inventing but embracing the flush
toilet, the high-pressure shower head, and the shopping bag made of materials
less biodegradable than the customer’s own pubic hair (not that hair is <i>all
that</i> biodegradable, a consideration that really ought to compel each and
every environmentalist crypto-Whig to commit suicide in the
as-yet-only-truly-bio-friendly manner by pitching himself or herself into the
core of the nearest nuclear reactor).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
call these creatures <i>crypto-Whigs </i>because for all the doom-laden-ness of
their rhetoric (N.B. In calling this rhetoric <i>doom-laden</i> I by no means
wish to imply that it ever comes within shoe-clutching distance of the likes of
Jeremiah, Ecclesiastes, and Jonathan Edwards in point of rhetorical sublimity),
they regard the doom that is supposedly in store for us as counterfactually
entirely avoidable by human ingenuity, because they regard human powers—or at
least all hyperoccidentally originating human powers of more recent provenance
than the mid-twentieth century—as both limitless and absolute, in the sense
that those of an absolute monarch are theoretically supposed to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In their view the buck of every
humankind-afflicting problem always stops at humankind itself, and no human
being has any right to blame any share of his aut al.’s misfortune on any facet
or aspect of the nonhuman world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
their view, when a person drops dead of a heart attack at the age of 107, his
decease is owing <i>entirely</i> to his having opted for a cholesterol-rich
diet when he was in his teens or twenties [owing entirely in turn, of course,
to a completely canny and calculated turning of a blind eye to the dangers of
cholesterol by the governmental powers that then be’d {owing in turn to these
governmental powers’ completely wide-eyed servitude to the chicken farming
magnates, natch}], and not at all to his being 107.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Likewise, in their view, when a hurricane
flattens a Caribbean village sited a micrometer above sea level, this is <i>entirely</i>
owing to the fact that some eighty years ago a just now-deceased
hyperoccidental 107-year-old flushed a toilet a microsecond too early after
expelling from his bowels the remains of a cholesterol-rich egg sandwich and
not at all to the fact that the village was sited a micrometer above sea level
in the Caribbean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Letter</i>, I say,
may as yet administer a corrective to such asininity in presenting nature as a
force that attacks the film’s dramatis personae entirely without
provocation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the forest fire that
must ultimately be blamed for the deaths of three-quarters of the
diamond-hunting quartet cannot by any means be construed as being caused by
anything that any member of this quartet is doing beforehand; it is ignited not
by, say, a manmade campfire set up too close to a tree, or by any other
instrument accessible to human agency, but rather by the classic Jovean
implement of a lightning-bolt from the sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Kalatozov would seem to have taken the utmost pains to drive home the
point that <i>these things sometimes just happen</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the long term, the project with which the
diamond-hunting quartet of <i>Letter</i> have associated themselves will
doubtless involve the exploitation of the earth, and depending on how sizeable
and extensive their find proves to be, it may even involve a version of
exploitation that is more than negligibly environmentally destructive, but the
puny exploratory incisions they themselves make in the earth in the course of
their explorations are of no environmental consequence whatsoever, and only the
most flakily <i>unscientific</i> of worldviews, namely some karma-centered
version of Buddhism, can regard their fate as being in any way causally
implicated in their material investigations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A final point regarding <i>Letter</i> must be made before we move on to
our next film, inasmuch as more nearly purely than any other film the present
writer has encountered, it, <i>Letter</i>, seems to instantiate that
much-maligned quintessentially Soviet tendency or quasi-school in art known as <i>socialist
realism</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer is most
familiar with the term <i>socialist realism</i> in the context of
hyperoccidental-originating writings on Soviet music, most frequently certain
quasi-hagiographic writings on the biographies and compositions of the Soviet
Union’s two most illustrious composers, Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev and
Dmitriy Dmitriyevich Shostakovich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
these writings, <i>socialist realism</i> always figured, and presumably still
figures, as a term of opprobrium, as a designation of the supposedly oppressive
official artistic credo of the Soviet State, against whose pricks DDS and SSP
were supposedly incessantly kicking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Left to their own supposedly infallibly authentic artistic impulses, SSP
and DDS wrote music that bore absolutely no trace of influence by socialist
realist doctrine, as supposedly could be seen, and indeed heard, in this
music’s unapologetic abstractness, its non-sporting of any title or program
overtly evincing its interest in the lives of supposedly ordinary Soviet
citizens, and in its unregenerate pessimism—i.e., effectively, inasmuch as both
composers were operating within prevailingly diatonic sound-worlds, its
predilection for minor rather than major keys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When, and only when, supposedly pushed to the utmost verge of
desperation by the threat of incarceration in the Siberian gulag, SSP and DDS
wrote music that toed the socialist realist artistic-aesthetic line in bearing
titles like “Song of the Forest” (along with a libretto extolling the Soviet
State’s ordinary Soviet citizen-enabled efforts to plant umpteen-thousand acres
of forest) and “Hymn to Stalin” (along with a text that requires no
elaboration), and in being overwhelmingly upbeat and optimistic, even smugly
triumphal, in its unvarying major-modedness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whether <i>Letter Never Sent</i> is officially or even unofficially
regarded as an instantiation of socialist realism is unknown to the present
writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all the present writer
knows, the movie may be celebrated by the cinephile cognoscenti as the most
anti-socialist anti-unrealist movie of its microepoch, as a late-50s flick that
makes <i>Last Year at Marienbad</i> look like <i>Tibor’s Tractor</i>, but
inasmuch as during the year of its release <i>Letter</i>, like <i>Cranes </i>before
it, was puffed like mad by the Soviet authorities and flocked to like a
hotcake-superstore by the Soviet public, I cannot but conclude that at least
according to all the then-available Soviet lights, it was a textbook example of
cinematic Socialist Realism—this, indeed, despite its prevailingly downbeat,
even tragic, tone, and despite all the hardship, misery, and death it presents
as inalienably associated with all striving for the most marginal augmentation
of the corpus of human knowledge or improvement in the conditions of human
existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such seeming to be the
case, the present writer cannot but conclude that Socialist Realism has gotten
something of a bum rap in the hyperoccident, that it was hardly ever about
well-fed babushka-sporting babushkas contentedly bouncing their grandchildren
on their knees as their children of both sexes merrily drove combine harvesters
through mega-acres of chest-high 24-carat golden wheat; that it was, indeed,
mostly about people of both sexes and all ages and walks of life trying their
best to do something worthwhile in the face of always unpredictable and
frequently disastrous contingencies–an artistic-cum-aesthetic ethos neither
radically different from nor markedly inferior to not only that of Italian
neo-realism (which often enough does tend to concentrate too narrowly and
sentimentally on the peasantry and lumpen-proletariat) but also those of the
so-called British New Wave and so-called New Hollywood,
quasi-movements-cum-quasi-schools celebrated for their uncompromising
grittiness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But not to leave hanging out
there or ungathered a certain matzoh ball or loose end that must not be left in
such an embarrassing state despite its prima vista irrelevance to this
cinematically orientated episode: the <i>Letter</i>-supported seeming fact that
Soviet socialist realism was not an intrinsically and thoroughgoingly upbeat
and triumphalist dogma or credo should not lead us to infer that in their
prevailingly downbeat-cum-tragic compositions Shostakovich and Prokofiev were
socialist realists <i>malgré eux-mêmes</i> (or at least <i>malgré </i>their
hyperoccidental hagiographers), for even at its most downbeat, socialist
realism—like British New Wave and New Hollywood—does fundamentally seek and
find its telos in the world of living human beings, and while both composers’
oeuvres do contain a few works that manage to square a sense of tragedy with
such a telos (one immediately thinks here, in Shostakovich’s case, of the
Seventh and Eleventh Symphonies, and in Prokofiev’s of the Fifth Symphony and the
music to Eisenstein’s film <i>Alexander Nevsky</i>), on the whole, the downbeat
side of SSP and DDS participates in a completely different strain or strand of
Russian aesthetics-cum-poetics, one that I shall address when I finally get
around to discussing Tarkovsky &co. in the less wholeheartedly celebratory
portion of this episode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inasmuch as for
the present I am heck-bent on using Soviet movies qua building blocks of a case
in favor of the Soviet Union qua relocation destination, I am obliged for that
selfsame present to discuss an entirely different class or genre-constellation
of Soviet films from those instanced by Kalatozov’s and Tarkovsky’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For both <i>Cranes</i> and <i>Letter</i>,
like all of Tarkovsky’s films, place their characters in manifestly unquotidian
settings—settings in which a routinized everyday life has been disrupted by the
background events of the scenario (as in <i>Cranes</i> and the aforementioned
Tarkovsky opus <i>Ivan’s Childhood</i>, in both of which the disruptor is of
course the Great Patriotic War) or is simply absent as a given therefrom (as in
<i>Letter </i>and Tarkovsky’s <i>Stalker</i>, which in many ways can be seen as
a blokier and more overtly metaphysically orientated remake of <i>Letter</i>),
and so for all their unsurpassable eloquence qua testimonials of the Soviet mind’s
commensurability with the hyperoccidental mind in point of <i>Empfindlichkeit</i>
and <i>esprit de finesse</i>, they neither furnish nor evince a case for the
Soviet Union qua worthwhile place in which to live day in and day out for Vanya
or Masha Stolichnaya qua everyday Stolichnaya-swillers rather than qua
once-in-a-blue-moonish defenders of the Fatherland or out-sussers of precious
natural resources.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whence the necessity
of turning to a cluster of movies that, while typically (although not by any
means invariably) lacking the grandeur of Kalatozov’s masterpieces, present
quotidian Soviet life in a light that is perhaps seemingly paradoxically both
highly appealing and not fulsomely flattering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the main here I am perhaps unsurprisingly thinking of comedies, and
even more in the main I am perhaps rather less unsurprisingly thinking of a
class of comedies whose closest hyperoccidental near-counterparts would
probably be described as farces—namely the <i>Shurik</i> films, so called after
the name (whether forename or surname I cannot recall) of their shared
recurring hero, a fairly nice-looking, good-natured, and bespectacled young man
of variable hair color.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose as a
type Shurik would best be described in hyperoccidental terms as a <i>schlemiel</i>
or <i>nebbish</i> or possibly even a <i>fuck-up</i>—that is to say, a fellow
who is always getting into scrapes on account of his incompetence in some
sphere or other (to attempt to <i>preciser</i> and enoble the type by
describing it as a direct descendant of, say, Candide or Don Quixote [or indeed
Chamisso’s Schliemel] will do it no favors, or perhaps rather more favors than
it deserves, inasmuch as the provenance of the schlemiel autc.’s incompetence
cannot be chained down to a specific character trait [e.g., naivety or
undiscriminating magnanimity]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
schlemiel autc. repeatedly fucks up on account of his stepping into an
epistemological coverless manhole that you or I, the viewer, are understood to
be far too savvy to step into, and that is all that you or I, the viewer, ever
need to know about that coverless manhole).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As for the remaining set of paraphernalia of characterization that one
expects as a matter of course chez a recurring character—viz., biographical
particulars such as place of birth, course of education, history of love
interests, and current occupation—they seem to be absent from the Shurik
films.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one of the three of these
films of which I am aware, Shurik is a schoolteacher, in another an inventor,
and in the third some sort of anthropologist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Of course, the hyperoccidental cinematic-cum-broadcasterly canon is
chock-full of farce-series, most notably the entire Marx Brothers and W.C.
Fields corpora, in which recurring actors repeatedly perform their familiar
characteristic high-jinks under varying names and in varying uniforms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But such series in which the name remains the
same and the uniform is always changing are surely much rarer. Indeed, at the
moment, I can think of only one—the BBC radio series <i>Hancock’s Half-Hour</i>,
wherein the eponym-cum-hero would figure as a surgeon one week, an author the
next, a deserter from the British Army in the next, a far-eastern potentate the
next, etc.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would seem that the most
specific thing that can be said about Shurik qua functional or dysfunctional
presence in the Soviet world is that he is definitely an <i>intelligent</i> and
not a proletarian—a fact that taken in concert with his schlemiel autc.-dom
axiomatically affiliates all the Shurik movies with the not-necessarily grand
hyperoccidental tradition of farces centering on incompetent eggheads, from <i>The
Absent-Minded Professor</i> to the unspeakably god-awful <i>Big Bang Theory</i>,
a tradition dedicated to convincing pig-stupid cum ignorant wastes of flesh
that they are doing everything right in remaining pig-stupid cum ignorant
wastes of flesh (and no, the tradition is not the fruits of some ignobly
cunning attempt by the Havana-puffing fat cat-captains of industry and finance
to keep these pig-stupid cum ignorant wastes of flesh in their supposedly
productive place, but rather the fruits of an ignobly desperate [and doubtless
ultimately doomed] attempt by the concerted forces of each and every person
with more than half a brain in every walk of life to appease these pig-stupid
cum ignorant fleshwastes’ unregenerate and potentially [and doubtless
ineluctably] disastrously destructive <i>unregenerate wickedness</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet again, it could be argued that at
least at a grandly strategic (rather than locally strategic or grandly
tactical) resolution, the resolution of the overall dramaturgical frame of the
Shurik series, such as it is, Shurik is meant to stand as a poster boy
for—i.e., positive representation of—a certain kind of egghead whom one thinks
of as a marginal figure even in the hyperoccident, and is reflexively inclined
to regard as a positively treasonous one behind the old Icey—namely, the <i>crank</i>,
a brilliant eccentric who works on his own projects at his own pace and on his
own time and sets aside an old project to work on a new one, or sets aside a
new one to work again on an old one, as his inclination and sense of the
respective intrinsic possibilities dictate—or, rather, genially and
unperemptorily suggest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At any rate,
regardless of one’s political or meta-intellectual perspective, one cannot but
somehow admire the resourcefulness or just plain good luck of a bloke who can
get away with just setting aside or perhaps even throwing over completely his
career as a schoolteacher to set off on a solo anthropological fact-finding
expedition into the Caucasian hinterland or tinker away at his own prototype of
a time machine in his Moscow apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is this second activity that one sees Shurik engaged in at the
beginning of <i>Ivan the Terrible </i>(better, or, rather worse, known in the
hyperoccident as <i>Ivan Vasilyevich: Back to the Future, </i>a title chosen by
its official Soviet or perhaps post-Soviet publicists presumably on the bizarre
quartet or double-duo of assumptions that hyperoccidentals are familiar with
the Russian patronymic naming system, aware that Ivan the Terrible’s dad was
fornamed Vasily (as if any of them even knew the name of George Washington’s
dad [the present writer certainly doesn’t]), utterly enamored with or of the <i>Back
to the Future</i> franchise, and yet so unattached to that franchise’s star and
central character that they will snap up any presumptive installment of <i>BttF</i>
even if it manifestly centers not on Marty McFly as played by Michael J. Fox
but rather on some unfamiliar Russky played by some unknown Russky actor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway, as the juxtaposition of Ivan the
Terrible and a cranky would-be inventor of a time machine doubtless has already
intimated to the non-DGR, the central and pivotal plot-event of this Shurik
movie is the transportation of that ruthless sixteenth-century tsar Eye the Tee
into twentieth-century Moscow à la a medieval knight and his squire to
twentieth-century Paris in <i>Les Visiteurs</i>, Genghis Khan to
twentieth-century southern-Californian suburbia in <i>Bill and Ted’s Excellent
Adventure </i>or a thousand other uncouth historical figures to twentieth or
twenty-first century London in one out of every three <i>Doctor Who</i>
serials.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally this transportation
leads to all sorts of hilarious if potentially fatal misunderstandings of a
sort whose virtual interchangeability with some episode in one of the
hyperoccidental counterparts I have mentioned goes to show something that
hyperoccidentals both then (i.e., the mid-to-late 1960s date of <i>Ivan the
Terrible</i>’s release) and now points up a fact that now
seemed and seem to be constantly forgetting despite its eye-bursting
obviousness, viz. that at least in the texture of its day-to-day life, the
Soviet Union was far more like twentieth-century France, Britain, and the
United States than like fifteenth-century Russia (as indeed Russia today,
together with at least <i>most</i> of the other former Soviet republics, is
more like twentieth first-century France et al. than like fifteenth-century
Russia).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the most interesting facets
of the film in the present context have nothing to do with these sorts of
misunderstandings, or indeed with the Tsar-transportation plot at all except
very tangentially, and they are interesting because they point up aspects of
the texture of day-to-day Soviet life with which hyperoccidentals both then and
now may very well have been and still be unaware.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, in a subplot involving a pair
of small-time crooks—and the mere fact that this Soviet-made movie countenances
the existence of small-time crooks already bespeaks a certain liberal, socially
self-critical outlook (for after all, in a perfect socialist society there
would be no small-time crooks, inasmuch as everyone would be too satisfied with
his or her lot to turn to a life of crime)–we see a shady character hanging
about on a street corner fling open his long coat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the second or two before the camera cuts
from a side to a frontal view, the viewer cannot help wondering: <i>Is he
exposing himself?</i> It turns out that he isn’t—but again, the suggestion that
he <i>might</i> be doing so was unmistakably there, which in itself suggests a
certain liberal, socially self-critical outlook (for after all, in a perfect
Soviet society, such a suggestion would not have been worth including, inasmuch
as nobody would even have found that suggestion intelligible, inasmuch as
nobody would have seen an exhibitionist in action, inasmuch as all sexual
perverts would have been utterly reformed or, failing efforts at reforming
them, securely institutionalized).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway,
it turns out that the man has opened up in order to display a generous
selection of wristwatches pinned to the inside of both coat flaps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the reality that we are being presented
with synecdochically here is a black market in luxury goods, presumably goods
illegally imported from the execrable capitalist hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The existence of this black market is in
itself no revelation: that there was such a black market in Soviet Russia, that
indeed this market thrived there, was well known to us pre-1991
hyperoccidentals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we were also led
to believe that this market was a black market in the fullest sense of the
metaphor implied by the term–something that operated very much in the shadows,
that was liable to severe prosecution, that simply did not exist as far as the
Soviet media pretended to be concerned, and that we in the hyperoccident were
aware of only because it was after all the business of our anti-Soviet media to
dig up as much well-concealed dirt as they could on life behind the old Icey. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The presentation of this watch-vendor in <i>Ivan
the Terrible</i> makes it patently clear that even Soviet officialdom must have
regarded the domestic consumer-orientated black market as a conscionable
illegality—regarded it, in other words, in much the same light as that in which
even we hyperoccidentals’ most family friendly-minded movie producers regard
and present such activities as marijuana-smoking and bootleg videogame-selling:
while they by no means wish such activities to be thought of as utterly harmless,
let alone downright wholesome or respectable, they would also never dream of
representing them, á la heroin use or gun-running, as ineluctable depositors of
their practitioners on to the high-speed conveyor belt ineluctably conveying
them to an early death or lifetime incarceration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The black-market watch-seller in <i>Ivan the
Terrible</i> behaves with the same kind of measured furtiveness as is evinced
by a hyperoccidental cinematic prospective high-school dropout smoking a joint
under the bleachers of the football stadium during his lunch period: he would
not dare to do what he is doing in broad daylight, but he also feels no
compulsion to do it in a windowless basement in the dead of night, because he
knows that nothing direly serious will happen to him even if he is caught; and
the viewer, for his or her part, does not wish anything direly serious to
happen to him, because although this dude is undoubtedly a rogue or knave he is
most certainly not a full-fledged scoundrel or villain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But <i>Ivan the Terrible</i>’s most—or,
rather, I suppose, pending the coming to mind of other examples, more—muffled
un-endorsement of the Soviet-period black market is issued surprisingly if not
quite ironically during the part of the film set in the extremely pre-Soviet
sixteenth century, wherein the two abovementioned small-time crooks find
themselves at Tsar Ivan’s court and naturally end up coping with the folkways
of olden times as bunglingly (Yes, yes, yes—à la <i>Bill and Ted</i>’s “‘Put
them in the iron maiden.’ ‘Iron Maiden?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Excellent!’ ‘Execute them.’ ‘Bogus.’”) as their imperial counterpart
copes with those of modern ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway,
at some point during this episode the duo perform some sort of song-and-dance
routine (convention or official fiat seems to have required the inclusion of at
least one song in every Soviet comedy of this period [for both of the other two
comedies I shall consider include at least one]; while this requirement was
indisputably naff and seldom even slightly ingratiatingly fulfilled, it must be
remembered that it did not originate in the Soviet Union, for the first decade
of Hollywood talkies is rife with otherwise un-musical-esque comedies [e.g., <i>The
Cocoanuts</i>, <i>The Big Broadcast</i>, and <i>International House</i>] padded
out with largely or utterly dramaturgically gratuitous interludes showcasing
the vocal talents of famous crooners, blues-belters, or opera singers), at the
beginning of which the trouser-wearing member of the pair is standing front and
center and initially seemingly unaccountably giving a very small object pride
of mise-en-scènic place by holding it just above the bottom edge of the frame
and keeping it there for more than several seconds (the effect is uncannily
close to that of <i>SCTV</i>’s Dr. Tongue presenting a stack of pancakes to the
camera, minus the forward-and-backward motion and Bernard Hermann-esque
instrumental accompaniment).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
hyperoccidental viewer initially has no idea of what this object could possibly
be—or, rather, has every idea of what it necessarily <i>mus</i>t be but quashes
this idea with the supposition that it must be something else, because of
course the idea that in this setting it actually could be what he supposes it
to be is just too absurd; but upon scrutinizing the object with the steadiness
and thoroughness amply afforded by the camera, he concludes that it cannot but
be a so-called hard pack of Marlboro Red cigarettes (and indeed not some Soviet
knock-off thereof, for the familiar spindly serif Roman characters can be
discerned against the background of its non-red portion).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The doubtless empirically nonexistent reader
who happens to see <i>Ivan the Terrible</i> after reading my discussion of <i>Cranes</i>
but before reading this portion of my essay will doubtless be reminded here of
the appearance of the Steinway and Sons insignia in the earlier (and less
comedic, &c.) film, and perhaps (depending on whether he or she is swifter
or slower than the present writer) he or she will immediately thereupon be
scratching his or her pate trying to suss out in exactly what or which most
salient respects the Marlboro-manifestation differs in both essence and purport
from the Steinway-manifestation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Obviously (I aver, in so doing merging my speculations with those of the
doubtless empirically nonexistent reader), in the later (and less serious
&c.) film the showcasing of the hyperoccidental brand name is more
flagrant, more unabashed: if, as I more or less said earlier, the appearance of
the Steinway and Sons insignia in <i>Cranes</i> may be regarded as product
placement <i>avant la lettre</i>, the appearance of the Marlboro insignia in <i>Ivan</i>
may be regarded as (to employ a metaphor that regrettably plays supinely into
my Russophobic adversaries’ hands [and yet, alas!, an apter one cannot be
found]) product placement-<i>avant la lettre </i>on
the-most-powerful-and-therefore-most reviled-athletic-performance-enhancing
drug-of-the-present-moment, inasmuch as it showcases the brand name with an
insistence far beyond not only the exigencies but even the bounds of
verisimilitude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even in the earliest
days of product placement in Hollywood, when PP was at its most brazen
(presumably because it had not been consumer-tested, and the producers had
accordingly not yet learned that movie-viewers do not generally appreciate
having their cinematic fare generously larded with de facto commercials), the
appearance of the product always had to be plausibly integrated into the
diagesis, however implausibly it might have been integrated into the mise en
scène; thus when in the first <i>Superman</i> movie the teenaged Clark Kent is
seen breakfasting on Cheerios, although the brand-named yellow box receives a
ludicrously disproportionate portion of lighting and screen acreage (much
larger than that received by the CK-playing actor, whose name escapes me
[probably because this induced upstaging by a box of cereal doomed him never to
become a household name]), it is never used in any other way than it would have
been used at the breakfast table of any empirical American family without a
controlling interest in the General Mills corporation: young Clark takes up the
box, pours some of its contents into a bowl, and places it back onto the table,
and there’s a diagetic end on’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
contrast, <i>Ivan</i>’s showcasing of the Marlboro brand name has no diagetic
rationale whatsoever—indeed-stroke-for the love of <i>bubliki</i>, at no point
during the showcasing scene does the showcasing character even light up a
cigarette from the proffered pack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
effectively <i>Ivan</i> is out-capitalist swining the hyperoccidental
capitalist swine, giving more cinematic publicity to one of their products than
they will <i>ever</i> demand for any of their products themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Consider, by way of <i>almost</i>
comprehending the mind-boggling over-the-topness of <i>Ivan</i>’s
Marlboro-plugging, the above-parenthetically mentioned <i>Dr. Tongue’s House of
Pancakes</i>: it is a <i>satire</i> on product placement, such that it perforce
<i>exaggerates</i> the product-placing techniques used in the cinema of its
time, and yet, in contrast to <i>Ivan</i>, it still feels compelled to
construct a contextual diagesis for its pancake restaurant-plugging, to present
the house of pancakes as a place wherein something more sinister or ominous
than the preparation and consumption of pancakes may be afoot, and in vis-à-vis
which this preparation-cum-consumption may serve a merely instrumental
function.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there is another
consideration to be taken into consideration here—not vis-à-vis future
hyperoccidental product placement but vis-à-vis <i>Cranes</i>’ presentation of
the Steinway brand name; namely, the nature of the plugged product vis-à-vis
the Soviet system of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pianos are
commodities that can come into their own only in the context of a virtuoso
activity—namely, pianism; an activity that requires both a great deal of skill
and a gargantuan outlay of time, an activity in which for one reason or other
very few people in any system of life will ever be blessed or cursed to become
engaged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cigarettes, on the other hand,
are commodities whose use can be mastered by almost everyone in any system of
life in a matter of minutes: the notion of a <i>rookie</i> <i>smoker </i>or <i>amateur
smoker</i> can apply only, and with considerable license, to a teenager taking
his first few cough-inducing drags on a fag, and complementarily the notion of
an <i>accomplished smoker</i> or <i>virtuoso smoker</i> can apply only, and
with no less considerable license, to a person—a Humphrey Bogart, say, or a
Jean-Paul Belmondo—who is regarded as handling his cigarette qua gestural prop
with a certain kind of panache (for qua smoker of that cigarette he is
presumably equaled if not outclassed by many a Coke-bottle-spectacled engineer
and babushka’d babushka). Such being the case, there is no rational
Soviet-friendly argument for presenting a non-Soviet brand of cigarette on
screen; in defense of this presentation a Soviet director could not in good
faith have said, as he could have done mutatis mutandis regarding the
presentation of a non-Soviet brand of piano, “We are helping to secure the
U.S.S.R. a Number 1 position in the field of global competitive smoking”;
indeed, such being the case, the only reason a Soviet director could
conceivably have placed a non-Soviet brand of cigarette on screen would have
been that he regarded that brand of cigarette as indisputably intrinsically
superior even to its most upmarket Soviet counterpart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Enfin</i>, deductively speaking, the
appearance of the Marlboro pack in <i>Ivan</i> must be regarded as a decidedly
cheeky two-finger salute (albeit one in which both fingers are concealed, owing
to the exigencies of pack-holding) to the entire Soviet system of commodity
production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally, the autofellationary
hyperoccidental received opinion-saturated excuse for a mind will interpret
this salute as an admission of defeat, the throwing in of the hammer and
sickle-emblazoned towel on the part of the Soviet system of life, but it or he
can do so only at the cost of ignoring the eye-burstingly obvious fact(s) that
the salute is tendered in the context of a movie that prevailingly showcases
the benefits of the Soviet system of life qua standard-bearer of at least most
mod cons and that this movie was made a virtual or perhaps even actual
quarter-century before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A fairly-to-fully fair mind must rather
interpret the salute in its proper context as a good-natured acknowledgment of
certain minor shortcomings of the Soviet system of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Sure,” this acknowledgment as pronounced by
the impersonation of the Soviet system of life itself, the presumably
counterfactual specifically Soviet counterpart to or of Uncle Sam [and no,
Vanya or Masha Stolichnaya won’t do because each of them is the personification
of the Soviet-cum-post Soviet Russian (and only <i>Russian</i>) <i>consumer</i>],
may be worded, “we over here on this side of the old Icey may not be able to
make to make a smokable cigarette within our own borders, but qua covetable
amenities of twentieth-century life, what are smokable cigarettes next to cars,
electric lighting, televisions, radios, and indoor plumbing, all of which we
have in abundance?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed [this
personification continues, seamlessly transitioning from an acknowledgment into
a sales pitch], if we are paying our workers well enough that their wages can
sustain a black market in hyperoccidentally branded cigarettes (for even black
marketeers ultimately owe their sustenance to surplus capital generated by the
legitimate economy), we must be doing something right.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that the present writer even takes it for
granted that hyperoccidentlly branded cigarettes were vended exclusively
illegally in the U.S.S.R. of the mid-to-late 1960s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He conceives it to be at least remotely conceivable
that such cigarettes were legally vended then and there under the auspices of
some sort of semi-ad hoc trade agreement with the producing corporations’ host
countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Reliable information on the
extent and nature of such cooperation is conceivably available on the interweb;
but perhaps even more conceivably it is one of those questions that it has
simply never occurred to anyone to research and whose answer is accordingly
beyond the reach of even the most assiduous and wide-ranging search-engine. [Put
that endless dot-matrix’d paper printout of DOES NOT COMPUTE in your pipes and
smoke it, accursed techno-Whigs!]) He derives this sense of conceivability from
a slightly later Soviet comedy film to which he plans to devote a separate
subsection, 1975’s <i>The Irony of Fate</i>, wherein an eminently respectable
and indeed hopelessly square petty Party functionary, a sort of <i>Python</i>
proper-epoch John Cleesean bureaucrat physically suggesting the John Cleese of
the-mid-1980s on contemporaneous performance-enhancing drugs, presents his
girlfriend with a bottle of what she, after testing its bouquet, describes as <i>real
French perfume</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly, the
functionary may not have purchased the perfume at his local GUM outlet, perhaps
because (but only <i>perhaps</i> because<i> </i>[for so far the present writer
has seen only sub-anecdotal evidence in support of the assertion that GUM
stores supplied only non-luxury goods in n*****dly quantities]) it was not
available there; admittedly, he may have purchased it in Paris while, for
example, working as a sub-chargé-d’affaires at the Russian embassy—heck, he may
even have received it as a so-called kickback from the French government in
return for serving the DST as a so-called double agent; whatever the source of
the perfume may have been, its possession by a hopelessly square party
functionary in such a movie (and I must emphasize that all the movies in this first
portion of my survey were absolutely mainstream in conception, execution, and
reception; that in every movie considered in this portion we are by all means
dealing with something much closer in spirit to <i>Jaws </i>or <i>Meatballs </i>than
to some edgy, subversive, Communism-excoriating, exile or-incarceration
provoking production à la <i>Knife in the Water</i> or <i>The Fireman’s Ball</i>)
is indisputable proof that possession of at least certain foreign-made goods
was no big deal in either a positive or a negative sense—i.e., that it was
neither to be ardently coveted nor severely castigated—for a fairly large
proportion of the U.S.S.R.’s existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now that I am on something of a KV-1-like roll with <i>The Irony of Fate</i>,
I am sorely tempted to press on to the <i>Irony of Fate</i>-centered subsection
proper with all the remorseless implacability of the Soviet soldiers in the
wartime propaganda poster reproduced on the original jacket of Bernhard
Haitink’s recording of Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">(for the linguistically uninitiated, the slogan
at the bottom-left translates as <i>Forward! Victory [is] near!</i>), but as
there is a chronologically intervening movie on my list and that movie happens
to be another Shurik flick, I really ought to deal with that film first, but
prefatorily to dealing with it, I must make (and indeed am now making) it clear
that in moving on to this later Shurik flick we shall also be moving from the
Soviet system of life’s presentation and management of foreign consumer goods
on to another (albeit unsurprisingly related) aspect of that life-system,
namely its presentation and management of leisure time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This later Shurik flick is entitled <i>Kidnapping
Caucasian Style</i>, and in the interest of not only shameless self-promotion
and candid self-disclosure, respectively, I must mention, first, that I have
treated of this film in </span><a href="https://americasfuture.org/the-caucasian-persuasion/"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a previous
essay</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">; and second, that in the present essay I will not be referring to any
scenes or diagesis-strands that I did not refer to in the previous essay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this mention by no means constitutes an
analogue, however vague or remote, to the <i>Portions of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Chapter X </i>[the letter not the numeral]<i>
appeared in Publication Y</i>-type disclaimers one finds lily-liveredly lurking
on the versos of the title pages of many or perhaps even most officially
brand-spanking-new autobiographies, literary-critical monographs, &c.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It constitutes no such analogue, and the
immediately forthcoming commentary on <i>KCS</i> will accordingly by no means
constitute a mere cut-and-paste-fest, because I am about to consider these
selfsame scenes and diagesis-strands in a completely different light and under
the auspices of a completely different concept than in the earlier essay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the earlier essay I was principally
concerned with the film’s exclusive setting, the Caucasus, qua hyper-provincial
antipode to metropolitan Russia; i.e., qua hotbed of various barbaric
non-Russian ethnicities-cum-quasi-polities as-yet only partially civilized by
the beneficently paternal culture of a broadly Soviet administration <i>or</i>
a more narrowly Russian etiquette-coachery (apologies for this decidedly
inelegant neologism, but I have seen no plausible alternative to it other than
the hyperelegant [and therefore more objectionable] Gallicism <i>répétiteurerie</i>
<i>de l’etiquette</i>), depending on how heavily and effectively one thought
the relatively new Soviet dispensation had de-Russified and mollified the old
Tsarist high horse heaved hussar-outhanded high-handedness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(While in the earlier essay I emphasized the
continuities between the Tsarist and post-Soviet dispensations because I was
then considering <i>Kidnapping Caucasian Style</i> with an eye to post-Soviet
Russia’s then-current broils with Georgia, had I then been considering the film
with an eye to the by no means indisputably ineluctably abortive transnational
ambitions of Soviet administration, I would have been compelled to emphasize
the discontinuities [If this parenthesis seems but a feebly weasely attempt to
spackle over a complete intellectual volte-face, so be it—<i>My conscience is
clear</i>, to quote Trau Morgus in the space-opera serial].)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the present essay, I am solely concerned
with the Caucuses qua sun-bed for any northern metropolitan Soviet citizen
looking to hang loose, let it (whatever or how large or small it may be) hang
out or rip, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For as such a sun-bed
is how it or they, the Caucuses, first and foremost present(s) itself or
themselves, in <i>Kidnapping</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
film opens with a shot of Shurik riding along on a donkey against a magnificent
backdrop of Caucasian skies and mountains, to the audio accompaniment of a
voiceover delivering the barest skeleton of exposition to the effect that
Shurik has traveled to the Caucuses to research the local folkways, and very
soon afterwards our hero finds himself in a hotel that in point of modernist
sleekness and exploitation of the surrounding natural landscape can have had
few rivals in the contemporaneous real-worldial or even cinematic
hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps in strictly
architectural terms something vaguely comparable is featured in that relatively
early James Bond flick set in Las Vegas (the one with Plenty O’Toole and the
Howard Hughes-type millionaire recluse), but if so, the viewer’s appreciation
of its intrinsic capabilities is forestalled by its verisimilitude-mandated
supersaturation by hoards of blackjack and roulette addicts and
fruit-machinists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here we have a
bar-lounge that doubles as an observation deck with wraparound glass walls
affording a spectacular panoramic view of the just-aforementioned
sky-cum-mountainscape, occupied to only half capacity by genteelly sedentary
cocktail-sippers, and serviced by a redoubtably competent barman clad in the
far-abovementioned bellhop’s monkey suit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And no sooner does Shurik mention that the folkways he is interested in
include the locals’ traditional toasts (as in the word-sequences people utter
just before downing alcoholic drinks in synchrony; the vocable itself, being an
English loan-word, is the same in Russian) than this bellhop serves him a
reddish-purple concoction in a highball glass the size of an iced tea tumbler
(or perhaps an iced tea tumbler doing duty for a highball glass).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Within a presumptive matter of hours (for the
sun is still in the sky at the end of the transition [and remember that the
Caucusus are in the south, and hence subject to chronometrically seasonable
sunsets throughout the year]), Shurik is absolutely blotto, and yet no mention
has yet been made of any sort of bill or tab, let alone a tip or pourboire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The viewer cannot but conclude that his or
her hero has enjoyed quite a hefty bender, and consumed a succession of
evidently quite potent potations, utterly gratis, without being obliged to hand
over a single kopek.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, this
bender does cause some social friction with the locals (owing to the
universally typical epistemological friction between the drunkard’s and the
sober person’s respective views of the essences and functions of certain
contingently selected objects of their shared lifeworld [so Shurik, having been
drinking out of a vessel fashioned out of a mountain-goat’s horn, seeks a fresh
draught from a mountain-goat horn that is unfortunately attached to a live
mountain goat attended by its owner]) and consequently occasion him an
overnight stay in the neighborhood hoosegow, but the morning-warden on duty
cheerfully sends him on his way upon concluding from Shurik’s hungover
contrition that he is by disposition and habit a nice, well-behaved sort of
fellow and that the booze alone was responsible for his ultimately trivial
transgressions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The impression given by
this entire opening episode of the film is that vis-à-vis the management of the
citizenry’s sensual cravings the Soviet system of administration is both
discerning and humane, that it lets the average Soviet citizen indulge these
cravings fairly freely—and perhaps even more significantly, <i>affordably</i>—and
that while it is careful not to let this indulgence get out of hand, to allow
it to result in damage to public or indeed private property (for the
abovementioned mountain goat-owner emphatically insists that the goat Shurik is
in danger of de-horning is <i>his </i>[i.e., in his own words {to the extent
that the translation from the doubtless dialectally spiced original Russian is
accurate}, <i>mine</i>]), it also has absolutely no interest in curbing, let
alone quashing, these impulses as an end in itself, or even as a stimulus to
productive labor—for Shurik receives from the morning-warden no lecture on how
he really should resume his anthropological researches in a more properly
detached scientific manner, autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of
course, bibulousness, the craving for strong drink, is but one of at least
several cravings for sensual indulgence, and even at its most ardent it is
doubtless rivaled for pride of place by gluttony and randiness, by the cravings
for food and intercorporeal commerce, respectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>KCS</i> gives nary a hint at the Soviet
system of administration’s attitude to gluttony, perhaps because to do so in a
properly verisimilitudinous fashion would require it to specify in which
Caucasian sub-republic the film is set (as <i>KCS</i> is committed to not doing
for political reasons specified in my earlier essay), or perhaps simply because
it had not yet occurred to anyone on either side of the Icey that watching other
people eat could inspire anything but disgust in any viewer (for an analysis
of-cum-jeremiad against the naissance-cum-efflorescence of exhibitionist
gourmandizing in the hyperoccident over the past few decades, vide my essay </span><a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2013/09/gluttony-and-panpsychism.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">“Gluttony and
Panpsychism”</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">), and while the film does give some none-too-ambiguous hints at the
Party’s line on randiness, these are on the whole rather depressing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The film’s sole overt subject-cum-object (or,
to be more precise, subject-<i>qua</i>-object) of erotic interest is a perkily
attractive fair-skinned, dark-haired young woman (I described her as “a
Juliette Binoche <i>avant la lettre</i>,” and I stand by this description,
which in the context of the present essay is another way of saying, “She ain’t
no Tatiana Samoilova,” the female star of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Letter
Never Sent</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Cranes Are Flying</i>),
a member of the local chapter of the Komsomol, the Party-organelle into which
Young Pioneers (q.v.) with the requisite gumption eventually graduated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We know from very early on that she is
supposed to be incredibly hot because when in the course of her
Komsomol-mandated diurnal jogging routine she runs past a jeep-like transport
whose driver has so far failed to get running (much to the chagrin of Shurik,
who is hoping for a ride to the aforementioned ultramodern hotel from him), the
vehicle’s engine immediately kicks into action.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unfortunately for inter multissima alia her implicitly northward-bound
career aspirations, a grandee of one of the local ethnic tribes who also
happens to be a local Soviet governmental official covets her as a bride and
has her kidnapped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shurik then comes to
her rescue and has the kidnapper-cum-would-be husband brought to justice in a
Soviet courtroom, leaving her free to resume her wholesome Komsomol jogging
routine and him to return to Moscow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
the whole, to judge by this film, the meta-erotic scenario in the Soviet Union
is quite bleak: the masculine landscape, composed not only of men themselves
but also their inanimate—ahem-<i>tools</i>, is fairly seething with
heterosexual randiness, the feminine landscape consists of but a single
erotically disengaged woman apparently oblivious of this randiness and
therefore at the mercy of men even to protect her from it, and the only means
by which intercorporeal commerce can ever be brought to occur is ravishment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shurik, the nice guy, the nebbish transformed
into an unlikely but perfectly serviceable knight in shining armor, rescues the
girl but gets nothing from her in return apart from her thanks, and yet again
is so apparently quiescent in the face of this outcome that were <i>KCS</i>
even a very slightly less guileless or more adult-orientated movie one would be
inclined to suppose that he is <i>of the opposite persuasion</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in all hyperoccidental-bigoted
miserliness, can one truthfully say that hyperoccidental films of this time, or
indeed of any later date, deal with worldly eros in a manner that is both more
verisimilitudinous and more morally instructive?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is not the filmography of hyperoccidental
cinematic farces fairly saturated with utterly fantastic and overblown
depictions of heterosexual masculine libidinousness à la the above-described
self-starting of a car in the presence of an attractive woman?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is not the none-too-subtly conveyed message
of every such movie, from the earliest Mack Sennett silent caper flick to the
latest multisensory teen sex comedy, that every man is an abject slave of his
libido, that at the first sight of an even marginally prepossessing dame he is
willing to drop everything he is doing or planning to do and set off in pursuit
of the will o’ the wisp of a one-and-ten-thousand chance of achieving sexual
congress with her?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for Shurik’s
failure to get the girl at the end, the alternative ending would not have been
able to avoid implying that he deserved to end up in her arms as a matter of
course—in other words, that his damsel in distress-rescuing was merely a second
act of kidnapping, that he was no better, no more enlightened or morally
developed, than the crooked and savage local tribal chieftain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel obliged to put up what I concede is a
rather feeble defense of <i>KCS</i> not because I regard <i>KCS</i> as a
masterpiece, but merely because I do not believe its defects deserve to be
censured (as they doubtless have been) on political or peri-political grounds
supplied by the myopia-inducing Coke-bottle specs of present-day
hyperoccidentia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On these grounds <i>KCS
</i>would have to be (and doubtless has been) censured for its evincing of an
organically mutually complementary combination of prudishness and craven
Party-worship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On these grounds the
film’s female lead decides to remain single because she is a Komsomol member
and therefore presumably a mere instrument of the Soviet Communist Party, and
the Soviet Communist Party, like its counterpart in Orwell’s <i>Nineteen-Eighty-Four</i>,
presumably abhors sex, presumably because even the faintest and most occasional
indulgence of the libido interferes with the sort of remorselessly
time-monopolizing work regime exacted of all Party members towards the
attainment of the goals set in the most recent Five-Year Plan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But a less hyperoccidental-chauvinist
interpretation must see the Komsomol merely as the contingently straightest and
fastest avenue to power and prestige of its day and time and the young woman’s
decision to remain single merely as a typical manifestation of the <i>global </i>late-twentieth
century phenomenon of women opting to pursue professional careers before or to
the exclusion of marriage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other
words, by every impartial measure, <i>KCS</i> turns out to be at least in part
a <i>feminist</i> artifact—certainly every bit as much of one as <i>A My Name
is Alice</i>, <i>Kramer vs. Kramer</i>, and <i>The Mary Tyler Moore</i> <i>Show</i>,
and it is merely the unhappy consignment of the Komsomol, along with so many
other Soviet-spawned organizations, to the so-(specifically Trotsky)called
dustbin of history, that prevents early twenty-first-century hyperoccidentals
from seeing the film as such.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According
to our early twenty-first-century hyperoccidental lights, <i>The Mary Tyler
Moore Show </i>is a towering pioneering entry in the cultural canon of feminism
in virtue of persuasively showing how a single woman could <i>make it after all</i>
in the male-dominated world of local commercial American television in the
1970s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the historical context of
some none-too-improbable (and probably none-too-distant) future
post-hyperoccidental dispensation, the typical viewer in every part of the
world may regard Mary Richards’s dedication to her career as a so-called
producer or so-called show-runner of a local American commercial television
news program in a far less favorable light; in the context of a specifically <i>Sinocentric
dispensation</i> (q.v. [specifically in my peroration {the repetitions
immediately below not counting}], Lord willing), for example, Ms. Richards may
be universally reviled and despised for having squandered her considerable
talents on furthering a medium for the dissemination of deleterious skepticism
about the aims and actions of the various branches and registers of government
in the United States (a dissemination whose thoroughness was and is notably
attested to by the Federal Executive Branch-convulsing outcome of the
investigative shenanigans of Ms. Richards’s real-worldial colleagues and
contemporaries, Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein), and for the siphoning away,
via advertising, of milliards if not trillions of dollars from the American
homeland and into the bank accounts of foreign-headquartered corporations (an
away-siphoning whose thoroughness was and is notably attested to by the
Stateside marginalization of American-made cars by Japanese-made ones over the
course of <i>The Mary Tyler Moore Show</i>’s seven-year run).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, in the context of a Sinocentric
dispensation—admittedly one wherein the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist
Party hierarchy are far less blokey than at present—<i>KCS</i> may be
incorporated into an alternative feminist canon according to whose tenets a
woman can no more eloquently demonstrate her independence than via dedicated
service within the confines of a Communist Party-organized organ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet again, even in the context of a
Sinocentric dispensation, outside of Russia and a few other former Soviet
republics <i>KCS</i> may continue to languish in obscurity–not because its
pro-Communist facets will have failed to be appreciated but because Russia will
have declined even further in geopolitical prestige and its entire cultural
output will consequently draw an even smaller share of the global readership,
spectatorship, listenership, etc. than it does at present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hermeneutic destiny of no cultural
artifact is ever set (let alone etched) in stone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, every cultural artifact
contains elements and registers that are probably impervious to historical
contingency because they are themselves the product of purely logically
mandated contingencies (of course even in presupposing any such thing as a[n]
historically transcendent logic I am probably breaking company with the
Hegelian <i>Weltansicht</i> implied in the preceding sentence, but this can’t
be helped); an example, or pair of examples, of such an apparently historically
transcendent element of <i>KCS </i>being Shurik’s and Nina’s apparently
terminal-cum-mutual singledoms <i>eis ipsis</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The narrative nucleus-cum-nuclear power
station of <i>KCS</i> is the quasi-eponymous kidnapping of Nina by a Caucasian
warlord qua illustration of the barbarity-cum-outmodedness of the traditional
tribal-cum-patriarchal dispensation at least still residually in force in the
Caucasus; hence, all other elements and registers of the film must somehow be
made at minimum not to conflict with the exemplarity of this kidnapping; hence in
turn a pair of perfectly nice kids who together would have made a thoroughly
ingratiating couple must be kept asunder from each other even in their own
respective hearts-cum-loins of hearts-cum-loins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thankably, even behind the old Icey, it was
feasible to produce cultural artifacts, and specifically movies, powered by
nuclei-cum-nuclear power stations that verisimilitudinously allowed a pair of
mutually compatible perfectly nice kids to meet and join in connubial union as
hitchlessly as Papageno and Papagena.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Such a movie is the New Year’s-seasonal classic awkwardly (even in the
original Russian) entitled <i>The Irony of Fate: or, Enjoy Your Bath!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From what I hear tell about this flick from
presumably reliable informants (although I admit a pair or trio of these
gentlemen have offered me a broad selection of expensive Swiss watches at
laughably affordable prices), to this very day it occupies a place in the
hearts of Russians (and possibly even of the citizens of certain other former
Soviet republics) to which there is no remotely correspondingly intimate
coronary counterpart in any sector of the hyperoccident--take <i>It’s a
Wonderful Life</i>, multiply it by <i>The Sound of Music</i> and raise the
resulting product to the power of <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> (or perhaps even <i>Jaws</i>
or <i>Meatballs</i>), and you will still have not come within shrimping
distance of the magnitude-cum-character of the affection Russians et. fort. al.
harbor for <i>IF/EYB!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus do my
informants inform-cum-assure me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
although being an axiomatically Grinch-hearted (<i>Grincheskiserdechnyy</i>)
hyperoccidental, I am axiomatically incapable of judging whether <i>IF/EYB! </i>indeed
deserves to occupy such a deep and exalted place, I can in all frankness and
candor aver that I would more cheerfully watch <i>IF/EYB! </i>than any of the films
in the above-tendered equation with the exception of <i>It’s a Wonderful Life</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And why should I not do, given that more
nearly genuinely than almost all other cultural artefacts to which this
quasi-intrinsically perfidious predicate has been conjoined, <i>IF/EYB!</i> <i>has
got something for everyone</i>--meaning not, in the established acceptation of
this phrase, that it is composed of dozens of chock-a-block-packed goodie-bags
each of which has been earmarked for enjoyment by some specific demographic
niche--dads, mums, teenaged boys,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>sub-teenaged girls, grandmums, coprophiles, et al.—which or who will
take absolutely no interest in the fifteen or so other goodie bags not allotted
to it or them; such that once the car chase, shoe-shopping scene, fart-gag,
Barbie doll-grooming session, or second-species loo visitation, autc. is over,
Dad, Mum, Junior, Junioress, Bob or Suzy Coprophile, autc. respectively, will
doze off into a quasi-post-coital stupor and remain therein unless prodded back
into vigilance by a co-viewer resentful or oblivious of his or her (Dad’s,
Mum’s, autc.) indifference to his or her (the co-viewer’s) demographically
appropriate segment; meaning not, I say, that it is thus composed, but rather,
that it has just enough of every sort of cinematic-cum-dramaturgical element
that each of these elements is capable of appealing at least slightly to every
demographic niche and aesthetic habitus and incapable of alienating anyone of
any demographic niche or aesthetic habitus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So each member of the central couple is physically attractive and has an
alimentary occupation that commands respect--he is a doctor (specifically a
surgeon, I believe), she a schoolteacher; each of them is shown apart from the
other in his or her homosocial milieu (he at the bathhouse, she around the
coffee table), conversing with his or her fellow dudes or gals in a manner that
is verisimilitudinous and yet devoid of misogynistic or misandristic
aspersions; there is a musical interlude, when the female lead whips out a
guitar and accompanies her own (or, rather, a dubbed-in singer’s) dulcets, and
yet the musical-loather need not fear, for the interlude is entirely
diagetically motivated—within the narrative frame of the film she is
unequivocally performing for the entertainment of a visitor, not expressing
sentiments that she would have spoken in rightly called real life; there is if
not quite a car chase, then at least a solo-car spinout that for several nail
biting-inducing seconds bids fair to be a fatal solo-car accident (as the viewer,
for all his or her anxiety, cannot help half hoping it <i>will</i> be, inasmuch
as the potential victim is none other than the hero’s romantic rival, the
aforementioned Cleese clone [although yet again the viewer ends up sympathizing
quite heartily with the dude qua poor sod of a fresh demotee to third wheel {an
affective about-face that testifies not only to <i>IF: EYB!’s </i>dramaturgical
<i>richesses</i> but also more generally to the Russian (and perhaps even
Pan-Former-Soviet-Republican) soul’s capacious capacity for compassion with
poor sods, and for transmitting this capacity to members of other nations and
polities}]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But undoubtedly the most
generally and virtually unfailingly appealing element of <i>IF: EYB! </i>is its
framing-cum-governing conceit, which is both formally ingenious and
relatable-to by anyone in any corner or cranny of the developed world from the
film’s production-year of 1975 onwards (although admittedly there may come a
time when it is no longer relatable to by anyone in any corner of the developed
world [what with no cultural artifact’s hermeneutic destiny being set, let
alone etched, in stone, as noted above]), this conceit being that the world
that has been built for us to inhabit is so homogeneous, so prevailingly
composed of interchangeable parts, that a perfectly rational person might find
himself hundreds of miles from his place of regular, day-to-day residence and
activity and fail to take cognizance of his displacement therefrom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The viewer is apprised of this conceit from
the very beginning, in one of those winsome but by no means twee animated
opening credit (or sometimes, as in this case <i>pre</i>-opening credit)
sequences that seem to have been a quasi-norm in otherwise live-action sitcoms
and comedy films of any geographical provenance from about 1960 until, well, I
suppose, 1975, inamsuch as I cannot think of any later example of such a sequence
than the one at the beginning of <i>IF: EYB!</i>’s exact contemporary, the
Disney pre-teen comedy <i>Freaky Friday</i>; anyway, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">EYB!</i>’s instantiation of this form starts with a suit-and-tied
(albeit also not-undisturbingly white-coated) pipe-smoking architect contemplating
his blueprint for a building in an elaborate rococo revival style--multiple
wings, lots of balconies, classical columns, and pediments, and various frilly
protuberances--to the accompaniment of a few measures of art
historically-appropriate harpsichord music, which are interrupted by a stern
and much more modern-sounding motif played on massed strings, as the pediments
fall away and the blueprint receives its preliminary go-ahead in cursive
Cyrillic, but it is subject to further inspections, at the end of each of which
more parts of the design are lopped off until when it receives its final stamp
of approval nothing is left but its innermost core, which is instantly
recognizable as a mid-rise minimalist modernist apartment building of the sort
that each and every one of us is familiar with at least by sight (and within a
horizontally hypertrophic instantiation of which, indeed, the present writer
now dwells).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the architect is
replaced as the central human figure by a repulsive big-nosed dude in a neck-to-ankles
tunic and a pointed hat made of newspaper; this dude is presumably a bureaucrat
in charge of city planning, as he instantly sets about not barking but <i>honking
</i>(yes, just like a car horn) for the construction of mid-rise modernist
apartment buildings through a piece of rolled up paper that is self-evidently
the final version of the architect’s blueprint (for after all, now that the
design of the building is simple enough to be instantly replicated, the
blueprint might as well be converted into an ad-hoc megaphone, as it will never
need to be consulted again); soon the bureaucrat is commanding, nay conducting,
in the stiffly mechanical manner of a drum-major, a veritable booted parading
army of mid-rise minimalist modernist apartment buildings, which are then seen
occupying some of the theretofore least urbanized areas of the earth— the
seashore, the Sahara Desert—and finally, from an astronaut eye’s point of view,
spilling out from the earth on either side like vertically juxtaposed dominoes
and dilating and contracting like the ribs of an accordion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the mise en scène cuts to a succession of
live-action low-flying bird’s eye views of clusters of actual mid-rise
minimalist modernist apartment buildings (over which the opening credits are
superimposed), while a voiceover calmly (and hence ostensibly approvingly)
remarks that whereas in the old days people tended to feel ill at ease when
they visited a city for the first time, on account of the unfamiliar buildings
there, nowadays nobody need feel out of place again, inasmuch as every Soviet
city is filled with buildings that are exactly identical to the buildings that
fill every other Soviet city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then there
is a cut to a domestic interior that mere temporal propinquity compels the
viewer to assume is that of an apartment sited within one of the just-described
geographically fungible buildings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our
undeniably handsome hero and his merely debatably pretty girlfriend are
decorating their New Year’s tree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
the while, the girl is dropping hints at matrimony that our hero seems to find
decidedly off-putting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he repairs to
the bathhouse to let off some steam—in <i>exactly</i> two ways—with the
lads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The emphasis on <i>exactly</i> is
necessary by way of exigently forestalling any generic association of this bathhouse
with the contemporaneous bathhouses of the Castro District; for while the
male-bonding session in <i>IF: EYB!</i> is undoubtedly as amenable to homophile
interpretations as any other on either side of the old Icey at any point in
cinematic history, this session’s setting is an instantiation of an institution
that was fully heteronormative [albeit quasi-moribund, as hinted within the
film’s diegesis] in the Soviet Union in 1975.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the bathhouse stall, the blokes exchange a number of toasts and drink
a number of shots apiece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our hero,
being rather slight of figure and short of stature, becomes inebriated beyond
the point of basic motor self-command.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He ends up on a plane to Leningrad (the apartment and bathhouse were in
Moscow, by the way), and finally recovers his motor self-command (though not
his fully attentive awareness of his surroundings) in a cab to whose driver he
half-barks, half-mumbles his Moscow address, whereupon he is dropped off in the
forecourt of an apartment building that unsurprisingly looks exactly like his
own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so he takes the elevator
upstairs to the correctly numbered floor and then proceeds onto and into the
correctly numbered apartment with the help of an unhesitatingly compliant key (here
at least the present writer’s hyperoccidental belief requires a pair of
heavy-duty suspenders [whether in the American or the British sense is probably
immaterial at this point in the history of the hyperoccidental attitude to
so-called gender], although his informants have assured him that keys in the
Soviet Union were often pairable with multiple locks [and he has to admit that
such an appalling state of security is probably not unprecedented, or perhaps
rather unseconded, in the hyperoccident, for hyperlocal folklore at the place
of work of a friend of his maintains that once you have found the key to one
storage cabinet on the premises you have found the key to all half-dozen or so
of them]), climbs into the bed housed therein, and either falls asleep or
passes back out depending on how drunk one supposes him still to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By and by the apartment’s permanent and
official resident, a gorgeous blank billboard-foreheaded platinum blonde
(photographically if not quite dramaturgically a sort of cross between Carole
Lombard and Gena Rowlands) shows up, and the rest, as they say, is boilerplate
rom-com script-doctory (heartfelt breast-beating about the alimentary
shortcomings and spiritual rewards of their respective lines of work,
discarding of the undesired third and fourth wheels, propitiation of future
mothers-in-law both ruefully and reproachfully tsk-tsking over the sudden
change of matrimonial itinerary, et paucissima cetera).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the light of its capitulation to an
utterly heartwarming right boy-meets-right girl denouement in the teeth of its
utterly dispiriting framing conceit, the so-called message of <i>IF: IYB!</i>
is transparently and unequivocally reducible to a resounding affirmation of the
indomitable infungibility of the human individual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The film ultimately administers a sort of
good-natured yet decidedly admonitory chuck under the chin to Philip Larkin’s
contemporaneous sigh of utterly dejected wonderment, “How few people
are/separated by acres of housing...!” and effectively rejoins to it,“However
many acres of housing may separate them from one another, pairs of people
(i.e., real, proper unique people as opposed to the mutually indistinguishable
drones you seem to believe inhabit those selfsame acres) will find each other
out and build a shared world for each other not so much in defiance of as in
indifference to the drab homogeneity of their prefabricated environment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the contemporaneous words of Sonny Curtis,
lightly redacted to extend their scope beyond the aforementioned Mary Tyler
Moore, <i>Love is all around, and there is no need to waste it.</i>”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, there are at minimum a
butcher’s-umpteen rational, Queensberry rules-sanctioned counterblows that may
be dealt to this submentine chuck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
most unsubtle but by no means least telling such counterblow is the
observation-cum-inference that, as the movie’s title hints, our perfectly
mutually suited boy and girl met each other only thanks to a well-nigh
miraculous stroke of luck, or in more metaphysically portentous terms, <i>fate</i>,
and that had it not been for that stroke, they would indeed have remained
separated from each other by all those acres of housing—such that, in short, <i>IF:EYB</i>
ultimately reaffirms rather than undercuts Larkin’s plangent plaint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But inasmuch as this counterblow is instantly
parryable by the counter-counterblow that every felicitous first encounter is
in some measure fortuitous, that even in the absence of all those acres of
housing—e.g., during the idyllic days of mutually infungible pre-Soviet cities
and villages referred to in the opening voiceover—our lovebirds might not have
found each other, the more searching critic will prefer to remark, for
instance, that the lovebirds themselves are scarcely more original,
distinctive, quirky, or individualized than their respective dwelling-places,
that they are desirable to each other and to the viewer merely in virtue of
embodying a pair of desirable types—viz., the handsome young doctor and the
beautiful young schoolteacher, human analogues to soulless modern luxury
apartments distinguishable from their more downmarket counterparts merely in
having fresher paint jobs and a few extra mod cons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Corollarily, the more searching critic can
point out that the only quality that makes the excluded third and fourth
wheels, the John Cleese poly-clone and the New Year’s tree fellow-decorator,
less marriageable than their counterparts in the starring couple is their
comparative physical unattractiveness and comparatively less glamorous walks of
life (i.e., prospective housewifedom and sinister-cum-petty Party
functionaridom, respectively).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be
sure, the film would like us to believe that they are besmirched by other, no
less detracting, demerits, but it fails to supply them in the faintest
semblance of depth or detail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no
particularly keen axe to grind with any of these beeves with <i>IF: EYB</i>;
indeed, I couldn’t grind an axe with any of them even if I wanted to, for they
are all beeves of a breed represented in my own ranch of discontent (a ranch
yclepp’d the <i>K.O. Corrall</i>, natch). I would have much preferred a version
of <i>IF: EYB</i> in which either the two central characters never met and grew
old and died alone or did meet but were somehow compelled to stick with their
original engagement partners or to regret having not stuck with these original
engagement partners after marrying each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What I refuse to have even the most econo-sized truck or lorry with is
any attempt either to chalk up the aesthetic shortcomings griped about in the
above beeves to any specifically <i>Soviet </i>state of affairs or to hold up
any contemporaneous, or indeed, subsequent hyperoccidental cinematic or
televisual so-called romantic comedy as a norm, let alone ideal, in which the
themes treated of in <i>IF:EYB</i> are supposedly dealt with in a more truthful
manner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lamented phenomenon
satirized in and ostensibly transcended by <i>IF:EYB</i> is one by which every
polity and society in every part of the globe with the possible (and if not
only possible but actual, telling) exceptions of east Asia and the Indian
subcontinent was afflicted in the twentieth century—namely, <i>massification</i>,
the rapid multiplication of the local-to-regional human population from a
manageably-cum-intelligibly medium-sized collectivity to an
unmanageably-cum-unintelligibly massive mob.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The homogenization of architecture bewailed in <i>IF:EYB</i> is really
just an epiphenomenon of massification, inasmuch as the more people there are
in a given planning period (and planning periods are by no means peculiar to
polities-cum-demoses with so-called planned economies; indeed, even the most
laissez-faire system of political-cum-economic organization requires planning
periods of tediously substantial duration and pitifully finite flexibility for
every project exacting large amounts of capital and labor) than there were in
the previous planning period, the less time and money is available to devote to
such niceties as architectural individuation—this not only or perhaps even
mainly because there are not enough technically qualified people willing to
devote time to such niceties, but also and perhaps even mainly because when one
knows nothing about the prospective inhabitants and users of a
commercial-cum-residential zone but that there are a heck of a lot of them and
that they are going to be moving in very soon, it is impossible to introduce
into the zone any conspicuously non-functional architectural features that will
please all or even most of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be
sure, in the hyperoccident the non-white-coated, pinstripe-suited planners of
building projects were probably able to draw on a broader, more heterogeneous,
and more studiedly idiosyncratic pool of architects than their newspaper-capped
counterparts behind the old Icey--such that even a rinky-dink provincial
municipal council could afford to commission the town ice-skating rink from
Frank Lloyd Wright, or a cockamamey provincial liberal arts college its student
dormitories from I.M. Pei.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
difference was one of degree, and a by no means a staggeringly huge degree at
that, as will be attested by any American who has resided in a midmarket
suburban bungalow-centered development (or, as in the present writer’s case,
gone to school almost exclusively with residents of such developments [not that
the two breeze-block and respectively urban and rural bungalows in which he
grew up were ocularly distinguishable from each other except in point of color
and size]), for in every such development there are only a quasi-literal
handful of so-called models (i.e., realized blueprints), and the effect of
monotonous, well-nigh <i>IF: EYB</i>-worthy cookie-cutter repetition is
forestalled solely by the disposition of the houses along streets of such
involuted serpentinity that it is impossible for the passer-through (or even
more exigently, the full-time resident) to behold more than a literally literal
handful of houses at a glance or gaze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, the presence of so-called free enterprise in the
hyperoccident and the attendant proliferation of proprietary signage silently
clamoring for the consumer’s enamorment with thousands of mutually unmistakable
products has undoubtedly made for a less homogeneous urban-cum-suburban
landscape here than in the Soviet Union, but as I hinted many years ago in my
essay “</span><a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2006/10/proprietary-names-name-proprietary.html"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Proprietary
Names: the Name/Proprietary Names: the Place</span></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">,” heterogeneity of this sort is
on the whole a lamentable phenomenon that impedes rather than fosters the
individuation of people as autonomous or even quasi-autonomous subjects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whence my earlier effective assertion that no
hyperoccidental so-called romantic comedy has ever succeeded in squaring the
circle of homogenization more truthfully than <i>EF: IYB</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A quasi-or-pseudo-society brimming over with
proprietary heterogeneity is perforce a quasi-or-pseudo-society in which the
libido of every person is oligopolized by some cluster of proprietarily named
products—whether the person in question is a flogger or a gourmandizer thereof
makes no difference, because in either case the products are being overrated in
point of singularity and thereby making a mockery of the very notion of the
singularity of the human individual, and further consequently, of the very
sub-notion of finding Mr., Miss, or Ms. Right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hyperoccidental romantic comedies <i>invariably</i> reprehensibly gloss
over the mockery by depicting next to nothing of the work life of either member
of the central couple (in the old days—i.e., through about the early 1970s—it
was quite common for the male to be employed in advertising, but viewers—or
more likely <i>bienpensant</i> producers—evidently eventually found that this
topos smelled too pungently of the Sunday newspaper circular-packet, and so for
the past forty-something years our male rom-com leads have consisted almost
exclusively of doctors, lawyers, and, indeed, architects {supposedly
envelope-pushing pseudo-critiques of the older, more brazenly meta-commercial
friendly strand of the cinematic pseudo-tradition, notably the god-awful <i>Mad
Men</i>, only glorify the whoredom by falsely depicting the commodity-floggers
as wilfully macho thugs, i.e. so-called real men of the old school who have
supposedly been granted virtually unlimited subjective license and indulge that
license in full through gratuitous and utterly unproductive shouting and
bullying}) and representing their mutual enamorment as catalyzed by <i>shared
interests</i>—a phrase that empirically, in the so(and for the most part
rightly)-called real world, never designates anything but contingently
convergent habits in the consumption of proprietarily named entities but that
in the cinema can be made to approximate a simulacrum of its ideal-world
referent through judiciously intermittent soft-pedaling of product-placement
(q.v.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it be objected to my
characterization of the poetics of the hyperoccidental romantic comedy that it
is Ptolemaically perverse to the point of utter implausibility, that if the
fetishism of proprietarily named commodities were really so
wholeheartedly-cum-wholegenitally embraced in the hyperoccident as I have
asserted and described, it would be much simpler and more rational to produce
movies in which the protagonists are understood to have foregone interpersonal
entanglements entirely and are depicted incessantly disporting themselves in
the company of their favorite proprietarily named commodities, I must point out
to the objector (yet again--no DGR he or she, natch), that no citizen of the
hyperoccidental superpolity fetishizes commodity fetishism in the abstract,
that his or her libido is always engaged with a set of specific, quasi-to-fully
concrete, quasi-to-fully individualized proprietarily named entities, and that
as in any other system of libidinous engagement, any entity in the pertinent
entity-class that has formerly struck or yet to strike the lover’s fancy is
highly apt to inspire revulsion or anxiety, respectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the most flawlessly chiseled-chinned or
curvaceous doctor, lawyer, or architect who bastes himself or herself in a
hopelessly downmarket brand of aftershave or perfume, or who smugly shows off a
home-entertainment system or scented-candle line that was state-of-the-art
twenty years ago, is an instant turnoff, arouses immeasurable disgust;
complementarily, an otherwise no less desirable or identify-with-able
professional type who has a collection of handbags bearing the expensive-sounding
name of a designer one has never heard of or an electronic gadget of
inscrutable provenance or function, will send the viewer into an aesthetically
unrecoupable envious panic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whence the
utility of soft-pedaling the commodities, so that the rom-com viewer—á la the
reader of <i>Tristram Shandy </i>whom Laurence Sterne deliberately denied a
description of Uncle Toby’s inamorata—can fit out the central couple with a
constellation of commodities exactly commensurate with the present exigencies
of his or her proprietary commodity-gourmandizing jones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While I have already made it plain that the <i>IF:
EYB </i>glosses over the work lives of its protagonists no less ruthlessly than
a(n) hyperoccidental rom-com, and while I cannot pretend that its
production-team’s motives for such over-glossing are any more redeemable than
those of a(n) hyperoccidental rom-com’s PT (inasmuch as 24/7 submission
to-cum-inculcation of a system of administrative drudgery with no discernable
worthy telos or purpose is probably no more redeemable—albeit undoubtedly less
risible—than the 24/7 flogging-aut-gourmandizing of proprietary commodities
doomed to imminent decay), I do discern a sliver of greater truthfulness,
vis-à-vis the hyperoccidental rom-com, in that aforementioned brief scene in
which the heroine gushes over her lumpish Cleeseian soon-to-dumped boyfriend’s
presentation to her of a bottle of “real French perfume.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, in contrast to in a hyperoccidental
rom-com, the irresistibly seductive power of the quasi-individuated consumer
commodity is frankly if fleetingly acknowledged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this extent, I say, <i>IF/IYB</i> is more
truthful than a hyperoccidental rom-com.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But inasmuch as the heroine ultimately dumps the reliable
perfume-purveyor so that she can shack up with the doctor with presumably much
poorer access to imported luxury goods, the “real French perfume” episode
ultimately proves to be of no semantic force, like the minor-key episode in the
exposition of the first movement of a major- key symphony--and such being the
case, well, although as a vehement abhorrer of commodity fetishism and guarded
admirer of the Soviet system of life, I would love to embrace this turn of <i>IF:
EB</i>!’s plot, as a wholehearted lover of truth, I must reject it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lure of the consumer commodity, although
undeniably evil, is not to be brushed off so easily once one has been sucked
into its tractor beam, and while the homogenization-cum-massification of life
may not be (and indeed is not) a specifically Soviet phenomenon, it is an
inescapably demoralizing one, and any cinematic representation implying that
such demoralization can be obviated by finding the right marriage-partner is an
untruthful one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">So far in my admittedly patchy survey of Soviet cinema I have
admittedly yet to instance a single movie that indisputably outstrips all
hyperoccidental counterparts both qua autonomous cinematic achievement and qua
heteronomous index of the greater livability of everyday life on its side of
the old Icey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In each instance the
boosted film has been all too readily bashable by some smug hyperoccidental’s
“Yes, but…” clause.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To <i>The Cranes Are
Flying</i> and <i>Letter Never Sent</i>’s technical brilliance and meta-ethical
exemplarity such an insufferable w***ker may all too trenchantly demur, “Yes,
but these are representations of life in extreme conditions, which famously
both <i>bring out the best in even the worst people</i> and suspend the
operations of even the most inhumane institutions of even the most barbaric
socioeconopolitical dispensation, such that they (i.e., <i>Cranes</i> and <i>Letter</i>)
cannot be regarded as plausible indices of the superiority of the Soviet way of
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the two Shurik films’--<i>Kidnapping
Caucasian Style’</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">s</span> and <i>Ivan
the Terrible</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">’</span>s—light-hearted
attitude to the Soviet black market and idyllic depiction of Soviet
vacationing, our IW may quasi-legitimately retort, “Yes, but these two flicks
are <i>farces</i>, instantiations of a genre in which nothing ever even
purports to be even approximately as it is in the so--and very much
rightly--called real world.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And finally,
as just illustrated-cum-mentioned (some, perhaps even most--nay, all--would
say, rather, <i>belabored</i>), <i>The Irony of Fate, or, Enjoy Your Bath!</i>,
while not suggesting that everyday life in the Soviet Union was positively (or
perhaps, rather, <i>negatively</i>) worse than its hyperoccidental counterpart,
does intimate that that life was on the whole just as bad in being dominated by
demoralizing-cum-brutalizing forces and eliciting dreams of escape into a
connubial extremely seldom-extremely seldomland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In all candor, frankness, and rhetorically
obligatory feigned self-abasement, I cannot say that the portion of the survey
I have so far traversed or undertaken has been traversed or undertaken quite in
vain, for the reader who had already been favorably--or at any rate <i>charitably</i>--disposed
to the Soviet way of life but gone out of his aut al.’s way to avoid learning
too much about it for fear of being thereby converted into the most
sanguinarily whiggish advocate of global free marketeerism may have been
perversely reaffirmed in his mild Sovietophilia by discovering from this
hitherto traversed or undertaken portion that things really weren’t quite as
bad over there and back then as he had been told, much as the <i>bienpensant</i>
suburb-slicker finds his so-called progressive views on the apportionment of
tax revenues perversely reaffirmed after having been merely repeatedly
aggressively panhandled and verbally abused rather than mugged or mauled during
his first visit to the so-called inner city.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the present writer refuses to rest satisfied with such a lenten
pantry-filler; he is out to persuade his reader, or rather, <i>readers</i> (for
he will have no truck or lorry with the rhetorically obligatory self-abasing
forbearance from the use of what grammarians call the <i>ethical plural</i>)
not merely that everyday life in the Soviet Union wasn’t all that bad but that
it was incomparably better than everyday life anywhere in the present-day
hyperoccident, to persuade him et al. to ejaculate to me, “<i>Ya tam,
tovarsisch!</i> [I’m there, dude!] <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How
soon can I sign the U-Haul-cum-Rent-a-TARDIS contract?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fortunately for the sake of my pantry-filling
jones, I do have up one of my shirty sleeves (the <i>left</i> one, natch) a
t***p-card of a film that I fancy--nay, <i>presume</i>--will do just that; a
film whose setting, both in diagetical and actual terms, post-dates the Great
Patriotic War by more than two decades, a film that far from glossing over the
shortcomings and hardships of life under the Soviet system goes out of its way
to emphasize them, and yet somehow miraculously makes such a life seem like a
veritable idyll compared with any <i>modus vivendi </i>presently on offer even
to the most affluent inhabitants of the purportedly most livable and most
upmarket crannies of the present-day hyperoccident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This film is entitled <i>Wings</i> and is not
to be confused with the winner of the very first best picture Oscar or even
with the 1990s situation comedy—and yet like both of these it <i>does</i> deal
with aeroplanes, although on the whole much more obliquely and tangentially
than either of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than
summarize the whole dad-blamed thing up front, I shall begin my discussion of <i>Wings</i>
by describing its opening scene—this not because, as the ineluctably
intellectually petit-bourgeois Bible of film journalism holds, in summarizing a
film one is merely dishing out to the reader a serving of slop that he can get
from hundreds of other textual greasy spoons (for the summarist of a film
stands in no more intrinsically fungible, rubber stamp-like relation to that
film than that film’s maker stood in relation to his subject before the shoot,
inasmuch as he aut al. must choose which underwhelming minority of the film’s
elements to mention in his aut al.’s summary), but rather because of all of <i>Wings</i>’(s)
episodes this opening scene is the one that sticks with me the most tenaciously—for
indeed, apart from the absence of any Jacob Marleyesque high-jinx chez lui, it
would not be an exaggeration to say that it <i>haunts</i> me—and consequently
seems to say the most, as they say, about the reality the film is at least
purportedly, and very probably sincerely, attempting to depict.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This opening scene shows a white-haired,
grave old gentleman—a(n) WHGOG whose features, clothing, and bearing are all
more than slightly reminiscent of Bruce Wayne’s butler Alfred in the exactly
contemporaneous <i>Batman</i> television series—tape-measuring the pinstriped
blazer-encased torso of a woman whose back is turned to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I was taking in this scene for the first
time, I was sorely tempted to eject the disc from my DVD player to make sure
that <i>Wings</i> had not been swapped with some other movie—for such cock-ups
are not unheard of at the library from which I had checked out the film—and
specifically with some hyperoccidental period costume drama set at the very
latest in the late-Edwardian microepoch, for as everyone of my microgeneration
had been given to understand as youngsters, business attire for both (sic)
sexes in the Soviet Union had always consisted and continued to consist solely
of shapeless, jet-black, one-size-fits-all two-piece suits that one was forced
to wear straight off the rack from GUM without any option to have alterations
made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>And even supposing</i>, I
reflected as I smarted under the abovementioned temptation, <i>this session is
taking place somewhere closer to home than the Soviet Union, the date of it
must lie well to the fore of 1966, for that is only six years before my own
birth-year, and for all I know I have yet even to meet a person who has had a
suit custom-tailored, and I have certainly never had a suit custom-tailored
myself</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then this first scene
cut to a second scene in which the woman mentioned to somebody or other in a
language that I recognized as Russian (without knowing it well enough to
understand more than one out every ten of its therein-uttered words) that she
had just been fitted for a suit in connection with a television appearance, and
so I concluded that this film must after all be set in Soviet Russia in the
second half of the twentieth century, but at the same moment I was utterly at a
loss to specify the custom tailored suit-vouchsafed woman’s position in the
Soviet society of her time; <i>for surely</i>, I reflected, <i>only a Politburo
member would have been vouchsafed a custom-tailored suit, and as far as I know
there were never any female Politburo members, and even if there had been, the
custom-tailored provenance of her suit surely would have been solicitously
hidden from the off-the-rack sack suit-saddled Soviet cinema-going public’s
view for fear of inciting GUM store-incinerating riots from Kaliningrad to
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then
in the third scene one saw some rather disagreeable youths and girls in dark
union suits (a.k.a. <i>jumpsuits</i>) rather apathetically disposed around a
television set on whose screen the woman from the first two scenes was seen
giving some sort of speech (I write <i>some sort</i> because inadequate
subtitling prevented my becoming privy to the subject of that speech [although
to be fair to the subtitler, inadequate source-sound may have prevented him aut
al. from becoming privy to that selfsame subject]), whereupon I finally
accurately inferred the custom tailored suited-woman’s exact
occupation-cum-social function—namely nothing less ignominious than a sort of
principal or warden of a kind of high school that made the one in <i>Blackboard
Jungle</i> look like Andover or Eton.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>And
yet</i>, I reflected, <i>I’ll bet the principal or headmaster of Andover or
Eton who last wore a custom-tailored suit has been lying buried in that
selfsame suit for nearly three-quarters of a century.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the onscreen woman’s suit turned out to
be just the first item in a veritable suite of bespoke old-world amenities by
which this humble Soviet woman was (or perhaps—but only perhaps—rather <i>had
been</i>) surrounded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The town in which
she lived and principal’d was a goodly sized one, not Moscow, to be sure (as
the viewer could be sure because more than once a character mentioned the
Soviet capital as a version of elsewhere), but still bustling with pedestrian
traffic composed overwhelmingly of decent-looking men and women in fetchingly
heterogeneous (and conceivably even custom-tailored) business attire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The town’s streets were paved not with
asphalt but with bricks that could be washed completely clean by the briefest
of showers, and when the sun returned after the downpour, these bricks would
sparkle with a dazzling refulgence that MGM would have been proud to
incorporate into <i>The Wizard of Oz</i> had they been obliged to film even its
non-Kansan parts in black-and-white.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Within this town our (or at any rate <i>my</i>) heroine resided in a
sort of boarding house, more specifically in a furnished room where she could
sit and drink tea from a cup and saucer in a comfortable antimacassared
armchair of pre-twentieth century design, and if she ever craved company she
could step into the kitchen and chat with the landlady while lending her a
perfunctory hand at the potato-peeling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For recreation she could take in a movie at a cinema or sunbathe on a
beach in a bikini-style swimsuit that seemed as custom-tailored as her business
suit, and for refreshment she could visit a restaurant. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This restaurant was clean and well-lighted and
offered its patrons generously proportioned sausages and mugs of beer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, these patrons consisted entirely
of men, and these men almost entirely of open-collared, non-business suited
laborers, but they welcomed the principal’s appearance in their midst—not with
the chorus of wolf-whistles and obscenities by which a woman is invariably
greeted in any hyperoccidental site of plebian masculinity (whether fictional
or actual), but rather with expressions of enthusiastic admiration of her as a
so (and yet seemingly quite justly) called member of the community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure although living like a queen
within a virtual utopia, this woman was by no means entirely happy with her
existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She seemed to be saddened and
disappointed by the course of life newly embarked on by her adopted barely
post-teenaged daughter (whose lack of biological consanguinity to or with her
seemed to sadden her in its own right), specifically her marriage to an
improvident school teacher (though not a teacher at her [i.e., the principal’s]
school) almost old enough to be her (i.e., the principal’s) husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She seemed to find the pupils at her school
poor surrogates for natural filial connections, probably because they seemed to
regard her with a well-nigh terrified fear little mollified by respect, let
alone affection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her only close friend,
the curator of the local history museum, was a rather dour, close-mouthed and
otherwise unprepossessing (though still ever-impeccably business-suited)
middle-aged man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And most
discontentingly of all, she could not stop thinking about a much earlier period
in her life when she had had a much more exciting and glamorous job, namely
piloting fighting airplanes against the Nazi-German Luftwaffe, a job in which
she had spent time around much more exciting and glamorous people, including a
certain fellow-pilot, a very handsome young man whom one was given to
understand had been the great love of her life and had tragically been killed
during a mission in which they had both been involved (in a flashback scene she
plaintively called out to him from her cockpit radio as his plane took a
nosedive).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually she became so
violently nostalgic for this earlier period that she went down to the local
airfield, climbed into the cockpit of one of the propeller planes there, and
tricked some of the maintenance crew into giving her a push along the runway,
where she started the engine and soared up into the sky, where she remained as
the film unambiguously signaled its end with the word <i>konyets</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this day I do not know whether she ever
touched back down and resumed her land job--and most likely nobody else knows
either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Predictably in the light of the
fact that both its director and leading actor were women, all the inline
reviews of<i> Wings</i> represent it as <i>a searing critique-cum-blistering
indictment of the limited career opportunities available to women in the
male-dominated Soviet society.</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
the film is undoubtedly no stranger to such a critique, as can be seen at the
end of the restaurant scene, when the establishment’s female manager complains
of her husband’s treatment of her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
this traditional feminist plaint is the most inner of the film's inner voices;
it lasts for a very few minutes, and it is by no means expressive of the plight
of the protagonist. Her misery is occasioned not by having to be a school
principal now but by no longer being able to be a fighter pilot, which is in turn
occasioned by the socially extrinsic facts that she is no longer young and that
the Soviet Union is no longer at war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If
the film were really all about the heroine’s comparative misery qua woman qua
social contributor, we would see her surrounded by heroically successful men in
enviable social positions, whereas each and every man she encounters is
indisputably inferior to her in terms of both his present and prospective
social stations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, <i>Wings</i>
must be viewed as a critique-cum-indictment—searing-cum-blistering or otherwise—of
the entire post-World War II Soviet system of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why then does the present writer believe
himself justified in interpreting<i> Wings</i> against the grain as a jubilant
affirmation of that selfsame system?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First,
because as already made clear in my overtly subjective past-sense
quasi-summary, the film makes the post-World War II U.S.S.R., and moreover a
specifically <i>provincial</i> locale therein,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>seem on the whole a pleasant place in which to live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, <i>Wings</i>’ diagesis may not be
brimming over with state-of-the art luxury knick-knacks of the hyperoccident of
its own time (Tupperware containers, pocket flash-bulb cameras, and the like),
let alone of ours, but on the other (and to my mind far weightier) hand, it
retains a much goodlier proportion of the amenities from which bourgeois life
around the globe derived the best part of the superior level of comfort and
dignity it enjoyed and exuded through the early twentieth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Secondly, and perhaps more than slightly
corollarily, this diagesis allows its protagonist’s nostalgia for her personal
good old days free play, and indeed unreservedly <i>endorses </i>this
nostalgia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any—and I mean absolutely <i>any</i>,
including the most allegedly uncompromising-cum-artistic—recent hyperoccidental
cinematic treatment of this theme of an older person discontentedly adjusting
to the ways of a world whose pace and tone is set by younger people, we would
discover an exactly antithetical state of paired affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In such a treatment the discontented oldster
would be exclusively surrounded by vaguely anthropomorphic chunks of lard only
vaguely clad in shapeless envelopes of synthetic fabric differentiated only
into Large, Extra Large, and Extra-Extra Large pseudo-sizes; these lard-chunks
would be smugly shuffling around while wantonly and incessantly oozing
objectionable words and solecisms from their north-anuses and various
objectionable fluids and gases from that and every other orifice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet somehow the viewer would be given to
understand that these nauseating lard-chunks represented the ne plus ultra of
the good and the beautiful in both an aesthetic and a moral sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For in diagetic present-day life the oldster
would be incessantly laughed and jeered at by all the lard-chunks for not
owning a so-called smart phone of less than six months’ antiquity, or for not
knowing the name of the present week’s reigning world-champion professional
autoerotic asphyxiationist, or being ignorant of some unimaginably uninventive
slang term for, say, farting into the face of a sleeping Uber driver (e.g., <i>sleepubdrivefacefarting</i>);
and in his aut al.’s diagetic nostalgic memories his aut al.’s irredeemable and
incorrigible reactionariness on the technological front would be seen as
organically and inextricably linked to his aut al.’s equally (albeit <i>merely</i>
equally) irredeemable political reactionariness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus a shot of his aut al.’s younger self,
say, making a call on a rotary-dial telephone would be intercut with shots of
various atrocities hailing from the pre-touch tone telephonic era, so that once
his aut al.’s finger had spun the perforated circle far enough to dial the first
digit of the destination number, one would see a child worker expiring at the
loom in a sweatshop; once he aut al. had dialed the second digit, one would see
a parasol-wielding suffragette being bayoneted by a hussar; and so on, until
the atrocity subtending the dialing of the ineluctably terminal seventh digit
(for in the rotary-dial days no local call required more than seven digits, and
to represent the arch-villain’s younger self as a person of sufficient
consequence or financial means to rotary-dial a long-distance call without the
intervention of an operator would awkwardly imply that he aut al. had
subsequently owned all the latest telephonic devices as a matter of
course).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when the irredeemably
wicked oldster all too belatedly died, his or her only vaguely anthropomorphic
survivors would be seen first gleefully snapping pictures of his aut al.’s
corpse artfully arranged to look as though it were effortlessly and
enthusiastically conversing over the latest (and indeed not even yet officially
released) I-p***e spot-welded into its lifeless right hand and against its
lifeless right ear; and then tumbling the accursed carcass into a pit full (or
pitful) of priapistically randy necrophilic dingos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any present-day hyperoccidental cinematic
depiction of a nostalgic oldster’s life could not avoid pursuing the just-delineated
cursus because the present-day hyperoccident from the Oder Frankfurt (if not
Warsaw) to Nome or Barrow (q.q.v.) is a de facto Whigocracy to its very core: <i>Whatever
is, is immeasurably better than what was</i> is the cardinal article of faith
of every single hyperoccidental man, woman, child, aut al./cet., regardless of
his aut al.’s official religious or political persuasion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, or at least sure-ish, the
present-day hyperoccident teems with people who in their hearts of hearts
emphatically do <i>not</i> believe that whatever is, is immeasurably better
than what was, but they are obliged, nay, compelled, to express their
discontent obliquely, furtively, guiltily, and above all extremely
intermittently—very much after the manner in which the members of certain
organizations that cannot safely be named <i>used to</i> comport themselves—I
say <i>used to</i> because of course nowadays even the most harshly proscribed
of them proudly flaunt their T****r feeds, F******k profile, and portfolio of
Y**-T**e videos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the Soviet
Union of the micro-epoch of <i>Wings</i>, the Soviet Union of the early
Brezhnev period, was <i>officially</i> and <i>in principle</i> as
thoroughgoingly whiggish as any hyperoccidental polity then or now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But unofficially—nay, even in some subaltern
sense officially (for <i>Wings</i> was after all a 35-mm [albeit square screen-
aspected] product of the Soviet film industry, not some Super-8 samizdat effort—and
in practice it seems to have had a high tolerance for enamorment with the past
qua bearer of a superior form of civilization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And there are good grounds for inferring that <i>Wings </i>was not a
mere anti-Whiggish flash in the pan of the mid-to-late Soviet<i>
Gemeinschaftsgeist</i>; grounds that are especially good in virtue of having a
hefty hectare or two of their share sited well to the west of the Old
Icey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am thinking here, for example,
of an episode in that cinematic Cold Warhorse <i>Moscow on the Hudson</i>
(1984) in which Robin Williams’s character, a recent Soviet defector residing
in New York City, descants with passionate nostalgia on his limitless liberty
to <i>cherish his misery</i> back in the U.S.S.R.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, in this movie, as in every other
hyperoccidental movie representing Soviet subjecthood and released either
before 1942 or after, say, 1947, the nostalgia for misery-cherishing is
understood to be a transient growing pain that ineluctably must be undergone by
yet another gormless-cum-snowflakish Ivan Stolichnaya (or, perhaps, rather,
Ivan Non Levi-Jeans-Wearer) struggling to acclimatize himself to the initially
harsh but ultimately infinitely gratifying-cum-redeeming realities of so-called
free-market capitalism—realities that then were indeed at least finitely
gratifying-cum-redeeming in at least still being oriented towards the reliably
steady production and consumption of material goods of fairly durable
construction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How immeasurably more
miserable is this Robin Williams character’s present-day hyperoccidental cousin
(or perhaps, rather, nephew), incessantly adjured as he aut al. is by each and
every one of his aut al.’s compatriots and contemporaries to rejoice at and
revel in the unprecedented material abundance he aut al. is supposedly enjoying
despite having to make do, at every minute of every day—and not only to the
great detriment of his aut al.’s personal comfort, but also at great risk to
his aut al.’s personal life and limb(s)—with a congeries of material goods
whose shoddiness and undependability positively put to pride the most
bunglingly cobbled-together products of Soviet heavy industry!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But I am getting far ahead of myself via getting perhaps no less far
back to myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For at this precise
moment, as against at a much earlier moment and at a much later moment, a
moment within a stone’s throw of my peroration (for those who are particularly
good at throwing stones [Flanders and Swann reference, natch]), I am not
supposed to be talking about the shortcomings of the present-day hyperoccidental
consumer industry, egregiously grievous to the point of exacting an essay much
longer than the present one (if an essay of such <i>longueur</i> could be
imagined) though they undoubtedly are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
am supposed, rather, to be rounding the horseshoe bend-like curve of a turning
point in which I say something to the effect of <i>But the later Soviet system
of life’s tolerance of older modi vivendi had a dark side to it, </i>something
that I am perfectly content to be taken to have just said not only in effect
but verbatim, provided that for <i>dark</i> there is substituted something less
ineluctably evocative of a vampire ensconced in smoke machine-produced smoke
and yet no less redolent of unregenerate evil than <i>dark</i>, and provided
that it is understood from the so-called get-go that this dark-esque side to
the Soviet system of life’s tolerance of older lifestyles is by no means
anything at which the hyperoccident is entitled to look down its lorgnette,
inasmuch as the hyperoccident has sedulously both nurtured this side not unlike
a pelican and exploited it not unlike a tapeworm ([sic, or rather, <b>sic</b>]
on the present-perfect <i>has</i>, which denotes the soon-to-be-addressed
persistence of this darkesque side and its nurturing-cum-exploitation into the
present and hence well past the demise-date of the Soviet Union).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is more, I am quite keen from the
so-called get-go to forestall the impression that in decrying this dark-esque
side I am participating ever so slightly or in any respect in the boilerplate
intellectually petit-bourgeois hyperoccidental polemic against a certain
phenomenon-cum-entity-cum-practice; to the contrary, I am convinced that the
promulgators and relayers of this polemic have far more in common with the
inhabitants of the Soviet-cum-post Soviet darkesque side than with the present
writer--this in virtue of their own appropriation of the
phenomenon-cum-entity-cum practice to ends that are but (at best) superficially
divergent from those of the darkesque side-denizens themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to the divulgence of the identity of this
phenomenon-cum-entity-cum practice already!: it is simply-cum-complicatedly the
quasi-tradition appropriately albeit only occasionally termed
Judeo-Christianity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the darkesque
side of the SSL’s tolerance of old-school MVi consists in this selfsame
system’s facile, wanton, and sanctimoniously disingenuous appropriation of the
topoi and precepts of this quasi-tradition—not, as in <i>Wings</i>’s utterly
ingenuous registration of a tailor’s shop, an old-fashioned tea-service, and
the like, towards the noble end of affording sanctuary to residual elements of
a more civilized system of life, but rather towards the sub-perlatively ignoble
end of affirming the Soviet status quo from Kaliningrad to
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky qua supposed realization of the New Jerusalem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, at first, cherubic, dunderheaded
Sovietologist’s blush (to the extent that any still-extant Sovietologist skulls
retain enough skin and muscle on them to sustain a blush), the very notion of a
Soviet affirmation of the Judeo-Christian quasi-tradition seems downright
oxymoronic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, the Sovietologist
continues his demurral, to the extent that the condition of his chaps (in a
mandibular sense) permits him, the Soviet State was avowedly, nay, proudly
atheistic both in theory and in practice, and a Soviet citizen had no more
flagrant or perilous means of defying that State than openly espousing an
adherence to one of the Abrahamic faiths, which are after all (and <i>pace</i>
that nobly lonesome Indian-subcontinental outcropping of monotheism known as
Sikhism) the most emphatically theistic of all the world’s great faiths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if in counterdemurral one adduces the
most illustrious example of a Soviet exponent of Abrahamic theism, namely,
Andrei Tarkovsky, one is told (albeit not, as according to the chap-fallen
teller’s fading lights, <i>reminded</i>) in counter-counter-demurral that
Tarkovsky’s most unabashed essay in expression of his theism, the film <i>Andrei
Rublev</i>, was initially denied release in the U.S.S.R. on account of its
Christological content.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To this
counter-counter-demurral one is initially inclined to
counter-counter-counter-demur that the mere fact that <i>Andrei Rublev</i>, a
film with a cast of hundreds, was ever green-lighted at all, let alone allowed
to be shot and edited, and let further alone screened everywhere west of the
Old Icey, suggests that there were plenty of people in very high Soviet places
indeed who ardently wanted Tarkovsky’s Christophilia to thrive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then one suddenly and serendipitously
remembers a no-less-flagrant, and indeed in some ways even more flagrant,
example of Soviet State-endorsed Christophilia than <i>Andrei Rublev</i>, an
example that is impervious to the Sovietologist’s objections inasmuch as it was
not, as far as the present writer knows, subject to any official
Soviet-governmental proscriptions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is a 1977 film entitled <i>The Ascent </i>and directed by of all people--and
here I am obliged to turn my head aside and dam a flood of tears with a thumb
and index finger--Larisa Shepitko, the director of my beloved of beloveds, <i>Wings.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Whence, on the whole, the sluggishness of my
negotiation of the abovementioned horseshoe bend-like curve, a sluggishness
with which any reader who is not an absolutely intransigent adherent of Michel
Foucault’s theory of authorship [if such a person actually exists] will be
heartily sympathetic.) <i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Ascent </i>depicts
an abortive reconnaissance mission by a pair of soldiers in Belarus at at an
undated moment in the Great Patriotic War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The soldiers, both part of a military detachment escorting an entire
displaced village of famished civilians, have volunteered to traverse the bleak
and German-occupied Belarussian snowscape in search of whatever relief they can
find for their charges.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the
scouts is clean-shaven and rather ugly after the quasi-Mongolian manner of the
notoriously daemonic Tom Waits; the other is angelically handsome and bearded
just like Thou Knowest Who(m).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Eventually the pair are captured by the occupying Germans and placed in
the hands of one of their Soviet turncoat lackeys, a torturer played by none
other than the dude who had played <i>Andrei Rublev</i> just over a decade
earlier, Anatoli Solonitsyn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
torturer initially addresses the bearded soldier and initially tries to bring
him round to disclosing the whereabouts of his fellows via a lecture on
metaphysics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The human soul, so the
torturer maintains, is a chimera; nothing survives us after death, so why not
confess if confession is the only means of saving one’s life?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our nobly bearded hero rejects this argument
with eloquent vituperation along with, if the present writer’s memory serves,
an eyeful or two of spittle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon
the torturer calls in a handsome dentist’s trayful of instruments of pain and
sets to work with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scene ends
with a shot of a hot iron being pressed into the bare chest of the detainee,
who all the while manfully grits his teeth and holds his peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next we see the Tom Waits lookalike being
interrogated by Mr. Solonitsyn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the
latter hints that the dentist’s tray is on its way, he sings, as they say, like
a canary as voiced by Tom Waits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
recompense for this service his life is spared; our beardy, close-mouthed hero
in contrast is summarily sentenced to death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Just before being dragged to the scaffold he proudly and scornfully, and
indeed with downright patrician hauteur reminiscent of Suffolk’s last speech in
<i>II Henry VI</i>, announces to his captors that he has been a member of the
Communist Party since some date in which he could not but have still been in
short pants. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And at the moment of his
execution, the moment at which the chair is taken from beneath his feet, his
face is seen in close-up, smiling beatifically, as they say, and the shot
dissolves into a blindingly white blank screen as he is still moving along the initial
upward and forward-oriented arc of his pendulum-period, such that it looks as
though rather than merely swinging at the end of a rope like any common
criminal, he is <i>ascending</i> skyward, just like Thou Knowest Who(m)
(whence, presumably, the movie’s title).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The biblical genealogy of the Tom Waits-resembling snitch is even more
excoriatingly rubbed in when immediately after the execution some of the local
peasant women execrate him with cries of <i>Judas! </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as if the poor s*d hasn’t been made to
suffer enough by then, he is shown to be but a very shabby imitator of his
ignominious biblical precursor, for although like Judas he <i>tries</i> to hang
himself, the belt he has fashioned into a noose proves too weak to bear his
weight, and so at the film’s conclusion he is left staring up at the execution
scene (a Calvary-esque hill, natch) and stewing in remorse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, then: it is quite clear from the
foregoing summary that I love <i>The Ascent</i> almost as much as Thomas
Pynchon loves cameras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So then: what is
(there) not to love about this movie?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For a start, the entire Christological superstructure is poorly suited
to the diagetic facts of the narrative and therefore intrinsically
fatuous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These diagetic facts make it
clear that the two central characters start out at a position of exact ethical
parity, the position of ordinary soldiers who have somehow found themselves in
a situation direly threatening to both their own lives and the lives of those
they have been entrusted to protect, and who both desperately and in good faith
aim to do their utmost to extricate themselves and their charges from this
situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is an aim that may with
equal plausibility be alternatively termed termed heroic, reckless, altruistic,
or egoistic but that by no plausible means may be termed saintly, let alone
holy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That one of these two central
characters subsequently spills the beans with which the pair have been
entrusted while the other retains them makes neither the former a latter-day
Judas nor the latter a latter-day Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, the bearded soldier ends up evincing much more fortitude
than the aspirantly clean-shaven one, but this fortitude ought not to be taken
as proof of the beardy bloke’s immeasurable moral superiority to the non-beardy
one, let alone of his spiritual purity or absolute devoid-ness of sin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From a strictly Christian point of view,
since the fall of Adam there has only ever been one perfect, sin-free human
being, and the positing of any subsequently born human being, whether actual or
fictional, as perfect and sin-free, as a kind of moral carbon-copy of Christ,
must be regarded as an act of sacrilege (or blasphemy, if one fundamentally
regards the positing as a speech-act).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moreover, it is singularly Unchristian, inasmuch as <i>charity</i> is
one of the cardinal Christian virtues and “the quality of mercy is not
strained,” to represent a man who cannot keep a secret under pain of torture as
a Judas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The motives of the actual Judas
qua betrayer of his master and teacher as presented in the gospels are disputable,
but it is beyond dispute that that actual Judas was not in any way or to any
decree <i>coerced</i> into the betrayal by any sort of threat to his material
well-being, that he betrayed Jesus entirely voluntarily, and would have been
suffered to live no more uncomfortably than his eleven fellow-disciples had he
kept his secret to himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
relatively unbeardy soldier of <i>The Ascent</i> finds himself in an altogether
more life and limb-threatening situation and therefore must be judged much less
harshly than Judas by any aspirantly charitable Christian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As that famously un-self serving Christian
Sir Thomas Browne wrote in <i>Religio Medici</i>, way back in the 1630s,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">’Tis not in the power of every honest faith to
proceed thus farre [i.e., as the great Christian martyrs], or passe to Heaven
through the flames; every one hath it not in that full measure, nor in so
audacious and resolute a temper, as to endure those terrible tests and trialls,
who notwithstanding in a peaceable way doe truely adore their Saviour, and have
(no doubt) a faith acceptable in the eyes of God.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Finally, and not least damningly, the film’s unabashed twin-cum
mutually opposed equations of Communism with Christian theism and Nazism with
materialistic atheism are downright laughably, or, rather, revoltingly, at odds
with the historical record.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nazism was
at worst (or <i>best</i>, as far as an atheist should be concerned)
tendentiously atheistic in sidelining Christ and church-attendance in favor of
the <i>Führer und Vaterland</i>-worship-building rallies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure-ish, if Hitler &co. had had
their druthers, they would have abolished all the Christian churches and
formally deified the Führer in imitation of the ancient Romans’ apotheosis of
their emperors, but owing to intransigent resistance from the<i> gottesfürchtige(n)
Volk</i> (to whom they were quasi-paradoxically quite servilely compliant in
certain matters), these druthers were never formally codified, let alone
implemented, and even if they had been, they would have had absolute zilch to
say on the questions of the existence of a supreme all-governing deity and the
immortality of the soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By contrast
Soviet Communism—a.k.a. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Leninism—</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">included a denial of the
existence of a supreme being in its founding charter; hence, the swearing of
allegiance to the Soviet Communist Party always and in every case, and
intrinsically and perforce, entailed the sworn disavowal of the existence of a
supreme being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The virtual fact that
hundreds of thousands if not millions of sworn Soviet Communist Party members
were devout Christians (at least by Russian Orthodox standards [this snarkiness
will be explicated anon]) is of absolutely no relevance here, for however
ardently and intransigently these devout Christians may have been devoted to
the other articles in the credo of the Party, they could not but have regarded
its article of atheism as sacrilegious (if not blasphemous), as a traducement
of what they believed in <i>most</i> ardently and intransigently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence their Party membership could not but
have sat uneasily on their consciences; they could not but have regarded it as
something to be acknowledged as rarely and furtively as possible, and it
certainly never would have occurred to them to <i>boast</i> of this membership
immediately before being executed, at a moment when nothing was any longer to
be lost by affirming their more fundamental and hence overriding membership of
the super-community of Christians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moreover anyone who had been a member of the Party throughout the 1930s,
as the <i>The Ascent</i>’s Christ stand-in professes to have been, would have
been at least tacitly complicit in that Party’s worst acts of repression--the
show-trials, the unannounced abductions under cover of darkness, the mass
incarcerations and mass executions; atrocities certainly no less sanguinarily
brutal than the worst of those visited on the dramatis personae of <i>The
Ascent</i> by the Nazi-German Wehrmacht.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is ultimately in the light of this consideration, the consideration
of the Christ stand-in’s proud advertisement of his Party credentials at the
threshold of death, that even the least literal-minded, and therefore most
hifalutin interpretation of <i>The Ascent</i> --an interpretation that
lorgnette-flailingly maintains, “Well of course the dude himself isn’t actually
a Christian; rather, he’s embodying the infinitely fungible love-thy-neighborly
core of Christianity within the context of an atheistic cosmology”--must in all
good faith acknowledge that it hasn’t got a leg to stand on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For it is of course scarcely possible even to
conceive of anything less love-thy-neighborly than the Soviet Communist Party’s
treatment of hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens in the 1930s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I am obliged to leave out of consideration
the even more demographically devastating atrocities of the WWII years on the
grounds that the hero of <i>The Ascent</i> [albeit not Ms. Shepitko et al.]
would most likely not have been aware of them.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet again of course such anti-love-thy-neighborliness is very much
in keeping with the ruthlessness with which the film treats its supposed Judas
analogue, the non-beardy soldier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
when one synthesizes the film’s historical amnesia with this ruthlessness one
cannot but conclude that under the flimsy auspices of a Christological
semiotics, <i>The Ascent</i> actually and fundamentally promulgates not a
Christian but a <i>Stalinian </i>morality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And indeed even at a semiotic level, its Christological allegory readily
lends itself to being read as but a cipher for a higher-order Stalinological
one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the unbeardy soldier can be read
as Trotsky or Kirov, and the close-up on the beatific face of its Jesus figure
at the moment of his execution fairly begs to be read as the exact antitype of
the moment towards the end of Eisenstein’s <i>Alexander Nevsky</i> when that
film’s Stalin-typal hero both proclaims the solidity and permanence of his
reign and vows to crush all who would presume to challenge it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I realize—or, rather, assume—that this
Stalin-orientated interpretation might seem a trifle overreaching in the light
of the fact that <i>The Ascent</i> was released in 1977, nearly a
quarter-century after Stalin’s death and the nearly immediately ensuing
anti-Stalinist backlash, the so-called thaw; and a mere eight years before the
advent of <i>glasnost</i> and <i>perestroika</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I further assume—or, rather, dimly recall if
not quite realize—that the Sovietologist skulls have ready to temporal-bone
some sort of argument about a <i>refrigeration</i> tantamount to a revival of
Stalinism in the mid-Brezhnev period, an argument that can quite serviceably,
if mechanically, be made to account for the imposition of a Stalinist program
on <i>The Ascent</i> from on high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
the film’s very personnel roster militates victoriously against such a
Sovietologist(ic) explanation: Shepitko, its director, was a Tarkovsky
protegee, Solonitsyn, one of its principal actors, was Tarkovsky’s favorite
male lead, and its musical score was composed by Alfred Schnittke, an admirer
of Tarkovsky and the Soviet Union’s most illustrious—and consequently most
persecuted—exponent of hyperoccidental-style musical avant garde-ism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All signs point to <i>The Ascent</i>’s being
consciously conceived as a cinematic articulation of dissidence—and hence of a
presumptively anti-Stalinist worldview—in the Tarkovskian tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so naturally, acting on the virtually watertight
principle that [insert literal Russian translation of <i>The acorn seldom falls
far from the tree</i> here] one leafs through Tarkovsky’s pre-<i>Ascent</i>
dossier in search of proof that he was essentially, or at least tendentiously,
a Stalinist masquerading as a dissident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But such proof is really not to be found therein--for in the first
place, even in the most overtly Christological of his films, <i>Andrei Rublev</i>,
the protagonist is by no means simply a body-double for the Savior qua
unimpeachable authority-cum-embodiment of the ultimate good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For two things, inter alia, at an early point
in the film he is shown imagining the moment of Christ’s crucifixion as an
event in which he is in no respect involved (for herein it is quite obvious
that neither the actor playing Christ nor any of the bystanding actors is
Anatoli Solonitsyn), and such being the case, from the outset the diagetic
hermeneutic register preempts the allegorical one; from the outset Rublev is
posited as a Thomas à Kempis-esque <i>imitator</i> of Christ, and hence
disqualified from allegorically standing in for the Savior, let alone for some
ostensible Christ-successor such as Stalin; and at a latish point in the film
he is shown protecting a Russian woman from rape by slaying her Mongol would-be
ravisher and then expressing remorse at having done so—whereby he becomes
something of a Cain-like figure and distances himself at equal distances from
Christ qua Prince of Peace and Stalin qua Defender of the U.S.S.R. against
Attacks from the <i>Western</i> Hordes-cum-Gospodin Implacable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then (a.k.a. in the second place), one
must note Tarkovsky’s ever-recurring signaling of a conviction that the
near-eastern precincts of Christendom do not possess a monopoly on metaphysical
truth, and in particular his conviction that the Germanic world has at least
historically possessed a controlling share therein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One thinks eff-und-effmeist in this
connection of his first feature-length film, <i>Ivan’s Childhood</i>, which is,
like <i>The Ascent</i>, a film dramaturgically centered on Soviet citizens,
both military and civilian, defending the western frontier against German
invaders during the Great Patriotic War, but in which special cinematographic
emphasis is placed on page after page from a folio volume of Dürer engravings
that excite the admiration of its eponymous child hero in defiance of his utter
ignorance of Germans as anything other than an utterly inimical force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then in <i>Solaris</i> there are the
numerous lingering, scanning, searching shots of Breughel the Elder’s <i>Hunters
in the Snow</i> and the almost total domination of the musical soundtrack by
Bach’s chorale prelude <i>Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ</i> (circumspectly
secularized in the opening credits as “Bach’s Chorale Prelude in F
Minor”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, in Tarkovsky’s
first movie filmed outside the Soviet Union (specifically Italy) and with
partial foreign (presumably specifically Italian) financial backing, <i>The
Sacrifice</i>, there is a tedious amount of explicit bellyaching (voiced by a
Russian poet whose portrayal by a younger and more photogenic—and hence less
vatic gravitas-laden—actor than Solonitsyn was necessitated only by the
latter’s death) about Russia’s spiritual exceptionality and inscrutability by
(or <i>to</i>?) so-called Westerners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But of course this bellyaching is almost laughably easily dismissed as a
contingent manifestation of the filmmaker’s apprehensiveness about his
impending exile, about living somewhere in which he would incessantly be
required to take a stand on his Russianness, or rather his Russianness qua
stand-in for his ex-Sovietness, for his former acquiescence in a political
dispensation that ruthlessly curtailed freedom of expression, the circulation
of imported blue jeans, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present
writer, while quite strongly inclined to dismiss the bellyaching, is none too
strongly inclined to do so along such facile lines; rather, in the light of the
fact that <i>The Sacrifice</i> was filmed more than a half-decade after <i>The
Ascent</i>, he is inclined to think that by then Tarkovsky himself had been
swept into a vulgar Christological-cum-Russophilic-cum crypto-Stalinst <i>kinosgeistige</i>
current inaugurated by that 1977 flick, and hence was more or less doomed to
espouse its platitudes in his own movies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But if the spiritual cosmopolitan Tarkovsky could not escape being swept
into such a <i>kinosgeistige</i> current, we are confronted by a decidedly
ouroboric conundrum, a conundrum that impels us to seek out that current’s
headwater in some phenomenon of a more general, and indeed <i>weltgeistige</i>,
nature and momentum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer,
being almost entirely unschooled in the theological disparities between the
Eastern Orthodox versions of Christianity, including the Russian Orthodox
version, and those versions practiced and espoused in the
Protestant-cum-Catholic sector of what was formerly known as Christendom, is
presumably understandably chary of weighing in on the spiritual ethoses and
habituses of persons hailing from the Eastern Orthodox sector.<i> </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, as a person born, raised,
and braised in the Protestant-Catholic sector as a de facto atheist; i.e.,
someone who as a child was simply allowed to run wild on the
metaphysical-cum-theological plane (or plain) and never received any sort of
formal or informal religious indoctrination—and who, indeed to this day has
never even been bap-TIZED (to quote the idiolect of William Powell in <i>Life
of Father</i>, my stalwart private alter ego or quasi-saint vis-à-vis this
condition that is presumably still highly anomalous if the statisticians’
obdurate representation of the United States as a polity populated almost
entirely by churchgoing Bible-thumpers is to be believed) under the auspices of
any Christian faith, let alone confirmed therein (even if, for at least ostensibly
purely medical reasons, he has been subjected to a procedure that will allow
him to pass muster as a Jew in certain settings)—he at least fancies he is in a
fair position to think his way into the mindset of a fellow non-native believer
on the other side of the <i>other</i> Icey, the <i>spiritual</i> Icey (which of
course has never been exactly coextensive with the temporal Icey, as witnessed
by the cases of Greece, Poland, and certain sectors of the Balkans) who in
later life found or finds himself or herself inclined for whatever reason to
enter into some kind of fellowship with the faith of, if not his or father and
mother, then at any rate the faith of his or her first and second cousins two
or three times removed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He, the present
writer, at least fancies that such a person in his or her precipitous zeal to
catch up on all the spiritual <i>nourriture</i> that he or she at least fancies
(perhaps not without reason) that he or she has been missing out on for all
these decades, will find himself or herself unwittingly embracing certain
tenets and practices more or less stridently at odds with his or her
established ethos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He further in
consequence fancies that as it entered its collective midlife the dissident and
peri-dissident Soviet intelligentsia found itself unwittingly embracing many
such tenets and practices from the Russian Orthodox Church, tenets and
practices that were tantamount to those of the very Stalinism that in its
collective youth had constituted its nemesis-cum-<i>raison d’agir</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I write of a <i>collective midlife</i> I
do not mean merely the sum-total of the individual midlives of the dissident
and peri-dissident Soviet intelligentsia’s members; hence I am not describing
or perhaps rather about to describe some sort of Soviet analogue to the
sociocultural phenomenon notoriously dramatized-cum-cinematized in the
notoriously generation-defining 1983 American movie <i>The Big Chill</i>,
wherein a demographic cluster of virtual exact contemporaries who were at least
nominally committed to an at least nominally revolutionary ethos as youngsters
become brazenly politically quiescent as a well-nigh ineluctable epiphenomenon
of assuming the usual functions of adulthood in a radically bourgeois
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, by the year that I
have singled out as a watershed, 1977, the year of <i>The Ascent</i>’s
production, <span style="background: white; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">most
of the charter members of the Soviet dissident-cum-peridissident intelligentsia
who had escaped liquidation (e.g., Akhmatova and Shostakovich) were already
dead, and many of its leading lights, including Tarkovsky and Schnittke, were
well past early midlife (although, yet again, it is fitting and not accidental
that Shepitko, the watershed-marker, had not yet turned forty).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so by midlife here I mean a collective
quasi-psychological state arising out of this intelligentsia’s participation in
a society that was aging along with it as a larger and subsumptive
collective.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In its collective youth, a
period of life corresponding roughly to that of Stalin’s quasi-reign, this intelligentsia
had little need of spiritual succor from any officially chartered religion,
because it had a de facto faith in its reverence for the pan-European cultural
heritage of the preceding three centuries (within which the Russian sector
thereof, though highly regarded, by no means held undisputed pride of place)—for
the tradition of classical music from Bach to Schoenberg, the tradition of
great literature from Shakespeare to Alexander Blok, of great painting from
Rembrandt to Kandinsky, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it
believed that its adherence to this faith was in itself an act of political
opposition to the hegemonic ideology of Stalinism, for in addition to being a
tyrant Stalin was a philistine, at least vis-à-vis all cultural products of
post-mid nineteenth century vintage, and the great mass of Soviet citizens who
worshiped him were virtually illiterate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By the mid-1960s, Stalinism was, as they say, but a distant memory (as
any phenomenon of more than ten years’ antiquity is to the sub-middle aged),
and many, if not quite most, of the luminaries of the various modernist canons
had become if not quite <i>personae gratae</i> to the cultural gatekeepers of
the Soviet State then at least personae <i>non-non gratae </i>thereunto, as
witnessed, for example, by the elderly Shostakovich’s guarded use of
Schoenbergian twelve-note rows and <i>Klangfarbenmelodie</i> in his
instrumental works and poems by Rilke, Garcia-Lorca, Apollinaire, and Tsvetaeva
in his vocal music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet at the same
time, the dissident-cum-peri- dissident intelligentsia were by no means being
given carte blanche as <i>living</i> Soviet exponents-cum-continuers of the
modernist quasi-tradition, as witnessed, for example, by Tarkovsky’s difficulty
in securing domestic access to his films and Schnittke’s to his compositions
(apart from the film scores).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet at
another same (sic on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">another same</i>) time,
the Soviet State in its domestic orientation was turning into a sort of
laggardly and lower-key but (after its own duller fashion) quasi-reliable
imitator of its hyperoccidental quasi-governmental and non-governmental
counterparts qua implacable erector of residential
infrastructure-cum-outchurner of consumer goods, as we (or at least I) have
seen in <i>The Irony of Fate</i>, <i>Wings</i>, and the two Shurik movies, and
as was attested to by contemporary observers such as Jean Améry, who in his
1964 survey of the emerging post-Post World War II cultural landscape wrote,
“In the East...Marxism literally does not raise enough excitement to make a
dog, dozing behind a stove, prick up its ears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There the imagination of the people is kindled only by the mythology of
common production, of quantitative, objectively verifiable achievements
accomplished by horizontal work” (<i>Preface to the Future</i>, p. 133).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All this being the case, the Russian Orthodox
Church must have seemed reasonably attractive as a <i>pis aller</i> to all dissident
and peri-dissident <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">intelligents </i>who
were keen to signal and effectuate their opposition to the Soviet system yet
slightly reluctant-to-adamantly unwilling to forfeit their Soviet citizenship
along with certain other sub-Soviet affiliations (I am trying ever so
desperately hard to obviate recourse to the abominable word <i>id**t**y</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, like these <i>intelligents</i> it,
the ROC, was forced to keep a so-called low profile by the Soviet State, and by
habitus if not necessarily ethos it was opposed to all the prefabricated
trappings of the <i>bubliki</i>-cutter ethos-cum-habitus of relentless
production-cum-consumption that had taken seemingly permanent hold in all parts
of the pan-occident.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, the
ROC’s priests, unlike the university lecturers as which most of these <i>intelligents</i>
were compelled to earn their daily <i>khleb </i>(or <i>bubliki)</i>, officiated
not in off-the-rack GUM sack suits (for I somehow imagine the Alfred-esque
tailor of <i>Wings</i>, along with all but the most upmarket of his
hyperoccidental colleagues, to have given up the ghost [not to mention the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gost</i>] by 1977) and New Brutalist-<i>bubliki</i>-cutter
lecture halls, but in GUM-imperviously lavish ceremonial robes and infungible
pre-Soviet churches and cathedrals surmounted by all those lovely-to-lavish
onion-shaped cupolas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Note well that
three sentences ago I did not write that the ROC actually <i>was</i> a <i>pis
aller</i>, let alone <i>the sole</i> <i>pis aller</i> for these <i>intelligents</i>,
and I did not do so because while I do up to a point appreciate the expediency,
and indeed even the rationality, of this flight into the arms of the ROC, I by
no means believe that it was ineluctable or ultimately even excusable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, these <i>intelligents </i>could
and probably should have plied their Shakespeare, Beethoven, Pushkin,
Kandinsky, Tsvetaeva et al.-aut-c. like their predecessors and younger selves,
and probably some more than negligible proportion--and indeed possibly even the
majority--of them did just that; but so doing meant contenting oneself with an
admittedly highly demoralizing combination of obscurity and at least apparent
ineffectuality-cum-abject conformism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Those of them who could not bear to be out of the spotlight qua
standard-bearers of the apparent cutting edge of the <i>Östgeist</i></span></span>
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">qua apparent
cutting edge of the <i>Weltgeist</i> immersed themselves in the ascetically
chilling bath-waters of the ROC, <i>with devastating results</i>, as they
say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the short term the devastation
was evident only in the declining quality of their art**t*c output.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have already mentioned this decline in
connection with Tarkovsky, and it is equally starkly, albeit admittedly not as
consistently, evident in Schnittke’s work from <i>The Ascent </i>onwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, Schnittke was never a member of
the ROC and died a Roman Catholic, but the Christian-liturgical element that
figures so prominently in his later works owes much more to the spirit of the
ROC than to that (or those) imbuing the ecclesiastical compositions of the
great hyperoccidental composers with which his oeuvre otherwise unreservedly
affiliates itself; namely, Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven—and
indeed even Bruckner, the church organist whose chapel of most celebrated
residence, that of the monastery of <i>St. Florian</i>, is the eponym of Schnittke’s
Second Symphony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One might expect a
symphony so brazenly flying its Brucknerian ecclesiastical colors to avail
itself of the full panoply of post-Wagnerian instrumental, vocal, harmonic, and
melodic resources exploited by the organist of St. Florian himself in his own
masses and motets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to be sure, on
the instrumental side it employs an enormous orchestra in a manner that
Bruckner probably would not have discountenanced, a manner that indeed
suggests, <i>à la</i> Chuck Ives on the nature of his relation to Beethoven and
Prokofiev on his First Symphony’s Haydnian affinities, the sort of symphony
Bruckner himself would have written had he lived into the late twentieth
century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on the vocal side, which
sticks more tenaciously to the listener’s memory in being set off from the
tutti sections, there is nothing but a lot of rhythmically indifferent
monophonic modal choral chanting (whether it is technically <i>Gregorian</i> is
beyond the present writer’s sphere of competence, probably very much to his
credit) interspersed with soloistic interjections distinguishable only in
virtue of their solitude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is all
straight out of the soundtrack to some Time Life-BBC pseudo-documentary series
whiggishly puffing the wonders of post-Copernican science via a 16-mm film
sequence depicting a passel of monks alternately performing their drearily
routinized monastic rites by cloistered torchlight and gormlessly pointing
makeshift mirrorless telescopes at one another’s a(r/s)*s on the monastery roof
by moonlight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in the aggregate—i.e.,
vis-à-vis the symphony qua synthesis of the Bruckner-indebted orchestral
sections and the forbearing-from-partying-as-though-it were still 999-esque
vocal parts—one gets the impression that this work is principally intended not
to celebrate Bruckner qua dynastic inheritor-cum-improver of the legacy of
modern Catholic-cum-Protestant sacred vocal music from Bach to Beethoven but
rather to lasso him into the ambit of a purportedly primal and therefore
purportedly unimprovable sacred-vocal modus operandi of monkish simplicity and
thereby at kindest to pardon him condescendingly for having gratuitously
fancified and therefore corrupted that primal MO.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elsewhere in the latter part of his oeuvre,
Schnittke seems to abjure his crypto-Catholicism (while in no way compromising
his avowed and even flaunted catholicism on the musical plane, a musical
catholicism that he famously styled <i>polystylism</i>) by paying tribute to
the very letter of the ROC in making extensive use of the melodies of ROC chants
as thematic material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his 1979
concerto for piano and strings, for example, such a melody appears in its naked
form at two climactic points, points that have the effect, if not quite the
formal function, of signaling the end of the exposition and recapitulation,
respectively, of a sonata-form first movement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is of course highly tempting, or at least would be highly tempting to
someone writing in quite another context—i.e., that of having been commissioned
to showcase this work in the most flatteringly tradition-humping light (e.g.,
qua author of a summary of the work in a note to a recording or concert
program)—to extol these dual appearances as worthy continuations of the great
pan-occidental musical tradition of incorporating the essential material of
sacred vocal music into instrumental compositions of great power and complexity—as
in, e.g., Bach’s chorale preludes and too many Beethoven works to bear
mention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But such an extollation would
be fundamentally ill-founded, inasmuch as the Lutheran chorales were conceived
in not only melodic but also harmonic terms from the outset, and hence readily
lent themselves to plashless insinuation into the multiple currents of voice
leading from whose uninterrupted flow the great instrumental works of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries derived no small a proportion of their
greatness—this in devastating contrast to ROC chant, which, like the
early-medieval hyperoccidental monkish music employed in AS’s Second Symphony,
is strictly homophonic in conception and therefore amenable only to being
plastered like a bumper-sticker or temporary tattoo onto an instrumental work
in the hyperoccidental voice leading-driven tradition, and also (in unfavorable
contrast to early hyperoccidental monkish music) has the wearisome
characteristic of not so much lingering over individual notes as hammering away
at them over and over again like Khrushchev with his shoe at the United
Nations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, the two
moments in which the ROC erupts into the argument of Schnittke’s concerto
cannot fail to come across as moments of <i>naked</i> <i>regression</i>,
moments when the composer seems to be not so much letting his hair down as
sending his brain on a lunch break.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It
is perhaps not completely pointless to mention here that the only truly famous
instrumental musical composition in the pan-occidental classical tradition to
employ a(n) ROC chant melody is Tchaikovsky’s <i>1812 </i>Overture, in which,
as in Schnittke’s concerto, the melody figures at two moments—at the very
beginning, when its mezzoforte confinement to the lower strings renders its
iterative element fairly unobtrusive, and towards the very end, just before the
unleashing of the hyper-famous <i>pull-the-trigger-and-the-airplane flies </i>melody
[i.e., <i>the </i>melody of the <i>1812</i> as far as Bob or Suzy Independence
Day-celebrator is concerned], when its fortissimo tutti-ism renders it
unbearable [not only for the listener but also for the players, as Peter
Schickele {a.k.a. P.D.Q.} makes hilariously evident in his treatment of this
passage in his send-up of the <i>1812</i>, the <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">17</span>12</i> Overture: midway through the passage, there is a general
pause while all the members of the brass section take a highly audible deep
breath].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This mention may just be not
completely pointless because the <i>1812</i> is universally ridiculed as <i>bombastic</i>,
which suggests that the crudity of ROC chant music is of a sort that lends
itself peculiarly well to bombast, to loud but empty assertions of
strength.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Schnittke was by no means
alone among late Soviet composers in embracing Eastern Orthodox ecclesiastical
regression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sofia Gubaidulina, overall
the most forward-looking of the major late-Soviet composers, the main thread of
whose work is a development of certain tendencies in the music of Anton Webern
(such that in compositional terms she may be not inaptly styled a Russian
cousin of Pierre Boulez), has squandered a good portion of her compositional
energies on Christological works for something called the <i>bayan</i>, an
instrument which, at least as written for by SG, sounds like what the accordion
might have sounded like if it had been invented by the Scots as a replacement
for the bagpipes qua room-clearer of first resort.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, again, it is the non-harmonic-cum-iterative
character of the basic material that renders the music unlistenable--one
pictures the player of the instrument lackadaisically pumping the squeezebox
part of the instrument like a bellows with one hand and insistently slamming
the back of the other one into the keyboard as if to rouse it (the hand, not
the keyboard) out of numbness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In
Schnittke’s and Gubaidulina’s later music, the ROC-fetishizing strain becomes
highly pronounced, but fortunately it remains but a strain in a compositional
ethos-cum-techne that is most closely engaged with the great hyperoccidental
tradition, such that there is much of value even in the churchiest of their
late compositions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this residuality
of ROC-fetishism chez eux can afford but meager consolation to the admirers of
the pre-ROC fetishizing Soviet intelligentsia-cum-peri-intellgentsia as long as
AS and SG’s reputations are if not quite dwarfed then at least Tom
Cruise-heighted by a contemporary-cum-former compatriot of theirs who
embraced-cum-swallowed ROC-fetishism Aitch-Ell-and-Ess almost from the very
outset of his career and has remained cravenly devoted to it ever since.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am of course referring to that wily,
crafty, and, most reprehensibly of all, <i>beardy</i> Estonian Arvo Pärt. At
bottom and in essence, Pärt’s entire corpus consists of avowedly liturgical or
meta-liturgical compositions that wily-ly, craftily, and beardily mingle the
monotony of ROC chant with the complementary monotony of that vile barcode
scanner-humping pseudo-school of hyperoccidental sub-composition known as
minimalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At bottom and in essence,
Pärt is a sort of Eastern Orthodox John Rutter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But unlike Rutter’s, Pärt’s music is not relegated to serving as so much
mid-market middle-Anglo-American Christmas stocking-stuffing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the contrary, across the hyperoccident it
is fêted and fellated by if not quite the cognoscenti then at any rate the
indisputably hip (i.e., in this pseudo-age of instant access to everything
thought, said, or otherwise excreted, those who pride themselves on keeping
abreast not only of current fashions and subcultures but of the entire archive
of fashions and subcultures [at least up to a certain historical moment {i.e.,
ca. 1930}]) and his output of roughly the past quarter-century occupies a
substantial chunk of the catalogue of the upmarket German
prog-jazz-rock-cum-pseudo-classical record label DGM.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With the completion of the preceding sentence
I have quite evidently moved from a description of the <i>short-term and
artisitcally intrinsic devastation</i> wreaked by the late Soviet
intelligentsia-cum-peri-intelligentsia’s embracement of the ROC<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>to the longer-term and extrinsic devastation
wreaked thereby, inasmuch as I have begun referring to the <i>reception</i> of
the products of that embracement in the hyperoccident in a period extending far
beyond the collapse of the U.S.S.R. and indeed all the way to the present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mere survival of this embracement, or
rather, the mutual body lock-like embrace into which it seems to have
calcified, into the present deserves comment in the light of both my admittedly
purely conjectural earlier remarks on its genesis and the subsequent fortunes
of the ROC and the other EOCs in Russia and the other former S.F.S.R.s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The intelligentsia-cum-peri intelligentsia of
the 1970s—so I have conjectured and now re-conjecture in more figuratively
florid terms—embraced the ROC not as some sort of spiritual long-lost lover but
rather as an unfamiliar and rather forbidding <i>pis aller</i>, as the bride or
bridegroom of a sort of self-arranged politically expedient arranged marriage,
in consequence of the misappropriation of a substantial proportion of their <i>geistige</i>
canon by the Soviet political establishment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Such conjecturally having been the case, one might have expected them to
drop the ROC like an oven-fresh <i>bublik </i>(or indeed perhaps even like an
arranged marriage-imposed spouse) with the dissolution of the Soviet State qua
misappropriator of <i>geistige </i>products.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet they would seem to have done no such thing, and I infer this not
only from the comportment of solidly post-Soviet composers in the former Soviet
republics but also from the comportment of the Russian filmmaker Andrey
Zvyagintsev, who would seem to be regarded in the hyperoccident as the most
significant of all the Russian cinematic auteurs to have come to international
prominence since the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., and indeed to be the
undisputed and indisputably worthy heir of Tarkovsky. (Having been born in
1964, Zvyagintsev spent all his formative years in the Brezhnev epoch, came of
age just before the advent of glasnost and perestroika, and was just beginning
his professional career in 1991.) I have seen three of Zvyagintsev’s movies,
and all three of them peddle the same theologically-cum-morally regressive
crypto-Stalinist Russian Orthodox Christology as is peddled in <i>The Ascent</i>,
and perhaps, indeed, an even cruder, more brutally regressive version of that
Christology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i>The Return</i>, a
to-all-appearances completely functional and love-saturated household
consisting of a youngish woman, her two teenaged sons, and her mother is thrown
into chaos, as they say, by the unannounced appearance of the husband (or
perhaps ex-husband) of the younger woman-cum-father of the boys, a former
Soviet fighter (or bomber?) pilot who has been inexplicably absent for a dozen
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immediately after his arrival he
inexplicably and therefore inexcusably falls into a quasi-coma that requires
him to be put to bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His shirtless
recumbancy affords Zvyagintsev an entirely inexplicable and therefore entirely
inexcusable excuse to film him from the foot of the bed in a mise-en-scène that
flagrantly recalls Mantegna’s<i> Lamentation of Christ</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In inexplicable etc. defiance of his wife’s
wishes, the dude takes the boys on a road trip in the course of which he
relentlessly vituperates them as unregenerate sluggards and sissies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually (and not before parking their car
and getting into a boat) the trio arrive at a quasi-desert island which only
then transpires to have been the ultimate goal of the trip on account of its
containing some object that the father buried and now wishes to disinter (yes:
just like a pirate treasure [<i>Avast!</i>, <i>Shiver me timbers!</i>, and/or <i>Aaar!</i>]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They dig up the object, a small box of
unmistakably military provenance; then one of the sons (specifically the
younger and more sissy-ish [i.e., halfway sane and decent] of the two) climbs
up some sort of makeshift observation tower and threatens to throw himself off
it (and who with a monster like our piratic treasure hunter as a permanent
fixture in his life can be blamed for doing otherwise?), prompting his father,
who has been trailing him, to cry out “My son!” and catch hold of him and save
him from falling at the cost of plunging to the ground and his own death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The boys carry his body, along with the
martial treasure-box, to the boat and head back to the mainland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About midway through their passage the box
starts behaving mightily peculiarly, bouncing ponderously up and down as though
chock-full of an imperial or metric ton(ne) of Mexican (or, rather Nicaraguan
[because both mainland Central-American and at least intermittently Communist,
natch]) jumping beans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bouncing
becomes ever more ponderous and insistent, until eventually, just after the two
lads have stepped ashore from the newly alighted boat, the box smashes a hole
into the dinghy, which promptly sinks, dragging both the box and the dead dad
down to the then not-yet-late Davy Jones’s locker (not that a seabed a foot or
two below the surface is a very secure locker, but in this flick it’s always
the thought [or lack thereof] that counts).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The boys then drive off in the car; and that, naturally enough in so
blokey a film, is all he wrote: there is no reunion scene with the mother and
grandmother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At bottommost, <i>The
Return</i> is reprehensible for its eye-burstingly self-evident advocacy of an
intrinsically misogynistic notion that bizarrely enough seems to enjoy
considerable prestige even in the least macho, the most gynophile, corners of
the present-day hyperoccident--the notion that a boy is destined to an
altogether deficient existence if he grows up in the absence of a father or
father-surrogate qua masculine so-called role model.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I recall, the movie opens with a scene in
which the younger (and altogether better) of the two boys is too scared to take
a dive off a diving board (yes,yes,yes: proleptic [albeit ultimately misconceived]
anti-shades of his all-too-eager rush to throw himself off the observation
tower) and is soothed rather than chastised for his timorousness by his
mother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the light of all that follows
the return of the father, the implication of this scene is that the boy would
most certainly not have been scared to take the plunge if his father had never
taken off--if, in other words, the boy had had a father in his life from birth
onwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, as a man who has had a
father in his life from birth onwards and yet has never managed to screw up the
courage (or, rather, as he has always seen it, <i>foolhardiness</i>) to swim in
water deeper than his own height, let alone take a dive off a diving board, the
present writer cannot but reflexively regard the above implication as absolute
bollocks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously the chief requisite
to overcoming a child’s fear of diving is a swimming coach of either sex
dedicated and pushy enough not to take <i>I don’t wanna</i> or <i>I’m scared</i>
for an answer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer, who
received all his tutelage in natation over the course of a handful of
nursery-school trips to a YMCA, hence as one of a dozen or so children taught
as a group, evidently did not have such a swimming teacher and consequently
cannot now be brought to swim in water deeper than his own height, etc., but
this consequence is of little moment to him because, as hinted in the most
recent parenthesis, he regards swimming in most of its contexts as a dangerous
activity best avoided by anyone less keen on being in the water than on not
drowning; and he regards it in this disfavoring light not, as the DGR (who has
forborne from thumping on the side of his cage for so long that I am
half--albeit <i>only</i> half--of a mind to let him out for a spell) would
demur, because he is caught up in <i>a vicious circle of fear </i>that was set
turning by his inadequate tuition in natation, but, rather, because swimming <i>actually
is a dangerous activity</i>, as is attested by, for example, the recent (2016)
simultaneous drowning deaths of five able-bodied swimmers at the almost
notoriously placid beach called Camber Sands, in Sussex, England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what is true of swimming is doubtless
true of all other so-called life skills supposedly inculcatable solely by a
father--a human male ordinarily can live a longer and less miserable life by
remaining incompetent at them, and supposing he cannot, there are usually
plenty of extra-paternal sources of tuition in them ready to hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, I indeed very well might have
starved to death by now (i.e., for lack of presentability at job interviews in
my twenties, altho‘ were I on the so-called market as a younker now, I presume
the counterfactual skill-deficiency in question would be a positive asset,
provided I had a properly shaggy beard) had I not learnt the essential masculine
skill of tying a four-in-hand necktie knot as a lad, but I was not taught this
skill by my father or any other man via personal tuition; rather, I learnt it
from a diagram in a book, possibly one of those books wherein the skills a Cub
Scout had to prove himself proficient in before graduating to Boy Scoutdom were
enumerated and described, although if so, my learning of that-there
four-in-hand knot was almost certainly a case of voluntary self-tuition, for
(al)tho‘ I have not been impelled to go through life saddled with the peerless
opprobrium of having been <i>kicked out of the Webelos</i>, by the time I
quitted the Cub Scouts I had attained at most the second of the three or four
pre-graduation merit levels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if not
quite enough altogether about the present writer (for in all modesty he regards
his own stint in the Cub Scouts as an intrinsically richer discursive mine than
Zvyagintsev’s <i>Return</i>), then admittedly slightly more than enough
thereabout for the currently exigent Volga Boatmen-exhaustingly tedious task of
plotting the genealogy of this abominable ROC cum Stalin-humping
ethos-cum-habitus: this flick’s father-fixation would be at least anecdotally
redeemable, however empirically and categorically ill-founded in general terms,
if the father’s unexpected supervention in his sons’ lives were attended by any
sort of disinterestedly paternal attention to their education--if he were seen
teaching them how to fish or skeet-shoot or, indeed, cow-tip, or indeed<i> </i>do
<i>anything</i> provided it had no immediately conceivable bearing on his
monomaniacal pursuit of his--<i>Aaaaaar!</i>--quasi-piratic booty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But inasmuch as this pursuit is <i>utterly</i>
monomaniacal, such that the father’s orientation to his sons is nothing but an
epiphenomenon of this monomania, or rather, much more often than not, an <i>epi</i>-epiphenomenon
of this phenomenon (i.e., a consequence of the father’s frustration at not
being able to find the booty quickly enough), it has no lessons to impart to
the boys apart from the highly dubious one that grown men are monomaniacal
assholes and that as one grows into manhood one must either submit to being
treated as an utterly passive tool-cum-punching bag of other men or treat other
men (and boys and presumably also women [although as I recall, to his sole
credit the booty-hunter is not presented as a wife-beater]) as utterly passive
tools-cum-punching bags.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This unabashed
advocacy of the ruthless exertion of personalized masculine power as the
ultimate good qua end in itself constitutes an endorsement of Stalinism whose unqualified
full-throatedness is as far as I know unprecedented in the history of cinema
(inasmuch as Eisenstein’s two surrogate hagiographies of Josef Vissarionovich
at least advance the admittedly dubious eggs-and-omelet-esque argument that
such brutality is being exerted in the service of a worthy goal).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even as I closed out that last
parenthesis I could hear the DGR howling from his cage (and consequently
unifying my mind in the resolution not to let him out even for the briefest of
flush toilet-centered pee breaks), “But don’t you see, you s****ng imbecile?:
Zvyagintsev isn’t celebrating Stalinism in this film; rather, he’s <i>vilifying</i>
it in the proverbial no-uncertains, and, moreover, in the most brilliantly
conceivable way--viz., by the very means that you in your abject imbecility
regard as the helpmeets of celebration: he is showing the father behaving so
relentlessly horribly to his sons not because he approves of this behavior ever
so slightly, but rather because he vehemently <i>disapproves</i> of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Talk about your no-brainer of all
no-brainers!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here the DGR is
forgetting, or rather not forgetting but willfully obtusely failing to take
into account, the film’s none-too-subtle Christological allegorical
supertext--the sudden unexpected appearance of this man <i>who has just fallen
to earth</i>; this same man’s commitment to a mysterious mission the
particulars of whose telos he refuses to disclose even to his closest
disciples, such that they must accept its worthiness on faith; his double
presentation in an unambiguously sanctifying post-crucifixual Christ-like
posture--once in the aforementioned bed scene, and again in the boat after his
death, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Zvyagintsev had wished to
convey a sense of the wrongness of the sort of brutality that is exerted by the
father in <i>The Return</i>, he ought to have imposed a <i>Satanological</i>
allegorical supertext on the movie: he ought to have, for example, shown the
father leaning against a towering rock and distractedly clutching at side of
his head as in Doré’s famous (and indeed <i>iconic</i>, if a hyperoccidental
engraved representation of the Antichrist can be non-blasphemously described as
such) depiction of the anti-hero of <i>Paradise Lost</i>, or less subtly and
therefore more sure-firedly, sleeping upside-down on a wall or parking in a bus
stop or refraining from apologizing after noisily breaking wind in an
elevator--in other words, basically to have pulled out every stop at his
disposal by way of demonstrating that this father was the exact antithesis of a
nice guy qua surrogate for HRH JH von Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Like virtually every other generator (not by any means to be confused
with a <i>progenitor</i>, let alone a <i>creator</i>) of supposedly highbrow
cultural goods in our time, regardless of his or her national-political
provenance, Zvyagintsev fails to understand (for I refuse to credit him with
enough <i>Besonnenheit</i> to bamboozle or hoodwink his viewers vis-à-vis this
hermeneutic register) that a dramaturgical composition (and I subsume not only
films and plays but also novels under this heading) is not simply a semiotic
salmagundi<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>into which the generator can
just hapharzardly cram every symbol and topos in the book (or indeed even
Book); that it is, rather, a semiotic force-field in which deference must be
given to the associations historically evoked by every name, phrase, image,
etc. one might wish to include, and from which must be excluded every name,
phrase, image, autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>evocative of some
entity or quality that contradicts the givens that one has already established
vis-à-vis some other name, phrase, image autc. (The locus classicus here is the
character of Iago in Shakespeare’s <i>Othello </i>as analyzed by Samuel Johnson
in a footnote to the play in his edition of Shakespeare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Iago, says Johnson therein, is undoubtedly a
very witty and ingenious person, and so Shakespeare sagely forestalls our
falling in love with his wit and ingenuity by also presenting him as pettily
vindictive from beginning to end, as he is obliged to do because Iago’s
fundamental dramaturgical function is to serve as an agent-cum-embodiment of <i>vice</i>.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If one wishes to present a character as
Stalinesquely tyrannical, one cannot also present him as a Christ surrogate
because historically Christ has been seen as the antithesis of a tyrant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The acknowledgement of this historical fact
by no means entails asserting that the empirical, historical Christ was indeed
the or even a such antithesis or even denying that the Gospels themselves
afford abundant hermeneutic grounds for conceiving of him (note the
pre-Evangelical, High-Church lower-case haitch) as a Stalinesque tyrant, but it
most certainly does entail the supposedly high cultural goods generator’s
unambiguous adoption of the Christ narrative as his diagesis and the
iconography of Stalin (ditto, <i>mutatis mutandis</i>, the above parenthesis on
Doré) as the source of his supertextual signposts--this by way of emphatically
overriding the historical received view of Christ as the Prince of Peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The resulting play, film, or novel might, for
example portray or describe a figure passing through all the familiar episodes
of the Gospels--the Sermon on the Mount, the procession into Jerusalem, etc.,
right on up to the crucifixion and ascension--while clad in a military tunic
with a turned-down collar and sporting a peaked military cap and a Levantine
moustache.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a <i>Vorstellung</i> or <i>Schauspiel</i>
would effectively-cum-unmistakably convey the message that Christ was basically
-cum-essentially a Josef Stalin <i>avant la lettre</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i>The Return</i> Zvyagintsev generated no
such <i>Vorstellung</i> or <i>Schauspiel</i> because of course he wanted in
vain both to have and eat both his eucharist and two side-bubliki in perpetual
rotation--he wanted to imply that paternal bullying is virtuous and Christ-like
in some utterly unspecified ways and vicious and Stalin-like in likewise
utterly unspecified ways, and he ended up implying merely and viciously that
Stalin was the super-apotheosis of Christ and the modern post-Soviet dad the
super-apotheosis of both Christ and Stalin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In <i>Elena </i>(2011), the eponymousness of the film’s female lead
clumsily belies the fact that here Zvyagintsev is merely and entirely
reinforcing the macho Stalin-humping morality inculcated in <i>The Return</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elena is a ca. fifty-year-old former nurse
who retired early upon marrying one of her patients, a slightly older rich
dude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the beginning of the film and
over dinner in their swanky Moscow flat, she and her husband are at loggerheads
over whether or not they (meaning effectively he, as she makes no financial
contribution to the household) should continue to support her unregenerate
total wastrel of a son and his equally useless <i>kuchka</i> of
dependents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the course of their spat,
the husband uses the word гедонистический or <i>gedonisticheski</i>--i.e., <i>hedonistic</i>--and
Elena remarks that she does not know what that word means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Via this linguistic <i>malentendu</i>
Zvyagintsev means to signal that Elena is of proletarian origin and therefore
entitled to an unlimited line of credit on the viewer’s lachrymal ducts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What he actually thereby signals is that on
the intellectual plane Elena is no less of a wastrel than her son, inasmuch as <i>gedonisticheskii</i>,
like its English analogue, is a by-no-means esoteric Greek loan word that any
adult Russophone with half a brain and half an inclination to use it should be
conversant with even if he or she has never graduated from secondary school (as
one assumes a nurse must have done).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When her husband tells her he not only plans to stop supporting her
son’s family but also to disinherit them, she kills him with an overdose of
Viagra, whereupon the son and co. join her in the now half-less crowded
connubial apartment that along with a mightily hefty sum of cash she enjoys as
the fruits of her widowhood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Predictably,
hyperoccidental critics have fallen all over themselves and one another
praising Elena as an indomitably strong feminist hero and <i>Elena</i> as a
searing critique-cum-blistering indictment of the patriarchal-cum-oligarchical
essence of early twenty first-century Russian society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And no less predictably, the present writer
must fall all over himself (though mercifully in his solitude he is spared the
pain and embarrassment of falling all over anyone else) denouncing these
praisers’ appraisal of the film as absolute poppybollocks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The attentive reader, DG or otherwise, will
have noticed that these praisers’appraisal echoes verbatim the received
hyperoccidental appraisal of my beloved <i>Wings</i>, and the fatuity of that
appraisal is an exact hermeneutic mirror of this one--in that appraisal, the
received hyperoccidental appraisal of <i>Wings</i>, an implacable patriarchal
bogeyman is conjured up ex nihilo to the perverse derogation of the film’s
eloquent depiction of the inner life and external achievements of a woman of great
abilities and extraordinary courage; in this appraisal, the received
hyperoccidental appraisal of <i>Elena</i>, a patriarchal homunculus is puffed
up into a Holifernes by way of perversely magnifying the horrendously
despicable crime of a woman of limited abilities, negligible initiative, and
nonexistent scruples--in short, an extremely poor stupid woman’s Lady Macbeth
(i.e., a virtual carbon copy of the heroine of Shostakovich’s opera [on whom
she was doubtless deliberately patterned])—into an act of Judith-esque
heroism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly and understandably,
Elena is sentimentally attached to her son despite his unregenerate and
seemingly incurable wastrelism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Admittedly, her husband is rather frostily standoffish at his best
moments—but is not his frosty standoffishness at least mildly preferable to her
son’s brazen assholishness at his best moments?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Admittedly, the couple’s sexual life seems not to be organized along
very ethical lines, inasmuch as despite seemingly having lost all erotic interest
in her now that she is decidedly no longer young, he seems to expect her to
coit with him at the dee of an aitch; admittedly their marriage rather
appallingly seems to be <i>loveless </i>without being <i>sexless</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is no indication that she is being
even ever so gently physically coerced to stay in this marriage; she seems to
have complete liberty of movement--notably, complete liberty to visit her son’s
family during the considerable stretches of time when her husband is away, and
there is indeed nothing to stop her from simply refusing to return from one of
these visits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, such a refusal
would at least initially entail her putting up with her bairn’s assholishness
in much closer and otherwise more disagreeable quarters--the family’s cramped,
spartan, high-rise apartment, an <i>Irony of Fate</i>-reminiscent relic of the
Soviet era--than her connubial digs, and in the light of her son’s apparently
incorrigible ingratitude and fecklessness, it would also probably entail her
returning to work as a nurse or in some other capacity--and most likely some
other capacity, and most likely some less remunerative capacity, for having
been out of nursing for several-to-many years, she would most likely no longer
be qualified for a position in that sub-profession, but she really should have
thought of that before chucking it all in sub-professionally upon becoming
engaged to that awful rich dude, shouldn’t she have done?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granted, at the film’s opening, Elena is in
a tight spot, but it is a tight spot largely of her own making-cum-tightening,
and one whose prevailingly matrimonial character she is at liberty to swap for
a prevailingly maternal or alimental one at any time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, it is absolutely unpardonable
in her to extricate herself from this spot (or, rather, and more damnably,
merely make it slightly looser, as she in fact does) by killing her husband;
and indeed only a caveman-humping worldview that regards patriarchal masculine
power as an implacable buck-stopper, as the holder of each and every card
(including the queens) in the deck, as a force that can be challenged or
opposed only via the outright death of its individualized embodiers—i.e.,
exactly in the manner in which Stalinism supposedly came to a definitive end
thanks exclusively to the death of Stalin—can conceivably regard this homicide
in any attitude more flattering than that of utter contempt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course it is just such a worldview
that Mr. Zvyagintsev wholeheartedly espouses, or at least brazenly affects
wholeheartedly to espouse, as can be gathered from a moment in an interview on
the DVD of<i> Elena</i> in which he asserts for the supposed enlightenment of
his presumptively utterly Russo-benighted hyperoccidental viewers (not, of course,
without first sighing and then miming the inhalation of a hefty toke from the
mouthpiece of a hookah tube connected to his own anus) <i>in contrast to the
enlightened societies of the hyperoccident, since ancient if not precambrian
times and right on up through to the present, Russian society always has been a
thoroughly patriarchal society, a society completely and ineluctably dominated
by men </i>(or<i> </i>words very close to that effect).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course the present writer knows better
than this; or, at any rate, as the reader is or at least should be aware, the
present writer is well enough acquainted with the history of Russian-cum-Soviet
cinema to know that certain films of postcambrian<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>yet pre-Zvyagintsevian vintage do not evince
such a meta-patriarchal conception of Russian or Soviet society, and that
indeed a fair number of such films posit a conception thereof that is virtually
meta-egalitarian on the plane of so-called gender relations--films such as <i>The
Cranes Are Flying</i>, in which a woman is effectively (in both senses)
depicted in non gender-specific terms, as the average Soviet citizen during the
Great Patriotic War (which is not to say that her sufferings are confined to
those sufferable by men and women interchangeably, that they are not sometimes
of a kind possibly unintelligible by men, but merely that from the moment of
the death of her fiancé onwards she unequivocally becomes both the protagonist
of the film and a consequently the privileged witness of and participant in a
catastrophe involving not only her but also her fellow-Soviets, who are
likewise unjustly suffering); such as <i>Letter Never Sent</i>, in which a
young woman is an integral and indispensable part of an exploratory scientific
expedition and in which not a single (or married) man presumes to relegate her
to a position of subordinate teleological importance (although of course, the
same lazy, irresponsible hyperoccidental hermeneutic habitus that reveres <i>Elena</i>
as a feminist masterpiece presumably asserts that the mere fact that two men evince
a simultaneous and competitive erotic interest in this young woman relegates
her to a position of abject victimhood; but of course this selfsame habitus
self-servingly forgets that a pair of sharp words from her suffices to nip the
pair’s rivalry in its cods); such as <i>The Irony of Fate</i>, in which a
youngish woman summarily discards a lover who in terms of his socioeconomic
status and power is the perfect late-Soviet analogue of the husband in <i>Elena</i>--viz.,
a high-ranking Communist-Party functionary with permission to travel outside
the Union--for the sake of marrying a man of considerably inferior
socio-econo-political wherewithal; and finally, and most magnificently, <i>Wings</i>,
in which an older woman voids the field occupied by her milquetoast
contemporaries of both sexes with a combination of administrative and
aviational prowess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course
Zvyagintsev could—and doubtless would, and perhaps someday even <i>will</i>
(i.e., if he happens to be both less famous and a more ardent self-Googler than
a certain Tim Page, and if the transliterative software is up to par)—respond
to this parade of cinematic unblokiness by blasély and ever-so-condescendingly
remarking that these films cannot be regarded as faithful representations of
the Russian or peri-Russian society of their respective times, inasmuch as
quite apart from the fact that (here he would or will doubtless take another
toke from the anal hookah and cast a sidelong glance expressive of <i>Get load
of this-here glup</i> at his hyperoccidental adulators) <i>cinema never shows
or tells the complete and transparent truth</i>, they were produced under the
auspices of a totalitarian political regime and therefore are reflective first
and foremost and indeed exclusively of that regime’s inherently repressive
point of view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to this rejoinder I
may and shall legitimately counter-rejoin that by this selfsame toke-in,
Zvyagintsev’s films, being cinematic productions themselves, cannot be
clear-eyedly regarded as completely and transparently truthful representations
of the at least-officially peri Russian-bereft Russian society of their own
time, and moreover that having been and continuing to be produced under the
auspices of a regime that, if not exactly totalitarian in practice is at any
rate not anti-totalitarian even in principle, they cannot be declared free of
ideological doping by that regime by any conscientious cinephilic medical
examiner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granted, the gynophilic tenor
of the films I have cited may ultimately have been imposed from on high, i.e.,
by Politburo-humping apparatchiks, but this by no means axiomatically implies
that that tenor was conjured forth entirely ex nihilo, that it had as little
reference to then-present Soviet realities as would have had, say, the
counterfactual setting of the films in question in some unmistakably
extra-Soviet setting such as Ruritania, Erewhon, or Flatland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is possible and indeed not unlikely that
Soviet society between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s was more misogynistic
and androphilic than it is portrayed in these movies, but that does not mean
that the macho bravado was universally prevalent and quiescently yielded to,
let alone endorsed; and indeed it seems reasonable to suppose from the majority
of these films’ warm reception by their target(ed) audiences (audiences who always
did have other, more brazenly blokier choices, both onscreen and off--notably
in both live and televised sports) that most Russians and peri-Russians of the
mid-twentieth century were on the whole quite well-disposed towards sexual
egalitarianism, even if this principle was not fully realized in the
organization of their actual lifeworlds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps in terms of their relationship to social reality, these films
may be most appositely compared to certain American television situation
comedies of the 1970s—to, for example, <i>All in the Family</i> (of course), <i>The
Mary Tyler Moore Show</i>, <i>The Jeffersons</i>, and <i>Barney Miller</i>,
sitcoms that went out of their way to present characters of both sexes and two
or more races occupying social positions exacting more than a modicum of
respect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These sitcoms, like all their
predecessors on American television, were undoubtedly conceived and developed
by fairly-to-filthy rich people (I balk at styling them rich <i>white men</i>
on the grounds that there were women and so-called persons of color in
positions of power and influence even in the Hollywood of those days [even if I
dare not mention the most powerful and influential of these selfsame persons by
name in the light of their subsequent political fortunes and the danger of
metonymic contamination thereby]) with a certain (albeit by no means <i>static</i>)
political-cum-social agenda and so should by no means be regarded as presenting
a mimetically accurate picture of American society in the micro-epoch of their
production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And indeed, most likely the
then-present American social fabric was less sexually and racially integrated
than the casts and diageses of these sitcoms, but BTST these sitcoms
undoubtedly scored very high Nielsen ratings and hence must have presented a <i>Gesellschaftsbild</i>
that was inoffensive and even congenial to a plurality if not outright majority
of the American public—even in the heart or, rather, buckle of the so-called
Bible belt and bottommost white-meat-only barbecue pit in the so-called Deep
South.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the 1970s, the American
sitcomscape, and indeed the entire American movie-cum-TVscape, has undoubtedly
become both more tribalized and less inculcative of a message of pan-social
comity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The producers of the most
critically and box-officially acclaimed American <i>Gesellschaftsbilder</i> of
this succeeding mini-epoch would have us believe that this change has been
owing entirely to a greater degree of conscientious verisimilitude <i>chez eux</i>—a
verisimilitude owing in turn, and in ever-fluctuating proportions (i.e.,
depending on the auto-prostitutional exigencies of the self-publicizing
opportunity immediately to hand), to their superior prowess as so-called
creative artists and their superior demographic bona fides; they would have us
believe, in other words, that the United States has always been as appallingly
racist, misogynistic, homo-trans-gender-queer-phobic, etc., as they are
representing it, that in representing it as such they are merely stripping away
the, erm, <i>non-meta-religiously inflammatory word for a visually im****tr***e
covering</i> that previously concealed its racist autc. <i>non-sexually-politically
inflammatory word for something shameful that lies beneath a visually
im****tr***e covering</i>; and that they are able to do this because unlike
their predecessors of three or four decades ago they are proper artists solely
beholden to their own utterly infungible creative vision rather than utterly
passive mere pieceworkers abjectly dedicated to sucking off the racist autc.
status quo; and second, in themselves hailing from the respective demographic
niches they are representing, in being themselves black, gay, autc., they enjoy
an intimate and indeed downright hypercoitional understanding of the utterly
infungible and unsurpassable sufferings of the hominids peopling their
diageses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for aught I know they may
be right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, people laughed at
Christopher Columbus, Bill Marconi, Bob Hope, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I would venture to hazard firstly and
more charitably that it is also not utterly impossible that while the <i>Gesellschaftsbilder
</i>proffered by these latter-day self (and by all means legitimately)-styled
artists are indeed every micropixel as verisimilitudinous as their generators
represent them to be, in rendering their doubtlessly utterly infungible
services as <i>Gesellschaftsbildsteller</i> they are not unv**ling a state of
affairs that has remained unchanged since the 1970s but rather taking a
snapshot, so to speak, of a state of affairs that has by no means inevitably or
ineluctably regressed, degenerated, deteriorated, or what have you since then;
that once upon a specific time, namely the 1970s, there was anchored in the
harbor of the American <i>Volksgeist</i> a cargo ship--let us summarily retroactively
christen her the <i>U.S.S. Concordia</i>--laden almost (but not quite) to
bottom-on-bottom frottage with possibilities of reconciliation across, within,
amidst, and athwart, each and every demographic segment and spectrum, and that
if that ship has subsequently sailed and sunk owing to the contingent blasts of
a <i>weltgeistig(e)</i> hurricane, this is no skin off the noses of the
shipbuilder, the stockers, or the crew--in other words [but by no means
respectively, for scarcely anyone involved did not serve in one of these three
groups at one moment or another], the men, women, and children [among the last
of which the present author then figured] of that decade who strove or even
merely affected to expedite the emergence of an American society wherein, for
example (viz., one taken from <i>Barney Miller</i>), saucy (not by any means to
be confused with <i>sassy</i>) Afro-sporting African-American dandies could
undiscriminatingly rub elbows with sardonic WASP-American nerds, stroppy
Stonewall-American drag queens, lugubrious Chinese-American bachelors, and
fearless Italo-Judaic-American coppesses; inasmuch as they (the shipbuilder et
al.) were if not necessarily entirely sincerely then at any rate quite
vigorously having a go at achieving their aim (i.e., I suppose, anchoring in a
foreign port whose name happened to coincide with that of the ship [I confess
that the conceit, in contrast to the state of affairs it denotes, is not built
for long journeys]), such that if they had been left to pursue it, they might
very well have attained it--and, indeed, perhaps they <i>did</i> attain it; and
this conjecture brings me to my second, and less charitable, hazard-venture
vis-à-vis the present litter of American <i>Gesellschaftsbildsteller</i>--viz.,
that the American <i>Gesellschaftsbild</i>, or more precisely the
recent-to-present American <i>Gesellschaftswesen </i>(i.e., not merely the
image but the essence of present American society) has by no means been as dire
as they would have us believe--at least on the plane of relations between and
among the so-called races, classes, etc. (for on certain other planes it may
be, and as I have and shall further argue, actually is much direr than they can
even imagine), and that it merely <i>seems</i> to be and have been as dire as
it is in this litter’s <i>Gesellschaftsbilder</i> because each member of this
litter has a vested (or two piece-suited [all credit or discredit for this
parenthesis must go to Peter Schickele]) interest in making it look much more
dire than it is or has been by way of augmenting the admiration or pathos
accruable to the heroism or suffering of the demographic segment to which he,
she, autc. is materially and spiritually beholden as its self or
otherwise-appointed standard bearer--thus, for exactly one example (for to
adduce any further examples would be to unpack so much further identical
pack-thread) a member of this litter would finagle us into supposing that
because the NASA moon missions relied at a sub-conceptual level on certain
calculations supplied by black women, NASA never would have succeeded in putting
a person of either or any gender on the moon if it had had to have recourse to
white men for these calculations, and, indeed that NASA would have brought a
person (and undoubtedly specifically a black<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>woman) onto the moon much more swiftly had each and every white man on
its senior staff been replaced by one of these black female calculators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A just representation of the SOA to hand in
this case would by contrast celebrate a governmental-industrial dispensation
that allowed certain persons of substantial but by no means phenomenal
mathematical prowess to support themselves, and that more handsomely, via their
moderate-wattaged brainpower instead of by scrubbing floors like their
immediate forebears (who in turn may have been obliged to scrub floors less
principally on account of the color of their skin than on account of the lack
of a so-called market for their modest intellectual talents [the present writer
at least affects to fancy that he knows whereof he speaks, altho’ he declines
to be more specific for fear of being given the loftiest of high-hats by his
better-heeled, albeit unimpeachably <i>bienpensant</i>, readers]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But such a representation would not allow
black American women to feel much cleverer than the NASA scientists and
astronauts simply in virtue of existing, or, collaterally, <i>bienpensant</i>
white people across the hyperoccident to feel much more virtuous than those
scientists and astronauts simply in virtue of being outraged at the
calculators’ supposed maltreatment. BTST, I conjecture that the Soviet Union of
the mid-1950s onwards was undeviatingly and unretreatingly on a trans-Siberian
track to becoming as egalitarian-cum-meritocratic a polity-cum-society as the
world has yet achieved, which is to say at least no less egalitarian-cum-meritocratic
a polity-cum-society than any polity-cum-society in the contemporaneous or
succeeding hyperoccident, which is further to say a polity-cum-society wherein,
yes, people in positions of official or quasi-official authority do enjoy a
disproportionately large proportion of the pan-political-cum-societal wealth,
but wherein at least one’s sex (or, if the reader, DG or otherwise, insists, <i>gender</i>),
ethnicity, autc. does not <i>in itself</i> present an insuperable barrier of
any kind—be it legal or c******l--to becoming a person of official or
quasi-official authority (N.B. the preceding <i>in itself</i>, for as for a <i>truly</i>
egalitarian-cum-meritocratic polity-cum-society--i.e., one wherein every
citizen or subject enjoys a proportion of the share of the
pan-political-cum-societal wealth even approximately commensurate with his or
her abilities and their diligently virtuous exertion without having recourse to
the favors of “those little creatures which we are pleased to call the Great”
[Johnson, <i>Life of Savage</i>, quoting an unnamed source]; i.e., those who
have been placed in powerful positions by accident of birth, kinship, pimpage,
concubinage, or catamitage, or by dint of sheer ruthlessness or shamelessness—the
world has not yet seen its like and doubtless will not yet unless or until we
have all been converted into hyper-cyberpeople “and the world’s work is done by
proxy atoms” [Jacques Barzun, <i>God’s Country and Mine</i>, published in
1954]); and Mr. Zvyagintsev’s representation of post-Soviet Russia as an
oligarchical patriarchy must either be a mimetic registration of a regression
that has taken place since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., or—and much more
likely--a misrepresentation of a society-cum-polity that is basically as
quasi-or-proto-egalitarian-cum-meritocratic as it was thirty years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(To term it such is by no means to deny that
a disproportionately large proportion of Russia’s wealth is in the hands of a
small number of people who may with only a soupçon of license be termed oligarchs
[although I shall balk at terming them <i>patriarchal</i> oligarchs until I
have seen proof that <i>all</i> of them are men, and the example of the
so-called gas princess Yulia Temoshenko in neighboring Ukraine {which was
itself after all a part of the Soviet Union} leads me to guess that there are
at least a pair or troika of women in their ranks] but merely to affirm that
few Russian women are content or expected to be housewives and that the
present-day Russian, like his or her Soviet and recent-to-present hyperoccidental
counterparts, regards the presence of women in the professions and
quasi-professions—the presence of female doctors, lawyers, judges, journalists,
and so on—as a matter of course. [And no, the mere fact—if it indeed is a fact—that
Russian men are on average slightly more vocal than their hyperoccidental
counterparts about pretending not to take this as a matter of course
emphatically does <i>not</i> make Russia a northern annex of Taliban-governed
Afghanistan.])<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The completion of my analogy
with recent American cinema as exemplified by the movie about the black female
calculators requires the identification of Zvyagintsev’s constituents, the
identification of the persons who as a demographic aggregation are meant to be
gratified by his <i>Gesellschaftsbild</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If one knew nothing of Zvyagintsev’s output but <i>Elena</i>, a film in
which the Russian patriarchy is presented as all-powerful and vicious, one
would perhaps be inclined to identify these constituents as <i>bienpensant</i>
Russian women, Pussy Riotichkas, if you will; but one struggles to identify a
plausible Russophone constituency for a film like <i>The Return</i>, in which
that patriarchy is presented in a prevailingly favorable light, and yet again
not at all in the manner in which one would expect of a film seeking to curry
immediate favor with the Russian blokility—i.e., a Russophone Chuck Norris or
Steven Segal-style action movie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
present writer is inclined to resolve the paradox by simply airbrushing the
domestic audience out of the demographic picture—in other words, by
conjecturing that it is prevailingly if not exclusively a certain <i>hyperoccidental</i>
demographic niche to whom or which Zvyagintsev is pitching his <i>Gesellschaftsbild</i>,
a hyperoccidental demographic niche very probably consubstantial in ethical
essence, and even geographical provenance, with the albinity who at least
affect to venerate the NASA black-female calculator flick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the present writer cannot reasonably
expect to take even his most sympathetic reader with him in this conjecture
without giving at least a modicum of more-than-toking consideration to
Zvyagintsev’s all-but-most recent, and most hyperoccidentally critically
acclaimed, film, <i>Leviathan</i> (2014).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This film concerns the efforts of a crusty, hard-bitten middle-aged dude
living in the exurbs of some provincial sub-hole (the entire municipality
proper seems to consist of an administrative building or two and a quasi-troika
of residential mid-rises) to save his house from being demolished by the local
authorities to make way for a new church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Initially, the dude assumes he has got the law on his side, and so he
calls in a smooth-faced Muscovian or Petersburgian lawyer, an old mate of his
from the Afghan wars, to take up his cause in the district court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the court (a court incidentally presided
over by a <i>female</i> judge) rules against him, and when the lawyer tries to
appeal the decision, the mayor has a pair of his henchmen scare him, the
lawyer, into thinking they are going to kill him, whereupon he clears out of
this unnamed Dodge City-analogue, leaving his client, the dude, without further
judicial recourse; whereupon the dude’s house is demolished and the mayor
clinks glasses with the local bishop in celebration of the forthcoming
ecclesiastical groundbreaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Described
in these terms, terms which take in all the most visibly salient points of the
diagesis—the film looks like a straightforward, old-fashioned
hyperoccidental-style Christianity-bashing cinematic screed: inasmuch as the
Church qua exponent-cum-embodiment of Christianity--and indeed
Judeo-Christianity—is shown to be in up to its incense-incensed eyeballs in
venal materially self-interested collusion with the vilest elements of the
secular world, Judeo-Christianity in toto from Acts to Zephaniah may safely be
concluded to be utter bunk and utterly evil from the filmmaker’s povey, as far
as the broad strokes of his diagesis are concerned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in a shot towards the end of the film, a
shot occupying at most a half a minute, Zvyagintsev casts a saving throw that
without palliating his vituperation of the Church in the slightest allows him
to take his at least orthographically correct place as the last and most
authoritative prophet in the Judeo-Christian tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This shot commences by showing the dude
trudging along in visible dejection by (or <i>at</i>?) the forthcoming or
recent demolition of his house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a
few half-seconds of such trudgage he is bumped into by some sort of lowly
clerical figure--a monk or whatever the Russian orthodox equivalent or
quasi-equivalent of a parson or curate (or perhaps merely a canon or deacon)
is--who, upon noting his dejection and apparently ascribing it to its correct
efficient cause, viz., the aforementioned house-demolition, repeatedly strokes
bottom-right index finger against upper-left IF towards him and reprovingly
ejaculates: “Tut, tut-cum-tsk-tsk!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Remember Job!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remember Job?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Know who I mean?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Job</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As in the Book of?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eh, eh?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Know what I mean, know what I mean—<i>candid</i>
photography?,” etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The presumptive <i>ostensible
</i>hermeneutic primary upshot of this episode is simply that the dude has no
right to complain because a certain other dude, Job, was once much worse off
than he, the dude, inasmuch as he, Job, lost not only his house but also his
children, cattle, chattels, kine, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So far so innocuous and, indeed, even salubrious, for who among us—be
he, she, they, youse, yinz, winz, autc. Christian, Jew, Musselman, Hindoo,
Chaldee, Parsi, autc.--has not benefited in times of trouble by reflecting on
the plight of Job?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But one must also
consider the ethos (in the classical-rhetorical sense—viz., one’s social
position, lowercase job, autc. qua something that one at least affects not to
be ashamed to acknowledge and even to identify oneself with wholeheartedly) of
this meta-consoler, this adverter to Job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One must consider that he is not merely a generic Judeo-Christian layman
clad in unobtrusive early-twenty-first-century mufti (e.g., the ensemble of
nylon anorak, blue jeans, and hiking boots that I seem to remember the
protagonist, our chastised dude, wearing), but rather an unabashed initiate of
the Russian Orthodox Church obtrusively clad in that church’s signature black
cassock and signature ridiculously curlicu’d black hat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such being the case, he is unabashedly
identifying himself as a member of the very organization that has been or is
about to be responsible for the demolition of the dude’s house; identifying
himself as a member of the awful secular power-humping bishop’s party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And such<sub>2</sub> being the case, he has
absolutely no right to go flinging the book of Job into the face of our hapless
house-loser; indeed, such<sub>2</sub> being the case, he is in an ethical (in
both the classical-rhetorical and latter-day senses) position more or less
exactly consubstantial (albeit merely in kind and by no means in degree) with
that of a junior S.S. officer adjuring a death camp-bound Jew to chin up--or,
for an example slightly closer to home (i.e., Russia, not America), a junior
Soviet Communist Party apparatchik of the Stalin mini-epoch screaming “I told
thee [for one would never <i>vouvoyer</i> a person in such a manifestly abject
position] so!” (“</span><span style="background: white; color: #212121; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Я
так говорил тебе!”) </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">at his
next-door neighbor being dragged into the Gulagial equivalent of an airport shuttle
by certain lowers-down of the Cheka or KGB.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I by no means adduce these parallels lightly, for it must be remembered
that, however well-founded the doubtless utterly ill-founded
hyperoccidentogenetic accounts of an early twenty-first-century Russian Great
Awakening may be, the present Russian Orthodox Church, like the Soviet
Communist and German Nazi parties (and utterly unlike its former self under the
Tsarist dispensation, and indeed in marked contrast even to the established
church of so anciently liberal a polity as the United Kingdom as recently as
the early nineteenth century), is an organization with which official
affiliation is by no means compulsory according to either the spirit or the
letter of the law of the polity in which it participates (hyperoccidentals--and
in particular Americans, who can affiliate themselves with a political party
merely by registering to vote, and are not even required to pay membership dues
to maintain this affiliation--have a deucedly hard time understanding this;
have a deucedly hard time understanding, in other words, that at least in
history’s big three totalitarian polities [for I frankly admit to ignorance on
this score vis-à-vis, e.g., Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge] refraining from
joining the ruling party has never entailed any positive <i>danger</i>, but
merely the foregoing of certain perquisites, such that in electing to join it
one is indeed effectively both endorsing its creed and policies and selling
one’s soul to it [which may, to be sure, be an entirely creditable transaction
if on balance the party effectuates more good than evil {which is why one
should not make too much in either direction of, for example, Shostakovich’s
acquisition of Soviet Communist Party membership in ca. 1960, when
Khrushchevian liberalism was at its apex}]) and that, indeed, as vis-à-vis the
two other organizations, one must jump through a fair number of fairly lofty
and fairly narrow hoops to secure such affiliation therewith (although, to be
sure-ish, one supposes that to be a mere member of a ROC <i>congregation</i> is
easy enough, but we are not dealing with a mere lay churchgoer at the moment);
and such being the case, here there can be no legitimate recourse to the
hallowed <i>argumentum ad sapientiam abjectorum; </i>i.e., <i>the wisdom of the
little people</i>, in defending the cleric’s officious scripture-flogging: this
officiousness bears absolutely no legitimate comparison with, for example, the
condign chastisement of an unjustly disinherited poor white American scion of a
cattle empire by his poor black American undisinherited fellow-cowhand in the
far above-cited <i>Home from the Hill</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Our lowly ROC cleric was not shanghaied or press-ganged into his
ceremonial robes whenever he joined up, and he is not being straightjacketed or
duct-taped into staying in them now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>SBtC, if he had really wished to place himself in the position of
someone entitled to cite the book of Job in this instance--i.e., somebody who
regarded the loss of the house as a genuinely undeserved misfortune—he would
have sloughed off those robes before tsk-tsking the prospectively or recently
unhoused dude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In having left them on
before attending to this tsk-tsking he is effectively endorsing the demolition
of the house as a piece of condign good fortune and thereby affiliating himself
with Job’s enemies, with his supposed friends, and indeed with the archfiend
himself and sole instigator of the Biblical Jobian diagesis, Satan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, as the film’s title indicates, <i>Leviathan</i>
is parasitic on this Biblical diagesis, inasmuch as the word <i>leviathan</i>,
meaning some water animal--perhaps a whale, but also perhaps a crocodile or
hippopotamus--too large to be caught by a solitary fisherman, originates in the
book of Job, such that the minor cleric’s allusion to that book fairly demands
some kind of extra-diagetic or even specifically <i>allegorical</i>
interpretation, but Lord knows what any such interpretation even half-assedly
resistant to semi-serious scrutiny might look or read like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every now and then, Zvyagintsev’s camera
affords a glimpse of something that might be a killer whale briefly surfacing
from the presumably saline waters on which the podunk setting of the film
abuts, but inasmuch as not one of the human characters in the film evinces the
remotest awareness the creature, let alone an Ahab-esque desire to master it,
its leviathanism is perforce as irrelevant to the cleric’s Job-jobation as the
semi-proverbial beached whale carcass as which the beast finishes up—or at
least so I recall, for in my memory’s eye (and nose) I may be conflating this
beast with the malodorous stuffed whale carcass of Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s <i>Melancholy
of Resistance </i>(a.k.a. Bela Tarr’s <i>Werckmeister Harmonies</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then of course there is the secondary echo of
the title of Thomas Hobbes’s famous treatise on statecraft, but even after
loathly suspending one’s suspicion--a suspicion all too well founded on the
evidence of the pygmy shrew-fordable intellectual shallowness of Zvyagintsev’s
oeuvre overall--that AZ knows more about Hobbes the toy tiger than Hobbes the
philosopher, as well as one’s certainty that any ultra-provincial locale makes
for a piss-poor synecdoche for any polity larger, more whale-like or even
crocodile or hippopotamus-like than, say, Cyprus or Malta, one is very hard-pressed
indeed to wring any sort of hermeneutic cogency out of an application of the
echo to the cinematic diagesis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For <i>Leviathan</i>
the book is essentially the Ur-primer of Toryism, and <i>Leviathan</i> the
movie is thoroughly, primally Whiggish (i.e., in being utterly dedicated to the
cause of <i>liberty</i> [as distinct from being more diffusely dedicated to a
combination of liberty and progress after the manner of what I have repeatedly
vituperated--and hope to vituperate further--as Whiggism in these pages]) in its
hermeneutic upshot. <i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>Hobbes’s <i>Leviathan</i>
discursively argues that the supervention of a disinterested monarch is the
only force that is capable of neutralizing the de facto hegemonic
impulse-cum-principle of <i>homo homini lupus</i>, of neutralizing the intrinsically
mutually antagonistic private interests whose unchecked indulgence would lead
to the annihilation of the human species in an orgy of universal mutual
consumption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zvyagintsev’s <i>Leviathan</i>
dramaturgically argues that private interests, as exemplified by the crusty
Job-synecdoche, are by default benign, and that the supervention of a
monarch--or in this case quasi-monarchical force; i.e., the local-governmental
authorities in collusion with the ROC—merely wilfully maliciously impedes the
actualization of this benign impulse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thus if anything Z’s <i>L</i> is an <i>anti</i>-Hobbesian screed, a
piece of perversion conceivably aesthetically recuperable only supposing the
film to be somehow construable as a satire, as it patently is not, as is
indicted by its uniformly utterly po-faced-cum-pissless tone of equal parts
lugubriousness and portentousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
even supposing such recuperation to be possible, the inescapable exegesis of <i>Leviathan</i>
qua critique of Hobbes sorts ill with any sort of interpretation of the film
that would redeem it a both faithful portrait-cum-excoriating critique of
early-twenty first century Russian society, for as everybody round the occident
both hyper and hypo knows, or at least has affected to believe, political life
in post-Soviet Russia has been signalized by the hegemony of old-school
hyperoccidental-style private interests, interests of freewheeling individuals
doing whatever the fudge coated-bublik they can get away with doing regardless
of its congeniality to other individuals and aggregations of individuals,
interests that differ more in magnitude than in spirit from the impetus
actuating <i>Leviathan</i>’s crusty protagonist’s insistence on being allowed
to continue to live on his own land and in his own house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In point of fact, <i>Leviathan</i>’s main
dramaturgical pivot of Craggy Homesteader vs. City Hall is much better suited
to a depiction of a polity-cum-society in which the division between
governmental and private interests is at least well nigh-universally supposed
to be much more starkly defined—for example, the United States, and indeed, as
Zvyagintsev himself admits, the dramaturgical kernel of the film was supplied
to him by an incident that took place not in B*****k, Russia, but rather in
B*****k, Colorado; by the rebellion of a cantankerous auto-mechanic against
local authorities for imposing and enforcing zoning laws that blocked
convenient access to his garage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
only conceivably ethical cinematic realization of this Amerogenetic
dramaturgical kernel would have been a reconstruction of the auto-mechanic’s
rebellion set and filmed in the United States (and indeed, ideally in B*****k,
Colorado), and so upon determining that this dramaturgical kernel would make a
good film, Zvyaginstev should have either sought out the means of realizing
such a realization—which conceivably could have finished up being mentionable
in the same breath but two or three as such masterly Eurogenetic depictions of
American life as <i>Stroszeck</i> (q.v. the previous section of this essay) and
<i>Paris, Texas</i>—or set it aside entirely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But had Z. both taken this more ethical course and successfully pursued
the former sub-course, he infallibly would have alienated his fellationary core
of nanny goat State-humping hyperoccidental <i>bienpensants </i>by implying
that self-interested resistance to the implicitly beneficent measures of a
hyperoccidental (and therefore implicitly intrinsically beneficent) State was a
very, very good thing indeed rather than the most reprehensible thing
imaginable (for <i>chez les bienpensants hyperoccidentaux</i> any citizen who
kicks against the pricks of State out of personal motives [for those who kick
against those selfsame pricks on behalf of certain <i>groups</i> are often
regarded as saints <i>chez eux</i>] is regarded by default as a deranged
ultra-right-wing pig-f**ker).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By instead
siting <i>Leviathan</i> within Russia, Zvyaginstev not only spared himself many
a jaw-hour jawing with Hollywood medium-sized wigs, but even more resourcefully
drew into his regisseurial lasso each and every nanny goat-State humping
hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i>, each and every one of which (sic) could
wantonly indulge their (sic) autc. mandatory-cum-boilerplate commiseration with
the so-called little guy or so-called underdog (a commiseration
mandated-cum-boilerplated partly by their reflexive embracing of their
respective polities’ creation myths, all of which in one way or another recount
the rebellion of a so-called little guy or so-called underdog against a
supposed tyrant; and partly by their not entirely unjustified fear of being
literally and bodily devoured by the supposedly oppressed demographemes of
their own and other polities) now that the little guy or so-called underdog was
pitting himself against a so-called big guy or overdog, or, rather overbearing
over<i>bear</i>, that was implicitly understood to be unfailingly
whisker-twirlingly maleficent, namely the Russian State of the 20-teens qua
supposed mere passive and dedicated engine of the supposedly invariably
sociopathic whims of Vladimir Putin (whose portrait on a wall of the mayor’s
office is undoubtedly intended as a signal that Vlad is the ultimate and hence
ultimately only begetter of all the misery suffered by the protagonist, and it
has doubtless been interpreted as such a signal throughout the hyperoccident,
even though portraits of the current head of State are equally routine fixtures
of hyperoccidental governmental offices from Anchorage to Vienna [?]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In point of hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i>-fellation,
Zvyaginstev’s transposition of the dramaturgical kernel of the film from the
U.S. to Russia complements with diabolical ingenuity his inclusion of the lowly
Scripture-citing priest qua ethical norm: in each case by rhetorical sleight of
hand the little guy is given his sentimental due in the tearful eyes of the
hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i> despite his intrinsic and indissoluble
connection to forces that the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i> cannot but
regard as absolute anathema, namely, pig-f**king personal libertarianism and
doctrinaire religious authoritarianism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet, for all the force of my conviction that in all his films
Zvyaginstev has been deliberately pandering to the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i>
intellectual petit-bourgeoisie, I cannot in good faith assert that this
pandering has been utterly cynical and detached in conception or deployment; in
other words, I am strongly inclined to doubt that AZ is some sort of completely
deterritorialized Harry Lime-esque opportunist looking to retire to his own
private micronesian desert island once he has squeezed every last dollar,
pound, or euro squeezable out of his hyperoccidental patsies, and strongly
inclined, indeed, to suspect that he is to the contrary a highly patriotic
Russian after a certain deeply (sic) shallow fashion, a proud Muscovite or
Petersburger who has absolutely no plans to go anywhere (except for Cannes,
London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, autc. every third week or so), and that
he regards himself as nobly and selflessly continuing and indeed fulfilling a
Russian cinematic tradition dating all the way back to Eisenstein, if not to
whichever Russian Edison-analogue shot those first few precious frames of a
hoary-bearded nonagenarian muzhik sneezing (or pissing, farting, autc.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In point in fact he is fundamentally but an
epigone of a much ignobler sub-tradition of the Russian cinema, a sub-tradition
extending only as far back as forty years, to </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Larisa Shepitko’s <i><span style="background: white; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">The Ascent</span></i><span style="background: white; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">, a
sub-tradition in which pandering to hyperoccidental taste is simply a matter of
course because the inauguration of this tradition was precipitated by the
broader <i>Soviet</i> intelligentsia’s disengagement from the shaping of a more
broadly <i>Soviet</i> <i>Gesellschaftsbild</i> owing paradoxically to the
absorption of its more adversarial and outward-looking elements and aspects
into the Soviet cultural mainstream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once bereft of its sense that the Soviet State was at bottom an enemy of
pan-occidental humanistic culture, and therefore bereft of a sense that it, the
Soviet intelligentsia, had a significant mission as a counteractor of this
anti-humanistic <i>Staatsgeist</i>—a mission that had required it to represent
Soviet culture as participating in hyperoccidental culture en bloc, and
therefore to draw heavily on hyperoccidental topoi in its own <i>Gesellschaftsbilder</i>
(as cinematically evidenced by, for example, the presence of hyperoccidental
brand names in <i>Cranes</i> and <i>Ivan the Terrible</i> [the above-discussed
time-travel farce, not Eisenstein’s biopic], the appeal to the progress of
humanity in <i>Cranes</i>, <i>Letter Never Sent</i>, and the plenipresence of
the bare-crucifix’d imagery of non-denominational Christianity in Kozintsev’s
Shakespeare adaptations)—it, the Sov-intsya, could not but feel sorely tempted,
for the sake of maintaining a <i>raison d’être</i>, to look within the Soviet
borders for its <i>gesellschaftsbildige </i>topoi, which inevitably resulted in
its hard-pedalling of topoi drawn specifically from the various Eastern
Orthodox Churches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This pedal-free
fortissimo pianizing of Eastern Orthodoxy, whether in Zvyaginstev’s films or in
the music of Schnittke, Gubaidulina, and Pärt, is by its very nature
hyperoccidental-fellatory in gratifying a longing that has long been ardently
strong in the hearts of intellectually petit-bourgeois hyperoccidentals, a
longing for something that the latish pianist-cum-musicologist Charles Rosen
termed <i>religious kitsch</i>, which consists in and of the artistic
appropriation of a congeries of the aesthetic<i> </i>trappings of a certain
faith (or congeries of faiths) that allows one to console oneself for no longer
being a sincere, wholehearted adherent of a particular faith, or indeed for
never having been even a phony, half-hearted adherent of any faith at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Rosen, as I have pointed out before in
these pages, the founding father and greatest—and therefore decidedly <i>sub-great</i>
as a composer tout court—exponent of religious kitsch was Felix Mendelssohn,
who in the early nineteenth century packed English concert halls to the
bursting point with his Old Testament-based oratorio <i>Elijah</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As kitschy as <i>Elijah</i> undoubtedly was
(though not necessarily <i>still is</i>), it possessed the saving virtue of
respectively hailing from and appealing to sites of comparable, and comparably
rich, spiritual alienation: Mendelssohn, a born Lutheran but also the scion of
a great Jewish intellectual family whose scholarly achievements were
indissociable from their immersion in Talmudic Scripture, longed to reconcile
the opportunistic conversion of his parents with the quasi-proverbial Hebraic
intellectual-cum-spiritual fecundity of his grandparents, while his Anglican
English audience longed to reconcile their ever-broadening ecumenicalism (as
instanced, inter alia, by their embracement of a Lutheran composer of Jewish
extraction) with their Puritan etc. forebears’ Old Testament-style sense of electness-cum-</span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">beleaguered</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">ness—in short, chez <i>Elijah</i> (albeit presumably
admittedly not chez <i>performances</i> of <i>Elijah</i>), audience and
composer were singing from the same OT-affecting Protestant hymn sheet—and of
course undergirding the whole quasi or pseudo-spiritual fellowship was the
shared sense that all these railroads and unearthings of skeletons of
outlandish-looking animals and whatnot that were so much in the news thenabouts
were making a mince-meated mockery of the whole Judeo-Christian <i>Weltbegriff</i>
by transforming the world into something that no longer bore much resemblance
to the world described in Scripture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
variety of religious kitsch served up by the Soviet-cum-post-Soviet
intelligentsia since <i>The Ascent</i> and consumed by their hyperoccidental
contemporaries-cum-peers is much inferior to the Mendelssohnian variety in
three respects: 1) It is signalized not by a gradual <i>transition </i>from an
organic to an inorganic relationship to the ecclesiastical-cum-scriptural
source material, but rather a violent <i>caesura</i> between the two modes of
relation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither the dispensers nor the
consumers of Eastern Orthodox religious kitsch are merely the latest collective
link in a chain of believers of who have gradually grown (or degenerated) out
of a sense of the self-evidence of the respective faiths of their respective
fathers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the contrary, the dispensers
of EORK are the latest collective link in a chain of <i>religious skeptics</i>
who have only lately even affected to give a tinker’s toss about the faiths of
their quasi-or-pseudo fathers; and their hyperoccidental counterparts at the
receiving end are religious<i> je m’en foutistes</i> who would on the whole
most likely be stumped to remember whether their respective grandparents were
Presbyterians, Anglicans/Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Roman Catholics,
autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2) The cravings catered to at the
dispensing and receiving ends, respectively, are by no means commensurate or
complementary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dispensing end, namely,
<i>initially</i>, the solidly unified Soviet-cum-post-Soviet intelligentsia, <i>initially</i>
wished to take refuge in its own version of religious kitsch, its perforce
Eastern-Orthodox version, qua <i>pis-aller</i> of a <i>chez-moi</i> (or <i>chez-eux</i>,
if we are considering it as a pluralized entity); i.e., in virtue of viewing
the proscription of the various Eastern Orthodox churches as an analogue or
totem of its own marginalization; but has subsequently, since the dissolution
of the U.S.S.R. and the attendant rescindment of the subtendant republics as
officially atheist States and its splintering into a mini-congeries of
nominally baby intelligentsias, been all too fain-to-all too reluctant to
fashion, or, rather, dispersively smash, this version into a mini-congeries of <i>pis-allers</i>
of <i>chez-moi(s)</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the case of
Pärt and his fellow composers, this <i>chez moi</i> is probably a version of
Christianity that is imagined to be immeasurably <i>purer</i>, immeasurably
closer to that envisaged by Christ and the apostles, than the versions
practiced in the hyperoccident, a <i>chez moi</i> that is all too easy to
maintain given that it is only since 1991 that the various Eastern Orthodox
churches have been granted official recognition by the governments of their
affiliated polities, and hence rendered (again) amenable to corruption, and
that the maintainers all identify themselves partly or wholly as non-Russians
(even if Pärt alone is entitled to claim citizenship in a non-Russian polity).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zviagentsev, on the other hand, seems on the
religious plane to be prevailingly engaged in a vigorously (if utterly ineptly)
sustained game of Christological catch-up, a game in which his principal
objects of emulation are by no means any overtly Christian hyperoccidental
filmmakers (e.g. [bordering on i.e., {for Lord knows there are none too many of
them}] Dryer, Bresson, and Stillman), but rather that congeries of great and
not-so-great hyperoccidental, and for the most part specifically American, <i>literary</i>
modernists who in one fashion or other used Judeo-Christian Scripture as source
material for their novels, poems, plays, and short stories—Faulkner, O’Neill,
MacLeish, O’Connor, et al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He seems
embarrassingly eager to prove to us hyperoccidentals that he qua Russian qua would-be
hypoccidental can spin out a Judeo-Christian religious allegory just as deftly
as we, and for the most part specifically we Americans, can; and at the same
time he seems to want to cast the Russian Orthodox Church, the local
institutional embodier of the faith that he affects to find so semiotically,
metaphysically, and morally rich, in the most unfavorable light, to represent
it as an utterly self-interested, despotic, and pernicious force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, too, there are plausible grounds for
supposing that he is trying to bring his <i>Weltbild</i> into line with
hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i> best practices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his latest film, <i>Loveless</i>, a
quasi-eponymously loveless wedded couple--consisting, needless to say, of a man
and a woman (this is after all quasi-Paleolithic Russia we’re dealing with
here)—’s plans for a divorce are at least temporarily stymied by the male
half’s boss’s policy of requiring all his employees (or perhaps only the
managerial stratum thereof [like all first-rate hacks from Dickens onwards, Z.
can’t be arsed to supply a scintilla of substantial detail on what people
actually do in their working lives {as far as this particular working life
goes, we are shown in total about thirty seconds of the dude typing and mousing
alongside a few-dozen other business-attired people in a so-called open-office
setting; this suffices to signify that he is a middle-managerial schlub (much
as the description of Scrooge’s place of business as a <i>counting-house</i>
suffices to expunge him from the reader’s good books as an intrinsically and
unregenerately parasitic usurer) and therefore deserving of our unmitigated
contempt-cum-absence of curiosity}]) to be married.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wife explicitly attributes this policy to
the Christian faith of this boss, whom she dubs <i>Beardy</i> (at least
according to the subtitles, which may very well have been over-literally
translating the surname <i>Borodin</i> {my ear wasn’t quick enough to tell one
way or the other, and I can’t yet double-check without sitting through the
first half-hour again, as I am not about to do, as I have dozens if not
hundreds of preferable movies ready-to-view}, but even if they were, the beardy
etymology of the name suffices for my PPs), and she further describes his
variety of Christianity as <i>fundamentalist</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here Z. low-cunningly tars this boss with two
<i>bienpensant</i> hyperoccidental-baiting brushes by saddling him at once with
a beard, the preeminent corporeally organic sine qua non of an Eastern-Orthodox
ecclesiastic, and with the designation <i>fundamentalist</i>, which of course
in the <i>bienpensant</i> hyperoccidental mind instantly triggers
panicked-cum-ravenous associations with snake-handling, Darwin-bashing,
LGBT-thrashing, holy-rolling Bible-thumpers, and thereby adds a sort of dash of
rhetorical MSG, <i>bienpensant</i> hyperocciental-targeting wise, to Z.’s
implication that Christianity is ultimately responsible for the film’s central
atrocity, the disappearance and presumptive death of the couple’s pubescent
son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If only the boss had not been a
Christian, Z. all-too-pointedly implies, the couple might have secured a
divorce much earlier, and thereby saved the life of their son, because, of
course, as every <i>bienpensant</i> hyperoccidental knows (or, rather,
presupposes), there is absolutely nothing more detrimental to a child’s
immediate well-being and long-term development than growing up under the
umbrella of a <i>loveless</i> marriage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In reality, of course, no child in any part of the world at any point in
history has ever given a toddler’s toss whether his or her parents are in love
or not, and children have only ever suffered from their parents’ lovelessness
insofar as it has eventuated in overt manifestations of aggression (<i>Because,
after all, if Daddy goes on a stabbing or shooting rampage what is to prevent
him from taking me out along with Mummy?</i>) or a displacement of favorable
attention to themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the
child in <i>Loveless</i> is treated horribly by both his mother and his father,
and horribly enough indeed that he can hardly be blamed for running away from
home, but it is the undiscriminating egoism of each of the two parents--their
respective lovelessnesses tout court—and not the lovelessness of their marriage
that is responsible for his maltreatment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But in dwelling so long on the dumbed-down Biedermeierism of the
present-day hyperoccidental cult of the family, I have strayed from the
hyperoccidental quarry immediately to club, namely the appeal of
recent-to-current Eastern-Orthodox kitsch on this side of the former Icey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the main, hyperoccidental (<i>bienpensant</i>
or otherwise) interest in Eastern-Orthodox kitsch differs from its dispensing
counterpart in viewing the Eastern Orthodox version of Christianity not as a
purer form of the parent religion but as a different sort of religion
altogether, as a more <i>mystical</i>, more <i>spiritual</i> religion than its
nominal hyperoccidental counterparts, as a religion less cluttered, or utterly
uncluttered, with the supposed impedimenta of industrial society; a
prevailingly extra-urban religion practiced in isolated churches surrounded for
dozens of versts in all directions by semi-fallow potato fields, if not craggy
rockscapes utterly devoid of vegetation--in short, a sort of flaky hippie’s
religion for those who are reluctant to take the plunge into a fully hyperoriental
belief-system like Tibetan Buddhism, or who may be even all too happy to take
that plunge but have been put off by the Cookie Monster-on-estrogen-like
howlings that count as that belief-system’s greatest musical achievements, and
would like the soundtrack of their gym-routine to consist of something that at
least sounds as though it is being produced by human beings, as Eastern
Orthodox chant and its derivatives in the music of Pärt et al., for all its
shortcomings, undoubtedly does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Here,
parenthetically, in the light of the affinities of Pärt’s music with
hyperoccidental minimalism that I remarked earlier and my subsequent treatment
of Zviaginstev’s <i>Umgangsart</i> with Christianity, I must mention that the
musical soundtrack of Z.’s <i>Leviathan</i> is dominated, if not exhausted, by
a single instrumental composition by the unholy hyperoccidental metropolitan of
minimalism, Philip Glass, a substantial proportion of whose corpus [I use the
term not only in its musicological but also its forensic sense, for no music
could be more corpse-like than the oeuvre of Philip Glass] has unabashedly
contributed to the canon of flaky, hippiesh Buddha-humping hyperoccidental
religious kitsch by cunningly applying a schmear of the abovementioned
hormone-treated Cookie-Monster Buddhist-monk vocals to a foundation taken
LS&B from the voice-leading-less diatonic soundscape of hyperoccidental pop
music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The inclusion of Glass in the
soundtrack is another example of Zviaginstev’s both-having-and-eating-ism on
the religious and national political fronts or planes, for had he used Pärt
instead of Glass, he would have been undesirably--from a
hyperoccidental-fellatory point view—outing himself as a full-blown Christian,
and equally undesirably—from a Russo-fellatory national-political point of
view--declaring himself an adherent of a version of Christianity that despite
its orientality was not specifically Russian.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In addition, owing to cultural lag—i.e., a lingering memory of the
Soviet State’s proscription of religion combined with a lack of up-to-dateness
on the hand-in-glovishness of the present Russian Orthodox Church’s
relationship to the Russian Federal Republican State—there may be some residual
hyperoccidental sympathy with these churches as embodiments of resistance to
totalitarianism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But prevailingly
hyperoccidentals are more or less well aware of and indeed inclined to
exaggerate the ROC’s complicity with the RFRS and on this account would prefer
to see it represented unfavorably--and of course not only or even principally
on this account, for the <i>bienpensant</i> hyperoccidental mainstream is of
course overwhelmingly anti-Christian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of
course, in its quasi-official platform--or, better yet, its official
quasi-official counter-Scripture—it presents itself as merely
anti-ecclesiastical, as an abject adherent of the <i>original teachings of
Christ</i> and an abhorrer solely of the supposedly utterly self-interested
corruptions of those teachings introduced by each and every church, every
organized administrative body, that has subsequently appropriated them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In conformity with the post-literate tenor of
our <i>Zeit</i>-cum-<i>Weltgeist</i>, the founding texts of this
hyperoccidental counter-Scripture are not proper texts at all but rather a
musical and a film, respectively, namely, Rice and Lloyd Webber’s <i>Jesus
Christ Superstar</i> and Monty Python’s <i>Life of Brian</i>, which probably
not merely coincidentally—at least on the Providential plane (for I am by no
means so Pollyannaish a paranoiac as to attribute the coincidence to an
exclusively human-complotted conspiracy transcending polities and continents)—were
released a few years before and after, respectively, <i>The Ascent</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; color: #545454; font-family: "roboto";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The creedal upshot of this
counter-Scripture is that HRH J.H. Christ was basically just an affable chap,
guy, or bloke who ended up being (in the words of Douglas Adams, who perhaps
not untellingly contributed as a writer to the final season of the Pythons’
television program, which aired a full five years before the release of <i>Life
of Brian</i>) “nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to
people for a change,” and that the whole sub-kit-and-caboodle of Christianity
declaring or implying anything beyond this platitude, very much including any
promises of life extending a jot beyond the breathing of one’s last corporeal
breath, is just a load of adventitiously adscititious tosh having nothing
whatsoever to do with HRHJHC’s only-begotten essential message.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hypersuperficially, this upshot is indistinguishable
from that of the Protestant Reformation’s revolt against the adscititious
excrescences of Catholic priestcraft (indulgences, Purgatory, the
hypostatization of the Eucharist, etc.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But even the most sub-hypersuperficial glance at the historical dossier
will reveal that the two upshots are at bottom mutually irreconcilable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Protestant Reformation founded its revolt
on a direct appeal-cum-abject deferral to the New Testament, a text composed
entirely of writings by people other than Jesus Christ, and prevailingly of
writings by a person, namely the apostle Paul, who never knew HRHJHC in the
pre-crucificxional flesh; a text wherein, moreover, HRHJHC is reported to have
said many a much less lovey-dovey thing than “how great it would be to be nice
to people for a change”—e.g., “</span><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I
came not to send peace, but a sword,” and many a thing of
personal-eschatological import—e.g., “</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he
that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on
him.”</span><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensants</i>
have not got a naturally incurable leprous leg to stand on when it comes to
defending their notion of an HRHJHC qua champion of a lovey-dovey, <i>ici bas</i>-orientated
lifestyle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the very literal
pre-dawn of Christianity there has been a church of some kind either tasked
with or arrogating the function of spreading HRHJHC’s teachings, and not all
those teachings are assimilable to an ethos of irenism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly, HRHJHC might have actually and
exclusively preached the very unalloyedly lovey-dovey creed formulated by Mr.
Adams, but then again, he might just as plausibly actually and exclusively have
preached a creed of regarding each and every one of one’s neighbors as so much
long pig-sushi fodder, a creed that, if its underlying scenario be true, has
been mercifully palliated to the odd mention of a sword only thanks to the kind
if unveracious offices of HRHJHC’s oral and scribal intermediaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How such an unalloyedly lovey-dovey creed
came to be extracted from the New Testament at all is more than something of a
poser, inasmuch as all of the extractors—very probably including the only
American Python member, Terry Gilliam, inasmuch as he hails from Minnesota, the
North American capital of Lutheranism (as everyone knows thanks to the
radiophonic monologues of that notorious Lutheran Minnesotan back-groper
G******n K*****r)--were christened and reared as mid-twentieth-century
Anglophone Protestants and therefore presumably had each and every chapter and
verse of the NT quasi-literally drilled into their respective heads several
times in the respective courses of their respective first decade-and-a-halfs
([sic] on the heterodox plural, quasi-natch).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps like the schoolboys during the lecture on sex during <i>Monty
Python’s the Meaning of Life</i> they were too distracted by ocarinas and
suchlike gimcracks to absorb the substance of the drilling in full.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or perhaps they did then absorb it then and
have since selectively (albeit not deliberately) forgotten the bits that were
and are inconsonant with their respective lovey-dovey <i>modi vivendi</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or perhaps yet again they both absorbed it
then and have since retained it and yet have somehow been confusing the
substance of the non-lovey doveyish bits of the NT with that of those bits of
the Old Testament in which, for example, the earth is said to have been created
in six days, or the sun is said to have been made to stand still, bits
vis-à-vis which the manifest natural impossibility of the phenomenon described
can be explained away via some sort of philological or poetical explanation
(this, of course, by way of reconciling the OT with some metaphysically garbled
[and therefore vile] or neutral [and therefore irrelevant] natural-scientistic
sub-creed of the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i> creed as Darwinism or
Copernicanism, respectively).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course
the above-cited NT-ial sword can in its own right be, and, indeed—inasmuch as
HRHJHC presumably did not go traipsing about Judea, Samaria, and Galilee with a
rapier or saber strapped to his side after the manner of a European gentleman
of the seventeenth century--fairly <i>demands</i> to be interpreted in poetic,
and specifically metaphorical terms, as a metaphor for the chastisement of
moral-cum-spiritual inadequacy, but here the metaphoricity does not alter the
purport of the message in the slightest: a sword may be metaphorically
transformed into a whip or even a stern interjection of “Hey, man, that’s not
cool!” but there is no linguistic way of making a sword into a ploughshare (as
in Isaiah 2:4), let alone an electric massaging instrument, except by
explicitly stating that you are doing so, or otherwise juxtaposing a sword with
the irenic article in a way that somehow suggests that is in the wrong or in
decline; in connotative terms, a naked sword is a sword is a sword is a sword,
and there’s an end on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this is an
end that the hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i> purported champions of
Christianity are either incapable of or unwilling to accept, because at b****m
they cannot countenance the exertion of authority or judgment outside any
metaphysical context but that of the defense of the rights ostensibly in
arrears to ostensibly underprivileged groups or the distension of the
ostensibly irrefragable epistemological umbrella of so-called science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with this mention of religious authority
I am at long last come to my third stricture on the new Russo-hyperoccidental
religious kitsch vis-à-vis the old-school Mendelssohnian intrahyperoccidental
religious kitsch: 3) The Russian side of this kitsch-diptych is marked by an
indissoluble association of the Christian religion with power, and specifically
secular governmental-cum-administrative power, that is utterly irreconcilable
with the radically latitudinarian and irenic character of its complement, the
contemporaneous hyperoccidental <i>bienpensant</i> conception of
Christianity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mendelssohn’s <i>Elijah</i>
was composed and premiered in the 1840s, a period of intense political strife
both in Britain (over the Corn Laws) and on the Continent (over the various
post-Napoleonic monarchical political dispensations), but the work, despite its
Old Testamental source text with its above-alluded-to tradition of being
received as a manual for political revolutionists, made no effort whatsoever to
appeal to contemporary political sentiments, and its success complementarily
owed nothing to any sort of political-interpretative habitus on the part of its
audiences; indeed, if anything, these audience sought in <i>Elijah</i> an
interval of <i>escape </i>from current political anxieties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The new Russian religious kitsch, as
dispensed from <i>The Ascent </i>onwards, is by contrast inalienably linked to
a political worldview, and specifically a <i>ruthlessly authoritarian</i>
political worldview, that by all strictly theological rights should have
precluded its being favorably received in the hyperoccident at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That it has been to the contrary
hyper-favorably received in the hyperoccident is owing in no small part to
sheer gormlessness—e.g., in the case of <i>The Ascent</i>,<i> </i>the film’s
sheer abundance of quasi-early-Tarkovskian trees has prevented hyperoccidentals
from descrying its fundamentally Stalinian wood (the trees being the impossible
obduracy of the consumptive Jesus stand-in and his band of impossibly loyal
disciples in the detention cell, the wood being the all-too-possibly ruthless
scorn meted out to the all too possibly-cum-forgivably yielding Judas stand-in
[admittedly this isn’t a particularly apt metaphor for a movie shot largely in
a tree-bereft snowscape]), to the extent of prompting its DVD releaser,
Eclipse, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Criterion Collection (which, it must
needs be said [inasmuch as Criterion has undeniably become the hyperoccidental
cinephile’s equivalent of or to the Michelin Guide] has also released editions
of not only <i>Life of Brian</i> but also <i>Chasing Amy</i> by the latter-day
professional Papist Kevin Smith, auteur of the excerable <i>Dogma</i>, a
vehicle of the new hyperoccidental religious kitsch whose theological
ham-headedness-cum-factitiousness makes <i>Jesus Christ Superstar</i> look and
sound like the <i>St. Matthew Passion</i>) to meta-hail it </span><span style="color: #282828; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
having “been hailed around the world [the present writer’s apartment evidently
aside] as the finest Soviet film of its decade”</span><span style="color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">—<span style="background: #FDFEFF; mso-pattern: solid #FDFEFF; mso-shading: #FDFEFF;">but
also in even less small part to <i>bienpensant</i> hyperoccidentals’ apparently
insatiable craving for a genre of cinema that as far as I know has yet to be
identified by cinematic taxonimists, and that I am consequently obliged to
name, and for which I can think of no apter name at the moment than <i>bad-cop
porn</i> (which one is inclined to reject if only for its evocation of the
conceptually extraneous <i>bad cop-porn</i>, not to mention the even more
conceptually extraneous <i>bad popcorn</i>); a genre signalized by its
accentuation of the abusive aspects of authority within the social
agglomeration represented in the diagesis and its attendant elicitation of a
more-than-well-nigh-orgasmic sense of political-cum-moral superiority from the
implied viewer (just as one speaks of <i>the male gaze</i> in describing the </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">mise en scène</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">of mainstream lad-gratifying pornography, one should
speak of the <i>moral-cum-political autoerotic asphyxiationsist of any gender’s
gaze</i> in describing that of bad-cop porn) as he or she rhythmically
congratulates himself or herself on the reflection that this has never happened
and never could happen here in good old Blighty, Eastcoastia, Twentyteenia
autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: #fdfeff; color: #001320; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">END OF PART
II</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-74621503883175932572019-04-06T04:51:00.005-04:002019-06-07T18:19:42.086-04:00To Russia with Lunch--Part One<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">“Sleep, my dear
Chevalley, sleep, that is what Sicilians want, and they will always hate anyone
who tries to wake them, even in order to bring them the most wonderful of
gifts; and I must say, between ourselves, I have strong doubts whether the new
Kingdom will have many gifts for us in its luggage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All Sicilian expression, even the most
violent, is really wish-fulfillment: our sensuality is a hankering for
oblivion, our shooting and knifing a hankering for death; our laziness, our
spiced and drugged sherbets, a hankering for voluptuous immobility, that is,
for death again; our meditative air is that of a void wanting to scrutinize the
enigmas of nirvana.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is what gives
power to certain people among us, to those who are half awake: that is the
cause of the well-known time lag of a century in our artistic and intellectual
life; novelties attract us only when they are dead, incapable of arousing vital
currents; that is what gives rise to the extraordinary phenomenon of the
constant formation of myths which would be venerable if they were really ancient,
but which are really nothing but sinister attempts to plunge us back into a
past that attracts us only because it is dead. […] Two or three days before
Garibaldi entered Palermo I was introduced to some British naval officers from
one of the warships then in the harbor to keep an eye on things. […] They came
to my house, I accompanied them up on to the roof; they were simple youths, in
spite of their reddish whiskers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
were ecstatic about the view, the light; they confessed, though, that they had
been horrified at the squalor and filth of the streets around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t explain to them that one thing was
derived from the other, as I have tried to with you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then one of them asked me what those Italian
volunteers were really coming to do in Sicily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They are coming to teach us good
manners</i>,” I replied in English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">But they won’t succeed, because we think we
are gods</i>.’” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: black;">Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Leopard</i> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Il Gattopardo</i>), translated
by Archibald Colquhoun (Pantheon: New York, 1960, 2007), pp. 177-178; 182-183.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Although I am insufferably enough about to begin an essay yet again—for
the umpteen-to-the-umpteenth-power time—on a personal note, this time I shall
not even bother trying to contrive the wispiest ghost of apology for such a
beginning, inasmuch as the personalness of the note is purely contingent,
inasfurthermuch as the phenomena (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sic</i>
because plural) I am about to report on from a personal point of view should by
all rights be familiar at the barest-bones minimum to the totality of
still-living sentient adults over the age of forty and the majority of all
still-living adults whether they are old enough or not to have experienced them
at first sensorium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly the
by-all-rights-ness is going to be a bit of a hard sell vis-à-vis the second subclass
of the second class of adults—viz., those who are not old enough to have
experienced the phenomena in question at first sensorium, inasmuch as current
received opinion seems bizarrely to maintain that no human being, however
intelligent or inquisitive he or she may be, is able, let alone willing, let
further alone eager, to acquire even the most cursory understanding of any
historical epoch or micro-epoch antedating his or her birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I personally—but only <i>contingently</i>
personally, mind you—flatter myself that I have an understanding of the forces,
personages, and events in play during, for example, the so-called McCarthy
period, which ended nearly two decades before my birth, that is sufficiently
near-comprehensive to allow me, supposing I were transported back to that
micro-epoch, to acquit myself persuasively as either a booster or a detractor
of the HUAC in any soda counter or juke joint in the then-48 states.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there are even more distant micro-epochs
(and not only of American history) on whose signature institutions and
hot-button issues I flatter myself I could weigh in with comparable
persuasiveness as a temporal transplant; I flatter myself that I would have
something both intelligible and plausible to say about the retention or
rejection of the gold standard during the 1896 U.S. presidential campaign, the
comparative desirability of a Stuart versus a Hanoverian succession in the Britain
of the first decade of the eighteenth century, and the comparative desirability
of a Stuart restoration versus a continuation of the Cromwellian protectorate
in the Britain of the late 1650s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I
flatter myself that I am within my rights to flatter myself on the score of all
these micro-epochs because like virtually every other literate person in the
recent-to-present United States, I have free or at worst very inexpensive
access to reputable historiographers’ accounts of these earlier periods, and
further, for fact-checking purposes, to a vast archive of documents dating from
these earlier periods themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence,
I am not by any means a prisoner of my age, let alone my so-called generation,
in any epistemologically substantive sense, and I am effectively no more
compelled to derive my overall or basic <i>Weltansicht </i>from current
received opinion than I am to derive my musical tastes from the latest
Billboard pop singles charts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
inasmuch as received opinion is after all received opinion, and received
opinion now holds that we are <i>all</i> prisoners of our respective so-called
generations, although the phenomena I am about to expound on were among the
most mediatically conspicuous, the most electronically hyper-hyped, of their
day, I effectively have no more right to expect any reader born since 1976 to
be conversant with them than I have to expect him or her to be aware of, say,
the artist and song-title associated with, say, Billboard pop singles
chart-position No. 54 in the second week of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>July 1985 (please don’t ask <i>me</i> of all 46-year-olds for the names
of that artist and song-title, as my personal 54<sup>th</sup>-favorite track in
that week was Ferenc Fricsay’s version of Smetana’s <i>Moldau</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for readers born in or before 1976,
although even current received opinion would probably vouchsafe me the right to
expect them to be conversant with the phenomena prospectively in question, I am
highly disinclined to exercise this right in the light of a certain super-sized
matzoh ball-sized empirical datum--v iz., my observation that virtually every
person in the Anglosphere whom I know either personally or by reputation talks
and behaves as though he or she were utterly oblivious of these phenomena, and,
indeed, as though in some sort of hypnotic state he or she had had these
phenomena erased from his or her memory and then been force-fed a collection of
utterly logically incompatible pseudo-phenomena (although for reasons that may
become clear in the further course of this essay, I am no great fan of <i>The
Manchurian Candidate</i>, I shan’t be so arrant a chicken thief as to forbear
acknowledging that movie as the sole source of the forgoing mini-conceit).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The phenomena in question are the opinions
received some thirty to thirty-five years ago regarding the country or
federation of countries then known in the Anglosphere variously as the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics, the Soviet Union, and (always contentiously but by
no means always naively) Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
presumptively unaltered memory avers to me that back then, in the
early-to-mid-1980s, although in the Anglosphere attitudes towards this country
or federation of countries varied greatly across the so-called political
spectrum (or perhaps, rather, gamut of so-called political spectra, supposing
that even within the Anglosphere every country or federation of countries has
its own scalable yet infungible political spectrum), from an equation of the
USSR autc. with the dominion of the Antichrist and its leader with the Dark
Lord himself on the so-called far-right (or Far Right) to an inclination to
drop every semblance of an adversarial stance to the USSR autc. and embrace its
political system H,L&S (or L,S&B) on the so-called far left (or Far
Left), a set of assumptions about Russia autc. was shared by virtually
everybody, by each and every man, woman, and child Jack and Jill<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>père</i>, <i>mère</i>, <i>fille</i>, und <i>fils</i>
of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was assumed by everybody that
the USSR autc. was an important demographic-cum-geographical-cum-political
entity, and indeed for everybody the question whether the USSR autc. or the USA
was the most important such entity in the world was very much a tossup, given
that although the USA undoubtedly enjoyed an appreciably higher so-called
standard of living than the USSR autc., the USSR autc. undoubtedly enjoyed a
much bigger landmass than the USA (and indeed was the most geographically
extensive demographic-cum-geographic-cum-political entity in the world), a
comparably sizeable (ca. 200 million souls-strong and at minimum unshrinking)
population, a significantly larger standing army, and last but assuredly not
least, an always competitively sizeable and often substantially larger arsenal
of domestically designed-and-built nuclear weapons (q.v.).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was further assumed that the Soviet (or
Russian) people, or the average Soviet (or Russian) citizen, or Vanya or Masha
Stolichnaya, was or were not to be blamed for his, her, or their country’s or
federation of countries’ geopolitical or domestic-political shortcomings and
that these shortcomings were entirely the fault of the Soviet (or Russian)
State’s enthrallment to (so the Anglophone right/Right) or perversion of (so
the Anglophone left/Left) the Marxist-Leninist political philosophy upon which
the USSR autc.’s government had been founded way back in 1917; that if this
philosophy should ever be either extirpated from the Soviet government’s
constitution (r/R-ight) or actualized along non-repressive lines (l/L-eft), the
Soviet (or Russian) people’s inherent and ineradicable kindness, magnanimity, <i>gemütlichkeit</i>,
and all-around <i>savoir-vivre</i> would then come gushing forth like, well
(admittedly I am getting a bit ahead of myself via the vehicle of this-here
simile) a veritable geyser of life-giving petroleum from the world’s most
munificently girthed and tumescent oil pipeline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whatever the intrinsic shortcomings of their
political system (r/R-ight) or of the paltry handful or so (or, <i>po russki</i>,
<i>kuchka</i>) of kleptocrats lamentably and contingently then standing at the
helm of their fundamentally admirably redoubtable Socialist Ship of State (l/L-eft),
the Soviet (or Russian) people autc., so it was universally averred, were at
bottom completely indistinguishable from us Anglophone Occidentals even in the
very mitochondria of their ethical makeup.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The establishment and cultivation of a pen-palship with some Soviet (and
Russian) near-to-exact contemporary was encouraged in every schoolroom and VFW
hall from Juneau, Alaska to the Dunedins of both New Zealand and Florida, and
many, many a cis-Iron Curtainian epistolary <i>Genosse</i> thereby begotten was
heard to aver that were by some well-nigh-divine-cum-natural law-defying cause
the USSR autc. to become a properly democratic country or federation of
countries, he or she would engage in coition with his or her Soviet (or
Russian) counterpart no fewer than five times regardless of his or her (i.e.,
the cis-Iron Curtainian’s) degree of corporeal attraction or aversion to him or
her (i.e., the trans-Iron Curtainian) and purely as a series of manifestations
of his or her (i.e., the cis-Iron Curtainian’s) uncontainable <i>jouissance </i>at
the quasi-literal tectonic shift in the ethical infrastructure of the
geopolitical landscape (or the geopolitical superstructure of the ethical
landscape).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entire apparent <i>Weltgeist
</i>of the inhabitants of the so-called developed West (a.k.a. the so-called
Free World) vis-à-vis their fellow earthlings living under Soviet (or Russian)
dominion was epitomized by and in Gordon Sumner (a.k.a. Sting)’s 1985 Billboard
chart near-topper (it peaked at No. 16, which rather surprises me, as at the
time it seemed to be on the radio constantly and consequently remains one of
the very few songs of 1985 I remember as well as Smetana’s “Moldau”)
“Russians,” which repeatedly voiced the whinging categorical assertion
masquerading as a tentative “hope” that “the Russians love their children
too.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Five to six years later, the
well-nigh-divine-cum-natural law-defying cause supervened, at least formally:
the USSR suddenly morphed into the Commonwealth of Independent States which no
less suddenly (and after a period of existence not much longer than that of one
of those artificial chemical elements that Soviet and Anglo-American physicists
alike had such a knack for concocting and holding together for a millisecond or
two in their laboratories) effectively disintegrated into a mere congeries of
geographically contiguous but politically completely mutually unaffiliated
nation-States, and every single one of these nation-States, including the
former Russian Federated Soviet Socialist Republic was at least nominally a
non-denominational parliamentary democracy—meaning a republic with a
legislature answerable to the will of the electors regardless of that will’s
degree of conformity to a political philosophy such as socialism or
communism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the great supposedly
immediately attendant intercontinental love-fest did not subsequently
materialize: indeed, in hindsight, one is struck by the fact that although the
USSR was both the headquarters and Big Kahuna of international Communism, in
the West its political dissolution was greeted almost with apathy by comparison
with the tsunami of orgasmic elation that (had) swept over us all the instant
the first pickaxe hit the Berlin Wall two years earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the memory of the present writer, the fall
of the Berlin Wall was signalized by the mandatorily (yet gratefully) viewed
telecast of that remarkable ad-hoc intermural performance of Beethoven’s Ninth
Symphony under the baton of Leonard Bernstein, a performance in which the
maestro audaciously—yet at the time quite seemingly justly—substituted <i>Freiheit</i>
for <i>Freude</i> in the vocal finale; and the fall of the Soviet Union by one
of the present writer’s college classmates’ announcing with lackadaisical
matter-of-factness between bong-hits that the name of Leningrad had reverted to
<i>St. Petersburg</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the contrast
in the scale of reaction to the two events was very much just that stark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“And quite rightly so,” the (present) reader
may be tempted to interject, “given that throughout this decade-straddling
period it was the dissolution of the <i>Communist system </i>that was being
welcomed in the West and that that dissolution happened to begin at the
Brandenburg Gate rather than in Red Square.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But such an interjection would merely bespeak the reader’s abject (or
perhaps proud) supineness towards current received Anglospheric opinion on
Russia and his or her utter incapacity to recollect or apprehend the Spirit of
’85, for as I have already made clear enough to anyone willing to remember or
apprehend that Spirit, in 1985 it was not the Communist system as such, but
rather the Communist system qua enchainer of a great and loveable nation or
people, the Russian nation or people, that we Anglo-Saxons wished to see
abolished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1985 (here I am launching
into a second attempt to persuade the reader to enter into the Spirit by delving
into the geopolitical fine grain) the citizenry of East Germany and other
Warsaw Pact countries’ enchainment by the Communist system, while undoubtedly
lamentable, was of peripheral significance because as nations or peoples or
quasi- or semi-peoples, the Poles, East Germans, et al. were but the smallest
of small fry to us Anglophones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
small-fryishness is evident when one takes cognizance of the considerable
liberalization (or Westernization) of the laws and policies governing civil
rights and liberties in certain of the so-called Soviet satellites in the years
leading up to the fall of the BW.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
remember round about 1987 hearing some pundit on National Public Radio remark
that in Poland <i>you can get away with saying pretty much anything</i>, and
from the Polish so-called cultural artifacts of the 1970s and 80s that I have
since become acquainted with—notably the music of Lutos</span><span style="background: white; color: #252525;">ł</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">awski’s late
period and the movies of <span style="background: white; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">Kieślowski’s middle period</span>—I infer that this
assertion was well-founded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Certainly
L’s wildly aleatoric orchestral works were much weirder and hard-listening than
anything in Shostakovich’s corpus, and in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dekalogs</i> (at least in the Trilog or Tetralog thereof that I have so
far seen) K. certainly did not go out of his way to make Poland seem an ideal
tourist destination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Hungary there
seems to have been even greater license to criticize the governing political
dispensation, as witnessed by the novels of Laszlo Krasznahorkai and the movies
of his pal and eventual collaborator Bela Tarr.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Tarr’s early (ca. 1977-1985) films were apparently domestically hailed
as masterpieces of socialist realism, and inasmuch as they dealt with the
quotidian life-situations of so-called ordinary people they undoubtedly were,
but insofar as socialist realism entails the presentation of such life-situations
in a positive and encouraging light, and thereby as an affirmation of the
socialist powers that be, they were anything but: in Tarr’s films the
life-situations of average Hungarians are almost uniformly depicted in such
unremittingly grim and hopeless colors (or, more often, grayscales), and with
such meticulous attention to the bureaucratic minutiae with which these average
Hungarians have to contend perpetually—and almost invariably futilely—that the
viewer cannot help concluding that the filmmaker is ascribing the brunt of the
blame for his characters’ misery to the entire so-called system, in this case
an avowedly and inalterably socialist (i.e., Communist) system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(At one point in one of these early Tarr
flicks, a middle-aged father attempts to give his preteen son a kind of lecture
on the geopolitical facts of life, a lecture on the difference between
Capitalism and Communism, only to trail off in a mixture of boredom and
confusion within a half a minute.) As for Krasznahorkai’s two novelistic
masterpieces of the 1980s, <i>Satantango</i> and <i>The Melancholy of
Resistance</i>—well, let’s just say that their joint depiction of the Hungarian
populace and political system makes <i>Deliverance</i> and <i>All the
President’s Men</i> look like triumphal tributes to the American way of
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it must not be forgotten that
the closest thing to the fall of the Berlin Wall’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>immediate efficient cause—namely the
opening of the Austro-Hungarian border, which effectively allowed any Eastern-Bloc
resident with the wherewithal to make it to Hungary to defect to the West—was
initiated by the Hungarian government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>And
it must not be forgotten</i> my embarrassed mouth-embedded foot!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth—as in all candor I realized only
after typing the last full sentence—is that barring an admittedly not
especially improbable onset of dementia praecox I am guaranteed not to forget
about the Hungarian government’s catalytic role in the fall of the Wall anytime
soon, having learned of it only some five years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is that the fall of the Wall struck
me like a so-but-in-this-case-aptly called bolt out of the blue (blue being the
classic symbolic antithesis of red, which is, or rather used to be, the color
of international Communism [its recent transmogrification into the signature
color of conservative domestic Republicanism is not the least sad of scads of
attestations to our collective oblivion of even the most conspicuous semiotic
paraphernalia of even very recent history])—as I suspect it did every other
Anglosphere-inhabitant not in the grip of a hobby-horsical obsession with the
domestic policies of extra-Soviet Warsaw Pact countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The proof of this
bolt-out-of-the-blue-ish-ness resides in the fact that for me the Wall-Fall was
one of those events about which, as they say, <i>I can remember exactly where I
was and what I was doing</i> when I learned of it—viz., lolling in bed after
having slept in, as they say, presumably on the morning of Saturday, November
11 (I had evidently missed all the previous day’s news broadcasts), and hearing
an announcer on our local so-called community radio station, WMNF, to which my
bedside wireless had been tuned overnight, say something to the effect of,
“Next, in celebration of the fact that the Berlin Wall is now open, we’re going
to play [some extremely famous celebratory pop song whose name escapes me after
the reliable fashion of the at-first-blush most memorable components of these
sorts of memories].”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thitherto like
those of all other Americans in the grip of a, shall we say?, <i>hobby-ponyial</i>
interest in goings-on behind the Iron Curtain-cum(shall we say?) heroin-horse-like
dread of nuclear annihilation, all my hopes for an East-West
reconciliation—still very faint hopes, to be sure–had been actuated by certain
recent changes in the USSR, by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev (not to be
confused with Secretary-General Javier <span style="background: white; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">Pérez de Cuéllar</span>)’s agreement
to substantial reductions in the Soviet nuclear arsenal and his institution of
domestic political and economic reforms under the auspices of two things called
<i>glasnost </i>and <i>perestroika</i> (respectively, I believe, but please
don’t cite me as a source).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although we
Americans in the grip of this obsession-cum-dread had little or no notion of
what <i>glasnost </i>and <i>perestroika</i> concretely entailed for Vanya and
Masha Stolichnaya, we were confident that they were making everyday life
substantially easier for the couple and, what was even more significant,
enabling them better to express and embody their innate and radically
incorruptible goodness—their indomitable moral and intellectual virtue—in every
conceivable field of human activity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
if even as late as November 9, 1989, we had been asked by, say, a betting-shop
owner to describe the process most likely to eventuate in an end to the
so-called Cold War, we doubtless would have described a scenario wherein
ever-weightier and fattier dollops of <i>glasnost</i> and <i>perestroika</i>
administered from above would gradually—very gradually, over a period of
perhaps twenty years—transform the Soviet Union into an utterly wholesome and
quiescently productive modern Western nation state-cum-territory-cum-society,
its heartland studded with prosperous mid-density cities entirely
indistinguishable from Mayfield, Levittown, and Milton Keynes barring the
Cyrillic lettering on their shop-fronts and traffic signs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Events, or, rather, pseudo-events, in the
so-called satellite countries were worthy of no notice in our eyes, for after
all, we assumed, would not the governments of these countries simply follow
each and every cue and toe every line-segment supplied to them by Moscow?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quite self-evidently right up until November 9,
1989 we were all sorely afflicted with a gargantuan geopolitical blind spot, or
perhaps, to put it more justly if less elegantly, with a fairly sizeable
geopolitical blind spot acting in concert with a fairly serious case of
geopolitical tone-deafness—for we were all aware, to some extent, of the <i>glasnost</i>
and <i>perestroika</i>-dwarfing liberality in full-flower in certain of the
satellite States (of, e.g., the Polish government’s above-mentioned de facto
chartering of freedom of speech), and merely failed to give it its
world-historical due.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“In other words,
you are at last acknowledging the justness of my earlier interjected assertion
to the effect that in the Anglosphere the collapse of the Soviet Union was
greeted with all the enthusiasm it deserved—namely precious little.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not quite, or perhaps not in the
slightest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For it by no means follows
that merely because the death blow to the international Communist dispensation
was not ultimately administered by <i>glasnost</i>, <i>perestroika, START I, </i>or
indeed any other element of the Gorbachevian project, that this project was
inherently wrongheaded or that its admirers either within the Soviet Union or
without were simply simpletons—partial ignoramuses, undoubtedly, but
simpletons, not necessarily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, the
collapse of the Soviet Union in the late summer and early autumn of 1991 was
effectively greeted in the Anglosphere with a mere collective shrug, but this
may testify more eloquently to the collective egocentricity of the shruggers
than to the intrinsic triviality of the shrugged-about phenomenon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is in point of fact conceivable that the
Anglosphere’s comparative apathy toward the Soviet Implosion of mid-to-late ’91
was owing to an event that the Soviet Union had had nothing to do with, that
indeed might as well have taken place on another planet as far as the Soviet
domestic political situation was concerned—namely, the first so-called Gulf
War, whose jaw-drop-inducingly eloquent (albeit ultimately wearisome and
offensive) demonstration of the overwhelming telegenically spectacular
technological might of the United States’ armed forces—a demonstration these
forces had not been so unreservedly vouchsafed since the Second World
War—effectively preemptively rendered every succeeding geopolitical event of
1991 a nonstarter public opinion-wise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the aftermath of the first so-called Gulf War, the entire
geopolitical landscape could have been reshuffled—with France reverting to a
Bourbonist monarchy, Turkey to a sultanate, North Korea transmuting into a
Swiss-style republic, Switzerland into a North Korea-style totalitarian
dictatorship, etc.–and not elicited the obtusest eyebrow arch from the North
American or British public, provided that none of these revolutions involved
the obliteration of any large buildings by so-called smart bombs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Again, I say, this just proves that the
Soviet Union deserved every inch of Occi-occidental cold shoulder it
received.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If in the autumn of 1990
(i.e., the period of consolidation of the at least nominally multinational
coalition that ousted Iraq from Kuwait in January 1991) the USSR gave a genuine
tinker’s tosslet about retaining its telegenic hold on the Anglospheric viewing
public, it should have stepped up to the plate and joined in the festivities,
either by assuming its traditional (at least by comparison with the US’s
ever-changing, weather-cock like disposition to Saddam &co.) role as Iraq’s
foremost champion or becoming the U.S.’s senior junior partner in Operations
Desert Shield and Storm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it did
neither, it had only itself to blame for the occultation of its own restaging
of the 1989 revolution qua multi-media spectacle.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, again, and specifically for the third
time, I am aghast at and exasperated by my default reader’s—or, as I have
addressed him or her for literally micro-ages (i.e., much more than a decade)
in numerous contexts, Dear Gentle Reader (DGR)’s—enthrallment to <i>post hoc
propter hoc</i>-driven Whiggism, by his or her assumption that whatever course
of action in the past would have proved most expeditious to the realization of
“our” own designs (I employ <i>our</i> in so-called scare-quotes in preference
to naked roman <i>their</i> because in my present <i>Lebenswelt their</i>
interpellation of <i>me</i> as one of <i>them</i> is far less eluctable than,
say, my interpellation as a man by another man) was perforce not only the only
prudent but also the only morally justifiable CoA for other parties to pursue,
and that the<i> </i>subsequent success of “our” designs—however rickety (i.e.,
provisional and equivocal) that success may be—is proof positive that those who
pursued designs in any way not assimilable to “our” designs—no matter how
Cracker Jack and splendiferous these other designs may have been in point of
both intrinsic desirability and realizability—were unregenerate suckers,
chumps, losers, rogues, scoundrels, and, indeed, only barely figurative dung
beetle-shunned <i>turds</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this
seemingly de facto terminal recurrence of craven Whig-humpery on the part of
the DGR impels me to conclude that I am going to have to dispense with his or
her services for the duration of the present essay, which is a pity because
contrary to what a plurality if not outright majority of my empirical readers
doubtless think, the DGR is not merely some twee device for showing, or rather
attempting to show—presumably ever-more futilely—what a clever fellow I
supposedly am (via, say, a practical appropriation of the Bakhtinian concept of
heteroglossia), but rather the most efficient and productive engine I have yet
alighted on (admittedly there may be more efficient and productive engines that
I happen not to have alighted on yet) for <i>advancing </i>my argument in every
conceivable family-friendly sense of the gerund—moving the argument along
towards its conclusion, making a case for it, and taking it to a so-called
higher level (doubtless among several other equally pertinent senses that
happen to escape me now).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The DGR
advances my argument in all these senses by enabling me to forestall or obviate
misinterpretations—presumably not all misinterpretations but quite likely most
of the most obvious and devastating ones, which—admittedly
counterintuitively—are quite often one and the same.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I am (or were) penning a philippic
against, say, <i>tigers</i> in the obsolete and recondite Balzacian sense—i.e.,
a philippic against sexually aggressive young male aristocrats habitually on
the prowl during the Bourbon Restoration micro-epoch—it is (or would be)
naturally imperative to establish in the empirical reader’s mind that I am (or
would be) referring to <i>tigers</i> neither in the primitive zoological sense
nor in the derived emblematic sense as the name of the aggregated members of
Detroit’s senior (or perhaps even sole) professional baseball team, because of
course both of the last two senses are almost inevitably going to be more
familiar and obvious to him or her than the Balzacian one (yes, even if he or
she is neither a zoologist nor a resident of Detroit and at the same time the
world’s most dedicated Balzac scholar or fan).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the DGR can help me effect this needful blinkering of the empirical
reader’s hermeneutic horizon by simply asking me at the virtual outset if I am
not writing about tigers qua animals or tigers qua Detroit baseball-team
members.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course I could simply
explain that I am not writing about tigers qua either non-Balzacian entity-set,
and in the case of something so quickly explainable I doubtless would do just
that (the essaying of a case actually typically exacting a DGR-intervention, a
case of something only very <i>slowly</i> explainable, is not practicably
adducible here, inasmuch as its adduction would itself almost ineluctably exact
the intervention of a DGR), but were I to do just that at each and every moment
such hermeneutic blinkering was required, my already syntactically
hyper-involuted and digression-sclerotic prose idiom (for which I shall tender
no apologies, as the involution and sclerosis, although lamentable in
themselves, are peremptorily exacted by the <i>Ding an sich</i> [the
physiological analogues chez the organisms of such-and-such persons engaged in
such-and-such activities are both too obvious and numerous to enumerate]) would
overtax the most indulgent empirical reader’s patience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So even more fundamentally than as an <i>aide-explication</i>
(or <i>aide d’explication</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">)</span>,
the DGR functions as a kind of prosodic safety valve interspersing my
hypotactic <i>longueurs</i> with a bit of doubtless much-craved if not
necessarily even ever so little-needed paratactic brevity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so it is with some commiseration with the
empirical reader that I am dispensing with the DGR’s services for the balance
of the present essay—with some commiseration, yes, but admittedly not with <i>a
great deal</i> let alone <i>shed loads</i> thereof, for thus far in the present
essay the DGR has been behaving atypically like a spot-on statistical composite
of my prospectively actual empirical readers, or to put it another way, like
almost everyone to whom I have tried to air my views on the ought-to-be-even if
it isn’t-so called Russian situation in the past, say, nine years—since, in
other words, some indefinable point between the poisoning of Alexander
Litvinenko and the Russian military intervention in the Ossetian part of
northern Georgia—he or she has been behaving, in other words, like a knee-jerk
Russophobe-cum-unregenerate Russo-ignoramus who is quite simply utterly
undeserving of interpellation-cum-acknowledgment as a fellow quasi-enlightened
adult and who must accordingly be treated as an utterly alien, refractory, and
benighted schoolchild.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Conceivably fair
enough, but if I may be vouchsafed one parting interjection in the character of
an <i>old-school DGR</i>—“ –Most certainly (<i>he said with insufferably
manifestly self-indulgent affected good grace</i>)— “Thank you (<i>he or she
said with insufferably manifestly unaffected selfless good grace</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My question (and I am confident, in the light
of the hundreds of words you have devoted to establishing your didactic
prerogative in “<a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2015/05/against-intralingual-diversity.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Against Intralingual Diversity</span></a>,”
that you will not take the question amiss) is quite simply, ‘Given that you
intend to treat my empirical counterparts as mere schoolchildren, on what
ethical (in the rhetorical sense) grounds have you assumed the position of
schoolmaster on all subjects or topics bearing (pun very much intended) on
Russia?’—or to put it another way, ‘<i>Whence the s***ing f**k do you get off
berating the most Russo-ignorant members of the great Anglospheric reading
public for their opinions on Russia (nay, whence do you even derive the s**ing
side to assert that </i>Russian<i> is important enough to have a much-coveted </i>situation<i>
appended to it)</i>?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have you
perchance—and perchance on the grounds that <i>if you told us you would have to
kill us</i>—been concealing a longstanding appointment as a senior fellow of
Kremlinology at the Armand Hammer-Hoover Institute?’” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, I have not, and the source of my
side-cum-off-getting on these Russoursine topics is simply that furnished by a
pair of Anglospheric eyes and ears trained fairly attentively, to the extent
that the various distances entailed by my position have permitted, on the
Soviet Union and its contributing and succeeding political entities over a
period of some thirty-six years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Meaning since you were the age of ten?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although that is one more question than I vouchsafed you, I shall
condescend to vouchsafe it with its candid, frank, and truthful answer—namely, <i>Yes</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And before you leap in with a this-time
utterly impermissible second post-permitted question to the effect of “Are you
sh***ing me?” let me assure you that I am by no means sh***ing you and express
no small amount of bemusement at the supposition that I even might be sh***ing
you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it is within the capacity of a
ten-year-old to maintain and cultivate a collection of hundreds of so-called
action figures based on characters, sub-characters, and mere bits of animated
flotsam from the top-grossing summer<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>sci-fi or cartoon zoological schlockbuster franchise, or to follow the
playing-field statistical fortunes of each and every one of dozens of teams and
hundreds of team-members comprising the core personnel of a professional
athletic organization, it should also be within his or her capacity to follow
the domestic and international political situation of a single country as
reported on in and by the traditional so-called media outlets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And not only is such a pursuit within a
ten-year-old’s capacity, it is also certainly no more intrinsically perverse a
pursuit for him or her than are the more traditional tykish avocations–for
whereas the killing off of some fictional dayglo scimitar-wielding
pseudo-samurai or the sacking or outstriking of some schlub of a quarterback or
designated hitter can have no immediate material bearing on a ten-year-old’s
well-being, the activities of a foreign State, particularly one as powerful as
the USSR in the early 1980s, do more than occasionally bid not unfairish to
ruin his or her whole day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that is
really requisite to the average ten-year-old’s becoming as much of a lay authority
on a given country as that country’s most zealous forty-year-old
non-professional fan is the will to direct as much attention to that country as
he or she might otherwise be directing to athletics or toys or movies or
whatever else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I am certain that at
some point less than six months and a fortnight after my tenth birthday I
acquired at least the rudiments of that will vis-à-vis the then Soviet Union or
USSR.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How can I be so sure that this
acquisition took place before I turned 10.5342(…)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, because I distinctly remember seeing
Leonid Brezhnev’s photograph on the front page of the <i>Tampa Tribune</i> and
asking my mother who he was, and her replying, “He’s the General Secretary of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [or <i>USSR</i> {or possibly even <i>Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics</i>].”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
may very well have been the sheer portentous verbosity of Mr. Brezhnev’s job
title that drew me into the hobby or pastime of–well, what shall one call it?—<i>Russeme</i>-
or <i>Sovieteme</i>-spotting, I suppose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At any rate, whenever this inaugural encounter with the image of the
living Mr. Brezhnev occurred, my Sovieteme-spotting jones was certainly in full
flower by the date of his death (whence the <i>terminus ad quem</i> of my
10.5342[…]th birthday, which fell on Mr. Brezhnev’s <i>Todestag</i> of November
10, 1982), because I can remember avidly taking in one of the big three U.S.
television networks’ coverage of the aftermath of that death, on either
November 11 or 13 (depending on whether Veterans Day, the eleventh, which fell on
a Thursday that year, was a school holiday in my county-cum-district that year,
for I am sure I saw the broadcast at home [according to the usual source, Yuri
Andropov was appointed the new General Secretary on the 12<sup>th</sup>, but I
have so far not been able to be a**ed to track down the date of the official
announcement of that appointment]) and in particular its inclusion of a brief
eavesdropped live satellite feed of the big one Soviet television network’s
coverage of that aftermath, a feed which showed a symphony orchestra in full
evening dress performing what the American commentator described as “somber
Tchaikovsky music” (again, as with the radio song commemorating the fall of the
Berlin Wall, I have lamentably forgotten the name of the performed piece if I
ever knew it—although in this case perhaps that information is more easily
recoverable and perhaps will be recovered when I can next be a***d to G****le
away a half an hour or so at Y** T**e).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even at the time it was obvious to me that the feed was being included
in order to make a political point, to demonstrate the unpardonable
secretiveness-cum-administrative inefficiency of the Soviet leadership: if, the
commentator implied, the surviving members of the Politburo had trusted the
Soviet people as any confidently legitimate governmental regime ought to trust
its governees, they would have contrived to fill the airwaves with something
more revelatory of the procedures leading to the selection of a new general
secretary than the round-the-clock Tchaikovsky, which was effectively serving
as a giant DO NOT DISTURB sign incorporating a gargantuan glyph of an erect
middle finger (my conceit, not the commentator’s).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in hindsight, it also seems to me that
there was an additional subtext to the feed-inclusion, a <i>mediatic</i>
subtext perhaps no more subcutaneous than the political one, a subtext to the
effect that if the Soviet broadcasting executives had really known how to
produce a proper television program, at such a moment they would have come up
with a much more resourceful or <i>creative</i> idea than simply dragging a
camera down to the Bolshoi or the Mariinsky or wherever and pointing it at the
house band; that they would instead now be affording their viewers visually
lavish chapel-to-graveside coverage of a State funeral liberally interlarded
with, say, interviews with the late executive’s political cronies, high-school
football coach, et al.; a subtext indicative of a general assumption that has
long been pandemic <i>chez nous Anglo-Saxons</i> and that I shall have occasion
to address at length in these pages, the assumption that in every profession
and walk of life the Soviets, and the Russians after them, were and are worthy
of immeasurable scorn and ridicule simply for doing things in a less
spectacular, less up-to-date, and above all <i>less expensive</i> manner than
their Anglospheric counterparts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at
the time (remember—November 11 or 13, 1982) the prevailing impression made on
me by the feed was one that cut quite across the grain(s) of both the political
and the mediatic subtexts in being an entirely <i>favorable</i> impression: as
a budding if not burgeoning classical music buff (see “<a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2010/05/weasel-goes-pop.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Weasel Goes the Pop</span></a>” for the
so-called back-story) I was entirely favorably impressed by the fact that the
Soviets were seeing fit to mourn the death of their leader exclusively through
the music of Russia’s greatest composer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whether I was then yet at all aware of any of the decidedly culturally
downmarket typical products of the Soviet cultural mill, of any of the <i>socialist-realist</i>
murals, novels, movies, cantatas, etc. unalloyedly and unremittingly
celebrative of the collective Soviet Socialist Way of Life, is impossible to
say from this temporal distance, but whether I was or not, the Tchaikovskyan
obsequies to Brezhnev implanted in my mind a supposition that no subsequent
acquaintance with the actual quotidian cultural diet of the empirical Soviet
citizen could ever shake–a supposition, namely, that the Soviets—meaning
prevailingly but by no means exclusively the Russians—had laudably held on to a
kind of society-wide, subculturally transcendent reverence of so (and for the
most part rightly)-called high art that we Anglo-Saxons had long since blithely
and perhaps even enthusiastically renounced in favor of the deplorable (and
entirely rightly called) mass-cultural likes of Beatlemania, <i>Star Wars</i>-mania,
multiprefixball-mania, and <i>Dallas</i>-mania.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>From November 11 or 12, 1982 until at least a half-handful of years
after the events of August 1991, I took it for granted that upon touching down
in not only Moscow or Leningrad, but even in some provincial burg such as
Tblisi, Kharkov, or Novosibirsk, on any early afternoon of the week, one would
be hard-pressed without pulling a number of extremely hefty and stubborn strings
to obtain even standing-room admission to that evening’s performance by the
local symphony orchestra, <i>corps de ballet</i>, opera company, or senior
string quartet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the
late-middle-1990s at the latest, I have ceased to take for granted any such thing
about the Moscow, Leningrad, Tblisi, Kharkov, Novosibirsk, etc., of either the
present, November 11 or 12, 1982, or any intervening chronological points, and,
indeed, I have come to assume that on the whole the Soviets-cum-post Soviets
have been at least as apathetic or antipathetic to so (aftMPR)-called high
culture, and at least as deplorably enthralled to (entirely rightly called)
mass culture as us Anglo-Saxons for quite a bit longer than 3.6 decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The supposition that Russia and the other
now-former Soviet republics are or were more hospitable greenhouses (a.k.a. <i>conservatories</i>)
for the cultivation of the fine arts has of course been supposed by other
Anglo-Saxons than me or I; indeed, in many ways idée-reçue-istically speaking
it is but the complement of the other pan-Anglospheric supposition (or
assumption) that I have already stroked, the supposition-or-assumption that the
Soviets (or Russians [and by now by all means <i>exclusively </i>the Russians])
are incapable of doing anything in a properly up-to-date way, and like that
supposition-or-assumption, it will be subjected to condign extensive
interrogation [apologies for any inadvertent evocation of the practices of the
KGB and FSB] herein in dew coarse; for now, though I must continue with the
outfilling of my ethos qua would-be Russian studies prof in fulfillment of my
pledge to the retiring DGR, as follows: thanks to the <i>Aufbiggung</i> of
Tchaikovsky in the Brezhnev obsequies, my interest in the Soviet Union expanded
beyond the ambit of its political doings to encompass its so-called cultural
life as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was not satisfied with
the pre-revolutionary-originating strains of Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov; I
also wished to get to know the music of Prokofiev and Shostakovich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because the so-called literature on these
two composers—the LP and CD liner-notes, music-reference-work-entries, and
critical monographs devoted to them—was (and indeed still is) heavily laden
with accounts of their respective numerous tussles with Soviet officialdom, and
in particular with the Stalinian phase thereof, in becoming acquainted with
their music I also received an ample—albeit highly tendentious—education in the
Soviet Union’s political history, a history venomously rich with the cruel
machinations and generally no less cruel (if also often condign) fates of the
likes of Kirov, Tukhachevsky, Beria, and Zhdanov.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as a result of the coition of this
two-stranded education there was born in my mind the favorite baby of a notion
of the first-rate Soviet artist as an indomitably plucky and resourceful
individualist determined to be boldly experimental and expressive and honest no
matter how devastating the potential cost to his health, safety, or retirement
plan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Concurrently, from the broadcasts
of Radio Moscow, which I listened to on my portable shortwave radio in a spirit
and with a frequency (and at a number of frequencies) that both defy adverbial
expression (both <i>avidly</i> and <i>religiously</i> would suggest that I was <i>actively</i>
and <i>regularly</i> seeking out RM, whereas the truth was that it was almost
impossible for any shortwave listener to avoid RM, as it had the strongest
signal, longest schedule, and largest number of frequencies of any
English-language shortwave station barring the BBC and manifestly not barring
the Voice of America [which of course makes sense, as RM was trying to win <i>us</i>
over and the VOA was trying to win <i>them</i> over]; on the other hand, both <i>fitfully</i>
and <i>casually</i> would fail to do justice to the several-dozen minutes over
which I am known by my present self to have lingered more than twice at a(n)
RM-occupied meter-band subdivision) I was getting a decidedly mixed picture of
the then-current Soviet regime’s attitude to <i>Geist</i> in the
Matthew-Arnoldian sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the one
hand, although RM’s propagandistic mission never retreated into the fully
ignorable background, and all its programming had a decidedly pro-Soviet slant,
none of its broadcasts had anything of the smug, hectoring quality of Lord
Haw-Haw or Hanoi Hannah.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As near as I
can remember, there were two typical genres of Radio Moscow programs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One was a kind of cultural-anthropology
correspondence course of the air wherein the presenter would read aloud
letters<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from listeners inquiring after
Vanya and Masha Stolichnaya (or their counterparts in one of the non-Russian
Soviet republics)’s manner of attending to some politically neutral facet of
everyday life and then deliver oral replies liberally inclusive of
acknowledgments of his or her debt to RM’s fact-checking team (in other words,
liberally partaking of the same disarming, implicitly officialdom-abjuring
“Shucks, it’s just li’ol-old-me up here talking to you”-type ethos that has
ever been the stock-in-trade of on-air personalities in the Anglosphere).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, for instance, I recall some query about
the preparation of tea being answered with the factoid that people in some
Gosh-awfully hot corner of the Union counterintuitively preferred their tea
extra-hot in the summer, as the heat induced sweating and thereby cooled them
off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other typical RM program was a
panel talk show wherein three or four pundits of at least ostensibly divergent
political outlooks would at least go through the motions of debating some
non-politically neutral topic—say state ownership of the means of production
versus private enterprise, on which one of the panelists (probably invariably
the perfect-American-accented and part-time New Yorker Vladimir Posner, whom I
also seemed to see every other week fielding flak for the Kremlin on Phil
Donahue’s daytime television talk show) would be broad-minded enough to point
out that State-owned production did rather tend to restrict the consumer’s
range of choices—only of course to be gently put in his place with the rebuttal
that the Soviet State was working diligently and competently at diversifying
its product lines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So this was the nice,
the cheery liberal, the free-thought-facilitating, glasnost-affecting side of
Radio Moscow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The station’s coverage of
the Chernobyl nuclear disaster revealed a very different side; a dour,
secretive, prevaricating, mistrustful side—in short, a traditional or
old-school Soviet side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was more than
figuratively chilling to hear RM’s almost robotically affectless female
newsreader merely announcing that there had been an <i>incident</i> at the
Chernobyl power plant and that details about this incident were not yet
available when I had already learned from American media sources that the
reactor was in full meltdown and hemorrhaging torrents of lethal radiation into
the atmosphere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile (we’re talking
here about a period almost exactly coextensive with the calendar years 1987
through 1991), I was acquiring a not-unextensive if highly selective (and
translator-filtered) acquaintance with both the pre-and post-revolutionary
Russian-language literary canons—an acquaintance comprising, on the
pre-revolutionary side all the major Dostoyevsky novels save <i>The Idiot</i>
(which after several attempts I managed to read through to the end only in
2008–having at last been able to stomach its Christology [q.v. below {Lord
willing}]), several of D.’s shorter works, including notably <i>Notes from
Underground</i> (from which I derived facets of my authorial persona that
survive intact to this day and in the present essay), the first part of Gogol’s
<i>Dead Souls</i> and most of G.’s famous tales (though not G.’s famous play <i>The
Inspector General</i>, which I was inspired to read only in about 2010 after
watching the wildly unfaithful but palpably superior Danny Kaye cinematic
adaptation), a smattering of Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Turgeneev novellas, and a
fairly heaping helping of Chekhov short stories (though none of Ch.’s plays);
and on the post-revolutionary side Ilf and Petrov’s <i>Golden Ass</i>,
Zoshchenko’s <i>Before Sunrise</i> (of which the slightly inferior Richard
Linklater movie of the same name would appear not to be even a wildly
unfaithful adaptation) together with some of Z.’s ultra-brief humorous tales,
Yevgeny Zamyatin’s <i>We</i>, and Yuri Olesha’s <i>Envy</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Notable lacunae in this syllabus include
(doubtless not exhaustively), all the works of Russia’s second-greatest
Romantic, Lermontov (whose <i>A Hero for our Time</i> I eventually got around
to in about 2002 and now revere), Goncharov’s <i>Oblomov</i> (of which I still
know only as much as whatever portion of the original made it into the BBC’s
Toby Jones-starring radio adaptation), all Russian poetry on either side of the
boundary apart from poems set by composers (e.g., the handful each of Blok and
Tsvetaeva poems in Shostakovich’s cycles), the two big (<i>sic</i> on <i>big</i>
for <i>great</i>) Tolstoy novels, the one big (<i>sic</i> ditto) Turgeneev
novel, and everything written in Russian after about 1950.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By my seventeenth year, towards the end of
1988, I had become enthusiastic enough about Russian literature—that is to say,
literature written <i>po-russkii</i> regardless of the geographical provenance
or native tongue of its author—to study the Russian language, as I did
informally on my own for a year-and-a-half (or at any rate <i>over a period of</i>
a year and a half, for I can’t imagine I devoted more than an average of ten
minutes a week to it) and then formally for three semesters in college.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the end of that third semester I felt as
though I had had my fill of Russian.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This was mainly on account of the intrinsic qualities of the language,
and in particular on account of the distinction between perfective and
imperfective verb forms, a grammatical feature that Edmund Wilson perceptively
pinpointed as the chief stumbling block for English-speaking would-be
Russophones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Russian’s multiplicity of
inflections, its dozens of noun and verb endings, in having near-exact
parallels in Latin, presented me with few problems, but the whole business of
perpetually having to deal with two stems for a single verb both perplexed and
annoyed me to extra-figurative distraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But if I am to be honest with myself (and with the retiring DGR), I must
concede that my throwing in of the J-Cloth on my study of Russian was also
materially actuated by if not an absolute waning of interest in Russian
literature, then at least a relative waning thereof occasioned by my growing
fascination by or with other literatures originating in other languages—notably
French, German, and my native English.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was probably not then the case that I had actually become bored with
Russian literature <i>eo ipso</i>, but rather (and yet conceivably no less
damningly to Russian literature’s discredit) that these other literatures were
still patently disclosing new vistas to me while Russian literature seemed to
be failing to do this; or, to put it another and more brutal way, that I was
getting the sense that I had essentially gotten the gist of Russian literature,
that whatever as-yet-unread Russian novel, poem, short story, autc. I might
subsequently read would not teach me anything I had not already learned from
other Russian novels autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if I am
to be <i>totally</i> honest with myself and the retiring DGR, I must further
concede that the course of Soviet and former-Soviet history post-August 1991
(August 1991 marked the beginning of my third and final semester of official
Russian study, by the way) also contributed materially (if secondarily) to the
radical downscaling of my scholastic Russophilia; I must concede, in other
words, that at some moment during my selection of classes for the spring
semester of 1992, I more than likely reflected something along the lines of
“Well, if the next chapter in the <i>grand </i>[<i>grand</i> as in <i>great</i>
and not merely big (or, indeed, merely <i>bolshoi</i>)] <i>roman</i> of history
isn’t any longer going to hinge on this standoff between the U.S. and the
Soviet Union, I had better get out of this scholastic Russophilian racket like
[some amusingly Russocentric cod-variation on “a rat off a sinking ship,” a
cod-variation probably ineluctably centering even more specifically on the <i>Potemkin
</i>and<i> </i>the Soviet Union’s answer to Mickey Mouse {for I cannot but
assume there was such an answer, knowing as I do that there were Soviet answers
to the likes of James Bond}].”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet
yet again (or yet again again), I shan’t be so perversely self-abasing
vis-à-vis the present meta-ethical context as to pretend that every last drop
of my interest in things Russian and peri-Russian simply evaporated in January
of 1992.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, in all frankness and
candor, I can assert that this interest simply reverted to its 1982 levels,
which is to say that while I stopped reading Russian books and trying to learn
the Russian language, I kept listening to Russian music and following the news
from Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in about 1999, I began
to cultivate a fandom in (or of) Russian-language cinema (my almost total
ignorance of which thitherto had been owing not to any lack of curiosity on my
part but merely to the unavailability of rentable video versions of the movies
[which my neighborhood video shop started carrying only in the expiring moments
of the millennium {It is something of a puzzle of a fact—one that I shall
subsequently have occasion to take a crack at solving—that Russian-language
cinema’s commercial profile in the Anglosphere has been steadily rising all the
while that Russia’s political stocks herein have been plummeting.}])<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Russian cinema</i> is here by no means to
be read as simple shorthand for <i>Soviet-period so-called art</i> <i>cinema</i>,
for while I did indeed school myself first and ultimately most thoroughly on
the films of Andrei Tarkovsky and subsequently sought out Soviet movies of
comparable falutine altitude to his—e.g., Grigori Kozintsev’s <i>King Lear</i>
and <i>Hamlet</i> and Larisa Shepitko’s <i>Wings</i> and <i>The Ascent</i>—I
also watched a fair number of Hollywood-style Soviet dramas (e.g., <i>The
Cranes Are Flying</i> and <i>Letter Never Sent</i>) and even broad
crowd-pleasing comedies such as <i>The Irony of Fate</i>, <i>Ivan the Terrible</i>
(a.k.a. <i>Back to the Future</i> [groan]), and <i>Kidnapping Caucasian Style</i>,
as well as some commercially successful if more than vaguely arty features from
the post-Soviet period—most notably Andrey Zvyagintsev’s <i>The Return</i>, <i>Elena</i>,
and <i>Leviathan</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It is under the aegis or auspices of the immediately above-delineated
ethos that I presume to lecture the reader: I presume to lecture him or her, in
short, in my capacity as a moderate Russophile-cum-Sovietophile-cum
former-Soviet-realm-ophile of thirty-six years’ standing who knows a
more-than-modest if hardly formidable amount about Russia and the other former
Soviet republics although he has never been to Russia or any of those other
countries, and, indeed, has met very few Russians and former-Soviet
republicans—so few, indeed, that it would be extremely impertinent in him
(a.k.a. me) even to extrapolate the most tentative of generalizations about the
Russian or Former-Soviet-Republic-X-an national character from my appraisals of
their individual characters; nay, even to attempt to bring home to the reader
the precise flavor and piquancy-point of the impertinence by tendering an
Anglospheric analogy along the lines of “It would be like generalizing about
Brits or Americans based on the habitual comportment of Famous or Notorious Brits
or Americans X, Y, and Z.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doubtlessly
this lack of firsthand geographical and social experience has occasioned—or,
rather, in conformity with the metaphorical equation of knowledge with vision,
left in place—certain epistemologically significant blind spots. For instance,
back in the Soviet epoch I heard (and only <i>heard</i>) that in Russia (or
possibly even in every Soviet republic) the circus was a much more important
cultural phenomenon-cum-institution than it ever had been in any so-called
Western country; that, indeed, the average Russian (or possibly even average
Soviet) devoted at least as large a proportion of his or her leisure hours to
circus-attendance as to sporting-event attendance and movie-viewing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, as a ca. fifteen-year-old American who
thitherto had been utterly oblivious of the existence of Soviet circuses but
had had many a pair of Toughskins whisked off his lower extremities by his
unalloyed boredom by various American circuses, I could not help imagining the
average Soviet circus as an act-by-act clone of the average American circus
(only with ringmasters, clowns, lions, etc. that boasted, laughed, roared, etc.
in Russian [or Georgian, Armenian, autc.] rather than English) nor,
consequently, being utterly bemused by the average Russian or Soviet citizen’s
reputed enthrallment thereby; and as a forty-six-year-old American who has
still not spectated on a single Russian, Soviet, or former-Soviet circus (nor
been capable of being a**ed to see if any footage of such a circus is available
on Y**-T***) I continue to imagine the average Russian autc. circus as a <i>mutatis-mutandis</i>
act-by-act clone of a Toughskins offwhiskingly boring American circus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in consequence of my total ignorance of
the Soviet or Russian circus I have doubtless failed to understand some salient
facet of the Soviet or Russian character and have most certainly by default
ascribed a doubtless unjustified nadirishness of naffness to the leisure-time
proclivities of Vanya and Masha Stolichnaya aut al.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doubtless there was and possibly still is
something about the Soviet or Russian circus that set and possibly still sets
it head, shoulders, and nineteen-foot stilts above the American circus and
indeed elevated or even still elevates it to the level of sublimity equal to
that of the works of Tarkovsky, Tchaikovsky, and Dostoyevsky—but in consequence
of my firsthand geographical ignorance of Russia and other former Soviet
territories I have yet to learn what that something is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even if by now I had been capable of
being a**ed to see if any footage of a Russian or Soviet circus was or is on
Y**-T*** and had discovered there a complete video archive of circus
performances in Russia and other former Soviet territories from the dawn of
cinema to the present and had spectated on every single minute of that archive,
I am sure some wag of a traveler of former-Soviet climes would call me out for
or on my obliviousness of some facet of Russian or Soviet circus-spectatorship
accessible only to those with buttocks planted in the bleachers—e.g., as
follows: “How can you claim to begin to say the simplest goshdamn thing about
the Russians or other former Soviets when you know nothing about the
perennially preferred snack or popcorn-analogue of Russian and other former
Soviet-republic-an circus goers—viz. deep-fried Kabardian mountain goat
mountain oysters drenched in Kabul sauce?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Not that I know anything about Kabardia except that it’s some part of
the Caucasus mentioned in <i>A Hero of Our Time</i>, or about Kabul sauce
except, thanks to Yevgeny Yetvstushenko’s poem “In the Store” [which I in turn
know only because it served as the text to a movement of Shostakovich’s
Thirteenth Symphony], that you could buy it in Soviet government stores in
1962.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Naturally the linguistic fortunes
of the term <i>Kabul sauce </i>since the 1980 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
spring{s} to mind in its own right as a subject on which I might be more
enlightened if I had ever been to Russia autc.]) And that well-traveled
out-calling wag would doubtless be well within his rights to lord it over me
like some pre-1861 Russian landowner, and I would doubtless be obliged to take
his lordliness on the chin like the lowliest of pre-1861 <i>muzhiks</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the same, travel is surely not some
fixed, top-ranking epistemological t***p card or epistemological vacuum cleaner
that irrefragably and indefeasibly hoovers up each and every particle of
demurral gleaned from other registers of experience, and on two or more
occasions the present untraveled semigluteal Russophile has enjoyed the by no
means dubious pleasure of putting a well-traveled steatopygiac Russophile in
his or her place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I recall, for example,
that in 2009 I met a person with a professional political-policy-orientated
interest in Russia (doubtless he would have had to kill me, as they say, had he
disclosed the precise nature of this interest) who reported that he had lately
spent an extensive and intensively professionally orientated interval in the
city of Astrakhan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Ah, Astrakhan,” I
reflexively shrieked in uncontainable delight at simply being in the presence
of a person who had been in the place after which such iconic articles had been
named (I apologize for the clunkiness of this construction, but regrettably the
term <i>eponym</i> applies only to people and <i>namesake</i> to paired named
entities in the Kripkean sense—e.g., Odessa, Ukraine [formerly though not
originally Odessa, Russia and Odessa, U.S.S.R] and its namesakes Odessa, Texas
and Odessa, Florida), “as in <i>the hats</i>?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Alas, the dude or gentleman had no idea of what I was referring or
alluding to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might as well have been
in the presence of a recent sojourner in Buffalo, New York who had never heard
of Buffalo wings, or a recent sojourner in Pisa, Italy who had never heard of
pizza, or, indeed, a recent sojourner in Delhi, India who had never heard of
delicatessens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, the Astrakhan
hat was and is at least as intimately conjoined to or with Russia as the bowler
hat to or with the City of London and the ten-gallon Stetson cowboy hat to or
with the State of Texas, for what scene of outdoor Russian winter life, what
view of Red Square or Nevsky Prospect at Christmastime [or, in the officially
heathenish Soviet days, Newyearstime], would be complete—at least in cis-Ural
eyes—were not every last masculine head therein surmounted by one of those
bulky, towering black-fleeced-out superfezzes?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why, one would as soon countenance a bare a**e or b*s*m as an
Astrakhan-hatless male pate in such a tableau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet this dude or gentleman who derived not only his daily bread but
also his weekly circus-cum-sack of deep-fried Kabul sauce-drenched Kabardian
mountain goat mountain oysters (qua quasi-synecdoche for disposable income,
natch), from his supposed—and in most registers doubtless actual—expertise on
Russia, had never heard of the Astrakhan hat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Presumably throughout his sojourn in Astrakhan he had been so thoroughly
absorbed in the nitty-gritty of public policy (committee meetings; nodding,
chin-stroking spectations of or on maps, graphs, diagrams; etc.) that he had
not had a moment to pop by the local local history museum, which doubtless
centered and still centers on an extremely expensive (by local history-museal
standards) and multi-sensorily arresting and therefore inescapable exhibit on
the hat to which the town owes its fifteen million minutes of low-key,
soft-white 60-watt bulb, fame (but <i>fame</i> rather than <i>obscurity</i>
nonetheless).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, to reiterate and
acuminate the point I made before the adduction of this example: while <i>caeteris
paribus</i> the well-traveled person is more enlightened than the untraveled
person, <i>caeteris inparibus</i>—i.e., specifically in the well-traveled
person’s disfavor and generally because the well-traveled person has been less
curious about or attentive to the traveled-to place—the well-traveled person’s
epistemological edge over the untraveled person may be slight, nonexistent, or
even negative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, the
reader should not by default set a lesser value on my assertions than on those
of any official expert on Russia etc., and by the same token I should (and
indeed will) stand ready to be corrected by any officially accredited expert on
Russia etc. whose curiosity and attentiveness thereunto equal or exceed my own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I confess to standing especially
vigilantly ready to be corrected by officially accredited experts on the
non-Russian parts of the etc. as these parts have developed (or stagnated or
regressed) over the past 15 years or so, for the following reason: throughout
this roughly 15-year-period the respective internal political situations of the
former Soviet republics other than Russia have been by default quite marginal
contributors to the overall geopolitical situation, such that by whatever (if
any) time the BBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, et al. aut c. find occasion to report on one
of these nation-state-territories, the various forces, factions, personages,
and interests materially germane to the historical moment have already been in
play (or at war, loggerheads, autc.) for some time (that <i>some</i> <i>time </i>being
a unit that is axiomatically always increasing in length), such that the
Russophile-cum-Sovietophile-cum former-Soviet-realm-ophile who relies, as the
present one does, on the BBC et al. aut c. for his intelligence of the former-Soviet
realm is apt to be unaware, at least for the short term (i.e., until such time,
if ever, when the former-Soviet republic in question has been close enough to
geopolitical center -stage long enough to elicit so-called in-depth
documentaries, panel-discussions, etc. from the BBC et al. aut c.), of the
precise anatomical position of either the principal political bone that is
being picked within any given former-Soviet republic or the principal political
bone that the dominant and significant would-be dominant political agents and
would-be agents wish to pick (or share [if <i>sharing a bone</i> indeed be the
cooperative complement of <i>picking</i> one]) with Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example [CENSORED DGR INTERVENTION IN
OBJECTION TO MY UNDENIABLY CLOYING ADDICTION TO ‘FOR EXAMPLE’ + PERSONAL
ANECDOTE IN THE PRESENT ESSAY], it was only in September of 2016, when Islam
Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan since 1989 (hence, since Soviet times)
died and consequently received a few-dozen minutes of news coverage on BBC Radio
4, that I was compelled even slightly to disentangle Uzbekistan as a political
entity from the neighboring <i>stans</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The last I had heard of Uzebkistan before this necrological episode
(barring the hilarious [albeit—if the DVD commentary is to be believed—completely
uninformed, let alone fact-checked] SCTV mock-Soviet television public service
announcement warning the presumptively upright non-Uzbekistani Soviet citizens
against the subterfuges of the wily though shiftless Uzbeks, which I had first
seen in ’07 or thenabouts) had been way back in the autumn of ’01, when, during
the ouster of the Taliban from the pilot’s or helmsman’s seat of the ship of
state of Afghanistan, U-stan had been repeatedly publicly described by White
House and State Department spokespeople as <i>a key ally in the war on
terror(ism).</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the meantime I had
interpellated U-stan by default as a “typical corruption-ridden ex-Soviet
State-cum-territory other than Russia” in which a nationalist or Islamist-orientated
party, a retro-Soviet-orientated party, and a so-called progressive so-called
free-market orientated party were recurrently triangling off against one
another in paper-rock-scissors matches that recurrently brought one of the
three into nominal ascendancy for a year, or, at most, two years in succession
out of a decade of incessant actual political anarchy and economic torpor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Karimov death-coverage revealed to me
that to the—or, at any rate, a—very surprising contrary, since the dissolution
of the U.S.S.R. Uzbekistan had been functioning very much like an old-school
Soviet satellite state on penuriously rationed steroids, with Karimov
constituting a <span style="background: white; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">Ceaușescu-like omnipotent and unbudgeable chief executive
presiding over a government-monopolized economy centered on the extraction and
exportation of indigenous natural resources—notably gold and natural gas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doubtless two or more among the other former
Soviet republics about which I have lately happened to hear next to
nothing—Azerbaijan, Moravia, Armenia, etc.—evince comparably wide and striking
divergences from my “typical corruption-ridden ex-Soviet State-cum-territory
other than Russia.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And doubtless
intelligence of the internal political situation of at least one of these two
or more republics would occasion some far from trivial modifications of my
overall appraisal of the former-Soviet sub-geopolitical landscape, as my recent
briefest of briefings on Uzbekistan has in fact done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before this briefing I had tended to assume
that a given former non-Russian Soviet republic’s degree of Russophilia varied
in direct proportion to the percentage of its population comprised by so-called
ethnic Russians (the admittedly cumbrous precise designation for such types is <i>people
who like to think of themselves as Russians</i>), and Uzbekistan has shown me
that such an assumption is by no means well-founded, that, indeed, in a
political-ethical rapprochement partly reminiscent of the mutual attraction of
the Axis powers in World War II (“partly” because I am as yet unaware of any
upsurge of Russophilia among the Uzbekistani populace [not that I am not
essentially unwarrantedly taking it for granted that a preponderance of the
German, Italian, and Japanese populaces were enthusiastic about the Axis]) a former
non-Russian Soviet republic statistically devoid of so-called ethnic Russians
is quite capable of becoming bosom buddies with Russia merely in virtue of
pursuing (or being prey to) a political-cum-economic program that is
ever-so-broadly Russia-esque.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this
Uzbekistan-catalyzed refinement of my default conception of non-Russian former
Soviet republics has not failed of having knock-on effects on my appraisal of
present-day Russia herself or itself; for now that I know that he has had at
least one genuine dependable ally-cum-imitator (although, in the light of the
chronology, <i>role model</i> might be the more appropriate word for Mr.
Karimov) in the president of Uzbekistan, Mr. Putin’s uniformly cocksurely
domineering comportment towards the remaining non-Russian former-Soviet
republics seems to me slightly more rational, slightly less megalomaniacal,
slightly less pie-in-the-skyish than it did as recently as two years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps, I am now inclined to reflect, Mr.
Putin is not entirely foolishly hoping that even the most prevailingly
Russophobic among these countries will be coaxable back into the Old Kremlin
Corral after their respective feckless teenager-like dreams of hosting “the
Silicon Valley of the Armpit of Nowhere” and transforming every last
porcifutuoaceous peasant within their borders into a gig-entrepreneur pulling
in eighty-thou (euros, dollars, or pounds—take your pick [after all, the
value-differences among the three currencies are negligible as of this
writing]) a week by taking the pooches of well-heeled Parisians, Londoners, and
New Yorkers for walkies in nonets by remote-control robotic video-link, have
finally spent themselves, leaving them finally to realize (so at least the
P.W.’s conjectural V.P.) that they would be best served by transforming
themselves into oversized three or four- aisle company stores on the current
(and well-established) Russian floorplan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So in short: inasmuch as such bits of non-Russian former Soviet
republic-iana have proved enlightening if chastening so far, I welcome further
instances thereof from whatever enlightened quarter or party can supply them,
even knowing as I do that my privity to them may compel me to revise or even
retract some of the sentiments I will have aired by the conclusion of this
essay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, knowing as I do
that my fuller knowledge of the political-cum-economic habitus of Uzbekistan
has not compelled me to revise by so much as a jotlet, let alone to retract, a
single one of the assertions that constituted the main so-called talking points
of the then-prospective and now present essay (to which I really must start
sp*d*-a-sp*d*-calling-ishly referring consistently as a <i>lecture</i>) even
some months before I learnt of Mr. Karimov’s death, I see no sub-casuistically
compelling reason for not forthwith itemizing these assertions and then
expounding on them as blithely, cavalierly, and indeed insouciantly, as though
it were still ca. March 2016 both chez moi and chez the whole gosh-damn
kit-and-kaboodle of a Russian-cum-non Russian former Soviet Republican state of
affairs, as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">1) Russia,
as it subsists within its present borders, is indisputably a great power, and
indeed the world’s third-greatest power after the United States and China,
although Japan (another unjustly now démodé-cum-formerly catwalk-dominating
nation-state) and India certainly have plausible grounds for contesting the
bronze with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly this title of
Great Power No. 3 (of, say, five to seven) is a less illustrious—or, perhaps,
rather, less pompous or blingy—one than that of Superpower No.2 (of only two)
that the U.S.S.R. was universally conceded even during the most torpid
micro-stretches of the Brezhnev micro-epoch and the unremittingly embarrassing
two-and-a-half years of the Andropov-cum-Chernenko micro-micro epoch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the comparative dinginess of the title is
owing far more lavishly and exigently to the indisputable post-1989 ascent of
China to the position of Great Power No. 2 than either to whatever degree of
diminution of its absolute stature Russia has suffered since the dissolution of
the Soviet Union or to whatever absolute augmentation of its own absolute stature
the U.S. has enjoyed since that selfsame historical milestone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for all its dinginess, the title’s
still-stratospheric position in the geopolitical league table (or Billboard
Chart [q.v.]) means that for the so-called immediately foreseeable future the
third question any entity of worldwide presence-cum-influence—be it a
nation-state government, a multinational corporation, or a superquango—ought to
ask itself before taking any action of potentially global reverberativeness
will remain “How will this play in Moscow, and, indeed [in the light of certain
centrifugal post-1991 tendencies within Russia itself], in such Peoria-esque
Russian burgs as Novgorod and Novosibirsk?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>2) The historically-dubious-beyond-belief and ever-volatile congeries of
countries that now styles itself the West with a curious mixture of smugness
and desperation has precious little ethical or prudential grounds for looking
down its lorgnette at Russia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
so-called West’s arrogated supposed edge over the Russkies derives solely, in
the ethical register, from its recent liberalization of legal codes governing
practices of super-marginal and therefore negligible ethical import, and in the
prudential register, from its peremptory fetishization of a bastardized version
of a system of political economy that has always been legitimately contestable
and that by now has proved downright untenable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>3) The U. S. S. R. may have had its faults, but its sublation and
subsumption of an only barely figuratively myriad national, ethnic, peri-national,
and peri-ethnic-identification tags in and under the single portable
identification tag of Soviet Citizen was a very good thing, a VGT that mutatis
mutandis really ought to be revived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>4)
With the exception of the three Baltic nation-states, the non-Russian former
Soviet republics now at various sizes and temperatures of loggerheads with
Russia are axiomatically not merely striving to hold on to some pre-Soviet <i>status
quo ante</i> reestablished in 1991, because the territories coterminous with
them were already a part of the Russian empire before it turned Soviet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their respective beeves with Russia therefore
should be understood preeminently as <i>Russophobic</i> beeves—as beeves with
Russia qua Russia—rather than as beeves actuated principally by the fear of
once again losing whatever liberties they were deprived of as a consequence of
the institution of the Soviet regime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>5)
The <i>principal</i> principle upon which the so-called West founds its
contestation of Russia’s interference with the nation-states in its propinquity
is identical to the principal principle upon which Russia founds that
interference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the principle of
national self-determination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
inasmuch as this principle is at bottom a barrel of bl**dy bullocks’ b**l*cks,
the cry of any enlightened soul vis-à-vis the friction between Russia and these
other countries must at bottom be <i>A plague o’ both your houses </i>(or <i>dachas</i>
or whatever the local s*dding equivalent is)<i>!</i>—although at least to the
extent that vituperation by the likes of the BBC, CNN, CBS, NPR, etc.
constitutes the plague, Russia has had enough of it to last a good, say, five
years, and the non-Russian nation-states are long overdue for a dose of
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>6) Any and all present-day
Anglospheric pathos about the discrepancy between “Putin’s Russia,” and some
other Russia, whether that Russia is understood as the Russia of an earlier
epoch (e.g., Russia in the time of Nicholas II or Russia in the time of Lenin)
or as a more “liberal,” “intellectual” stratum of present-day Russian society
than the one frequented by Putin and his myrmidons (i.e., essentially, the one
frequented by the likes of Gary Kasparov and Pussy Riot), is blinkered to the
point of clinical blindness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure,
today’s Russia is a trashy, degenerate travesty of the Russias of 50, 100, and
150 years ago, but today’s world as a whole and every single country in it are
trashy, degenerate travesties of their former selves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly the morally, intellectually,
aesthetically etc. (and it is a long, long adverbial cetera) dubious elements
of today’s Russia are but an amplification of such elements in the Russia of
old, and they are and always have been indissociable from those elements of the
Russian <i>Volksgeist</i> that Anglo-Saxons most and rightly admire; or, to put
it in ad-homineminal terms, the likes of Pussy Riot and Gary Kasparov, just
like the likes of Tchaikovsky, Tarkovsky, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky, are all
possessed of character traits that a classic Anglo-Saxon liberal would balk at
adopting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus the quasi-Solomonian
question that confronts every would-be or half-hearted classic Anglo-Saxon
liberal of a Russophile is whether the Russian baby is a nice enough one to
forbear throwing away despite the noisomeness of its bathwater, for at least in
the historical medium-term any separation of the one from the other is a
virtual impossibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>7) Even the most
full-hearted non-would be (because long, long-since <i>is</i>) Russophobe who
is convinced that Russia is all bathwater and no baby (the very biological
meta-incomprehensibility of this metaphor is suggestive of certain conceptual
defects chez the present-day Russophobic outlook that I hope to elucidate)
cannot in any good faith deny that present-day Russia is in every salient
respect closer to us—at whatever level of specificity below <i>the entire human
race</i> one chooses set the us-from-them dividing mambo-stick—than to
China.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, unless he cherishes
the Pollyanna-in-the-sky fantasy that through the magic of commerce China will
transform itself into a kind of archipelago of American-style Chinatowns—a
fantasy that I hope to put paid to via my elaboration of Item No. 2 in this
list—he or she needs must welcome, nay, yearn for closer ties between Russia
and Anglo-Saxia, and at minimum in the very short term nurture the hope that
Russia will not become any more buddy-buddy (or <i>droog-tongzhi</i>) with
China than it already is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Now on to
the expounding, starting with No. 1, <i>Russia is Great Power No. 3</i> <i>in
the present world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>This is very
probably something of a problematic assertion in the eyes, ears, etc. of
present-day received opinion, which tends to view <i>greatness</i> in a
geopolitical sense as a direct function of the political-economic concept of <i>gross
domestic product</i> (GDP), and Russia is as of this writing ranked sixth
rather than third in all the competing <i>U.S. News and World Report</i>-style
rankings (cf. and contrast “<i>Billboard </i>chart” and “league table”
[q.q.v.]) of the respective GDPs of the world’s countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But GDP is not the only plausible index of
geopolitical greatness, and, indeed, until fairly recently—specifically, since
1934, when the phrase <i>gross domestic product</i> was coined—it could not
have served as any kind of index of geopolitical greatness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be fair to the fetishists of GDP, though, <i>geopolitics</i>
is itself a word of almost comparably recent coinage, and even the notion of a <i>power</i>
as “a state or nation from the point of view of its international authority or
influence” may not be much more than 116 years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(With gallingly unhelpful vagueness, my <i>Oxford
Universal Dictionary, </i>a 1950s abridgment of the original OED, gives the
just-quoted definition as a “late” sub-sense of a usage first recorded in 1726
and in illustration of this sub-sense cites a source from 1901.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, unless one is willing to concede
that great-powerdom is something of no deeper historical profundity than, say,
ragtime or the bicycle (and who, apart from the most unregenerate
ephemeron-gourmandizing churl would be willing to countenance, let alone
champion, such a scandalously banausic notion) one must dispense with philology
and conceive of powerdom and greatness in the simplest and grossest notional
terms—to conceive of a power or potential power as any territory or collection
of territories answering to a single name and governmental body and greatness
as an abstract noun subsuming all the sorts of accoutrements of territorial
dominion that people have tended to regard as great across the ages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let us take the sub-geopolitical situation of
Europe and its North American annex at the time of the Seven Years War
(1756-1763) as a case in point in illustration of the compellingness of such a
realistic (in the strictly philosophical sense), non-philological treatment of
great-powerdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this time France was
universally regarded as the greatest European power, and Great Britain as
running behind France at a fairly distant second (with Prussia panting close on
its rear hooves).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The principal material
grounds of this pride of place seem to have been demographic and geographical:
with at least 25 million souls France was a much more populous country than
Great Britain, which at most contained nine million; and France’s North
American colonial dominions were much more extensive, comprising all of
present-day Quebec and most of the present-day American Midwest, as against the
comparatively minuscule present-day I-95 corridor-minus-Florida then comprised
by Britain’s colonial holdings in the continent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the French colonies were much
more thinly populated than the British ones (such that, in contrast to the
latter, they never acquired a fraction of the demography-fueled side requisite
to declaring independence from the mother country), but their possession was
seemingly solidly underwritten by the protection of the French army, famous for
more than a century as the largest and best-trained in Europe, in abashing
contrast to its puny, ad-hoc, perpetually press gang-dependent British
counterpart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All this while, it was no
less universally acknowledged that Britain was an altogether more prosperous
and comfortable country than France—that its poor were much better fed,
clothed, housed, and educated; its class of persons of the <i>middle station</i>
much more numerous; its commodities of everyday use both much more copious in
number and variety and much more easily acquirable; its distribution of both
commodities of everyday use (e.g., coal, butter, candles, milk, and sugar) and
luxuries (e.g., tea, lace, china services, harpsichords, and whalebone corsets)
much more extensive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
short-cum-fatuously anachronistic terms, everybody was willing to grant that
Britain had a substantially larger GDP than France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody was blind to France’s economic
shortcomings, and yet everybody regarded France as a greater power than
Britain, because they regarded military strength, breadth of territorial
occupation, and demographic abundance as superior to economic magnitude qua
indices of greatness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only when,
in the very early nineteenth century, Britain achieved parity with or
superiority to France in these other areas, that it began to be regarded as a
greater power than France (albeit while furnishing the cult of GDP with its
creation myth by being the first <i>intercontinentally</i> great power {in
favorable contrast to the Mediterranean-bound Venice of the immediate
post-Middle Ages} to have trafficked its way into greatness).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white;">That I have
not adduced the preceding scenario as a full-fledged geopolitical allegory with
mid-eighteenth-century France standing in for present-day Russia and
mid-eighteenth-century Britain standing in for…well, virtually every
present-day country of more than negligible geopolitical sway <i>except</i>
Russia (and very much including Britain) should be evident (at least to those
who have not written me off as a complete-ignoramus-cum idiot) from one glaring
discrepancy between France back then and Russia today: Russia is manifestly not
more populous than any of its geopolitical rivals save Japan and is less than half
as populous as the United States and a tenth as populous as China and
India.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But inasmuch as I am merely
trying to make a case for regarding Russia as the present globe’s <i>third</i>
great power this discrepancy should not be regarded as fatal to my argument,
for in other registers present-day Russia can more than hold its own in a
comparison with France of 250 years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of these I shall mention the <i>military</i> register first, partly
because I find it the most boring and it is nice to get the most boring things
out of the way early on, but also because despite its boringness it is not only
arguably but <i>certainly</i> the one of greatest material weight—the one about
which we should…how do you say?...<i>give the largest s**t</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not even going to bother looking up
statistics on the relative personnel volumes of the Russian, American (or, for
those who would sacrifice both euphony and grammatical parity to Hispanophilia,
<i>U.S.</i>), Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Brazilian, Indonesian, etc. armies; or
even on the number of aircraft carriers, fighter-jets, battleships, bombers,
frigates, tugboats, etc. in the respective combined fleets of these countries;
for at bottom (and with sincere apologies to the million or so people who have
been injured or killed by them in the past decade alone) these endowments are
all so many wooden soldiers and pop-guns <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>when considered alongside the 7,300 warheads
in Russia’s nuclear arsenal, which is evidently if not substantially larger
than the United States’ 6,970, and positively lap-dogs the 260 in China’s
(along with the 140 or so each in India’s and Pakistan’s).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course I know that in the eyes and minds
of all the present-day supposed experts on geopolitics a nuclear arsenal is
merely the whitest and most massive white elephant a nation-state can ever
acquire and that in real military terms a purely nuclear-armed State would be
virtually interchangeable with a ten-year-old child armed with, well, wooden
soldiers and pop-guns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The deucedly
ironic thing about a nuclear arsenal,” these grizzled pundits (who <i>by no
means </i>are to be mistaken for DGRs) aver while puffing away with insufferable
smugness at hookah tubes filled with their own anal flatulence (to be fair,
they really have nothing else to puff away at now that pipe-smoking is banned
in television studios), “is that it’s <i>too</i> potent to use, inasmuch as any
commander-in-chief or head of state of any State who did presume to launch a
nuclear attack on a foe would be met with a retaliation massive enough, at
minimum, to prevent his or her continuing hostilities and quite possibly to
eventuate in the utter annihilation of his or her own country’s population and
infrastructure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ergo, a nuclear attack
is effectively an act of military-strategic suicide.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To which averral I am, in the first, most
boring but again—at least in certain senses—most materially weighty place
inclined to retort, “If these gosh-d**ged nuclear weapons are so
paperweightesque in their military utility, why are so many countries who
haven’t got any of them so eager, so gung-ho, to acquire them, and even more
strikingly, so eager-cum-gung ho to acquire the power to manufacture them <i>ad
libitum</i>, and why are we Anglo-Saxons so eager to prevent these countries
from acquiring both the weapons and the power?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But as this retort has no bearing whatsoever on Russia, I really ought
swiftly to move on to my second retort, which has as much bearing on Russia as
on any other country, and hence a great deal of bearing indeed, viz.: since
when has the effective suicidal nature of any action categorically precluded
its execution on any conceivably adduceable grounds?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If and only if suicide were as statistically
rare an occurrence as, say, that genetic disease that causes children to turn
into wizened biological centenarians by the age of ten, why, then and only then
would I concede the reasonableness of the fart-hookah-puffing pundits’
complacency (albeit not their smugness) vis-à-vis nuclear arsenals; then and
only then would I spirit away my dread of a nuclear apocalypse as speedily as I
routinely do my dread of the annihilation of humankind by the earth’s collision
with an asteroid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Sure, it could
happen,” I would in that case apostrophize myself while making my toilet of a
weekday morning: “After all, virtually anything’s possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what are the chances of its happening in
my lifetime?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A zillion-trillion to
one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, the odds of my dying of a fall
in the <i>yikes!</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I really should
have picked up that bar of so-o-o-a-p […]).”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But suicide is quite evidently not so rare an occurrence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would much surprise me if fewer than one
out of a hundred deaths were caused by a deliberate act of suicide—in other
words, as an immediate and dedicated consequence of the die-er’s conscious and
diligent contrivance-cum-employment of an instrument of self-destruction (e.g.,
a noose, gunshot, or unventilated car-exhaust {or anal hookah} pipe).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if one regards the ambit of suicide as
being broad enough to include deaths occasioned by the performance of routine
but potentially self-destroying acts in a wantonly reckless manner—one (or at
any rate I) immediately thinks here of that veritable icon of rock-solid
American stiff-upper-lip-dom Ed Asner’s shaving with an imperfectly mounted
non-disposable safety razor<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[no, bless
his soul, he didn’t actually die, but he very well might have done]—why, the
figure surely rises to at least one in ten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One could, of course, make a watertight-cum-ironclad argument that
virtually every death, or, let us say, 9,999.7 out of every ten thousand
deaths, is a suicide provided one broadened the ambit to include every death
conceivably traceable to an act the die-er deliberately engaged in despite his
or her knowledge that it was not a so-called healthy choice–say, the ten-minute
utilization of a non-non smoking bar (back in the days when there still were
non-non smoking bars)’s sanitary facilities, or the one-off consumption of a
cheeseburger with bacon or extra mayonnaise (or even of a
baconless-cum-mayonnaiseless cheeseburger instead of a mere hamburger, or even
of a hamburger instead of a mere lettuce-and-tomato sandwich, or even of a
lettuce-and-tomato-sandwich instead of a mere dressing-less lettuce-and-tomato
salad)—one could do that, but this <i>one</i>, a.k.a. <i>I</i>, shall and will
not, lest I find myself in the heart of the camp of my arch-enemies, the <i>vile
Whigs </i>(q.v. below, Lord willing).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
any case, I don’t think one needs to grant that suicide is a near-universal, or
even common, occurrence to be bemused by the pooh-poohing away of its
geopolitical manifestation as a virtual chimera.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suppose the figure of suicide-caused deaths
is only one in a thousand, or one in ten thousand; why, then, it is perforce
far too high to be tolerated at a geopolitical resolution, for the
eye-burstingly obvious reason that however statistically rare it is, it somehow
manages to translate into a phenomenon with which we are all familiar–every one
of us has heard of someone’s committing suicide in the past year, most of us
(including the present writer) have been within two or three degrees of remove
from personal acquaintance with a suicide, and quite a number of us have been at
zero degree(s)—or one degree, if the suicide himself or himself contributes to
the count—of such remove.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For each of
us, suicide is an event-genre <i>chez les autres</i> that is slightly less
probable than divorce or so-called gender reassignment and slightly more
probable than sharing an airliner banquette with a so-called B-list
celebrity—its occurrence <i>chez un parmi ces autres</i> elicits from each of
us a physio-semiotic reaction more ardent than a shrug or yawn yet a du*n-sight
less frenzied than a shriek or gasp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“What did you just say? [<i>pauses with coffee cup held within inches of
lips</i>] Jenkins in accounting offed himself with a so-called Magnum 44
revolver last night?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well I nev…well, at
least <i>only very seldom</i>. [<i>takes generous sip from coffee cup</i>].”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The preceding bit of stage patter pretty
much, I fancy, captures the precise temperature, flavor, and texture of the
average present-day Anglo-Saxon’s reaction to news of a suicide in his or her
personal <i>Umwelt</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And by all
rights his or her reaction to hearing that <i>Putin, the Russian branch
manager, </i>offed himself <i>in a mushroom-cloud steam bath </i>ought not <i>eo
ipso</i> to be a microjoule more animated or heated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For Mr. Putin is after all only human, as
they say, and even in the improbable event that he (along with all his
fellow-members of the multi-gigaton club) is ultimately as sane, prudent, and
even-tempered as the average accountant, we axiomatically cannot take it for
granted that he will never—or even only very seldom—commit nuclear suicide,
inasmuch as we know from our own quotidian experience that many a person as
sane, prudent, and even-tempered as the average accountant has committed
suicide by the most potent and spectacular means at his or her practicable
disposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why any
affective-cum-somatic disposition towards a prospective nuclear apocalypse more
than a few angst-degrees short of outright panic is outright wanton ostrichism
and indeed as delusive as the wildest persecution-fantasy sufferable by the
most paranoiac of nuclear-armed commanders in chief-cum-heads of state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is well enough to say, “We must keep our
fingers crossed and hope that cooler State-heads prevail in this matter”;
indeed, I myself am enough of a Whig-cum-Pollyanna to hope and indeed nearly
presume that cooler State-heads <i>will</i> prevail in this matter, inasmuch as
I do not believe a <i>natural</i> or <i>genuine</i> or <i>full-fledged</i>
hot-head (as against an affectedly hot-headed person such as Mr. Putin or Mr.
Trump [after all, we mustn’t conflate hot-headedness and fatuity]) is likely to
assume control of a nuclear arsenal of world-annihilating strength.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in this matter confidence in the coolness
of individual commanders in chief-cum-heads of nuclear armed States cannot be
suffered to expand and transmogrify into confidence in the safety of those of
us (i.e. <i>all</i> of us) within vaporizing distance of a multi-gigaton
nuclear arsenal, inasmuch as quotidian experience has proved to us that the
coolest of heads are not arithmetically, let alone geometrically, less prone to
self-destruction than the hottest of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And if to this assertion it be objected by a grizzled,
fart-hookah-puffing pundit that a nuclear arsenal, in staggeringly belittling
contrast to a noose, gun, autc., cannot be operated by a single human
individual, that while it is indeed easy to imagine even one of our most
cool-headed commanders in chief-cum-heads of a nuclear-armed State momentarily
getting hot-headed enough (or falling into a blue and slap-bass-heavy enough
blue funk) to press the biggest and most imposingly red of all buttons, that
button is after all effectively but a room-service bell-pull linked to, oh, at
most, a gross of silo-wardens and sub-captains, each and every last one of whom
can surely be counted on not to have flown or fallen into a suicidal passion or
blue funk on the same day as his or her superboss and hence be further counted
on to <i>do the right thing</i> with all the altruistic valiance of Cornwall’s
servant shielding Gloucester’s eye; why then, I cannot but counter-object that
collective suicide is no more uncommon a termination to the lives of
collectives than individual suicide is to the lives of individuals, and that
out of all genres of collectives it is perhaps those of a specifically<i>
military</i> stripe that or who most often meet their ends at their own
Hindoo-deity-like gaggle of hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who
among us—and perhaps least of all among us, grizzled, fart-hookah-puffing
pundits—can forget such brazenly suicidal military adventures as the Alamo
(which I admittedly <i>might</i> have forgotten by now, had it not been and
were it still not for the insane ubiquity-cum-catchiness of the familiar
adjurative mnemonic formula), Little Bighorn, and, indeed, virtually every
campaign in the first half of the First World War?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, it is at first blush rather hard
to imagine the <i>esprit de kamikaze-corps </i>of an intensity requisite to
such adventures springing into being among the assemblage of highly
geographically mutually disparate individuals requisite to launching a
multi-gigaton nuclear attack, but the feeblest second-blushial exertion of the
fancy—an imaginative analogue to reaching for an object as near to hand as the
TV remote in one’s bathrobe pocket—will churn up a semi-veritable myriad of
plausible scenarios eventuating in such a genesis; scenarios all more or less
centering on the blokes and blokesses in the subs and silos’ being whipped up
into a jingoistic frenzy-cum-lather by a series of reports and statements
transmitted by the organs of mass communication—reports on this or that <i>egregious</i>
<i>and unprovoked attack</i> made by some enemy power, and statements from the
head of state expressing his or determination not to let such <i>egregious and
unprovoked aggression</i> <i>go unpunished</i>; why one can scarcely refrain
from picturing one of these dozens of lathered-up sailors or soldiers strutting
about his or her cabin or office like a sex-starved bantam cock (or game hen),
pumping the air with one or more of his (or her) fists, and repeatedly
ejaculating, “I just cain’t <i>wait</i> to get the call from on high and mash
that wee plastic disc with my middle fanger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Soowee!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All this—i.e., the ca.
2,000 words I have typed since “Of these I shall mention the <i>military</i>
register first”—has been a way of saying that however little we may <i>respect</i>
Russia as a geopolitical agent, however bumblingly incompetent or flagitiously
vicious we may find their actions on the so-called world stage, we really
should <i>fear</i> Russia more than any other geopolitical agent full stop
(which Briticism reminds me that for the benefit of my non-American readers, I
really must add <i>including the United States </i>[i.e., qua possessor of the
world’s second-largest nuclear arsenal] to the preceding clause) and
accordingly always treat its government’s representatives with something a good
deal more civil than flippancy in diplomatic and peri-diplomatic settings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, received opinion (perhaps not
only today but also in the recent and perhaps even distant past [for the
opinioneme in question has the air of something Shih-Tzu or some other
ultra-ancient far-eastern wiseacre would have said]) holds that the very most
foolish thing one can do when confronting some anal sphincter
dilatingly-fear-eliciting entity—in the pertinent exempla almost always a dog,
for some reason—is to betray to him, her, or it the merest soupçon of a
suspicion that one fears him, her, or it; and indeed, maintains that during a
standoff with such an entity there is no surer-firer stratagem for getting him,
her, or it to turn around and run away with his, her, or its tail (or most
tail-like available appendage) between his, her, or its legs than to file one’s
fingernails with sublime detachment while whistling “Dixie” (or whatever other
ditty served as the anthem of the losing side in one’s native country’s most
recent civil war).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even as applied to standoffs
with mere non-human beasts armed with nothing but their nature-given armaments
this opinioneme has always struck me as absolute b*l**cks, inasmuch as it seems
to impute to these mere brute critters a power of divination (or paranoia) not
often found in even the most sagacious (or paranoid) of human beings—viz., the
power to envisage ways in which a nail-file may be employed as a deadly weapon,
or in which something even deadlier than a nail-file may be concealed in some
hidden receptacle or orifice on or within the person of some puny, utterly
unprepossessing <i>bare forkèd </i>(tho’ to all appearances <i>non-</i> <i>fork-possessing</i>)
<i>animal</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as applied to
standoffs with artificially armed human beings, and more particularly human
beings armed with artificial weapons that can kill instantly and from a
distance—why, it strikes me as tantamount to whatever the <i>ne plus ultra </i>of
<i>b*l**cks</i> is or are (any attempt to get at this <i>NPU</i> solely via the
generally trusty rhetorical technique of amplification gets one nowhere, or,
rather, gets one to a certain <i>ultima thule</i> that cuts quite against the
grain of the upshot of the present argument, as such hyper-macho monstrosities
as <i>blue whale’s b*l**cks</i> and <i>b*l**cks</i> <i>on a dose of steroids
equivalent in mass and volume to a blue whale’s daily plankton intake </i>eloquently
attest).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For why should a bloke or
blokess who has the immediate power of life and death over one care whether one
is afraid of him or her at all, inasmuch as one’s lack of fear is powerless to
harm him or her, inasmuch as it is incapable (at least for the micro-epochal
nonce, while the arts of biological and chemical engineering are doubtless
desperately—and yet almost-doubtless not futilely—collaborating towards the
realization of grotesquely terrifying psychogenetic events of this very kind)
of precipitating the instantaneous germination and maturation of, say, a fully
loaded and functional so-called AK47 at the actual tips of one’s fingers?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My own sense of the most prudent way to
behave in such anal sphincter-dilating face-offs differs quite stridently from
received opinion’s and to its presumptive discredit is indubitably traceable to
a much more modern source than Shih-Tzu–namely, a certain dude or bloke,
interviewed on NPR’s <i>Fresh Air </i>about five (or, more likely—in conformity
with the rule, <i>my</i> rule [here, incidentally, is a rule that in contrast
to certain others of my devising I should be all too proud to have named after
me {q.v. <a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2014/03/on-golden-age-of-videotape-and-16mm.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">“On the Golden Age of Videotape and 16mm
Film”</span></a>}] that after the age of 40 one should double one’s intuitive
estimate of the temporal remoteness of phenomena from one’s own past that
incontrovertibly post-date one’s adolescence and yet cannot incontrovertibly be
pinned to specific dates—ten) years ago; altho’ to its presumptive credit it is
also much more streetwise (or, more properly speaking, <i>sidewalk-wise</i>)
than any apothegm devisable by Shih-Tzu or any other ancient far-eastern
wiseacre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway, this dude or bloke,
whose name escapes me but is presumably quite easily retrievable (although I am
not going to bother to try to retrieve it, partly because it—along with almost
all of the bloke’s or dude’s other biographical particulars [including, truth
to tell, the bit in the <i>because</i> clause to the immediate right of the final,
right-curved bracket of the present parenthesis]—is presumably rhetorically
otiose in the present setting, partly out of resentment [resentment of the same
flavor as the resentment that peremptorily dissuades me from cooking for myself
{q.v. <a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2015/09/the-return-of-every-man-his-own-george.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">“The Return of Every Man His Own George D.
Painter”</span></a>}] at my financial incapacity to retain a full-time
fact-checker) because I remember from the interview that he was the fellow or
chap who came up with the now-notorious “Try me: Fly me” advertising slogan for
the now long-since-defunct National Airlines, worked for a time as some kind of
crime reporter (this biographeme, incidentally, is the raison d’être of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">al<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">most
all</span></i> in the immediately preceding parenthesis) and in this capacity
was often required to view the bodies of people who had just been killed by
gunfire, and he remarked that by far the most common expression on the faces of
these hapless individuals (metaphysical scruples preclude my referring to them
as <i>ex-individuals</i> {q.v. <a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2017/01/kripkean-metaphysics-and-personal.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">“Kripkean Metaphysics and Personal
Eschatology”</span></a>}) was not one of overwhelming pain but rather of <i>surprise</i>,
surprise that he inferred had been occasioned by their immediate prehumous
expectation that they would not be shot despite having just addressed to their
firearm-armed confronters words to the brazenly insolent-cum-provocative effect
of <i>So you want to shoot me, </i>typo duro<i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go ahead: shoot me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As if I give a fetid futuacious fuller’s f**k</i>.<i>
</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And from this inference he induced
the staggeringly counterintuitive yet ultimately ineluctably compelling
so-called rule of thumb (it really should be christened That Guy or Cove Who
Came up with the Now-Notorious “Try Me : Fly Me” Advertising Slogan’s Law in
the light of its originality and potentially world-changing character) that
when tête-à-tête with a firearm-armed person one should invariably and
preeminently <i>be polite</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
surely whatever <i>politesses</i>, whatever <i>bienséances</i>, are owing to a
mere bullet-laying regular-sized goose are due in at least equal measure to a
warhead-laying Godzilla-sized one; surely at minimum our various foreign
ministers and their various envoys ordinary, extraordinary, and
plenipotentiary, all of whom are, like the rest of us, compelled incessantly to
stare up the, erm, <i>vent</i> of such a Godzilla-sized goose, should not be
hallooing words to effect of <i>So you want to shoot me, </i>typo duro<i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go ahead: shoot me. As if I give</i> a <i>fetid
futuacious fuller’s f**k</i> up that vent as a mere matter of diplomatic and
peridiplomatic course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet <i>mutatis
mutandis</i> (specifically the substitution of a bear for a goose) our various
foreign ministers et al. have been hallooing just that up that very vent as
just such a matter of course at least since 1999—a year that seems particularly
eligible as a watershed because the aerial bombardment of the soon-to-be-former
Yugoslavia that took place therein, was the first military intervention by NATO
that proceeded according to plan despite having been vetoed by Russia at the
United Nations Security Council.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
then-president of the Russian Federation, Mr. Yeltsin, bellowed at “us,”
meaning every last man, woman, child, dog, cat, gerbil, et al. and etc. in the
NATOsphere, that such wanton snubbage of Russia could very well precipitate a
nuclear war, but “we,” meaning the a(*)**(*)holes in charge of the foreign
policies of the governmental bodies to which every gerbil etc. and et al. in
the NATOsphere were (and still are) obliged and compelled to pay either direct
or oblique financial tribute, ignored him with a mildly exasperated
smile-cum-head-shake, because (so these<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>soft-spoken, Armani-clad teetotalers reasoned), he was a buffoonish
alcoholic with no fashion sense, and therefore utterly harmless despite his
immediate access to a multi-gigaton nuclear arsenal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And “we” were immediately subsequently
infinitely obliged to Mr. Yeltsin for his boundless
condescension-cum-indulgence in letting “us” have our way in and with the
Balkans without discharging a single sub-microton of that arsenal into the
NATOsphere, let alone annihilating every last gerbil etc. and et al. therein
outright as it was well within his power to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And how did “we” respond to this boundless condescension-cum-indulgence
from Mr. Yeltsin?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perchance by
prostrating “our”selves at his feet a hundred times in succession in the
Kremlin’s counterpart to the Oval Office (as Moscow has its own <i>Byelii Dom </i>or
White House, I shouldn’t be surprised if this counterpart to the OO were or was
actually styled the most literal Russian translation of <i>oval office</i>)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why, then, presumably by at least sending him a bouquet of stoplight
roses and a kiloliter of top-shelf vodka (naturally, if perversely, the vodka
presumably would have had to originate from one of the trendy NATOsphere-sited
distilleries like Rembrandt’s or Gray Goose rather than a Russian one like
Standard or Stolichnaya, as during that fiscally very dire microepoch the
Russian government’s treasury presumably needed every kopek of customs revenue
it could get).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not even.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We” responded, rather, by acting as though
“we” had never heard his remonstration and blithely flouncing “our” way through
the next decade-and-two-thirds as though Russia was or were effectively utterly
diplomatically mute and utterly militarily impotent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose from an-Emily Post-or-Miss Manners’
eye perspective, the perspective of etiquette in the broadest yet purest and
ethically most material sense, the low point of this high-hatting of Russia so
far has been the Obama administration’s assurance some six years ago that the
umpteenth proposed revival of Ronald Reagan’s nuclear defense shield was not by
the stretch of the wildest imagination to graphene-ic thinness intended to be a
fortification against a nuclear attack from Russia; that it was in fact to be
directed at protecting the United States from a nuclear attack by such
so-called rogue states as North Korea and Iran—by countries, in other words,
that at maximum (then) had no practicable nuclear warhead delivery system
faster than fourth-class mail and in some cases had no nuclear weapons at
all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The apparent impossibility of metaphorizing
this assertion in terms both naturally plausible and adequately evocative of
the scale of the forces in play testifies most eloquently to its
as-yet-unsurpassed bumptiousness, chutzpah-hood, and testicular-cum-gluteal fortitude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In naturally plausible terms, it is perhaps
adequately evoked by the image of a white resident of an overwhelmingly black
neighborhood in the so-called Deep South’s surrounding his house with an
electrified barbed wire fence under the pretext of protecting himself from an
invasion of Canadian Eskimos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in
order adequately to capture the scale of the forces in play, one must posit a
scenario of a type perhaps hitherto only stipulated in animated cartoons of the
Warner Brothers type—a scenario in which, say, the stockpiler of a kiloton of
DDT remonstrates with an asteroid-sized nest of hornets in his attic that he is
merely protecting himself from an invasion of ants from some piddling
average-sized anthill two miles up the road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet for all the jaw drop-triggering rudeness of the Star Wars
revival high-hatting, certain more recent hyperoccidental snubbages of Russia
have bade (and continue to bid) even fairer to eventuate in geopolitical
disaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am thinking here of the buildup
since early 2017 of NATO troops in the Baltics in alleged response to alleged
“recent Russian aggression.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That Russia
has aggressed in a militarily strong-cum-geopolitically unignorable sense in
recent years cannot be denied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most
significantly in this sense he, she, or it has annexed Crimea and concurrently
taken it away from Ukraine (a.k.a. The Former the Ukraine [and even-more
formerly and scandalously The Former Little Russia]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And while many or perhaps even most of the
scads of command-chains and money trails allegedly involved therein often break
or turn cold at the most tantalizing places along the way, it does seem almost
inconceivable that Mr. Putin and Co. are not actively directing and supporting the
Russian quasi-insurgency in southern and eastern Ukraine to some lengthily
extensive extent and in some grossly material manner—in other words, that the
Russian government is not effectively aggressing in Ukraine in a geopolitically
unignorable albeit militarily weak sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But as Ukraine is not a Baltic republic, and, indeed, the most
Baltic-ward cities in Ukraine, namely Lviv and Rivni, are some 500 miles’
distance from the most Ukraine-ward city in the Baltics, namely Vilnius, it is
hard to discern what immediate material bearing Russia’s weak or strong
aggression in Ukraine could have on NATO’s militarily strong—and
ever-strengthening—defensiveness in the Baltics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As near as I can tell, this defensiveness has
been solely instigated and justified by an argument from analogy, wherein it
has been alleged that because as in Ukraine there are large minority Russophone
populations in each of the Baltic republics, it is not unlikely that sooner or
later each of these republics will have its own Ukraine-style Russophone
quasi-insurgency shadily masterminded and bankrolled by Moscow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even to a person like the present writer who
is almost wholly ignorant of the flavor and temperature of relations between
Estonian, Lithuanian, and Latvian speakers, respectively, and Russian speakers
(I refuse to dignify any of these aggregations with the mawkishly kitschy
honorific of <i>community</i>) in these three nation-states, the scenario
envisaged by this argument is plausible enough, because by default one expects
any aggregation of Russophones anywhere outside Russia to have something of a
chip on its collective shoulders, but qua justification of NATO’s troop buildup
in the Baltics qua defensive maneuver it is pure and arrant poppycock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A defensive maneuver by its very definition
is an act directed at a blow that is at minimum already unmistakably aimed at
an unmistakably identifiable target.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So
in order for NATO’s present Baltic troop buildup in to be justifiable as a
defensive maneuver, Russia would at minimum have had to have begun its own
Baltic troop build-up, a troop-buildup in the Russian side of the
Russo-Estonian, -Lithuanian, or –Latvian border, in advance of the embarkation
of even the first jeepload of NATO soldiers for the Baltics (and, more
specifically, only the Baltic republic against whose border the Russian buildup
was taking place [e.g. {verging on i.e., owing to the geographical isolation of
the bit of Russia bordering on Lithuania}, Estonia).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as such a buildup had not been begun and
still (touch ever-diminishing piece of wood) has not begun, the present NATO
buildup must be seen if not as an offensive act then at any rate an act no more
remote in character from an offensive act than a defensive one; it is probably
best termed a <i>provocation</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
ordinary course of international affairs, Country A does not build up troops
along one of the borders of Country B because it, Country A, has formed a mere
supposition of what Country B will do on the evidence of what Country B has
done before near one of its, Country B’s, other borders; but rather because it,
Country A, is itching for a fight with Country B and smugly believes that it,
Country A, can win that fight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the
combined powers of NATO have no right to be smug about winning a fight with
Russia, inasmuch as even with the inclusion of France and Britain’s combined
total of five hundred nuclear warheads in addition to the United States’ 6,700,
NATO’s nuclear arsenal barely stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia’s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It really is just that brutally simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the same calculus really should be
applied to <i>any</i> preparation for military engagement with Russia by any
geopolitical agent, and indeed I am inclined to believe that it has been
applied vis-à-vis certain Russian extra-domestic political maneuvers in very
recent history—notably the aforementioned 2014 annexation of Crimea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In international-legal terms that annexation
was absolutely unwarranted, or at any rate no more warranted than Saddam
Hussein’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990 or, indeed, Hitler’s annexation of the
Sudetenland in 1938.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Vladimir Putin
in 2014, in contrast to Saddam Hussein in 1990 or Hitler in 1938, had a
6,700-warhead-strong nuclear arsenal at his disposal; whence, it seems to me,
the then highly prudential lack of enthusiasm on the part of the NATO powers
for scaring up a multinational anti-Russian military coalition in the teeth of
highly vociferous cries of <i>Appeasement!</i> <i>chez</i> their respective <i>bienpensant</i>
mobilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, as I have
already implied, these cries of <i>Appeasement!</i> were entirely well-founded
vis-à-vis the international-legal deserts of the <i>appeasee</i>; but at the
same, and ultimately hands-down more materially weighty, time, they were
entirely ill-founded vis-à-vis the prospective effect of the <i>appeasee</i>’s
full employment of the military resources at his disposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The admittedly lamentable FotM is that in
present-day geopolitical terms <i>appeasement</i> is a full-fledged anachronism
of no more moral weight or moment than <i>wergild</i> or <i>fiefdom</i> in any
so-called value judgment pronounced on any political agent’s comportment
towards a nuclear power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contemporary
Britain disapprovers of Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler in 1938
were morally entitled to denounce NC’s concession of Hitler’s annexation of the
Sudetenland because the very worst that Hitler could have visited on Britain
with all the military might then at his disposal was the partial obliteration
of a handful of city-centers and an administratively headache-inducing
usurpation of the government–cum-occupation of the Kingdom—in short, a cost
quite conceivably worth paying in protest of a morally inexcusable act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Present-day NATOsphere-residing denouncers of
Russia’s belligerence possess no such moral entitlement because if Mr. Putin
wishes to he can obliterate not only every city but every jerkwater town,
village, and hamlet—and hence every last human being, dog, cat, and indeed
gerbil—in the NATOsphere; because, in short, he can compel us to pay a cost
that—unless we wish to subscribe LS&B to the fundamentally un-occidental
(q.v., Lord willing) principle that <i>death is worse than dishonor always and
in every extremity—</i>in annihilating us qua payers would void the transaction
of moral significance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The admittedly
lamentable FotM is that a country in possession of a substantial nuclear
arsenal can and indeed must be allowed to do pretty much whatever the fudge it
wants, and in point of fact throughout the overwhelmingly large portion of the
so-called Cold War in which the U.S.S.R. possessed such an arsenal, it was
allowed by the U.S. to do pretty much whatever the fudge that it wanted, with
nary a cry of <i>appeasement</i>’s consequently being heard from any
hyperoccidental to the so-called left of Barry Goldwater (and probably not even
by Mr. Goldwater himself in that exact word [at least not very often]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is indeed very pleasant to observe that
the Berlin Airlift, the single largest and most defiant defiance of Russian
military might by the United States to date, concluded in May 1949, a mere four
months before the Soviet Union exploded its first atomic bomb, and that the
erection of the Berlin Wall twelve years later, by which time the Soviets had
exploded many a hydrogen bomb and embarked on an intercontinental ballistic
missile-building program, essentially provoked nothing more belligerent than a
spell of finger-wagging from the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the U.S. reacted with comparable material indifference to such other
intrinsically unpardonable Soviet military initiatives as the quelling of the
1956 and 1968 revolutions in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and the 1980 invasion
of Afghanistan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At immediate present the
prevailing attitude to Russia in the hyperoccident bizarrely seems to favor
“our” rolling the clock back 68 years and comporting “ourselves” towards the
Russkies as if we were all once again living in the days of the Berlin Airlift,
when Russia et federated al. were powerless to lift an unvaporizable finger
against “us” qua host of the world’s sole nuclear power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the “immediate present,” I suppose I mean
since no more recently than about three years ago, when for reasons that are
completely opaque to me Russophobia started to become one of the three or four
main planks of the general <i>bienpensant</i> political platform. (To chalk the
change up to the centrality of Russophobia to the specific political platform
of the Democratic party during the most recent presidential campaign is to beg
the question in the most technically unimpeachable sense of the phrase, for Russia
was not then up to anything substantially more nefarious than it had not
already been up to during the so-called run-up to the 2014 elections, and even
vis-à-vis Mr. Trump’s alleged Russophilia-actuated high crimes or misdemeanors
it is reasonable to wonder why none of his business activities in even dodgier
nation-States than Russia have received comparable scrutiny.) To be sure, for a
long time before then it had been extremely bad form to be ever so faintly or
equivocally sympathetic to Russia (what with whatever Putin had done to Pussy
Riot and whatnot), but until then it had not been politically mandatory to
spend a substantial proportion of one’s waking hours railing against Russia; it
had been acceptable to regard the checking of Russian ambition as a niche
political program of much less urgency than the pan-sexual integration of
restrooms, the defecation of crypto-racists from law-enforcement agencies, and
of course that perennial yawn-inducer-cum-a*(*)*(e)-chafer, the retardation of
global warming by international, national, regional, local, and above all
hyper-local legislative fiat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such
having been the case, in 2014 the so-called appeasers (who really should be
called <i>those playing with at least a so-called bog standard full pinochle
deck</i>) in the various hyperoccidental ships of state managed to forestall a
hyperoccidental counteroccupation of Crimea that very probably would have
touched off the nuclear Apocalypse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now
that the Russophobes have a sizeable chunk—and possibly even a majority—of the
hyperoccidental mobility on their side, it is probably only a matter of the
briefest time (barring the obliging supervention of some other daemon qua
principal conduit of the hyperoccidental mobility’s fury [I term the
supervention <i>obliging</i> because no threat posed or wielded by any daemon,
however formidable he, she, or it may be in his, her, or its own person, could
be more menacing than a 7,300 warhead-strong nuclear arsenal]) until that
selfsame Apocalypse is touched off, until, that is, the Russians—or, to be more
precise, at least probabilistically, some individual <i>Russian</i> or
other—do(es) something to incense the government—or, to be &c.—some
individual human constituent—of one of the hyperoccident’s
by-now-seemingly-innumerable traditionally Russophobic national-political
fosterlings, and thereby elicit(s) an unignorable several-hundred-larynx-strong
ululation of diplomatically unslakeable Russophobic bloodlust from the
hyperoccidental mobility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are any
number of hypothetical scenarios all-too-plausibly descriptive of the
eliciting-cum-off touching event; my favorite is a variation of the
Anglosphere’s most mythically antediluvian (meaning not necessarily and indeed
very probably not the oldest, but the one that is universally regarded as the
oldest) joke formula, which goes as follows: this uniformed Russian soldier
walks into a bar in downtown Tallinin and orders a shot of Standart or
Stolichnaya garnished with a soupcon of ordinary table-pepper (naturally
according to the supposedly organic mixological wont of natives of whatever
Podunk or indeed jerkwater Russian town he hails from).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he raises the jigger-glass to his fatally
formidably nostrill’d shnoz he unfortunately happens to be inhaling so that a
pepper-flake or two is sucked into his inner-nose and precipitate(s) a sneeze
whose mistified snotty contents happen to end up on the shoulder of his
immediate neighbor, a mufti-clad bloke who thereupon asks him in Russian, but
in the fittingly yet fatally nasal tones of some sort of Estonian accent
peculiar to certain Estonians who have never learned to speak Russian even
half-a(*)*(*)*edly fluently, “I say, old cove-cum-c***t, aren’t you in the
Russian army?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon the sneezer
genially replies in Russian, <i>Yes</i>, i.e., <i>Da</i>, i.e., Да; but
unfortunately his geniality is thwarted by his accent, which happens to sound
exactly like that peculiar to </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Lasnamäe, Tallinin’s most heavily Russophone and hence
most Estoniophobic neighborhood or district, so that the sneeze-victim feels
duty-bound to hop forthwith on to his mobile-blower, ring up NATO HQ (whose
digits he has speed dial-programmed against just this sort of exigency), and
say to the receptionist (in impeccable Etonian [yes, Johnny Yobbo {not to be
confused with any previous DGR of mine (tho’ who knows what might be in store
for him in the improbably non-Apocalyptic future?)}, that’s <i>Etonian</i> not <i>Estonian</i>]
English, natch), “Would you please put me through to Herr Stoltenberg?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the rest, as they say, or should say, is
the very-end-of-human-history-cum-mere beginning of the history of mushroom
cloud-patterned curtains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Doh!-stroke-What
a congeries of pointlessly mutually affiliated cahntrees, or, rather, </i>c**teries!<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>One (i.e., <i>I</i>, albeit probably no
other living human being) might well (i.e., <i>really do</i>) wonder what
miasma, will-o’-the-wisp, or phantasmagoria could be sufficiently potent to
persuade every last member of the hyperoccidental mobility that he or she had
in geopolitical terms been spirited away back to early 1949.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the only plausible contender for such an
office that has so far occurred to one is the hyperprosaic but serviceable
miasma autc. of <i>lack of media coverage of the existence of the two extant
multi-gigaton nuclear arsenals</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
other words, it seems likely to me that because these two arsenals are hardly
ever mentioned in the news (if, for instance, to impart a sense of their
effective mediatic nullity, each and every mention by a major news service be
analogously equated in rhetorical force with the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima, these two arsenals would be rhetorically dwarfed by Arsenal Football
Club perhaps five times as dramatically as the Hiroshima bomb is dwarfed in
point of brute TNT-tonnage-yield by the paired nuclear arsenals themselves) the
<i>weit(e[r/s])</i> if not <i>accablant</i> majority of the hyperoccidental
mobility is or are but dimly aware of them, and a substantial plurality of that
mobility is or are entirely ignorant of their existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, nuclear weapons tout court are in
the news not all that infrequently, almost invariably in connection with the
wily shenanigans of the Iranians or North Koreans, but in these cases one is at
most-cum-worst being asked to contemplate an embryonic nuclear arsenal of
ultimately no greater immediate destructive force than the U.S.’s in, say,
1950.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as it has been probably more
than a full quarter-century—i.e., the interval separating us from the signing
of the START II treaty—since the two big nuclear arsenals were even
intermittently in the headlines, is it not reasonable to suppose that there are
enormous numbers—say, tens of millions—of purportedly educated and
well-informed hyperoccidentals under the age of 30, or even as old as 40, who
are entirely unaware of these arsenals, or at the very least, unaware of the
sheer destructive power thereof?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all
the asperity of my preliminary strictures on those who cannot be a(*)*(*)ed to
brief themselves on historical periods antedating their own births, I am not
entirely unsympathetic to these so-called millennials’ ignorance on this score,
for I can remember a micro-epoch quasi-consubstantial with the present one when
I was wholly ignorant of the existence of these arsenals (which were then
substantially larger than they are now), and owing perhaps to exactly
consubstantial causes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am thinking of
the very early 1980s (cf. Whit Stillman’s <i>Last Days of Disco</i>), and my
certainty of my ignorance on the present score during that micro-epoch is owing
to a memory of the lamentation of purportedly imminent <i>nuclear war</i> by
some nutter of a drunk-tank inmate in an episode of the classic mid
mid-70s-through-late early-80s cop-sitcom <i>Barney Miller</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As at the time my only association of the word
<i>nuclear </i>with anything remotely baleful hailed from the then-quite-recent
and meta-Arsenal FC-scale coverage of the partial meltdown at the Three Mile
Island nuclear power plant, I could not but picture a <i>nuclear war</i> as
some sort of reciprocal deliberate synchronized induction of meltdowns in all
the nuclear power plants within the warring parties’ dominions—a wildly
inefficient <i>modus belli gerendi</i>, to be sure, by comparison with an
exchange of bombs, and yet also an eerily quasi-plausible one now that
State-sponsored so-called cyber-terrorism is all the rage as the next big thing
in sub-Apocalyptic war-making.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyway,
it seems to me quite likely that I thought of a nuclear war along such <i>China
Syndrome</i>-ian lines rather than along <i>Dr. Strangelove</i>-ian ones at
that time simply because the news media had not lately been feeding us much
reportage on or many images of nuclear weaponry proper and its prospective use
in military conflict—this probably largely as a legacy of so-called détente,
the relaxation of tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union
beginning not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis and continuing, despite such
long-simmering potential nuclear-Apocalyptic flashpoints as the Vietnam War and
the well-nigh actualized nuclear-Apocalyptic flashpoint of the 1973
Arab-Israeli War, until the very late mid-70s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course, now, in the long present—meaning since about 1994—the
so-called Cold War is conceived of as a single ummottled hard cheese-block of
uniformly mutual geopolitical animosity tidily book-ended (or vice-gripped) by
the years 1949 and 1989, but the residents of the micro-epoch of détente took a
markedly different view of the epochology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In their view, the perdurance of the Cold War was largely a lingering
but thankfully moribund holdover from the so-called McCarthy era.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the détente microepoch-residents
acknowledged, the hyperoccidental and Communist blocs were still governed along
radically mutually incommensurable political lines, but now (so the détente
microepoch-residents asserted) that no hyperoccidental politician of any
geopolitical consequence believed or even faintly feared that the Soviet Union
was trying to take over, let alone destroy, the non-Communist semi-world—now
that Senator McCarthy himself and his State-Departmental counterpart John
Foster Dulles were long dead and Mr. Goldwater and his Red-bashing crew
(consisting partly of the Pentagon hawks whose influence had made the Kennedy
administration much more hawkish than it would have liked to be) had given over
their national-governmental ambitions—the danger of an outright military
confrontation between the U.S.S.R. et al. and the U.S.A. et al. had been
greatly reduced and was creeping asymptotically (and presumably inexorably)
ever closer to zero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, if memory
serves me faithfully—and I see no reason for mistrusting it as the memory in
question hails not from my détente-microepoch early childhood but from my
immediately post-START II early adulthood, when I most recently consulted the
texts in question—the period of détente even saw the publication of diplomatic
and military policy analyses that referred to the Cold War unreservedly in the
past tense, as in such constructions as “at the height of the Cold War, in
1953,” or “at the very end of the Cold War, in 1963.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, in 1981 the hard-line
Goldwater-style Republican Ronald Reagan was elected president and immediately
altered the tone, if not the substance, of the U.S.’s disposition to the Soviet
Union, such that the Soviet and American nuclear arsenals started regularly
appearing in the headlines once again, and the Cold War ceased to be a
prospective anachronism, but the détente microepoch residents had not known or
even expected this, and there is no sane reason to blame them for not having
known or expected it, because then as now the U.S. polity and public were
virtually evenly divided (or uniformly befuddled) on so-called key foreign
policy issues, such that at least inasmuch as the executive branch of the U.S.
had any say in the matter, détente might very well have continued well into the
1980s and indeed well into the 21<sup>st</sup> century; but by this or that
same token, there is no sane reason to pardon the détente microepoch residents—or,
at any rate, those of them old enough to have known better (for fudge’s sake,
the present writer was only eight years old at the very end of détente
micro-epoch and therefore at least a year-and-a-half younger than the
comparatively grizzled youngster who learned that Leonid Brezhnev was </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">General
Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union autc.</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">)–for having ever
taken their eyes off the multigigaton matzoh-ball, for having regarded the
geopolitical program, official or otherwise, of the Soviet government as being
of greater material geopolitical weight than that government’s 45-to-65 percent
share in that matzoh-ball, and the long present’s reflexive appraisal of Mr.
Yeltsin’s and then Mr. Putin’s geopolitical habitus in feigned or actual
ignorance of that share, though equally eminently comprehensible, is equally
damnably unpardonable.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Like
or as I said or was saying, I find the military register of Russia’s present
geopolitical grandeur superlatively boring, and thirteen single-spaced pages
later, I trust the reader (DG or otherwise) shares my boredom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But our fellow-feeling-cum-unanimity
vis-à-vis this one index of Russia qua third-greatest great power is certainly
no guarantee that we shall be of one heart-cum-mind vis-à-vis the next index
thereof that I shall adduce—viz., the admittedly hypernaff, shopworn,
moth-eaten, and indeed downright corny one of <i>brute geographical
expansiveness-cum-capaciousness</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
some point in the 1980s—not the very early 1980s, mind you—the Canadian-American
sketch comedy show <i>SCTV</i> devoted an episode to a supposed satellite feed
from Soviet television, and one of the phony Soviet programs included therein
consisted solely of the presenter (Dave Thomas)’s bombastically boastful
demonstrations of how many smaller countries could be fitted into an outline
map of the U.S.S.R.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Look,” he would
triumphantly remark while pointing at the map, “Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey, West
Germany, and Zaire [not that I can remember the names of any of the countries
actually in-fitted or have been able to be a***d to try to find them out via
You T**be beforehand; I include the last two by way of imparting an air of
period verisimilitude to the catalogue] are now in map.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But map still has much room for other
countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How mighty is Soviet
Union!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scenario was silly enough to
be funny but at the same time rational enough to be an object of satire: there
was indeed no getting round either the fact that the U.S.S.R. was the world’s
most geographically expansive and capacious country or the conclusion that
merely maintaining this brute geographical supremacy was something the Soviet
State was entitled to take some more than negligible measure of pride in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in
1991 left the Russian Federation bereft of its watertight political affiliation
with three handfuls (minus a finger whose selection I bequeath as an exercise
to the reader) of former Soviet republics turned independent nation-States,
each of which carried away along with it a portion of the U.S.S.R.’s former
geographical bulk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But so huge a share
of that bulk had been occupied by the Russian S.F.S.R. (they don’t or didn’t
call the largest of the former S.F.S.R.s, the former The Ukraine, “Little
Russia” for nothing), that the new Russian N.(S.)F.N.(S.)R. was still the biggest
country in the world by a staggering margin—viz. nearly
two-and-three-quarters-of a million miles or 71% of the land-mass of the
second-biggest country, Canada.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of
course, the Soviet Union had never been the world’s most populous country, and
the severance of the former S.F.S.R.s substantially albeit not dramatically
reduced its standing in that alternative reckoning of greatness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I have already touched on Russia’s
helplessness on the score of the third and now-most-fetishized RoG, that of
GDP, and I shall not touch on it again until I reach my explication of No. 2 in
the above itemized list of assertions, without which explication this
helplessness is not worth any further ontouching.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so athwart the physical-geographical
argument in favor of Russia’s greatness there runs a counterargument that most
of Russia’s corporeal bulk is effectively<i> empty space</i> inasmuch as it is
devoid of human inhabitants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even to
a prevailingly misanthropic creature such as the present writer this argument
is in a certain register quite plausible and even compelling; for inasmuch as
despite my prevailing misanthropy I concede that <i>caeteris paribus</i> (and
of course the <i>caeteris</i> are hardly anywhere near to being <i>paribus</i>)
every patch of land is made more estimable by its occupation by a human being,
I am compelled further to concede that, say, India is in a certain way a
greater country than Russia simply because it has more than several times as
many human inhabitants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I also
believe that tenuity of human habitation has a peculiar grandeur of its own, a
grandeur akin or at least analogous to that of the sun, which for all its size
and incandescent brilliance is after all nothing but a big ball of gas—a state
of matter much more full of empty space than the liquid and solid ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider, if you will, Russia’s easternmost
and westernmost major cities, St. Petersburg and
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The former
city lies at the approximate longitude of Cairo, the latter at that of
Sydney.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A scant 1,200 miles separate the
former from the Prime Meridian, and an even scanter 600 separate the latter
from the International Dateline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
short, the distance between these two cities spans seventeen-twentieths of the
eastern hemisphere and a quarter of the circumference of the entire globe as
measured at the equator.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Terrestrial
distances between two points simply and literally cannot get more than
one-and-a-third times as long as the distance between St. Petersburg and
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When one
ponders the virtual practical insuperability of this distance, the confounded <i>insolence</i>
of former President Barack Obama’s description of Russia as a “regional power”
becomes starkly, risibly apparent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
in the present instance I am not adverting to St. Petersburg and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy
qua two intrinsically and mutually impartial geometrical points but rather qua <i>two
mutually partial Russian cities</i>—two sizeable agglomerations of people
within whose confines Russian sovereignty is generally acknowledged and the
Russian language is generally spoken and understood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, of the pair only St. Petersburg in
comprising more than five-and-a-quarter million inhabitants, is a proper
metropolis, a big city in the strong sense, but Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy is
certainly no mere glorified village.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Comprising as it does more than 180,000 inhabitants, it is
demographically larger than such formidable hyperoccidental middleweights as
Macon, Georgia; Bern, Switzerland; and Guelph, Canada—cities that all enjoy the
amenities of road and rail communication with the so-and-rightly-called outside
world, amenities that Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy has been compelled to forgo
from its foundation onwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(I daresay
that if bereft of these amenities, the present inhabitants of Guelph, Bern, and
Macon would high-tail it to Toronto, Zurich, and, Atlanta [or, indeed, if these
cities let them down on the same score, to Buffalo, Strasbourg, and El Paso] as
fast as their legs or wings would carry them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet for all its brute physical-geographical isolation
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy somehow contrives to be a city inhabited almost
solely by people who style themselves <i>Russians</i> as unabashedly as
tenth-generation St. Petersburgers and speak as their native tongue a language
universally known as <i>Russian</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
a sense of the scale of political grandeur of this instance of
physical-geographical transcendence, one need only compare it to its closest
analogues in the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The most
obvious such analogue is of course the pairing of Nome, Alaska, our
northernmost and westernmost incorporated city, and Key West, Florida, our southernmost
and easternmost one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course Nome
with its piddling 3,800 inhabitants is a city in legal name only, and Key West,
though a sizable burglet of 26,000 souls, is certainly in no danger of being
twinned with Guelph, Bern, or Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If one even dreams of rendering demographic
justice in the analogue one must scale it down so that it is bounded by the two
most mutually distant 100,000-inhabitants-plus-sized cities in the so-called
lower 48 States, namely Seattle, Washington and Miami, Florida.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here, of course and <i>imprimis</i>, one
notices that the intrametropolitan distance of 3,300 miles is risibly small by
comparison with that between St. Petersburg (Russia not Florida) and P-K, but I
do not wish to make very much of this shortfall because 3,300 miles is still
jaw drop-elicitingly long by most intranational standards, and notably by
comparison with certain other maximum caliper-compasses attainable in certain
other polities that I wish to belittle even more disparagingly than I am now
belittling the United States (more on these anon).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At present I think it most fitting to draw
attention to the analogue’s shortcomings in the <i>linguistic</i> register as
manifested by the fact that while (at least to the best of the present writer’s
knowledge) English is the only first language spoken by any demographically
substantial proportion of the population of Seattle, a highly significant
proportion, and possibly even a majority, of the population of Miami speak
Spanish rather than English as their first language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course one may delineate if not quite
a myriad then at the very least a hemi-hecaiad of shorter crow’s-flight
trajectories disembarking from Seattle and alighting in some comparably hefty
or appreciably heftier Stateside metropolitan conurbation in which Spanish rather
than English is the first language of a highly significant proportion of the
conurbation’s populace (including, incidentally, a demographically substantial
proportion of that conurbation’s U.S. citizens)—Seattle to Los Angeles, Seattle
to San Diego, Seattle to Brownsville, Seattle to El Paso, Seattle to Las
Cruces, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such trajectories, mutatis
mutandis, are virtually undelineable within the present borders of the Russian
Federation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Place one tip of your
calipers on any indisputably Russophone Russian city such as St. Petersburg or
P-K, and you are as safe as houses to bet hundred-ruble-notes to bubliki that
the first named cis-Russian border dot that will present itself as a
touchdown-point for the opposite tip will be a town or city inhabited almost
exclusively by Russophones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it
should not be forgotten that the language spoken by these Russophones in these
cities is named <i>Russian</i> after the country of Russia, the country in
which these cities are all sited.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
contrast, the language prevailingly spoken in Seattle (though not in Los
Angeles, San Diego, Brownsville, El Paso, Las Cruces, etc.) is not named <i>American</i>
or <i>United Statesian </i>but <i>English</i> after the country of <i>England</i>
sited some 3,200 miles from the nearest point to it in the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, many times more people speak this
language in the United States than in any other country including England, but
this demographic fact does not in any way or to any extent alter England’s
proprietorship of this language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(In
this regard the Scots [and no, as “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2015/05/against-intralingual-diversity.html"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Against Intralingual Diversity</span></a>”
makes plain,</span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">
I <i>do not</i> consider Scots a language], Welsh, Irish, Australian, New
Zealand, and Canadian Anglophones are obviously all in scaled-down versions of
the same sad boat as the one occupied by us Yank Anglophones.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter how many people speak English in
the United States relative to England—and no matter, indeed, whether or not
England as a political-cum-geographical entity continues to exist—unless or
until English is rechristened <i>American </i>or <i>United Statesian </i>or
some other nominalized toponymic adjective pairing it inalienably with the
United States and with no other political-cum-geographical entity (and the
failure even of an American Anglophobe as famous as H. L. Mencken to effect
such a rechristening—and this at a time when Americans were generally much less
well-disposed to the English than they are now—suggests that it is not likely
to be effected anytime soon given that no American Anglophobe of any fame
whatsoever seems to be agitating for it now), it will be incapable of serving
as what one may term a <i>hard signifier</i> of the United States’ ontological
integrity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have no interest in
asserting either that this
utterly-contingent-but-for-all-that-seemingly-utterly-obdurate nomenclatural
obduracy is a good thing or that it is a bad thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hang about-stroke scratch that: I actually
have <i>a great deal of interest</i> in emphatically asserting that it is a
good thing—partly as a semi-Anglophile and partly as a Johnsonian Tory who
obdurately believes that change qua change is always a bad thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at least at the present moment this
interest is not in play, at least not qua detractor of the United States qua
headquarters of Anglophonia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the
present moment I merely wish to point out that the United States’ logical
inability to declare itself the eponym of a language spoken more or less
universally within its own borders makes it, the United States, a much more
loosely ontologically constituted entity than Russia, and consequently a <i>lesser
power than Russia</i> in at least one non-trivial respect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, linguistic eponymity is not the
only, or necessarily even the most formidable, tool of hard signification at
the disposal of a territory-qua-polity seeking to establish or shore up its own
ontological integrity, and at least at the present moment the United States
wields a number of such tools with considerable, or at least conceivably
super-Russian, skill, panache, and aplomb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The most eloquent of these tools now in operation is probably our Interstate
Highway System, with its inalienable and unmistakable sans serif white-lettered
and red white and blue shield-surmounted green signs, which are indeed
conspicuously present <i>all over this land</i>, including in each and every
one of the aforementioned prevailingly non-Anglophone conurbations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While Jose Seis-Tecate-Pack in El Paso or Las
Cruces may know (or fail to know) his <i>culo</i> rather than his <i>ass</i>
from <i>un hoyo en la tierra</i>, he is as abjectly dependent as his gringo
fellow-<i>ciudadanos</i> on the signage of the interstate highway system to get
from Mesa Vista to Durazno or Paseo de Onate to East Madrid Avenue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet the present sweep, solidity, instant
identifiability, and pervasiveness of the U.S. Interstate Highway System is no
cause for outright smugness about the ontological integrity of the United
States qua polity-cum-territory, for systems of parallel sweep, solidity,
instant identifiability, and pervasiveness <i>all over this land</i> have
proved or bid fair to prove as evanescent as a dodo masquerading as a
mayfly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider, for unignorable
ready-to-hand example, the more ancient non-limited-access U.S. Highway
System.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A combination of
intrametropolitan assimilation into local throughways and intermetropolitan
desuetude has effectively annihilated this system qua anything more substantial
than a(n) historical relic, and indeed, the famous continent-spanning Route 66
has been so ruthlessly cannibalized and negligently left to rot that it may
justly now be reckoned a kind of American Appian Way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider, too, a less ready-to-hand yet for
all that perhaps no less chilling example, that dictionary-margin-worthy
illustration of the idiom <i>ghost of its former self</i>, the United States
Postal System.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the nonce, its
familiar arch-topped navy-blue boxes remain fixtures of our urban landscapes
and its slightly less familiar (because forever morphing in make, model, and
label-design) white-blue-and-red (sic [I have listed the colors in descending
order of visual-field-occupation]) delivery trucks and vans fixtures (though <i>roving</i>
fixtures) of our suburban landscapes as well, but now that <i>Seinfeld</i>’s
USPS carrier Newman’s highly reluctant (and in its time scandalous) admission
that <i>nobody needs mail</i> has been actualized as an idée reçue, the USPS’s
days as an ontological signifier of U.S. sovereignty are probably more than
figuratively numbered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And recent
proclamations by even the most disinterested sources that after a long identity
crisis the USPS qua rapid package-delivery service is now fairly thriving and
that indeed in its fulfillment of this rapid package-delivering function the
USPS’s best, or at least most remunerative, days may still lie ahead of it,
have absolutely no detractive bearing on this glum prognosis of mine, at least
in the short term; for at least for the nonce the USPS qua rapid
package-delivery service is an Uncle Sammy-Come-Lately in a crowded field of
wholly non-governmentally affiliated rapid package-delivering firms, notably
Fed Ex, UPS, and, most troublingly of all from the perspective of a would-be
maintainer of the United States’s ontological integrity, that Germany-headquartered
(and color-schemed) <i>Paketlieferunggesellschaft</i>, DHL.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, as of this writing it is not only
conceivable but entirely plausible (though admittedly not very probable) that
DHL will trounce all its rivals including the USPS and thus become the sole
rapid-package-delivering-firm operational within the borders of the United
States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why the scenario is enough to
make Benjamin Franklin qua first postmaster-general turn in his grave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not to say that I am saying that even
if every cubic inch of cardboard delivered from Seattle to Miami and between
and among all points in between were swathed in the <i>Vaterland</i>-evoking
red-and-yellow DHL livery Americans would ever come to suppose that they lived
in the seventeenth German <i>Land</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, more than likely in such a case most of them would not even
realize that DHL was not an American company, just as most of them probably do
not know (inasmuch as the present writer himself has only recently learned
this) that their aspirin-manufacturer of first resort, Bayer, is headquartered
in Germany.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What <i>is</i> to say that I
am saying is merely but not trivially that the ontological integrity of a
polity not inalienably because eponymously bound up with a language is perforce
a piecemeal affair that is necessarily subject to—and in the course of time
invariably if not inevitably subjected to—erosion in all sorts of registers by
all sorts of agents, and that such a polity must never smugly depend on its
official institutions abstractly considered to shore it up against a collapse
into absolute nullity in the most strictly conceivable (albeit conceivably
trivial) sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To particularize this
point: we Americans must not rely on, say, the mere uninterrupted functioning
of our Federal government to insure that something called the United States of
America continues to exist inasmuch as the ontological footprint of our Federal
government eo ipso is certainly much tinier than that of our Interstate Highway
system and very probably at least a bit tinier than that of Federal Express and
UPS, albeit at least a wee bit bigger than that of DHL and Bayer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer has enjoyed and exploited
ample opportunity to observe and marvel at the tininess of this U.S.
Federal-governmental ontological footprint thanks to his
22-year-long-and-counting residence in the sub-Federal State of Maryland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In gross gross domestic productive terms,
Maryland is a virtual colony of the U.S. Federal Government owing to its
immediate abutment on the District of Columbia (if the Providence that is
merely the eponym of the capital of Rhode Island and not to be confused with
that city itself allow[s] I shall have more to say on the indispensability of
geographical propinquity qua administrative lubricant semi-anon).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite this, my sightings of material
exhibits of evidence of the Federal occupation have been few and rare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here in Baltimore City, my place of residence
in the strong sense, I can think of only one such exhibit that I have ever
clapped my eyes on—viz., the vertically rather low-slung if horizontally not
unimposing George H. Fallon Federal Building in the city center, more
specifically on the north side of Lombard Street and across Hopkins Place from
the Royal Farms Arena.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(It could not
implausibly be argued that Federal Hill, at the southern end of the Inner
Harbor, merely in virtue of its name, and the Star Spangled Banner House and
Fort McHenry, in virtue of their association with the consecration of the flag
of the federated republic as a national emblem, also constitute bits of Federal
footprintage; but I am inclined to reject this argument on the grounds that
Federal Hill does not conspicuously advertise its own name <i>in situ</i>, and
that at least since the proscription of the display of the so-called Stars and
Bars in most former Confederate states, the flying of the so-called Stars and
Stripes has signified an at-most half-hearted endorsement of the federal system
of government tout court, and no sort of endorsement at all of the U.S. Federal
government specifically.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even
during my on-average-biyearly traversal of the so-called Baltimore-Washington
corridor, a cluster of mutually parallel transportational arteries alongside
which are parked such formidable organs of the U.S. Federal government as Fort
Meade, the Goddard Space Flight Institute, and the National Security Agency, I
have yet to catch a glimpse of so much as the tiniest scrap of architectural
evidence, to be vouchsafed the briefest of shuftis of the lower ankle of a
cornice or cornerstone, capable of convincing me that the Federal sub-entities
in question are not utter chimeras, veritable Potemkin villages or staged moon
landings without the houses or the moon; indeed, had my trusty Rand McNally and
ADC atlases (or the signage along Interstate Highway 95 and Maryland Highway
295, visible only during the minority of occasions on which I have traversed
the corridor in question by bus or car rather than by train) not informed me otherwise,
I never would have supposed central Maryland to be a jot more richly or
oppressively occupied by the Feds than the most states-rightsist tract of
Fedaphobia in the so-called Bible belt or so-called Deep South; and, indeed, it
is only several minutes after I have penetrated the limits of Washington City
itself, and the Washington Monument and Capitol dome finally elbow their way
into view from behind hundreds of acres of mid-rise commercial and residential
real estate, that I get any sort of sense that I am in the quasi-municipal
headquarters of the U.S. Federal government rather than in any old (with the
emphasis on <i>old</i>) small-to-mid-sized Atlantic city, be it Baltimore,
Washington [DC not PA], Wilmington [DE not NC] Newark [NJ not DE], or Philadelphia
[PA not AM].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short-stroke-at bottom,
even in its most established precincts, in locales wherein a plurality of the
population must call it its (or their) employer and bread-giver, and wherein
scarcely a living human individual does not depend at least indirectly on it
for his or her livelihood, the U.S. Federal government seems to be doing its
best to keep a low profile, as they say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Its away-tuckedness even in these precincts in which it holds greatest
sway reminds me of Longinus’s admittedly disputable aperçu on the retired
situation of the genitals on the human body and suggests that somebody of some
perduring influence (exactly who is difficult to pin down [for if one flags
this somebody either as <i>the American people</i> or <i>the Federal government
itself </i>one<i> </i>is attributing to some quite gargantuan-cum-nebulous
collective entities a kind and degree of moral-cum-political calculus of which
they hardly seem capable]), far from wishing to boast of the U.S.F.G.’s
grandeur and might, is actually and painfully <i>ashamed</i> of its very
existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In gross economic terms the
Tea-Partiers and their even more Whiggish successors have doubtless been well
within their rights to rail against the k***u-like growth of <i>big government,
</i>for there is no denying that the U.S. Federal government is a substantially
larger entity by all salient economic measures—viz. the number of agencies
under its umbrella, the amount of money it takes in and expends, and the number
of people working for it—than it was a hundred or even fifty years ago; such
that if one wishes to defend the U.S.F.G. one really must do so on purely
utilitarian grounds; one must, in other words, argue that the American people
are materially better off for all this Federal-governmental growth than they
would have been without it, for in order to defend the U.S.F.G on the grounds
of the unreality of the expansion, one must descend to such a minutely
microhistorical level—to the fleetingly frugal fiscal policy of this or that
Congress or this or that half-term of a presidency—as to invite and indeed
secure trouncing by anyone who takes even the most modestly long view, the view
of, say, a single decade (i.e., five Congresses or two-and-a-half single-term
presidencies).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the same, if (heaven
forfend!) shove is ever accosted by push—if, that is, the Fed-bashers ever
start properly feeling their oats and genuinely thinking they can get away with
throwing their weight around, if they ever get it into their heads to call upon
a thousand torch-wielding mobs of peasants (i.e., twenty such mobs per state)
to incinerate the nearest totem of U.S. Federal sovereignty, the nearest
Bastille-analogue, as it were, it would seem that they are going to be rather
hard-pressed to get more than two-or-three-fifths of a handful of these mobs to
their targets without resorting to highly detailed directions—e.g., “Take I-68
to Exit 53, take a right on to U.S. 27, follow it to State Road 46, take a
left, follow SR46 to County Road 49 (a.k.a. Bent Spoon Lane [a.a.k.a. Uri
Geller Way]), take a left, and a half a mile farther along, just past the Dairy
Queen, you’ll espy a gray two-story building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That, my fellow friends of liberty, is the district office of the
god-awful bloodsucking Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement”—which is
as good as to say that they won’t manage to get them there at all, because
nothing takes the wind out of the sails (i.e., torches) of a torch-wielding mob
of peasants more efficaciously than having to pull off the road every five
minutes to consult a sat-nav map.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
the prospective fecklessness of the would-be Fed-torchers is certainly cause
for smugness on the part of any would-be (and presumably firehose-or water
bucket-armed) Fed-defenders, for the more than figuratively myriad sites of
Federal-governmental activity are as out-of-the-way, obscure, and recondite to
them as they are to their adversaries; meaning that if word got round in their
camp that torch-wielding mobs of would-be Fed-destroying peasants were a-car,
they (the presumably firehose-or water bucket armed would-be Fed-defenders)
would likewise have to rely on their leaders and personal sat-navs to reach
their posts and would consequently be just as vulnerable to throwing in the
towel on the whole thing and heading back home for pizza, TV, coition,
autc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">All
this since my mention of Nome, Alaska has essentially been by way of building
up to a cautionary meta-ontological-cum-meta-rhetorical comparison of the
United States since the mid-twentieth century to the European Union since its
foundation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly the present
moment is not exactly a salutary one for drawing this comparison either
tactfully or non-hysterically.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that
nobody in the European Union apart from the core membership of the British
Liberal Democratic Party (whose Europhilia, as it basically amounts to
Francophilia, would collapse in a trice if France withdrew from the EU) seems
to be positively <i>enthusiastic</i> about the EU, and that all energies within
it seem to be directed towards simply holding the gosh-d**n thing together for
another year or so, the suggestion that any political entity that has managed
not only to subsist intact but expand both territorially and demographically
over a period of more than a century-and-a-half bears any comparison whatsoever
to such a political rattletrap-cum-tatterdemalion cannot but seem—well, not to
put too fine a point on it, both <i>barmy </i>and<i> bonkers</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless, I believe that the comparison
must be drawn because there really is <i>no</i> other currently extant polity
that bears any credible comparison whatsoever with the United States in terms
of its <i>raisons d’être et de ne se faire foutre pas immédiatement</i>—or less
credible comparison with Russia in those selfsame terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granted: the EU doesn’t have a
polity-spanning limited-access highway network, and the U.S. does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granted: the EU doesn’t have a
polity-spanning mail-delivery network, and the U.S. does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Granted: the EU doesn’t even have a
polity-spanning currency, and the U.S. does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But beyond these admittedly powerful bonding agents, on the
formidableness of the strength of two of which I have already expatiated, what has
the U.S. really got holding it together?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Constitution, you (by no means a DGR) say?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the EU has got and does have a
constitution of its own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, its
constitution is barely a quarter as old as the U.S. Constitution, but it is no
less legally binding within the borders of the EU than the U.S. Constitution is
within the borders of the U.S.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then
of course we must remember that the U.S. Constitution is always subject to
alteration or, in constitutional-legal terms, to <i>amendment</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ever-self-renewing tribe of
anal-hookah-huffing boosters of our polity never cease praising this subjection
under the incantatory auspices of the word <i>flexibility</i>, but in material
legal terms the constitutional attribute so called might no less aptly (if
admittedly much less elegantly) be dubbed <i>toss-out-a/i-bility</i>, because
it effectively amounts to a blank check to the citizenry to alter the
constitution, or even to abolish, it whenever they durn-well please.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, since the incorporation of the
Bill of Rights into the U.S. Constitution amendments have been rare events, and
the two most recent of them, the twenty-seventh and twenty-sixth (prohibiting
sitting members of Congress to vote themselves raises and allowing
eighteen-year-olds to vote, respectively) were and are so ancient, equitable,
and equable that one cannot help inferring from them that the old USC (not to
be confused with the vintage battleship of the same name) is in absolute
shipshape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">All the
same, one must acknowledge, first, that the process of Constitutional amendment
has brought about some pretty far from equable, and indeed downright radical,
changes in the law of the entire polity, changes that were far from universally
popular and that were consequently implemented at best (or worst, depending on
your attitude to the amendment in question) halfheartedly in substantial
subdomains of the polity and that in one case—the 18th Amendment, prohibiting
the manufacturing and sale of alcohol within the polity—were even ultimately
subject to reversal by counter-amendment; second, that the U.S. Constitution,
however it has happened to stand at any given historical moment, has always
been something of a hermeneutic Rorschach blot in many of its paragraphs, such
that hair’s-width demographic majorities have contrived to insinuate de facto
amendments into it (here I am of course thinking mainly of the legalization of
abortion via a highly controversial interpretation of the fourteenth amendment);
and finally, that the Constitution itself stipulates that the entire process of
amendment can be circumvented by the calling of what it (the Constitution)
terms “a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution,” and that
all sorts of famous and notorious individuals and collectivities of both narrow
views and substantial influence have been clamoring for such a convention in
recent decades, and that that clamor is almost certainly as loud now as it ever
has been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, to the extent that
one views an ideal polity as a polity in which everyone living under its
auspices finds his or her existence at least minimally tolerable in every
significant register, one must view the U.S. Constitution as a failure qua
guarantor-cum-administrator of those auspices, inasmuch as it has quite handily
and skillfully, and indeed with the delicate precision of a deli-meat slicer,
seen to it that very nearly exactly one half of the U.S. population will
perpetually feel itself (or themselves) to be living under (or in) a ruthlessly
implacable tyranny, inasmuch as it (or they) will perpetually feel itself (or
themselves) to be legally compelled to defer to the will of an
at-best-technical majority and in some cases (notably those determined by the
outcome of a presidential election) outright minority with whom it at least
purportedly passionately disagrees on some issue that it regards as being of
paramount moral significance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being
the case, our only present quasi-guarantors against an instant instant-replay
of the American Civil War are, first, the geographical, and consequently
political, dispersal of those peremptorily committed to this or that
purportedly morally un**umpable issue—by which I essentially mean the well-nigh
dropsical plethora of so-called pro-choice, anti-gun, &c. types in the
urban centers of even the reddest of the so-called red states (the appalling
displacement in the American political imagination of the color red qua
dedicated synecdoche of Communism by the color red qua dedicated synecdoche of
Redneckism will, it is to be hoped, be addressed at due length in a more
seasonable passage within the present essay) and the complementary
superabundance of so-called pro-life, anti-gun, &c. types in the rural
hinterlands of even the bluest of the so-called blue states, such that a
demographically representative solid regional political bloc would seem to be
difficult albeit not quite impossible to assemble; and second, the probability
that the prevailing mass of all the immoderately self-righteous talk about
issues such as abortion and gun control amounts to what Samuel Johnson termed <i>cant</i>,
a mere “mode of talking in society” that for all its <i>outward shews of
passion</i> is incapable of making its exponent “sleep an hour less or eat an
ounce less meat,” such that even if<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the
Second Amendment is repealed (or, more likely, modified to exclude Gatling
Guns, howitzers, etc. by another amendment) and Roe versus Wade is overturned
in the Supreme Court, the very hardest of the hardcore NRA members and
pro-choicers will betake themselves to the nearest shopping mall (or to the A****n
website) with their pocketbooks as usual rather than as per unprecedented to
the nearest district office of the </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> or Roman
Catholic parish church with torches (incidentally, by <i>torches</i> I have all
along meant actual old-timey flame-sporting torches and not what we Yanks term <i>flashlights</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such, I say, are the only quasi-guarantors
against a second American Civil War, and I term them quasi-guarantors because
vis-à-vis the first one I suspect that it could have been (and indeed was)
adduced <i>mutatis mutandis</i> by various Whiggish personalities and interests
vis-à-vis the plausibility of a first American Civil War, and that in hindsight
the present enclaves of bluestate-ism in red states and vice-versa will appear
as nugatory and ineffectual as Atlanta’s chapter of the Anti-Slavery Society
and Boston’s chapter of…well, I won’t be so flippant for mere parallelism’s
sake as to let fall the name of the most notorious consonantal analogue to the
American Automobile Association, but I trust there were certain well-heeled
white Bostonians sympathetic to Southern slave-owners qua fellow
quasi-patricians; and vis-à-vis the second it must be out-pointed that although
people (or, if you insist, <i>the</i> people) do indeed tend not to care about
even the supposedly most burning issues enough to sleep an hour less or eat an
ounce less meat just because their way of handling those issues has not been
ratified by whatever powers happen to be being, the act of ratification itself,
being more or less instantaneous in each of its phases, however slowly the full
sequence of phases may play out, exacts no such Johnsonian-cum-Frankfurtarian
degree of commitment, such that people (or <i>the</i> people) tend very readily
to set in motion legislative changes that in the fairly-to-very short run <i>do</i>
cause them to sleep less and eat less (or more likely, under the sway of the
current mental-hygienic orthodoxy of gluttony-as-so-called self medication, <i>more</i>)
meat and that may indeed put the acts of sleeping and eating entirely out of
their power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The probabilistic logic in
play here is essentially identical to that which I have described as being in
play vis-à-vis the heads of State in charge of nuclear arsenals: while at all
times every version and tributary of self-interest peremptorily
counter-indicates pressing the button, the mere ready-to-hand-ness of the
button makes its pressing all too likely owing to the intermittent yet
ever-recurring supervention of impulses recklessly heedless of all versions and
tributaries of self-interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short:
in the light of the inherently politically divisive character of the one entity
holding us-stroke-the U.S. together, we should not be altogether surprised by
the irruption of a genuinely vexatious lesion of Texit or NExit into the
American body politic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For my part, as a
lifetime resident of the Eastern Seaboard and virtual adulttime resident of the
so-called I-95 (and, more recently, <i>Acela</i>) corridor, I can’t imagine
lifting a finger, let alone both a(*)**(e)-cheeks, to stop Texas from saying
sayonara (or its equivalent in Tejano Spanish [perchance <i>Adios, y’all</i>?])
to the Union, much less to prevent Maryland, New Jersey, New York,
Massachusetts, etc. or et al. from jettisoning their collective fiscal,
military, and judiciary obligations to the raffishly parvenu likes of Wyoming,
Hawaii, California, and the Dakotas.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Now, as for the relevance to Russia of all this from the last mention
(barring the one in this paragraph) of “all this” onwards, it consists in the
following: that such an EU-like scenario of disintegration through voluntary
mutual disaggregation, however improbable it may be in the United States’
present case, is more than figuratively <i>impossible</i> in Russia’s present
case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is impossible in Russia’s
present case because it has already happened to Russia, and indeed happened to
it (or her [for Russia is after all a self-styled <i>mother</i>]) more than a
quarter-of-a-century ago, when the U.S.S.R. ceased to exist and both Russia
itself and the non-Russian Soviet republics ceased to participate in a larger
polity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, perhaps uniquely among
the former-great powers of the long twentieth century (i.e., the twentieth
century proper, spanning the years 1901 through 2000, in contrast to the
historians’ short twentieth century, spanning the years 1918 [by which year
Russia had ceased to exist as an independent polity on account of its
absorption into the U.S.S.R ] and 1989 [a year whose historical significance
need not be recapitulated]) Russia now enjoys the privilege attributed to the dead
by Lemmy Caution in <i>Alphaville</i> (and presumably by some classical [and
more specifically pre-Socratic] author or thinker with whom Jack L. Godard was
[and perhaps still is] better acquainted than I am): <i>it cannot die</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, even in the present long-post-Soviet
microepoch there are still quasi-nationalities (or for all I know <i>actual</i>
or <i>authentic </i>nationalities [after all, one doesn’t want to make enemies
gratuitously]) living under the Russian political umbrella who long to break
free of that umbrella and shelter (for what such shelter is worth) under a
smaller political umbrella of their own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I suppose the Chechens and the Tatars (a.k.a. <i>Tartars</i>, an
alternative nation-label that I really think they should plump for in the light
of the popularity of the sauce of the same name [minus the ess] in the
hyperoccident, as attested to by its yeoman service as a condiment applied by
default to each and every last McDonald’s Filet o’Fish sandwich ever compiled)
are the demographically largest such collectivities; at any rate, they are the
only such collectivities who spring to my mind by name at the moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at their utmost geographically
desiderated compasses the dominions pined for by these conceivably authentic
nationalities are positively dust-mited by the chunks of land ceded by the
Russian S.F.S.R. upon the dissolution of the U.S.S.R; such that even if each
and every one of these collectivities acquired a nation-state-territory of its
own carved out of the quasi-living flesh of the present Russian polity, Russia
would still be the biggest darned country in the world by many a long
chalk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Complementarily, and as mentioned
before, in many of the non-Russian former Soviet territories there are
so-called enclaves of so-called ethnic Russians who at least intermittently
affect to feel aggrieved that the burglet, village, or potato-field they live
in or on is not officially a part of Mother Russia, that it has, so to speak,
been assigned to the belly of the wrong <i>matryoshka</i>, to a Ukrainian,
Byelorussian, Estonian autc. nesting-doll rather than a Russian one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet even if each and every one of these
burglets, villages, and potato-fields were assimilated to Mother Russia, that
mother’s girth would not be visibly increased <i>sub specie satellites</i>;
Russia would indeed consequently be an even larger country, and consequently
outstrip the rest of the world’s countries in terms of landmass more than it
presently does, but not by so much as a single nub of a single short chalk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly if the Asiatic portion of Russia
really started feeling its geographical oats and took it into its highly oblate
head to secede from the republic and start up an entirely new polity called,
say, Pansiberiana, and stretching from Novosibirsk to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky,
then it would be the largest country in the world, leaving the consequently
engendered rump Russia just ahead or behind Brazil at the fifth or
sixth-largest (I confess I can’t be back-bottomed to do the maths), but such a
secession is scarcely imaginable for the perhaps utterly infantile but
nevertheless highly efficacious reason that from their very foundations all the
urban and semi-urban centers of this massive mass of steppe and tundra have
been inhabited effectively exclusively by people who called and call themselves
Russians and were and are native speakers of the Russian language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess what I’m saying in the immediate here
may be divided into two gentle adjurations, one addressed to Russia and the
other to the hyperoccident: I would ever-so-gently adjure Russia to relax a bit
and stop giving both the various internal separatist collectivities so much of
a hard time and the various external Russian integrationist collectivities so
much encouragement; and I would no less (or more) gently adjure the
hyperoccident to give Russia at least a modicum of its due as a geographically
incredibly large and demographically quite respectably substantial political
entity that, in contrast to most of the political entities within the hyperoccident,
has managed to accomplish the well-nigh-miraculous geopolitical feat of <i>remaining
a polity unto itself</i> <i>neither beholden to any larger polity nor readily
analyzable into any congeries of self-sustaining sub-polities</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I realize of course that such an adjuration
is almost certain to go unheeded by either party in the present geopolitical
climate, a climate in which Russia feels itself (excuse me: <i>herself</i>)
obliged, in words mostly originally written for Chico Marx by S.J. Perelman, <i>to
play for French-fried potatoes as if they were large steaks</i>, in other words
to treat the insurgencies on either side of her border as matters of
existentially determinant import because the hyperoccident cannot be awed by
mere ontological integrity-cum-perdurance, and because, moreover, she knows
that she cannot hope ever to compete with the hyperoccident on the only
non-military front on which it will unreservedly salute success–viz. a certain
version of international commercial activity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In mentioning this version of international commercial activity I am
of course segueing to the illustration of Item No. 2 in my catalogue of
assertions (which in hindsight [sorry to shatter the illusion that I composed
this entire essay at a single mental-cum-temporal moment à la the painting of
the Mona Lisa as described by Steve Martin] I am inclined to think I should
rather have styled <i>theses</i> on account of that word’s instant evocation of
a pair of persons who are perhaps preeminently pertinent at present, namely,
Martin Luther and Karl Marx), specifically to the bit at the end about “<span style="background: white; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">a
bastardized version of a system of political economy that has always been
legitimately contestable and that by now has proved downright untenable.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t suppose any ailurophobes will be
alarmed in the slightest by my specifying that the system of political economy
I had and have in mind is the one most generally known as <i>capitalism</i>,
but I also suppose few ailurophiles will be much heartened by the specification
because it tells us nothing about what is defective in Russia’s
political-economic practice from the hyperoccident (a.k.a. so-called West)’s
point of view, inasmuch as this practice is itself almost impossible to define
except as a form or version of capitalism, or at any rate as a form or version
of a political-economic system that is emphatically not <i>anti</i>-capitalist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, in the Soviet days Russia’s
political-economic practice was definable as a form or version of a
political-economic system that <i>was</i> emphatically anti-capitalist, a system
that styled itself communism (or more typically and bumptiously <i>Communism</i>),
and that did indeed comport itself in ways that were difficult indeed to
confuse with those most signally cultivated and flaunted by the capitalism of
its day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Under Communism (I use the
preposition <i>under</i> under—or rather, in cooperation with—protest, as its
ineluctable implication of subjection stacks the cards against the poor Commies
from the outset) every Russian citizen was an employee or some other kind of
dependent of the Soviet State, whether his or her daily routine centered on
teaching kindergarten or arguing cases in court or screwing in widgets onto
bits of machinery or sitting in a prison cell or going down to the local
drugstore (or GUM) to sell flair pens (another Steve Martin reference, natch)
or their nearest analogue right of the Wall (interesting how geography often
confounds the usual spatially grounded political metaphors, no?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Complementarily, under Communism every Russian
was at least <i>quasi-officially </i>(for there was after all a thriving
so-called black market whose existence Soviet officialdom seemed to be at no
great pains to deny [more on this at a more seasonable moment], let alone
negate, whence the <i>quasi</i>) a dedicated and exclusive consumer of goods and
services produced and proffered by the Soviet State; such that if he or she
wanted a suit of clothes or a car or a cup of tea or a glass of beer or (for
all I know, as I have been given to understand that prostitution has always
been legal in all polities barring the extra-Nevadan United States), a b**w
j*b, he or she would almost always perforce repair to a State-owned department
store (perchance one of the aforementioned GUMs) or car dealership or tearoom
or juke joint or hooker/rent-boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is not—and was not—to say that all such commodities were pedaled and flaunted
under the imprint of a single <i>brand—</i>say, a friendly, grinning
Balloo-like hammer-and-sickle wielding cartoon bear, or a winking-cum-beaming
cartoon V.I. Lenin instantly identifiable by his bum-fluff moustache-cum-chin
whiskers and peaked newsboy’s cap—stamped (or tattooed) onto a given piece of
merchandise’s most conspicuous patch of plastic, steel, or skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the domain of cinema, for example, the
Soviet consumer economy was at times perhaps even more diversified than its
Stateside counterpart, with an artistically ambitious Lenfilm movie being no
more mistakable for a crowd-pleasing Mosfilm flick or a Gorkyfilm period
classic adaptation than a Universal monster mash for an R.K.O. gumshoe opera or
a 20<sup>th</sup>-Century Fox “issue” film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But it is hard to know now (and not only in the hyperoccident but
perhaps even in Russia, where most quotidiana of Soviet life are perhaps
unascertainable even by those who had attained the age of discretion by 1991
[for after all, the present writer would be hard-pressed indeed to quote the
price of a cinema ticket in 1991, or to specify how he went about punching in
his hours at the supermarket where he then worked]) how visible the glum, dusky
features of the sole, ultimate buck-stopping paymaster—i.e., Comrade Stalin,
Khrushchev, Brezhnev autc.—were beneath the various brightly parti-colored
brand icons spray-stenciled atop them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At the very least, the Soviet-period Russians would have recognized
these brands as home-grown (or -drafted, or whatever other past-participle best
describes the mode whereby brands are generated) and distinctively Soviet, in
stark contrast to, inter alia, the <i>Marlboro</i>, <i>Levi-Strauss, </i>and<i>
Ronco</i> brands they would have encountered only in officially unsanctioned
settings, or whenever a product bearing such a brand was included in an
officially sanctioned photograph or movie by mistake or deliberate
the-other-way-looking (q.v., at the above-mentioned more seasonable moment).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Flash forward twenty-seven or more years, and
however closely the producer side of the Russian economy may resemble its
Soviet predecessor (and I shall try to establish the extent of this <i>closely</i>
presently), on the consumer side that economy is virtually indistinguishable
from its hyperoccidental counterparts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The flagship GUM in Moscow’s Red Square has been converted into an
upscale shopping mall housing retail outlets of such nauseatingly hyperoccidental
chains as Armani, Samsonite, and Hugo Boss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And if to my assertion of the salience, and indeed revolutionariness, of
this transformation it be objected that the <i>overwhelming majority</i> of
Russians—a.k.a. Vanya and Masha Stolichnaya—are too fetidly poor to avail
themselves of any of the myriad-to-the-g*****lth power brand-choices paraded
before their terminally purchase-starved eyes, that they have to make do with
tatty own-brand handbags, blue jeans, sunglasses, etc. from the Russian
equivalent of Walmart (which may, for aught I know, actually <i>be</i> Walmart)
I say to the objector, <i>Let Vanya and Masha join the fetid club of which the
present writer along with Jean et Suzette Courvoisier, Hans und Greta
Bährenjäger, José y Maria Rioja (</i>or<i> José y Maria José Cuervo </i>[yes,
the reduplication of the J-name is a bit awkward]) <i>et al.</i> <i>have been
involuntary and begrudging members since no more recently than ca. 1990.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For brand-name proliferation without
consumer-power expansion has in fact been the norm in the hyperoccident for
more than a generation or quarter-century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And whatever the so-called media of whatever self-styled political
persuasion may have us believe (for in wishing to have us believe this,
Breitbart and Fox News join hands with Pacifica and the <i>Guardian</i>), the
experience of one’s own material utter irrelevance to the most high-profile
brands in the consumer side of one’s domestic economy is by no means confined
to those who “refer to fifth grade as <i>my senior year</i>” (J. Foxworthy,
natch) and whose Saturday-night calendars alternate between hot dates with
their respective kid siblings and quite literal rolls in the hay with the
choicest porkers in their respective pig-seraglios.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For proof of the verity of this admittedly
scandalous assertion one need look no further (or farther) than the case of the
present writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer is a
college graduate with a master’s degree conferred by a supposedly (i.e.,
universally reputedly) elite university.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The present writer possesses a well-nigh-infallibly accurate command of
irregular past participles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present
writer even enjoys an annual income only two or three percentage points below
the national average (although admittedly eight or nine points below the average
of the state in which he resides [Worthington’s law naturally and infallibly
dictates that five of my six remaining empirical readers will have turned away
with handkerchiefs clutched to their nostrils at this revelation]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet whenever the present writer is
compelled to visit any mid-to-upmarket subdivided shopping emporium in the
United States—whether the Galleria in downtown Baltimore or CityCenterDC in
downtown Washington or the International Mall in midtown Tampa—he is confronted
on all sides by articles of merchandise whose purchase(s) is or are
stratospherically beyond his means—meaning, I suppose, that if each week he
purchased just one such article chosen entirely at random he would be bankrupt
within a few months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that he is
particularly resentful of the inaccessibility of these commodities; to the
contrary, on the whole while sashaying or flouncing past them he is inclined to
ejaculate, “How full the world is of things that I do not want!” like Socrates
at the Athenian agora on a market day (not to be confused with Diogenes
ejaculating in a different sense at the same site).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is, however, particularly and indeed
rabidly resentful of received hyperoccidental opinion’s laughably outmoded
contention that in the second decade of the twenty-first century the hyperoccident,
in contrast to Russia, remains a place or consumer zone awash in brand-name
luxury goods that all but the poorest of its population may acquire without
availing themselves of the so-called five-finger discount, a place or consumer
zone in which an office secretary can still be “soigné and chic on forty-five
[or seven hundred to a thousand in today’s dollars] a week” as Ogden Nash put
it in the early-to-mid-twentieth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For the overwhelming minority-to-faintly whelming majority of old-school
hyperoccidental commodity-gourmandizers, the hyperoccident is in point of fact,
and like Russia, a vast commercial desert chock-full of tantalizingly life-like
mirages and utterly bereft of genuine oases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be presumably sure, in Russia the proportion of the population with
purchasing access to high-ticket name-brand items is probably slightly smaller
than in the richest and most economically energetic hyperoccidental countries,
the countries that still deserve to be considered <i>first-world</i> (if that
term still enjoys any currency) by one or more standard economic standards
[e.g., unemployment rate, inflation rate, medium-term rate of growth of GDP,
and productivity-level of labor force], i.e. (not e.g. [and note how short the
list is!]), the U.S., the U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Lichtenstein,
Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, New Zealand, Austria, the
Scandinavian countries (including Iceland), and Australia; but it is also
probably slightly larger than in the most economically sluggish hyperoccidental
countries—e.g. (not i.e., because in the light of Worthington’s Law one feels a
bit of a jerk naming any but the most notorious member of this club, a polity
which unlike most of the others was hardly a poster child for so-called free enterprise
even at the acme of its post-WWII heyday), Greece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, in broad terms, the situation
of the average consumer is pretty nearly uniformly wretched throughout the
hyperoccident-plus-Russia; the hyperoccident has absolutely nothing to be smug
about qua exponent, champion, or embodiment of a political-economic system
catering munificently and efficiently to the will of the consumers of its
respective polities; and the median income-earning American residing in a
Stalin (or, if you insist, Truman)-period mid-rise in the South Oakenshawe
neighborhood of Baltimore is essentially in the same cramped, bilge-inundated
boat as the median income-earning Russian residing in a Stalin-period mid-rise
in the Vyborg district of Moscow; which is to say, he spends the bulk of his income
on non-negotiable quasi-necessities like rent and utilities and has precious
little left over to lay out on the gewgaws, gadgets, and fripperies that
received opinion in the hyperoccident fatuously regards as our
pseudo-civilization’s greatest triumphs, and indeed as sufficient reasons for
being happier to be alive now than at any preceding moment in human
history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How received opinion—by which I
mean what <i>virtually</i> <i>everybody</i> in a given population, and not
merely some influential fraction or faction thereof, believes to be true—in the
hyperoccident could take such possessive pride in a congeries of gewgaws,
gadgets, and fripperies legally inaccessible to nearly half-to-almost all of
its receivers, is a subject not for a separate essay, or even a separate module
or section of the present essay, but indeed for a separate sub-module or
sub-section of the present essay, the one in which I shall devote all my
discursive energies to tearing (or attempting to tear) the hyperoccident not
only a proverbial second but also a proverbial third waste-disposal chute on
the score of its entire officially espoused system of political economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the nonce, i.e., the present sub-module
or sub-section, I am trying to seal up, to cauterize, the second and third
proverbial waste-disposal chutes that hyperoccidental received opinion has with
bumptious ruthlessness carved out of the living abdominal tissue of the Russian
system of political economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The extent
of Russian officialdom’s espousal or even comprehension of this system is
difficult or perhaps even impossible to ascertain, but in my view this lends it
a certain irresistibly naïve charm that the hyperoccident’s system has lacked
since whatever day in 1775 or 1776 Adam Smith handed the final set of galleys
of <i>The Wealth of Nations</i> to his printer.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I believe I have already cauterized one of
these factitious wounds, the one on the <i>consumer side</i>, serviceably
enough by demonstrating that the present-day Russian consumerist landscape is
far closer to the consumerist landscapes of hyperoccidental polities than to
that of Russia in the Soviet period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unfortunately, the cauterization of this wound as an isolated
pathological phenomenon is no guarantee against its eventual suppuration and
indeed terminal gangrenization because, at least as bourgeois-economic
superstition insists on having us believe, consumption is at least strongly
dependent and perhaps even prevailingly parasitic upon production, such that
this consumer-side wound is always frighteningly vulnerable to contamination by
the producer-side wound (I leave the out-working of the details of the conceit
to the professional gastroenterologists and proctologists among my readership),
and it is a much bigger ask to cauterize that wound than it was to cauterize
the consumer-side one; in other words, to demonstrate that Russia as an
economic locus of production is substantially different than it was in the
Soviet period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For it is said by people
who are said to know something about this (and I have no choice but to cite these
people as infallible authorities, for the scene of production is ineluctably
[albeit perhaps wholly contingently] much more occult, much more hidden from
view, than the scene of consumption) that on the side of production the
present-day Russian economy is prevailingly and/or essentially a two-commodity
economy, an economy that sustains itself mostly or perhaps even effectively
solely on exports of petroleum and natural gas, an economy wherein, moreover,
the possession, refinement, and distribution of these two mainstay resources is
contentiously shared between the Russian State (quasi-i.e., Mr. Putin and his
rich bosom cronies) and a <i>kuchka</i> or handful of wealthy individual
Russian citizens (the so-called oligarchs; quasi-i.e., the rich non-cronies of Mr.
Putin), such that it is not entirely implausible to argue that on the side of
production the Russian economy is not even superficially very different from
its predecessor in the Soviet period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
be sure, the exponents of this not entirely implausible argument maintain,
State control of the mainstay industries is no longer as in Soviet days an
attribute of official policy, such that in the unlikely but not inconceivable
event that one or more of the privately owned oil or natural gas companies
became geometrically more profitable than its largest State-owned rival, one
would no longer be within one’s rights to describe Russia even as a partial
de-facto site of State capitalism (otherwise known <i>dirigisme</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even in such an event (so these exponents
expound), most of the worst, the most undesirable, characteristics of a
Soviet-style State-run producer-side economy would still be in place, because
control of the mainstay-resource possession, refinement, and distribution would
remain in the hands of a very few individuals—because, in other words, there
would be very little <i>competitive diversity </i>on that side.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This argument strikes me as quite a <i>specious</i>
one in the old, only half-pejorative Johnsonian sense—by which I mean that it
has a great deal to recommend it at least on the surface, a surface that may
amount to a serviceable enough succedaneum for depth, just as a lake that is
merely frozen in its top <i>x</i> inches is sometimes (if not even often, let
alone always) as serviceable for skating as one that is frozen to its very
bottom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I concede that in certain
productive settings, competitive diversity is a good thing and indeed a much
better thing than uncompetitive homogeneity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Certainly in the early stages of a given commodity’s heyday, which is to
say the period wherein even its most state-of-the-art manifestations are
manifestly short of technical perfection, it is best for there to be a large
number of producers working in knowing competition with one another to design,
manufacture, and distribute the best version of that commodity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus in the early days of the automobile it
was undoubtedly a good thing that Messrs. Stanley, Benz, Ford, et al. were each
and all trying to design, manufacture, and distribute the best version of the
automobile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If only one of them had been
at work on that project, we (or rather <i>you all</i>, as I do not own a motor
car and am not even licensed to drive one) would probably still be puttering
about in individually crafted (and therefore phenomenally expensive)
steam-driven cars (which on balance would probably be a very good thing as far
as a car-hater such as the present writer is concerned, but for the present
sub-argument’s sake [and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only</i> for its
sake, as will become clear much later in the essay] I am writing from the point
of view of an automobilophile).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
desirability of a large number of mutually competing producers of any
well-established and settled commodity, a commodity in whose design and construction
only marginal improvements are capable of being made, is highly debatable at
best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present state of the
automobile industry is a case in illustration of this at-best high
debatability: at present there cannot be many more than ten car-manufacturing
companies that are not subsidiaries of larger car-manufacturing companies, and
I can perceive neither much intrinsic value in increasing their number nor any
evidence whatsoever of lobbying or agitation in favor of such an increase by
any political constituency or so-called interest group. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background: white;">To be sure, in the present race to build a reliable and affordable
driverless car, there is presumably a great deal of competition among dozens or
hundreds of firms of which we have yet to hear (alongside the one huge firm of
which we have heard more than quite enough), and a handful or two of which are
doubtless destined to become the Chrysler, Ford, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz etc. or
et al. of the driverless car industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But as for the old-school driver-operated car industry, because people
have essentially accepted that a driver-operated car is never going to move
comfortably or legally faster than 80 miles per hour and that it never even
ought to cost much less than a half a year’s wages (because they are
fundamentally <i>unregenerate masochists</i> [q.v. below, Lord willing]), they
are content with choosing from the offerings of a mere half-dozen firms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no need for a hundred models of
luxury cars to choose from when the known price tag of a Rolls Royce or a
Bentley alone certifies that you are several times as rich as a person who can
only afford a Jaguar, BMW, or Mercedes—and so on down a conspicuous-consumption
ladder comprising no more than ten rungs and occupied even at its bottom rung
by no more than a half-dozen car-models.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And in industries where there is no prestige whatsoever to be derived
from choosing one version of its appropriated commodity rather than another,
the utility of competition diminishes virtually to zero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The oil and natural gas industries are
obviously <i>loca classica</i> of such industries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While there may be a minuscule modicum of
traditional conspicuous-consumerist cachet to be garnered from choosing premium
rather than regular gasoline-stroke-petrol, no driver prides himself or herself
on being a <i>Shell</i> man or woman rather than a <i>BP</i> or <i>Exxon</i>
one, except perhaps as a function of his or her views of the company’s record
of relative environmental friendliness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And as for natural gas—well, here in the United States, the alleged
foremost bastion of no-holds-barred free enterprise, the public’s lack of
interest in competitive offerings of this commodity eventually and anciently
(i.e., well over a hundred years ago) reached such a near-absolute-zero point
of lassitude that virtually (or perhaps even actually) every last serviced
population in the land (i.e., the then at-most 48 contiguous states) cheerfully
allowed its local private natural gas supplier (often or perhaps even usually
also its supplier of electricity) to operate as a <i>monopoly</i>, i.e., as a
company operating in the complete and utter absence of competition from other
firms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for perhaps as long as
slightly over a hundred years, nary an American soul affected to voice the
smallest soupçon of dissatisfaction with this commercial arrangement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, round about the turn of the millennium,
some Whiggish dickhead (or dickish Whighead) or other got the asinine idea of
legislating <i>consumer choice</i> in the matter of basic utilities and thereby
precipitated nothing of greater interest or appeal to Bob and Suzy Focckuck
(i.e., the average American natural gas consumers) than a torrent of bulk paper
mail into their U.S. Postal Service (q.v.)-ial mailboxes and a horde of <i>incredibly</i>
uncivil door-to-door teenage sales-pitchers onto their front doorsteps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After getting on for two decades of this
utterly unwelcome and obtrusive Whiggish rain-dance, I have yet to hear, let
alone make the acquaintance, of a fellow-Baltimorean who has switched over from
the former monopoly holder, Baltimore Gas and Electric, to any of its newly
chartered competitors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And assuming my
own desire-mechanism as a consumer is not radically different from that of my
fellow Baltimoreans, I conclude that the reason they have not bothered
switching over is that their electric-cum-gas bills have not risen very much at
all or ever very sharply over the 17-odd years since the introduction of
competition into the electricity-cum-natural gas market, and as long as one is
not expected to pay substantially more for something this month (or whatever
else the billing interval is—although in the case of continuously supplied
goods or services it is rarely anything other than a month) than one was paying
for it last month, one is not going to bother seeking out an alternative
provider of that something–this on the seldom-falsified assumption that the
amount of time one would have to spend looking for a more competitive vendor
(or hearing out the sales pitch of one of its incredibly uncivil teenage sales
representatives) would not be repaid by the savings netted by the switch to
that vendor (and I mean <i>repaid</i> in the coarsest yet most precise
pecuniary sense: one infers that the alternative vendor would save one, say,
$200.00 over the course of five years and thereby concludes that $3.33-1/3 per
month is not too hefty a price to pay for never again being obliged to think
about that vendor).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, if
electricity or natural gas ever became <i>sexy</i> again (for nothing could
have been sexier than electricity in its ca. 1890 heyday or natural gas in its
1830 one), prices of the newly resexified commodity would indeed spike and
vacillate widely from vendor to vendor, and Americans would find it worthwhile
to shop around for alternative electricity or natural gas vendors, as they very
recently still did in search of alternative broadband mobile phone interweb
coverage (the jargon is bound to be imprecise when echoed by a mobile phone
non-owner such as the present writer).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But failing (not that I have any desire for such a catastrophe to <i>succeed</i>)
a <i>genuine</i> energy crisis (i.e., one precipitated by an ineluctable
natural shortage rather than the ever-eluctable pipeline-squeezing shenanigans
of a human supplier), neither electricity nor natural gas nor petroleum will
ever be sexy again, and so no consumer of any of these commodities is ever
going to yearn in good faith for access to a more competitive market in any of
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time, of course, the
terminal utter unsexiness of electricity, natural gas, and oil has by no means
either emanated from or led to their becoming superfluous, let alone worthless;
to the contrary, each and every representative national couple in the world or
on the globe undoubtedly needs (in a relative sense, of course) these
commodities much more exigently than its or their ancestors ever did at these
commodities’ aforementioned apices of sexiness (admittedly I did leave out
petroleum, so let me date its apex of sexiness now, viz. to 1924, as that was
the year in which the greatest number of Ford Model T cars, the most popular
cars [and hence the most popular gas-guzzling entities] ever, was or were
manufactured), and so any person, corporation, or other entity with large stores
of any of these commodities, these natural or quasi-natural resources (TBS,
stores of electricity are usually factorable down to more basal natural
resources like natural gas, oil, coal, and radioactive metals) and control of
their refinement autc. and distribution is sitting pretty pretty for the
nonce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the god-awful
tree-huggers are desperately fain to get Bob and Suzy Focckuck, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Vanya and
Masha Stolichnaya, <span style="background: white; mso-pattern: solid white; mso-shading: white;">Hans und Greta Bährenjäger, et al. to light and heat their
so-called homes exclusively with their own fecal excrement, nasal mucus, and
seminal and vaginal discharge; and they are also gunger-ho than a 1986 Michael
Keaton-starring Ron Howard movie to get Bob, Suzy, Vanya, et al. to ditch their
motorcars and propel their own malodorous carcasses to work, school, church,
tanning salon, and back aback purely acoustic bicycles every day; and for aught
any of us know these god-awful tree-huggers may ultimately succeed, and if they
ever do, the suppliers of the classic heating, cooling, lighting, and
propelling commodities will indeed no longer be sitting pretty, at least not
qua suppliers of such commodities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
not even the tree-huggers’ most enthusiastic boosters—viz. Bob and Suzy
Religious Bottle Recyclers-cum-Hybrid Compact Car Owners-cum-Triannual
Intercontinental Airline Pleasure Voyage-Takers—to say nothing of their
detractors (i.e., basically, everybody who hopes the driverless car <i>really
takes off</i> often in two or more senses [and just imagine what a godsend to <i>some
</i>sort of natural resource-hawker a flight-capable driverless car would
almost ineluctably turn out to be]) believe that they will succeed in the next
half-century, that personal-environmental autocoprophagia and acoustic
bicycling will become normative rather than exceptional <i>modi vivendi</i>,
and such being the case, Russia as a mass of biologically living people can
look forward to a future that will never dim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This of course is not to say that prosperity for the Havana-puffing
oligarchs and grand state functionaries, the <i>tolstiye koti</i>,<i> </i>in
charge of the petroleum and natural gas producing firms has ever necessarily
spelled or ever will necessarily spell prosperity for their shop-floor
employees, Vanya and Masha </span>Stolichnaya, but merely that the failure of
such prosperity can never be attributed to the noncompetitive structure of the
Russian petroleum and natural gas industries <i>eo ipso</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are in point of fact neither solid a
priori nor solid a posteriori grounds for regarding the remunerativeness of the
wages of the shop-floor employees of a given industry as being directly
proportional to the number of mutually competing productive organizations
involved in that industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, it is
manifestly clear that <i>caeteris paribus </i>a competitive production-market
in a given industry tends to drive down the wages of its shop-floor employees,
inasmuch as a firm with many competitors is under constant pressure to reduce
its production costs in order to sell its products at the lowest profitable
price, and labor is almost invariably the most costly of production costs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To sum up my appraisal of the productive side
of the present Russian economy: there would appear to be nothing about its
fundamental structure that is intrinsically inimical to the welfare of the
Russian citizenry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Natural gas and
petroleum are among the most highly coveted commodities in the present and
foreseeably prospective geoeconomy, and Russia possesses both of them in
abundance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, there is
evidently nothing but a lack of political will—the will, in other words, on the
part of the oligarchs and grand functionaries to let the great mass of Russians
in on a greater share of the wealth inexorably accruing from the sale of
petroleum or natural gas, either via an industry-wide wage hike or via a kind of
universal annual allowance on the Alaskan model—to prevent Vanya and Masha
Stolichnaya qua economic quanta from standing toe-to-toe and brow-to-brow with
the average native married couple in Switzerland (I regret that the linguistic
heterogeneity of Switzerland, acting in concert with my complete ignorance of
Swiss wine, beer, and spirits, precludes my coming up with the requisite
complementary national couple), the national polity undoubtedly most celebrated
and notorious for lavishly looking after each and every one of its own at the
greatest exactable expense to the rest of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, even if the profits of the
Russian petroleum and natural gas industries were evenly shared amongst the
Russian citizenry as a matter of policy, there would still be extrinsic threats
to the well-being of that citizenry, because the Russian petroleum and natural
gas industries would continue to face competition from these industries in
other parts of the world—notably, the Middle East and the Americas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there is nothing intrinsic to the Russian
petroleum and natural gas industries to preclude their holding their own in an
international market, nothing to preclude their keeping up with, say, the
United States, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela in terms of either productivity or
affordability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only material
obstacles to Russia’s prosperity as a net natural resource-exporter are of a
political—and hence at least conceivably removable—nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that so-called fracking has made the
United States a net exporter of natural gas, the Germans are much less inclined
to buy natural gas from the Russians, but this is not in the main because
American natural gas is cheaper (if it even is) but because the American gas is
being supplied <i>by the Americans</i>, whom the Germans regard as an ally,
rather than by the Russians, whom they do not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If by what doubtless would seem to everyone but the present writer to be
some miraculous turn of the geopolitical tide Germany came to trust Russia as quasi-implicitly
as it now trusts the United States, it would have no disincentive whatsoever to
importing all its natural gas from Russia and a very powerful disincentive to
importing it from the United States in the U.S.’s much greater geographical
alienation from Germany than Russia, as expressed both by pure distance and by
the lack of a continuous stretch of dry land between the two countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(If there is a single humane principle I wish
to inculcate in this essay—and the present exemplum of Germany and Russia qua
commercial trading partners is but the first and least trenchant one whereby I
hope to inculcate this principle before my peroration—it is that <i>physical-geographical
propinquity and contiguity ultimately matter every bit as much in the
twenty-first century as they did in any earlier age</i>.)<i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But received hyperoccidental political-economic opinion seems to hold
that there is something intrinsically and ineluctably evil about the productive
side of the Russian economy’s centeredness on natural resources <i>eo ipso</i>,
such that even if each and every one of Russia’s petroleum and natural
gas-producing firms adopted a policy of absolutely impartial and uniformly
egalitarian profit-sharing and even if all political obstacles to Russia’s
frictionless, fully competitive participation in the world petroleum and
natural gas markets were removed, Russia would still be a geoeconomic miscreant
or a geoeconomic infant—or perhaps a combination of both; say, a geoeconomic <i>street
urchin</i>; in other words a country that was still refusing to play by the
rules and refusing to grow up, to behave like a decent, law-abiding, prudent,
potty-trained, enlightened geoeconomic adult.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And in what does the behavior of such a decent, law-abiding, prudent, potty-trained,
enlightened geo-political adult consist, according to received hyperoccidental
geoeconomic opinion?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To my mind the
pithiest and most compendious answer to this question—pithiest and most
compendious, that is, in its conveyance not only of the desiderata of
geoeconomic adulthood themselves but also of the nauseatingly smugly didactic
attitude in which they are characteristically stipulated—was provided just over
four years ago on NPR’s <i>All Things Considered</i> by some American foreign
policy wonkess with some sort of professional accreditation in something having
to do with Russia who censoriously remarked (quasi-apropos of the
just-consummated annexation of Crimea, unless that annexation had not just then
been consummated, in which case her remark was quasi-apropos of the generally
fractious state of relations between Russia and Ukraine [in either case the
apropos-ness was merely quasi, inasmuch as the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is not
at all about economics as hyperoccidental received opinion now understands it
{even if that conflict is very much about economics in a more basal sense
ignored by hyperoccidental received opinion}, as I hope I shall get round
persuasively to arguing]) something to the effect of [if somebody will only
give me my own wonk’s chair, “air-conditioned cell at Kennedy,” and
upper-mid-six-figure annual emolument, I shall be only too happy to hire a
fact-checker!!!]: “Russia needs to develop an economy that’s centered on making
things that other countries want to buy.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The emphasis here is manifestly on the <i>madeness</i> and the <i>thingliness</i>
of the things rather than on their cravedness by foreign buyers, as indeed it
needs must be in the light of the secure international high-ticketed-ness of
petroleum and natural gas, which I have already pointed out and which cannot
have been or be unknown even to the most troglodytically benighted foreign
policy wonkess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On or by this account,
the Russians are childish and evil because they make their collective living by
simply selling amorphous uncountable <i>stuff</i> that they happen already to
have sitting around on or beneath their turf, and their only hope of being
grown up and good lies in shaping this amorphous uncountable stuff and other
kinds of amorphous uncountable stuff on or beneath their turf into previously nonexistent,
discrete, countable <i>things</i>; it lies, in other words, in their
collectively transforming themselves into a polity-cum-economy prevailingly
devoted to what I cannot seem to avoid calling<i> </i>(for there are few if any
things that I would more eagerly avoid doing than typing or uttering the most
soporific and at the same time most inflammatory of em-words) <i>manufacturing</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This implied prescription needs must pose
something of a poser (<i>qua</i> conundrum not <i>qua</i> 1980s subcultural
bugbear) to any would-be talent agent of the hyperoccident keen on saving his
or her client from being cast in the role of the kettle-denigrating pot in some
sort of <i>Toy Story</i>-style kitchen pantomime, for as every hyperoccidental
schoolchild knows or ought to know, it has been well over a full half-century
since any hyperoccidental nation-state (with the possible admittedly unmarginal
exception of Germany) has signalized itself as a geoeconomic player via the
manufacturing sub-sector of the productive sector of its economy; and indeed in
the hyperoccident’s flagship polity, the United States (which of course also
happens to be our wonkess’s home base and probable [to judge by her accent]
native land), the moribundity of domestic manufacturing has been taken for
granted for so long that by now it is virtually a module of the national
folklore curriculum like the Great Awakening or the Closing of the Frontier or
the Birth of Jazz.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the (non-DG)R
presumes I exaggerate, let him or her only consider the antiquity of the
epithet <i>the Rust Belt</i> as a collective term for the former urban
industrial American northeast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
coinage of the epithet dates from no later than the early 1960s, hence well
over a half-century ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jump another
half-century-and-change back into the past and you are in the 1890s, when most
of the big industries in the region were just getting into gear and some of
them—notably the automobile industry—had yet even to be founded; when, in
short, whatever sort of unrusted metal belt the region comprised before it
started rusting did not yet even fully exist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In short the Rust Belt has been the Rust Belt substantially longer it
ever was the Unrusted Belt, such that the very term Rust Belt now has a
palpably absurd ring to it in the ears of anybody who has reflected on the chronology;
such a person inevitably yearns for the region to be rechristened after
whatever rust turns into once it has crumbled away, or what the non-rusted
remnant of metal left behind after the crumblage is called, but alas!—he or she
lacks the requisite metallurgical vocabulary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Calling Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, etc. “Rust Belt cities”
is every bit as preposterous as calling the present historical moment “the
postwar period,” inasmuch as the Belt started Rusting more or less exactly when
the Second World War finished ending.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But hey, unlike “the postwar period,” “the Rust Belt” generates revenues
in the coffers of municipal governments, who will seemingly be able to get away
with carping dunningly to Uncle Sam about the <i>economic hardship our town has
suffered since Biblical City Aleph Steel shut down its operations here </i>until
a team of Biblical archaeologists will be needed even to make it clear to Uncle
Sam what sort of entity Biblical City Aleph Steel was, and who am I to demand
the amputation of one of the most grossly distended udders of these
governments’ communal cash cow?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Obviously not any non-bovine creature, but I <i>am</i> very much of a
non-bovine creature to beg these municipal governments of the erroneously
called Rust Belt to parley with Uncle Sam in slightly more hushed tones,
inasmuch as the sheer decibelular amplitude of their sales pitch seems to be
misleading many an American (and by no means only an unregenerately
historically uninformed one) into supposing that the demise of the Rust Belt
began a mere six rather than a full sixty years ago and thence to supposing
that manufacturing is still the normal order of the day chez the productive
side of the U.S. economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such I am at
least residually inclined to gather from the smug lording over the Russian
economy indulged in by our wonkess, although I am probably prevailingly
inclined to gather therefrom that she was mistaking an unflagging profusion of
new <i>names</i> chez the productive side of the U.S. economy for an unflagging
profusion of new <i>things</i> thereat—a misprision of the true lie of the
economic land which, inasmuch as in the words of Edward Gibbon </span><i><span style="color: #252525; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">mankind
is governed by names</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">, would certainly be enough to conjure up the
mirage of a vital, thriving manufacturing economy in the mind of any wonk or
wonkess of any but the highest genius and most ruthless intellectual
self-command.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now what do I mean by a <i>profusion
of names chez nous</i> <i>Americains</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I mean by this nothing more occult or mysterious than the large number
of <i>proprietary</i> names that did not exist at all, or were visible only in
small subnational or subcultural pockets, as recently as the turn of the
millennium—names like N****x, A*****n, F****k, U**r,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and the butcher’s-dozen <i>I</i>-prefixed
products bearing the logo of the A***e corporation (whose most lucrative strand
of cunning [I wouldn’t dream of calling it <i>inventiveness</i>, let alone <i>genius</i>]
has probably been its periodic <i>refreshing</i> of the master-name of its
product line, from <i>A***e</i> itself to <i>M******sh</i> in the mid-1980s,
and from <i>M******sh</i> to <i>I</i>-this and that in the
mid-20oughties).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some of these parvenu
proprietary names are indeed affixed to manufactured products: such is patently
the case with the I-P*d, I P*d [sic on the repetition, though I daren’t expect
any reader to have a memory retentive and extensive enough (i.e., to call to
mind consumer fads of more than five years’ antiquity) to understand why],
I-P***e, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is no secret that
few to none of these products is or are manufactured in any State or territory
of the United States, that virtually each and every one of them is assembled in
China (or, as Chinese labor becomes increasingly costly, in more commercially
marginal Asian countries like Vietnam) out of materials hailing from places
less heavily trodden by hyperoccidental feet than even the proverbial-if-actual
Timbuktu and more celebrated-if-mythical B*mf**k, Egypt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the corporate headquarters of the
most illustrious (or notorious) of the proprietors of the proprietary names
affixed to these products are sited in the United States, but it is difficult
to ascertain to what extent, if any, these nominal geographical presences
signalize or mandate an inflow of domestic revenues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If, for example, one orders an I-P***e online
directly from A***e, what are the chances that the I-P***e one eventually
receives was stored in a warehouse in Bowling Green, Kentucky rather than in
one in Ya’an, Sichuan and consequently contributed its hyper-minuscule share of
property taxes to the treasury of Warren County rather than to that of Ya’an
Prefecture and was packaged by a pair (or trio autc.) of Kentuckyian
wage-earning hands rather than a pair (or trio autc.) of Sichuan(i) ones?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Having never ordered a single I-anything from
A***e I honestly cannot say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I <i>can</i>
honestly say that on most if not all occasions on which I have ordered
something directly from A****n (as against one of its so-called partners, many
of whom have turned out to be based in Timbuktu-stroke-BFE-esque places), the
almost-(although-admittedly-not-<i>always</i>)-invariably-foreign-made ordered
commodity or bundle of commodities has been conveyed to me from some location
within the United States—and more than often enough some heartlandish, or
peri-heartlandish locale like Bowling Green, Kentucky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So to the extent that at least the United
States’(s) sphere of circulation, its sphere of getting already-made things
from place to place, is well represented by A****n, a certain sub-sub-sector of
the pre-rust Rust Belt economy is still thriving here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The toting and packaging functions being
followed and fulfilled at A****n’s shipping warehouses may not be manufacturing
jobs in even the loosest of senses, but they are most certainly <i>blue-collar</i>
jobs of the same genus as the one subtended by a vocation whose demise is
bewailed very lachrymosely indeed by pre-rust Rust Belt nostalgia-ists—namely
that of the doughty, horizontally striped-shirted, Popeye-forearmed <i>longshoreman</i>
who was an unbudgeable mainstay of this country’s ports (I apologize if this
use of the nautical vehicle <i>mainstay</i> in a perinautical context
constitutes a mixture of metaphors) before the advent of containerization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course and as everybody knows, most of
the most illustrious proprietors-cum-bearers of newly minted American
proprietary names are neither directly nor indirectly involved in manufacturing
things at all, and it is indeed highly debatable whether they are even
participating in the so-called <i>services</i> sub-sector of the U.S. economy
that according to certain parties more enlightened than our wonkess (albeit far
from fully enlightened) has more than taken up the slack left by the
moribundity of the manufacturing sub-sector.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For it is after all a notorious fact that for many years G****e, F****k,
and T****r, despite their global name-recognition, were unable to become
profitable—this, most obviously and also notoriously, because they rarely if
ever charged their users (for one can scarcely call one who spends no money a <i>customer</i>)
a dime, but also much less notoriously (if equally obviously to those with a
functioning pair [in both upper and lower-body senses]) and indeed downright
back-page-ishly, because they were not providing anything for the sake of not
being without which anybody in his or her right mind would ever a sacrifice a
dime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By now all these companies
(perhaps barring T****r) are of course in the black to the tune of milliards
per annum, but this is only because back in ’08 or thenabouts they all bit a
certain bullet that had doubtless been lying ready to hand and in non-Texan
plain view on a silver plate (do I hear the howl of a wolf?) since the very
first hour of the very late nineties-to-very early oughties day their
respective founders devised them (i.e., the companies) in between bong hits in
their (i.e., the founders’) respective ever-so-mandatorily cramped and smelly
dorm rooms—namely, that of hosting aggressively conspicuous advertising by
deep-pocketed third parties (i.e., for the most part, the same old rogue’s
gallery of proprietary names by which we were assailed via television twenty,
thirty, and even forty years ago [e.g., M* D****d’s, F**o L*y, O***r M***r, and
D****y]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course in a
received-opinion-sphere in which Worthington’s Law ultimately reigns supreme
(even among those who affect to contemn it), the present profitability of
G****e et al. constitutes irrefutable proof not only that their founders and
runners have alighted on a brilliant short-term get-rich scheme (an assertion
that not even the present writer would contest), but also that these founders
and runners are geniuses of unprecedented intellectual fecundity whose business
prospectus (plural—fourth declension, natch) and indeed entire <i>modi vivendi</i>
must be followed with hyper-realistic fidelity of detail by each and every
hyperoccidental man, woman, ambulant child, and uncute animal who or which
would fain not be torn into shark-feed (a.k.a. <i>chum</i>) by the
remorselessly ineluctable one-way rip-tide of commercial history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each and every one of us, so hyperoccidental
received opinion now maintains, must be striving 3600/60-360,000/1,000 to be in
on the so-called ground floor (tho’ I prefer Dean Acheson’s more upmarket
metaphor <i>present at the creation</i>) of the next F****k, T****r, U**r, etc.,
and accordingly must strive to be the next Mark Sugarwalls, Sergei Brineshrimp,
or Travis
SomenamethatsnotbickellandthatIcantbearsedtolookupletaloneparodicallyalter, and
sub-accordingly spare no expense in having our noses and coiffures remodeled to
match those of Dustin Diamond, Ringo Starr, or Charles Bronson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the abject dependence of G****e, F****k,
and T****r on advertising is or should be a so-called red flag announcing to
every rational being that these companies’ days as viable commercial concerns
are numbered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For insamsuch as people
are still loath to pay for the these companies’ offered pseudo-services as
things in themselves, the ineluctable implication of these companies’
profitability is that what is drawing people back to them is not these
pseudo-services <i>eo ipso</i> but rather the phantasmagoric appeal of the
products on display in the hosted advertisements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And why should this come as anything of a
surprise to us, given that intrinsically considered, the pseudo-services in question
<i>do not even require the mediation of the interweb and could not only subsist
but positively thrive in a global social nexus utterly devoid of electronic
communication networks of any kind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>That
email (and hence G****e) merely electronically reconstitutes the interpersonal
intelligence-bearing department of the world’s postal services is evident from
its very name, and the same <i>mutatis mutandis</i> is true of the leading
pimps of the so-called social media, F******k and T****r, although the
redundancy is less easy to detect in their cases because for socially rather
than technologically contingent reasons their arrogated functions did not exist
in the pre-interwebbial world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If people
had really been interested in supposed friend-collecting after the manner facilitated
by F******k—in other words, interested in simply publicly registering an
awareness of the existence of as many and mutually far-flung people as
possible, and of being capable of epistolary commerce with them—there would
have been nothing to prevent them from doing so by, say, the late eighteenth
century, by which point it was certainly technically possible to circulate
printed materials to each and every urban center in every quadrant of the
globe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed a perfectly technically
feasible scenario for such a horfe, wind, and elbow greafe-powered F*****k is
by no means hard to devise: one imagines residents of the participating
municipalities supplying their names, street addresses, and brief
self-descriptions to a local printer; the printer collating the names etc. into
a registry and printing the registry several thousand times in broadsheet
format; the post and the packet-boats conveying the broadsheets to other
participating municipalities; the residents of <i>those</i> municipalities
selecting the names of people they wish to befriend as correspondents; the
printers compiling a new and more detailed registry grouping each addressee
together with his or her chosen correspondents (and with those who have chosen
to correspond with him or her), breaking that registry down by addressee,
communicating the down-broken sub-registries by packet and post to all the
participating municipalities, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of
course the whole wretched business of getting people in touch with each other
and one another would have taken much longer at a maximum data-transportation
speed of twenty miles or eighteen knots per hour per 100MB (assuming each
broadsheet to contain 10K of data, each carriage or ship-run to carry a
thousand broadsheets, and a hundred ships and carriages to be in transit at any
given moment), but after the first few months (assuming one month to equal one
complete transatlantic post-and-packet cycle) that would not have mattered
much, for by then the average participant would have garnered several dozen
correspondents (assuming each participating municipality to contain at least <i>one</i>
dedicated fan of faro, Hank Fielding, Joe Haydn, ballooning aut
al.-stroke-c.)—easily many times more than enough to fill a leisure schedule
devoted to nothing but reading and writing letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reason F****k-style social networking did
not take off two hundred and fifty years ago was of course that people back
then had as many friends as they needed—or, at any rate, cared to have—in their
home municipalities and tended to find it a chore to stay in touch by letter
even with close relatives residing more than a half a day’s carriage ride away;
and F****k itself would never have taken off in our own time had not the
picture-screened mobile telephone—the so-called smart phone—made the fetishism
of bandwith-driven data transmission-speed, formerly an obsession confined to
so-called tech geeks, into a universal neurosis afflicting even the most
technically ignorant-cum-apathetic teeny-boppers and centenarians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No F*****k user actually takes a scintilla of
pleasure in corresponding with his or her so-called friends in such mutually
far-flung locales as Bandar Seri Begawan, Ulaanbaatar, and Sheboygan, but the
act of uploading to F******k a 10-gigabyte movie (say, some Warhol-esque
video-diary of the user himself or herself picking his or her a(*)**(e) for
eighteen hours straight) that can be viewed by each of these mutually far-flung
so-called friends is enormously gratifying to every F******k user in
demonstrating to him or her the fantabulous data-transporting capabilities of
his or her present phone by comparison with the old candlestick he or she was
obliged to shift with way back in the Paleolithic days (quasi-literally
days—i.e., actually a mere trio or, at most, quartet of months) of very-late
2016 to very-early 2017 (to say nothing of the lumbering cretaceous-epoch
2015-manufactured phones fumblingly manipulated by his or her mum and dad, or
almost infinitely less than nothing of the proverbial pre-Cambrian computer
that was obliged to put the first human on the moon all by its feeble
transistor-driven stadium-filling lonesome, and thereby demonstrating that
putting a human being on the moon is a <i>much smaller step for man</i> than
the uploading of an a(*)**(*)-picking video to F******k).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the ostensibly socially-oriented <i>raison
d’être</i> of the platform is a ruse, and one that is bound to be undermined
and indeed eroded into untenability and ultimately nonexistence as the
platform’s sustaining advertisements, in incorporating more and more supposedly
sophisticated—and consequently more greedily bandwith-hogging—<i>son et lumière</i>
effects in their own right come to usurp the so-called friend-to-so-called
friend electronic shipments qua demonstrations of telephonic virtual
horsepower.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course (and here I am
partially quoting myself) probably very soon—say, within the next decade—the
famous Moore’s Law will reach its atomic limit and phones will be incapable of
getting any faster and the whole phantasmagoric apparatus, like a de-hived
swarm of bees, will have to find an entirely different and as-yet-unimagined
(at least by the present author) material platform—unless, that is, by then the
so-called quantum computer processor has been both effectually engineered and
manufactured in sufficiently numerous numbers to fit into a mass-marketed
mobile telephone, in which case there is no telling how long hyperoccidentals
will continue to confuse the epiphenomena of technical improvements in the
infrastructure of the circulation of intellectual sewage (wherein, in contrast
to the circulation of biophysical sewage, the material rather than being
purified is allowed to ferment and become ever-more-noxiously feculent) with
economic productivity in an old-school sense, with or without the supplementary
delusive assistance of F******k-like entities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Proprietary entities like U**r (of which there are many besides U**r,
the most famous of these probably being A** *&*) are even more ludicrous
than F******k in adding nothing more than an unwarranted aura of safety and
respectability to practices that have been engaged in throughout the world
since the dawn of human civilization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The most obvious, because the most widely geographically evident,
precedent for U**r is of course hitch-hiking, but there are certainly others
that even more closely hew to its core mission of providing more affordable
alternatives to taxis in urban centers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I can attest, for example, that here in Baltimore it was—or rather,
probably, has been (for although I have not seen evidence of the practice in a
few years, in the light of its refreshingly completely red-tape-free
informality it would greatly surprise me to learn that it has been superseded
by U**r completely)—an extremely common custom to hail rides from unliveried
private vehicles driven by people not licensed by the city to convey
passengers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The practice is or was so
well-established that the local argot even has or had a word to distinguish
such vehicles categorically from official liveried cabs (your <i>Checkers</i>, <i>Diamonds</i>,
<i>Red Balls</i>, and so forth)—viz. a <i>hack</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the term is neither autochthonous
nor judiciously applied—historically and geographically speaking, throughout
the Anglosphere <i>hack</i>, being derived from <i>Hackney</i> as in <i>Hackney</i>
cab or carriage, is merely a slightly downmarket term for a cab or taxi, but
here in Baltimore, where a taxi or cab by any other name apparently does not
count as such, it, <i>hack</i>, does serviceable enough yeoman service in
setting apart the carruchial goats from the carruchial sheep (or
vice-versa).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is or was even a
semiotic protocol for hailing a hack, or, more precisely, for signaling that
one is interested <i>exclusively</i> in the services of a hack, that unliveried
vehicles alone should heed the summons and that all liveried vehicles should
seek their fares elsewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
protocol consists or consisted in pointing one’s arm-cum-hand-cum-extended
index finger not at a forty-five or even fifty-degree angle from one’s
shoulder, as if drawing an actual or imaginary companion’s attention to a
notable bird in some treetop across the street, as one does when hailing a cab,
but rather in pointing it directly at the horizon and then repeatedly jerking
the index finger nervously and indeed almost spastically towards the pavement
(in either a British or an American sense, depending on how close to the curb
[or kerb] one is standing), as if drawing some presumably imaginary
dog-walker’s attention to a particularly voluminous <i>deposit</i> that he or
she has had the confounded effrontery not to scoop up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No fancy-schman(t)zy <i>apps</i> were or are
involved, and yet at least in my presence the gesture has very seldom failed of
meeting its mark, of smoothly drawing the passenger-side back door of an
unmarked mid-’70s-to-early ’80s Impala, Bonneville, Cutlass, autc. level with
the hailer’s legs within a matter of a very few minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the light of such a potent combination of
simplicity and efficacy one at first blush wonders how U**r ever came to
flourish in this town, or why one began to notice a diminution of the presence
of taxis on its streets only after U**r’s local advent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then on second blush one recalls why one
oneself has not so far sought out the services of a hack—viz., that one does
not trust some presumably louche character driving an undeniably louche vehicle
like a mid-’70s to early ’80s Impala, Bonneville, Cutlass, autc. to transport
one to one’s intended destination in one unmolested piece and without having
shaken one down for one’s every last penny on earth plus a cool grand or so in
IOUs secured with the kneecaps of one’s next of kin beforehand—and the
recent-to-current local prosperity of U**r at the expense of the officially
licensed taxis becomes an eye-burstingly self-evident foregone conclusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For after all, the demographic profile of the
typical U**r driver is—or at least until very recently was—that of a decidedly
unlouche and indeed superlatively <i>nice</i> person—a college student,
middle-bourgeois mater- or paterfamilias, or wholesomely bohemian artist
looking to pick up a bit of extra cash in between classes, school runs, or
gallery viewings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a <i>nice</i>
person, so the assumption must run among habitual U**r users, would never
charge a passenger a penny more than the rate exacted by the meters of officially
licensed cabs, let alone do anything untoward to his or her person–or at least
so it must have run until the louche mobility got wind of U**r as a lucrative
base on wheels for their louche activities, as they seem to have done round
about four years ago, to judge by the “List of U**r Horror Stories” that
appeared at the <i>Daily Beast</i> on November 19, 2014.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(For the record: in this matter the present
writer is in virtually no position to furnish any anecdotage drawn from his
personal experience, as he does not own a mobile telephone and therefore cannot
use U**r, although he feels obliged to disclose that he has <i>exactly</i>
once, in October 2015, taken an U**r-sponsored ride as a fellow-passenger of
its securer, that the securer gave no sign of regarding the fare as being
unfair, and that neither the securer nor the present writer was physically,
emotionally, or spiritually assaulted by the driver, who seemed to be a very
nice sort of chap.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course one
assumes that there is an equally voluminous list of horror stories associated
with A** *&*-lodgings and all the other interweb app-enabled and branded
forms of self-whoring that have emerged in the past butcher’s half-decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And how could it be otherwise, given that not
even the least opprobrious of these despicable practices is materially
distinguishable from some imposture that every decent, would be-self-respecting
now-living hyperoccidental over the age of, say, 25, was sternly adjured to run
like heck from by his aut al. mother or wet-nurse from his aut al. or her
earliest infancy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet such exercises
in wanton chicanery are (at least so the present writer hears tell) now held up
as literal textbook examples of good old-fashioned Yankee gumption-cum-know
how-cum entrepreneurship by every schoolmaster or schoolmistress in the
hyperoccidental congeries of lands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
I have not even begun to lay into these meretricious practices from the
point-of-view of the hapless chump of a c*m-d***pster (or, in rightpondial
parlance, c*m-<i>sk*p</i>) who is stupid or desperate enough to engage in
them—from the point of view of Joe or Jill College Student, Middle-Bourgeois
Mater- or Paterfamilias, Wholesomely Bohemian Artist, or (since at least 2014)
Louche Grifter-aut/cum-Psychopath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Imagine, if you will, my decidedly undear reader, what it must be like,
after having put in one’s eight-and-a-half hours in the quite conceivably
literal salt mines, to don a black vinyl-visor’d yellow hat and listen with
patience to a seemingly interminable succession of whinge-fests while dodging a
seemingly endless succession of errant dump-trucks, so-called smart cars, and
fire engines; or a tailcoat and black tie and be sent scurrying back into one’s
own kitchen a hundred times over the course of an evening-cum-night-cum-early
morning in the futile aim of getting a morsel of steak or salmon the
spectroscopically undetectable shade of pink demanded by the ugly American’s
ugly American to whom you have granted the privilege of calling your house his
or her home for as long as he or she is willing to pay a penny more per night
than the rate exacted by the nearest Motel 6.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Short of round-the-clock utter prostration by an excruciatingly painful
illness, I can conceive of no mode of existence on offer in the present world
that more closely approximates the fate of some damned soul in the Hell of the
Dantean or Edwardsian type.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor can I
conceive of a mode of breadwinning more degrading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And last and certainly not least and indeed
probably most in this setting, this mode of existence, far from <i>producing</i>
anything in a pre-Rust Belt sense, is not even generating new services; rather,
as implied in earlier assertion herein, it is merely reapportioning previously
delivered services among a new aggregation of servants (and let there be no
outraged nose-crinkling at my dubbing Bob or Suzy U**r-Driver<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or Air *&*-host(ess) a <i>servant</i>,
for what other word in our language more charitable than <i>slave</i> is there
for a person who performs a service in person at the grotty, smelly, bedpan-emptying
level?).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet this so-called gig
economy—along with the pseudo-or downright anti-social media that I have
already shown up for the glorified battery tester-cum-ad rag that they
collectively constitute–is revered by hyperoccidental received opinion as the
pinnacle of American political-economic achievement, and is purportedly more
revolutionary than steam power, electric power, cinema, radio, television,
nuclear power, train travel, car travel, air travel, and space travel combined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, the sheer lunacy and insolence of the
whole notion is enough to make Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, Philo Farnsworth,
the Wright Brothers, and all the other classic great American inventors spin in
their aggregated graves with a combined kinetic force potent enough to displace
solar, wind, etc. as the next great source of energy (i.e., the first such next
great source actually bidding fair to imperil a traditional energy
source-driven economy like Russia’s).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But what hope have we Americans of extricating ourselves from our
delusive infatuation with our own wanton fallowness of invention when the
remainder of the hyperoccident unremittingly deluges us with encouragement of
our fatuity by praising to the skies (and into the so-called cloud) the
nonexistent wonders of F******k, T****r, U**r, etc.?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When is this remainder of the
hyperoccident—which after all, in collectively comprising perhaps as many as a
milliard-and-a-half souls (if one includes in that remainder not only the other
traditionally English-speaking countries and the EU but also the remainder of
the Commonwealth and all the former French colonies), demographically dwarfs
our mere third of a milliard—going to realize that these proprietary
will-o-the-wisps are materially indistinguishable from all the blustery and
intellectually toxic persiflage it (or they) rightly contemn(s) in the United
States?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The locus
classicus-cum-horribilis of this attitude of abject Yankophilia—in my
eyes-cum-mouth it indeed counts as the other or crowning slice of bread in the
gargantuan shit sandwich whose first or foundational slice is our wonkess’s
denunciation of Russia as a non-producer of things that other countries want to
buy—is a comment made by some Labour MP whose name escapes me (as it obviously
has every right to do given that I am not a member of his constituency in Bury
St. Cumbert, Bilgewater on Ouze, autc.) on BBC Radio 4’s <i>Any Questions</i>
within a few weeks of the inauguration of the 45<sup>th</sup> American
president.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“How can it be,” the
presumptive front bencher-cum-non shadow cabinet member sententiously queried,
as if having just alighted on the most piquantly provocative paradox since
Bertrand Russell’s one about the barber, “that the country that has produced
Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg has also produced Donald Trump?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To my seemingly antediluvian ears this
question had—and in my seemingly antediluvian mind’s ears now has—all the
piquantly provocative paradoxicality of such questions as “How can it be that
the country that has engendered the invention of the whoopee cushion and fake
dog poo has also engendered the invention of farting powder?” or “How can it be
that the country that countenances the publication of <i>Hustler</i> and <i>Jugs</i>
also countenances the publication of <i>Club International</i>?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, heretical as this may sound
to the at least comparatively postdevluvian mind’s ears of most if not all of
the hereunto most sympathetic segment of my readership--each constituent of
which has presumably vouchsafed my imprecations against F*****k etc. a
sympathetic <i>right-on</i>, <i>jude! </i>but also has presumably regarded the
cofounder of A***e as a secular saint since 1984 or the year of his or her
earliest memory, whichever is more recent, and now regards Mr. Trump as a, or
rather, <i>the</i> Antichrist (for there can after all be but one of him)—I
regard Messrs. Jobs and Zuckerberg essentially as woodcocks of the same
gormless and unsightly feather as Mr. Trump, united as they are with him in
being dedicated peddlers of meretricious trash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For <i>am Arsch</i> the entire umpteen-trillion-dollar produce of the A***e
empire is as contingent, superficial, and adventitious in its relation to what
if any <i>Geist</i>-furthering work computers actually accomplish as Mr.
Trump’s network of cheesy casinos and hotels and blowhard table-thumping antics
on <i>The Apprentice</i> are in their relation to whatever <i>Geist</i>-furthering
work is actually accomplished by so-called entrepreneurs and captains of
industry (or indeed even commerce or finance [for I have no inclination
whatsoever to engage in the fatuous and fractious old practice of lambasting
the supposed superfluity of the so-called middle man of business {cf. Samuel
Johnson’s spirited apologia for the <i>tacksman</i> in his <i>Journey to the
Western Isles</i>}]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, it is
awfully nice to be able to see one’s own words (or at any rate the words one
has been impelled, by whatever efficient or final cause, to commit to paper,
whether actual or virtual) immediately rendered in graceful serif characters
(not that I myself am well-heeled enough to be typing the present essay on an
A***e machine, but I concede that in the absence of Mr. Jobs’s obsession with
such cosmetic effects they probably would not now be achievable via cheaper
reckoners) without the dilatory and expensive intervention of a printing shop
(which intervention, it must be noted, did keep a number of pairs of hands
besides the writer’s gainfully employed for at least a tiny fraction of an
hour), but in point of the bottom-line mechanical essentials of the writer’s
c**ft, in point sheer speed and ease of typage and untypage (i.e., the
correction of errors), a green or amber-screened ca. 1983 IBM PC would work
every bit as well as a top-of-the-line 2018 M******sh<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(or, rather,
I-Whatever-the-Name-of-an-A***e-Made-Desktop-or-Laptop-Computer Is Nowadays
[supposing A***e still makes—or, rather, <i>causes to be made</i>—anything so
abjectly unhip {yet utterly indispensable to anyone wishing to compose anything
longer than a t**t or T***t} as an ordinary laptop or desktop computer]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even in its prize bailiwick, the
bailiwick of aesthetics, A***e falls abysmally short of the standards of any
aesthete who does not crassly reduce aesthetics to the immediate palpation of
the senses, to a combination of smooth contours, soothing colors, <i>rich
Corinthian leather</i>, and the like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One could site examples of this shortcoming on the aesthetic front
dating back to the early years of the A***e II, but for textual economy’s sake
([both DGR-like interjection charging the present writer with indifference to
and indeed outright contempt for textual economy and author’s spirited defense
against the charge omitted for that selfsame TE’s sake]), I shall stick to an
illustration taken from the present A***e-verse, viz. the ineluctable I-T***s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My principal objections to I-T***s are not
directed at the <i>look</i> or <i>feel</i> of the thing, to its aesthetic
shortcomings in the vulgar sybaritic sense (though, to be sure, I am no fan of
the virtual brushed stainless steel that frames all of I-T***s’ windows at
least by default) but rather to what one might term its ideal aesthetic
habitus, i.e., the sort of musical outlook and collection of listening
preferences that it seems to assume is shared by all its users.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the world’s default recorded music-playing
platform, I-T***s is used by music-listeners of every conceivable age and
taste-orientation—I shall eschew the
at-such-moments-as-the-present-one-obligatory cascading <i>from…to</i>
catalogue because filling it out to its requisite amplitude would perforce
exact the naming of a number of pseudo-schools-cum-genres (e.g., <i>emo</i>, <i>grime</i>,
and <i>tam-tam and treble</i>) that by all rights should be reduced to the
single rhetorically deflationary yet utterly just appellation of <i>pop</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, as the ideal reader of this b**g will
already know, the present writer has hardly any interest whatsoever in pop
music and is almost exclusively interested in serious or real music; i.e., the
music vulgarly known as <i>classical</i>, but it is not the mere bigotry (if
extremism in defense of merit can ever rightly be called bigotry) of a
classical music buff that actuates my principal objection to I-T***s’ ideal
aesthetic habitus; it is actuated, rather, by my bipartite awareness as an
Anglophone and a person of the world in the broadest and least snooty of
senses—the sense in which every compos-mentis present-day human over the age of
10 should be a person of the world regardless of his or her so-called
socioeconomic background—that a <i>song</i> is a musical composition that
involves the human voice [chowder-headed DGR-ish Mendelssohn-centered demurral
and sagacious authorial retort thereunto omitted <i>ob multissimas causas</i>]
and that not every single unit of music ever committed to some aurally echoic
medium is an instance of such a composition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, a great many, and perhaps even the majority, of such
recorded non-songs—all those overtures, symphonies, concertos, etc.—hail from
the so-called classical repertoire, but a great many other musical corpora are
dominated by them—jazz, for instance, and bluegrass, not to mention hearty chunks
of the recorded output of most extra-Occidental musical traditions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pre-nebular epoch of hi-fidelity
recording—i.e., the period stretching from the advent of the LP in 1948 to the
beginning of the out-bowing of the CD in ca. 2002 (I refuse to aver that the CD
was <i>superseded</i> by the various MPs inasmuch as the sound quality
available on the highest-end CDs has always outpaced that of the average
I-T***s download by a considerable stretch)—enjoyed the currency of a catch-all
noun denoting any unit of music distinguished on the platter in question’s
label by a number followed by a title or some other sort of name and separated
from both its predecessor and successor on the platter in question by a
decorous interval. This noun was <i>track</i>, and no listener, were he or she
the lowest-browed teeny-bopper or the highest-browed classical music buff,
seemed to have any complaint with the denotation of such a unit by this
particular noun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, most
teeny-boppers of that baker’s half-century very probably had never heard of any
mode or genre of music that did not center on the human voice, but their
ignorance on this point had not put them off cuing up <i>tracks</i> rather than
<i>songs</i> on their Panasonic phonographs or Sony Discmen any more than had
the presumably universal absence of a likeness of Fabian, Debbie Gibson, or
Britney Spears on the turntables or casings thereof.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such having been the case, it came as not
only an unwelcome change but also a genuinely surprising one when the present
writer, upon using I-T***s for the very first time, in 2003 or 2004, discovered
that every single sound-unit in his musical library, which then as now
consisted overwhelmingly of purely instrumental works, was now ineffaceably
termed a <i>song</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he has had to
lump the misnomination and submit to cuing up nothing but <i>songs</i> on his
laptop and I-P*d, all because back in 2001 or 2002, the shot-calling louts at
A***e HQ, presumably up to and including Mr. Jobs himself, either were
teeny-boppers of larger growth themselves, or assumed that everybody but
themselves was a teeny-bopper, or (worst and yet most probably of all) assumed
that everybody either was a teeny-bopper or wanted to think of himself or
herself as one and was therefore mortally mortified at the notion of being
interested in non-vocal music of any kind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One has of course been hearing philippics against our so-called
culture’s <i>worship of youth </i>for decades, and while the seemingly
unchallengeable prevalence of such youth-worship is undeniable, the polemicists
have all too often gone for the sitting-duck of a meta-target of youthful
physical beauty and consequently left themselves all too vulnerable to the
charge that their resentment is actuated by mere envy actuated in turn by pure
vanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Why can’t we see <i>older</i>
models in our fashion and porn magazines, older <i>anchorpeople</i> on our
evening news programmes, older CGI enhanced cat-suited <i>actors</i> in our
summer comic book superhero blockbuster movies?” these de facto pruned-faced,
pabulum-sucking Zimmer frame-pushers incessantly whinge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer, by contrast, despite or
perhaps because he was not even remotely photogenic even in his youth, but most
likely because he consumes neither the mags nor the movies nor the shows in
question, flatters himself that he is happy to cede every pixel of the
so-called media’s photographic fetishism of young flesh as youth’s
quasi-sempiternal birthright; and in his resentment of I-T***s’ fetishism of
the teeny-bopper aesthetic habitus he flatters himself that he is getting to
the core or gist of the noxiousness, the viciousness, the perniciousness, of
pandemic youth-worship, inasmuch as this resentment is at least in unsmall part
disinterested, or perhaps rather, and even more commendably, <i>interested,</i>
on behalf of young people themselves qua at-minimum-conceivably autonomous
subjects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would like to think that
even Chet and Caitlin Teeny-Bopper are at least marginally aware of and not
completely contemptuous of non-vocal music and would appreciate the semantic
precision of a <i>playlist</i> incorporating both songs and non-songs under the
auspices of a single, vocally neutral designation, be it <i>track</i>, <i>chunk</i>,
<i>clod</i>, or whatever non <i>song</i>-synonym the louts that be at A***e
will suffer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would like to think,
moreover, that even if Chet and Caitlin Teeny-Bopper are either not even
marginally aware of non-vocal music, or if aware of it completely contemptuous
of it, they are appreciative of the aesthetic integrity of units of music
transcending the confines of a single track (or, rather, <i>song</i>), to think
that they at least occasionally enjoy listening to an assorted succession of <i>albums</i>
by their favorite butcher’s half-gross of flash-in-the-pan guitar-shredding
ensembles or boy bands, and accordingly at least occasionally bristle at having
to hear the first <i>song</i> on one of these albums followed not by the second
song thereon but rather by, say, the ninth song on an album by a completely
different flash-in-the-pan guitar-shredding ensemble or boy band.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alas, I T***s affords them no means of
speedily gratifying their fastidiousness on this score in that it does not
allow the user to treat albums (let alone such generally sub-album-length yet
multi-<i>song</i> entities as symphonies, sonatas, and concertos) as integral
unpartitionable units either in a playlist or in a so-called shuffle mix.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, it is easy enough—at least when
the pathetic s*ds who update I-T***s’s database gratis have done their
perversely voluntary sixteen-ton job of slave labor properly—to listen to one
Fabian or Felicity Twinkle or Testicular Atrophy album after another by simply
sorting one’s library by album-title; but in order to listen to an entire Fabian
album followed by an entire Felicity Twinkle album and an entire Testicular
Atrophy Album, one must laboriously assemble a playlist including only the
songs from the desired albums; and the possibility of listening to a succession
of albums at random—to an entire Felicity Twinkle album followed at hazard by
an entire Walker Brothers album and in turn, and equally at hazard, by an
entire Assück album—is foreclosed by the so-called shuffle function’s automatic
atomization of every album into an agglomeration of infinitely mutually
alienable <i>songs</i>, each of which is<i> </i>juxtaposible in the mix with a <i>song</i>
hailing from any album ascribed to any so-called artist hailing from any sphere
of music-making; such that in listening to one of these I-T***s random mixes one
invariably finds oneself having to sit, stand, dance, or snooze (or indeed any
or all of the above in alternation) one’s way through, say, four minutes of
Frank Sinatra followed by thirty seconds of Assück followed by eighteen minutes
of the Gamelan Son of Lion followed by four minutes of Liszt as played by
Charles Rosen, &c.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is enough to
make any halfway grownup person turn his back on and a deaf ear to the entire
musical cloudscape. (The recent-to-present craze for LPs among young hipsters,
while prevailingly upchalkable to the fatuously misplaced fetishization of what
has after all always been a thoroughly mass-produced and standardized commodity
as though it were as artisanal an object as a </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222;">Fabergé egg or a </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Chippendale
cabinet, probably owes a modicum of its intensity to such sane and laudable
anti-nurseryism.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet it is, after
all, entirely of a piece with the pre-pre-pre-pubescent ideal aesthetic habitus
imagined by the nominally productive sector of the U.S. economy en bloc—with
the utterly unapologetic (and unprotested) elbowing of advertising into places,
both virtual and actual, wherein its absence was formerly taken for granted;
with the incorporation of so-called emojis into communications of the most
impersonal nature from the most po-facedly institutional communicators; with
the posting of so-called spoiler warnings in every context in which the least
imaginative and most ignorant creature on the planet could conceivably derive
the tiniest scintilla of pleasure from not being apprised of the outcome of a
narrative in advance [e.g., in a plot synopsis of one of the four gospels, the
reader will be vouchsafed a spoiler alert before being informed that Jesus is
crucified towards the end].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sheer, naked,
brazen, shameless vacuity, asininity, and infantilism of the supposed vanguard
of the present nominally productive sector of the U.S. economy is an
embarrassment of c**ptacular proportions, an embarrassment that does not so
much make a mockery of the old-fashioned sleeve-uprolling, grindstone-sniffing
model of Yankee brawn-cum-know-how as utterly submerge that model from the view
of living memory in a barrow-mound of excrement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In all truth—or at least the preponderance of
truth that so far bids fair to carry the day—the only material commodity that
the United States produces entirely within its own borders and “that other
countries want to buy” in sufficient quantity to make or break our domestic
prosperity is dollars, and the market for dollars is in turn buoyed largely if
not entirely by the mobility of other countries’ infantile and gormless
belief—or, rather and at-best, against hope-hoping hope—that F*****k, T****r,
A****e, et al. (or etc.) are up to something substantial after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, it may be plausibly argued (and
indeed the argument is so plausible that in all candor and frankness I cannot
pooh-pooh it as yet another blockheaded confabulation of a counterfactual DGR),
for more than a hundred years the United States has been making money H over F
via its propagation of insubstantial illusion via cinema and television to
every C of the G; and in all frankness and candor I concede to the promulgators
of this argument that our domestic illusion-factory may yet have just enough
juice in it to keep us out of the political-economic doldrums long enough to
spare us a complete socio-econo-political train-wreck (brazenly unapologetic
[sic] on the metaphor-mixture); but by that same or some other uncannily
similar token, it must be acknowledged, first, that the United States does not
enjoy some sort of spiritual monopoly-cum-royal charter on illusion-mongering
any more than France enjoys one on the production of fine wine and cheese or
Italy on the curing of spicy sausages, that there have been periods when
Hollywood was threatened by the cinematic produce of other countries [more on
this specifically in connection with the Soviet and Russian cinemas anon], and
that just as we now tend to rate certain French and Dutch vodkas more highly
than the leading Russian ones and are coming to appreciate certain Italian pale
ales and Japanese scotches, so we may soon enough cease thinking of Hollywood
as the dream-factory of first resort [the most obvious harbinger of such a
decentering is of course the increasingly global profile of so-called Bollywood,
but the popularity of so-called Scandi-noir detective television series in
Anglo-Saxia is probably ultimately more telling]; and second, that historically
the United States’s hegemony in cinema has been superstructed on its
film-industry’s successful and in some measure authentic depiction of a
so-called American way of life, a way of life that has always generally been
depicted as superstructed in turn on a combination of the industrial activity
of the old so-called Rust Belt and the agricultural activity of the old
so-called Heartland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure,
audiences around the world have always enjoyed a movie centered on the fortunes
of some young enterprising Madison Avenue copywriter or some would-be movie
starlet waiting tables at some greasy spoon sited within a stone’s throw of the
MGM, Columbia, or Warner Brothers back lot, but the scenario of such a movie
generally had one of its feet firmly planted in some provincial locale where
some humble, unglamorous, unspectacular, and yet emphatically productive
activity was being engaged in with great alacrity and success by the
locals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In today’s Hollywood the norm is
to depict metropolitan American office life as a kind of sanitized,
air-conditioned, business-casual cocoon entirely cut off not only from the
provinces but even from the so-called street life of the city in which the
office in question is purportedly sited (I say “purportedly” because nowadays
even a movie set in Los Angeles itself is apt to be filmed in some incredibly
un-L.A.-like place like Vancouver or Des Moines [and while this lack of
resemblance may in itself account in part for the infrequency of exterior shots
in such a movie, one must for all that consider that the movie’s producers
would never have settled on Vancouver or Des Moines in lieu of L.A. if they had
not regarded the other city as being at bottom <i>the same f***kin’ place</i>
as the City of Angels]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Complementarily, when today’s Hollywood opts to shoot on location,
whether amid the row-houses of Baltimore or the cornfields of Kansas, it
generally seeks out the most economically and spiritually depressed spots and
does everything in its considerable rhetorical power to emphasize the misery,
economic unproductivity, and all-around ultimate futility of the existences of
the people supposedly unfortunate enough to live there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On being presented such a stridently
bifurcated depiction of American life, one in which neither side of the divide
is ever-so-remotely appealing, why would any Indonesian, Kenyan, or Albanian,
let alone a German, Chinaperson, or Liechtensteiner, want to live here, or even
continue to shell out his or her hard-earned (or otherwise acquired) rupiahs,
autc. on such rebarbative kinetic representations of such a demoralizing <i>Volksdasein</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the studios—or, rather, perhaps, the
multi-myriad so-called independent production teams that have nominally
replaced them—relentlessly keep churning out such unpalatable castor
oil-saturated pap under the Sundance and Oscar-blessed label of <i>biting
social commentary</i>, and why should they do otherwise when their so-called
target audience is not the mass of starry-eyed overseas cinema-gourmandizing
youngsters of yore, but rather the phony Stateside middle class of
pseudo-accredited mock-functionaries (i.e., the recipients of the academic
equivalent of vanity publishing deals who constitute the
at-minimum-adequately-whelming majority of so-called college graduates in this
country) and gig-economy workers whose genitals become engorged at the sight of
all those dreary gray so-called open-plan offices staffed with dreary hordes of
open-collared and blue-jeaned twentysomethings, because they mistake them for
the smithies and smiths (respectively) of progress, and whose “withers are
unwrung” by the crimes and vices of urban and rural bottom-feeders because
their own quintessentially suburban version of whoredom happens to be pandered
to and pimped by the latest model I-ph*ne.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In point of fact, <i>whoredom </i>is far too kind a word for the <i>modus
laborandi </i>of the gig-worker, inasmuch as a dedicated full-time whore, just
like a dedicated, full-time cabdriver, hotelier, courier aut al., is compelled
merely to engage in a <i>single</i> repertoire of self-debasing gestures,
maneuvers, calculations, etc., that may be repeated, with very minor
variations, from client to client; such that while he or she is technically and
to all outward appearances servicing<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>anywhere from several to hundreds of anuses in the course of a work
week, from a private or spiritual point of view (or taste)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he or she is effectively servicing a <i>single</i>
anus with a predictable repertoire of flavors, textures, and flexures; whereas
the gig-worker—i.e., the part-time cabdriver cum part-time hotelier cum
part-time courier et al.—is effectively in the decidedly unedifying and
unenviable position of an unwilling guest at a sort of anilingual or even
coprophagic all-you-can-eat (or, rather, all you <i>must</i> eat) smorgasbord
featuring dozens of mutually incommensurable anuses, each of which must be
humored according to its own unique and infungible set of desiderata.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, the typical deludely alacritous
gig-worker will contrive to persuade himself or herself that there is something
highly and fundamentally (in two or more ways) redeeming about this oro-proctological
juggling act; he or she may even come to fancy himself or herself a kind of
connoisseur of the various vintages and varietals of anus, to persuade himself
or herself that the pungent alkalinity of the anus of an octogenarian heavy
black coffee drinker is infinitely preferable to the bland saccharineness of
the chocolate starfish of a vigintigenarian sweet-tooth; or perhaps, rather,
that while each of them is excellent in its own way, neither may be savored to
the fullest except when prefaced or succeeded by its ideal gustatory complement—a
sniff and a lick at the poo-chutes of, say, a quadragenarian oenophile and a
quinquagenarian vegetarian, respectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And far be it from the present writer to assert that the cultivation of
such a discriminating coprophagic palate is either impossible or undesirable;
to the contrary, he is much of a mind to conjecture that the United States
already teems in the tens if not hundreds of thousands with coprophagic
connoisseurs and that inasmuch as the ranks of such anilingual gourmets bid
fair to outnumber those of aficionados of craft mead, cupcakes, home-grown
cale, and artisanal shoelaces combined within the next five years, these tens
if not hundreds of thousands are residing on the very acme of the cutting edge
of the biggest and most inexorable tsunami of the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Howbeit, he, the present writer, will and
shall be bold enough ever so humbly to crave from his very-near-future
demographic overlords some infinitesimal modicum of slack in accommodation of
what he cannot but regard as an irremediable organic defect in his organism
occasioned by his having not only grown up and come of age but also ripened and
gone all but entirely to seed in a (or, rather, because there is no pretending
that there is any hope [or, rather, dread] of going back, <i>the</i>) pre-gig
economy; inasmuch as, according to his seemingly irreparably damaged lights
(and nose and tongue) an anus is an anus is an anus, and all anuses look,
smell, and taste uniformly and mutually indistinguishably <i>awful</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not that he, the present writer, is some sort
of po-faced, clothespin-nosed, corncob-rectum’d prissy-boy who fancies that he
is <i>above all that</i>, who fancies that one may go to one’s grave as
blissfully ignorant of the taste of others’ anuses as one (or at least <i>he</i>,
the present writer) has always been of one’s own; to the contrary, ever since
he was a wee bairn knee-high to an Etruscan shrew he has been aware of and has
reflexively acquiesced in the not particularly encouraging notion that every
kind or line of remunerative work universally and ineluctably if contingently
exacts a certain amount of anilingis; and, indeed, at least since he has been
in long slacks (a watershed or milestone that admittedly will mean little or
nothing not only to his juniors but also to most of his contemporaries and
elders), he has been willing enough—albeit not exactly game—to countenance the
downright demoralizing notion that such work no less universally or ineluctably
(albeit no less contingently) consists of nothing <i>but</i> anilingis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the same, in hailing from the pre
gig-economy macro-era he cannot manage to shake himself free of the delusion
that once one has done one’s bit of remunerative labor for the portion of the
day allocated to it—a portion never to exceed eight hours, or, at any rate
(once one has thrown in one’s ever-interruptible lunch) eight-point-five hours,
or rather (once one has also thrown in one’s ever-dilating commute)
ten-point-nine-and-counting hours—one should not be expected to have any
further commerce with anuses (apart from the absolutely unavoidable manual
commerce with one’s own), that from that point onwards until the start of the
next workday one is entitled to regard one’s <i>Lebenswelt</i> as a veritable
anus-free zone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally, he realizes
that such a clear-cut bifurcation of anilingual and non-anilingual phases of
the day is out of the question now, at least for anyone spineless enough (as he
concedes he is) to desire and seek off-the-clock social intercourse with his
fellow-living hominids; that given that an ever-increasing plurality of the
verbiage spewed from the <i>north-anuses</i> of these F-LHs consists of the
unremunerated promotion (a.k.a. <i>up-b*****g</i>) of the gig economy, and even
more offensively, of adjurations to join in the gig economy oneself, to liaise
lingually with this or that anus of especially auspicious purulence, he will at
least have to spend a goodly proportion of his nominally non-working and even
non-work-pertaining hours licking ass, if only by proxy (not that a <i>proxy
ass</i>, in virtue of the term’s inevitable evocation of certain industrially
[albeit regrettably not domestically] produced succedanea, should be confused
with a <i>synthetic</i> ass, i.e., a <i>latex</i> ass, i.e., a <i>pleasant-smelling
</i>ass; for not unlike a <i>proxy server</i> it retains every aroma-particle
of its client’s unendurable rankness).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Naturally, or rather unnaturally if eminently understandably (at least
by any admittedly empirically virtually nonexistent <i>rational nice person</i>),
he would much prefer to spend if not the bulk then at least the third class of
these nominally non-working-cum-non-work pertaining hours sedulously abrading
the derma of his nose with a presumably pedally powered grindstone as his quasi
or pseudo ancestors of a century or so ago did, but as nowadays such
hyper-old-school diligence not only never receives a penny of financial
remuneration or an Etruscan shrew’s Zen handclap of acclaim but is actually
greeted uniformly and universally by contempt and ridicule, he, the present
writer, cannot forbear entertaining fantasies deriving from the only
pre-gig-economy-originating classic American scenario of material
self-actualization that still enjoys a modicum of currency (even if it never
has enjoyed a modicumette of respectability), viz. that of <i>suddenly striking
it rich through some complete windfall—i.e., an event to whose precipitation
neither one’s own labor nor one’s own ingenuity has contributed a jot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>The most prevalent version of this
scenario is of course that of <i>winning the lottery </i>(a designation that
really ought to be expanded to something like <i>winning the jackpot of one of
those really big multi-state lotteries</i>, inasmuch<i> </i>as in a lottery it
is never the lottery itself that is up for winning, and as the average return
on a winning lottery ticket—viz. ca. $10—cannot make anybody rich), but
inasmuch as nice people (rational or otherwise) don’t play the lottery and the
present writer has at least not quite yet resigned himself to being an un-nice
person, he is fain to have recourse to a less popular (albeit still eminently
entertainable) version, viz. that of <i>some poor s*d simply stumbling upon
something incredibly valuable whilst going about his quotidian business—</i>the
version<i> </i>enshrined in the example of Jed Clampett, that <i>poor
mountaineer </i>who whilst <i>shootin’ at some food</i> alighted upon <i>a</i>
massive field of <i>bubblin’ crude—</i>i.e., <i>oil, black gold, </i>or <i>Texas
tea</i>—and consequently became one of the 90210 ZIP-code’s wealthiest
residents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have concluded that
inasmuch as it is utterly impossible for me to participate productively in the
economic life of my country of citizenship and residence, my only hope of
contentment lies in accidentally becoming a fulltime rentier; i.e., a person
living entirely on or off what he already owns; for then, Worthington’s Law
will ensure that no matter how ridiculous, antiquated, or just plain barmy my
fellow-countrypeople regard my outlook and utterances, they will be
obliged—nay, compelled—to hold their peace and treat me with more respect than
they deign to vouchsafe any gig-worker, or indeed gig-tycoon, whose net worth
is a penny less than my own, just as the ultra-snooty banker to the stars
Milburn Drysdale was compelled to pay court round the clock to Jed Clampett
despite the latter’s obdurate adherence to his pigf***erly mountaineerin’ ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And naturally it will not have escaped the
eye of any discerning reader that this unabashedly sedentary rentier’s ethos,
this feudalism for dummy’s dummies (albeit <i>filthy rich</i> dummy’s dummies),
that I am unapologetically espousing, is tantamount to a reduction of
present-day Russia’s political economy to the proportions of a bachelor’s
household; such that at least on the political-economic plane I am obliged, nay
compelled, to confess myself very much a present-day Russian rather than a
present-day American in spirit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-top: 12.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Of course it will also not have escaped the eye
of a <i>certain kind</i> of discerning reader—namely, a discerning reader with
no knowledge of pre-late nineteenth century history (hence empirically speaking
<i>any</i> discerning reader once again) that the portion of my argument
advanced in the preceding section contains or seems to contain what he or she
cannot but regard as a gaping hole.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
gaping hole consists in or of this—that in b**ging up the present-day Russian
political-economic habitus merely as a <i>pis aller</i> and in clinging to
nose-to-the-grindstone-ism as an ideal political-economic habitus, I have
merely set myself up as a kind of contingent, fair-weather Russophile who
would, if he had his druthers, desert to the hyperoccidental side at the drop
of one of his beloved Astrakhan hats, a man who must indeed be regarded as more
fundamentally an Amerophile than a Russophile inasmuch as his ideal economic
habitus has never flourished better than on American soil and has never
flourished at all on Russian permafrost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“That it—the nose-to-the-grindstone habitus—is either moribund or
extinct in the U.S.A. of the present is certainly persuasively arguable” (so
concedes the worthy hole-espier [who is by no means to be confused with a
DGR]), “but this extinction or moribundity, no matter how ineluctable or
irreversible it may be, is certainly no grounds for embracing a quasi-state
capitalist political-economic habitus such as that of present-day Russia, for
however unilikely-ly nose-to-the-grindstone-ism is ever to flourish again,
there is surely no polity on the globe in which it is less unlikely again to
flourish than the U.S.A.—this, of course, because nose-to-the-grindstone-ism is
after all inextricably associated with free-market capitalism—nay, would be
completely unthinkable without free-market capitalism—and capitalism has
famously and notoriously never been freer in its market, or rather, erm,
marketedness, than in the United States.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This hole is not wholly (groan) factitious, inasmuch as I myself am
strongly inclined to suppose that nose-to-the-grindstone-ism really did reach
its acme as a sustainable political-economic habitus here in the United States
in the late nineteenth century when capitalism (to the extent that there is
such a thing) was in its least regulated state, and much as I abhor capitalism
(at least to the extent that it is shameless enough to embrace a belief in its
own numinousness, to be proudly self-conscious of being <i>capitalism</i> with
a merely typographically lowercase C), I am sufficiently hard-bitten as a
student of metaphysics not to pooh-pooh the economic historians’ attribution of
the parentage of nose-to-the-grindstone-ism to free-market capitalism as so
much self-interested plutocratic twaddle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet I am also sufficiently hard-bitten as a student of history in a
certain broad, nebulous, and, above all, backward-looking (a.k.a. <i>retrospective</i>)
sense to pooh-pooh the aforementioned attribution of parentage qua parentage;
for qua such a student I would describe free-market capitalism vis-à-vis
nose-to-the-grindstone-ism rather as a top-notch midwife (or, perhaps, rather
still [for I am after all pooh-poohing here, and midwives and home-birthing are
all the rage nowadays], as a top-notch indisputably male obstetrician of the
old school [and so incessantly swearing, smoking during deliveries, nipping
liberal lashings of hooch in between them etc.]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is to say, and more specifically
quasi-concede, that while the politico-econo-c****ral conditions that prevailed
in the United States in the late nineteenth century were perhaps more favorable
or conducive to the flourishing of nose-to-the-grindstone-ism than the
prevailing politico-econo-c****ral conditions in the U.S. or any other country
in any earlier or succeeding mini-epoch, it is utterly wrongheaded to suppose
that nose-to-the-grindstone-ism originated in the U.S. of that mini-epoch as a
consequence of that polity-cum-mini epoch’s unprecedentedly free free-market
capitalism, or even that nose-to-the-grindstone-ism sprang from the loins of some
less full(y) fledged version of free-market capitalism (e.g., and effectively
i.e., that of James Watt and co.’s late eighteenth-century Britain) and
subsequently grew to maturity and efflorescence in lock-step with the
ever-improving fortunes of its progenitor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For in the first place there is more than one bullet-vector along which
to cross-section a cat, and the bullet-vector principally traversing the organs
appertaining to free-market capitalism in the cat that is the United States in
the late nineteenth century is not necessarily the one that takes in the
largest proportion of the animal’s total length or mass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To my mind, a much more capacious vector for
such a cross-section of that animal has been supplied to us by the
lawyer-turned-sociologist David Riesman, who in a book published in 1950—in
other words, at the very height of old-school (albeit by then highly
State-regulated) industrial capitalism, and just before the advent of the Rust
Belt—succinctly if somewhat clunkily (because ungrammatically) termed the
signal characteristic of the late nineteenth century U.S.’s exponents of
nose-to-the-grindstone-ism <i>inner-direction</i>, a tendency to be governed by
one’s own inner impulses rather than by external or outer impulses—whence his
term for the antithesis of inner direction--“<i>Outer</i> direction?—no, <i>other</i>
<i>direction</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And by inner impulses
Riesman most certainly did not mean impulses necessarily <i>originating</i>
from within the individual; to the contrary, he believed that these impulses
were generally derived from the individual’s formative experiences and most
often specifically from principles inculcated in the very young individual by
his or her parents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The inner-directed
individual (so Riesman) was directed from within only inasmuch as he or she did
not adjust his or her aims, attitudes, and conduct to bring them into line with
the aims and conduct of his or her immediate neighbors and contemporaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short (so Riesman, <i>mutatis verbis
mutandis</i>), in all aspects of his or her orientation to the world, the
inner-directed individual was more or less the antithesis of a dedicated
follower of fashion or trend-humper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While a plurality or perhaps even a preponderance of Riesman’s cases in
illustration of inner-direction hailed from the U.S. in the late nineteenth
century, he emphatically did not regard the late nineteenth-century
laissez-faire capitalist U.S. as the birthplace-cum-birth mini epoch of
inner-direction; indeed, he traced ID as far back and away as to
sixteenth-century central Europe, to a time-cum-place in which all polities and
political economies were organized along decidedly feudal or pre-capitalist
lines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now of course the early sixteenth
century was the mini-epoch that witnessed the beginning of the Protestant
Reformation, and of course there is an unbudgeable bit of orthodox sociology
that maintains that the triumph of capitalism was an inexorable consequence of
the Protestant Reformation’s introduction of monastic ascetisicm and
routinization into the secular world, that Martin Luther was essentially the
David to Hank Ford’s J. Christ, and to the extent that capitalism is defined by
the habitus of those involved in its productive side qua producers, this bit of
orthodox sociology is more or less spot on as far as I am (and probably also
David Riesman was [for I am afraid the worthy gentleman has not been with us
for some time]) concerned—in other words, I am willing to concede that inner-
direction (a.k.a. nose-the-grindstone-ism) never would have flourished, never
would have become the hegemonic habitus, at any historical moment in any
portion of the Occident (hyper or otherwise), had the political-economic
quasi-system known justly or otherwise as capitalism not afforded
inner-directed types a means of simultaneously <i>focusing like a laser </i>on
some pet project and making ends not only meet but also meat and meet<sub>2</sub>
(i.e., the archaic sense meaning <i>fit, proper, suitable</i>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course chez capitalism the producer
cannot simply produce as much as he likes on his hermetic lonesome in onanistic
bliss without either drowning in his own exudations or running dry; and indeed
it takes not two mere tangoers but three full-fledged thuringoers for any
quasi-functioning capitalist quasi-system to quasi-function—in other words, in
such a quasi-system, not only must there be a congeries of producers but also a
congeries of consumers who absorb the producer’s products and circulators who
move the producers’ products to the consumers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>From the point of view of a champion of inner-direction or nose-to-the-grindstone-ism,
an ideal not-only-macroeconomic-but also macrogeographic arrangement is one in
which producers have no intercourse or commerce with the consumers and
circulators of their products and consume nothing more than they need to
consume in order to keep producing; for from this point of view, the allure of
the product to circulators and consumers is of no intrinsic interest, the
product being either actually or potentially present as something to be
developed and perfected for its own sake, as something worthy of being
developed and perfected in its own right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>From this point of view, an automobile assembly line may be as worthy an
object of a producer’s productive energies as a painting—or indeed even worthier
of them, if the year of production is 1920 and the best one can hope to attain
in the painting is an obsolete and therefore gratuitous photographic
realism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So as far as a lover of
inner-direction is concerned, whether the producer in question is Beethoven or
James Watt, Picasso or Henry Ford, the norm is very much that of the lonely
artist or artisan toiling away in his workshop 24/7, 7/52, and engaging with
the worlds of circulation and consumption only when he becomes so hungry that
he has to write or phone for a delivery of pizza, sandwiches, or Chinese food,
at which point it is a matter of sublime indifference to him whether the pizza
in question hails from Domino’s, Papa John’s, or Pizza Hut; whether the
sandwiches in question hail from Subway, Potbelly, or Quizno’s; whether the
Chinese food in question is Cantonese, Szechuan, or Hunan in manner of
preparation (or indeed, whether the source restaurant uses the traditional
foodie-depreciated big-nose orthography or styles itself a Gwandong, Sichuan,
or Xiang eatery).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He quasi-literally couldn’t
give a fig about any of these considerations-cum-distinctions, because he is
only incidentally a consumer, because he is interested in the pizza,
sandwiches, or Chinese food merely as matter with which to stoke his stomach so
that he can continue producing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Consumers and circulators, on the other hand, very much do care about
such considerations-cum-distinctions between and among products; indeed, it
could be persuasively argued that en bloc they care <i>principally</i> about
such considerations-cum-distinctions, and it is indisputable that en bloc they
care much more about them than about such brute use-values as
stomach-stoking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To refine this analysis
ever so slightly but obligatorily, the circulator is intrinsically and
necessarily interested only in <i>speed</i>, or perhaps, rather, to be more
precise and avoid confusion with the drug in one go, <i>expediency</i>, in
making the products he is circulating move along more quickly and securely and
in larger loads, so that he can reap larger and more frequent revenue-packets
from their circulation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In principle he
is indifferent to whether he is circulating (in the nifty phraseology of a
former U.S. president or his speechwriter) <i>computer chips or potato chips </i>as
long<i> </i>as the chips in question are more widely available and can be
shipped faster now than they used to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In practice he cares a great deal about the specific products (I am
trying ever so desperately hard to stick to the p-word and avoid the <i>c</i>-<i>word</i>,
for reasons that seem exigent even though they are as yet unclear) he is
circulating and is keen to circulate an ever more <i>diverse range</i> of
products and to be constantly introducing at least ostensibly <i>new</i>
products into his product line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
hankers for diversity because come what may, each of his circulating vessels
must contain <i>something</i> before it sets off for its destination, and he
cannot count on bumper crops of potato chips or computer chips each and every
year, and he hankers for novelty because that is what the people at the other
end of the circulation pipeline—namely, the consumers—hanker for above all
else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, common sense of a very
durable and by-no-means-to-be-sneezed at sort will argue that there is one
thing that consumers desire more in a product than novelty, namely <i>utility</i>,
or perhaps more precisely the <i>facilitation of everyday living</i>, and in
asserting that consumers desire novelty above all else I by no means wish to
reject this commonsensical line of thought outright, but rather to modify it in
saying that at least <i>chez</i> a<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>pure
consumer (i.e., somebody whose consumption is never merely a means of improving
his life as a producer, e.g., through the acquisition of the latest model of a
certain kind of machine-tool to be used in his widget-factory) in the
not-so-very-long run utility or the facilitation of everyday living converges
with and is absorbed by novelty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
essay a case in point derived—most appositely, for reasons that will soon
become clear—from the dawn of the so-called industrial revolution: a
householder of the middle station who has just earned (or otherwise acquired)
his first 10 disposable pounds (or 80 [?] or so dollars) and who has an
old-fashioned open fireplace in his sitting-room is patently guided by
considerations of everyday living-facilitation (and thrift [which can of course
in turn be ascribed to a desire for greater comfort in the form of other
comfort-giving commodities to be purchased with the money saved]) in laying out
those 10 pounds autc. on a freestanding stove of the type designed by Dr.
Franklin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But once the stove has been up
and running for, say, a few months, he (the householder, not Dr. Franklin),
provided he has since acquired more disposable funds, will be on the lookout
for other products to improve his creaturely domestic life—perhaps a set of those
fancy new sash windows to replace the creaky and drafty old casement windows
that he has been resentfully contending with since he bought the old
half-timbered pile of wood and plaster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And once this domestic improvement has been effected he will, as hinted
in the immediately above square-bracketed parenthesis, be looking to make other
such improvements—the addition of a kitchen garden, the acquisition of a
sorrel-mare-and dog-cart, the deepening of the well-cum-upgrading of the pump,
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of these improvements doubtless
facilitate the everyday life of our householder and his household, but the
facts, or, any rate, extreme likelihoods, that they are <i>not absolutely
essential to the maintenance</i> of that household and that they are being
effected in an entirely arbitrary sequence means that they should in all
extreme likelihood be viewed principally as expressions of our householder’s
craving for novelty and only secondarily as expressions of his craving for
everyday life-facilitation; and corollarily, that one should in all extreme
likelihood view the producers and circulators enabling these improvements
principally as facilitators rather of novelty than of utility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even after conceding the partial
redeemability of Franklin stoves, sash windows, etc. in the eyes of utility,
one must acknowledge that a great many of the very-early industrial age’s star
products were object-classes whose <i>sole</i> selling point was their novelty,
their never-before-seen-ness, at least in the Occident (yes—hyper or otherwise)—viz.
tulips, proper Chinese (or at least Chinese-looking) china, patterned silk
fabrics, grotesquely shaped lapdogs, and the like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet again, from a booster of inner
direction-cum-nose to the grindstone-ism’s point of view, the utter otiosity of
such products must yield shame of place to their statically hermetic autonomy,
to the lamentable fact that while they undoubtedly drew upon the sedimented
accretions of dozens of generations of dedicated, undoubtedly
grindstone-sniffing Oriental (no—no, not hyper or otherwise, but rather
hyper-exclusively) artisans, they did not exact an iota of ingenuity or
resourcefulness from living producers, that they required nothing more than Bob
and Suzy Tsingtao’s repetition of the same actions that they and their forebears
had been performing for however many umpteen-thousand years our sorry age’s
execrable mandatory Sinophilia exacts from me in tribute to the incomparably
ingenious and virtuous Chinaperson’s all-around superiority to the ridiculously
slow-witted yet irredeemably wicked and unsurpassably pernicious
Westernperson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I submit that the
hermetic autonomy of such products combined with the above-described
assimilation of utility-craving into novelty-craving constitute(s) sufficient
grounds for rejecting L, S, and B and with every impolite gesture in one’s
arsenal (bad pun-cum-pocket Morrissey homage entirely intended) the whole
K&C of the quasi-system known as free-market capitalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The orthodox mythology about this
quasi-system holds that production has always (or at least since the
off-casting of the shackles and blinders of the supposedly
commercially-cum-industrially clueless feudal-agrarian system in ca. 1750)
necessarily existed in an indissoluble and symbiotic bipartite relationship
with consumption, a relationship governed by the authentic and immediately
palpable needs of both parties, vis-à-vis which circulation is a mere mindless
pack-mule or pimp neither able nor authorized to add so much as a literal
two-cents’-worth of its own to the attendant series of transactions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to the logic of this mythology and
via one of its favorite topoi, the consumer is plagued by mice owing to the
inadequacy of the state-of-the-art mousetrap; the producer produces what he
believes to be a better mousetrap than the state-of-the-art one; and the
consumer, after purchasing and testing one of the producer’s mousetraps, either
buys a hundred more of them, in which case the producer strives to produce an
even better mousetrap, or refrains from buying a single further one, in which
case the producer goes back to the so-called drawing board and redesigns his
mousetrap from scratch, thereby coming up with one that is <i>actually</i>
better, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In reality, the consumer
has never much cared about catching mice and has always been content to choke
on mouse droppings (or drown in mice p*ss) provided that he or she is, was, or
were surrounded by the latest knickknacks, gewgaws, gadgets, and doohickeys
from the remotest circulation-accessible locales as he or she is, was, or were
drawing his or her last mouse p*ss or sh*t-saturated breath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, the orthodox mythology affects to
concede, capitalism has always been vulnerable to <i>fads</i> whipped up by the
occasional cocaine-addled loose cannon-cum-rotten apple in the fundamentally
indispensable and irreproachable domains of advertising and marketing—fads such
as the mood ring, the pet rock, jelly shoes, and the tamagotchi—but (so the OM
avers) these fads have always been mere marginal and economically trivial
adscititious excrescences of the system; excrescences that could easily be
lopped off and undoubtedly would be were the off-lopping worth the effort—as it
patently is not, owing to the aforementioned marginality and economic
triviality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is that owing to
the sheer arithmetical minority of the sphere of production vis-à-vis the
libidinously united spheres of circulation and consumption, fad-obsession was
an essential attribute of the quasi-system of capitalism from the very
beginning, when James Watt, Ben Franklin, Eli Whitney et al. were receiving a
pittance of the Occident’s capital by comparison with the tens of millions (of <i>their</i>
pounds and dollars, not ours) pouring into the coffers of the utterly
unproductive, grindstone dust-allergic purveyors of Chinese fans, screens, and
lapdogs; and that the mood ring, pet rock, jelly shoes, and (yes
indeed-stroke-lest we forget) F****k, T****r, and U**r were or are but
apotheoses of the original fad (or trend)-humping anti-genius or <i>Ungeist</i>
of capitalism. “In destroying they –F ****k, T****r, and U**r—fulfill.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, at numerous points along the way
a serendipitous complementariness-cum-synchrony of the enlightenment-craving
impulses of the sphere of production with the novelty-craving impulses of the
spheres of circulation and consumption has eventuated in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>well-nigh-universally permeating
quality-of-life-improving innovations from the Franklin stove to the electric
light bulb to the zip-fastener or zipper to the undisposable safety razor to
the disposable safety razor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to be
further sure, at numerous points along the way producers have benefited from
so-called input or feedback from circulators and consumers, have actually had
their attention drawn thereby to shortcomings in their products and
consequently remedied those shortcomings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the official mythology’s cardinal notions that such so-called input
or feedback constitutes an indispensable non-electric old-school torch to the
backsides of producers—i.e., that in the absence of such so-called I/F Ben
Franklin, Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, et al. would simply have spent all their
days picking at the respective apertures of their respective backsides—and that
it (the so-called I/F) is bound to lead to everyday-life-improving changes in
products; both these notions are, I say, pure poppycock in the non-proprietary
sense (for there are surely few better examples of serendipitous
complementariness-cum-synchrony of production of and with
circulation-cum-consumption than Poppycock in the proprietary sense [although
yet again the perdurance of the older Cracker Jack brand in the caramel and
peanut-impacted teeth of its manifest and well-established inferiority to
Poppycock points up the perversity of the whole gosh-damn quasi-system]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sad or not-so-sad
truth-bearing-complements to these two mythemes are that 1) once a product has
been designed and patented, its effective production—that is to say, its
fabrication as something that actually exists in multiple incarnations (or
inplastations, inlignations, autc.) in the world, its passage from <i>the</i>
single quasi-Platonic Franklin Stove, electric light bulb, autc. to a <i>gazillion</i>
countable Franklin Stoves, electric light bulbs, autc.—shifts from the control
of the producer in a strong sense—from the person who actually thought up the
dag-blasted thing, a person who generally, along with his investors, has the
greatest material and libidinal stake in seeing the dag-blasted thing thrive in
the world—to the control of hundreds, thousands, or even a semi-gazillion
subproducers—the factory managers and workers, warehouse shipping clerks and
dogsbodies, internal accountants and inspectors, et al.—each of whom, as his
individual material and libidinal stake in the prosperity of the product is
almost incalculably small, finds the prospect of that prosperity about as
powerful an epipygial stimulus to diligence as a lighted Etruscan shrew fart;
and consequently cannot be expected to work especially diligently at their
contribution to the product’s production (TBS, they will work <i>fairly</i>
diligently out of the <i>fear</i> of losing their principal source of income,
but much less diligently than they would out of the <i>hope</i> of getting
rich) and that 2) beyond a certain generally appallingly early stage in their
lives in the so-called marketplace and in the quotidian existence of consumers,
not only the infamously proverbial overwhelming majority but even the obscurely
unproverbial virtual entirety of everyday-life improving products tend to become
unamenable to substantial improvement qua everyday life-improvers, such that
consumer input or feedback ceases to eventuate in a better Etruscan shrew-trap or
what have you, or indeed and even more significantly from the producer’s
material-cum-libidinous point of touch and desire, a more popular or more
sellable Etruscan shrew-trap or what have you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet, i.e., despite the virtual absence of any material incentive for
the effective producers of all those well-established everyday-life improving
products and the unimprovability of all those products, these products have got
to continue to be made—for after all, it would surely be unreasonable to expect
Bob and Suzy Shiraz et al. to learn how to shave with straight razors and button
their trouser-flies and so forth just so Bob or Suzy Entrepreneur (I’m thinking
here of genuinely enterprising entrepreneurs, not the fart-producing likes of
Zuckerburg et al.) could go off and work on the grapheme oil-spill catcher or
quantum dildo-quantifier or whatever product bids fair to be the next genuinely
everyday-life improving product.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
yet, of course, Bob and Suzy Shiraz et al. demand novelty in everything they
purchase; nothing appalls or disgusts them more than the notion of buying an
electric light bulb or acoustic toothbrush or disposable safety razor that is
in all respects identical to one they themselves might have purchased three
years ago, let alone one their parents and grandparents might have purchased
thirty years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so the producers
of these well-established everyday-life-improving products are compelled to be
constantly <i>fiddling</i> with them, to be making improvements in them that
are either so trivial as to be unnoticeable by the consumer or that are not
improvements at all but merely cosmetic changes—and all, of course, for
ever-diminishing returns even for those at the top-of-the-chain-cum-reins of
production—all the senior engineers, controlling stockholders, and boardroom
executives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course from the
consumer’s point of view-cum-pocket, the principal effect of all this fiddling
has been a gratuitous proliferation of superficial diversity on the shelves and
racks at the supermarkets and special(i)ty stores.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is no longer merely obliged to choose
among a handful of competing brands of toothpaste, brands almost unabashedly
advertising themselves as no better or worse than any of the others (one was
never really hoodwinked into supposing Aqua Fresh offered anything beyond the
pleasure of seeing three different colors on one’s toothbrush at a time, or
Colgate the bracing austerity of an impenetrable white paste as against the
gaudy translucent blue and red gels offered by Aim and Close-Up), but among
double-handfuls of paste-varieties within brands, each of these varieties
allegedly catering to a specific facet of oral-hygienic care—one of them to the
whitening the teeth, another to the freshening of the breath, another to the
controlling of cavities, and yet another to the off-staving of the build-up of
tartar (in the non-ethnic [q.v., Lord willing]-cum-non-condimental sense).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the light of the monomaniacal terms in
which this departmentalization is couched in or on the tube-encasing boxes, one
cannot help wondering if in using a paste dedicated to one facet, one will be
exposing oneself to substandard care in all the others—wondering if, say, in
order to acquire dazzlingly white teeth one must resign oneself to having a
mouthful of cavities that will ultimately necessitate the extraction of all
thirty-something of those dazzlers, or if in order to avoid cavities one must
resign oneself to being fled from like Godzilla each time one dares to flash an
open-lipped smile (whether the fleeing is principally owing to the sight of
one’s turd-hued teeth or to the stench of one’s sewer-scented breath one
tragically will never know).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there
are other lately hyper-diversified everyday life improving-products about which
one need not wonder along such lines, inasmuch as one’s recent experience has
proved that the purchase of the wrong line of a given brand can have palpable
and even arguably disastrous everyday life-depreciating consequences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am thinking here first—on account of the
intimacy of access to one’s own person vouchsafed to the product in question as
properly used—of my experience with certain disposable razors produced by the
Gillette brand of Proctor und Gamble (yes, I <i>will</i> name proprietary
names, and not at all because I am hoping for a sack of propitiatory free stuff
from the Proctor et Gamble corporation [although, to be sure, I wouldn’t turn
my nose up at a sack of sufficiently upmarket free stuff therefrom]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the old days—meaning, perhaps, as recently
as the middle of the last decade—there were essentially three tiers of Gillette
men’s razor (and no, I’m not the sort of bloke to use a woman’s razor just to
make some sort of statement qua feminist-cum-consumer advocate; although I
don’t doubt that the difference is almost invariably undetectable by a blind
person)—Sensor, pivoting Good News, and non-pivoting Good News (having very
probably not been “present at the” presumably mid-1980s “creation” of the Good
News line even in a weak sense—i.e., as a decidedly post-pubescent regular male
shaver on the lookout for innovations in shaving technology—I am unable to
comment insightfully on the evangelical overtones of the line’s name).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the Sensor—the highest-end of the
three—one got the undeniably genuinely visceral pleasure of an extra-smooth
shave and the undeniably genuine if unvisceral pleasure of holding onto a
single razor-handle week after week and even conceivably year after year
(although these handles, in being made of plastic rather than stainless steel,
did tend to get a bit grotty after a few months) as one’s grandfather had done
(although in my specific case this pleasure was somewhat attenuated by my never
having seen my maternal grandfather shave with anything but an electric shaver
and heard my paternal grandfather talk hyper-explicitly of shaving with
disposable razors); pivoting Good News denied one both these pleasures while
still getting the job done and retaining the Sensor’s pivoting razor-head and
thereby saving one’s elbow a bit of labor, and non-pivoting Good News was
indistinguishable from pivoting Good News apart from the eponymous elbow
labor-saving pivot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a phase of
principled and exorbitantly costly Sensor use in his late teens and early
twenties (i.e., the early-to-middle 1990s), the present writer switched over to
non-pivoting Good News on the grounds that as a member of the have-nots he must
take the rough instead of the smooth as long as the smooth was substantially
more expensive, and that (perhaps owing to his thitherto lifelong non-participation
in team sports) he had never suffered from pitcher’s elbow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for at least a good full decade, the
present writer got on quasi-literally super-famously with the Good News line,
inasmuch as if he had been a paparazzo-mobbed celebrity during this period,
many if not most of the photos then snapped of him would have included within
its borders a Good News razor, whether in active use at the lavatory mirror or
encased with its fellows in its cardboard wrapper on the kitchen counter during
a grocery-unpacking session.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure,
he could have done without feeling every single hair follicle resiling in agony
as each of the unlubricated twin blades passed over it, and he was too jaded a
soul to rationalize away this agony as <i>bracing</i>, but as the whole
tonsorial operation was unfailingly completable in the same
five-to-seven-minutes as had been exacted by the Sensor and left his face as
baby-monkey’s bum-smooth as it had done under the auspices of the more
expensive shaver, he did not even feel entitled, much less obliged, to
complain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then at some point not long
after the dawn of the present decade, he noticed that although the price of the
non-pivoting Good News-razor five-pack had been keeping pace with, if not
overtaking, the rate of inflation, the quality of service delivered by the
non-pivoting Good News razor had sharply—or, perhaps, rather, dully—declined;
for in the first place, the experience of raking the twin-blades across one’s
north-cheeks was not only agonizing but also <i>alarming</i>, in that one could
not help suspecting from its abrasiveness—an abrasiveness less akin to the
older GNR’s sandpaper-chamois rubdown than to a so-called Colombian facial
(wherein, I should explain for the benefit of any unstreetwise [and therefore, <i>was
mir betrifft</i>, DGR-trouncing] readers, one is dragged face-down and at
walking speed along a tarmac surface)—that one was inflicting subcutaneous and
therefore not only scarifying but also potentially gangrene-inducing damage to
one’s puss; and in the second, and more material, place, the twin-blades had
manifestly ceased to be capable of getting the job done, for at the end of the
aforementioned five-to-seven minutes, one’s face was every bit as rough and
prickly, as middle-aged monkey-bum-esque, as it had been before its
up-lathering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sportingly, if one
happened not to have any appointments on one’s calendar that day [for if one
did, one stoically resigned oneself to explaining to one’s appointment-mates
that one was <i>going for the Don Johnson look</i>, and hoping against hope
that none of them would confuse <i>Don Johnson</i> with some smooth-faced
partial namesake {e.g., my beloved Dr. Samuel J.}], one would re-up-lather and
apply the razor for another five-to-seven-minute interval, only to end up as
stubbly as before the previous attempt; then for a third such interval, and
possibly even a fourth (by the end of which one would be beginning to suspect
that one’s beard was actually <i>getting thicker</i> as indeed it probably was,
what with its growth having effectively gone unchecked for a full half-hour)
before resigning oneself to going unshaved for the day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole ordeal was an exact tonsorial
analogue to washing oneself with a bar of that joke-shop soap that despite
being as white as ivory (and Ivory) left everything it touched as black as
pitch (and also as Pitch, if perchance there is an unabashedly black soap of
that proprietary name).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But after the
first of these futile struggles with a single Good News shaver one sportingly
gave Gillette, or, rather, P&G, the benefit of the doubt, surmising that
one had alighted on a dud shaver that had slipped past the inspectors; but then
the next shaver in the pack proved just as inefficacious, and so one sportingly
(albeit teeth-grittingly) extended the radius of the doubt-benefit in the hope
that one had alighted on a dud pack, and picked up another one—but no such
luck—and so one affectedly sportingly surmised, or affected to surmise, that
one had alighted on a bad batch of packs, and picked up a pack at a drugstore
in a foreign ZIP-code, and so on, until at length (in two or more senses) one’s
beard had assumed well-nigh Rasputinian dimensions, at which point one
alacritously, albeit entirely figuratively, threw in the towel (for what with
not having had a proper shave in months, one had no ready-to-hand literal towel
to throw in) and resigned oneself to re-upgrading to Sensor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on returning to one’s shaver emporium of
first resort and raising one’s eyes above the bottom row of the pegboard for
the first time in a donkey’s decade, one was astonished and dismayed to see the
nameword <i>Sensor </i>on none of the Gillette products depending from those
loftier heights, and so one reflexively lowered one’s eyes to their old haunt,
the bottom row, and was even more astonished and dismayed to see the nameword <i>Sensor</i>
printed on a Gillette product that apart from the presence of that nameword and
the absence of the old evangelical namewords was to all appearances <i>exactly</i>
identical to the old Good News five-pack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Was one dreaming?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was one
alternatively in one of those alternate (sic) universes in which all men (save
oneself, of course, at least so far and last one had checked) sported
eye-patches and green <i>membra virilia</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One rubbed one’s eyes and took a discreet peek down under.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Es war kein Traum, und auch kein
Augenklappenundgrüneschwänzeszenario</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so, incorrigible sucker that one was, one gave the stinkin’ Proctor
and Gamble corporation the benefit of the doubt yet again, and simultaneously
gave the world’s <i>first</i> proprietarily named razor—viz. Occam’s, natch—a
two-finger salute, in hoping against hope that this bottom-row Sensor was
indeed a proper old-school Sensor in Good News’s undergarments rather than a
degenerate new-school Good News in Sensor’s overgarments, that P&G had
actually been inscrutably perverse enough to retrofit the Good News
razor-handle with proper, self-lubricating, smooth-shaving Sensor blades rather
than brazenly, straightforwardly a***holish enough to put a pair of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>un-self-lubricating, un-depilative,
Columbia-facial administering Good News blades and a Good News razor-handle in
a wrapper retrofitted to display the nameword <i>Sensor</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And naturally enough, a week or so later one
once again found oneself Rasputin-bearded and standing back at the old
drawing-pegboard and compelled this time to consider each of the higher-pegged
Gillette products as a potential purchase—compelled, in other words, to select
among a finite yet still proverbially dizzying array of Gillette products with
names utterly unknown to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
names were the least obnoxious of the unfamiliarities, for none of these
products was available in packs of more than three units, each of these units
flaunted at least five blades, and each of these blades cost at least a
dollar-and-a half or slightly more than half of what a five-pack of old-school
serviceable Good News shavers had cost one barely a year earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what choice did one have, being a
confirmed abhorrer of beards, a man for whom beardiness was ten times closer to
devilishness than cleanliness to godliness, a man who could never be convinced
by the most esteemed etymologist in history that the orthographic propinquity
of <i>barba</i> and <i>barbarian</i> was an historical accident?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so one resigned oneself to living on
lentils and water thenceforth and purchased a two-pack of one of those ghastly
Mach-something-or-others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally one
was expecting in exchange for such an exorbitant capital outlay a shaver that
simply wiped away one’s beard while one slept and took out the bins/trashcans
afterwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead one got an implement
that was as heavy and unwieldy as a two-handed battle-axe and consequently
exacted a thousand times more arm-labor than the any of the old-school Gillette
shavers, pivoting or unpivoting, had ever done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The quintet of blades <i>seemed</i> to do (barely) about as good and
painless a job as the old-school Good-News pair had, but it was difficult to
judge this quintet dispassionately, given that merely getting the dad-blamed
object in which it or they was or were encased within reach of one’s stubble
occasioned such overwhelming discomfort and fatigue on its own.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Confronted as he was at his emporium of first
resort by this unenviably stark choice between tonsorial deadness-on-arrival
and tonsorial pyrrhic semi-success, the present writer was impelled to venture
to larger emporia, to the sorts of places that had entire aisles devoted to
shaving equipment in general and Andre-the-giant-dwarfing shelf-columns devoted
specifically to Gillette shaving equipment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Finally, after a half-year’s experimentation with sundry shavers,
blades, wordnames, and package-sizes, he arrived at a version of Gilletteism
that proved just barely both tonsorially and financially viable—although to
this day, some three years after his arrival at this half-a(*)**ed tonsorial
solution, this <i>pis se raser</i>, he cannot peg it to a specific wordnamed
Gillette product line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knows that the
product must have the word <i>sensitive</i> displayed on its wrapper, and yet
not every Gillette product labeled <i>sensitive</i> will do, for both some of
the aforementioned battle-axes and new-school Good News reduxes (or <i>reduces</i>)
are thus labeled, and he knows that so far a combination of the <i>sensitive</i>
label with a smattering of light green on the blade-handle itself seems to
betoken something both affordable and usable, and yet he is unable to make the
leap from this seemingly dependable yet irritatingly vague combination of word
and color to the unambiguous and more versatile wordname (versatile in, for
example, being employable in sentences of the form <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sirrah, pray hand me one of those five-packs of Gillette Wordnames </i>[the
reader must bear in mind that many of the present writer’s razor-emporia are
sited in the sorts of neighborhoods in which everything pricier than own-brand
toilet paper is kept behind the counter]) because the wordname seems to be
different each time he has to make a new purchase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the quality of the shave delivered by
these partially light green-handled sensitive shavers, it is, to the best of
his mind’s north-cheek’s recollection, at worst not much worse but certainly
not a jot better than that of the shave he was afforded at a much more
affordable price—viz. 75 cents per shaver as against two dollars per shaver—by
the old-school Good News razor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all
this misery has been inflicted on the present writer qua Bob Everyshaver merely
for the sake of allowing the Proctor and Gamble corporation to keep the most
niggling and tremulous of toeholds in the ultra-low (and ever-ultra-lower)
prestige shaving equipment market.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So at
least the present writer might have concluded in a semi-Whiggish vein had his <i>Dasein</i>
as a consumer (i.e., <i>Konsumentsdasein</i>) been confined to the purchasing
and utilizing of shaving equipment, if all along he had simply been able to
procure every other amenity of quotidian existence by clapping his hands or
wiggling his nose like some practitioner of the black arts in a 1960s
sitcom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But alas, his ineluctable
experience of dozens of other consumer product-lines in recent years has led
him to surmise that there may be even less salubrious, less redeemable motives
at work in this gratuitous diversification in the sphere of production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am thinking here—and consequently, second,
qua palpable and even arguably disastrous everyday life-depreciating consequence-inducing
experience—of my recent history as a user of disposable ballpoint pens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the old days—again, not much more than a
decade ago—I qua disposable ballpoint pen user would more often than not settle
for the bottom-tier product—quasi-i.e., the transparent cum polygonal-shafted
Bic or the opaque cum tapering cylinder-shafted Paper Mate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was not insensible of or to the charms of
the more expensive disposable ballpoints—their easy-grip handles, their
retractable tips, their much smoother rapport with the writing surface, and
perhaps above all else their sturdier construction (many a woeful hour indeed
did I spend picking bits of crushed budget-Bic-cum-Paper Mate shaft from the
interior bottoms of my book-bags)—but in the light of the notorious misplaceability-cum-filichability
of ballpoint pens I did not believe that these pricier models were worth the
extra capital outlay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In those days, I
would buy a ten-pack of the budget pens and leave one or two of out of the ten
lying about wherever I happened to expect to be again soon, such that until the
moment, a year or two after the purchase, when the ink had run out of all five
of the ten that had not run out on me, I always had a serviceable writing
implement ready to hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only
attention-exacting tactical complication of this elegantly simple meta-scribal
strategy was occasioned by the <i>caps</i> of the pens, which, on account of
the afore-implied unretractability, had to be placed back atop the tips at the
end of each writing-session, lest the (ahem) ball should dry out and
consequently be alienated from the ink-reservoir, to which contact could be
reestablished (and then only momentarily) only if one happened to be a smoker
of the sort who always carried a lighter (as I was not, being a smoker of a
sort who generally lit his cigarettes with whatever matchbooks he had been
thoughtful enough to snatch from bar-top fishbowls during nights out [this
because budget disposable lighters were scarcely less readily loseable and
appreciably more expensive than budget disposable pens {incidentally, I cannot
forbear from conjecturing, perhaps to the detriment of the seaworthiness of my
argument, that the fact that the pens and the lighters shared a number-one
manufacturer-cum-purveyor—namely, <i>Bic</i>—bespeaks some kind of deliberately
intracorporationally engineered metacommercial ecosystem wherein and whereby
ballpoint pen-users were compelled to be as dependent on smokers as flowering
plants are on bees (and perhaps even vice-versa, although at the present moment
a budget ballpoint-pen user’s smattering of small talk is striking me as a
rather meager analogue to a hive-cell of honey)}]).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any event (or perhaps, rather, <i>at all
events</i>), imperfect though this meta-scribal strategy was, it was to its
ultimately redeeming credit fairly painlessly routinizable within the <i>Alltag</i>
of a regular ballpoint-pen user of negligible disposable income: though pens
were often lost thanks to the user’s habitual negligence, there was never any
need to whip the “gentle breeze blowing through” the user’s “bank account”
constituted by the repercussions of the ten-pack purchase into a so-called
gail-force wind by buying supplementary pens one at a time (and hence at a
higher per-pen price), because each full-reservoir’d ten pack-pen that supplied
each lost ten-pack pen’s place was always in good writing condition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If pursued or implemented in the present day
by the present writer, whose disposable income is if anything even more
negligible than back in the Golden Age of Disposable Ballpoint Pens [this
despite the fact that he is now both a full-time non-smoker and a virtually
full-time night out-eschewer], such a meta-scribal strategy would
not-especially slowly and most certainly surely end in his bankruptcy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why, almost self-evidently, because most if not all of the constituents
of the budget ten-packs (supposing the budget ten-pack is even still issued)
presumably would not be in good writing condition, or indeed in any sort of
writing condition, long enough to earn their respective keeps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see, duct tape-gagged non-DGR, to a non
gender-specific unit, each and every one of the budget ballpoint pens of the
present features the defect of running dry after only one, or at most two,
writing-sessions, be these writing-sessions ever so un-verbose, pithy, or
laconic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this I mean neither that the
pens’ ink reservoirs are shockingly punier than those of their forebears nor
that the pens have seemingly picked up some condition analogous to hemophilia
but that their ink simply stops flowing from the (ahem) shaft to the (ahem)
ball.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“MMM-mm mm-mm-MMM mm mm-MMM-mm mm
mm mm MMM mm mm.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What’s that,
non-DGR?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll remove the duct-tape just
long enough to allow you to repeat that utterance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Maybe it’s because you’re forgetting to put
their caps back on.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see that I did
well to gag you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Obviously I have not
been forgetting to put the caps of the pens back on because the resetting of
the caps was an indispensable element of the old budget ballpoint strategy and
consequently could not but have become a matter of habit by the time I first
noticed the ludicrously premature up-drying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Goshdammit!” the non-DGR should have registered that I needs must have
exclaimed at that necessarily bewildering and exasperating moment, “Here I am
doing my bit, fulfilling my end of the bargain as it were, by conscientiously
putting the cap back on after every use, and the goshdamn pen is still not
cooperating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What (in) the fabled name
of Frank Finlayson’s f**k gives?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
gave, and still gives to the this day, is, I conjecture, a willful act of
spite, an exercise in targeted sadism, directed by the ballpoint
pen-manufacturers at a certain segment of their customer-base—namely, the
maximum thrift-oriented segment—whom they regarded and still regard with an
explosive mixture of resentment, outrage, and contempt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At some point a few years after the turn of
the millennium the ballpoint pen-manufacturers evidently got so fed up with
declining sales-revenues that they gave up on trying to win over their thrift-oriented
customers and opted rather to punish them with all the subtlety of a
cane-wielding snubbed panhandler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“If,”
the aggrieved manufacturers must have stroppily mused, “these cheapskates won’t
have the common decency to upgrade to one of our mid-market models, we shall
and will do them the condign bad turn of selling them pens that are unusable
almost from the very beginning, pens in which only the bottom .0379% of the ink
reservoir contains standard semi-liquid ink and the remaining 99.9621% is filled
with bone-dry desiccated ink resin.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do
I espy you surmounting the expressive restrictions of the gag via an all-too-
eloquently skeptical eyebrow-arch, non-DGR?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why, I ought to make sure you don’t get a second go at such supercilious
eloquence by shaving <i>both</i> your eyebrows clean off—but I dare not and
shan’t, for every nanometer of blade-keenness in my exorbitantly expensive
unnamable Gillette sensitive shaver must be vouchsafed to the depilation of the
subcilious sectors of my own face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
any case, once you have duly considered the ironclad logic behind my imputation
of such cussed maliciousness to the ballpoint executives, your eyebrows will
doubtless be only too content to mind their respective places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider, if you will, the only conceivable
alternative explanations for the non-functionality of those umpteen-milliard
pens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Consider, first, the possibility
that the manufacturers or their lackey boffins have simply failed to cinch the
formula for ink that retains its liquescence and flows infallibly downwards in
conformity with the law of gravity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Given that they did cinch the formula at least four-fifths of a
half-century century ago as evidenced by all the perfectly functioning budget
ballpoints used by the present writer beginning in the late 1970s, this
explanation can only be entertained as a corollary of the supposition that they
have somehow <i>forgotten</i> the formula in the meantime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such intracorporational oblivion is
undoubtedly possible because it is undoubtedly not unprecedented—the Egyptians’
inability to decipher their own hieroglyphic writing system for those
semi-umpteen centuries between the arrival Alexander and the arrival of
Napoleon is a handily notorious example of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And if the world is allowed to pursue its present course (a.k.a. <i>Weltlauf</i>),
at least a milliard-and-a-half people now living will undoubtedly see examples
aplenty of this phenomenon—perhaps most spectacularly, temporally proximately,
and nevertheless perhaps ultimately felicitously, in the case of the artisanal
(yes, the very same <i>artisanal</i> that is an inalienable metonym of the
granola-slavering postpositional adjectival phrase <i>handed down by word of
mouth from generation to generation</i>) body of knowledge requisite to
maintaining and operating the earth-ball’s two great arsenals of nuclear
weapons—by which I mean that I suspect that owing to the flagrant unsexiness of
nuclear weapons in both the Hyperoccident and the Hypoccident since the
pseudo-end of the Cold War, the global pool of Occidental boffins who know their
way around a nuke has been both aging and dwindling for some years
already.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at least for the nonce, I
believe we may safely trust that the ballpoint-pen industry has not been and
will not be afflicted by such a case of collective proprietary amnesia, for
although the present writer is the last (and perhaps only) person in the world
to disparage any discipline or body of knowledge, however manifestly
uncomplicated and intellectually untaxing, on the grounds that <i>it isn’t</i>
[let alone <i>ain’t</i>] <i>rocket science</i>, he is only fain to conjecture
that rocket science is at least a smidge more complicated and intellectually
taxing than ballpoint-pen science, and that although in the Occident ballpoint
pens have been only slightly more sexy than nuclear weapons of late, the
formula for a functioning budget ballpoint pen is simple and intellectually
untaxing enough to be kept afloat and intact in the respective ballpoint pen
manufacturing companies’ respective corporate memory banks by a fairly small
pool of fairly lazy and fairly stupid boffins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What, then, are we to make of and do with the second conceivable
alternative explanation of the recent-to-present non-functionality of budget
ballpoint pens—viz. <i>that the manufacturers are simply trying to increase
their respective profit margins by cutting costs</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the non-proprietary north-face of it, this
explanation is more plausible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After
all, cutting costs necessitates using cheaper materials, which may very well
seem to necessitate resigning oneself to turning out shoddier products.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But cutting costs even more fundamentally
necessitates not simply throwing away productive materials, and that is exactly
what the ballpoint pen-manufacturers are doing by producing all these milliards
of stillborn pens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the ballpoint
pen-makers were seriously interested in increasing profit margins and cutting
costs, they would plough all the dye and polyethylene goo they are now
squandering on all those stillborn pens into accelerated production of the
at-least-slightly-usable pens that they are now selling as their mid-market
models, thereby spending less on production per mid-market pen and allowing
themselves to lower the price of these models, thereby encouraging their
thrift-oriented customers to buy them repeatedly in bulk, and thereby accruing
more generous profit margins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their
present practice, by contrast, at best encourages their thrift-oriented
customers eventually to upgrade to the mid-market model as cautiously and ad
hockishly as possible–one grossly overpriced one-pack at a time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At worst, yet perhaps most typical, it drives
these customers (inter alia, the present writer) to renounce writing by hand
virtually altogether, even in contexts wherein it is appreciably more
convenient than typing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Here I
incidentally wish to bud-nip any Whiggish impulse to toss the manufacturers a
non-proprietary lifesaver in the form of the ascription of their declining
revenues to the rise of the various keyboard-equipped phones, tablets, and pads
that have emerged in the past decade-and-a-half by pointing out to the would-be
tosser that writing by hand was technologically eclipsed as anciently as
sevenscore and nine years ago with the invention of the typewriter, and that
decades before the advent of word-processing software, the world was already
teeming with people who preferred to type even their grocery lists and most
intimate <i>billets doux</i>.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is
worse, the latter-day efflorescence of producer-evinced sadism would appear not
to be confined to the bottom end of the consumer-product scale and indeed to be
no less pronounced towards the opposite end thereof, chez upmarket products
with ticket-prices upwards of several-thousand dollars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly the present writer, being stinking
poor, cannot boast of having a very extensive acquaintance with such products,
and indeed qua consumer thereof in the strong sense, the sense of being a sole
user if not outright sole proprietor thereof, he is a virtual ignoramus, but
qua consumer in a weaker sense, the sense of being a non-sole user of such
products as are assigned to a community of users, he flatters himself he knows
a hawk from a handsaw—not that any of the products in question have been hawks
or handsaws (prime specimens of either of which can doubtless both fetch prices
upwards of several thousand dollars and be employed in collective settings
[e.g.., bird of prey-managing master classes and carpentry surgeries]), and
indeed the most saliently vexing of them is about as un hawk like-cum-un
handsaw like an object as one can imagine, viz. the <i>post-millennial digital
photocopying machine</i>, specifically the one that I have had to contend with
business-day in and business- day out at my place of work since about the dawn
of the present decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course
photocopying machines have been almost a byword for unreliability since, well,
presumably long before the early 1990s David Letterman joke about the one with
the built-in (or probably rather, built-<i>on</i>) <i>Out of Order</i> sign,
and the reader, gagged non-DG or otherwise, doubtless being no less conversant
with this mytheme than the present writer, doubtless presumes that I am on the
point of simply slathering a fundamentally gratuitous and redundant, albeit
much more up-market, bilious descriptive layer onto my previous bilious
description of the non-workings of the post-millennial budget ballpoint pen
(which is, after all, at least in terms of the two engines’ shared purported
function—viz. the propagation of the ocularly absorbed word—a sort of humble
cousin of the photocopy machine, much as the tiniest marmoset is a humble
cousin of the most hulking gorilla [vis-à-vis their not only purported but
demonstrated shared functions of poo-flinging, public onanising, etc., natch]),
that I am about to launch into a crapulous philippic against stillborn toner cartridges,
toner-delivery mechanisms, paper-shuttling mechanisms, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But few if any presumptions could be wider of
the mark of their presumptees than this one, for the vice of the
state-of-the-art (or perhaps rather, in the light of what we or you lot will
presently see, <i>hyper-art</i>) photocopier that I am about to decry is in
fact the hyperantithesis of the deliberate shoddiness of construction that I
have decried in the state-of-the art (or, certainly rather, in the light of
which we or yinz have already seen, <i>anti-art</i>) budget ballpoint,
ineluctably inalienable as it seems to be from manufacturing specifications
that are altogether <i>too</i> refined, self-preservative, and self-preening
for the user’s comfort and sanity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
may term this vice <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pygmalionism</i>,
inasmuch as it seems to arise from producers’ excessive enamorment with their
own products. This vice is a kind of a kind of cyborgically embodied pedantic
valetudinarianism manifested in the fact that the indisputably well-constructed
machine (for after all, it has been up and running—or, rather, mostly
sulking—for about seven years) refuses to do a dad-blamed thing until the
would-be user has assured it that each and every one of its real or factitious
desiderata, however irrelevant to the user-desired result it may be, has been
supplied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, if you put a ream of
plain white 8-1/2”-by-11” (Brits: read <i>~A5</i>) paper into one of its
half-dozen trays, it will insist on your “confirming” that this is what you
have just done before it slides the tray into commission with all the alacrity
of a sedated slug—this as if it had been physically possible for you to insert
an 800-1/2”-by-1,100”-sized ream, or as if you might have just tried to slip in
an 8-1/2”-by 11” unsliced tofu loaf, or as if, on the offest of off chances you
had put in a ream of black paper, the copier, despite being unequipped with a
toner cartridge filled with pulverized White-Out (Brits: read <i>Tipp-Ex</i>),
could have done sweet Fanny Adams towards making the copies it produced a jot
more readable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you place any document
a nanometer smaller than an 8-1/2”-by-11” sheet of paper on its flatbed
scanner, it will whinge that it doesn’t “recognize the size of the document”;
whereupon you will have to trick it by placing an 8-1/2”-by-11” paper-sheet
behind the document.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you are enough
of an egomaniac to leave it without something to do for more than half a
minute, it petulantly queries you whether <i>you</i> wish “to continue working
or not” and perversely—at least for a purportedly insentient machine—insists on
your replying “Yes” before being obliging enough to do a further microjoule of
work <i>itself</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if you are
unfortunate enough to have need of its services when it is in so-called energy
saver mode—why, then, you had best have brought along a book of Old Testament-al
dimensions, for you will have geological eons of time on your hands as you wait
for the dad-blamed thing to rouse itself from its pedantic slumbers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But don’t you dare get at all deeply absorbed
in your reading of that book, lest you miss the crucial ninety-second interval
between the machine’s revival and its descent back into somnolence in protest
of what it will perceive as your flagrant lack of interest in <i>pushing its
buttons</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In sadistic substandard
construction and sadistic superstandard function, as exemplified by the
bottom-of-the line ballpoint pen and the top-of-the-line digital photocopier,
respectively, the critique of capitalism’s most celebrated topos—that of the
human being made utterly subservient to the machine ostensibly conceived and
built to serve him, the topos compellingly literalized in early cinema by Fritz
Lang’s <i>Metropolis</i> [iconic image: young Frederson crucified to the hands
of the clock-face-like doohickey of unexplained purpose] and Charles Chaplin’s <i>Modern
Times</i> [iconic image: Charlie bodily implicated in the cogs of the assembly
line-mechanism]–has come full circle or been stood on its head (take your pick,
consumer).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the old topos, it was the
human subject qua implement of production who suffered; now the victim is the
human subject qua implement of consumption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the old topos, the machine, having been transformed into a subject,
was the direct inflictor of the suffering; now it is at best a proxy subject, a
mighty scourge or cat-o’-nine milliard tails wielded by the frustrated and
by-now terminally insatiable subjective cravings of the producer—not, to be
sure, qua inner-directed would-be inventor of a better Etruscan shrew-trap but
qua abject dyed-in-the-wool worshiper of exchange value. Towards the bottom of
the productive hierarchy, the end occupied by the ballpoint-pen and razor
manufacturers, the producer, ashamed of his wares merely in virtue of their ultra-low
price tag, deliberately and wastefully foists on the consumer products that
fall far short of the most advanced technical standards; at the upper end, the
end occupied by the digital photocopier-manufacturer, the producer, besotted as
he is by the ultra-high price tag of his product, convinces himself that it is
destined to replace sliced bread (or tofu) as the thing than which nothing can
ever be greater, and is hell-bent on “taking” each and every individual
consumer “with him” by forcing him or her to lavish more time on the product’s
use than he (the producer) devoted to its production. The whole Dag-blasted
state of affairs is “far, far worse than Detroit” at any point before the turn
of the millennium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Penultimate if not
necessarily second-least in the present quasi-digression, I must make
depreciatory and deprecatory mention of a phenomenon that is visible mainly if
not exclusively at the most prestigious strata of production—viz. <i>schematic
or meta-conceptual regressiveness</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By this I mean the atrophying or even outright disappearance of certain
basal and essential features of a product in concurrence with the addition,
proliferation, and refinement of more superficial and less essential
features—i.e., in terms of the most familiar and vivid metaphorical vehicle,
the rotting of the trunk and roots of the tree despite the (presumably
temporary) fecundity of its branches, leaves, and flowers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer is afflicted by this phenomenon
each and every day of his existence in the domain of that existence most vital
to his perdurance qua present writer in the fullest sense (i.e., qua present
writer present in the present setting)—viz. his transactions with his own and
others’ personal computers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While there
is scarcely any module or aspect of these transactions that is not without its
rotten trunk-cum-root-rooted woes—for example, his contentions with the
ever-so-cramped horizontal axis of Gmail’s lists (wherein “Important
Things—A-O”, “Important Things—P-Z,” and “Important Thing-like Non-Things”
become indistinguishable from one another by all being abbreviated “Important
Thi”)–it is undoubtedly the Windows 7 operating system that occasions him the
most <i>Alltag</i>-disrupting of these woes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Windows 7 undoubtedly <i>looks</i> much nicer than any earlier Windows
operating system and probably at least a smidge nicer than any earlier
personal-computer operating system full-stop (not that I have ever been the
sort to squander precious navel lint-removing time on comparing the aesthetics-cum-ergonomics
of computer operating systems); and indeed, the present writer would perhaps
expatiate on these superiorities until the start of the bovine homecoming dance
were he not fully sensible of what a trifling bean-hillock they collectively
amount to beside the <i>mighty Everest of hoit</i> induced in his organism by
Windows 7’s shortcomings, <i>shortcomings that are most aggravating precisely
because they had been surmounted in </i>earlier versions of the OS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wireless networking via Windows 7 is a
virtual impossibility for the present writer, even though he owns a wireless
modem, because within a half an hour of establishing his wireless connection he
loses it (i.e., the connection, not his self-control—though since the five
hundredth-or-so occurrence he has tended to lose that as well) and is impelled
to seek succor from the Windows rob</span>ə<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">t troubleshooter, which, after gratuitously
cycling through a dozen other possible explanations for the problem over the
course of a half-dozen minutes, invariably concludes that his “wireless network
adaptor needs resetting” and reports that it is resetting that selfsame WNA,
whereupon working order is restored for another whopping half-hour, whereupon
the whole troubleshooting do-si-do has to be gone through yet again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In vain has the present writer searched for
some means of fixing the problem once and for all and permanently circumventing
the troubleshooter’s intervention—in vain because all the inline sources,
whether Microsoft-sponsored or independent—that make mention of the problem of
a shaky wireless connection simply explain it away as an instance of “a
wireless network adaptor in need of resetting” and refer the user to the
troubleshooter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These sources all seem
to regard the need for resetting as something that simply and ineluctably <i>happens</i>
to a wireless network adaptor in the course of its use, after a fashion not
merely analogous to but exactly consubstantial with the coarsely physical
process whereby the filter on an air conditioner or clothes-dryer becomes
clotted with dust or lint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To not one of
these sources has it seemed to have occurred that a wireless network adaptor,
however hard a piece of hardware it may be, is after all a component whose
functioning, inasmuch as it can be restored by an operating system’s rob</span>ə<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">t
troubleshooter, is in the last instance governed by <i>software</i>—in other
words ultimately by verbal instructions on what it is to do, and that in
consequence the malfunction must be attributed to the operating system’s
delivery of inadequate or erroneous instructions to the component, and in
further consequence it is ultimately up to the operating system’s developers
rather than to its users to fix the glitch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If these developers simply can’t be a(*)*(*)ed to fix it because it
afflicts a portion of the personal-computer using mobility too poorly heeled to
give a rat’s a(*)*(*) about—viz. those running the antepenultimate version of so
naff an operating system as Windows on machines whose exact human
contemporaries are already whining for their fifth I-p***e or C*****b**k,
fine—or, if not quite fine, at least s***ty in a completely familiar way—but
the universal maintenance of the pretense, or perhaps rather gormless Gerald
Ford-esque presumption, that there is no such thing as a software-induced
wireless network adaptor malfunction, is, to say the least, either extremely
irksome or not only extremely irksome but extremely creepy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at least <i>eo ipso</i> this malfunction is
at least comparatively bearable in centering on an element or aspect of
so-called information technology that has been in vigorous play only since the
dawn of the present millennium and around which there has meanwhile gathered a
sort of halo or Oort cloud of received imprecation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Dans nos jours</i>, one is expected to
expect wireless connections of each and every sort to c**p out on one for some
never-to-be-explained reason, and while there is certainly no <i>excuse</i> for
such out-c**ping, insofar as there is no ante-millennial precedent for general
consumer-end acquiescence thereunto (one can hardly imagine, for example, the
multi-million-strong legion of Model T-drivers equably coping with a breakdown
every five miles by adding water to their Tin Lizzies’ to-all-appearances
brimful and leak-free radiators just because their user’s manuals instructed
them to perform such a to-all-appearances utterly gratuitous ritual), the
shakiness of wireless networks, in being a problem that has yet to be even
provisionally solved at a so-called macro level, does not pose a so-called
existential threat to the Whiggish worldview, which can doughtily cope with the
deceleration of progress even to a complete standstill on the metaphysically
unchallengeable grounds that the mighty all-redeeming breakthrough is just
around the corner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, earlier
versions of Windows dealt with local wireless networking more capably than
Windows 7, but the Whig’s withers are unwrung by Windows 7’s incapable handling
of local wireless networking because wireless networking tout
court-stroke-across the board has yet to be consigned en bloc to what we may
term the anti-pantheon of de facto simple machines, to the assortment of
technologies that we have come, however irrationally, to expect to behave as
predictably as the wheel, inclined plane, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The two bugs in Windows 7 that I am about to animadvert on, on the other
hand, do pose an existential threat to the Whiggish worldview in marking a <i>regression</i>
in Windows’(s) functionality to pre-millennial levels and thereby constituting
a regurgitation-cum-expulsion of certain technologies from the just-mentioned
anti-pantheon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The less irksome and <i>Alltag</i>-thwarting,
if slightly more spectacular, of the bugs is 7’s tendency to freeze—a tendency,
in other words, not to register any of the user’s mouse or keyboard-delivered
instructions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The user clicks on an
icon-button, and the icon button fails to register the click; he or she tries
to turn the arrow cursor into a typing cursor, and it obdurately remains an
arrow—i.e., it fails even do him or her the bare-bones courtesy of changing
into the rotating hourglass’s successor, the so (by certain of the present
writer’s fellow users [for obviously he cannot be a(*)*(*)ed to look up its
official name])-called whirling doughnut or wheel of death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer can scarcely remember the
last pre Windows-7 time he had to contend with such impertinent catatonia from
a computer operating system, but presumably it was at some moment to the fore
of the introduction of the Windows task manager way back in…well, <i>’95</i>,
assuming the correspondence was no mere coincidence (for the single
digit-postfixed<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Windows 7 has thrown all
such chronogenetic assumptions into confusion) and Gill Bates &co. were
running a reasonably tight ship by then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The significance of the task manager qua allayer of the user’s anxiety
or frustration or anxiety-cum-frustration can scarcely be overestimated; for
however little the TM was (or is) typically able to do towards extricating the
user from his or her plight short of recommending <i>ending</i> the <i>process</i>
wherein the plight is sited (and thereby more often than not effectively
recommending his or her committing to the virtual flames every character or pixel
of what he or she has been working on over the course of the previous
several-dozen hours), it (in salutary contrast to the above-dwelt-upon rob</span>ə<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">t
troubleshooter) always gave (and gives) the user the sense that the operating
system was (and is) present as a sort of fellow-subject <i>trying</i> to do
something, that it has not simply packed up and shuffled off to Buffalo (or
perhaps rather Seattle) without so much as a BYL.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And at least in the old days (i.e., the days
between the advent of Windows 95 and the advent of Windows 7) any failure of
the task manager to yield to the usual three key-actuated summons spelled a
calamity chez one’s machine that was far too deep-seated and organic to be
remedied by a simple reboot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, I
remember with particularly acute pathos a particularly baleful moment at my
place of work back in ’07 or ’08, when my trusty old [consult paper files at
place of work for computer model number, to omit which would be tantamount to
the withholding of a mention of a Betamax videotape recorder or Wizard personal
organizer qua guaranteed elicitor of thigh-slapping laughter at my red-nosed,
trouser-dropping Luddite’s expense] had been attacked by a particularly
virulent and peremptory strain of so-called malware and required a partially
non-remote intervention by the IT personnel; a moment when the onsite component
of that intervention, a taciturn, hard-bitten toothpick-chomping, pocket
protector-sporting quinquagenarean bloke of the oldest of old IT schools,
having just chinned the mouthpiece of my [consult workplace desktop phone for
model number qua elicitor of doubly raucous version of thigh-slapping outburst
(doubly raucous because ten years on, the corded phone in question is still my
phone of first workplace resort {and second resort overall})] desktop phone,
calmly but decidedly grimly reported to his colleague down the line-cum-stairs,
“I can’t even start the task manager”; a moment that could not but immediately
put me in mind of the final chilling seconds of that darkest of dark comedies,
Werner Herzog’s 1977 film <i>Stroszeck</i>, when a rural policeman or state
trooper likewise stymied by the implacably, sublimely unholy misbegotten union
of man’s artifice and nature’s gormlessness intones, “We can’t stop the dancing
chicken” into his walkie-talkie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
Windows 7 task manager is no longer the task manager of that hard-bitten
ultra-old-school IT bloke (or, indeed, of the present writer’s former, 35-or-36-year-old,
self).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No: under the ultra-shabby
auspices of Windows 7 you will almost diurnally find yourself pressing Control
+ Alt + Delete repeatedly and insistently enough to keep the three involved
digits [in the present writer’s case the index and ring fingers of his left
hand and the index finger of his right] reflexively twitching in waltz time for
a fortnight after you give up on the so-called shortcut without eliciting an
appearance from the old tee-em.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
non-appearance never means that anything is seriously wrong with your machine
or any application running on it, but it almost always does mean that you can
kiss goodbye to any hope you may have had of devoting the succeeding twenty
minutes or so of your life to anything other than waiting for your computer to
reboot and for all umpteen-hundred of its now-indispensable bits of preliminary-establishing
software to snap back into gear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
system crashes of this sort—crashes that have essentially the same phenomenal
texture as a city-center traffic jam and would seem to arise from exactly analogous
and partly consubstantial causes—are at least not utterly unprecedented—rare
indeed, but not utterly unprecedented—in the present writer’s experience in the
pseudo-era of post-DOS WYSIWYG personal computing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amazingly enough Windows 7 is also prone to a
kind of crash that the present writer cannot recall having encountered since
the early 1980s and his transactions with that generation and market-level of
machines known not as personal but <i>home </i>computers—the Commodore 64, TI
99-4A, Atari 800XL et a very small cetera—a generation and market-level of
machines distinctive in virtue of lacking an integrated monitor and therefore
needing to be plugged into a conventional television set.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Associated with these machines were certain
magazines that featured line-by-line printouts of the code for arcade
game-knockoffs of the publishers’ own invention, knockoffs that users such as
the present writer would then laboriously type into their machines over the
course of an entire weekend afternoon and then attempt to run on those selfsame
machines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Typically one would only have
gotten as far as having the game’s backdrop—a two-dimensional Lego-ized
depiction of an ant-farm, coalmine (yes, yes, yes—proleptic shades of M***c**ft),
abattoir, or what have you—on screen and taking a purposive jab at some bit of
the backdrop with one’s joystick-actuated ant or miner or butcher when
everything would stop happening, when one’s television would effectively simply
become a frame for a pixellated still photograph (not that there had been a
great deal going on within that frame beforehand)—this, naturally, because in
the tedium of all the hours of typage one had allowed a fatal,
machine-nonplussing typo to creep in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am
describing my experience of this very minor episode of a very minor byway of
information-technological history so circumstantially—albeit much less
circumstantially than is my wont across the descriptive board—not out of
anything like nostalgia–for I feel nothing but the most searing regret in
connection with all those dozens or perhaps even hundreds of unpaid data-entry
hours—but rather out of a desire to bring home to the reader a sense of the
ultra-primitive and laughably slapdash material conditions under which the
strong freeze or hard crash was most recently suffered as a matter of
course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are after all forever being
told by our sub-simian technophile masters that the humblest computerized
toaster of today is umpteen-quadrillion times more <i>powerful</i> (whatever
that means) than Deep Blue-to-the-power-of-the NASA computers that guided Mr.
Armstrong &co. to the moon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If such
is truly the case, then surely we have the right to expect the average personal
computer of today to avoid the sorts of c**k-ups that the sub-personal
computers of a (human) generation-and-a-half ago lapsed into only when their
otherwise robust coding instructions were corrupted by the digital (in the
ultra old-school pre-digital sense) ineptitude of mere tots with barely enough
knowledge of BASIC to run an endlessly looping “Hello [or, in more historically
accurate phraseology, <i>Fuck You</i>] World” queue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet it is a c**k-up of one of these
selfsame sorts that I must contend with virtually every time I run the newest
version of Microsoft Word under Windows 7, on each of which occasions an active
window within which I a have an active document open can be virtually
guaranteed to turn into a cursor-inaccessible so-called screen shot at least
once.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly, if bizarrely, one can bring
such a window back to cursor-responsive life by simply activating and then
minimizing another window, but why should one be expected to perform such an
eldritch ritual—a ritual less reminiscent of such wholesome analogue-era <i>pis-allers</i>
as thumping the side of a television set with an inefficacious horizontal or
vertical hold than of such kooky perennial old-wivesish superstitions as
crushing eggshells to prevent witches from using them as boats—at all?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And worst of all, Windows 7 is prone to a
certain particularly vexatious bug that I cannot for the L of M recall having
been harassed by even in the quasi-pre-Cambrian jungle of early-1980s
home-computerdom, a bug whose pandemic prevalence makes a mockery of the very
notion of the computer as the dedicated agent-cum-facilitator of a continuation
of a paper and filing cabinet-centered modus vivendi by other means, the notion
onto which our entire system of life has long since shifted its very
moorings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am referring here to W7’s
ever-so-laggardly refreshment of its…how do you say?...<i>directory listings</i>
or <i>temporal file hierarchy</i> or whatever the industry cum company-endorsed
term is for the bit of directory-governing code that allows the user to see an
up-to-date list of files in a given folder; such that after revising and saving
a file labeled <i>Bob Fockkuck</i> at 7:52 a.m. on July 25, 2017 he or she can
subsequently count on seeing that up-to-date version of <i>Bob Fuckuck</i>
represented as the most recent version of <i>Bob Fockcuck</i> and on not seeing
the previously revised version—a version dating from, say, 8:42 p.m. on January
17, 2015—at the top of the “Date Modified” queue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is something that the user can by no
means count on under the auspices of Windows 7; and, indeed, quite often he or
she must simply take it on faith that some beneficent angel of a background
operating-system process is keeping his or her files up-to-date, because no
amount of waiting or clicking on “Refresh” in the “View” pull-down menu will
compel the folder-window in question to put the most recent version of the
document in question at the top of the list.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It quite simply <i>is not to be endured</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet endured it must be by each and every
man Jack, woman Jill, and trans, transitioning-or-gender queer Pat of a Windows
7 user (tho’ TBT, I can scarcely imagine anyone <i>progressive</i> enough to be
trans, transitional or gender-queer’s settling for such an antediluvian,
retrogressive operating system as Windows 7), inasmuch as amid the hundreds of <i>Alltag</i>-annihilating
mandatory updates they or it have or has visited on us Windows 7 users each and
every year, Microsoft has or have not seen fit to introduce a so-called patch
for this <i>Weltall</i>–annihilating glitch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As surely as the sight of the full moon does a lycanthrope this
patch-omission must give us pause.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
axiomatically Whiggish apologist for Microsoft will doubtlessly conjecture that
the glitch has not been repaired because it is quite simply and literally
irreparable within the architecture of Windows 7 because that architecture is
not designed to support instantaneous file hierarchy-refreshment–in other
words, he or she will effectively argue that my metaphor of the efflorescent
tree with rotten roots is inapplicable here because we are dealing with a
completely different tree, a tree of completely separate plantation from the
one constituted by DOS-through-Windows NT.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To this defense I would rejoin that it is no intelligible, let alone
legitimate, defense at all, inasmuch as the architects of Windows 7, to the
extent that they thought of themselves as ethically consubstantial with their
counterparts in the world of so-called bricks and mortar, were duty-bound to
reproduce all of the most taken-for-granted features of earlier operating
systems in their blueprint for Windows 7.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The reason that they did not reproduce these features (at least so <i>I</i>
conjecture) was that they were solely interested in achieving
aesthetic-cum-ergonomic effects in Windows 7 and gave no thought to whether the
means by which these effects could be most expeditiously achieved were
squarable with the achievement of much more basal and much less blingy effects
like instantaneous file hierarchy-refreshment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To extend and expand the architectural quasi-metaphor to its requisite
conceptual height and girth: these conjectural Windows 7 architects were like
bricks and mortar-world architects who, upon discovering that ice (yes <i>that</i>
ice—viz. solid hydrogen hyrdroxide) is a much more pliant and expressive medium
for the production of architectural ornaments—Gothic revival-revival gargoyles,
Corinthian leather textured-Corinthian capitals and whatnot—than reinforced
concrete, proceed to have their most recently commissioned record-toppingly
tall skyscraper, including each and every one of its foundation piles and
load-bearing walls, made entirely out of ice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>So in short: while the impracticability of effecting the patch for
instantaneous file hierarchy-refreshment is entirely <i>plausible</i> as an <i>explanation
</i>for or of the omission of the patch, it is by no means <i>redeemable</i> as
an <i>excuse</i> therefor, and accordingly if this explanation is the correct
one, the omission by all rights ought to be regarded as a scandalous and
prospectively ineffaceable black eye in or on Microsoft’s reputation as a
vendor of even minimally functional software.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But inasmuch as even now it does up to a point take two mutually
consenting parties to engage in the act of coition contentiously known as
consumer capitalism—I say <i>even now</i> and <i>up to a point</i> in the light
of all the latter-day wanton producer-inflicted sadism I have remarked in
recently preceding paragraphs [sadism that I believe to be less in play in the
domain of computer OS-dom on account of the still relatively high prestige
quotient of PC-orientated IT]—the real or ultimate culprits of or for the aforesaid
omission may in fact be the prevailing mass of Windows 7 users.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this I mean that it is entirely
conceivable and not altogether implausible that Windows 7 users have not
complained about the omission sufficiently vociferously or in sufficiently large
numbers to drive it up into the Microsoft bug-correction team’s Top 10 (or even
Top 100) list of Windows 7 bugs to be corrected, and if such is the case, who
can blame the team particularly censoriously for not having corrected it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, qua artisans or craftspeople they
ought to correct it solely out of professional <i>pudeur</i>, but qua
producers-cum-businesspeople they have precious little, if any, incentive to do
so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And epipygially vexed to the point
of ulceration by the omission though he is, the present writer concedes that
inasmuch as he is most likely not the ideal casting choice to play Bob, Suzy,
Jack, Jill, or Pat Windows 7-Everyuser (because he is most certainly not the
ideal casting choice to play Bob, Suzy, Jack, Jill, or Pat present-day computer
user <i>tout court</i>), he is most likely not entitled to assume that a
substantial proportion of his fellow-Windows 7 users share his vexation with
the omission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For after all, in what
capacity is the present writer most sorely epipygially vexed by the omission;
in what capacity does he most keenly feel its unrelenting sheering of epidermal
tissue from his fundament-cushions?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why,
essentially in the capacity of an <i>archivist</i>, a keeper of documents that
must be sorted by age—in his case an age that already often exceeds that of the
present chronological threshold for voting and that within a very few years
(touch would [sic]) will often also exceed the chronological threshold for
serving in the U.S. House of Representatives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And while the accurate dating of archival documents was undoubtedly
regarded as a categorical necessity by the virtual totality of the
first-and-a-half human generation of users of personal computer operating
systems, the users of DOS through Windows NT, because in one way or another they
were all using their machines principally to track phenomena that developed
over time—phenomena ranging from corporate budgets to software applications to
genealogical charts to literary opera–this feature is quite conceivably not
even regarded as the most trivial and dispensable of frills by the largest
majority of users of such systems today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After all, what is it that Bob, Suzy, Jack, Jill, or Pat Personal
Computer Operating System User principally uses his, her, their, or its
personal computing device—whether this be a desktop, a laptop, a s***t phone,
or a t****t—for?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why, for securing a
rendezvous with his or her latest T***r-mediated f**k-buddy, plotting a travel
route to that selfsame rendezvous, uploading s*lfies of himself or herself
standing alongside some flash-in-the-pan pop star, downloading the latest
version of Cow-Chip Gourmandizer—in short, engaging in activities of the most
transient, ephemeral, evanescent nature; activities vis-à-vis which
chronological accuracy is of no importance whatsoever because there is scarcely
if ever any need to refer to any past occurring-or-originating phenomenon
because in turn one is always moving relentlessly, unreflectively, and
remorselessly into the future.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">END OF PART
ONE</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-71413368040697452832019-03-08T16:58:00.000-05:002019-04-06T04:41:09.355-04:00A Translation of "Sagbares und Unsagbares--Die Philosophie Ludwig Wittgensteins," a Radio Essay by Ingeborg Bachmann<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><b>The Sayable and Unsayable—The Philosophy of Ludwig
Wittgenstein</b></span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">1</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Voices: First Speaker, Second Speaker, Reader of Quotations
(Wittgenstein), A DETRACTOR<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“The world is everything that is the case.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The world
is the totality of facts…”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“The world
is determined by the facts, and by these being <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> the facts.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">4</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Thus begins the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus</i> by Ludwig Wittgenstein—a not very
lengthy philosophical work that was published in Vienna in 1921.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anybody who immerses himself in it will
initially be struck by its terse, standoffish style.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he will be struck by the fact that it is
not a systematically constructed philosophical treatise but rather a loose
succession of consecutively numbered aphorisms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It does not always follow a chain of thoughts through to its conclusion;
it does not always provide a helpful link from one thought to the next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why despite its clear, precise
formulations the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i> has often
been described as an obscure book, an esoteric book accessible only to
initiates, in other words, scientific specialists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we happen to believe that it is quite an
essential and important book for everybody interested in philosophy and modern
science, and that it can teach us to see the world in the correct way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Within the first few sentences of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i> Wittgenstein has already
established his starting position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
speaks of the world as the totality of facts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In philosophical terms this is a thoroughly simple and uncritical
statement, a statement that he borrowed from his friend the English philosopher
Bertrand Russell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Russell takes as his
starting point the thesis that the world consists of mutually fully independent
facts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the world above and beyond
the totality of facts is—nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Accordingly, our knowledge of the world—knowledge that is a reflection
of these mutually fully independent facts—can only ever apprehend portions of
it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: But we often formulate our knowledge of the
world in universal propositions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
example, we can say, “All men are mortal.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: When we closely scrutinize this “general”
proposition, we discover that it has the same meaning as such statements as
“Peter is mortal” and “Hans is mortal.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This “and,” which binds these two individual statements together, has
the function of guaranteeing the truth of the universal proposition “All men
are mortal.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The universal truth that we
believe we have acquired is determined solely by the truth of the two
individual statements “Peter is mortal” and “Hans is mortal.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet a new, universal truth does not
emerge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This small, innocuous example of
logic demonstrates that logic—understood in entirely verbal and banal terms—conveys
absolutely nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has, to echo
Wittgenstein, a purely tautological character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All its statements are empty; they cannot impart to us any information
about reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Working with reality, with the totality of
facts, is the business of the natural sciences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They describe the facts and share insights with us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Philosophy, on the other hand, is not a
natural science, and like logic—its instrument—it can teach us nothing about
reality; for all propositions that have reference to reality are propositions
belonging to the natural sciences, and the generalizing propositions that we
encounter in traditional philosophy, propositions like the previously adduced
“All men are mortal,” have meaning only because they rest upon empirical
propositions, and they impart no new specifically philosophical insights.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">DETRACTOR: If philosophy can share no insights with us, if
only the natural sciences can do this, what work of any value whatsoever can
philosophy still perform?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: In the form of “logical analysis,” it can carry
out a kind of inspection of the natural sciences’ propositions about
experience; it can expose sources of error and eliminate the errors themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it must completely relinquish the
processing of this reality to the natural sciences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The relinquishment of the investigation of
reality to the various specialized departments of the natural sciences, a
relinquishment that was already effected long ago, is here being corroborated in
German philosophy for the first time ever.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Wittgenstein’s mode of philosophizing,
“logical analysis,” is not so new as it would seem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, in this mode we rediscover the
analytic method of rationalism and empiricism, a method that is almost as old
as philosophy itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That this method
has been forgotten by German philosophy is owing to the fortunes of that
philosophy in the nineteenth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The systems of
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel had completely displaced it, until it resurged in
a new form in the twentieth century and entered the vanguard of the history of
philosophy as neopositivism, this at least partly at the impetus of
Wittgenstein. But the actual cause of the comeback was the revolution in
mathematics and logic—when the fruitfulness of applying the analytic method to
these fields became newly apparent towards the end of the last century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was discovered that mathematics and logic
are riddled with so-called paradoxes that are disruptive of the fundamental
principles of those two disciplines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
be sure, a few logical paradoxes were already known of in antiquity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of us are familiar with the story of the
liar; the Cretan Epimenides says, “All Cretans are liars.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But now paradoxes
were also being found in mathematics, and these were far more alarming, because
they threatened to neutralize the entire field of mathematics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because logic and mathematics were
threatened by these paradoxes, our entire system of representation—our <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">language </i>in the broadest sense, and not
merely this or that proposition within our language—was effectively impinged on
by them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was to be done now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could these problems—these fundamental
problems—be solved?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: The
philosophers who recognized the extraordinary importance of concentrating on
logic—Bertrand Russell in England and the neopositivists in Vienna—alighted
upon quite an obvious but altogether new idea; the idea that these paradoxes had
to be rooted in the fact that for centuries in philosophy—and likewise in our
everyday language—we employed propositions that looked as though they had
meaning but actually had none whatsoever in reality; that we fell victim to a
mystification of our language without realizing it, because we blindly trusted
in language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, Plato and other
philosophers after him had already tried to assess the truth of propositions
via the application of a rigorously analytic method.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Descartes famously even resolved to regard as
false all propositions whose truth was not absolutely transparent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But nobody had ever asked the question
whether certain questions were inherently meaningless in their formulation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: So
in the work of Wittgenstein and his kindred the neopositivists, the meaning of
propositions and formulations of questions moves into the foreground of
philosophical activity and becomes more important than the question of truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hidden nonsense—the nonsense hidden in
language—would have to be sounded to its uttermost depths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this mistrust of language suddenly
swelled to such proportions that Moritz Schlick, one of the leading lights of
the Vienna School, once proclaimed that what philosophers feared most at that
time was not that they would be unable to solve the problems confronted by
philosophy but that philosophy would never even come up with a genuine problem;
he proclaimed that by that time most of philosophy’s problems were already
debunkable as pseudoproblems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER:
Because the philosophical difficulties were discovered to be rooted in language,
we understand why Wittgenstein’s work contains a theory of language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will show us how the world can be
“depicted” in correct and meaningful propositions; how we can “speak” about the
world and what philosophy can achieve as a critique of our language about the
world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Moreover, Wittgenstein
is said to have called his first book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>
because he wanted to preside at a “trial,” in the juridical sense,</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">5</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> of philosophy and our
philosophical talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his preface he
writes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The book
deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, as I believe, that the method
of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our
language.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">6</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: So
the investigation of logic became the natural starting point for Wittgenstein’s
philosophical activity, for as an aphorism in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i> reads:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“Outside logic all is accident.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">7</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And
everything outside logic must be accident, for the world is replete with logic:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“…the limits of the world are also its limits.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">8</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER:
Let us try to follow this train of thought: Wittgenstein speaks about the world,
with whose objects and circumstances we have dealings. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This world and its
circumstances are depicted by us in propositions that are assessable—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER:
—namely, propositions belonging to the natural sciences—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER:
And in another passage, he adds that we are also capable of representing the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">total</i> reality by means of our
propositions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: His
points of reference are always the sciences that investigate reality and
incorporate it into a system of representation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">DETRACTOR: So what
prompts Wittgenstein to speak of the “limits of the world?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Now
he takes a step back and says that we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cannot</i>
represent a single thing, least of all exactly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what</i> our propositions that represent reality have in common with
reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: In
saying this he touches on quite a remarkable phenomenon that we never give a
thought to either in practical everyday life or even in the practical side of
science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For example, we represent a
certain natural process by means of the proposition “It is raining,” or, in the
natural sciences, we express a so-called natural law, for example the law of
acceleration, by means of a formula.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Both the proposition from everyday language and the mathematical formula
represent reality, even though they obviously have nothing to do with this
reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are merely signs that
signify something and that have nothing to do with what is signified by them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How, in spite of this discrepancy, do we
manage to operate with these signs, with our language itself in in its broadest
sense?: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> is the question!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And
Wittgenstein answers this question thus: it is their logical form that the two
of them must have in common, for otherwise propositions would never be able to
represent reality at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this
logical form is the “limit” about which our detractor was asking a short while
ago, for it makes representation possible, but only at the cost of being
subsequently unrepresentable in its own right. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this form is manifested something that
points beyond reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It points beyond
reality inasmuch as within the logical form there arises something that we find
unthinkable, and because it is unthinkable, it cannot be spoken of.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “What
we cannot think, that we cannot think: we cannot therefore <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">say</i> what we cannot think.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 20.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">9</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER:
Thus does Wittgenstein formulate the “limit-situation” by which science is
confronted in the matter of representation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And in this treatise or “trial” that is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus logico-philosophicus</i> he subsequently investigates the
“sayable” propositions and stipulates the conditions in which those
propositions are sayable, and hence also “meaningful.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He dubs these propositions “models” of
reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER:
The term “model” incidentally happens to be one that we encounter in modern
physics, whenever, for example, the model of the atom is being discussed; and
in physics the term has likewise been chosen in order to make it clear that the
description of the atom has nothing to do with the atom itself, that the
logical form corresponds merely to the representation and not at all to what
Wittgenstein would call the incomprehensible underlying reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: But
let us once again recall Wittgenstein’s thesis that the logical form itself, by
the aid of which we can describe the facts of the world, does not belong to the
facts of the world, that while by its aid something meaningful can indeed be
said, it marks the limit of the sayable and is coextensive with the limit of
the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER:
--but not with the limit of reality as a whole.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And
“the limit of my world” signifies “the limit of my language.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For our reach extends only as far the reach
of our language, by means of which we accurately represent and depict <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> the world is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">DETRATOR: Allow me
to synthesize the theses that have been propounded so far: I believe that we
are dealing here with a strictly empiricist, positivistic, rationalistic
philosophy that is working with one of the analytic methods developed by modern
logic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its theses mainly illuminate the
relationship between philosophy and natural science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the history of philosophy since antiquity
we have repeatedly encountered similar currents, but whereas in earlier
centuries a clean and decisive split between philosophy and the natural
sciences had not yet been effected, in our century such a split has supervened
almost as a matter of course thanks to ever-increasing specialization in the
natural sciences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An array of questions
that people used to try to solve using philosophically speculative methods have
long since been eradicated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Psychology,
physics, and biology have provided the definitive answers to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was tantamount to a progressive erosion
of the very foundations of philosophy, but by no means did all philosophers take
cognizance of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for all that, the
erosion has undoubtedly been taking place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And quite deliberately and radically picking up on the logical
consequences of it, at this moment a neopositivistic school appeared on the
scene, declared that what we had gotten used to calling philosophy was on the
one hand natural science incognito, and on the other either the lingering
remnant of psychology unmasked as an anthropological hoax or something that the
methods of the new system of logic could readily unmask as grammatically or
syntactically meaningless twaddle.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Within the “Vienna
Circle,” the group of neopositivists active in Vienna, historical and current
systems of metaphysics alike were indeed greeted with such expressions as “meaningless
twaddle” and “pseudo-propositions.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
it is to say the least highly debatable whether Western metaphysics in its all
its undeniably multifarious and mutually contradictory forms can be consigned
to the filing cabinet overnight simply because certain people regard it as
preposterous on account of the unanswerability of the questions it poses.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: The
neopositivists never maintained that metaphysics was preposterous on account of
the unanswerability of the questions posed by it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That sort of assertion was characteristic of
the old-school empiricists and positivists, who fell prey to the error of
making empiricism into a worldview in which there continued to lurk a certain
kind of metaphysics, namely the kind that allowed us to absolutize the
empirically given world as reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
contrast, in neopositivism or logical positivism, an attempt was initially made
to formulate in meaningful terms the questions that had arisen in philosophy
since its inception, and when this proved impossible, to eradicate the
questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For it will fundamentally
never be possible to give a meaningful answer to a question that cannot even be
formulated in meaningful terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
attempting to answer such questions within the context of metaphysics,
philosophers ran into “pseudo-propositions,” “pseudo-problems,” problems such
as that of the ideality versus the reality of the world, the problem of the
nature of the soul, the problem of the nature of God, problems that were
fundamentally unsolvable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And these
problems were eradicated from philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A proposition that maintains, for example, the reality or ideality of
the world represents no state of affairs of any sort; like all other sentences
of this kind, it has an entirely different function.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It gives expression to a certain attitude
towards life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is pregnant with its
propounders’ emotional and volitional dispositions towards their immediate
surroundings, towards the cosmos, towards their fellow men and women, towards
their missions in life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why
metaphysics has attached so much value to so many of these kinds of
propositions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the attitude towards
life can also find expression via artistic production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When it does, metaphysics is transformed into
a work of art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in this work of art
the attitude to life comes to be expressed in a nexus of propositions that seem
to be logically interconnected with one another, that seem to be mutually logically
derivable; and in the process a simulation of theoretical content is
generated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An artwork does not expound
an argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Metaphysics, on the other
hand, does expound arguments and prides itself on imparting knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the only thing capable of yielding
knowledge is a scientific proposition, even when it appears on the scene in
metaphysical disguise.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER:
Wittgenstein’s stance is also hostile to metaphysics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one proposition after another, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i> insistently advocates a sharp,
clear-cut distinction between genuine propositions and pseudo-propositions: the
representation and depiction of the world are to be left to the natural
sciences, and wherever vagueness, lack of clarity, subsists, logical analysis
must intervene to procure clarity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
is what philosophical activity is now going to be all about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this is no longer classical
empiricism-cum-positivism with its naïve faith in science and the world and its
embodiment of a synthesis of a worldview with a method, but rather a method
plain and simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There will not even be
any further attempts to interpret the world or what have you; reality will
deliberately be left untouched and “undetermined,” for it does not lie in our
power to determine its character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
we can represent things properly and usefully, there is no need for questions
about “essence” and “appearance”; asking such questions has never taken us so
much as single step forward in our representational endeavors; indeed, it has
often been merely obstructive, and in the empirical sciences it has even led to
results that are useless or downright false.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nevertheless, for Wittgenstein, who shares this neutral stance towards
the world—which might also be termed an unphilosophical stance—with other
neopositivists, one question remains worth asking: What have we actually
achieved by means of a proper and useful representation and depiction of the
world? And he gives us an answer on one of the last pages of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>, an answer that allows us only
then to comprehend what a bold, what a daring, leap of faith this book is
making: “absolutely nothing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How</i> the world is, is completely indifferent
for what is higher. […] Not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> the
world is, is the mystical, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i>
it is.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">10</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: In
this aphorism Wittgenstein alights upon a new tone, a tone that he sustains
through the end of the book and that unveils the actual problematic of this
body of thought that is so hostile to problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His assertion of the worthlessness of our knowledge of “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how</i> the world is” is just as pointedly
directed against positivism, and hence against his own philosophical activity,
as it is against metaphysics, which strives to ascertain the essence of things,
the absolute, actual character of the world and of the objects behind its outward
forms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This assertion both draws our
attention to the incomprehensibility of the very fact <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> the world exists at all and explicitly gives this
incomprehensibility a name, “the mystical,” a word with a limitless semantic
field, a word encumbered with indubitable and dubious experiences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">DETRACTOR: May I
be permitted to ask what specific accent the mystical has in Wittgenstein’s
work?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Isn’t this proposition
suspiciously reminiscent of a question that is meaningless in a Wittgensteinian
sense, namely Heidegger’s question, “Why is there Being at all rather than
nothing?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is Heidegger’s speechlessness
vis-à-vis Being not the same as Wittgenstein’s speechlessness?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t the positivist and the philosopher of
Being end up in the same cul-de-sac?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: The
experience that underlies Heidegger’s mysticism of Being may indeed be similar
to the experience that allows Wittgenstein to speak of the mystical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Wittgenstein would find it impossible to
pose the Heideggerian question, for he denies what Heidegger presupposes—namely,
that Being can find utterance in thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Where Heidegger begins to philosophize, Wittgenstein ceases to
philosophize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For as the last
proposition of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus
logico-philosophicus</i> says: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “Whereof
one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">11</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER:
According to Wittgenstein’s theses, it is impossible to speak of “meaning,” for
there is no meaning in a world that is representable, describable—but not
explicable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to be able to
explain the world, we would have to be able to put ourselves outside the world,
we would have to, as he puts it, “be able to utter propositions about the
propositions of the world” as the metaphysicians fancy they are able to do; in
addition to propositions that speak about facts they have propositions of a
second order, propositions that speak<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">
about</i> the propositions that speak about facts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They solemnize the ascription of
meaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wittgenstein decisively rejects
these attempts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If there were meaning in
the world that meaning would have no meaning, for it would then constitute one
of the facts, a representable entity among other representable entities, and of
equal rank with them, an object of science like other objects and therefore
worthless for:</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“How </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the world is, is completely indifferent for what
is higher…The meaning of the world must lie outside the world. In the world
everything is as it is and happens as it does happen.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">12</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">DETRACTOR: If we do not receive an answer to
this question, a question that we are accustomed to address to philosophy,
the question of the “meaning of being,” when we are referred back to ourselves
by this question, because thought and language fail us, how will the questions
of ethics, which are closely connected to it, be answered?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For of course both ethical norms—which are
propositions hinging on “ought”—and the values towards which we orientate
ourselves, are also questions of a second order and anchored in
metaphysics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if a reality of a
second order, a reality to which the ascription of meaning and the moral
legislation of our life are indigenous, is being rightly gainsaid by this
neopositivistic philosophy, then the entirety of ethics has been abolished; and
with this abolition we have reached the actual rock-bottom of Western
philosophical thought, the fulfillment of an absolute nihilism, a nihilism that
not even Nietzsche, the great demolisher of traditional Occidental
value-systems, was capable of devising.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Naturally, Wittgenstein’s
philosophy is a negative philosophy, and he could quite plausibly have given
his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i> the same title as that
of Nikolaus Cusanus’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">De docta ignorantia</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For what we can speak of is of no value, and
we cannot speak of the word’s indigenous habitation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore—so he infers—we cannot utter a
single true or verifiable proposition of ethics:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “Ethics are transcendental.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">13</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: By this Wittgenstein means that
the moral form, which has nothing to do with the facts of the world, is not
analogous to the logical form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It can no longer be represented, but it still manifests
itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the logical form, with
whose help we depict the world, it is the limit or border of the world, a
border that we cannot cross.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he
continues:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“The solution of the riddle of life in space and time can only lie </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">outside</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">space and time.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">14</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">SECOND SPEAKER: And we come back to the
decisive proposition:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“For how </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the world is, is completely indifferent for what
is higher.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">God does not reveal himself </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the
world</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">15</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">FIRST SPEAKER:
It is the bitterest proposition in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is reminiscent of Hölderlin’s “How little
do the heavenly powers heed us!”; nevertheless, it states much more, namely,
that this God remains the hidden God, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">deus
absconditus, </i>who does not manifest himself in this world, which we can
depict by means of a formal schema; that the world becomes speakable—and hence
depictable--that the sayable is possible, only thanks to the unsayable, the
limit, or whatever we choose to call it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">SECOND
SPEAKER: In our treatment of Wittgenstein’s theory of language, which is
concerned with the representation of the world, we have pointed out the
connection between the empiricist and rationalistic features of his philosophy
and the analytic methods that have been influential in Western thought since
its inception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And today we are learning
what a major influence this “positive” portion of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i> has had on the development of modern thought in the past
few decades, especially in the Anglo-Saxon countries; learning, indeed, that it
has become the Bible, so to speak, of the scientific method-orientated thought
of our age.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But in what
context are we to situate the other component of Wittgenstein’s thought, his
despairing effort on behalf of the inexpressible, the unsayable?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">FIRST
SPEAKER: On account of these efforts, Wittgenstein should perhaps be termed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the </i>great representative thinker of our
time, for in him the two extreme tendencies of the intellectual currents of the
West find expression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He stands at the
pinnacle of the scientific thought of his age; the thought that accompanies the
development of technology and the natural sciences and antedates him; and yet
he quotes to us Nestroy’s maxim, “It is generally characteristic of progress to
look much greater than it actually is.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is why we are so deeply moved by the other component of his
thought, the mystical component, which yearns to surmount the limitations of
scientific thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">SECOND
SPEAKER: We believe we won’t be erring if we identify Pascal as a predecessor
of a thinker who similarly embodied both components.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Probably unlike any other post-Pascalian
philosopher, Wittgenstein with his austere twentieth-century style idealization
of science would probably be credited by Pascal with possession of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">l’esprit de la géométrie</i>. But can we
also attribute <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">l’esprit de finesse</i> to
him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Pascal it is the combination of
these two forms of intellect that distinguishes the great thinker; he is of the
opinion that in the absence of the “mysticism of the heart,” the mystical
experience of the reality of the entire person, who stands either before or
behind thought, a philosophy is “not worth a single hour of effort.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">FIRST
SPEAKER: A harsh judgment, which Pascal recorded in the course of a reading of
Descartes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">SECOND
SPEAKER: In order to comprehend and render comprehensible Wittgenstein’s
mystical traits, we must perhaps take a step beyond his own miserly outlay of
words expressive of this tendency:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“God does not reveal himself in the world.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">16</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">SECOND
SPEAKER: These are words that are to be found towards the end of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do they mean?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They mean that the world as the totality of
facts, the only world allowable by scientific description, does not reveal God,
that we cannot prove the existence of God as a limited being in a limited
world, for God is manifestly not one of the world’s facts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And to extrapolate a conclusion about the
higher world from the facts of the lower world is impossible; for every
conclusion is perforce a logical conclusion—hence devoid of content; in other
words, a tautology.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“There is indeed the inexpressible. This <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shows</i>
itself; it is the mystical.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">17</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">FIRST
SPEAKER: And it is in these terms that we must also understand Wittgenstein’s
treatment of ethics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Values are things
of a “higher” order; therefore they are not of this world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let us listen closely to his formulation:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“In the world there is no value, and if there were, it would be of no value.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">18</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">SECOND
SPEAKER: In other words, the world is value-neutral; it consists of facts of
mutually equivalent status; they, like us, are incapable of being transformed
by our will, which we term the standard-bearer of the ethical domain. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But ethical values figure
among the central problems of our life, for they impart the accents of good and
evil, of merit and demerit, to our actions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is undeniable, and Wittgenstein has no wish to deny it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he makes it perfectly clear that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">science </i>can contribute nothing to the
solution of such a problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With all
existential questions we are thrown back onto ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, he does not believe that there are no
values, that it is impossible to believe in God—he merely believes that it is
impossible in a strict sense to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">speak</i>
about any of that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Language can only
speak of facts and constitutes the limit of our—your and my—world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The limit of the world is stripped away when
language is insufficient and therefore thought is also insufficient.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is stripped away when something
“manifests” itself, and that which manifests itself is the mystical—the
inexpressible experience—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: --the experience not of the empiricist but
rather of the mystic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: So Wittgenstein’s credo is negative, because
he cannot express it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the final
proposition of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i> suffices
to give us an inkling of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“We feel that even if </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">all possible </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">scientific questions
be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. Of course
there is then no question left, and just this is the answer.</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 20.0pt;">
</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">19</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The solution
of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">(Is not this
the reason why men to whom after long doubting the meaning of life became
clear, could not then say wherein this meaning consisted?)”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">20</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And thus does the book arrive at the logical
implications that have provoked so much head-shaking from other positivistic
scientists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">except what can be said, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">i.e. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">the
propositions of natural science,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">i.e.
</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">something that has nothing to do with
philosophy: and then</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">always, when
someone else wished to say something metaphysical,</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">to demonstrate to him that he had given no significance
to</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">certain signs in his propositions. This method
would be unsatisfying</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">to the other—he
would not have the feeling that we</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">were
teaching him philosophy—but it would be the only strictly</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">correct method.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My
propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally
recognizes them as meaningless, when he has climbed out through them, on them,
over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up
on it.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He must
surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">21</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">FIRST
SPEAKER: Doesn’t Wittgenstein effectively come to the same conclusion as
Pascal? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let us listen closely to what
the author of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pensées</i> says three
hundred years before him: “The last step of reason is to recognize that there
are an infinite number of things that surpass it.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">22</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">SECOND
SPEAKER: Wittgenstein has taken this last step of reason.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who like him says, “God does not
reveal himself in the world” also implicitly says, “Vere tu es deus
absconditus.” For what ought one to be silent about if not the world stripped
of its limit—about the hidden God, about the aesthetic and the ethical as
mystical experiences of the heart that are fulfilled in the unsayable?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of this is fully comprehended by his “Whereof
one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Of course being silent about something does not entail simply and solely
being silent about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Negative silence
would be agnosticism; positive silence is mysticism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">FIRST
SPEAKER: This interpretation of Wittgensteinian silence admittedly goes far
beyond anything he ever said; but we believe it is permissible to pursue it for
the sake of making the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>
intelligible, and also because Wittgenstein’s life provides us with a key to
understanding everything that he regarded as being only silently fulfillable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ludwig
Wittgenstein wrapped himself in silence all his life; there is scarcely any other
way of putting it, given how astonishing it is that a man assured of public
prominence, fame, and distinction managed to withdraw from his age so
thoroughly that he genuinely evaded it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In 1921 he published the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus</i> in Vienna, where a few years later Moritz Schlick was
inspired enough by his thought to bring into being the “Vienna Circle."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the Viennese neopositivistic school,
which based its own work almost exclusively on Wittgenstein’s sublime
intellectual efforts on behalf of modern logic and scientific theory but gave
his mystical “whims” the cold shoulder, was winning ever greater international
distinction, Wittgenstein never showed his face; he kept his distance from all
discussions, declined to take up an academic teaching post, and eventually
moved to a village in Lower Austria where he lived for years that nobody can
give an account of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He “exited”
philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 1938 he had to leave
Austria for “racial” reasons and turned to England and the University of
Cambridge, where he acceded to the professorship of philosophy that G.E. Moore
had just resigned. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of these last years
we know that during them he acquired a small circle of disciples; they recount
that he lived in a cottage and hadn’t allowed it be furnished with anything but
a simple chair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus even during his
lifetime his life had already been replaced by a legend—a legend of voluntary privation,
of the attempt to hearken to the proposition that concludes the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof
one must be silent.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">23</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER:
Only after Wittgenstein’s death in 1951 did people really begin to preoccupy
themselves with his life and work in earnest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In Germany it was Ewald Wasmuth who drew everybody’s attention to him
and in an inquiry expressed his hope as a Christian philosopher that
Wittgenstein had crossed the threshold separating silence from confession in
his final writings, word of whose existence was then leaking out of England.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those were the days when people talked of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blue Book </i>and of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophical Investigations</i> [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophischen Untersuchungen</i>], of an
extensive collection of posthumous papers that would give us a complete picture
of his corpus of thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And last year did
actually see the publication in England of a posthumous work—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophical Investigations </i>[here
Bachmann gives the English title (DR)], a large portion of which he had lived
long enough to edit himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He explains
this “reentry” into philosophy in a preface:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “Up
to a short time ago I had really given up the idea of publishing my work in my
lifetime. It used, indeed, to be revived from time to time: mainly because I
was obliged to learn that my results (which I had communicated in lectures,
typescripts and discussions), variously misunderstood, more or less mangled or
watered down, were in circulation. This stung my vanity and I had difficulty in
quieting it.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">24</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And
with regard to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophical
Investigations</i> themselves, he says in a later passage:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “I
make them public with doubtful feelings. It is not impossible that it should
fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time,
to bring light into one brain or another—but, of course, it is not likely. I
should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But,
if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own. I should have liked
to produce a good book. This has not come about, but the time is past in which
I could improve it.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">25</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER:
Whether this book might have turned out better is a question we must leave
unanswered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the form in which it has
reached us, that of an agglomeration of illustrated thoughts, it presents a
number of difficulties.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again there
is a lack of systematic coherence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
are drawn into a Socratic dialogue with the author, a dialogue that touches on
numerous things; thus the author’s intention is never directly disclosed to us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, he is seems to be proceeding in the
absence of any premeditated intention, and says, for example:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “I
can know what someone else is thinking, not what I am thinking. It is correct
to say ‘I know what you are thinking,’ and wrong to say ‘I know what I am
thinking.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: We
have chosen this illustration because it is paired with a crucial comment, an
exclamation that could just as aptly follow all the other illustrations:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “A
whole cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of grammar!”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">27</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And
in this comment we have discovered his intention, the same intention that
openly manifests itself in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>:
to show that the problems of philosophy are problems of language, that, as it
were, the misfires of language create philosophical problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophical Investigations</i> he proceeds to expand the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i> by giving us examples of right
and wrong thinking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN:
“Language itself is the vehicle of thought.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">28</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: In
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus </i>it is already stated
that:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “The
result of philosophy is not a number of ‘philosophical propositions,’ but to
make propositions clear.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">29</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: In
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophical Investigations</i> this
clarification of propositions is to be established on a broader
foundation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now he begins by
scrutinizing the propositions of everyday language in the light of his own
philosophical idea: complete clarity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Let us hear how he himself conceives of it:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “But
this simply means that the philosophical problems should <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">completely</i> disappear.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">30</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: It
is Wittgenstein’s conviction that we must bring philosophy to a standstill so
that it is no longer “plagued” by questions that call <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">philosophy itself</i> into question, and he believes that we will be
able to silence these questions when our language is functioning well and
meaningfully, when it lives and breathes in the course of its <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">use</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is only when language, which is a form of life, is taken out of use,
when it runs idle—and it does this, in his opinion, when it is employed
philosophically in the traditional sense—that problems arise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These problems must not be solved but rather
eliminated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Thus these
investigations move within the ambit of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>,
but they expand it through detailed investigations in every direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They abandon abstraction and provide
illustrative examples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Language is now
no longer termed a system of signs—although it obviously remains one—but rather
likened to an ancient city in virtue of its multifariousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And thus it may be regarded as:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “[A]
maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with
additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new
boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">31</span></span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And
as language is a labyrinth of paths, philosophy must take up the struggle
against the bewitchment of our understanding by the ruses of language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It must raze castles in the air and lay bare
the foundation of language; it must be like a kind of therapy, for
philosophical problems are illnesses that must be cured.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He demands not a solution but rather a cure.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Consequently
philosophy has a paradoxical task to carry out: the elimination of
philosophy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">DETRACTOR: And so exactly
like the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophical Investigations</i> effects a
certain very remarkable result.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Both
books would have us put an end to what we have been practicing as philosophy
for millennia and in the most varied forms—and therewith to install positivism
qua deliverer of a valid description of the world in the judge’s seat, but also
to throw positivism qua worldview and world-explaining philosophy onto the
scrap heap along with all the other philosophies seeking answers to the
questions of Being and existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this
recommendation seems to contain a crux, a crux consisting in the fact that
after this elimination or shutting-off of the problems that are described as
“existential matters” nowadays, these problems will stubbornly continue to
exist, for it is in the nature of human beings to ask questions and to see more
in reality than the positive and rational, which of course does not constitute
the whole of reality even in Wittgenstein’s own opinion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And there will be a good many of us who will
be dissatisfied with this admittedly irreproachable definition of the
distinction between the knowable and unknowable, of positive science and the
limits that crop up in a logical and ethical form in the metaphysical subject,
but that can no longer be spoken about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If
Wittgenstein may have also effectuated silence in a positive sense, perhaps he
has already made the positive acts visible in his own work, in that he
possessed the great virtues of a thinker—intellectual probity and reverence for
reality divested of the human understanding: he has bequeathed to us a
vacuum—the metaphysical realm emptied of all contents.</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: This is undoubtedly the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what you call a vacuum is ready to be refilled
by authentic beliefs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, there
is no longer any place for the struggle of the Western metaphysical systems,
for the struggle between various philosophical creeds each armed with logical
arguments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the fact that
Wittgenstein does not make the expected profession of Christianity should not
blind us to the essential character of the “limits,” which are not only limits
but also holes in the apparent, in the mystically or piously experienceable
that has an effect on our doings. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
confession has no place in his work, because a confession is not amenable to
utterance; if it were uttered it would be simultaneously recanted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, as passionately as Spinoza before
him, Wittgenstein wished to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">liberate God
from the stigma of addressability</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: We must seek the foundation of his attitude in
the historical situation in which Wittgenstein found himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His silence is most certainly construable as
a protest against the version of anti-rationalism specific to his age, against
its metaphysically polluted Occidental thought, in particular against the
German version thereof, which delighted in bewailing the loss of meaning and in
enjoining passive reflection, in forecasting the degeneration, transformation,
and ascension of the West—a stream of anti-intellectual thought mobilized
against the “dangerous” positive sciences and “unfettered” technology in order
to leave humankind languishing in a primitive intellectual state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And his silence is also construable as a
protest against this age’s tendency towards a naïve adulation of science and
progress, against the ignorance of the “total reality” that frequently infests
both the thought of the neopositivistic school that took his work as its
starting point and that of their fellow-scientific thinkers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A Viennese philosopher once called Wittgenstein Janus-faced,
and it is true that more than anyone else he recognized the perils of the indurating
intellectual antagonisms of his century; in his work he both endured and
overcame the conflict between rationalism and irrationalism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, he did not manage to come up with
a simple prescription for attaining the oft-longed-for synthesis, but he did
produce <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a</i> prescription, a
prescription for effecting a cure through a long course of therapy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">WITTGENSTEIN: “We feel that even if <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all possible </i>scientific questions be answered, the problems of life
have still not been touched at all. Of course there is then no question left,
and just this is the answer.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: small;">32</span></span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">THE END<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Source: </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ingeborg Bachmann, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Werke</span></i><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, edited by Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, and Clemens Münster (Munich: Piper, 1978), Vol. IV, pp. 103-127.</span></div>
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Bachmann’s editors report that this essay was
written in 1953 and that it was broadcast only once, on Bavarian Radio in
Munich on September 16, 1954.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (1).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With
the exception of my treatment of a single word, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sinn</i>, which I have rendered as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">meaning</i>
rather than as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sense</i>, because the
former sounds much more idiomatic in the context of Bachmann’s own use of the
word, all quotations of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tractatus</i>
are taken verbatim from C. K. Ogden’s translation except when Bachmann has
taken liberties with the text, in which cases I have approximated her
alterations.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid. (1.1)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid. (1.11)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Trial”: not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Prozess</i>,
as in the title of Kafka’s novel, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Verhandlung</i>.
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid., preface, second paragraph.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid. (6.3)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid. (5.61)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid. (5.61)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.
(6.432) and (6.44)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid. (7)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">12.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid. (6.4312)
and (6.41).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The romanization of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">how </i>is either Bachmann’s or her
editors’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">13.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.
(6.421)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">14.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.
(6.4312).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Can </i>is Bachmann’s addition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">15.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.
(6.432).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">For</i> in the first sentence and italics in the second are Bachmann’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">16.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.
(6.432).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">17.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid. (6.522)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">18.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.
(6.41).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bachmann’s only translatable
change is the substitution of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">world </i>(<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Welt</i>) for the pronoun unambiguously
referring to it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">19.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.
(6.52)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">20.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.
(6.521)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">21.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.
(6.53 and 6.54)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">22.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Pascal, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pensées</i>,
second (1670) edition, Chapter V., par. 1. Translation mine from the original
French.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">23.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Tractatus</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (7)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">24.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Philosophical Investigations</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophischen Untersuchungen</i>],
preface, par. 4.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Punctuation aside, all quotations
of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Philosophical Investigations</i> are
taken verbatim from G.E.M. Anscombe’s translation.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">25.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid., preface,
final paragraphs (8 and 9)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">26.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.,
Part II, ch. xi.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">27.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid.,
Part II, ch. xi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The exclamation point
is Bachmann’s. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">28.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid., Part I (329)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">29.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Tractatus</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (4.112)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">30.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Philosophical Investigations</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">, Part I
(133)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">31.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ibid., Part
I (18)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">32.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Tractatus</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (6.52)</span></div>
<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-83206279954112548022019-02-01T19:10:00.001-05:002019-02-04T18:36:44.749-05:00A Translation of Ein Jahr mit Thomas Bernhard by Karl Ignaz Hennetmair. Part I: January.<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: large;">A Year with Thomas Bernhard: The Sealed 1972 Diary</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><br /></b></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b><i>Preface</i><o:p></o:p></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At a certain point in his long friendship with Thomas
Bernhard, the real estate agent Karl Ignaz Hennetmair dared to do something
about which, as he remarks in his own notes, “Thomas” must have had some
inkling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the course of an entire
year—from January 1, 1972 to January 1, 1973—Hennetmair recorded a series of
diary entries on his conversations, joint ramblings, and general experiences
with Bernhard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These entries tended to
center on topics that Bernhard could not discuss as unceremoniously with anybody
but him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As a sales clerk, commercial traveler, pig-dealer, and,
finally, real estate agent, Karl Ignaz Hennetmair accumulated experiences
involving interactions with other people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fact that he had a good memory, that he was always openly receptive
of the “real world,” that he was capable of transmitting a faithful rendition
what he had learned, together with his inexhaustible energy, set him apart from
the undifferentiated mass of other neighbors in Thomas Bernhard’s eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who has ever accompanied Karl Ignaz
Hennetmair in his stalking of Thomas Bernhard through that patch of countryside
that serves as the setting of the diary and also, prevailingly, of so many of
Bernhard’s works, acquires a lasting impression from the sheer energy of this
human prehistoric rock—as the headlines have already dubbed him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hennetmair is none too squeamish in pursuing
his goals, but Thomas Bernhard is more than a match for him in this respect, as
we may learn from a perusal of the diary. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Karl Karl Ignaz Hennetmair brokered the purchase of all three
of the houses that Bernhard owned in Upper Austria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First came the large square
courtyard-enclosing farmhouse in the township of Ohlsdorf in Traunviertel, then
the so-called Krucka, his workhouse, as he calls it in the diary, and finally a
house in Ottnang, the so-called Hansbäun or Haunspäun, or, in standard German,
Hans-Paul. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The inspection, brokering,
and sale of the Haunspäun, together with the initial phase of its interior
redecoration, all fall within the temporal scope of the diary and are described
therein in meticulous detail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
significance of the houses, of their renovation, which Bernhard undertook
personally, subsequently manifests itself in Bernhard’s work.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The most conspicuous feature of this diary is its scrupulously
precise reportage, along with its stylistic self-confidence and its
unprecedentedly consistent and copious form of expression.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here nothing is embellished or pared away;
rather, “reality” [Realität] is allowed to say its piece.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Karl Ignaz Hennetmair was also a past master
of the linguistic version of “real-estate agency” [Realitätsvermittlung].<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span> We learn—as Bernhard “bashes out” a
typewritten letter on financial matters to his publisher Unseld—why the author
exclusively uses certain older models of typewriter. We follow along as after
the removal of his play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ignoramus and
the Madman</i> from the schedule of the Salzburg Festival, Bernhard writes a
telegram in which he evinces solidarity with Claus Peymann and the actors and
takes potshots at Josef Kaut. The telegram has already been published in
newspapers, at least in abridged form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But in his Bernhard archive, Hennetmair has preserved Bernhard’s
handwritten draft as well as well as the post office-ready final text.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bernhard sat down with Hennetmaier in a beer
garden, asked for paper and a ballpoint pen, and gave free rein to his
resentment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ever “prepared to make a
deal,” Hennetmair always had such writing utensils ready to hand so that he
could obtain signatures on preliminary contracts for the sale and purchase of
lots and houses whenever he needed to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Even the difficulties the two men encountered in handing the telegram
over at the Eugendorf post office are recorded in precise detail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Along the way, we learn how long, or rather
how short, a telegram must be, especially when it is intended for immediate
transmission.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hennetmair’s advice to go
to the main post office in Salzburg is finally accepted by Bernhard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even their conversation with the counter
clerk there is included in the notes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>These are seemingly trivial irrelevancies—but even here, Hennetmair is
never boring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A typical day in Bernhard’s life includes not only having
dinner with Claus Peymann but also conversing with Hennetmair about Bernhard’s
grandfather’s wife, who let him go an entire week without saying a word to her
and didn’t even ask him what the reason was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hennetmair was even at his service during the installation of a
television at the “Krucka” and also recorded this in his diary.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Somebody is writing about a writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this “somebody” is not himself a
writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What will we initially expect
from such a diary?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bits of information,
private dirt; we may expect any number of things, but we are surprised when the
author of this diary—amid all imperfections that are not also occasioned by
lack of time—gives expression to his own literary talent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incidentally, in Hennetmair’s diary we read
that Bernhard claims to be somebody who writes rather than a writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this diary we also get to know Karl Ignaz
Hennetmair as somebody who writes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be
sure, it was the master who (unwittingly?) inspired him to take up the
pen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The enthusiasm that Hennetmair
musters for many of Bernhard’s formulations and letters betrays his sensuous
engagement with linguistic performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At the beginning of the diary he is vexed by the headaches attending the
delivery of a faithful rendition: “In the course of the walk, Thomas only made
a few good remarks ‘aloud.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were so
nicely and neatly formulated that afterwards I said to my wife: I didn’t manage
to make a mental note of them, and so everything he said has gone down the
drain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Because when I can’t recall it word for word, the
effect of the original statement isn’t there” (January 29, 1972).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So Hennetmair “knows” that the form of the
statements does not leave their content untouched. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That he is a true master of form is shown by
an “arboreal blueprint.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas Bernhard
showed his friend Hennetmair the spot uphill from the “Krucka” at which he had accidentally
injured himself with a chainsaw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The tree that had caused the accident, which stood on a slope as
steep as a church roof, had been snapped in two by a storm so that its top half
was lying athwart our path and pointing downhill, so that from root to top the trunk of the beech, which was over twenty meters tall but slender, described a semicircle” (January 15, 1972).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This depiction betrays a talent for
description. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a delight in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that Bernhard felt no pain
immediately after the accident because he was in shock gives Hennetmair an
excuse to “tack on” a few anecdotes about his war experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bernhard valued these narratives, as is
evident in Hennetmair’s reference to Bernhard’s formidable memory in the
following passage: “</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When we’re on the road in the car, traveling between Linz, Steyr, and
Kirchdorf, Thomas reminds me at many places along the way that I told him this
or that story about my wartime experiences years or months earlier at this
precise stretch of the drive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because as
a little schoolboy he was attacked by airplanes with bombs and aircraft cannon
and lived through the bombing of Traunstein and Salzburg, it’s worthwhile
talking about wartime experiences with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because if a person hasn’t lived through all that himself, how is can he
possibly come even close to forming a picture of it?” (January 29, 1972)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here Karl Ignaz Hennetmair is essentially putting
forward an authorial creed to the effect that one must tell a story in such a
way that the listener or reader can form a picture of what is happening and
thereby be kept in the picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it
would be quite wrong to term Hennetmair an autodidact; he felt no calling to
become a writer; he took up writing only once, when an occasion for doing so
presented itself, and afterwards he was done with it for good.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But
already at the very beginning of the diary, the first sentence is well-turned and
displays Hennetmair’s stylistic flair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
fact that somebody has found it worth mentioning, and even printing in a
newspaper, that Thomas Bernhard has large pores in his nose is a good enough
reason for recording those of Karl Ignaz Hennetmair’s conversations and
encounters with Thomas Bernhard that have had a fundamental influence on the
life of both men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hennetmair
is aware of the danger of being caught in the act by Bernhard—often enough “Thomas”
paid him unexpected visits at his house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He would either be fleeing from an unwelcome forthcoming visit or, quite
often, hoping to set out on a lengthy walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Karl Ignaz Hennetmair captured all of this.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A truly glorious
moment in Hennetmair’s remarks best illustrates what he may have found
particularly fascinating about Bernhard.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is also one of those rare moments in which Hennetmair, in
speaking about the world of literature, managed to wrest some form of
acknowledgment from Bernhard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hennetmair’s strength and significance as a “real-estate agent” is never
more eloquently expressed than in his criticism of those “speechless artists”
who lack material to engage with: “</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Just then it occurs to me that in
Vienna, writers are always bellyaching to Thomas that they have no material to
write about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That strikes me as utterly
pathetic. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were then walking directly
along the barbed wire fence of a field, and I said to Thomas: When I look at a
wire, that wire on its own would surely give me enough material for a book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pages and pages could be written starting
from its being taken from the ore to when it’s being made into barbed wire, in
connection with the factory and the people who work there, to the point when
it’s being used as a pasture fence here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Because everything’s contained in that, everything from agriculture to
the livestock dealer to the sausage factory that receives this livestock from
the field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If somebody says he hasn’t
got any material, then he can never be a writer, because the first bit of
material he senses is the very air he breathes, and surely somebody could spend
a lifetime writing about that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
the air we breathe has already passed through the lungs of so many people and
farm animals; all the nations before us have already inhaled and exhaled it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Somebody could tell a story about the air
we’re breathing here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You yourself take
walks for the air and need the air in order to come up with good ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A writer has simply got to make things up out
of thin air, and everybody’s got air and it doesn’t cost anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thomas heard me out without saying anything, which
in his case is much closer to an expression of assent than when he actually
says something in reply” (January 30, 1972).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This simple and clear de-scription of the most subtle of all
elements—which was traditionally employed as a basic constructive ingredient
and also as a metaphor for the mind—as a primary source of material and a
universal element immediately accessible to everyone, as a vital principle that
animates individuals and at the same time has a decisive influence on all of
history thanks to its exchange between “breathers,” is an achievement that must
be regarded as one of the diary’s high points.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hennetmair was an expert at maintaining contact with the
material world and with people who take in, assimilate, material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The first-person narrator of Bernhard’s
novella <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yes</i>, a researcher of
“antibodies” suffering from lack of contact with other people, has expressly
sought out and come to marvel at the contact he has established with the real-estate agent [<i>Realitätenvermittler</i>] Moritz.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In this character, Moritz, Bernhard fashioned a tribute to Hennetmair. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hennetmair’s fraternization with Bernhard took place over an
entire decade and lasted so long not least because the two of them moved in
very different circles and therefore never trod on each other’s “turf.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hennetmair was Bernhard’s man Friday, who
over time came more and more to pursue his own goals within the context of his
friendship with Bernhard, something that also finds expression in the diary in
its present state.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He collected every
newspaper article, photographs, the original or a copy of every telegraph to or
from Bernhard—everything having to do with Bernhard, provided he could get hold
of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, he even had his mother
mend the trousers cut up by Bernhard’s chainsaw—an accurate reconstruction of
the accident can be gleaned from the diary—so that he could take possession of
the discarded scraps of fabric.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his
eyes, the name Bernhard transformed everything material.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He knew that someday his collection would be
interesting, valuable, lucrative.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">To be sure, Hennetmair’s diary consists of far more than this
auction house-appraiser’s version of appreciation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By and large, Hennetmair’s accounts and
anecdotes have a title to literary merit that makes this “diary” a delight to
read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In retrospect, Bernhard’s search
for and discovery of a “reality agent” [<i>Realitätenvermittler</i>], a link to
reality, in Hennetmair, becomes intelligible via diary entries in which
Bernhard and Hennetmeir’s worldviews come to light.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yes</i>, the scientist-narrator
swears that despite his lack of education, Moritz the real estate agent is
possessed of an exceptionally high degree of intelligence and an
extraordinarily keen sense of hearing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
the course of the diary it transpires that Bernhard would often accompany
Hennetmeir on his business excursions—this among other reasons in order to
listen to Hennetmair from a certain distance during the negotiation of deals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yes</i>
Bernhard describes the same kind of situation involving the real estate agent
and the scientist as follows: “Such excursions, in which he always became
acquainted with new examples of human baseness and viciousness and in which I
had quite often participated, mainly in order to get away from my work and away
from my house, from my imprisonment in work and existence, but also, like him,
to meet new people and new characters and abominations, had always
simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated him.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In his notes Hennetmair betrays how exhausted he finds himself
after strenuous discussions with Thomas Bernhard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Bernhard has not failed to notice that
Hennetmair has accepted the challenge.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hennetmair, alias Moritz, has immortalized not only Bernhard but
also himself in his daily notebook entries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bernhard must have known this and encouraged it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In these notes Hennetmair writes that at this
time Bernhard constantly discussed his mail with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But eventually Thomas and Karl’s friendship
came to an end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bernhard broke off his
friendship with Hennetmair via erroneous accusations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a sanctuary and refuge, Hennetmair’s house
was exposed to the risk of betrayal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
all that, in hindsight it must be said that in the end Bernhard betrayed
Hennetmair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hennetmair sums up the end
of a friendship lasting more than ten years in his own unique way: “Just as
Mozart’s letters to his girl cousin can’t tarnish Mozart’s music, Bernhard’s
execrableness and baseness can’t detract a jot from his world-famous body of
work.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hennetmair’s reference to Mozart’s letters to his cousin was
not made by chance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However farfetched
the comparison may be, at the following moment, the diarist’s sense of humor comes
very close to Mozart’s in those letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When the August 4, 1972 performance of Bernhard’s play <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Ignoramus and the Madman</i> at the
Salzburg Festival was canceled, a certain lady asked Hennetmair who had spoken
directly to the expectant audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whereupon Hennetmair replied: “The guy heading up the stairs was Thomas
Bernhard, and the guy with the chalkboard was the director, Peymann, and the
banana tree was standing there too, and you can guess what happened next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She gaped at me in horror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I said: You’ve got no sense of
humor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only person who’s got a sense
of humor is the author, who deserves to have his job-description started with
an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">S</i> today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What do you mean by that? asked the
lady.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Well, you see, when you put an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">S</i> in front of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">author</i> it becomes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sauthor</i>
[as a prefix, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sau</i>, literally meaning <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sow</i>, has roughly the same negatively
intensifying overtones as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sodding</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fucking</i> in present-day English (DR)].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then she looked even more horrified, and I
stepped outside via the actors’ entrance.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">There is a back-story to Hennetmair’s assertion that “only”
the author had a sense of humor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
diary is full of episodes in which Thomas Bernhard has the entire Hennetmair
family literally in stitches, from which the individual “participants” manage
to “rescue themselves” only by leaving the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone seeking an acquaintance with Thomas
Bernhard’s sense of humor will find no better book to introduce it to him than
this one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But Bernhard was only too willing to exploit the Hennetmairs’
hospitality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He got used to being
treated to his favorite dishes by Mrs. Hennetmair, a privilege that was
otherwise exclusively extended to family members.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the entry for April 13, 1972, we read that
on noticing that Hennetmair was about to head back home, Thomas Bernhard asked
him if he could tag along with him, because “he just couldn’t stand to be alone
tonight.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yes</i>, the narrator describes Moritz the real-estate agent as a
lifesaver who has often liberated him from a nightmare, from his imprisonment
in work and existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An already-famous
sentence in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yes </i>reads: “We have to be
able to go see someone like Moritz and to get what we need to say off our
chest.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in this novel the narrator
also talks about what the real-estate agent was apparently unable to offer him:
“I told Moritz that what interested me most about the Persian woman, and more
than any such quality had interested me recently, I pointedly did not say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in recent years</i> but rather <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">recently</i>, was her sensibility, her
undoubtedly high degree of cultural attainment.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this point, the narrator has conversed
with this Persian woman about, for example, Schumann and Schopenhauer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the diary we are also briefly introduced
to the woman on whom the character of the Persian woman was modeled.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">What is missing from the diary—and this missing something is
indeed a complete Whole—is hinted at by the narrator in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yes</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is “what I had
concealed throughout my entire decade-old acquaintanceship with Moritz, what I
had indeed been taking ever greater pains to hide from him over the course of
that entire period, to hide from him with mathematical subtlety and conceal
from his gaze with pitiless disregard for myself, in order to make sure that
he, Moritz, did not obtain a scintilla of insight into my existence…” Thus does
the narrator speak about “the person I was probably closest to in quite a
literal sense at that time,” about his “lifesaver,” whose house was a refuge
for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The narrator suffering from lack
of human contact owes his very existence to the real-estate agent Moritz, as he
himself admits; this debt “…cannot be overstated and must be mentioned here.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hennetmair made sure that Bernhard never lost a firm footing
on terra firma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hennetmair’s “groundedness”
was less keenly appreciated by Bernhard’s other acquaintances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, jealousy is also in play in this
friendship, as “Thomas” himself makes clear in the last entries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On June 27, 1972, Hennetmair parenthetically
writes: “Basically I’m glad…that I’ve never been present at gatherings of these
circles, because nothing good would come of that and Thomas would lose his
sanctuary…at my place…”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Apart from the fact that Hennetmair was “only” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">basically</i> glad to be excluded from
certain circles, he hits the bullseye in mentioning the danger of the loss of
the sanctuary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bernhard once said to
Hennetmair: “You’re the only person who I can talk to in a normal way” (August
8, 1972).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In generally, talking to
Bernhard about his literary work must have been a touchy matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Hennetmair asked Thomas Bernhard if his
current writing project was gaining momentum, the latter replied: “I don’t talk
about such things” (May 31, 1972).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hennetmair noticed his “blunder” immediately, and apropos of it writes:
“With such a direct question to Thomas I managed to top off my well.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Otherwise Hennetmair was evidently quite
aware of the fact that it was impossible to fetch water directly from this
“well.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our natural scientist in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yes</i> shows that he knows his way around
Moritz the real-estate agent’s modus operandi when in a decisive situation he avers:
“…by dexterously steering our conversation, Moritz had succeeded in doing what
he had intended to do, namely, in getting me away from myself, in other words,
maneuvering me out of my lack of all means of escape…”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Getting away from oneself and getting back to oneself via an
indirect path, via one’s alter ego, which is to say via another person, is a version
of salvation that owes nothing to the identity principle of formal logic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lack of human contact, illness, was the
formal-logical identity (a=a) that had taken possession of our natural
scientist (perhaps in conformity with his method?) in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yes</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his diary,
Hennetmair says to Bernhard, “Of course, the last thing you want to be is a
‘member’ of any society.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But a
real-estate agent’s very livelihood depends on his making contact with
people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that a (commercial)
exchange must never be built up to in a crude, excessively straightforward
manner was a lesson he taught Bernhard fairly often.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This can be gleaned from the diary and from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yes</i>: “And I have never in my life
learned more about people than during these reconnaissance excursions with
Mortiz…”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hennetmair himself talks about changing the subject of
conversations with Hede Stavianicek (Bernhard’s “Lebensmensch”) in order to
reduce the tension between Hede and Thomas (December 27, 1972).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Hennetmair once again committed the
“blunder” of asking him how his writing was progressing, Bernhard very
earnestly declared: “That’s none of your business.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And after a brief pause, he said: “I need a
change of subject.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we also
indirectly learn a fair amount about Bernhard’s creative process; not to mention
the fact that his conversations with Hennetmair offer copious material to
anyone trying to understand Thomas Bernhard and his work.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Hennetmair writes that he could write down only about thirty
percent of his conversations with Thomas Bernhard, that he almost completely
stopped reading newspapers and listening to the news so that he could devote
more energy to this task; that either the conversations were too rich in
content to allow him to take everything in or there was not enough time to
write so much down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hennetmair did most
of his business work at weekends, so that it was on weekdays that he had the
most time for doing things in Thomas Bernhard’s company.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In our conversations with him, Hennetmair has admitted that
towards the end of the diary he was totally exhausted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That it had become impossible for him to
continue working on this project.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just
as it had become impossible to retie the knot of his friendship with Thomas
Bernhard a short while after he fell out with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hennetmair has told us that Bernhard himself
would have been disappointed in him if he had accepted Bernhard’s offer to bury
the hatchet with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no
turning back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But one thing remains: a
virtually inexhaustible Thomas Bernhard archive compiled by Karl Ignaz
Hennetmair, an archive whose centerpiece is constituted by his diary entries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only a very small portion of his notes and
materials has been made public so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once we have attained a certain greater degree of historical distance,
it will obviously be even easier to name names.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The reader will then not only get closer to “Thomas” with the help of
the real-estate agent Karl Ignaz Hennetmair, but also get to know a highly
gifted agent of both real estate and reality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Johannes
Berchtold</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBJr9VFwhO8Jh3EEHcDCkOLfXDoMKgrHNhbTGTky1As2xMHLaXkSIjcSHX8fCwZvBpzGk8Z17c-kCpi3tpr18-Vxlm5tYvl9uzPbmJ17jcs3kYMDzvXCzSD0rWZ0sLRXXsp3Q_7Q/s1600/Bernhard+%2526+Hennetmair.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="550" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBJr9VFwhO8Jh3EEHcDCkOLfXDoMKgrHNhbTGTky1As2xMHLaXkSIjcSHX8fCwZvBpzGk8Z17c-kCpi3tpr18-Vxlm5tYvl9uzPbmJ17jcs3kYMDzvXCzSD0rWZ0sLRXXsp3Q_7Q/s1600/Bernhard+%2526+Hennetmair.PNG" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas
Bernhard and Karl Ignaz Hennetmair, united in friendship for a decade</span></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>The
Sealed 1972 Diary</b><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 1, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Today, after discussing Andreas Müller’s article in the <i>Münchner Abendzeitung </i>[Mein Körper, mein
Kopf und sonst nichts” (“My Body, My Mind, and Nothing Else”)] with Thomas and
noting that Müller even found it worth mentioning that Thomas had large pores in
his nose, I resolved from here on out to take notes on all my meetings with
Thomas Bernhard and to write up our conversations as accurately as possible. Yesterday, the last day of the year, Thomas
visited me three times, and I invited him to have lunch with me. At 10 a.m. we set out on the walk from his
house in Nathal to Weinberg via Ohlsorf, the forester’s lodge, the grotto, and
Hildprechting, with the intention of arriving for lunch at my house in Weinberg
at 11:30. As we’d hoofed it as far as
Eybl’s house in no time flat, we arrived at my house by 11:15 and from my place
went to Nathal, because my car was parked there and Thomas and I wanted to have
our cars with us after lunch. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Even though Thomas got home from the New Year’s Eve party at
Pabst’s in Laakirchen at 4 a.m., he was much spryer than usual. Thomas had spent New Year’s Eve with Mr. and
Mrs. O’Donell and Hufnagl the architect.
I went to bed at 3:15 and knew that Thomas wasn’t at home yet because if
he had been I would have seen him pulling in from my window facing Nathal. He certainly would have honked his horn and
would still have popped up to see me or I would have popped down to see
him. Because it made me mad that he’d be
getting home so late on account of our scheduled 10 a.m. walk, when I went to
bed I left the light on in my room, so that he’d think I was still up, which
was meant to make him mad. In actual
fact, afterwards Thomas told me he’d still been up at four, that he’d honked
but I hadn’t responded. When I told him
I’d been fooling him, he said reproachfully: you’re such a stinking imbecile.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas on the sight of Ohlsdorf deserted at 10:30 a.m. on New
Year’s Day: all the doors are locked, the windows shut; they’re still
“wallowing”; the streets are deserted, and just as they’re beginning the New Year
by wallowing they’ll go on wallowing the rest of the year. Here and there this year another execrable
house is being built; the people who live here are completely lacking in taste
and repulsive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>MY BODY, MY MIND, AND NOTHING ELSE<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>…It’s impossible to have a normal sort of interview with
Bernhard. He has no telephone, hardly
answers any letters, resents being photographed, rarely speaks around other
people…Agi, Baroness Marie Agnes von Handl, says to me on the telephone: “Fine;
I’ll do it.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><i>We arrive unannounced. Agi:
“First he’ll probably just talk bilge.
He’s always talking bilge.”
Bernhard’s bright yellow VW sticks out like a sore thumb, a foreign body. The farmhouse, which is quadrangular like a
fortress, looks newly renovated: clean, from the outside almost sterile. The cowshed is empty. Agi pounds on the door with her fist. Absolute silence within. “Thomas, open up!” Finally we hear shuffling
feet. She: “I’ve got somebody with me.” He:
“But you know I never want to deal with that.”
Via a dark, austere vestibule, followed by the sparsely furnished living
room, in which a misplaced ironing board is standing, we enter the “reception
chamber.” Three hard, high-backed
armchairs, a fireplace without a fire, on the wall a colorful primitivist oil
painting, wood shavings, a couple of books.
It’s freezing cold, the house hasn’t been heated. Smoking is prohibited. Dusk sets in.
Bernhard lets the room stay dark.
He looks ill. Thin hair. His nose is full of visible pores. Narrow, mistrustful eyes. He starts talking out of the blue, makes fun
of Agi, yammers away, ridicules her, pours scorn on her ironically. Aggression (what Agi called “bilge”) is his
form of self-protection. Agi mentions
her son. Bernhard: “Drastic measures
should be taken to keep so many children from coming into the world. Because everyone’s always complaining there
are too many of them, and yet it still keeps being encouraged. First people have children, and then they
can’t stop talking about what a headache they are. People who have children should all have
their ears lopped off.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">(Andreas Müller, <i>Münchner
Abendzeitung</i>, 12.28.1971)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We talked about an article in the <i>Münchner Abendzeitung</i> of 12.28.
He has already received a letter from Agi since then. She didn’t comprehend a thing, didn’t want to
understand anything, didn’t have a clue, etc.
But he was through with her.
Yesterday at the Café Brandl she hesitantly stopped by his table and
very sheepishly and dopily asked: May I? Then she kept standing there biding
her time like a total dope and I said: well, make up your mind. Then she sat down and said I had to forget
that. But you can’t make somebody forget
something; there’s no such thing as forgetting.
What’s happened has happened, but of course you can’t forget anything
whatsoever even if somebody tells you to; it just simply isn’t possible to
forget something. There’s just no such
thing as forgetting. As we were walking
Agi said: when will we see each other again?
I said: perhaps when the wheat’s billowing. Agi was born Baroness Maria Agnes von Handl
of Castle Almegg. Thomas can’t recall
having said anything about people “having their ears lopped off.” He said he had perhaps said something
similar. We both thought it was
possible that the reporter Andreas Müller had made “ears” out of it just as he
had made Agi into a widow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As we’re eating our turkey lunch—my wife, my son Karl with his
wife and their six-month-old baby, my daughter, her fiancé “Stutz,” my daughter
Reinhild and son Wolfi are all there—I threaten to “lop off the ears” of my
offspring. We’re in a good mood and our
appetite is good and hearty too after our walk.
At 12:15 we sit down upstairs to watch some television: the New Year’s
concert. The dancers are annoying,
Thomas says; they only distract you from the nice concert; only the orchestra
should be shown; the dances are pure kitsch, crap. But I’m still going to write the ballet. The man who’s going to do that, Aurel von
Milloss, is marvelous; he has a high regard for my books; he likes people like
me. Because I know who I’m writing for,
I can adapt myself to him and he can adapt himself to me. You know that’s the only way anything good
comes about. He, Aurel von Milloss, has
been begging me to write the ballet for his opera.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas sings the praises of coffee and Linzer torte. He feels fantastic; if he didn’t he wouldn’t
still be watching the New Year’s jumping competition with me. In the second heat Thomas wishes a crosswind
or a gust of wind on the rider in the lead, Kasaya, so that Mörk can win. At 3:00 Thomas gets up and says now I’ve got
to leave, I’m already going to get there too late. I agreed to meet O’Donell and Hufnagl at the
Brandl at 3:00. We also talked about the premiere at the Salzburg Festival, but
hardly anything new was said, and I’ll give an account of previous conversations
about this later on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Oh, and here’s the most important thing: on Sunday, 1/2,
meaning tomorrow, he’s expecting Ilse Aichinger with her husband [Clemens] Eich
and their son. To [Harry] Buckwitz’s
displeasure he brought the son to dinner with them after the premiere of his <i>Boris </i>so such a young person could see
how horrible something like that is.
Most of the time they imagine it differently. Besides, I always like joining in that sort
of thing to spite people, and because the lad was so nice, I invited his mother
Ilse Aichinger and him to visit me. They
sent me a telegram: “Should we come at 2 or 3 in the afternoon?” I wired back: “At 2.” Because of course at 3 Schmied is coming (Dr.
Wieland Schmied). Yes, etc., but I’ve
had enough now; I keep remembering more things to write about, but I’m done for
today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 2, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas comes at 8:15 in the evening. We sit and watch television; <i>Stars in der Manege</i> [<i>Circus of the Stars</i>] is on. He says it isn’t interesting, because if
anything goes wrong, you don’t see it, because they edit it out. I couldn’t come any earlier because Aichinger
was still visiting with me. I’m a bit
tipsy; we drank at least ten liters of cider.
It was splendid, very nice, marvelous, ha ha ha ha, he sang and kept
making fun of the TV show. I waited for
the Aichingers starting at 2; they didn’t show up until 4. Unfortunately the Aichengers themselves had
visitors before they left to see me.
Then they decided that Eich, the husband, would stay at home to
entertain the visitors, and that Ilse would make the trip. Because Ilse can’t drive, they had to call
for a cab. Her mother, her son, and
three girls came with her. The driver of
the cab was a girl, a Turk, a woman. It
was marvelously merry; I had to fetch cider from the cellar three times. Three liters go down nicely; we must have
drunk ten liters. It was obviously
starting to have an effect on them long before they left. It was marvelous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Me: at some point you lot must have talked about either their
work or yours (by work I naturally meant their activity as writers, which isn’t
always the case when we discuss work).
But they didn’t at all, not a jot.
I’ll stay till the news at 10:30; maybe somebody’s died, Thomas
said. Just then Thomas gave me a
meaningful look. He often says this, and
he knows we’re often thinking the same thing at the same time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Years ago we were sitting in front of the tube when the news
came that [Heimito von] Doderer had died.
As if he’d just been given an electric shock, Thomas leapt up from his
chair, clapped his hands, and delightedly exclaimed: Heimito von Doderer is
dead. When I asked him why he was so
glad, he said: well, you see, in Austria, Doderer was the top-ranked horse, and
as long as he was still alive, nobody else could become somebody, nobody could
make any headway. Now racecourse is wide
open; now I’m coming. But they won’t get
me the way they got Doderer. So I’m not
going to pretend to be a Doderer for them, because if you let yourself be seen
at every official function, you get worn out, distracted, irritated. It goes to your head; you rest on your
laurels and can’t achieve anything anymore or at least not anything that’s
great, that’s any good. Nobody criticizes
you very much anymore either; everybody just celebrates you and makes a phony
show of worshiping you for every little piece of rubbish. Of course that’s the ruin of people. They exploit it and don’t produce anything
good anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And a few weeks later Thomas and I visited Wieland Schmied,
whom I regard as Thomas’s Bernhard’s true, genuine, and only friend; I
deliberately told him about how Thomas had jumped for joy that night. Despite the closeness of his friendship with
Schmied, Thomas turned red in the face; he was weakened and felt embarrassed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Incidentally, Wieland Schmied has said that he’ll be arriving
from Hannover tomorrow. Several times
Thomas says: Wieland is already sitting in the train. I say: he’s already sleeping. Yes, with a snorer in his compartment, he
says.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We agree that Thomas will come by my house at 7:30 tomorrow
morning and that the two of us will pick up Schmied at 8:00 at the train
station in Wels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I’ve gotten started on something really fine here. Thomas Bernhard left my house at 11:30 at
night; now it’s 1:00 a.m., and I didn’t manage to write all that much about
those two-and-a-half hours. But if I
don’t jot anything down, future Bernhard research will come to nothing. What’s more, I’m sure people will believe me,
because a couple of my children are bound to survive Bernhard and me and
corroborate every word I’ve written.
What’s more, Bernhard is such a rewarding “object” that you don’t need
to make anything up. It’s more likely that I won’t be able to get anywhere
close to describing everything, because when you talk with Bernhard for five
hours at a stretch as I did on January 1, you can’t even do justice to the most
interesting bits. On the first we talked
about the fact that the eighth year of our acquaintanceship was beginning. We traded old stories about everything that
had happened in those eight years, and noted that apart from times when he was
away, hardly a day of those eight years had passed without our seeing each
other. Indeed, there were days when he
came to see me in the morning, afternoon, and evening. Today I’m sorry that I didn’t at least jot
down some catchy expressions. Even
though as far back as about four or five years ago he said to me: you have no
idea of how famous I am. And then I
said: I’ve got a very good idea of that.
But he said: no, in Austria they don’t write anything about me, but in
Germany, I’m really somebody. But I
said: I know that in the German newspapers they write about you as though
you’re the greatest living German-language writer. But does that mean I’ve got to address you as
“Sie” now? At most I’d manage to do that
by using it as a plural, because you’re a whole mob even on your own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So I’m going to try, whenever I have the time and it happens
to occur to me, to write about the past seven years as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 3, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas comes by at 7:30 in the morning. I ride with him in his yellow VW to Wels to
pick up Dr. Wieland Schmied. The train
is punctual, his welcome cordial. We
drive to my house in Weinberg and unload his luggage. Dr. Schmied will be staying with me. He wanted to spend three days at Bernhard’s,
but the latter can’t stand to have him around the house for very long. Schmied is planning to stay up late, until at
least 11 p.m. in company, usually by then he’s been “talked into a lather,” and
then writes letters until four in the morning.
Talked into a lather by analogy with a horse that’s been ridden into a
lather and then runs fastest. And this
is just what it was like from the 3<sup>rd</sup> to the 4<sup>th</sup>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 4, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When Thomas and I leave him at 10 p.m., he writes until four
a.m. and gets up at 10. He walks to
Thomas’s house in Nathal. When I get
there at two in the afternoon, Thomas is still driving away a load of gravel in
his tractor, and then they finally head out for lunch together.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At six in the evening we meet up again at my house to complain
to Steinmaurer the upholsterer in Vorchdorf about fading black suede
seat-covers on his chairs. Then we have dinner
at my house.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">As Dr. Schmied plans to write late at night again, Thomas goes
home by 9:00. At 9:30 I also try to
leave Schmied, but I can’t manage to get away.
At 10:00 I have an energetic go at it, but Dr. Schmied asks me for a few
more minutes. At 11:00 I can see he’s in
top form, and it’s just turning midnight when I finally leave him. Schmied works till 4:30 a.m. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 5, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas comes by at 10:00 a.m.
As Schmied is sleeping, he drives to Gmunden by himself. Schmied and Thomas and I are scheduled to
have lunch together at my house at 12:00.
At 11:30 Schmied comes from bed.
Naturally he has no appetite for lunch in a half an hour. We drive to my son’s house in Pinsdorf to
look at a heater and leave a message: if Thomas comes at 12:00, give him our
regards, and tell him not to bother waiting up for us to join him for
lunch. He would have gotten very angry
otherwise, because he loathes unpunctuality.
But if he can eat something in the meantime, he’ll have an easier time
forgiving us. After lunch we chat about
Germany, about its art and literature, until 2:00. The Germans live off nothing
but the Jews and the Austrians, Thomas says.
Afterwards to Lederau etc. with Schmied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 6:00 Thomas is waiting for us in Nathal. In Gmunden we saw Glöckler [traditional
illuminated Austrian New Year’s decorations (DR)] and lots of people. Despite this Thomas believes it won’t take
long to get a table for dinner in Gmunden.
As every place is packed, Dr. Schmied and Thomas drive to the guesthouse
in Reindlmühl. A Glöckler dance is
taking place there; they get some food right away; the two of them have such a
good time talking with the natives that they reach Attnang only just before the
departure of the train at 11:05.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Dr. Schmied is going to Venice to see Hundertwasser. Hundertwasser has been mad at Bernhard for
over ten years. Back then Bernhard was
annoyed at the fact that Hundertwasser was wearing a kaftan in the middle of
winter when he showed up in Sankt Veit to visit Schimed, who in turn was
visiting Bernhard. The three of them
spent a few days together, and over the course of them the book that Dr.
Schmied and Hundertwasser published and that practically ushered in
Hundertwasser’s success materialized. As
they were leaving a coffeehouse in Bischofshofen, Thomas held up Hundertwasser’s
kaftan for him, but the latter instead of quickly slipping into the coat that
was being proffered to him just kept chatting nonchalantly with Dr.
Schmied. Thomas remained frozen in his
stance, and when Hundertwasser was just about to take the kaftan from him Thomas
dropped it onto the floor and walked away without saying a word. They haven’t seen each other since.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 6, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At exactly 2:00 p.m. seven years ago today, Thomas Bernhard,
accompanied by his aunt (Mrs. Stavianicek), signed the deed of sale of his
farmhouse in Nathal. Every year since I
have invited Bernhard to lunch in celebration of this anniversary. As we have already preempted this feast by
having roast venison with Dr. Schmied yesterday, I wait for Thomas in the
evening. He comes at 6:00 and stays
until 10:00. He came without his car and
declines my offer of a ride back to his house.
He says he hasn’t been getting nearly enough exercise over the past few
days. Because of this he’s going to do
some work at the Krucka—this is the name of the house on the plot of land at
Grasberg 98 he bought on March 29, 1971—tomorrow.
I am enclosing a photocopy of the “Notice of Information” that I
initiated with Thomas. The original is
in my possession, because as soon as I realized that my lawyer would have had a
field day with this original, I gave him the carbon copy as a basis for drawing
up the main contract.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5IN5kTww-Kt-glIyKhMuCai4X-sxeOV50DCEhyLngiMrtMwFK_CmHsAz3tMvV656HkvcyYTNJvakl7y8PqjnXRx0O4XXnS1ZC-pWRCDuwE1udhjJcj7BjznHUwPH42s7EG5_AlA/s1600/Information.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="574" data-original-width="534" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5IN5kTww-Kt-glIyKhMuCai4X-sxeOV50DCEhyLngiMrtMwFK_CmHsAz3tMvV656HkvcyYTNJvakl7y8PqjnXRx0O4XXnS1ZC-pWRCDuwE1udhjJcj7BjznHUwPH42s7EG5_AlA/s1600/Information.PNG" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The “Notice
of Information” regarding the preliminary contract for the sale of Grasberg 98,
the so-called “Krucka,” concluded by Josef Schmid, horse-cart driver, and
Thomas Bernhard, farmer and literary classic <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 7, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 4:00 p.m. Thomas enters my house: now I’ve received a new
foot as a present, he says. I’ve come
straight from the hospital. I was quite
lucky in that my knee wasn’t caught, and it could have taken my entire foot
off. Please be so kind as to call Peter
(his brother Dr. Peter Fabjan, a physician in Wels) and ask him to come see me;
he’ll have to give me my third tetanus shot right away. It’s been a year or more since I stepped on
that rusty nail. Back then he gave me
two injections; he’ll have to bring the third one with him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In order to “test” him on how bad the injury is, I ask him if
he mightn’t like to have a small snack, as I know that at the Krucka he’s eaten
some pea soup at most. He gratefully
declined and asked for some tea. It was
served to him immediately, but before he could even finish the cup he started
getting pains, which kept getting stronger, so that he suddenly stood up and
said: it’s high time I left; now I can still drive over; a little later on I
won’t be able to anymore. In the meantime
he told me about how he’d been stitched up and how the accident had come to
happen.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I drive to the post office right away, phone Peter, and drive
to Thomas’s house. When he came to the
door he said: just a few minutes ago I thought it was you, but it was a police
patrol car. They wanted to take me to
hospital immediately; they said I’d have to be given the tetanus shot
immediately. Is Peter coming? Yes, at 8:00, I say. Well, I told the police that and didn’t go
with them. Peter knows what I’ve already
gotten, from a horse, a cow, or a sheep.
I don’t know; that’s why Peter has got to give me the “third one.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 8:00 Peter comes; the injection is given. In the meantime Thomas has stopped being able
to bend his left leg. Peter drives to
Gmunden to speak in person with the chief resident who stitched up the wound. He said that Thomas had watched the stitching
operation very closely and that he had been very brave.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 10:00 p.m. Peter and I leave Thomas. He still instructs me to bring a bottle of
milk,<i> Die Zeit</i>, the <i>Suddeutsche</i>,<i> </i>the <i>Salzburger Nachrichten</i>,
and <i>Die Presse</i> with me tomorrow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 8, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 9:00 a.m. I come with milk and newspapers to Thomas’s
house. He can walk only with great
effort and lies back down immediately. He
gives me a think little book about Grillparzer and the letter from Residenz
Publications that Schaffler had sent him with the book. The letter is dated 1/5/1972, and I say: did
you get this in the mail before your accident?
Yes, but that’s not it. Of course
I’m not a good match for Grillparzer, and he’s got nothing in common with me
either. Actually I shouldn’t be given
this prize at all, because I’m obviously the exact opposite of what Grillparzer
was. But take a look at the letter from
the Burgtheater that Klingenberg’s written to me. I look at the date, 1/5/1972, inspect the
envelope, and on it the return address is that of the Burgtheater, and
underneath it THE GENERAL MANAGER is printed very large. I say: Aha, they’re
already banking on a quick change of general managers. These envelopes can be used by any general
manager. He says: never mind that; read
it and see what he wants from me again already.
I tried just to skim the letter as I do most of the time, as Thomas sums
up the gist of the contents of his letters much better himself. So I read exactly this: Klingenberg is
writing that in honor of the 100<sup>th</sup> anniversary of Grillparzer’s
death he was organizing “a quite small celebration” at the Burgtheater. He’s expecting a small three-to-five-minute
speech from Bernhard. He pictures it
centering less on Grillparzer as a great writer than on his suffering on behalf
of Austria. I also notice that the letter isn’t signed by Klingenberg but by a
secretary and that there’s a postscript on the second page. I say right away that something like this is really
out of the question. He’s never spoken
about a writer before, not even at an award ceremony. For example when he received the Büchner Prize
he didn’t speak about Büchner, even though they sent him a book about all the Büchner
Prize recipients’ speeches and each of them spoke about Büchner. But to speak about Büchner would be just to
give one perspective out of lots of them and wouldn’t signify anything because
of course everybody sees everybody differently.
What’s more, from the very beginning, when Hans Rochelt warily asked
Bernhard if he would accept the Grillparzer Prize, we resolved not to give a
speech this time. (Afterwards, he keeps
promising me to give one.) But in the
light of this he wrote to Rochelt: “I’ve survived 15 years disregarding things,
and the Grillparzer Prize isn’t going to faze me either.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Since the minister of education [Theodor Piffl-Percevic] left
the auditorium during the awarding of the State Prize, of that
“misunderstanding,” as Thomas calls it, Thomas has had a real horror of award
ceremonies. Incidentally, he hastily
committed that speech to paper between breakfast at 9:00 a.m. and the tribute
at 11:00 and then still read it to his aunt, Hede Stavianicek. She advised him against using it, but he kept
the text as it was. He came to me the next day with this rumpled draft in order
to transcribe this speech onto better paper so that he could send it off for
publication in its entirety. Otherwise,
he said, people would quote isolated sentences that would give a different
picture. He also wanted to know what I
had to say about it. After whinging for
months that it was entirely up to the guy being listened to to point out weak
spots, etc., I was enraptured by the speech.
I commented in detail on the assertions contained in the speech and
declared to him that the education minister hadn’t been clever enough to take
it in. If he had understood the speech,
he certainly wouldn’t have walked out on it.
But of course his reaction in itself only reaffirmed that speech.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I recall the weeks leading up to the award ceremony for the
Büchner Prize. Thomas would visit me
every day at the building site of Steindl’s house, where I was helping out the
bricklayers. His hour and a half-to-two
hour daily walk went right past it. Even
though I was constantly busy hauling mortar or bricks, he would linger for
hours on end to talk and to vent about his problems. Something or other was stuck inside him;
something or other was weighing him down and preoccupying him. And one fine day it was ready. I was back at the building site; from quite a
ways off Thomas tossed a brick. I walked
over to him. I’ve got it now, he said;
you’ve got to read it to me right away.
This is the speech that I’m going to give after the laudation at the
Büchner Prize ceremony. Of course I know
it’s good; I also don’t want to make any more changes to it, but when I read it
aloud myself, I can’t make the necessary impression. I can’t hear what kind of effect it’s having
then. In the past Hede has always read
my speeches to me; sometimes Peter has as well, but he’s so…he doesn’t
understand me. He’ll probably still come
today, but I’d like you to read it to me; please read it. It consisted of ten to twelve typewritten
lines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We had discussed the idea of the speech being short some time
earlier. I told him that I was familiar
with the long speeches of his predecessors—of course he gave them to me to
read—and that everybody in the audience would be glad if his speech was short. Also, a lot can be said in a few sentences,
and if a speech is going to be good and powerful, it mustn’t be too long,
because if it is the listeners won’t keep their minds on it through to the end. His speeches demanded the strongest, the most
unwavering attention; without that there was bound to be another
“misunderstanding.” I silently skimmed
the lines so that I wouldn’t stumble over any of the punctuation right away,
and then I read them out. Thomas almost
danced for joy and said: that’s how I wanted the speech to sound. It’s good.
You know, without a speech the whole thing’s a no-go, but this one is
short and it’s good enough; please read it again. After I had finished, he said that as the day
of the ceremony got closer, he was less and less able to concentrate. Yesterday it suddenly popped into his head as
he was taking his walk. This was why
yesterday as he was passing by my house he dashed in and went straight to my
wife so that he could jot down some notes, because by the time he’d gotten home
he already would have forgotten it again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Returning to the subject of Klingenberg’s letter, Thomas
finally says: of course now I’d have a perfectly good excuse for not doing it,
on account of my foot-injury. But
naturally no matter what I’m not going to make a speech.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Towards midday Thomas will cook himself a bit of milk soup; I
leave him and visit him again at 4:00. I
stay with him until 10:00. I had brought
four of his large kitchen knives freshly sharpened by his neighbor Strasser,
and during supper we used the knives extensively.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 9, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I had promised to visit Thomas sometime in the morning. Since I’ve been working on this journal here
since 8:00 a.m. and see that I’ll need to spend even more time on it, at 10:00
I drive to Thomas’s house. At first I was
planning to tell Thomas not to cook anything, that I would bring him some soup
at 12:00. But since he won’t mind my
taking him to my house for lunch either, he assents, and we agree that I’ll
pick him up at 12:00. In the meantime I
plan to write some more. As I’m leaving
I also tell him that my daughter my daughter Elfriede and Stiegler will also be
there at lunch. Then he says he’s sorry
but that he won’t be coming; that I’ll have to excuse him. He’s got nothing against my daughter, but he
absolutely refuses to be seen in this state.
He actually has got a very heavy limp.
I say, “Fine, I’ll bring you some soup at 12:30.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I punctually bring him the soup, a cutlet, and salad. I hand it to him at the front door so that I
won’t stick around, because I’ve still got too much to write. Still I quickly say: “I’ll visit you sometime
again today; I don’t want to commit to an exact time. I don’t know when I’ll be finished with the
work.” Now I am, and after a short
afternoon nap I’ll drive back over to Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 4:30 I’m at Thomas’s house.
He’s in a bad mood. I ask him if
he’s had visitors. He says, who’s going
to come here now? Well, on Saturdays or
Sundays you at least see O’Donell; he might stop by just to see what’s up. He won’t come, says Thomas; he doesn’t dare
come unless I explicitly invite him. Nobody
at all will come; nobody would dare to. I’m
glad; it’s fine with me. He continues to
be in a very bad mood.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Finally at 5:00 he switches on the radio for the news. Nothing like a proper conversation gets
started afterwards. I keep thinking of
how I can get out of there as soon as possible without his noticing that I’m
leaving on account of his bad mood. He
complains that I haven’t brought him the <i>Kronen
Zeitung</i>. Towards 6:30 I tell him
that at 9:30 tomorrow morning, Monday morning, I’ll take him to the hospital
for his re-bandaging in my son’s car, as I’ll be leaving mine at the garage for
an inspection at 7:00. Then I stand up,
say: so, I’m going to clean the fish now; bye.
Then he says: leave the gate open; I’ll close it myself so that I can
get a bit of fresh air, and he limps after me to the gate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 10, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At Thomas’s at 9:30 a.m. As he knows I arrive punctually, I
knock in a normal way. I hear him
walking; he doesn’t open the door. When
I keep hearing him off and on, it occurs to me that he isn’t going to react. I knock at our agreed rhythm; he opens the
door immediately and is friendly. I hand
him a letter. I received this letter
from the postman at 8:00. For several
years I’ve been authorized to take delivery of all his mail at the post office
or from the postman. This is either
because he’s often away or just because I get my mail at 8:30, and so he can
have his mail in his hands much earlier, because otherwise the postman would
deliver the mail to his house at 11:00, long after he’s left the house.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas opens the letter, and when he sees he’s got rather a
lot to read, he asks me to take a seat.
Then he tells me the letter is from a journalist, the actress [Elfriede]
Kuzmany’s sister. In it she asks him
whether he still remembers when he was invited to her house fifteen [sic] years
ago, in 1955, and consumed a huge pile of dinner rolls. Of course I remember it, he says. You see back then I was already pigging out
just as much as I always do at your house.
She also writes that I’m quite a celebrity now and that she’s very proud
that I graced her with a half an hour or so of chat on a patio ten years ago in
Salzburg. I haven’t seen her since then,
but whenever I hear anything about her sister, the actress, I also think of
her. Well, and now here she is writing
to me. Let’s go!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">After dropping off Thomas at the hospital in Gmunden, I pick
up seven newspapers for him. <i>Die Zeit, </i>the<i> Süddeutsche</i>, the <i>Oberösterreichische
Nachrichten</i>, <i>Salzburger Nachrichten</i>,
<i>Kurier</i>, <i>Frankfurter Allgemeine</i>, and <i>Die
Presse</i>. His wound is healing
well. The stitches can be removed next
Monday, January 17. He wants to go to
Vienna by the 15<sup>th</sup>. I ask:
why, is there also an event on January 15, Grillparzer’s birthday? He says: no, I didn’t even know that
Grillparzer was born on January 15. He
asks me if I know when Stifter was born.
I say I could only guess within a few decades, because I know when
Stifter had the Kefermarkt Altarpiece restored, and he must have been alive for
quite some time by then. He says: if
Stifter corresponded with Grillparzer, we can’t have a situation where that can
only be estimated in terms of decades. You
see, for many years Bernhard has been hoping to win the Stifter Prize. This is the one he’d be happiest to get, as
he’s a good match for Stifter. At 10:30
a.m. I drop Thomas back off at his house.
Then I go to Kastner, the editor of the <i>Salzkammergutzeitung</i>, with an article about Thomas’s accident: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Ohlsdorf—THOMAS
BERNHARD has an accident while working in the woods.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Early on
the morning of 1/7/1972, Thomas Bernhard, “a farmer at Nathal,” betook himself
to Hill 98, a plot of land he owns, in order to “clean out” the woods there. At 2:30 p.m. a tree fell and hit Thomas
Bernhard in the back. At the same time his
running chainsaw was knocked out of his hand and inflicted a gaping wound above
his left knee. He also suffered an
injury to his face. As Bernhard was as usual
doing this work by himself, he had to drag himself to his car. He drove to the hospital in Gmunden, where
his wounds were stitched and treated. Administration
of his course of treatment has since been taken over by his brother, a
physician in Wels.</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">On Saturday I had given this report to a worker who was
spending his Saturday off repairing his violin in the machine room and asked
him to give it to Mr. Kastner. But
nothing was to be added to it, and it was just to be printed in the “Community
News” section under Ohlsdorf. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">When I went to see Kastner he said to me right away: we’ve
already changed it a bit. We owe this to
our readers. We can’t print it the way
you expect us to. He phoned for the
proof sheet; one glance at it was enough to make me lose my temper. The article began, Thomas Bernhard, a State
Prize laureate and successful author etc.
I indignantly dismissed the article and said I wouldn’t read another
word of it. This is exactly the kind of
thing Bernhard won’t put up with, and that’s why I left out the word author
etc. There’s obviously nothing to this;
he’s actually already won seven prizes, so you could keep going in that vein,
and with that plus the accident you could fill seven whole pages. On the 21<sup>st</sup>, when he receives the
Grillparzer Prize, you can report whatever you like at length. So, at what time is it? 11 a.m.
Where? At the old
university. So then, we obviously should
have a man there then. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Finally I say: if the article can’t come out as it was, I’m
withdrawing it. I’m completely disowning
it, because I’ll risk screwing up my dealings with Bernhard for at least two
years if I’m responsible for an article that makes him mad. I also ask Kastner
whether he’s familiar with the article in the <i>Münchner Abendzeitung</i> of 12.28.1971. I point out the window at the OKA
[Oberösterreichische Kraftwereke AG {Upper Austrian Energy Corporation}] and
say: sitting in that building is Agi’s brother, Handl the baron, who can tell
you how a reporter managed to sneak into his house with his sister. You can write as much as you like about that. Sometime soon I’ll bring you details and the
reporter’s article. Then you can write
about that for weeks on end; nobody can keep you from doing that. Then you can cater
to your readers’ wishes, but please don’t tear into me with this article; don’t
print it, or print it just as it is. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Kastner promises me to do as I say and asks me to
give his regards to Bernhard. He knows
that I’ve been on friendly terms with Bernhard for years, and a few years ago,
when Thomas fell out with him on account of an article, he said to me: if you
ever have something about Bernhard that you want to have printed, I’ll print it
right away in my paper.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">But then he also tells me that he’ll write a note
to the effect that I insisted on having the article printed in this form so
that the readers will understand how the article came about. I say: you can do that and bid him a warm
goodbye.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At six in the evening I come to Thomas’s house and
tell him about my fight with Kastner the editor. I justify my move on the grounds that since
the police and the hospital were called in, an unacceptable article about his
accident could easily appear in the paper, and that I had just preferred to
take advantage of Mr. Kastner’s longstanding offer myself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">In the meantime the television, which was on,
began to stink, and Thomas said: any second now that machine’s going to explode
and cut me to bits. Then you can go
straight to Kastner; he’s still got to finish the article. He’ll be able write whatever he likes; he
(Thomas) will never be able to read it, because he’ll be dead. Or I could have a fat embolism; that would be
very nice, if in the newspaper it says: Thomas Bernhard, dead of a fat
embolism; then you can all write whatever you like. The wound, you see, is healing quite nicely;
a wound starts healing after just four to six hours. The healing is moving
along without any complications, everything’s fine, but a fat embolism could
still happen. It’ll look like this. He sticks out his tongue, lets his head slump
to one side, and rolls his eyes upward.
He does this for me once again and says with a smile, look, it’ll happen
that fast. I said, I know that’s not in
your future; Mrs. Jakob the palm reader in Linz told me that you can do
whatever you like; everything will turn out all right for you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I had asked Mrs. Jakob it would be good if, say,
he kept offending people, especially the people he owed his livelihood to. Then she said to me, the man’s got a sixth
sense; he can do whatever he likes. He
can’t be all that bad; everything will turn out just fine for him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I stayed with Thomas until the end of the
television broadcast with Böll, the president of the PEN Club, who was
interviewed about the Soviet writer Bokovsky [Vladimir Bukovsky, author of the
book <i>Dissent. A New Mental Illness in the Soviet Union</i>
( Munich, 1971)]. He didn’t like Böll;
at certain times he found him execrable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas used to use the word execrable much more
frequently, often several times an hour.
My mother had told me that she’d been highly displeased by his using
this term so often. So one day I asked him
if he’d ever really thought about where the term “execrable” actually came from,
since he used it so very often. When he
didn’t answer, I said: well, obviously it’s got to come from “excrement.” In the weeks that followed he employed the
word less and less often or only uttered half of it, and finally months would
pass without my hearing it. Nowadays he
employs it only rarely, but always aptly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">January 11, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Today on my back from Vienna, I visited Thomas at
6:00 p.m. with my spouse. I had brought
him seven newspapers. Thomas immediately
showed me a letter and Ferry Radax’s screenplay for an adaptation of his novel <i>Frost</i>.
In the letter Radax wrote that he was going to screen <i><a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-translation-of-der-italiener.html" target="_blank">The Italian</a></i> at Wolfsegg on Tuesday, in
other words that very evening. The
countess has no problem with it, etc. But
then in the afternoon came a telegram announcing that everything had been
postponed to next Tuesday, that further information would follow. Thomas also said that the screenplay was very
good. Radax made quite a good effort in
it; he knows it too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas attaches no particular importance to being
in Wolfsegg at the time; it makes no difference to him whether he can speak
with Radax, etc. Mainly because the
screenplay is good; he doesn’t care about anything else. But I know Radax and want to spare him a
disappointment. And so I ask Thomas if
he would mind my thanking Radax for his regards and writing to him that Monday
would be more convenient. Thomas has no
problem with this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At 6:30 my spouse and I leave Thomas on his own
again. I tell him: today I’m already
tired, and now he has newspapers. I also
leave him a ¼ [of a kilogram? (DR)] of butter then. He invites me to have lunch with him at
Pabst’s tomorrow; I’m to be at his place at 11:30 a.m.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas also shows me a postcard from Wieland
Schmied, who sent it to him from Chioggia.
It’s got a blue stamp with a boat on it; it’s supposedly Hundertwasser’s
yacht. Above the boat somebody has drawn large raindrops, and underneath it they’ve
written the phrase “rainy day,” along with what’s probably “rainy day” in two
other languages. Hundertwasser has signed
in cursive.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">When I get home I also find a postcard from Chioggia
and Dr. Wieland Schmied in my mail; it’s also been signed by Hundertwasser, but
unlike on Thomas’s postcard, on mine there’s an oval-shaped 5 x 7-cm spot of
color, and above this spot of color from a blue inkpad are written Schmied’s
greetings. Naturally the stamp with
Hundertwasser’s yacht is also on it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">January 12, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At 11:30 a.m. I’m at Thomas’s house in Nathal; we
drive to Pabst’s guesthouse in Laakirchen for lunch. We have soup with liver dumplings, roast pork
with sauerkraut. As we were leaving
Nathal, I invited Thomas to coffee at my house.
At Pabst’s Thomas wants to order pancakes after the roast pork; I’m not
interested. He says he’d like to have
two or three of them, but he’ll eat them only if I have two as well. I say, I can’t possibly do it; eat on your
own. No, then I won’t, he says; eating
on my own is out of the question. Then I
say: fine, I don’t want to spoil your enjoyment; I’ll join you. I protest that I only want one; he insists on
two; he says I’ve got to overeat properly as he’s often done at my house. In the end even he has got to leave half a
pancake on his plate. Because he’s been lying
around for so long, he can’t put away as much as usual. He says: this kind of thing has never
happened to me before; suddenly I can’t eat anymore. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Otherwise our conversation focuses on nothing but
unimportant stuff, and there’s always a lot of humor and wit in it. It was really quite amusing; the two of us
weren’t different in any way from the other customers. The people having lunch alongside us were
laborers and office workers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">When I stopped at my place on the way back, Thomas
said: I can’t do it; I can’t have coffee with you anymore; my foot’s already
hurting; I’ll be happy when I can lie back down. Once he was back at his farmhouse, he’d just
pour himself a shot of schnapps and go straight to bed. Since I was going to be driving to Gmunden
afterwards, I promised to bring him newspapers at 5:00 that afternoon. I punctually brought him seven newspapers
again and left for my gym lessons at 6:00.
I invited Thomas over for lunch the next day. I said I’d pick him up at 11:30 and bring him
all the available newspapers then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">January 13, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Events involving Thomas are following in rapid
succession. I’ve been pressed for time
to write and finding it impossible to watch out for typos. As I’m thinking about the incident I’m writing
about, I’m so absorbed by it that I make the stupidest mistakes and sometimes
even type Thomes instead of Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At 11:30 a.m. I’m at Thomas’s house in Nathal as
scheduled. I bring him all the
newspapers, including the <i>Salzkammerzeitung</i>
with my article about the accident. I
inform Thomas that I have just been to see the editor of the <i>Salzkammerzeitung</i>, Kastner, and thanked
him for printing the article without any changes. I tell Thomas that Kastner declared to me
that he had never before printed an article so much against his better
judgment. By this he meant that in
addition to the name Thomas Bernhard the article should have included a mention
of his address and occupation. I give
Kastner the article about Thomas in the </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Münchner
Abendzeitung</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"> of December 28, 1971. I advise Kastner to read the article
beforehand; then he’ll understand why I could only risk that dry,
matter-of-fact article. I say that he can
certainly write a postscript to it; that he should even print the article from
the <i>Abendzeitung</i> in full or
cannibalize it; that should he need any further information I’d be happy to
help him. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">On the margin of the newspaper I also jotted down some notes
about Thomas’s decades-old acquaintance with the aristocratic family of
Handl-Pachta from Almegg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Kastner wants a picture of Bernhard. I say to him: pictures are rare; he doesn’t
allow himself to be photographed. I’ve
taken some snapshots of him at my house and while he’s working.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Finally Kastner says he wants to dedicate something to
Bernhard in connection with the Grillparzer Prize. I say that in the future he can write
whatever he likes about Bernhard; that he needn’t have any reservations about
it or show him any special consideration.
Thanks to other newspapers Thomas has long since gotten used to it; he
doesn’t react to that kind of thing anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I tell Thomas all of this.
When I’ve finished, it occurs to me that I was at Dr. Meingast’s office
in connection with his properties and that he was waiting on an exemption from
the real estate tax on one property. I
told him that the maps of another property would be on display at the town hall
on January 17, 1972. That he had to make
sure that the dimensions had been accurately drafted. That he mustn’t neglect to do this because
the 17<sup>th</sup> would mark the beginning of a fourteen-day appeal
period. Afterwards even a drafting
mistake can’t be corrected anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">This briefing of mine lasted 30
minutes; at was 12 noon. Thomas said: so
is that it? Is there anything else? I: No.
He: too bad, it would have been so much fun if you’d kept talking for
another half-hour, till half-past twelve.
I say: it’s already time for us to leave for lunch at my house. He says: you absolutely must read this letter
from Peymann. I read:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Dear Mr. Bernhard:<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Just so you can be glad too: Bruno Ganz is playing along in
Salzburg. Perhaps we’ll see each other
at the beginning of February at the first rehearsal. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Sincere regards,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Claus Peymann</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I hand the letter back to
Thomas. He says: when I look at the
letter, I think, the twit just writes two lines. Probably people also think the same thing
about me, since most of the time I only write two lines as well. That’s certainly true. To this I reply: Peymann has received these
kinds of two-line letters from you several times already, and he reasonably
thinks that you want and expect the same thing.
He’s falling right in line with you.
When you’re terse, he is too. I’d
do exactly the same thing, and I actually do the same thing in similar
situations. Peymann is obviously of the
opinion that he can only please you with such a short letter. In any case it’s not a bad idea to write so tersely;
I have been writing tersely for years, like in telegrams; that’s the most
effective way. You yourself are
obviously only writing so tersely because it’s having a good effect on a rational
person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At about 12:30 we sit down to
lunch at my house. We have grammelknödel
with sauerkraut, preceded by soup with sour cream—because Bernhard likes
it—with baked canapés. Over mocha Thomas
raves about Bruno Ganz. He says: if
anything further goes awry, the play can’t be performed. (He’s referring to <i><a href="http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-translation-of-der-ignorant-und-der.html" target="_blank">The Ignoramus and the Madman</a></i>, which is scheduled to be have its
premiere at the Salzburg Festival on July 29, 1972 and in which Bruno Ganz will
now be playing the principal role.)
Thomas says that the fact that Ganz will now be playing the part means
more to him than the Grillparzer Prize.
Because thanks to Ganz it will be clear that the young are on his side,
and that’s important, because then all the old (writers) will be as well,
because they’re afraid of the young.
That’s another proper box to the oldsters’ ears (by oldsters he always
means writers). They’re getting one box
to the ears after another now. First the
Grillparzer Prize and now Ganz. Apart
from this, I’m glad about this news, because just imagine, until now if
somebody had asked who was acting in Salzburg, I definitely wouldn’t have been
able to say. If I tell them now that
it’s Ganz, of course they’ll hardly believe me because he’s so good—can you
still remember? A few years ago we
watched that television play <i>The Battle
of Lobositz</i> together. In that play
Bruno Ganz played a soldier; he was magnificent in it. I say: how can I possibly not remember a
television movie that was so good when hardly any plays that good are broadcast
in a year? But can’t you remember that at the time I told you I’d seen that
film a few months earlier on the German channel and was watching it for the
second time with you? Thomas: yes,
right, now I can remember; yes, yes, that’s true. <span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjseZ-htqyxLLQpt960oLI2AFTOXh9mqZ76_SA9hRLgZzLeuVjuFFK4bWdIzRsl3U0cuysh3PPchpqvWe2P1W-cZfZSGdC5l6VSki6UJUW4Zmxy1IR43KAi3EXKk_fcrG_W-Lm37A/s1600/Bernhard+at+table.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="533" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjseZ-htqyxLLQpt960oLI2AFTOXh9mqZ76_SA9hRLgZzLeuVjuFFK4bWdIzRsl3U0cuysh3PPchpqvWe2P1W-cZfZSGdC5l6VSki6UJUW4Zmxy1IR43KAi3EXKk_fcrG_W-Lm37A/s1600/Bernhard+at+table.PNG" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas
Bernhard, witness at the confirmation of Hennetmair’s son, Wolfgang, with<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Reinhild Hennetmair in the left foreground. May
1, 1967.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGVmI0P6cEzE8QYrOf_e0Fqrpr16ZAlhVtxlyO3Mmo2dXpCNfQe8JBWMytZAWMw2RG6VgYCGGLEVcPihDskxk1ucP1QZQIFpmrdGT8kDzpI3oYbUaQIAZP21iouKx59StCo01E2A/s1600/Bernhard+and+Hennetmair+family.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="378" data-original-width="558" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGVmI0P6cEzE8QYrOf_e0Fqrpr16ZAlhVtxlyO3Mmo2dXpCNfQe8JBWMytZAWMw2RG6VgYCGGLEVcPihDskxk1ucP1QZQIFpmrdGT8kDzpI3oYbUaQIAZP21iouKx59StCo01E2A/s1600/Bernhard+and+Hennetmair+family.PNG" /></a></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The family of Karl Ignaz Hennetmair (not
pictured): his oldest son Walter, “Granny” Christine, his wife</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Z</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>äzilia, </i></span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">younger son Wolfgang,
and the witness at Wolfgang’s confirmation, Thomas Bernhard</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At about 2:00 p.m. I drive Thomas
to Nathal, and he tells me further that Ganz will have difficulties with his
community when he plays that role in Salzburg etc. Thomas also tells me that shortly after I
left for my gym lessons yesterday, Wednesday, Lord O’Donell came to see him
with <i>Die Presse</i>, as he had been
informed about his accident by Mrs. Hufnagl over the phone. His jaw dropped when he saw <i>Die Presse</i> already lying on the coffee
table. He assumed I’d have nothing to
read. We further agree to my taking him
back to my house at 7:00 p.m. to watch the men’s figure-skating competition. Peter is supposed to show up at the same time
to take off his bandages; he wants to see for himself how the wound is looking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">So at 7:00 I show up at Thomas’s
house at Nathal. Peter isn’t there yet;
he’s supposed to arrive at any minute; then we can leave. At 7:30 we turn on the television to watch
the news. Regarding the program called <i>Culture</i>, which has followed the news
since 1/1/1972, Thomas utters increasingly withering pronouncements.<i> </i> He expects this ridiculous <i>Culture </i>program to be canceled in no
time flat. He says that it isn’t
possible to say something each and every day about real culture, as is demanded
by the very title of the show; that the whole program is simply ludicrous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Because after a half an hour his television
starts stinking and the picture is breaking up, we turn it off at 8:00. As Peter still hasn’t shown up, Thomas starts
badmouthing Peter and Peter’s father in particular. Thomas tells me that when he was eighteen his
guardian only ever called him “the old man” and told him he’d never even hack
it as a bricklayer. Nobody ever talked about anything but the fact that “the
old man” would never amount to anything.
His guardian allocated 80 schillings of his 110-shilling-a-month welfare
allowance to heating and only ever gave him 30 schillings. Whenever Thomas opened the refrigerator, his
guardian would say: you’re eating me out of house and home. What was more, when his birth mother was
dying he completely forgot about him and didn’t notify him, so that he read
about his mother’s death in the newspaper two days afterwards. Thomas showed me this newspaper cutting some
time ago. I can recall that the cutting
also mentioned that his mother was the daughter of Freumbichler the writer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas also tells me that to
this day his stepfather and former guardian doesn’t give a thought to his own
ninety-two-year-old mother in Vienna. He
wants to describe the house to me, but I already know it, as several years ago
I drove Peter there in my car so that he could pay it a brief visit.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Then we end up talking about
his publisher. Thomas says that for him
his publisher is nothing but a laundry deliveryman; if a laundry deliveryman
writes him two letters, he doesn’t need to write back to him at all, but the
deliveryman has got to keep bringing him his laundry anyway, because after all
that’s his job. He’s failed to answer two letters in a row
from the publishing firm [Suhrkamp].
They’re simply not worth answering because they’re so…written in such a
way that he can’t answer them. But
still, his publisher should have congratulated him on the Grillparzer Prize a
long time ago. If someday his posthumous
papers are examined and put in order, people will notice that they don’t include
any letters of congratulation, even from his own publishing firm. What’s more today he received the third
printing of his <i>Prose </i>from the
firm. He couldn’t help noticing that
they’d redone the page where the third printing is mentioned but that they hadn’t
simultaneously changed the list of his previously published works, that only <i>Frost</i> was mentioned as having been
previously published, just like back in the first printing. He said that stuff like that shouldn’t be
happening at a publishing firm. That
he’d be giving the lot of them the boot, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Today Thomas received a third
letter from the Academy of Sciences, who will be awarding him the Grillparzer
Prize on the 21<sup>st</sup>—he tells me he won’t be answering it. He’s only answered the first one, the one
asking him if he would accept the prize, with a yes. Since then three more letters have come, but
I don’t think it’s necessary to answer them, Thomas adds. Other writers would savor that and reply with
page after page about how crazy they were about Grillparzer. They’d look for similarities and assert every
conceivable thing; they’d dissemble and melt with rapture, etc. Because after all the academy’s also written
how happy they are; I loathe all that reciprocal adulation. I’ll accept the prize the way I take my
polished shoes into my room from the hallway when I’m staying at a hotel, and
then of course I’ll jubilantly walk along the streets of Vienna in my “freshly
polished shoes,” but that’ll be all. Not
that I don’t cherish the prize, but I’m not going to go nuts about it; I’m not
going to receive the prize any differently than I’d receive a pair of freshly
polished shoes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">
</span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">By way of explaining this I
must mention that Thomas has an improbable predilection for shoes and is
constantly polishing and maintaining his circa 30 pairs of new shoes as
punctiliously as the ones he wears. Most
of the time, when he comes home with dirty boots or shoes, these are cleaned
immediately, or at least he takes advantage of the very first opportunity to
clean them. Everybody who knows him will
confirm that he attaches great importance to genuinely bespoke footwear. I’d almost go so far as to maintain that when
it comes to shoes, Thomas has got a <i>fimmel</i>
[i.e., an addiction or obsession (DR)], as they say here, and I think that this
word <i>fimmel</i> could be a corruption of
the word <i>phobia</i>. Therefore in Thomas’s eyes there’s nothing
derogatory in his comparison of the prize to shoes. It means a great deal indeed if he cherishes
the prize as much as shoes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Two things cherished in equal
measure at the farmhouse at Obernathal: shoes and hand tools</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Then Thomas Bernhard tells me
that he won’t be attending the premiere of the play at the Salzburg Festival. He says the theater at Salzburg is much too
small to allow him to remain incognito.
If he doesn’t clap, the people will stare at him, if he were to clap it
would seem to him as if he were applauding himself. What’s more, after the performance he’d have
to celebrate with the actors: then everybody will ask, How good was I; then
I’ll be expected to answer; that’s so horrible.
What are you supposed to say then?
I know that everybody will think they’re the best, but in a setting like
that you obviously can’t say to everybody that they were better, etc. I’ll watch the dress rehearsal, and during
the premiere I’ll sit somewhere and drink a glass of wine. Of course I won’t tell anybody that I won’t
be going. I won’t mention it until just
before the premiere, so that the actors know and won’t be irritated by the
author’s absence. For me it’s better
when I’m not present. I tell him that
after the performance I’ll find him and brief him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I can easily imagine that in
Thomas’s mind a different conjecture is also playing a role: the audience won’t
know anything about his absence, will call out for him, will keep calling out
for him until he finally comes, and so maybe the applause and the calls will
last a really long time if the author doesn’t appear. Much longer than if he were there. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I also had to add the following
regarding my visit with Kastner the editor today: Kastner asked me why Bernhard
wasn’t married and if he had any women at all.
I answered by saying that I hadn’t noticed a trace of anything of that
kind in years. I can therefore only
suppose, I said, that Bernhard has adopted a rule that quite a lot of priests
have also abided by, namely only ever to get involved with a very decently
married woman so that he won’t run any risks whatsoever during the affair. But I said that this was only a supposition
on my part because, as I’d already mentioned, I hadn’t noticed anything. I also told this to Thomas. As I was doing so he smiled in a way that
suggested that my guess hadn’t been too far from the truth. Then I said to Thomas that I hadn’t been
prepared for this question, and that right after my visit with Kastner it
occurred to me that I should have said that at any rate Bernhard was certainly
not a homosexual, since otherwise he wouldn’t let all those students who
worship him languish outside his closed gates.
A few of them have even stayed overnight with his neighbors in the hope of
just running into Bernhard the next day.
But he hasn’t received any of them as guests. If he were a homosexual, he’d let them in. Then I said to Thomas: hopefully somebody
will ask me the same sort of question again soon; I’m sure it’ll occur to me to
say that then. To which Thomas replied: it’s
entirely natural that since I’m not married people immediately assume I’m a
homosexual. That’s the most obvious
explanation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">By 9:00 we knew that Peter wouldn’t
be coming. I reflected that once again
I’d written down some very interesting stuff and that inevitably after I’d
finished my entry for a given day I’d remember something else that was
interesting and that I really should have also written down. Accordingly I jot down the list of things he
wants me pick up for him the next day and drive home. Before I leave he gives me two letters to
mail, one to Dr. Hilde Spiel-Flesch and the other to Mrs. Ilse Leitenberger.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">January 14, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">At 10:00 a.m. I’m at Thomas’s
house in Nathal with seven newspapers, his mail, two knackwursts, and a bottle
of milk. I leave him on his own again
soon and say: so now at least you’ve got newspapers to read; I’ll come back
this afternoon. Before I go we talk
about Peter, about whether he’s going to come and about the fact that it’d be really
important to hear his advice as a doctor as to whether walking around could
still be harmful. Thomas said that such
fruits didn’t grow on his family tree, that only crab apples grew there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">At 4:00 in the afternoon I’m
back at Thomas’s. His entire face his
consumed with laughter, and he hands me the invitation to the Austrian Academy
of Sciences’ Grillparzer Commemoration.
I had already received it yesterday, says Thomas, but I was so angry
about it that I couldn’t even show it to you then. I read the invitation through and say it’s a
colossal outrage to let the vice president of the academy hand over the prize
in the presence of the president and to specify in the program who was playing first
violin and second violin, to list all the members of the Vienna String Quartet
by name, but to omit his name, the name of the awardee. Naturally, says Thomas, of course that’s the
issue, and then he launches into a stream of abuse. I howl with laughter when he finally lets me
get a word in, and I say that the academy really couldn’t have done him a
bigger favor than by corroborating his opinion in such a documentary way. That he can’t possibly be surprised by this
outrage, that to the contrary he’s got to count on this kind of thing happening
every time because otherwise his views on such institutions would be false. But here once again it’s being clearly shown
how right he is. I’m downright happy, I
say, that this has happened, since some of my acquaintances still refuse to
accept your views. I can convince them
with this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I entreat Thomas to lend me the
invitation overnight because I’d like to have a photocopy of it made at the
Ohlsdorf Cooperative Bank, which opens at 7:00 a.m. on Saturdays. To make sure I don’t forget the invitation
later, I take it to my car in the courtyard right away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas reads me a newspaper
article (from the <i>Oberösterreichische
Nachrichten</i> of January 14, 1972) about Rauris. Handke and [Uwe] Johnson are involved; 10,000
schillings are being awarded as an advancement prize to somebody whose name I
don’t recall [Bodo Hell]. Thomas fills
me in on the background and says: do you still remember the time I was at your
house with [Erwin] Gimmelsberger, when Gimmelsberger showed me a list with
names on it and invited me to Rauris? I
had him cross out almost all the names on his list and told him which names on
it were worth considering. They really
have me to thank if anything good came out of that. Just imagine: he’d written down the names of some
really god-awful jingoistic writers like [Karl] Springenschmid. This year they couldn’t talk about “global” and
“international” literature even if they’d wanted to tart it up in that kind of
language. Of course they’ve invited me
back to Rauris this year. They’d like to
exhibit me as a living body from last year.
They’ll certainly have written all over the place that Thomas Bernhard’s
going to be involved again. Johnson’s so
arrogant anyway. He’ll stare at the
locals when they go around in lederhosen.
He’s got no ability to appreciate that kind of thing; he’ll be sorely
disappointed. Besides, it’s ridiculous,
to award 10,000 schillings as an advance.
Because what can anybody do with ten thousand schillings; that’s
basically nothing. They want to give
young authors a leg up, but the writers have to spend all the days of the event
in Rauris. No writer gets anything out
of being tied down to a place; it’s just absurd. It’s obviously not the case that exactly when
he’s privileged to be in Rauris he can also write something, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Eventually 7:30 comes around,
and we turn on the television to watch the news. Thomas thinks that <i>Culture</i> is appalling, that it can’t possibly run much longer, that
they’ll have to cancel it. Since the
television only gives a good picture for 30 minutes and then the picture breaks
up if he doesn’t switch if off for a few minutes, at five to eight Thomas turns
off the television. If Peter were
planning to come today, he really should have been here by now, Thomas says,
and we take off the bandages and inspect the wound. We try to finish in five minutes, in time to
watch the news on the first German channel.
Thomas wants to know if he’ll hurt the leg if he moves around more. He can’t put up with any more lying around. The stitches are unevenly knotted, the wound is
healed up and free of pus, slightly swollen around the edges. I roll up the two plasters, and Thomas puts
the bandage back on. When he’s finished
and we’re about to turn the television back on, there’s a knock at the
door. We think it’s Peter; I open the
door, but his neighbor Schabinger comes in with an invitation to the Red,
White, and Red Ball: because you’re ill now I’ll collect the money from you
some other time. I’ve never come in here
before; today is the first time, but I knew I’d catch you today. He gets 20 schillings and a signature on the
collection list. No sooner has he left
than there’s another knock; it’s Peter.
Now the bandage is taken off again.
Very beautifully stitched, he says.
In my opinion it wasn’t beautifully stitched, but I don’t say that. By “beautifully” Peter possibly meant “serviceably,”
but perhaps to a doctor it is actually beautiful. Peter has no reservations about Thomas’s
walking a bit more provided of course that he doesn’t overstrain the leg or
turn it too violently. Thomas
immediately takes advantage of this and asks me to ride with him to the Krucka
tomorrow. Since I promised him earlier
to bring him the invitation from the Academy of Sciences with his mail at 8:30
a.m., I say: We can do that afterwards. He
asks Peter to make sure he comes punctually at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday and not a
minute later so that he can leave Wels for Vienna at 12:00. Peter is supposed to take the stitches out
before the trip.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Before Schabinger showed up and
after we switched off the television, I started to feel hungry. Since 4:00 Thomas hasn’t even offered me a
shot of schnapps. I pondered whether to
ask Thomas for a single crust of bread and thereby appropriate one of his own tricks—whether
to do exactly as he had done years ago at my house, when he used those exact
words, can I have a single crust of bread, as a trick for getting himself
invited over for tea. But after the
bandage was opened I lost my appetite, and I stayed till 9:00.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas also told me that he had
written to Klingenberg, the general manager of the Burgtheater, that he
wouldn’t be giving a speech at the Grillparzer commemoration at the Burgtheater
on 1.21. He said he had written a person
can’t say what can’t be said in three minutes in three minutes. I have recorded this sentence verbatim. He said this meant he would be a passive
participant in the celebrations. Since
Thomas would like to call Hans Rochelt tomorrow to draw his attention to the
academy’s peculiar invitation, he searches a drawer of the “Josephine” cabinet in
the living room for letters from Rochelt’s girlfriend. Because his telephone number is under her
name, and the telephone number should be printed on a letter from her. He
rummages through the letters from 1971—they’re all higgledy- piggledy—for over
a half an hour. Some letters he pores
over at length, some only briefly. The
whole time I’m standing two meters away, by the tiled stove. Every minute I’m thinking he’s going to give
over the search, but he keeps searching and makes remarks on individual letters;
for example: Look, I didn’t even answer this invitation. But now I know I should have gone to that
thing. Look, here I didn’t answer
either, and here, and here, but it was good that I didn’t, and here. For God’s sake, if I’d agreed to go to all
these things, where would I be; it’s impossible. But here and there, in one or two cases, a
certain do would have been good for me. But
that only becomes clear afterwards—the fact that one or two of these dos would
have been good. And because I didn’t
know beforehand which one or two of the dos would have been good, it’s better
for me to say no to all of them. Then I
can even do without the couple of good dos.
And things are already getting better; I hardly receive any invitations
anymore. I’ve announced everywhere that
I won’t accept any of them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas doesn’t find what he’s
looking for—the telephone number isn’t on any of the letters he’s found—and eventually
he gives up. Afterwards he explains,
Hansi (Rochelt) used to have an unlisted number, but when the charge for
unlisted numbers went up, Hansi changed his number to his girlfriend (his
life-companion) Miss Haring’s, and he should have this number somewhere, since:
She’s absolutely bombarded me with letters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">January 15, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">This was an eventful day with
Thomas. From 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and from 7:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m., in other
words eleven [sic]-and-a-half hours, I was uninterruptedly in Thomas’s
company. When he climbed out of my car a
half an hour before midnight, I told him I wouldn’t come by again until shortly
before 11:00 the next morning when Peter would be taking out the stitches and
he would ride with him to Wels afterwards.
You see, he wanted me to come even earlier to pick up the television to
have it repaired during his absence. But
because I’d like to write about the eleven-and-a-half hours with Thomas
starting at 7:00 a.m., I insist on 11:00 a.m.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">At 8:30 a.m. I show up at
Thomas’s with his mail. From my own mail
I give him the <i>Oberösterreichische
Nachrichten</i>. He asks me how much
time I’ve got for him today. The whole
day, I say, because from just one look at him I can tell that he’s in a very
good mood. Good, then we don’t need to
hurry; then I can take a look at the paper before we leave. He reads aloud some
stuff about Rauris and comments on it very jollily. As he’s reading the article (from the <i>Oberösterreichische Nachrichten</i> of
January 15, 1972) he keeps interrupting himself and tells me that this man
Hoflehner, whose works he happens to value very highly, has already tried to
visit him from Vöcklabruck three times.
One time Hoflehner was accompanied by a very fat man. He had hidden upstairs and watched them
walking around the house. Hoflehner is
from Linz, Thomas says; he paints as well as the Englishman Bredon [Francis
Bacon?]. He was supposed to write a
preface for an exhibit catalog; Hoflehner was going to dedicate a painting to
him. But he hadn’t replied to this
letter of Hoflehner’s; this was why he tried it with visits. Despite this Hoflehner dedicated a big
painting to me. It’s hanging in the
exhibit. By then I had already been
expected to write a preface for Dr. Wieland’s Hundertwasser’s catalogue and had
declined. Then Wieland quoted me in his
preface.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Then we discuss our departure,
and Thomas asks me to stop by the post office.
He wants to call Hede at St. Veit im Pongau and to take a certain train
to Vienna on Sunday morning. He plans to
catch the train in Wels. He reads me the
card from Hede, his 78-year-old “aunt,” in which she informs him that she will
be traveling to Vienna on Wednesday of the forthcoming week to attend the
Grillparzer Prize award ceremony. As I
was collecting his mail I couldn’t help noticing that there was postcard from
Hede in it. But I scrupulously avoided
looking closely at it so that I wouldn’t learn what it was about at all. You see, Thomas is a very sharp-eyed observer
and would be able to tell from the look on my face whether I already knew what
the card was about when he reads it to me.
Of course I could have read the card, but then as soon as I’d handed the
mail over to him I would have had to say I’d taken the liberty of reading the
card. He wouldn’t have been mad at me
about it then. But when I learned straight
from him that Hede wouldn’t be setting off until Wednesday, I told him that he
shouldn’t call and ask her to come to Vienna tomorrow. That he had a lot of plans that Hede wouldn’t
approve of. That there were quite a few
steps that she’d try to keep him from taking.
What was more, I said, both of them would find it unbearable enough to
be together from Wednesday to Saturday.
I could take this liberty on account of his good mood. Thomas said that I was right and that he’d
wait till Tuesday to call her from Vienna, so that he’d already be there. By then their neighbors in the
Oberkirchergasse will have already told Hede if he’s brought any guests into
the apartment. She’s already heard lots
of stories like that, including some with girls in them—each time from
neighbors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Since no letter from Radax had
come, I ask Thomas whether I shouldn’t phone Radax from Ohlsdorf. He asks: Have you got his number? Yes, I brought it along just in case. Good, he says, let’s go. He stays in the car as I talk over the phone
with Radax at ca. 9:30. Radax just
wanted to send a telegram stating that on Monday at Wolfsegg he would be
shooting the film (<i>The Italian</i>). As I informed him that by early Sunday
morning Bernhard would be headed for Vienna, he’s going to postpone everything
a fortnight. He plans to call Thomas at
the Obkirchergase between 9:00 and 10:00 Monday morning. Since Thomas is usually already out of the
house by then, which is as early as Radax ever gets up, I say to Radax: Thomas
is sitting outside in the car, but even without asking him I can tell you that
he won’t be able to guarantee his being able to wait for this call at that
time. I say that he’ll have to try at
other times of day. Bernhard has lots of
things to take care of; he can’t be kept homebound for the sake of his phone
call. Finally I ask Radax whether he’s
read the 12.28.1971 article in the <i>Münchner
Abendzeitung</i>. He says he has. Then I say: Now you surely understand if you
didn’t before why when we first met in Bernhard’s bedroom I said you’re one
lucky rascal to be sitting here at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Thomas asked me to stop by the
Gmunden train station on the way to Reindlmühl so that he could buy “all the available
newspapers.” On the I way gave him a complete account of my conversation with
Radax. We park the car downhill from Lot
No. 98, from the house named Krucka. It
takes us ten minutes instead of six to reach the house because Thomas can only
walk slowly. In the house, Thomas shows
me the chainsaw, the shredded knitted trousers, and the blue locksmith’s
trousers he was wearing on top of them.
On our way up to the house we were already joking about how close he
came to never being able to visit the Krucka again, or having to visit it with
a prosthesis, with a missing leg. I
describe to Thomas how he wouldn’t be able to write anymore, because of course
he wouldn’t be able to walk anymore, so that he wouldn’t be able to think
anymore, etc., and he would have expired on a branch of one of these trees. Then one of those oh-so-frequent writer’s
deaths would have been in the offing for him as well. We’ve often spoken about his death
before. He’s changed his mind three
times about where he wants to be buried.
First it was Vienna, then Ohlsdorf, and now it’s Neukirchen bei
Altmünster. During such conversations
Thomas has repeatedly stressed that suicide, which is certainly the way that
other people think he’s most likely to die, is something he’ll never commit no
matter what. He isn’t about to do the
world such a favor. Now he didn’t
contradict me. He said that in the event
of such a serious accident resulting in the loss of a leg, it would all be over
for him, literally and completely over, because walking for hours on end is
something he’s quite simply got to do.
Thomas rolls up the two pairs of trousers so that he can take them with
him to use in washing up and DIY work later on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Since I know how miserly Thomas
is—he’s the biggest skinflint who’s so far come my way (and yet this very fact
cheers me up—the fact that I’ve gotten along so well with such a difficult
person from the get-go)—I don’t tell him that he should hold onto the trousers
just as they are as a memento. Since I
often have a hunch and a feeling about when he’s going to do the opposite of
what I advise him to do, I see in this a certain slight chance of his perhaps
leaving the trousers as they are. But
I’ll have to make a point of not asking about the trousers in future, unless he
happens to be wearing them again.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="db5m4n0" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Then we started climbing uphill from the house to
the site of the accident. On our way
Thomas shows me where he’s cut off branches, where he’s piled them up, etc. The site of the accident is strewn with
several fallen trees; a few of them have rolled into the little creek. The tree that had caused the accident, which
stood on a slope as steep as a church roof, had been snapped in two by a storm
so that its top half was lying </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">athwart our path and pointing downhill, so that from root to top the trunk of the beech, which was over twenty meters tall but slender, described a semicircle.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"> I said to Thomas: Something was bound to
happen to anybody who tried to tackle a tree like this in such a spot. Of course, I added, it would have been
impossible to tell in which direction the tree was going to fall, given that
its trunk was stretched like a bow. I
stationed myself at the spot where Thomas had been standing when the saw had
been knocked out of his hand, and he told me the whole story for the fifth or
tenth time. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">When it
happened to him, he didn’t know how severe his injuries were. He feared the worst on account of the
tattered condition of his trousers. He
attributed the fact that he felt no pain to shock, and his first thought was to
take advantage of this state of shock to get to his car.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I have told him about my wartime experiences with such states
of shock several times before. For
example about one soldier who was carrying his own entrails at the casualty
clearing post, and another whose cap fell off his head when he was struck by a
stray bullet at the front line. The
soldier ran laughing with his head wound to the dressing station and rebuffed
every offer of support from his two escorts.
After a half an hour he collapsed dead onto the ground. Indeed, I even remember that for an hour
during a charge through wide fields a non-commissioned officer thought he was
sweating so heavily that the sweat from his face was soaking him all the way
down to his trousers. When he reached
into his trousers, his hand came back covered in blood. He hadn’t noticed that he’d been shot in the
stomach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Fortunately for Thomas it wasn’t shock that enabled him to get
away on his own but rather the favorable spot where he had sustained the
injury, as he could tell when he reached the house. He told me he he’d
changed his trousers so that at the hospital they couldn’t just say have a seat
right there, pal, as they do straight off the bat to woodcutters. This was also why at the hospital he’d talked
to the doctor like a posh German right away, so that he wouldn’t be treated
rudely as a matter of course. From the
site of the accident we went back to the house and took clothes and stocks of
food to the car. We drive straight to
lunch at my house in Weinberg. We have
salted and smoked meat with cabbage and dumplings. Thomas got more and more cheerful and told me
about his barber, who told him that some people he knew had recently gotten
central heating and were greatly content with their “gladiators” (by which he
had meant radiators). We talked about
the fact that O’Donell’s wife would lose either her child or her ears at the
gynecological clinic. I said that if it
were up to Thomas, inside the gynecological clinic would look like something
I’d gotten to see in a pigsty when I was working as a pig-dealer. A few hundred pigs, small and large ones, all
had a split ear. I couldn’t figure out
what that was supposed to mean and went through the whole sty, but all of them
without exception had a split ear. It
looked silly. Of course, I knew that in
dealing with fever or a certain illness, people sometimes punch holes the size
of fly-buttons in pigs’ ears, to help them recover. But there was no way that that was the case
of all the pigs in this sty. Finally I ventured
to ask about it. The farmer said that
all the pigs had had to be vaccinated against some disease, and that to avoid mistakenly
having a pig vaccinated a second time, he had cut each pig’s ear after it had
been successfully vaccinated. My wife
doubted the truth of my story, but Thomas said it was surely true, because of
course I had to get everything from somewhere or other. What I write is almost always something I’ve
experienced, sometimes in a kind of fantasy, but even so I’ve actually
experienced it. It’s quite true that
everything’s got to come from somewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">We drink our mocha in front of the television on
the second floor, so that we could watch the downhill ski race on the
Streif. Thomas admits that Brundage, the
president of the IOC, is right: these skiers are no amateurs. He’s naturally impressed by the skiers’
achievements, but they shouldn’t participate in the Olympics because they
simply aren’t amateurs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas stays till the end of the broadcast at
2:30. I take him to Nathal, and we agree
on my coming back to take him to my place at 7:30. We plan to watch the news, Hans-Joachim
Kulenkampff’s show, <i>Good Evening,
Neighbor</i>, and the women’s free skating.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas was really nice and jolly, but I’m still
glad that I can be alone for a few hours now, as of course I’ve got to jot
everything down. So many splendid,
striking remarks escape me. In Thomas’s
presence it’s impossible for me to write anything concerning him. Because whenever I’m busily jotting something
down, he asks me right away, what’s the matter, what in the world are you
thinking about, what’s bothering you, and I have to show him everything and
answer him, since he never hides anything from me either. A couple of times I have actually fooled him
and said, I just remembered something about Dr. Ortner, so I’ve got to jot
something down, and by doing this I’ve managed to cheat with a tag from my
actual note. At home I often go into the
kitchen so that I can at least quickly scribble down some names somewhere. If Thomas hadn’t gone to Vienna, 1/15/1972
would have been pretty short despite the 11-1/2 hours with Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I pick up Thomas at 7:30. He’s still in an excellent, jocular mood. He sits through Kuli’s entire show. When it comes to entertainment shows, after
the first few minutes Thomas usually tries to persuade me to switch the set off
so that we can entertain each other with our own conversation. When at one point during the show somebody
has to guess the name of a certain classic English ballroom dance, I start
tap-dancing; I myself don’t know what dance it is, and I ask Thomas if
perchance he recognizes this dance that I’m performing for him. He says: I sure would have to be awfully
stupid to recognize that dance. Thomas
peppers the entire broadcast with witty remarks. My wife and all our children who are in the
room enthusiastically join in the laughter.
Thomas even stays past the second evening news program to watch the
women’s free skating. When one of the
younger skaters, a girl who’s between 15<sup>th</sup> and 20<sup>th</sup> place
in the queue, makes a poor showing, Thomas says it reminds him of a stag beetle
that squares off against some stags and then thinks he’s also a stag. Throughout the program he makes high-spirited
remarks. But the best bit comes
afterwards, as I’m driving Thomas home to Nathal. It’s what he says to me during the drive at
11:30 at night. But to fill you in on
the background:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">For weeks the picture on Thomas’s television set
has given out after ca. 30 minutes.
Thomas is reluctant to give the set to a repairman because he’s afraid
that once the set is turned on at the shop the picture will of course be there
as usual. That they’ll say the writer’s
a dumbass, that the set’s working, and then bill him, and that he’ll end up
with the same nuisance as before. You
see, Thomas isn’t taken at all seriously by tradespeople or people working in
shops, especially if they’ve taken so much as a single peek at a book by Thomas
Bernhard. They think he hasn’t got a
clue about anything, and they try to exploit him and bamboozle him whenever
they can. Many of them assume he’s got
plenty of money and hasn’t got a clue about anything, and this is often
reflected in the bills they present him with.
In general Thomas buys or orders things only in my company and in shops
that I recommend to him. But if Thomas
tries to keep a business relationship going on his own, then most often after
just the second or third sale he gets into a fight with the vendors because after
offering him decent and fair service one time they try to rip him off yet again,
or Thomas interprets a rise in their rates as an attempt to get more out of
him. Then things reach a point where
he’s raking me over the coals, berating me for having recommended this guy to
him back whenever, telling me it’s all my fault. Because of this I’m wary of making
recommendations now, and when I do recommend someone, it’s just for a one-time
purchase, since then I’ll be there at the time.
I always say that what happens later on is his affair. And now in connection with Thomas’s
television set I recommended his writing a “report” on a slip of paper. You see, Thomas had gotten the set back from
a shop in Gmunden with the same problem that was supposed to have been
fixed. This was a few day ago, and the
report was going to read:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Bernhard, Nathal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">After a few seconds a
slowly growing black stripe on the left side of the screen,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">a bit later on the
outer right side a “gray fog” almost a third of the width of the screen,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">at the same time an
increase of a smell like ammonium nitrate,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">breakup of the
picture after about ½ to ¾ hour,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">by adjusting the knob
(turning it up and down) or<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">[…] turning set off
and immediately back on picture reappears (poor quality) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">in short all tricks
useless. The end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas wrote this “report” himself. Thomas was to give this slip of paper and the
television to Lahner in Laakirchen. He
was to hold on to a carbon copy. When he
picked up the set he was to use the paper as a checklist in asking how and by
what means this problem had been fixed.
Then he was to ask them to switch on the set for an hour-and-a-half, and
in the meantime he was to sit in the guesthouse and read his newspapers. But after ¾ hour he was to barge into the
shop and see whether it had really been turned on, because otherwise they might
not have turned it on until an hour before he came back. That was only the way I could see a chance of
his not being taken it by the repairman.
So that was my advice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">And now on our drive to his house at 11:30 Thomas asks me to pick
up his television tomorrow and take it to Lahner before Peter comes. When the repair is finished I’m to do as I
advised him to do and have a meal with Pabst at the guesthouse. For a moment I’m flabbergasted. One of these days, I say, I’m going to give
you a piece of advice so that you can pinch my hair with my own advice. We both had to laugh heartily. Finally I agreed to take the set to Lahner
but I tell him that there’s no way I’m going to pick up the set, that he’s
going to have to do that himself when he gets back from Vienna. I wrote out a copy of Thomas’s note for
Lahner; I kept the original.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I’m just now remembering that at some point in the day I asked
Thomas what he’d be taking in hand when he got back from Vienna, after the
Grillparzer Prize, what he’d be writing then. He said: I want to start on a
play right away; I absolutely need a third play; I’ve already got an idea. Perhaps it’ll be what you’d always prefer to
have. So it’ll be a kind of comedy. So I’ve already got it in my mind; I already
know what the plot’s going to be. This
conversation took place at the Krucka, as we were also talking about wooden
legs and hanging.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">January 16, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At ten minutes to 11 in the morning I’m at Thomas’s house in
Nathal. I can’t load the television yet,
because the slalom from Kitzbühel is on.
But we’re looking less at the set than out the window, where Peter is
supposed to turn up at any moment.
Sparrows are bustling about on the bare rosebush. I tell Thomas that these sparrows have been
constantly visible for days. They’re a
sort of substitute for the absence of flowers in the room, because they give it
a bit of “life.” For years I’ve been
complaining about the fact that something always seems to be missing from the
room because Thomas won’t even put some strawflowers in there. Thomas says, I’ve got enough “life” in
myself; I don’t need any flowers on top of it. When you live in the middle of nature you
don’t need it in your room as well. What
do you actually take me for? I’m
obviously not some old granny who needs flowers. I got plenty o’ blossoms: the pimples on my
face. He’s here now, Thomas adds. He was referring to Peter. We step out to meet him in the courtyard. I say: I’m going to your neighbor
Stadlmayr’s, because I can’t watch the stitches being taken out. Thomas was in an irritable mood, so I
preferred to be somewhere else and to follow the slalom on the neighbor’s
television.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Towards 11:30 I step back into Thomas’s living room. Thomas said that it was all done, that we
should leave at noon. Then he says that
he nearly suffered some burns yesterday.
That he could have been blown sky high; there was an explosion in the
fireplace. He bawled Peter out for
having thrown the swab and the plastic syringe into the wastepaper basket. He said that it was a wastepaper basket,
which was only for paper. That there was
a bucket in the kitchen for other kinds of rubbish. That there was no telling what such
thoughtlessness could lead to etc. He really laid into Peter. He was in a very foul mood. Despite this I tried to change the subject
and show Peter the article from the <i>Salzkammergutzeitung</i>. He knew that I had been planning to do this
today, and so he had taken away the article, which had been lying on his chest
of drawers since the day it came out.
But I still thought I’d be able to get hold of it now. So I asked Thomas if he had the article ready
to hand. No! Whereupon I said: Now I’d like to load up the
TV and get going. The three of us
carried the set to my car. Then Thomas
asked me to mail a few letters for him tomorrow, Monday. He wants them to be mailed from Steyrermühl
or Ohlsdorf. He gives me money for
stamps and five letters. The letters are
addressed to Claus Peymann, 44 Landhausstrasse, West Berlin; Ernst Wendt, 72
Fasanenstrasse, West Berlin; Mrs. Gertrud Frank, Residenz Publications, 9
Imbergstrasse, Salzburg; Mr. Seitz, Carl Hanser Publications, 22 Kolbergstrasse,
Munich, and Prof. Mayrhofer, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, 2 Dr. Ignaz
Seipel Platz, Vienna. Regarding the
letter to Dr. Mayrhofer, Thomas tells me that it contains only a single line
“to the effect that I’d like to receive the money in person on Friday morning. Otherwise it’s a no-go. You see, the academy wrote to me asking me in
which of my bank accounts the prize money should be deposited. But I learned my lesson about this a long
time ago. These things always drag on
and on; you never know what might happen; I want the money right away. And of course on top of that it’s a
ridiculously piffling sum. It should
have been increased ages ago. It may
have been a lot of money when the prize was established, but now a retired
Viennese city official gets twice as much a month in his pension check.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I say goodbye to Thomas and Peter and tell Thomas that I hope
everything in Vienna goes according to his plan. It’s bound to go according to some plan,
Thomas says. No, it’s got to go
according to your plan, I say when I’m already in the car, and then I drive
off. As I was saying my goodbyes, I
hadn’t neglected to invite Peter to stop by in the afternoon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At 3:00 p.m. Peter steps through my front door and sighs, “It’s
good that he’s gone.” I tell Peter that
I’ve already taken my revenge on Thomas for his lousy manners, and show him the
letters that I’m supposed to take to the post office tomorrow. I had put the two-schilling stamp with
Dürer’s Christ child on the letters.
This isn’t like Thomas at all, I say; he certainly wouldn’t put those
stamps on them, even if he had been given them.
I say: Peymann lives in a commune, and Prof. Mayerhofer might find it
quite amusing to see Thomas using such stamps.
But probably they won’t think anything at all about them, and they won’t
even notice them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Then Peter tells me old family anecdotes, but I’ve already heard
them all from Thomas. Peter is sorry
that Thomas can’t understand why he sticks by his father as his biological son. Of course he’s aware of his father’s
weaknesses and knows that he was a poor foster-father to Thomas. But he’s still got to stick by his father. As I’m listening to Peter I realize that in
telling me these family anecdotes Thomas wasn’t exaggerating but rather
understating the events in them. A lot
of them are so horrifying that I can’t hear Peter out in the presence of my
wife and children. I stop him with a
wave of my hand and say: Yes, yes; I know all about it; he’s already told me
everything. But Peter has hardly seen
any recent articles about Thomas and has almost no idea of what’s going on in
his life. He’s astonished that I’m so
well-informed about everything. Like a
secretary, he says. When I tell him that
Thomas was very funny yesterday, he doesn’t believe me and obstinately
maintains that Thomas has never had a sense of humor and will never have a
sense of humor in the future either.
That he’d never noticed any such thing in Thomas. I try to convince him of the contrary and I also
tell him that for some time I’ve been trying to talk Thomas into writing a
comedy; for he actually has a genuine classical sense of humor. Only a serious writer like him can pull off
humor well. Clowns can’t; they only think
they’re funny. Thomas rebuffs this
request every time. Then I always say
it’s only a matter of time before he gets a bee in his bonnet, a bee that will
force him to write one someday. Peter
sticks to his opinion that Thomas has got no sense of humor, and so I give up
trying to convince him of the contrary.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Then I tell Peter that Thomas once came to me in a very irritated
mood and said he had go to Wels right away to see Peter or at least call Wels
to talk to him. He said that he had
offended Peter very badly again. That
Peter had driven off in very low spirits.
But that now he was sorry about it.
But on the other hand he really wasn’t up to calling him: Because what I
told him was actually true; I just shouldn’t have put it so bluntly; anyway,
dear old Peter will come back soon enough.
He obviously knows I’m actually quite fond of him. In point of fact Thomas is very fond of
Peter, when he needs him, but he never shows it to him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">January 17, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Picked up television from Lahner’s shop in Laakirchen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Today Thomas was supposed to inspect the surveyor’s maps of the
enclosure at Ohlsdorf town hall personally.
He left me no instructions regarding this before his departure. I was supposed to have driven him to the town
hall if he hadn’t gone away yesterday.
As a precautionary measure, I call his lawyer Dr. Meingast. He says he’ll arrange to make sure that
Thomas can still do the inspection if he comes back after the fourteen-day
appeal period. As I presume Thomas will
recollect his omission in Vienna and it’ll make him worried, I’m going to
inform him of my intervention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">January 18, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I send a telegraph to Thomas at 3 Obkirchergasse, Vienna:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">HAVE ARRANGED FOR YOU TO BE ABLE TO INSPECT MAPS AFTER
FOURTEEN-DAY APPEAL PERIOD. SINCERE
REGARDS, KARL.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">January 23, 1972 <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas arrives from Vienna in Peter’s car at 3:00 p.m. Right afterwards he rides with Peter to the
Krucka to make sure everything is in order there. At 7:30 Thomas comes to see me in Weinberg. He informs me that at the Krucka all the
water buckets and the toilet are frozen solid.
He’s poured all the salt he had in the house into the toilet. He thanks me for my telegram.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At the prize award ceremony on Friday, Hansi (Rochelt) agreed with
the production team that in revenge for the invitation to the Academy of
Sciences’ fête, everything would be edited out and only the handing over of the
award itself and an interview with Thomas would be broadcast. And that was indeed what was actually shown on
<i>Culture Today</i> on Friday evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas also spent some time with Hilde Spiel. Regarding Rauris, she said that Uwe Johnson
had gotten into a spat with Hans Lebert right after he arrived and then refused
to do any readings. It took
Gimmelsberger half the night to talk Johnson round to reading something. Bernhard was delighted that he had turned out
to be right in his prediction of the way things would go with Johnson. Johnson called Rauris a “Nazi village.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">We watch <i>Libussa</i> on
television with my wife. Thomas approves
of many of the short scenes. From this
line of sight he likes Grillparzer very much.
We also end up talking about his interview on Friday, in which he said
he knew only as much Grillparzer as he’d read in school.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I brief Thomas on Rochelt’s radio broadcast, in which Rochelt
quoted the beginning of the speech for the State Prize award ceremony, up to
the passage on “basic necessity,” by way of smoothly segueing into a few
relevant passages from <i>Walking</i>. Thomas knew that Rochelt had spoken about
him, but he didn’t know what he had said.
Yesterday he met with Radax. In
the next few days it will be decided whether <i>Frost</i> is going to be filmed this year. If it turns out it is, Radax will come to
Nathal between February 5 and 12 to take a look around Weng and its surroundings,
where the shoot is supposed to take place.
Also during this period <i>The
Italian</i> is supposed to be screened at Castle Wolfsegg, where all of us will
go to see it, Thomas says. He says that all
of us includes my entire family. Thomas
repeatedly says he’ll be glad to be there again. At 10:30 p.m. he drives home to Nathal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas also tells me that at the Academy of Sciences’ opening
ceremony, Mrs. Firnberg the minister greeted several Excellencies, etc. by
name—but not him, the recipient of the prize.
Since nobody knew him, he sat down in the second row. But eventually he was discovered and invited
into the first row by a gentleman he wasn’t particularly well acquainted
with. But even this man said that the
president himself would have to come over, that otherwise he’d have to stay
sitting next to his aunt in the second row.
In fact the president did then come up to him and escort him to the
first row. At least six times somebody
whispered to him that it wasn’t usual to give a speech, just because they were
scared stiff that he’d give another speech like the one he gave back when he
received the State Prize.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">When I tell him that he’s gotten three prizes from Vienna now,
that there’s nothing more to get there, he says: Yes, now my poky little home
region is all that’s left. I haven’t
gotten anything from Upper Austria or Salzburg yet. I know it pains him that he still hasn’t
received the Stifter Prize, and I’m going to try to figure out if there’s
anything I can do towards making that happen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thomas also tells me that the three students [Erik Adam, Ingram
Hartinger, and Walter Pilar] who tried to disrupt his reading in Salzburg on
12.10.1971 by constant walking were also in Rauris and walking about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The program of the Grillparzer Prize award ceremony looks like a
menu, Thomas says. The text and my name
have been typed in. But if the program
were really pompous-looking, people would also hold that against the academy
and say it was too extravagant. They
might as well do whatever they like; it’ll always be criticized. But the text of the program is very fine and reverential. I haven’t received a line from my publisher in
two months. But even if they know that I
don’t give a damn about congratulations, they obviously should still send them
to me. The publisher of a play that I’ve
received a prize for really should take an active interest in something like
that. They should snatch up something
like that purely out of commercial self-interest. This prompts me to say: If the text of the
program for the award ceremony is so fine, they should quote that text in every
program, etc., for example, in everything having to do with the new play. I add that I would have liked to see the
program. Thomas says: I left the program
in Vienna with my aunt. Then I recall
that owing to his anger at the cancellation of the award ceremony for the
Wildgans Prize of Austrian Industry he promised me: You can have that program. I said: it’ll be beautifully framed and hung
in the bathroom. When I subsequently
started to ask for the program in his aunt’s presence, he wouldn’t let me
finish and tapped his lips with his finger.
Later he told me that he had given the program to his aunt, because she
got a big kick out of those kinds of programs.
He’s also given the programs for all his other prizes to his aunt. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I’m going to try to get hold of a photocopy of the program,
because I’m curious about the “menu.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">January 24, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At 6:00 p.m. I drive fast to Thomas’s house in Nathal to see how
well his television’s working. The
electrician has still got to come tomorrow to set up the antennas. Thomas tells me that in the <i>Salzburger Nachrichten</i> etc. there are
stories about a telegram from a group in Graz protesting his reception of the
Grillparzer Prize. After 15 minutes I
leave him. Thirty minutes later he comes
to my house to join us for a dinner of radishes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Next we give a hearty welcome to my mother, who has just spent six
weeks with my sister in St. Nikolai im Sausal.
This is followed by an evening of all dozen of us sitting in front of
the television until 9:15. I accompany
Thomas to his car, and as he’s driving away we agree on my coming by to give
him his mail at 8:30 tomorrow morning and then the two of us discussing how to
spend the rest of the day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Today I wrote a letter to Governor Wenzl, naturally without
Bernhard’s knowledge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Dear Governor Wenzel!</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">On 1/6/1965 the author Thomas
Bernhard acquired his farmhouse in Obernathal in the township of Ohlsdorf, and
he has since resided in Upper Austria for over seven years. He has acquired an additional property in the
municipal territory of Altmünster and likewise saved the house there from ruin
and preserved it in its original state. Thomas Bernhard is an Austrian who grew up in
Henndorf, attended high school at the Gymnasium in Salzburg, and studied music
in Vienna.</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"> <i>In</i> <i>1957
Bernhard graduated from the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg with a degree in
dramaturgy and directing and a thesis on Bertolt Brecht and Antonin
Artaud. Over the past nine years Thomas
Bernhard has been repeatedly described by the most notable German and Austrian
literary critics as the greatest living writer in the entire German-speaking
world.</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">His works have also received
appropriate recognition via the awarding of the following prizes:</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">1963 Julius Campe Prize, Hamburg <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">1964 Bremen Literary Prize<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">1965 Regensburg—Literary Prize of Germany Industry<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">1967 Austrian State Prize for Literature<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">1968 Anton Wildgans Prize of German Industry<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">1970 Georg Büchner Prize of the German Academy for Language and
Literature<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">1972 Grillparzer Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">After the awarding of the Georg Büchner Prize, the most
significant token of recognition that Germany can bestow, Thomas Bernhard’s
creative work has now also received due recognition from the Austrian Academy
of Sciences.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">But what Thomas Bernhard still lacks is recognition in his own
home state. As a matter of principle,
Thomas Bernhard declines all invitations to give readings within and outside
Austria, regardless of the size of the fee associated with them; he will be
even less receptive to invitations to the Jägermayrhof from Dr. Lassl. The true greatness of Dr. Lassl became
plainly evident when he mentioned the award of the Grillparzer Prize only very
briefly and in passing in the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Since Thomas Bernhard became a resident of Ohlsdorf, many names of
local places and people have appeared in his works. His film THE ITALIAN takes place in Wolfsegg. One of his books is called UNGENACH, and the
abandoned lime works in Gmunden inspired him to entitle another book THE LIME
WORKS. Thomas Bernhard has a high regard
for Adalbert Stifter, and there are many parallels between Stifter and him. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">As a
native of Linz and Upper Austria, I would like you to take up Thomas Bernhard’s
cause in the interest of Upper Austria’s reputation as well, and to try to see
that he receives some very long-overdue respect in the form of the Adalbert
Stifter Prize.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Yours with amiable regards,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Karl
Hennetmair<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">January 25, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">At 8:30 a.m. I’m at Thomas’s house with the mail I’ve picked
up for him from the Ohlsdorf post office.
He draws my attention to two letters without return addresses and says,
look, these are abominations. They leave
off the return address so that I’ll open their letters. Because they know that as soon as I read the
return address I’ll throw the letter away without opening it. He opens the letters. One of them is from Salzburg and the Baroness
von Levetzov, a daughter of Countess Saint Julien von Wolfsegg, whom we’ve run
into several times during the filming of <i>The
Italian</i>, and it contains an invitation to have a drink with her, a
Valentine’s Day drink on February 14.
Thomas opens the second letter without comment and says: Agi’s husband
(Dr. Teufl) congratulates me on the Grillparzer Prize. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">We decide to start out by going to the Dorotheum in Linz and
to go to Wolfern in Steyr-Land afterwards.
We plan to go shopping for furniture, Biedermeier furniture for
Peter. When Thomas asks which car we’re
going to take, I say: Yours; it’s your turn.
Of course he can drive again, and his leg injury isn’t causing him the
slightest discomfort anymore. As we’re
riding past my wife I tell her I’m leaving with Thomas. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">In Linz, at the Dorotheum, there isn’t much going on. Thomas places an order for a twelve-piece set
of massive silverware. Modern silverware
is much too small; people are forgetting how to eat properly, Thomas says. Because a parking lot right in front of the
bakery is “for customers only,” we buy eight jelly doughnuts so that we’ll be “customers.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">On our way to Wolfern, Thomas revels in Rohrbach, Hohenbrunn,
etc. Just past Niederneukirchen, near
Jagabauer, he’s particularly glowing in his praise of the landscape, which he
terms magnificent. As we’re passing by
Losensteinleiten, Thomas remembers that I once told him that after the war two
livestock dealers had bought the castle there from the Auerspergs for a
ridiculously low sum, so low that the dealers managed to raise almost the
entire sum by selling their stock. In
Judendorf we find Peter an inexpensive Biedermeier table, so inexpensive that
we make a down-payment on the spot and phone Peter from Steyer to inform him
that he needs to pick the table up.
Thomas also picks up two lampshades for himself. For seven years we’ve been looking for suitable
lighting fixtures for his farmhouse. In
most of the rooms the sockets have bare lightbulbs in them. This time two lampshades were adequate.<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">From the post office in the Grünmarkt we walked to the Gosser
in the “Enge” for lunch so that we could take a look at the old houses on our
way there and back. I proposed our
stopping on our way hom for mochas at the guesthouse just past the Hametwald in
Sierning, at the fork in the road just past Waldneukirchen, so that we could
eat our own jelly doughnuts. We’ve
partaken of its hospitality several times already, and Thomas always delights
in my chats with the landlady, because I know the whole neighborhood really
well from those days back in 1939 when I used to ride along with Dr. Büchel,
the municipal physician of Sierning, during his house calls. The chats always include talk about Forsthof,
“Forsthof Franz,” about his suicide, a suicide in Eder the mayor’s family,
among many other topics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We drive home via Bad Hall.
Because I couldn’t take any notes, I’m finding it difficult to write
down any part of our conversations. It
was simply too much, and I found it so taxing that I was utterly exhausted when
Thomas and I reached Nathal at 2:00.
Thomas was in a very good mood.
Whenever we’re on the road, I’m his guest. He told me about Eisenrach, about his debts,
about the fact that he’s expected to receive the Wildgans Prize. But his wife wants to distrain the prize
money. You don’t see what publishers are
like until you’re dependent on them. Schaffler
[Wolfgang Schaffler at Residenz Publications] used to love Eisenrach; now he
certainly won’t give him a thing. I say:
Eisenreich could end up with his head in a noose, because how can he be
expected to knuckle down and write something decent when he knows that the
money he’s going to get for it won’t belong to him at all anymore? Incidentally, Eisenrach was one of the first
people who came out against Thomas in a big way, in <i>Der Spiegel</i> in 1965. That
was back when you compared him to an ape.
I’m not sorry for him, I tell Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">We end up talking about the unhappy experiences of
Thomas’s grandfather Freumbichler as we so often do, and Thomas says that he
himself has been spared a lot of hardship thanks to his grandfather’s
experiences, which he lived through with him.
His grandfather drove ahead of him with the “snow plough.” I say to Thomas that he seems to be getting
more approachable and accommodating with each new prize he receives. Then he loses his temper and says: How could
you have any idea? It’s just the
opposite—now I’m even more arrogant and standoffish, and whenever somebody starts
thinking, “He’s been spending all this time with me; he’s friendly now,” I’m
already saying goodbye, I’m already sending them on their way; whereas when I’m
really grouchy to start out with, I suddenly turn friendly as I’m sending them
off. You have no idea how I behave in
other places. Well, then, I say, I was
only right about the way you behave towards me specifically. (He had previously confided further “family
secrets” to me, secrets that he said nobody was allowed to know, and so I don’t
dare to record them here.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">When I left Nathal at 2:00, I promised to come
back at 4:00 to install the lamps. So at
4:00 I showed back up at Nathal, and Thomas had already cleaned six picture-frames,
which we had also bought, and he said: Look, they’re so beautiful; people never
see what’s hidden beneath the surface.
How fine they look now. <i>A Party for Boris </i>could have ended up
just like them. Whenever anybody just
reads that play, they chuck it aside and say it’s nothing. But when it’s performed well, you see can see
what’s hidden inside it. When I wrote
that play in a fortnight, I never would have believed that it would be
performed, because people really can’t see what’s hidden inside it. I would have believed even less that I’d even
receive a prize for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Together we install a lamp on the ceiling. At 6:30 I drive home. Thomas follows me a half an hour later. We watch
“Bookworld” on television. As Thea Leitner is discussing a book, Thomas tells
me about how right after the war he tried to sell two short stories to this
woman, Thea Leitner. At the time she ran
a literary bureau in Vienna and was at <i>Die
Weltpresse</i> when it was still owned by the Americans. When Thomas doesn’t say anything further, I
ask: So what happened with the two stories?
Then Thomas says, when I said wanted some money for them, she told me
that in ----Strasse she had a large basement that hadn’t been cleaned in two
years. I was supposed to go there and
tidy it up and in exchange I was allowed to go the bakery next door and buy
something for such-and-such an amount on her line of credit. I did just that. Then I say: how times change. She’s still dealing with her short stories
and right now she’s discussing some foreign book, and you’re sitting there with
the Büchner prize.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When later in the program Hugo Portisch is discussing two
books about Russia and Siberia, thanks to my mother, who’s also present—we’re
actually sitting in her living room—we start talking about Wiesenthal, because
Paulinka, Wiesenthal’s daughter, is reportedly married to Portisch. Wiesenthal used to live in my parents’ house
in Kleinmünchen, in my old apartment.
Janko Musulin’s also got Jewish blood; I don’t know how much, says Thomas. Then I say: so have I, and tell my mother
that she’s got to tell Thomas about it.
My mother says that before her marriage to my father, he had himself
adopted by his Aunt Hennetmair. The
reason was that my father was surnamed Grünzweig, and my mother didn’t want to
assume a Jewish surname. My father had
been a Roman Catholic ever since he was born.
It was really amusing, the way we all started laughing then. Because I was very glad to admit to Thomas
that I had Jewish roots, and Thomas has a higher regard for the Jews than for
any other sort of people. This comes to
the fore on numerous occasions in his novels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 26, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 3:00 p.m. on the dot my wife and I are at Nathal. Thomas is just then receiving a visit from a
woman. I say we’ll come back later and
won’t disturb him. He presses us to come
in. In his living room a female reporter
is sitting with a camera primed for a snapshot.
As we’re stepping in, she’s still finishing off a glass of spirits, and
Thomas shows her out the front door.
When Thomas comes back, he apologizes and says he was worried we might
leave. It was very lucky for him that we
had come. This woman was the wife of the
postmaster at Laakirchen; he didn’t know the man’s name. He had promised her husband to let his wife
come to Nathal sometime. But he didn’t
know she wrote for a newspaper in Wels.
As soon as he found out, he declined to do anything, wouldn’t let her
take any pictures, and just drank a “hush shot” of schnapps with her. He doesn’t want to have any more trouble here
in the neighborhood; that was why he was friendly. Because if he makes another blunder here, he
won’t be able to go anywhere anymore. He
tried to make her understand why he didn’t want her to write anything about
him. Then I said: Thomas, that’s Mrs.
Heli Sammer, who has been trying via a girlfriend to get me to introduce her to
you for years. I reminded him that this
was the woman I had told him about years ago, about how much she had wanted to
meet him. But I didn’t tell him about
every time she tried to get me to make such an “intervention.” To the contrary, because I try to keep people
at arm’s length from him, I often didn’t tell him anything at all about it. (I’d obviously only make him angry by
mentioning something like that, and I plan to keep avoiding doing it out of
self-interest.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas reads to my wife and me the letter from Claus Peymann
that arrived today. Peymann writes that
at the Berlin Anatomical Institute he has examined the textbook quoted in <i>The Ignoramus and the Madman</i> and that it
doesn’t say, for example, vonsilitis but rather tonsillitis, etc. That moreover the wooden wedge isn’t placed
under the cadaver’s head but rather shoved under its shoulders. At the Anatomical Institute Ganz the actor
will get an opportunity to use the dissector’s scalpel himself and also learn
the technical terminology in detail. The
doctors are enthusiastic about the play.
Ganz plans to come to Salzburg soon, and Peymann thinks it would be a
good idea for him to meet the author as well.
Then Thomas interjects: Well, I don’t know; that’s really not such a
good idea; it’ll be better if we don’t meet.
In conclusion, Peymann writes that Thomas should work with a coping saw
instead of with a chainsaw. Then Thomas
says he plans to go over the medical terminology in the play (<i>The Ignoramus and the Madman</i>) with Peter
once again. He says that he relied
solely on his memory for the technical terms and that he’s glad there aren’t even
more mistakes in the play. That
vonsilitis is naturally a typo, because everybody knows it’s supposed to be
tonsillitis. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We drink schnapps, install the lamps in the little living room
together. We talk again about how
difficult it is to find suitable lighting fixtures for his farmhouse, and just
as I’m saying that in the period in which he’s received seven prizes we haven’t
managed to get hold of seven lighting fixtures, somebody in the courtyard
knocks at the door. Thomas answers the
door. I recognized the person’s voice as
our postman’s. I know right away that
it’s a telegram. After a loud “Bye-bye!”
from the postman there’s silence in the hallway for a bit, then Thomas bursts
into a loud ha-ha-ha and rushes into the room.
Yet another prize, he says excitedly.
I ask: Really, what sort of prize?
Then he says: Let me see, I haven’t even read the telegram all the way
through. He reads it aloud. The telegram
is from Falkenburg (cultural editor at the third channel of West German
Television). He informs me that the
television film <i>The Italian</i> has
received the distinction of being awarded the Grimme Prize. It’s inconceivable, says Thomas. I’ve just come back with a prize from Vienna,
and today it’s only the 26<sup>th</sup>, so only four days later, and there’s
yet another prize. From the telegram
it’s impossible to tell if the award applies to the author, the director, or
everybody involved in the production. We
start speculating about the whole business, and now we’re tensely waiting for
tomorrow’s newspapers. Waiting to
receive clarity. In celebration of the
event, Thomas fills our glasses of schnapps to the brim. It’s good that Schaffler will be coming
tomorrow. Now he can slip a paper band
around the book version of <i>The Italian</i>. Schaffler will likewise be very glad. I say: For Radax this mark of distinction
will mean a fresh impetus to his new work on <i>Frost</i>. I’ve been keenly
wishing him all the best with this project, because he really gave it his all during the filming
at Wolfsegg, through storms and cold-snaps.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When my wife and I leave Thomas at 6:00, we invite him to
continue celebrating with us over crepes and mulled red wine at 6:45. As we’re eating those crepes Thomas says to
me that like the others this prize will cost him many a sleepless night. That it was improbable, his first play (<i>A Party for Boris</i>) and now his first
film being singled out like this. The
count and the countess (i.e., of St. Julien at Wolfsegg) will certainly be surprised,
but everybody will be happy to have me back there again anyway. I’m writing my new play now, as I’ve already
told you. I’ve already got the title. It’s called <i>More Luck than Brains</i>. This
title popped into my head immediately after the accident. I’ve often said to myself that I had more luck
than brains, so now the play is going to be called that. It’ll be a proper comedy. I’ve already got the plot worked out. When I say, it’s going to be a uniquely
classic play, because you’ve definitely got a sense of humor that will outdo
all the good comedies that have been written so far, he says, I’ve put lots of
comedy in my books already. He reels off
passages in <i>Gargoyles</i> and <i>The Lime Works </i>that are humorous and
ironic, but says that apparently nobody’s noticed this yet. I certainly have, I say, because I’ve often
had to laugh out loud as I’m reading, especially where you have those birds’
necks wrung one after another and celebrate it so unambiguously. Especially <i>The Lime Works</i>, I say; I’ve found lots of passages in it that are
interwoven with comedy. But when I veer
back to the topic of <i>More Luck than
Brains</i>, Thomas gruffly says: Cut that out right now! That’s enough! Fine, I say, it’s important not to talk
something to death before it’s been written.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">By now it’s 7:30, and we move up to the second floor to watch
TV. We watch the German news in case
they mention the award of the prize even this early on. The Germans are always really on the ball
with these things. We’re also hoping
there’ll be something, an announcement, in “A Special Case.” But there ends up being nothing. But there ends up being nothing. Thomas says that now if someone congratulates him on the
prize, he’ll have to ask: For which one?
Because now of course two of them have come at the same time. Moreover he says that he learned from Radax
that after the preview of <i>The Italian</i>
the head of the WDR, Dr. Höfer, had said that the film was crap. He didn’t want to hear or see any more of
Thomas Bernhard. Immediately after that,
Falkenberg, who used to be such a staunch supporter of Bernhard and of this
screenplay, fell into line behind his boss, Höfer, and he hasn’t heard anything
more from him since. Now I can write to
him again, because of course he’s sent me this telegram. Now he’s sitting pretty again, and Höfer
looks like a fool. Then I say: After you
came back so enthusiastic from Germany after the preview and found the film so
good, I immediately thought that the film must be something special. Because when you’re so enthusiastic about
your own stuff it’s always spot-on, because nobody else can criticize your work
as severely as you do. Now even your
weakest piece, <i>The Italian</i>, has been
singled out for praise. It’ s
unbelievable; one can only laugh. Then
Thomas, my mother, my wife, and I burst into raucous laughter, and everybody
said, yes, one really can only laugh.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Then I started talking about his enviers. Lassl (Dr. Lassl from the <i>Oberösterreichischen Nachrichten</i>) will
inevitably be alarmed by the whole thing, and not want to break the news at
all. But that wouldn’t be in his
business interest. After all, breaking
news it what he’s there for. Now he’ll
start working out how small and inconspicuous he can make it look. That’s the way it is with lots of things in
Austria. Recognition always has to come
from Germany. Thomas stayed till 10:30.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">January 27, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Today we received clarification. Because Thomas knew that I had gone to Linz early
in the morning and might possibly be there by midday, he came to my house,
Weinberg, at 1:00 p.m. So then as soon
as I got home I learned that Thomas had given the letter from the Adolf Grimme
Prize to my wife to read. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The Adolf Grimme Prize Society informed Thomas
that his film <i>The Italian </i>had been
awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The enclosure read:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Scriptwriter, Thomas Bernhard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">2.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Director, Ferry Radax<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">3.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Cameraman, Gerard Vandenberg<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">They also asked him to keep the news a secret,
because the announcement wasn’t going to be made to the press until
1/31/1972. An invitation to a
preliminary celebration on March 9. The
award ceremony will take place on March 10 at 11:00 a.m. in Cologne.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As I didn’t get home from Linz until 2:00, I just
stopped by the house for a few minutes and then went straight to Thomas’s house
at Nathal. At the door to the courtyard
he told me that Schafller and his editor, a woman, were paying him a
visit. He said that he was right in the
middle of talking over what he had discussed with me yesterday. That as soon as the visit was over he would
come to see me—in an hour, he hoped. He
also told me that he had received the letter from the Grimme Prize. I say: Bring it with you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas doesn’t come by with the letter until 9:00
in the evening. I read with my own eyes
what I’ve already learned from my wife.
As I’m handing the letter and the enclosures back to him, I say: that
dog Radax will also be thrilled; this will fortify him for <i>Frost</i>. Yes, says Thomas, the
dog (he employs my word “dog,” which he’s never used before. He had been instantaneously animated by this
expression of mine. At other times he
says beast, brute, certin, repulsive fellow, etc. But these expressions are genuinely negative
in tone, whereas this word that we’re using together for the first time, “dog,”
was positive in tone) could also write and have something heard. Then I said: He’ll be thinking the same thing
about you—the dog won’t write. (Here our
starting point was the assumption that Radax had received such a letter as
well.) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Then Thomas tells me about a second letter that
he’s received today. From his publisher, Siegfried Unseld! Two lines.
Unseld’s asking me to write the afterword that he’s promised Ludwig Holl
(or a similar name) [Ludwig Hohl, author of the book <i>Bergfahrt</i> {<i>Ascent</i>}, which
was published by Suhrkamp]. Just a
really brief one. I say: Are you crazy;
of course he won’t be getting his afterword!
You’re obviously not going to compromise your principles; you’ve
certainly never done that. Well, what am
I supposed to do? I say, when what’s his
name…Ehrenreich wrote some negative things about you—who?—Thomas interrupts me;
Eisenreich, I say, who’s such a forgotten figure by now that I can’t get even
his name right anymore; so you can also just say that you don’t care for this
Holl person’s work. In the meantime
you’ve gotten to know it well and so you’re not going to write an afterword. Naturally, says Thomas, I don’t care for
Holl’s works, so I’ve got an alibi. I’ll
notify Unseld of this, but just in two lines as well, but right away, so that
he has the letter before the announcement of the award of Grimme Prize. Because just writing two lines and not
mentioning anything about the Grillparzer Prize is pretty lousy behavior. Surely Grillparzer can’t be as unknown and
insignificant as all that even in Germany.
Kaut (the president of the Salzburg Festival) did that really well; he
wrote to me: “I know that you don’t like prizes, but I still heartily
congratulate you on the Grillparzer Prize; that will give a real boost to our
project (the premiere of <i>The Ignoramus
and the Madman</i> on July 29).” I ask
Thomas how Schaffler has reacted to the news of the Grimme Prize. Favorably, of course. So far he’s sold 3,000 copies of <i>The Italian</i>; he’s had 5,000 printed; he
hopes to offload another thousand thanks to the Grimme Prize.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I calculate that so far 420,000 schillings’ worth
of books have been sold. Thomas says
he’s only supposed to receive 10 percent, which would amount to just 42,000
schillings. How nice it is, I say, that
you’ve agreed upon a fixed royalty-ceiling of 100,000 schillings. Because Thomas says that if he exceeds that
100,000-schilling royalty ceiling, he will be entitled to collect everything in
excess of it. But of course a print run
of 5,000 books can only bring in 700,000 schillings in revenues. So the most you’d ever get would be 70,000
schillings. So someday the publisher’s going
have to recalculate this rate with you.
Then Thomas says: Schaffler has also sold the rights to a paperback
edition for 30,000 schillings; he’s already got that money in his pocket. On top of that, one can always figure that 20
percent will be left over for the publisher.
We go on to talk about the fact that the number of his detractors keeps
growing. Pretty soon he won’t be able to
accept prizes anymore. The prizes arouse
too much envy. He’s also bound to lose
the few friends he still has. The Hufnagels
also made remarks to that effect when they heard about the Grimme Prize just
now—he throws up his hands. I say: your
aunt and Wieland Schmied will be the only ones left. How are things with O’Donell? I ask. He wouldn’t understand any of this; I don’t
talk about stuff like this with him. But
why are you suddenly so worried about not having friends? I say. So far you’ve never taken that into
consideration. You know, you get older;
and then I won’t have anyone, says Thomas.
Sooner or later, your friendships are going to fall by the wayside for
one reason or another; but you don’t want to change at all. If you still yearn to have friends in your old
age, you’ll have to open your door at least a crack, and then either friends or
flatterers will surely come flooding in.
Hopefully I won’t open it too wide a crack, says Thomas.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then Thomas says that at the award ceremony for the Grimme
Prize he’ll say that he’s really no film expert, that he had gone about making
it in the same way he had gone about taking the test for his truck-driver’s
license. All those “clever people” would
fail a truck-driver’s license test even if they studied air brakes and so forth
for six months. They have trouble enough just passing the test for the regular
driver’s license. I’ve made the film as
I took the test for my truck-driver’s license.
And I’ve also passed this test with flying colors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s really true, Thomas says, that all good things happen at
the same time. You know of course that
I’ve said I’d accept an invitation to go to Poland. Today it came. Naturally I won’t be getting a fee; you know
of course that the Poles don’t pay anything, but I’ll have all my expenses
reimbursed, and because I already want to go there, I’ll accept the invitation. I want to give readings in Warsaw, Krakow,
and Wroclaw. We’ve spoken often spoken
about Warsaw and Krakow, because we’ve both been there. I was there during the war and he was there
after it. So I ask him, are you familiar
with Wroclaw? No, says Thomas. You’ll have to see the town hall, the
cathedral island, and Centennial Hall, if all that’s still there. My mother chimes in that she once went to the
theater in Wroclaw. So Thomas is going
to Poland. A bit before the prize award
ceremony on March 10 he’ll go to Brussels for a few weeks and from Brussels to
the ceremony in Cologne. In March or
April he’ll go to Poland.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 28, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Today I had a chat with Theo Kihs about the article about the
awarding of the Grillparzer Prize. I
brought a carbon copy of my note for Kastner the editor. Mr. Kihs asked me if I would do him the favor
of asking Bernhard if he wouldn’t mind signing his paperback copy of <i>Frost</i>.
As I was planning to visit Bernhard afterwards, I took the book with me
and wrote Mr. Kihs’s first and last names down neatly, because he was hoping
Thomas wouldn’t just sign his name. As
soon as I stepped into Thomas’s house at 7:00 p.m., I took advantage of his
good mood and set the book and Kihs’s name in front of him, so that Thomas
wrote: “For Thomas Kihs very sincerely Thomas Bernhard 1.28.1972.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Books with Bernhard’s autograph will be an incredible rarity
someday, because he’s forever refusing to sign books. Of course, he’s always written something in
his books for my wife, my children, and me.
But a few months ago, when he gave me a copy of <i>Walking</i> right after it was published and I immediately checked to
see what he had written in it and saw that he hadn’t written anything, I say,
at least sign your name for me. Then he
drily said: No, I’m not going to do that now.
But afterwards he still stuck around cheerfully for a couple of hours as
usual. In the event that he’d said no I
would have handed the book without Bernhard’s autograph back to Kihs just as
drily; perhaps he would have been less surprised than me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas said: Another telegram of congratulations has arrived;
look:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">GREETINGS AND CONGRATULATIONS ON ADOLF-GRIMME-PRIZE FROM ME
AND ALL YOUR DEVOTED COLLEAGUES, YOURS HÖFER, 2 WDR<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas explains that this is the director of the second
channel, who had said that <i>The Italian</i>
was so bad that he didn’t ever want to hear another word about Bernhard. You see once again what monsters these people
are; now he’s sending me a telegram. I
say: The mere fact that he was against you before obliges him to congratulate
you now. If he was wrong about you, why
shouldn’t he admit it? Unfortunately,
because he was wrong about you, ten nullities and know-nothings who otherwise
wouldn’t have had a chance will slip into his schedule.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas also tells me that he’s received a letter from the
Grimme Prize Foundation asking him to send them a photo of himself. But
he’s not going to reply, and naturally he’s not going to send a photo
either. They’re expecting some gushing
letter from me now, “the happiest day of my life,” “for years I’ve longed for
this prize,” etc., but they’re on the wrong track about me. I’m not going to reply at all. I’ll just inform them when I’m arriving, and
I’ve already filled out the card with my hotel and room preferences; I’ll send
that back. People always expect gratitude when they give you something. But what can that possibly lead to? Of course it would end in everybody being literally
asphyxiated by forced gratitude. When
I’ve been offered something I accept it, but nobody has any right to expect
gratitude from me. Schaffler’s also been
trying to gouge me, of course. Because
he helped me save about 40,000 to 50,000 schillings, he wanted me to write something
for his publishing firm. How shameless
can a person get? And what’s more, he
proposed this to me in the presence of the firm’s editor. That’s really just bald-faced extortion. Now he won’t be getting a damn thing from me. Naturally I’m not going to burn all my
bridges with him, but I’ve come to recognize his true colors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s typical of Thomas that he’s now denouncing Schaffler, who
helped him save about 50,000 schillings, as shameless, just because Schaffler would
like to offset the high royalty rate by publishing the fruits of Thomas’s
intellectual labors. Thomas probably
interpreted my laughter as agreement.
But I was glad that he was once again splendidly confirming my opinion
that he’s the biggest egoist I’ve ever encountered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then I add that today during my visit with Kihs I drew his
attention to my first article in the <i>Salzkammergutzeitung</i>,
in which I wrote at the end that Thomas Bernhard was very modest. I highlighted this assertion today, and Kihs
said I’d left out a word. He said it
would have been more accurate to say that Thomas Bernhard was shamelessly
modest, because his modesty is really quite shameless. Well, yes, you’re quite right about that,
said Thomas. As we’re saying our
goodbyes at 10:00, we agree to meet for a walk at 2:30 the following
afternoon. Unbeknownst to Thomas I sent
Radax a telegram.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 29, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas arrives punctually at 2:30. We walk to the forester’s lodge on the Traun
and through Aupointen and Sandhäuslberg back to my house at Weinberg. We’re on foot for an hour and three-quarters. We don’t talk much, and the little we do say
is small talk. I know that Thomas’s
brain is working. I can simply sense
this, and this always makes the walk a bit slower. Often we go for ten or twenty minutes at a
stretch without exchanging a word, and then only a brief bit of small
talk. I know that he needs breaks like
this in order to get his train of thought moving along more smoothly again. I’m just surprised that he doesn’t take any
notes and that he holds onto the ideas from the walk until he gets a chance to
write them down. In the course of the
walk, Thomas only made a few good remarks “aloud.” They were so nicely and neatly formulated
that afterwards I said to my wife: I didn’t manage to make a mental note of
them, and so everything he said has gone down the drain. </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Because when I can’t recall it word for word, the
effect of the original statement isn’t there.
Among other things he witheringly criticized Dr. Lassl and Kihs, paraded
their weaknesses and execrable traits before my eyes, uncovered and dissected
everything execrable beneath their exteriors, etc. These were spot-on, sagacious remarks. I silently acknowledged that he was right.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Over
coffee Thomas also tells me that he isn’t going to reply to his publisher’s
two-line letter at all now. Next week
the publisher will hear about the Grimme Prize; then he’ll have two prizes to
“keep secret.” Then he laughed
cynically. The Grimme Prize people won’t
be getting a photo or a letter either.
I’m going to be even more execrable now.
I’ll be nice and friendly at the award ceremony, but if they think
they’re going to get another film script or film out of me, they’re sadly
mistaken. If they want they can make
film adaptations of my books, but other people will have to write the
scripts. I say: then the past and future
recipients of the Grimme Prize will refer to him as their “colleague,” as will
other people in the film industry.
They’ll expect him to be present at future award ceremonies and shake
people’s hands, etc. They’ll be sorely
disappointed, because until now you haven’t accepted an invitation to the
following year’s ceremony after receiving a prize. But on the other hand at each of the
ceremonies your living predecessors have personally congratulated you. At the Grillparzer prize they were even all
there. Yes, of course, but I obviously
can’t congratulate the execrable Uwe Johnson, who I dislike, on his being
awarded the Büchner. Because you’re
supposed to go to them every year. I’m
supposed to be in attendance at all those prize award ceremonies, but something
like that is out of the question for me.
I’ve got to forget all the prizes immediately and act as though nothing
has ever happened. If you let prizes go
to your head you obviously can’t work anymore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Actually
I really shouldn’t be surprised to notice that Thomas keeps all his good ideas
in his head while we’re walking and until he writes them down. When we’re on the road in the car, travelling
between Linz, Steyr, and Kirchdorf, Thomas reminds me at many places along the
way that I told him this or that story about my wartime experiences years or
months earlier at this precise stretch of the drive. Because as a little schoolboy he was attacked
by airplanes with bombs and aircraft cannon and lived through the bombing of
Traunstein and Salzburg, it’s worthwhile talking about wartime experiences with
him. Because if a person hasn’t lived
through all that himself, how is can he possibly come even close to forming a
picture of it? All the movies and books are lousy and don’t even come close to
reproducing the reality. Because how can
anybody even vaguely imagine what it was like to fetch barley soup with a
growling stomach in a hailstorm of gunfire?
The best one is and remains <i>All
Quiet on the Western Front</i>. But I
can’t say whether I would have been able to imagine everything in it so
precisely if I had read it before I was a soldier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">At
6:00 I drive Thomas to Nathal. He had
come on foot, you see. Pinned to the
gate was a note from O’Donnell asking him to pay him a visit. We agree to take another walk tomorrow,
Sunday, at the same time as today, 2:30 in the afternoon.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">January
30, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Since
the fall of 1971 I have been under orders from Thomas Bernhard to facilitate
his purchase of an acre of woodland that directly borders his property on its
northern edge. Back in the fall I spoke
with the owner of this scrap of woods, Mr. Rudolf Asamer, a restaurateur and
proprietor of more than 120 hectares. He
is in principle already willing to sell the woods. He has even proposed a price of 120,000 to
150,000 schillings. Thomas says when the
woods are worth that much he’ll pay that much.
But he’s counting on me to try to negotiate a better deal. So as with every lawyer or workman I
recommend to him, he’s loading me with all the responsibility. He knows that in many cases I can represent
his own interests better than he himself would be capable of doing. So then I said: Good, then I won’t finalize
the sale contract with Asamer until April.
He’s a hard-bargaining magnate with whom I’ve already haggled over
several farmhouses valued at two million schillings apiece. He’s always been a very well-armed haggler. I’ve got to make sure to choose the best time
for this purchase. The fall, when the
agriculturalists are raking in all their cash, is not such a time. The best time to approach Asamer will be in
April or May, because then every farmer who hasn’t got a forest to chop down is
in really bad shape. Because the
purchase of artificial fertilizer eats up all their reserves, or these farmers
don’t even pay for this fertilizer until the following harvest. But at the end of May the financial situation
of the farmers starts improving, because the price of pigs rises and the bulls
are being sold off. What’s more I’ve still got to measure the
woods trunk by trunk at chest height, calculate the cubic volume using my
chart, and deduct twenty percent so that I’ll know how much money in timber the
woods contain. Then I’ll be able to say
how high a price would still be worth paying for them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">At
9:00 this morning I suddenly got the urge to measure the trunks in the
woods. A good forester would be able to
be able to come up with an estimate accurate with ten-percent in less than ten
minutes. But on account of the small size
of the plot, it wouldn’t pay to hire one; besides, Thomas would doubt the
accuracy of such an estimate anyway. So I prepared some lists and some
chalk. On the north side of each trunk
I’ve measured I’m going to make a small chalk-mark at shoulder height to make
sure I don’t miss a trunk or measure one twice.
The seven-degree centigrade temperature will also be just right for my
purposes in forcing me to hurry as fast as I can. My 15-year-old son Wolfgang has been charged
with writing the measurements down. But
just as we’re about to leave the house, my 25-year-old son Karl Hubert turns up
and says he’s about to go skiing in Grünau with Wolfi. I say that we’ll be back in just over an hour
at the latest, and that they can leave then.
Neither of them objects outright, but Karl Hubert says he’s willing to
wait, so I ponder the whole thing—I don’t want to screw up the survey of the
woods—and say, just go. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">At the
same time it’s also occurred to me that now at 9:30 in the morning Radax will
still be in bed, and since Thomas will want to know what’s going on with him, I
go to the neighbors’ house and give Radax a call. As I expected, he’s half-asleep when he
answers. But when he hears my name, he
wakes up and immediately thanks me for my telegram. I ask him if he was also notified of the
Grimme Prize in writing. No, he only
heard about it by phone. He also doesn’t
know whether the award includes the director and the cameraman or is just for
the author. He asks whether Bernhard
will be coming to the ceremony. Yes, I
say, and I tell him that Bernhard feels the way he did back when he passed the
exam for a truck-driver’s license at the same time two mechanics failed
it. Radax howls with laughter. I say that Thomas is waiting for a report
from him. Radax says he’ll write
something today and send me a carbon copy.
I say: I don’t need a carbon copy; I’ll learn as much for Bernhard as he
deems appropriate. We must debunk
mysteries as much as possible; otherwise we’d get muddleheaded, which would be
unpleasant. I say he should feel free to
mention my telephone conversation, that I’ll fill Bernhard in on it. Radax also says that the negotiations about
the filming of <i>Frost</i> are dragging on
in Vienna, etc. Then I say to him that
thanks to the prize they almost couldn’t say no.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas
comes punctually at 2:30 p.m. I tell him
about my telephone call with Radax as
I’m putting on warm clothes and we’re leaving.
Out on the road Thomas says: tell
me everything again, but in exact detail, don’t forget a single thing; I want
to know everything in exact detail. Start all over again from the beginning. Then I say: Fine, it all really started on
Friday. After you received the letter
about the award ceremony, it struck me that Radax might not be included and
might not have received any notification.
And so I sent him a telegram so that on the one hand he could stall the
negotiations with the ORF until the official announcement of the prize. Whence my wording: “Exploit this triumph as a
trump,” etc. And on the other hand, as
soon as he learns about the prize, he’s bound immediately to get the impression
that from now on he’s going to get due credit for the film. But if he is included in the prize, the
congratulations are also warranted.
Thomas was very glad that I had done that and called him. He didn’t want to know any more about it and
I should have asked him more. Whether
any money is associated with the prize, who else is going to the ceremony, who
else is going to receive the prize? He
thinks he can recall that a whole list of Grimme prize awardees was published
the previous year. He might also be
mistaken. Then I say that I had of
course asked Radax afterwards and he said we’ll know more on Monday or Tuesday;
he can’t say anything at all right now.
My conversation with Radax went the same way. Of course I also wanted to know. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">By
then we’ve reached Feldweg in Ohlsdorf, and we take the route that leads to
Weinberg via the Puchheim manor’s forester’s lodge, Aupointen, and Sandhäuslberg. In the course of our walk we make an
arc-shaped detour, because otherwise the walk would be too short, as two hours
slip by in a trice. Thomas said to me
that yesterday, 1/29, marked exactly a year since he had gone to Brussels to
write <i>The Italian.</i> A year ago he sold the script to Residenz
Publications’ owner Schaffler for 100,000 schillings. By 2/9, in other words within ten days, he
had finished <i>The Italian</i>; because
Unseld from Suhrkamp Publications had congratulated him on it on February 9
when he was there for his birthday. <i>The Italian</i> was already finished
then. On that day Unseld gave him two
silver candlesticks, four-sided candlesticks.
I can naturally now recall everything in exact detail, because immediately
after his return from Brussels he showed me the candlesticks and we had talked
about the fact that he had been born on 2/10/1931 and not on 2/9/1931. Thomas heaps abuse on Unseld, because they
haven’t sent him the galleys for the new edition of <i>Frost</i>. All the typos in the
first edition are being carried over into this one. Lots of writers are just exploited by their
publishers, nailed down by options and then two years later they’re hung out to
dry or not even published at all anymore.
Schaffler is also mentioned; he lays into him as well, saying that he’s
no better than any of the others. That
Schaffler won’t be getting anything more from him either. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But Thomas isn’t serious and
embittered; to the contrary, he’s in a jolly mood and heaping all this abuse on
publishers in a sportive tone. I say:
Publishers are used to having every author on a string, like a puppeteer and
his puppets. Every publisher has got a
handful of strings, and whenever he pulls a string, an author appears. But when he pulls your string, it snags, and
nothing moves. They just can’t grasp
that. Thomas says he’ll stop in
Frankfurt on his way to the award ceremony.
When he’s there he’ll breeze through their offices and say: <i>Lookee heeyah, looka me</i>, <i>da great wridah</i>. You know most of the time I talk in dialect
there; I’m really quite brutal. If the
secretary says I’ve got to wait, I snap back: <i>c’mowan, it ain’t like I got wall da time in da woild.</i> Then the door opens, a little scribbler is
shoved aside, and I can step into Unseld’s office<i>.</i> They’ll let the next guy
wait so long that when he finally gets in he’ll have forgotten what he’s been
planning to say. That’s how they make
mincemeat of their authors beforehand—by making them wait. I’ve ordered the publishing firm to forward
all correspondence from theaters etc. to me, because of course ever since that
time that they described me as a “scatterbrained author” in a letter to
Salzburg, I haven’t received anything at all.
My play <i>Boris</i> was performed
scads of times in Zurich; of course I should have received a share of the takings,
but nothing of the kind happened.
Because they’re obviously…they’re obviously not going to give me what
ought to be coming my way. Even If I
have them show me everything at the firm, I’ll never be able to figure out
whether what they’re presenting as my share of the takings is what’s actually due
to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then we return to the topic of the Grimme Prize, and Thomas
says that now Hansi (Rochelt) is also going to pull a wry face. Actually I can imagine quite a number of
faces they’ll be pulling when they react to the news of my new prize. During those ten days I didn’t know a thing
or have an inkling of what would come out of it. An ordinary cold could have put a stop to the
whole thing. Of course I already had it
all in my head, but if I hadn’t written all night and all day throughout those
ten days, nothing would have come of <i>The
Italian</i>. Because of course they were
waiting on me to give them that script.
One tiny glitch would have been enough to make the whole thing come to naught. Then I asked if O’Donell had visited in the
meantime and how they had reacted to the news of the prize. He says: This
morning. But I came right out with it
like that and said that I had enviers on all sides, so that they couldn’t do
otherwise and didn’t envy me. I’ve made
myself out to be a kind of victim of prizes.
Perhaps I ought to take out a large ad in a German newspaper, ideally in
the <i>Frankfurter Allgemeine</i>, an ad
announcing that I won’t be accepting any more prizes at all. Violators will be prosecuted for disrupting
production. Then I said he should put
off taking out that ad until he had the Nobel Prize. He doesn’t believe he’s going to get it. I say: I’m not giving up hope. Austria still hasn’t got any Nobel laureates
in literature. They’re bound to give
Central Europe a turn someday.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Then our talk turns to Rauris.
Thomas says Rauris is already falling apart. The negative reviews are piling up. Schaffler from Residenz Publications, who was
such a booster of it at first, is now coming off his high horse. He’s wavering now, saying maybe it’s really
nothing, etc. You know, that’s something
that really bothers me about Schaffler, the fact that he always starts out
raving about the material and then immediately changes his mind. That’s when the beast shows his true colors. Then I ask him the name of the regional writer
Erwin Gimmelsberger wanted to invite to Rauris and Thomas talked him out of
inviting. I say: It was some writer I
didn’t know was still alive, because I hadn’t heard anything about him in such
a long time. Springenschmid, says
Thomas. Just imagine: he’s the one who
was always talking big during the Nazi period.
Gimmelsberger wanted to invite somebody like that to Rauris. I struck him off the list right away. I wouldn’t have gone to Rauris if he’d been
invited. Besides, he marched into Norway
with my uncle, and by the time the first shells were hurtling in,
Springenschmid had already been gushing every sort of thing on both sides. In back he was shitting himself, and tears
were rolling down his whole front. My
uncle had to box his ears to get him to overcome his panic. (I’ve witnessed many cases of panic and
cowardice, but I just can’t believe in this business of gushing from front and
back at the same time. His uncle was
surely exaggerating, or else there isn’t a grain of truth in the whole story.) But I don’t say this to Thomas, because
what’d be the point of getting into an argument with him about Springenschmid’s
muck? Because Thomas believes this
story, since he explicitly asserted to me that in such cases you can only drive
away panic with a box to the ears. The
cowards I’ve seen didn’t have sopping wet trousers, and they weren’t crying
either. But a box to the ears couldn’t
have drawn them out of the foxhole, or out from under the car during a tactical
advance. Besides, such cases shouldn’t
be described as attacks of cowardice but rather as nervous breakdowns. Those poor devils were detailed to cooking
duties, and every time we stopped they would take cover under the food truck
even when there wasn’t the faintest sound of a siren. One of these guys was Hickersberger, who now
works at the dairy in Machland. When I
visited him once after the war I expected he’d turn out to be a nervous wreck. The manager of the dairy knew that
Hickersberger had been totally frazzled during the war, but in the meantime he
had made a complete recovery. I myself
got panicked a dozen times. But each of
those times I was so petrified that my sphincter couldn’t have opened if it’d
wanted to. Whenever soldiers did happen
to crap their pants it certainly wasn’t because they were afraid but because it
often would have been suicide just to show their heads, let alone to leave
their hiding spot for the sake of taking a shit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Just then it occurs to me that in Vienna, writers are always
bellyaching to Thomas that they have no material to write about. That strikes me as utterly pathetic. We were then walking directly along the
barbed wire fence of a field, and I said to Thomas: When I look at a wire, that
wire on its own would surely give me enough material for a book. Pages and pages could be written starting
from its being taken from the ore to when it’s being made into barbed wire, in
connection with the factory and the people who work there, to the point when
it’s being used as a pasture fence here.
Because everything’s contained in that, everything from agriculture to
the livestock dealer to the sausage factory that receives this livestock from
the field. If somebody says he hasn’t
got any material, then he can never be a writer, because the first bit of
material he senses is the very air he breathes, and surely somebody could spend
a lifetime writing about that. Because
the air we breathe has already passed through the lungs of so many people and farm
animals; all the nations before us have already inhaled and exhaled it. Somebody could tell a story about the air
we’re breathing here. You yourself take
walks for the air and need the air in order to come up with good ideas. A writer has simply got to make things up out
of thin air, and everybody’s got air and it doesn’t cost anything. Thomas heard me out without saying anything,
which in his case is much closer to an expression of assent than when he
actually says something in reply.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At this
point it would probably be apropos of me to insert a photocopy of a letter from
Thomas dated 10.12.1965. The letter is
typewritten, as I had “forbidden” him to write by hand, because by then I
already possessed a ton of handwritten letters that I could hardly read. Thomas writes verbatim as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Vienna 19<sup>th</sup> District<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">3 Okirchergasse <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="right" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: right;">
<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">10.12.65<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dear Karl,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I have just received the letter you sent to
Lovran; in the meantime you have perceived [received] my letter from Vienna,
right?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">First of all: I’m sitting in my apartment in
Vienna and finishing my play, which is going to be performed next summer at the
festival in Salzburg; I’m almost finished, and I’m telling myself I’ve been
lucky once again.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This coming Thursday I’ll be taking the train to
Salzburg for a conference and then back to Vienna to work further on the novel,
which of course I’d also like to finish by the end of the year; on the 9<sup>th</sup>
I’ll be in Hamburg and Bremen; on the 10<sup>th</sup> I’ll be back in Salzburg;
whether I go from there to Nathal depends on how easy I find it to work in
Vienna; if it’s going as it is now, without any irritations, I’ll stay; but
even if I do I’ll at least make a side-trip to the Ohlsdorf area. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But to cut to the chase: I’d rather you didn’t undertake
anything on your own, and for the moment I’m quite happy to hold onto Nathal;
everything will become clear in time; I don’t want to rush anything. I’m sorry about my work, about everything
having to do with the house. As long as
it doesn’t run off, it can stay locked up on its lonesome, can’t it? It’s
reassuring enough for me if Mrs. Stockhammer looks it over, airs it out, etc.,
once a week. I’m also writing to her
today.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So I really can’t divest myself of my house and
home “on the spur of the moment”; I’ve really gotten into a groove and intend
to make the most of this groove. As of
now, I’ve reached a point where I’m not just unpleasantly obsessed with Nathal
as soon as I wake up and as I’m falling asleep.
Rest assured, “as of now,” I’m nobody’s fool. The telegram was from a friend with whom I
got drunk with in town and to whom I told all sorts of rubbish.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps you could write to me and let me know if
the house is still standing!<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In conclusion, regarding your letter: I haven’t
received another as rational in recent years, but I find it impossible to
bestow a compliment of any sort, in any direction, on any person. I was astonished by what you wrote; it
astonishes me and it shouldn’t astonish me—it’s not just that I’m biased in
your favor; I know you’re right.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Possibly the snow will be even deeper by the time
I try to drive my car up to Unternathal; in that case everything will be new
and yet familiar.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m especially looking forward to the Bavarian
curling. Of course it’s possible that I’ll start writing all of a sudden even
in Nathal. But as you know, I have come
to find it unbearable to be unable to do any sort of work there, because I’m
certainly not cut out to be a house painter or bricklayer over the long haul,
even though these are genuinely pleasant and rational and concrete vocations,
as I now know.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yours and your wife’s
sincerely,<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">P.S. The pictures you’ve taken put me into a very
melancholy mood; how do you manage to take such good pictures? The property comes across as quite a
beautiful spot!<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9NY_cJj7KGGXeBGCdZXQ482rw-2UzKECPvYV9uO5brY3Qv7BcY8UAGodQq68oOv2dA_1Jys90XXLMTTvv6MOsQeE8dLtsQBX2CgrEDLSMo6Y3rUhl0osIhUMTRZaDFUUrlIgZsg/s1600/Vierkanthof+at+Obernathal.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="538" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9NY_cJj7KGGXeBGCdZXQ482rw-2UzKECPvYV9uO5brY3Qv7BcY8UAGodQq68oOv2dA_1Jys90XXLMTTvv6MOsQeE8dLtsQBX2CgrEDLSMo6Y3rUhl0osIhUMTRZaDFUUrlIgZsg/s1600/Vierkanthof+at+Obernathal.PNG" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The sale of Plot No. 2 at Obernathal also had
literary repercussions. As Bernhard
wrote in his 1978 novella, “Yes”: “Nobody can have the faintest clue what it
means to make these ruins into an inhabitable house.” The picture was taken in 1993.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This was 1965, when I contributed
to a decisive change in the direction of Thomas Bernhard’s life. Since then he’s told his brother Peter and
Dr. Wieland Schmied a few times that he owes everything that he is and has to
me. That’s surely an exaggeration, but
there’s definitely a bit of truth in it.
I am incredibly proud of this letter, because there surely does not
exist any person who has received a letter like it from Thomas Bernhard. The fact that it’s shameless to expect thanks
from Thomas Bernhard for a favor is
definitely a bonus for me! Therefore,
I’ve got to step in with a bit of rationality from time to time in order to
keep our friendship warm. This rationality
cuts a wide arc and extends so far that I often tell him he’s right when he’s
quite wrongly kicking up a fuss about something with somebody. Because my backtalk would reinforce his anger
and only provoke him further, to the point where we get into situations in
which I’m acting towards him as a “subordinate” so that he doesn’t lose face in
a certain way and can’t describe me as soft.
Because softies are anathema to him. So he doesn’t care for the softies, and he
can’t get along with the hard types, so nobody’s left who can have an amicable
relationship with him. Except one based
on rationality.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">By 6:00 p.m., Thomas has gone
home, and since I’m not expecting anything more from him today, I’ve found it
possible to write a bit longer. I’ve
still got to make reservations for tea at Thomas’s local in Salzburg; I’m also
enclosing a bill for Thomas. THom<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">January 31, 1972<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At 1:15 p.m. Thomas comes. He wants to set off on a walk with me right
away, because at 3:00 p.m., Lord O’Donell will be visiting him with his heavily
pregnant wife. But he’d prefer not to
omit the walk. We take the road leading
from the grotto via the forester’s lodge.
From the grotto (a forest chapel in Hildprechting) the only thing that’s
visible in the snow on the road is our own footprints from yesterday. Thomas says he almost wanted to take the walk
on his own because he’s so angry. I say:
I’ve long been able to tell that from your tempo. You stamp out your rage with your feet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Thomas says that in today’s mail
he received a printed announcement in which Thomas Bernhard is named as the
latest recipient of the Grimme Prize “for the novel of the same name.” Can you imagine that my publisher doesn’t
even know that <i>The Italian</i> isn’t
based on a novel of the same name, that such blunders can happen? If I had a hand long enough to reach
Frankfurt now, I’d slap them all in the face.
He was planning to write his publisher a sharply worded letter in which
he was once again going to say what needed to be said. Now he once again has good enough
reasons. I told him that in dealing with
my business affairs two lawyers had once kept making such serious blunders, had
been so impossible, that they simply weren’t to show their faces ever
again. I tell Thomas that I’ve long
since given up raising a fuss about those very sorts of blunders, given up
making a big brouhaha in my lawyers’ offices, because they’re far too jaded to
care, and hardly a day ever passes in which some outraged client doesn’t
complain to them about something. Now I
do this really subtly. I call them or
write them a letter and tell that a blunder has slipped in. I tell them that these blunders are easy to
notice, and that as I know them well, I’m sure they’ll fix everything right
away. People aren’t used to this kind of complaint, and so they pay better
attention to it, and it’s more effective.
This isn’t me being deferential; it’s just plain common sense.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After a good
hour, during which we’ve spoken about some other things, Thomas says: I’m just
going to write a short note to the firm to let them know that I’m not writing
anything for Holl. Just two lines. Perhaps I’ll still write that it was quite a
good thing that the firm didn’t announce anything about the Grillparzer Prize,
because blunders as big as the one in the announcement about the Grimme Prize
would have slipped into that announcement as well. But meanwhile Thomas has once again been
properly badmouthing everybody and everything, actually the entire world. You see, I had reminded him that in 1965, in
the letter dated 10.12.1965, he had written: “First of all: I’m sitting in my
apartment in Vienna and finishing my play, which is going to be performed next
summer at the festival in Salzburg; I’m almost finished, and I’m telling myself
I’ve been lucky once again.” (I
remembered this as I was making a photocopy of the letter to attach to my entry
for yesterday.) I said: “You definitely
confided this to me, so I must assume you received firm promises back
then.” Thomas blushes! That’s why for me Kaut is always just Kaut
and will keep on being Kaut. Naturally
he promised me that. Afterwards I also
submitted the play to the Burgtheater; they didn’t accept it either. I got the play back from the firm with an
unsigned “form.” On the form somebody had written that they were being
inundated with plays at the time. That’s
why nobody likes me now. Fine, nobody’s
ever really liked me; of course, I’ve always given a prompt and proper answer
to anything stupid anybody’s spouted.
Not even Haidenthaler from the Salzburg chamber of commerce ever liked
me. Perhaps they’ll award me an honorary
merchant’s assistant’s letter in Salzburg someday. During an examination I was asked by
Haidenthaler whether I was allowed to fill a bottle labeled Maggi Sauce with
Graf-brand sauce. Whereupon I said, I’m
not about to answer to such a stupid question, which every first-year
apprentice has already got to know the answer to. Haidenthaler has since died; now I’d be bound
to receive a merchant’s assistant’s letter.
And it went even further than that.
These prizes that I’m now receiving are very much slaps in the faces of
all those people who have rejected my plays and other works. What
do you think it means that even <i>Boris</i>
has been awarded a Grillparzer Prize? I
say: yes, but of course not counting Salzburg it’s been seven years since a
play by you has actually appeared.
Obviously no writer can put up with that, with being put off for seven
years. A writer’s simply got to put up with
that, says Thomas, otherwise he’s absolutely nothing, otherwise he’s a
nonentity. He’s got to be able to get over
that, otherwise he’ll never amount to anything.
That’s why he obviously can’t come up in the world too easily, because
then he’s promised everything under the sun.
Do you think I was promised everything under the sun? I interject: Peter has said you’ve even
worked as a gravedigger. Yes, that’s
right, says Thomas; I’ve done every sort of thing to get by. That’s why nobody can get away with coming
along and saying, Thomas Bernhard’s always had it super-easy; he receives prize
after prize; he can do whatever he likes.
(I recall his resounding laughter at the news of Doderer’s death and can
even understand that now.) But it goes
further; I’d like to have just one good newspaper, says Thomas; then I’d write lots
of articles, articles about how, for example, Communism is already rotten to
the core, about how all systems are abominable and mendacious; I’d really tell
it like it is about every abomination under the sun, etc. I say: you could certainly find a good
newspaper, but I’d still keep perfectly mum now and wait for the Nobel
Prize. Thomas says, what a load of
rubbish, there no such thing, no such thing as a good newspaper. Naturally I’m calm now, but there’s so much
stuff dammed up inside me that’s got to break out at some point. Sure, I say, that’ll also be good, but now
isn’t the time for it. Once you’ve got
the Nobel Prize, you’ll only need to get all the fires started, tiny little
fires all over the place, and your critics will just blow on them and turn them
into proper blazes. As Thomas doesn’t
say anything over the next few paces, I continue talking. Then you’ll really be in quite a different
position, you’ll be standing there like a block of stone and not so easy to
attack. Thomas says: You’re completely
wrong about that. I’ll never be standing
anywhere like a block of stone, and I’ll always be easy to attack. But it’s got to be known that that’s the
case. I say: but because you’re in the
right, it won’t be very easy to attack you.
Wrong, wrong, even when you’re in the right, it’s always easy to attack
you. But someday I’m going to write all
about my prizes and about those institutions, about how all that works. When I’ve got all the prizes, I’ll make them
all look so ridiculous that everybody will be ashamed at the very thought of
accepting such a prize. I’ll show
everything that went on behind the scenes when Johnson and others received prizes,
or when I did, because everything that goes on back there is pure
commercialism. In the case of the
Grillparzer Prize, everybody on the jury was against me, but Klingenburg said I
had to get the prize because he was going to stage the play at the Burgtheater. You know, that’s what things look like behind
the scenes; I’m ruthlessly going to expose that. I won’t give any special treatment to my
family either; I’m going to write everything.
I say: Sure, why not, if it’s all true, it can be written. If they find it unpleasant, they just should
have behaved differently. It deserves to
be described as it is, says Thomas.
(I’ll keep this in readiness for Thomas, in case of an emergency, in
case it should ever be needed. In
Aupointen we walked straight past its four houses. Thomas will never forget what the two of us
said there. Little does he know he’s
giving me grist for my mill.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 2:45
we’re in Weinberg, and he drives to Nathal so that he’ll be there when O’Donell
comes. But he also says he’ll most
certainly come in the evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At 6:45
Thomas is back again. He eats French onion
soup. At 7:30 we sit down with Granny to
watch the evening news. When Mr.
Sinowitz the minister of education’s three telegrams regarding Schranz’s
exclusion are read out, Thomas says: In this telegram the language comes across
as hypocritical and sanctimonious; a cabinet minister shouldn’t express himself
in such terms. [Karl Schranz was not allowed to compete in the Olympic Games at
Sapporo because he was stripped of his amateur status owing to his
participation in advertising.] In
talking of Schranz’s case Sinowitz makes himself sound like some pub-landlord
from Puttenbrunn who’s been screwed out of what he’s owed for a half a liter of
wine. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thomas was
here until after the last evening news broadcast on German television, until
midnight. We still thought that there
would be an announcement about the Grimme Prize. We talked a great deal, said a great deal of
unimportant stuff, and I couldn’t pick up on any of it that might have been any
good because I was drinking some of my home-fermented elderberry wine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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</div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Oh yes: I
remember that Thomas was especially pleased that Bernadette Devlin gave a slap
in the face to the British home secretary. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
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<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
END OF PART I</div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Translation unauthorized but Copyright <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333;">©2019 by Douglas Robertson . Source: Karl Ignaz Hennetmair, <i>Ein Jahr mit Thomas Bernhard. Das versiegelte Tagebuch 1972</i>. Sankt P</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">ölten: Residenz Verlag, 2014.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 14.2667px;"><o:p><span id="goog_148032655"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a><span id="goog_148032656"></span></o:p></span></div>
Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-72847914129216501202019-01-18T19:37:00.000-05:002019-01-18T19:37:27.872-05:00A Translation of “Franz Kafka: Amerika,” a Radio Essay by Ingeborg Bachmann<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Franz Kafka: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amerika</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">SECOND
SPEAKER: “As sixteen-year-old Karl Rosmann, who had been sent to America by his
poor parents because a maidservant had seduced him and had a child by him, was
entering New York harbor in the ship, which had already slowed to a crawl, he
beheld the long-since sighted Statue of Liberty in sunlight that had suddenly
become more glaring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her sword-bearing
arm was thrusting skyward as though she had only just raised it, and the open
air was wafting freely about her form.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER:
Is this really the beginning of a book by Franz Kafka?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND
SPEAKER: “…and the open air was wafting freely about her form…”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: For we don’t encounter the “open air” anywhere else in his work,
either earlier or later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The novel
called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amerika</i>, as edited by Max
Brod, and recently republished by Samuel Fischer, has remained an exceptional
case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Max Brod is well-informed enough
to report:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND
SPEAKER: “Franz Kafka worked on this book with infinite gusto, mostly during
the evening and well into the night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Kafka was conscious of the fact that this novel was more sanguine and
‘lighter’ than anything he had written before.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amerika</i> is indeed a
lighthearted book, even though a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Trial</i>
is always pending for its young exiled hero; he is as unsuccessful as Josef K.
and K. in the novels called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Trial</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Castle</i>; he is met with and
sorely tested by a series of mishaps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
be sure, from time to time, the impression of humorousness, of occasional downright
innocence, seems to be based on an optical illusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The deranged world in which Karl Rossmann
finds himself is no less hostile, no less horrifying, than any other world ever
devised by Kafka’s magical imagination.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But here whatever in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Trial</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Castle</i> comes across as a
manifestation of utter inscrutability and darkness is shrugged off by the
reader as evidence of Karl’s childishness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On almost every page, the reader is inclined to argue to himself: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Naturally these things aren’t the way that
Karl Rossmann is perceiving them.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">If Karl were older, more rational, more
experienced, then everything would become clear to him and make perfect sense
once again.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, the
reader believes that the confusion isn’t actually a part of the book’s reality
but merely the byproduct of an infantile perspective on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in his relish for yarn-spinning Kafka
does indeed often make young Karl Rossman react to his world in a manner that
is innocent and indeed downright foolish, and the relations between certain
things in that world undoubtedly would take on a different appearance if they
were encountered by a more “rational” person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But one mustn’t forget that this selfsame blind gullibility, which
causes Rossmann to slide helplessly from one mishap to the next, is also
constantly facilitating his access to the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end he makes quite a bit more headway
than the savvy and the streetwise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On
the other hand, one admittedly may infer that innocence will not get a person
very far in this American world, for as Günther Anders has remarked, in Kafka’s
work it is women and chance alone that can ever be of any assistance, such that
it is pointless to exercise one’s own initiative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this remarkable [----] is not
emphatically thematized until those two great novels, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Castle</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Trial</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In these books it is not children, but rather
clever, full-grown men who are confronted by a world that they are aiming to
come to grips with, and there are no longer any such things as a redeeming
court of highest appeal, the hope of an exit, and an exculpatory legal
minority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I have already said, Karl
Rossmann’s struggle to find a place in society and a foundation for his
existence is more humble and more dedicated, albeit no less despair-ridden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he imparts his first scrap of insight in
the following despair-ridden sentence:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND
SPEAKER: “It’s impossible to fight back without a good will.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: It is only because owing to his youth and lack of experience he is
inept at asserting his rights and hasn’t got a clue about how to make use of
them that he is the only one of the heroes of Kafka’s three novels who manages
to attain his goal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admittedly, he is
spared nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the ship that is
taking him to New York he chances to meet his American uncle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything seems to fall miraculously into
place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is introduced into a new way
of life and into the operations of the shipping agency that has brought his
uncle great wealth and social distinction—until one fine day he accepts an
invitation to a party at a country house near New York, a party that takes a highly
peculiar turn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He instinctively realizes
that his loyalty towards his uncle is being tested; he wants to go back home
before it is too late and is then prevented from doing so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A letter from his uncle is delivered to him:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND
SPEAKER: “You have decided to leave my house this evening in defiance of my
will, but you must then abide by this decision for the rest of your life.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: Thus begins the young man’s Via Dolorosa, a quest for gainful
employment whose stations are the highway, a hotel, and the horrifying asylum
offered by the singer Brunelda, whose tyrannical domination is gamely endured
by her lover Delamarche and the diminutive Ire Robinson.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Karl is repelled by everything base and
vulgar, and his hope of finding a respectable occupation never fades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Kafka’s world, whose hopelessness is
otherwise irresolvable, there turns out to be exactly one permissible solution:
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in the celestial-cum-terrestrial project
called the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Karl’s bitterness and disappointment
lose their weightiness; he is able to forget about everything that has happened
to him so far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The promise barked out by
an advertising poster seeking personnel for this theater heralds a kind of Promised
Land:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND
SPEAKER: “The great theater of Oklahoma is calling you!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is calling you today alone, only
once!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who misses this opportunity
will miss it for all time!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who
cares about his future should be one of us!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everyone is welcome!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anyone who
wishes to become an artist, step right up!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We are the theater that can find a use, a place, for everyone!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To anyone who has decided to join us we
extend our congratulations right here and now!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But do hurry, lest you miss our midnight deadline!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At twelve o’clock sharp all offers will be
closed once and for all!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let anyone who
doesn’t believe us be damned!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: Karl’s belief that he is destined to be welcomed somewhere compels him
to answer the advertisement; his naïve confidence in the possibility of a life
in a community was never greater, and this naïf attains the simplest and most
elusive of goals: he gains acceptance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, the world with all its disorder remains in place as a system
of resistances, but people who, like Karl Rossmann, have stumbled upon this
choice are vouchsafed security and tranquility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A banquet reminiscent of a religious rite draws together those have been
accepted into the theater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They find <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the</i> entrance, in contrast to the man who
in Kafka’s parable of the doorkeeper is told:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND
SPEAKER: “This entrance was intended for you alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am now about to close it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: The book concludes with Karl’s departure for Oklahoma and a panoramic
description of a primeval landscape.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND
SPEAKER: “They traveled two days and two nights.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only now that Karl was finally getting
a sense of America’s vastness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gazed
indefatigably out the window, and his comrade Giacomo jostled against him there
for a long time, until the lads sitting across from them and intensively
preoccupied with a game of cards finally got tired of playing and spontaneously
dislodged him from the window seat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Karl
thanked them—Giacomo’s English was not universally intelligible—and over the
course of time they became much friendlier, as one cannot help becoming towards
one’s compartment-mates; although their friendliness was often quite
bothersome, because, for instance, whenever they dropped a card and went
searching for it on the floor, they would pinch Karl or Giacomo in the leg with
the utmost force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Giacomo, ever freshly
taken aback, would then let out a shriek and thrust his leg into the air; Karl once
tried to reply with a kick but otherwise patiently put up with it all in
silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything that was happening
inside the tiny compartment, which even with its window open was brimming over
with smoke, made a poor showing by comparison with what was to be seen outside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On the
first day they traveled through a range of tall mountains.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Massive blackish-blue wedges of rock were
drawing ever closer to the train; one leaned out one’s window and tried in vain
to locate their summits; dark, narrow, crevice-ridden valleys opened up; with one’s
finger one traced the vector along which they disappeared into the depths; next
came broad mountain rivers racing along the hilly terrain below in mighty
undulations and propulsively refracting themselves into a thousand rivulets;
they surged along their courses beneath the bridges traversed by the train, and
they were so close that their chilly breath made one’s face shiver.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: In 1913 Kafka published the first chapter, “The Stoker”; the following
year he wrote the succeeding chapters—then he suddenly stopped working on the
book and did not take it up again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
novel remained unfinished, but we know that Kafka intended to give it an upbeat
conclusion, that “little Karl Rossmann” was supposed to rediscover “a vocation,
liberty, security—indeed, even his homeland and parents,” in the nature theater
of Oklahoma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Kafka had
never been to America, and the America of his imagination was bound to fail to
resemble the actual country in many respects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thus Karl is at one point interrogated by a policeman in a manner that
would have been less credible in the New York of circa 1900.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this is of no consequence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Amerika</i>,
Kafka quite convincingly created and disclosed to his hero a world full of vast
expanses and vivid colors, full of joy in each and every act of observation and
in the rich depiction of particulars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This world is already no longer the natural world: its causality seems
perforated, and the actions of its characters do not always any longer arise
from motives as psychology has given us to understand them, even though
everything that happens is “rationally” explicable and linked to everything else
in a highly detailed network of collateral logic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
divide between reality and unreality that is made much of in the two other
Kafka novels is not yet discernible here, but even in this first book reality
is decidedly dysfunctional.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This
“dysfunctionality” is most plainly visible in the pure, pellucid style of the
work, which orients itself towards the slightest minutiae in an almost pedantic
fashion; indeed, the magic of Kafka’s work would be unintelligible in the
absence of the peculiar phenomenon of his style and its manner of
representation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But we
are not about to be fooled into appending yet another appraisal and
interpretation to the innumerable existing appraisals of Kafka’s literary
merits and innumerable existing interpretations of Kafka’s oeuvre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that the “pro and contra” hullaballoo of
the immediate postwar years has ended, we can make good use of this first
interval of silence by rereading him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>True
justice can be done to literary writers only in silence, for when all
interpretations have fallen into obsolescence and all explanations have been
consumed, their work is explicable in terms of the inconsumable truth to which
it owes its existence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">THE END<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Translation
unauthorized but Copyright ©2019 by Douglas Robertson</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: rgb(254, 253, 250); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Source: </span><span style="background: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Ingeborg
Bachmann, </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Werke</span></i><span style="background: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">, edited by Christine Koschel, Inge von
Weidenbaum, and Clemens Münster (Munich: Piper, 1978), Vol. IV, pp. 316-322.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: 351.75pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; tab-stops: 351.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The
essay was broadcast only once, as part of the Hessian Radio Frankfurt cultural
affairs series “Das Buch der Woche,” on December 9, 1953.</span></div>
Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-56276941629967912292019-01-11T19:37:00.001-05:002019-01-11T19:47:33.456-05:00An Uncharacteristically Topical Post on The Favourite<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">On Friday, December 14, I saw <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i> at the Charles Theatre here in Baltimore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I noticed on my way to my seat that the
screen on which I was about to see the film was but one of three devoted to it,
and as I have subsequent to my viewing noticed that the film has not received a
single negative review, I somehow feel impelled, partly as a student of the
British eighteenth century and partly as a general moviegoer, to get my negative
two cents—or perhaps, rather, negative 4.8 pence [2% of £1 or 240d.=4.8d.]—in on
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">now</i>, before it becomes one of those Oscar-sweeping monstrosities à
la <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The English Patient</i> as represented
on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seinfeld</i>, and like Elaine Benes I
am effectively debarred by peer (or, rather, and particularly in the context of
this flick, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">commoner</i>) pressure from expressing
my view that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">it really, really sucked</i>
as anything other than a hypothetical alternative to its presupposed
brilliance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is customary in such-meta
cinematic hatchet jobs as this to begin by grudgingly itemizing the few things
the flick in question got right, and I am not about to break with custom here,
although in all candor and frankness I can’t say that I am entirely qualified
to tender the required catalogue, for although I am, as already stated, a
student of eighteenth-century Britain, I have always been chiefly interested in
its literature and have therefore tended to be aware of other aspects of it
only to the extent that they are manifested in the works and fortunes of its
principal authors, none of whom figured as a regular, visible personage at the
court of Queen Anne.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, Joseph
Addison and Richard Steele were active Whigs and Jonathan Swift active Tories,
but they were active as authorial friends of courtiers and politicians rather
than as courtiers or politicians in their own right, such that I can only be
grateful for Rachel Weisz’s Duchess of Marlborough’s passing mention of Swift
as the potential author of a scurrilous pamphlet on Olivia Colman’s Anne’s
lesbian liaison with Emma Stone’s Abigail Hill—grateful, that is, for the
passing acknowledgment that writers at least indirectly exerted some political
influence in the Annine microepoch. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
for the liaison itself, much as I yearn sternly to affirm with arms firmly
akimbo that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">there is no evidence whatsoever
that Queen Anne was genitally involved with any other woman, let alone with
Abigail Hill, </i>I cannot do so in good faith, inasmuch as I know next to
nothing about Abigail Hill and indeed knew nothing whatsoever about her before
seeing the film, such that at least for its first half I was much inclined to
believe that she was one of those intrinsically objectionable fictional
characters that the makers of historical novels and movies are unwarrantably
allowed to insinuate into an otherwise literally historically referential
dramaturgy by way of bringing home a sense of how the lives of so-called
ordinary people contrasted with those of the supposedly only-supposedly
high-and-mighty, the so-called bigwigs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And speaking of bigwigs, from my passing knowledge of the portraiture of
the period, I can in good faith affirm that the Annine microepoch was
undoubtedly a microepoch in which men’s wigs were both extraordinarily long and
especially refulgently curly; and the film most certainly cinches this aspect
of the period, albeit to the seemingly deliberate detriment of its
meta-political seriousness (q.v. below).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>About the numerous flagrant anachronisms it is perhaps petulant to
complain—but only <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">perhaps </i>inasmuch as
one often has a hard time figuring out whether they have been deliberately
inserted in a nudge-nudge wink-winkish spirit or are merely a manifestation of
the screenwriters’ ignorance or laziness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nicholas Hoult’s Robert Harley’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">No
pressure</i> is evidently knowingly anachronistic, as is Abigail Hill’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">For fuck’s sake</i>, but Hill’s use of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fuck </i>as a bare expletive might simply be
an instance of the usual post-Hays-code-revocation-al tendency to make the old
style-hat-and coat set talk dirty on the assumption that in uncensored everyday
life people at all times and places have always used the naughtiest words in
the general lexicon as often as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One strikingly anachronistic episode did incontestably win the heart of
my goat, albeit not on account of its most strikingly anachronistic feature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was—and is—the episode in which the
Duchess of Marlborough is shown dancing with a handsome young buck to the obvious
jealous consternation of the queen. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
choreography of this episode is chock-full of ludicrous dance moves that
conjure up less vividly the ghost of 1970s disco-dancing as represented in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saturday Night Fever</i> than the ghost of
the parody of 1970s disco in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Airplane</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is all eminently bearable if by no means
quite all well and good, but that such choreography should be dedicatedly
lavished on a single dancing couple was and is abominable for the doubtless
by-now-universally-unintelligible-but-for-all-that-utterly-unimpeachable reason
that the eighteenth century was, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inter
multissima alia</i>, the grand age of the assembly, the ball, the rout, etc.—in
a word, an age in which people of the middle and upper social ranks habitually
danced in large choreographic formations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That not every social gathering of these ranks then centered on dancing
is undeniable; that at some such non-dance-centered gathering an isolated
couple took it upon themselves to cut a rug on their own is highly probable. But
this (or these) is (or are) quite beside the point, inasmuch as any
representation of a given milieu has an obligation to show us not merely what
probably or occasionally but also what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">typically</i>
happened therein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Mr. Lanthimos
&co. were simply uninterested in dancing as a diversion at the court of
Queen Anne, they should have gratified that lack of interest by forbearing from
including any representation of court-centered diversion in the film, for then
they would not have given the inescapable false impression that by and large
that court’s denizens frittered away their entire balance of free social time
on boozing, gourmandizing, and thoroughly outrageous pastimes like throwing
oranges at naked men (!).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it very
probably was, Mr. Lanthimos &co., were very interested in dancing indeed
and simply had neither the time nor the financial resources to hire a
sufficiently historically informed choreographer and a sufficient number of
professional dancers accustomed to being instructed to dance in period-specific
ways, and so opted to have a pair of non-dancers dance in the way that comes
most naturally to all non-dancers required to dance on the spur of the moment nowadays--i.e,
à la John Travolta as parodied in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Airplane</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as
it very probably was</i> on the evidence of the film’s puny $15,000,000 budget,
whose shoe-stringiness is likewise evident in the overall mise-en- scène and
montage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The majority of the action
takes place in a large period-appropriate house and its surrounding
grounds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until about three-fifths of the
way through the film, I assumed the house was standing in for Windsor Castle, the
principal country residence of the pre-Victorian British monarchs, partly because
it more closely resembles that structure than their London residence, St.
James’s Palace, but mostly because nothing that is shown on screen gives the
viewer any reason to gather that the house is supposed to be sited in the
middle of a substantial metropolis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Round about two-fifths of the way through, there was a representation of
something that I readily inferred was a session of the House of Commons,
because it centered on two bunches of dudes sitting on a pair of terraced
bench-rows separated by a wide aisle (and, no, Mr. Lanthimos &co., I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">didn’t</i> need you to color-code their
outfits like football-squad kits to make me realize that the two bunches
corresponded to two mutually opposed political factions), and I assumed that this
session was taking place in London because I had never heard of either house of
Parliament’s convening elsewhere during this period, but I continued to assume
that the main action was taking place in the country, that there were various
scenes of people shuttling from Windsor to London and back that we were not
being made privy to for reasons of dramaturgical expediency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only at the abovementioned
three-fifths-of-the-way-through point, in the second scene set in an
inn-cum-brothel in which the Duchess of Marlborough wakes up after having been
dragged unconscious through apparent miles of not only parkland but woodland
(i.e., a form of flora immediately evocative of the forest adjoining Windsor
Castle), that I began to suspect that London was the supposed setting of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">entire</i> action of the film, thanks to the
Duchess’s order to have herself bailed out of confinement in the inn via a
message sent to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a man walking a duck in
Hyde Park</i>, a man who turned out to be her closest non-spousal male ally,
the Earl of Godolphin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While it was not
inconceivable that the Duchess would have been in the country and the Earl in
town at that moment, Ockham’s razor suggested to me that they were then both in
London, for otherwise she presumably would have been seeking help from somebody
closer to hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why could not the
proximity of London to the palace and the inn have been indicated at some
earlier point in the film, and by explicitly cinematic means?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These means need not have been costly—a few painted
urban matte shots of the kind Eric Rohmer skillfully employed in his comparably
budgeted 2001 Paris-set French-Revolutionary period drama <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L’Anglaise et le duc </i>would have been more than serviceable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course, my accredited cinephile
detractors will argue that all such pointers would have been effectively
superfluous inasmuch as virtually every present-day cinemagoer simply assumes
by default that any drama centered on the British royal family of any period
takes place in London; and that in any case, the larger-scale setting of the
film’s dramaturgy is fundamentally irrelevant, inasmuch as its avowed intention
is to investigate and illuminate the love-hate triangle of Anne, Sarah, and
Abigail, a triangle whose sole site of triangulation was after all the monarch’s
court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in thus arguing, these
detractors will merely be exposing the film’s incapacity to realize that very
intention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, Sarah, the
Duchess of Marlborough, is one of the most criminally underrepresented figures
in historical drama, cinematic or otherwise, and a cinematic treatment of her
life is long overdue to the admittedly debatable extent that any dramatic
treatment (cinematic or otherwise) of the life of any historical figure is due
at all, and her relations with Queen Anne, along, presumably with Abigail Masham,
née Hill (remember: the present writer’s knowledge of the life-history of
Abigail Masham is as yet very scant indeed), constitute an important part of
the Duchess’s biography.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
Duchess’s energies, ambitions, and accomplishments were by no means exhausted
by her personal relations with these two women, and even these relations are
largely unintelligible in the absence of at least a schematic understanding of
the political lie of the land of late-Stuart Britain—this because despite their
longstanding mutual personal intimacy the Queen and the Duchess stood firmly on
opposite sides of the kingdom’s most significant political divide, the divide
between the Tories and the Whigs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
Queen was a Tory—<span style="background: white; color: black;">a person who in Samuel
Johnson’s definition of the word in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dictionary</i>
of two reigns and nearly fifty years later, “adhere[d] to the ancient
constitution of the state, and the apostolical hierarchy of the church of
England,”</span></span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">in other words, a believer in making
the political system as close as possible to that in place before the revolution
of the 1640s that ended in the execution of the king and a de facto temporary
abolition of the monarchy; in keeping both the monarch and the church strong
and limiting opportunities for political and religious dissent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Less philosophically centrally, Tories also
tended to be hostile towards commerce and fairly conciliatory towards Britain’s
principal enemy, France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Whigs believed in retaining as many of the
liberties that Britons unaffiliated with the church or the crown had acquired
thanks to the abovementioned revolution (along with the later, less bloody one
of 1688 that brought Anne’s elder sister Mary to the throne as co-monarch with
William III)—principal among these being a strong Parliament and freedom of
worship for most non-Anglicans—at least most <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Protestant</i> non-Anglicans, for by and large Whigs loathed and
dreaded Roman Catholics, and loathed and dreaded France as the most powerful
Roman Catholic nation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This moment in British history, the moment of the induration
of the Whig-Tory schism, is especially significant for two reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, it established the bipartisan model of
official political life that has been in place (yes, despite the efforts of
umpteen-hundred third parties to disrupt it) throughout the English-speaking
world ever since, as well as the dichotomy that has every since defined the
difference between any two principal parties in any Anglosopheric polity—the
dichotomy between a desire for a strong national government with a strong head
of State and a weak legislature, and a desire for a weak national government
with a weak head of State and a strong legislature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second, it marked the end of the last era in Britain
in which religion as such—perhaps <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">theology</i>
is a better word here—was a political mainspring, in which a significant
proportion of Britons chose a political side <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">principally </i>on the basis of their own religious beliefs and their
opposition to the religious beliefs of others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whether this religion-driven form of politics was actually doomed to die
out and be replaced by the secularly orientated form that succeeded it, as
received <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bienpensant</i> opinion now
holds, or whether it might not actually have lasted much longer in the absence
of certain intrinsically non-inevitable contingencies, as I suspect, is quite
beside the point in the present context: what matters here is that the Whigs
and Tories hated each other not merely because they were envious of each
other’s political influence but also because each party believed that the
members of the other one tended to entertain erroneous opinions about such
things as the nature of God and Jesus Christ, the correct manner of religious
observance, and the means of attaining eternal salvation—opinions so erroneous,
indeed, that they could land their entertainer in Hell for all time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any dramatic representation of the court of
Queen Anne that strives to be faithful even in spirit to the historical record <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">must</i> take the religious aspect of that
court’s politics into consideration because in the absence of such
consideration the machinations of its monarch, courtiers, and parliamentarians simply
do not make any sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These people were
not merely <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">jockeying for power</i>, not
merely striving for nationwide political hegemony as an end in itself; they
were also striving to realize what they believed to be God’s plan for Britain and
for themselves as individual Christians.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Scarcely any trace of the Whig-Tory let schism, let alone any
of its peri-political substrates, finds its way into the dramaturgy of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the very beginning of the film, we see the
Duchess’s husband, the Duke of Marlborough (Mark Gaitiss), heading out to fight
a war in France, but we are not told why he is fighting it, nor do we hear
subsequently hear much of anything about that war except as a succession of
personal triumphs and setbacks for the Duke and Duchess.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once in the midst of a session of her
favo(u)rite sport, non-clay pigeon shooting, the Duchess is guilelessly asked
by Abigail why it is necessary to go to war with France and savagely rejoins
something to the effect of, “Because if we don’t, the bastards will eat each
and every one of us alive,” but she does not explain why she believes the
French have developed such a keen appetite for human British flesh, and in the
absence of such an explanation she simply comes across (doubtless in complete
conformity with Mr. Lanthimos &co.’s intentions) as an anachronistic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guardian</i>-esque caricature of a Blimpish Brexiteer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The parliamentary heads of the Tories and
Whigs, Harley and Godolphin, are shown fairly often and given a fair amount of
dialogue, but this dialogue contains nothing of any genuinely political import
and is prevailingly devoted to snarky if uniformly witless repartee about the
speaker’s adversaries’ personal shortcomings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The religious aspect of the political divide is, I believe, not even so
much as hinted at in scripting, setting, or costuming: as near as I can recall,
there is not a single moment in which a character performs a religious act, a
single scene set in a church (even if the room standing in for the session
chamber of the House of Commons does incongruously look exactly like the
interior of one [presumably it was the chapel of the main manor house, lazily misappropriated]),
or a single actor attired as any sort of clergyman. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i>
were a very different sort of period film, a sort of live-action kinetic
Watteau painting in which the wills of the principal characters were at most of
secondary consideration, a film in which the desires and ambitions of those
characters served merely as a background to the exhibition of their manners and
idiosyncrasies, its utter disregard of politics with a capital P would not
necessarily be fatal to a decent and intelligent viewer’s admiration or
enjoyment of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it were that sort of
film, this disregard would still render its plot nonsensical, but a decent and
intelligent viewer would not much care because he or she would realize that
that plot was not actuated by or aiming towards anything of supposed metaphysical
heft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i> is to the contrary a film in which the wills of the principal
characters, Anne, Sarah, and Abigail, are always very much in the foreground, a
film in which not a single scene does not show one or more of the three of them
trying to get what she or they want(s), the absence of a broader political
scheme or canvas for these wills’ exercise cannot help conferring on them a
grotesquely nominalistic, monomaniacal quality that is not merely savage but
downright bestial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anne’s will is
actuated wholly by a desire for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">love</i>,
a desire that effectively boils down to a craving for a competent practitioner
of cunnilingus; Sarah’s by a desire for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">power</i>
as reduced to brute physical control over man, woman, and beast—the power to
twist an arm or throttle a throat, to knee a crotch, to kill a bird; and
Abigail’s by a desire for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">status</i>, in
its most humdrum escutcheal form: as a kinswoman of the Duchess, she believes
she is owed a title, which she eventually obtains when she marries the Baron
Masham.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, while the principal
men in these women’s orbit—Harley, Godolphin, and Masham—are unquestionably
their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tools</i> (at least in the sense
that a hammer is a tool for opening a wine bottle), they are by no means their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pawns</i>, because a pawn can only be used
in a game with a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">strategy</i>, which in
turn entails a complex system of interrelated aims, and each of these women has
merely a single, simple aim. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly,
further, the gazillion pseudo-feminist panegyrics to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i>’s supposedly compelling representation of so-called
strong women (not that I have read any of these panegyrics, but I am as certain
of their existence <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">as I am certain that I
am over five feet tall</i>, as David Hume [b. 1711] says somewhere) are deplorably
misplaced: a strong woman in the strong sense—as the Duchess of Marlborough
undoubtedly was, Baroness Masham may very well have been, and Queen Anne very
probably was not—does not merely insistently obtrude her will on a single
object like a one-fingered lady pianist; rather, like her male counterpart,
whom the idiomatic tradition of our language regrettably prohibits me from
terming the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">strong man</i>, she thinks
big and acts small; she starts out by conceiving a grand scheme and
subsequently exerts her will only in the manner in which, and to the extent to
which, such exertion seems necessary to make the constituents of the scheme fit
together adequately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
pseudo-feminists praise the likes of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Favourite</i> for supposedly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">finally</i>
(i.e., actually for the umpteen-thousandth time) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">presenting a female version of a male character that we have always
admired by default, </i>they are merely betraying their incorrigible amnesiac
loutishness, inasmuch as only an incorrigible amnesiac lout could ever regard
the sort of male character who has dominated Anglophone cinema of the past
two-fifths of a century (i.e., more or less since the first <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Godfather</i> movie) with anything more charitable
than pesticidal contempt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But of course in anticipation of
my railing against <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i>’s
bestial dramaturgy-cum-ethics these louts will doubtless have had what they
regard as a t**p card up their shirtysleeve, and they will doubtless point out
to my supposed cluelessness that the greatest satirist of the age of Queen
Anne, Jonathan Swift, was likewise intent on drawing attention to the
bestiality of human nature, such that despite his abovementioned near-total absence
from the film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i> bears
all the earmarks—or hallmarks or what have you—of being a Swiftian take on the
late-Stuart court, indeed on being the satire that JS himself would doubtless have
produced had he had access to [specification here preempted by farting noises
signifying contempt for virtually the entire technical side of the history of cinema].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But these louts will have forgotten—or, more
likely, failed ever to notice—that even in Swift’s satire, which is admittedly
the most vituperatively misanthropic satire the world has yet seen, the bestial
is never presented as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">normative</i>, is never
presented as either an acceptable point of view or an acceptable state of
affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However ruthlessly Swift
pillories the incorrigibly bestial quality of the present human system of life,
he always makes it clear that there at least <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ought</i> to be a better human system of life, that this bestial
quality is something to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ashamed</i>
of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus, for example, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gulliver’s Travels</i>, Swift’s
representation of Britain’s political institutions as incorrigibly corrupt is
counterpoised by the wise and benevolent king of Brobdingnag’s critique of
those institutions, the perverse applied hyperpedantry of the Laputans by the
prudential applied rationality of Lord Munodi, and the revolting sensuality of
the Yahoos by the edifying spirituality of the Houyhnhnms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, Gulliver’s attempt to put into
everyday British practice what he has learned from the norms and ideals he has
encountered in his globe-spanning sea-voyages ultimately drives him to despair
and madness; and these fictional norms and ideals cannot <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inspire</i> us after the manner of a so-called true story because they
are after all utterly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fictional</i>, but
the aspirational impulse contained in them is by no means thereby invalidated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In even the bitterest and most despairing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">genuine</i> satire, there must be a sense
that there is a genuinely good fight to be fought, even if the fighters of that
fight are seen to be irretrievably doomed to lose it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In what is termed, and merely termed, satire
nowadays, the could-be would-be good are absolutely invariably represented as unregenerate
chumps, sissies, or hypocrites—as people who are simply too stupid, cowardly,
or sanctimonious (or all three, as in the case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i>’s Queen Anne) to comport themselves with bestially
monomaniacal ruthlessness, now itself become the sole norm and ideal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The utter disappearance of genuine, good
fight-centered satire from the present cinematic landscape is brought home most
forcefully and repellently in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i>
by the scene of Abigail and Baron Masham’s wedding night, wherein in lieu of
coiting with her new husband the new Baroness absent-mindedly jacks him off
while furiously ruminating aloud about the Duchess’s whereabouts and
intentions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scene is vividly
evocative of one from a much earlier movie, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Network
</i>(1976), perhaps the last great genuine cinematic satire, the scene wherein
Faye Dunaway as an ambitious young television executive embiggens her big plans
for her network’s programming schedule while riding herself to orgasm atop the
membrum virile of a disillusioned old-school quinquagenarian TV newsman played
by William Holden.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The gaping difference
in tone and significance between these two scenes is owing entirely to the
presence of a credible representation of the good fight elsewhere in the
earlier film and the utter absence of such a representation anywhere else in
the later one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Network</i>, Dunaway’s character’s monomaniacal yearning and striving
for higher ratings even in coito unequivocally stamps her as a force of
evil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they stamp her thus only in
the context of Holden’s character’s de facto embodiment of an ethos that values
higher goods than higher ratings, very much not only notwithstanding but even by
dint of the fact that he has sorely compromised this embodiment by committing
both professional and matrimonial adultery, by supporting Dunaway’s
dumbing-down and sensationalizing of the network’s content and deserting his
loyal longstanding fellow-fiftysomething wife for this younger woman who is a
dedicated champion of everything he despises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To be sure, we know for certain that Dunaway’s banausic ethos triumphs
in the end, inasmuch as the film concludes with the assassination of a
television presenter for lousy ratings, but thanks to Holden’s repudiation of
her just before this assassination, a repudiation that firmly reestablishes his
commitment to his original loftier ethos, we know for equally certain that this
banausic ethos <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shouldn’t</i> have
triumphed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By flagrant contrast, the
off-jacking scene of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i> cannot
but be read as a wholehearted endorsement of Abigail’s yearning and striving to
steal on the Duchess each and every march up the staircase of status, inasmuch
as the other party in the scene, Lord Mascham, has never stood for or been
involved in anything more redeeming than this staircase-ascent: he has never
been anything but a booby lordling who wants a certain bit of tail and is
willing to go along with any move that allows him to continue hoping to obtain
that selfsame CBoT.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">While as a student of the British
eighteenth century I cannot but be especially dismayed by the universal
popularity of such a pseudo-satirical shitslinging-fest as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i> on account of its historical setting, as a charter
resident of the early twenty-first century Anglosphere, I cannot pretend that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Favourite</i> instantiates anything
groundbreakingly abominable, inasmuch as I am aware that such pseudo-satirical
shitslinging fests have been regarded as the ne plus ultra of high
cinematic-cum-televisual art since at least as far back as the first season of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mad Men</i>, and that since only slightly
more recently—namely, since the antepenultimate season of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breaking Bad</i> or the first season of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dexter</i>—they have reached an ethical nadir or rock bottom from which
it is more than figuratively impossible to descend any lower; namely, a nadir
or rock bottom whereupon a person who simply voids the ethical field by treating
other human beings as pure, dedicated means is posited as a hero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As to the reason why such P-SSFs have become
so wildly popular since the dawn of the millennium, I am afraid it is no less
prosaic than appalling–viz., that in a scenario chillingly reminiscent of that
mid-twentieth century cinematic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">non</i>-satire
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Invasion of the Body Snatchers</i>, the
comparatively virtuous antemillennials have to a man, woman, and child (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sic</i> on the anachronistic mere <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">trio</i> of human types), been replaced by
creatures as abhorrent and reprehensible as the creatures presented as mere
caricatures of humanity in the genuine satires of yore—creatures for whom shit-slinging
is a mere matter of course, a de facto means of engaging with other creatures
still (albeit factitiously and with any luck transiently) styled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">human beings</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The present writer is unembarrassed to
confess that he is heartily ashamed of sharing air with such creatures, such <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yahoos</i> (how sad, incidentally, it is
that a certain company’s by-now-too-ancient-to-be-notorious piss-poor showing
in the war of proprietary names has entirely stripped <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Yahoo</i> of<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>its polemical
force!), and his shame is compounded by his bitter realization that unlike
Gulliver he cannot seek consolation in the company of horses, inasmuch as he is
far too impecunious to purchase, let alone feed and stable, the cheapest Lilliputian
Shetland pony.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THE END</span></div>
<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-3946218580258643352018-11-30T19:02:00.002-05:002022-08-22T18:51:42.069-04:00A Translation of "Das Unglück und die Gottesliebe--Der Weg Simone Weils" by Ingeborg Bachmann<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Misfortune and Divine Love: Simone Weil’s Journey</span></span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">1</span></sup></b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Voices:
Narrator. First Speaker, Second Speaker, and Reader of Quotations from the
Writings of: Simone Weil, T. S. Eliot, Gustave Thibon, Madame Thévenon, and a
French Worker.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">NARRATOR:
When, shortly after the War, Simone Weil was first spoken of in Germany, in Francophone
superlatives, the denizens of circles hoping for “spiritual renewal from the
Christian spirit” hastened to repeat these superlatives; there were actually
even a few people who were familiar with several of her works in the original
language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But finally, in 1953, two whole
books were published in German, by the firm of Kösel, in an excellent
translation by Friedhelm Kemp.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were
entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Misfortune and Divine Love</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gravity and Grace</i>.</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small;">2</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">By 1953, one
only rarely still heard talk of a “spiritual vacuum,” and such general demands
as the one for “spiritual renewal” had ceded pride of place to the demands of the
daily grind. Everybody had indeed “caught up on what was to be caught up on”;
everything “unusual” had resumed its place in the system of cultural life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, legends about personalities
obviously flourish only as long as their work remains scarcely accessible or
their biography is shrouded in obscurity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One’s craving to see what cards they were holding sustains one’s
interest and imagination.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">One may presume that the legend of Simone Weil, that peculiar
creature, a philosophy teacher and factory worker, a Jew and a pious Christian,
the critic of the Catholic Church and the semi-heretic and potential saint—that
the legend of this peculiar creature has been fading since her books began being
translated into numerous languages and the dates of her biography began
becoming widely known. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so the only
question that remains to be asked is whether this fading is to Simone Weil’s
detriment or whether her work will survive her legend.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">I believe this question can be can answered in the
affirmative.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of Simone Weil’s “written
works” all too few were published in her lifetime; for the most part these
consist of essays on topical questions that acquire significance only in the
context of her actual oeuvre.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the
war, in newly liberated France, a French lay theologian, Gustave Thibon, edited
a few of the ten sheaves of papers that had been relinquished to his care; most
of them have in the meantime been published by Plon, and a few others by
Gallimard in Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">These ten volumes contain something that is difficult to
define, namely propositions and theses regarding the so-called last things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because everything regarding the “last
things” is constituted in such a fashion that it cannot be relinquished to the
mercies of either silence or confession, it will not be easy to do justice to
Simone Weil’s theses; they live out of reason and disembogue in confession. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To do justice to a confession or even to judge
it as one judges scientific propositions and theses is impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One can, however, follow the itinerary of the
journey that led to this confession and record and retrace the insights she
acquired and errors she fell prey to along the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, one can contemplate the linguistic
archive of her efforts—which owes its illuminating power to an extraordinary
intellectual passion and is accordingly possessed of both style and form—as an aesthetic
artifact, even though she herself would have had nothing to do with this; but
after all, every utterance and every pronouncement falls to the share of our
world and its categories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Simone Weil was no “authoress.” She was not productive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She did not write in order to write and to
create something that could stand on its own; rather, for her writing was—in
addition to being an outlet for strong critical and pedagogical impulses—above
all an exercise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An exercise that ranged
between humility and rebelliousness and remained important to her as long as
in her eyes the gap between “knowing” and “knowing with one’s entire soul” had not
been bridged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was a fanatic about
precision, both in her thought and in her life, a precision that was brought to
bear on matters of the smallest as well as of the largest dimensions, a
precision that inevitably maneuvered her thought and life into extreme
situations.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Simone Weil was born in 1909 in Paris; she was the
second child of well-to-do Jewish parents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was to her older brother—who is now a professor of mathematics at the
University of Chicago—that she owed her early preoccupation with literature and
science, her precociously exceptional mastery of difficult systems of
knowledge. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After completing school, she
studied philosophy with Alain, then enrolled at the Ecole Normale Supérieure
and left it with an <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">agrégation de philosophie</i>—which
is only superficially equivalent to our doctorate of philosophy, as it is a much
more difficult academic goal to attain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Until the outbreak of the Second World War, she taught—with voluntary
and involuntary interruptions—at various secondary schools.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She participated in French political life at
a very early age and fought in the ranks of the extreme left without ever
belonging to any political organization.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Her party was the party of the poor, weak, and downtrodden, and she
joined this nameless party in her own fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She took a leave of absence from her teaching career, enlisted as a
milling-machine operator working alongside foreign names at the Renault
factory, lived with and among the workers and in the same conditions as the
ones in which the majority of French workers of the period had to live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was unable to bring her first experiment
to a successful conclusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A case of
pleurisy forced her to quit her job.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">When the Spanish Civil War broke out, she aligned herself with
the Reds, went to the Catalonian front, and helped whenever she could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She only refused to use weapons personally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But once again she was obliged to give up;
this time it was an accident, which forced her to move back to France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had burned her feet with boiling oil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">In the summer of 1940, when the Germans were approaching
Paris, she decided to accompany her parents to Marseilles, but then she left
them to spend a few months in the country as a farmhand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The beginning of her acquaintance with the
philosopher and lay theologian Gustave Thibon dates from this period.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her days spent working in the vineyards were
followed by evenings in which she continued her study of Greek philosophy and
literature and Indian philosophy and began to turn her attention to
mysticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A short [time] later we find
her back in Marseilles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the urging of
the Dominican priest Joseph-Marie Perrin she gave lectures on Plato and the
Pythagoreans in the crypt of the Dominican monastery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally her parents prevailed upon her to
emigrate with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They traveled
together to the United States.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Simone
Weil, who had called justice a “refugee from the victor’s camp” felt that she
belonged in the unfortunate camp that was occupied France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She welcomed the Resistance, left hospitable
America after only a few months, and went to Maurice Schumann in London to work
for the French government in exile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
request to be sent on a mission to France was refused.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They feared that the worst would happen to
someone of her racial affiliation in a country infested by the Gestapo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for the sake of at least sharing in the
material deprivation of the French, she waived her right to extra food rations as
a gesture of solidarity with the refugees.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Years of hunger and overwork were wearing her out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had to be checked into a sanatorium with acute
tuberculosis and died shortly thereafter in Ashford, Kent on August 24, 1943,
having not even reached the age of thirty-four.</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">3</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> Nobody has given an account of her last days. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was probably alone there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her few friends were in France.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “Agony is the supreme dark night that even the perfect
have need of in order to attain absolute purity, and therefore it is better if
it is bitter.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">4</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">NARRATOR: Anyone familiar with Weil’s biography must be
inclined to think that she was—especially in the political and social conflict of
pre-war and wartime Europe—a person with a strong need to share in the
sufferings and struggles of others, and prepared to make any sacrifice. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seen in this light, her life would be a rare
exemplum of humane benevolence, but as such an exemplum it would have remained
invisible and inglorious like so many sacrificed lives.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The integrity of her life is destined to remain inviolable and
to speak for itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We intend to speak
of her thought, of her intellectual legacy and the manifestations of her
thought at the various and diverse stations of her journey, a journey that she
felt she had been expressly called to undertake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, although we shall not disregard
the fact that her vocation was a “spiritual” one, we must initially focus our
attention on her social and political thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The mainspring of this part of her personality was very strong, as she
herself belatedly acknowledged:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The
contemplation of social matters is as effectually purifying as withdrawal from
the world, and accordingly there has been nothing perverse about my
longstanding involvement in politics…”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">5</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Simone Weil first drew public attention to
herself when as a teacher in [Le] Puy she spoke up for the striking workers in
that commune.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During this episode she
came into contact with a group whose mouthpiece was the extreme-left
trade-union newspaper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Révolution prolétarienne</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she attracted an even greater degree of
attention from the workers themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They
had no use for people like her; they suspected her of being one of those
intellectuals whose sympathy with the proletariat arises from a misunderstanding,
who succumb to a fascination with complete otherness out of a feeling of
insecurity and emptiness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Preoccupied as
they were with their own concrete problems, these workers were by no means
appreciative when these kinds of intellectuals poked their noses in their
affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They therefore may have initially
found Simone Weil’s presence disagreeable; later they found it disturbing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were disturbed by her superior knowledge
of socialist theories, by her dazzling intellectual gifts and her ardent and
pure interest in the situation in which French workers then found themselves,
and by her ruthless advocacy of an improvement of their condition. Simone
Weil’s position was not an easy one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She
was very young and not very attractive, fairly unamiable, lacking in charm, uncompromising,
and deadly serious.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she was also
thoroughly truthful, tough, and single-minded, and she managed to prevail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She managed to get these men, from whom she provoked
nothing but bemused head-shaking, to accept her as a friend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The effect she had on them is best
characterized by a tragicomic remark made by one of these French workers, who
when deeply shaken by the news of her death said:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WORKER: “She didn’t know how to live.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was too bookish and never ate anything.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">6</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Simone Weil was a “highly strung” person—a
person possessed of an unparalleled cerebral intensity on the one hand and a
total ignorance of material exigencies on the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wanted to force the workers to think; she
wanted to explain their situation to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For she saw that the thoughtlessness of the employers was complemented
by the thoughtlessness of the workers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She wanted to attack the evil at its root and was mistaken only inasmuch
as she assumed that all human beings enjoyed the same intellectual
possibilities as she did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She assumed
this not out of arrogance but out of naivety and rarely noticed that she was
being left on her own during the intellectual excursions that she was trying
to get the others to participate in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nevertheless, in her memoirs of Simone Weil in this period, Mme
Thévonon, the wife of one of the leaders of the syndicalist movement, speaks of
her character and her ideas so sympathetically that one may readily suppose
that despite her awkwardness around other people Simone Weil did not fail to
have a lasting effect on them.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">MME. THÉVENON: “She was very simple, and although her level of
culture was far superior to ours, we could carry on long conversations with her
in a fraternal tone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She enjoyed herself
when she was with us and often asked us to sing—but not the most orthodox songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we were with her, she sat in her hideous
room, in which there was hardly any furniture, at the foot of her iron bed, and
recited Greek verses that we didn’t understand but that we delighted in because
we could sense her delight in them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then
sometimes she would give us an unforgettable smile, a look of acquiescence in
comical situations; this side of her character rarely made an appearance on
account of the earnestness with which she confronted everything…”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">6</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"> <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Because Simone Weil recoiled from every kind
of conformism and every one of her thoughts breathed the air of liberty, she
also conquered her surroundings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She did
not fight for any sort of utopia but for the present day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She also did not believe in any sort of ideal
program for answering the question of what was best for the workers but rather
in a step-by-step solution to their problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She stationed herself on the rock bottom of reality, or as she herself
would have put it, in “misfortune,” in which she knew she was imprisoned along
with everyone who suffered from it in any form in which it figured in the
world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For her, thinking honestly meant
taking givens as the starting-point of one’s thoughts.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: We k</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">now from her biography that she quit
working as teacher for a while and took a job as a milling-machine operator at
the Renault plant.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">At the time, she kept
a </span><i style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Factory Diary</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> from which we would
like to read a few passages in order to show that before she formulated them,
she was already undergoing the experiences that would enable and entitle her to
do so. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">This diary is neither overwrought
nor stylized; rather, it records what she encountered each day with great
authenticity and immediacy.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is her
encounter with the monotony and the moral and psychic void that was engendered
in the workers by their work in the large factory.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">In the process of appraising it, we must also
take into account the particular conditions of French factories in those years,
but one can only derive a sense of the general situation from numerous
particulars.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: At this time, Simone Weil worked a shift that
lasted from 2:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
times of day referred to must be understood in this context.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So on a Thursday in 1935 she writes:</span><span face=""times-roman" , sans-serif" style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “I go to the plant with an
excessively heavy heart: each step costs me (morally; on the way back, it does physically).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Am in a semi-distracted state in which I am a
moving target for every sort of hard knock…From 2:30 to 3:35, 400 pieces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From 3:35 to 4:15, time lost to the fitter in
the hat (he makes me fix my botches)—Large pieces—slow and very hard because of
the new setup of the crank on the vise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
have recourse to the foreman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Discussion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Resume work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I puncture the end of my thumb (there it
is—the hard knock)—Infirmary—Finished the 500 at 6:14.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No more pieces for me. (I’m so tired that I’m
relieved!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they promise me
some.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ultimately I don’t get any until
7:30 and only 500 (to round out the 1,000)…At 8:00, 245.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I finish the 500 big ones, suffering a lot
all the while, in 1-1/2 hrs…Off at 9:40.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But earned 16.45 francs!!!...I go home tired.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">7</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Three weeks
later, again on a Thursday.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “Drama at the factory
today…They fired a female worker who had botched 400 pieces.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A tuberculosis patient with a husband who’s
out of work half the time and some kids (by another man, I think) being brought
up by the father’s family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The attitude
of the other female workers, a mixture of pity and a schoolgirlish ‘it serves
her right.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems she was a bad
comrade and a bad worker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Comments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had blamed the darkness (after 6:30, they
turn off all the lights). ‘And I’ve definitely done all sorts of things without
any light.’ ‘She shouldn’t have talked back to the foreman (she had refused to
do the work); she should have gone to the assistant director and said: I made a
mistake, but etc.’ ‘When you’ve got to earn a living, you’ve got to do what
you’ve got to do.’ ‘When you’ve got a living to earn, you’ve got to be more
conscientious (!).’”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">8</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: From an
undated entry:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">WEIL: “Your
total ignorance of what you’re working on is excessively demoralizing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t get the feeling that a product is
the result of the effort you’re putting in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You haven’t got any kind of a sense of the number of producers involved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You also haven’t got any notion of the
relationship between your labor and your wages either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Activity seems to be arbitrarily imposed and
arbitrarily remunerated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You get the
impression that you’re a bit like one of those kids whose mothers keep them
calm by giving them pearls to thread while promising them candy.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small;">9</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: On a
Saturday:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “Violent headaches, my
mood distressed, better in the afternoon (but weep at B.’s…”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">10</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Monday:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “Leclerc summons me[…].<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Starts bawling me out because I’[ve finished] these pieces without
speaking to him about them first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
asks for the number.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I bring him my notebook!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He takes a look at it and starts being nice,
nice.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">11</span></sup><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></sup><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Wednesday.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “Earned 255 francs (I was worried I wouldn’t even get
200…) for 81 hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Didn’t sleep a wink
all night.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">12</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: From a pair of undated entries:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “In all other forms of slavery, the slavery is
contextual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only here has it been
transposed into the work itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Effects
of slavery on the soul.</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">13</span></sup><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">[…]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">A factory-owner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
enjoy untold costly pleasures and my workers suffer from poverty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can pity his workers quite sincerely and
yet not form any kind of relationship with them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">For no relationship can form if thought is not generating it.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">14</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Simone Weil tried to form relationships through
thought in the works in which she explicitly preoccupies herself with the condition
of the modern industrial worker, with the “rationalization” of the question o<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;">f human rights, a preoccupation that
is notably and definitively summarized in a “</span></span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind”</span><span style="font-size: small;"><sup><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;">15</span></sup><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;">
</span></span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">that constitutes her last will and testament.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">We cannot discuss each and every one of her works; but we will
try to discover the leitmotiv that dominates them all and to delineate her
principal ideas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poverty—poverty
originating in misfortune—figures throughout these writings in various
guises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simone Weil discerns the most
visible form of poverty in the social and political sector, because this form
of poverty is an insuperable roadblock lying athwart humankind’s path to
freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence it is first and foremost
necessary to deal with this form of poverty, to aim for the establishment of an
equitable social order, of a social equilibrium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is for this reason that she addresses
herself to workers and tries to enlighten them on the causes of their poverty,
which she discerns in Taylorism—specifically, in Taylor’s system of the
rationalization of labor, which, together with the Fordian system, which aims
at the attainment of the highest level of productivity, is being more or less
consistently implemented in modern factories. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What kind of scientifically based system is
this?” she asks, and she replies:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: One calculates the amount of time in which a
certain task can be completed and establishes this interval as a norm for
workers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Via bonuses, surveillance, and
ruthlessly prompt dismissal for failure to meet the targets set for them,
workers are motivated to achieve the highest levels of productivity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taylor was very proud of this system because
it catered to the interests of both employers and workers; both derived external
advantages from the system, and not insignificantly it made commodities cheaper
for consumers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought that with it
he had obliterated all social conflicts and generated social harmony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as Simone Weil explained, this system
embodied the most perfect form of slavery imaginable; it had led the workers
into a state of complete isolation; in their competitive struggle against one
another the solidarity of the workers was being destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The division of labor ultimately led to human
atomization in the factories and generated unparalleled monotony there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ford said that workers do not find monotonous
work unpleasant, and he was right to the extent that there is nothing people
get used to more easily than monotony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But this habituation marked the beginning of the moral disintegration of
humankind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Accordingly, Simone Weil also vehemently opposed the
application of psychological techniques—which incidentally were still in their
infancy then—and was of the opinion that under the dictatorship of their
calculations—calculations regarding, for example, incipient fatigue, decreasing
concentration, etc.—enslavement was being brought to perfection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For no psychological technician could ever compute
and precisely specify how long or short a specific worker (as opposed to an
abstract worker generated by methodical computation) would find a specific
interval.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only such a worker himself
could say that.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: After dealing with these “internal” problems,
in the essay <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Condition Ouvrière</i>
she came to speak of a related and comprehensive problem: the exclusively
nationalistic treatment of questions of production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: She takes the phenomenon of the product as the
starting point of her analysis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An
example of a product is the automobile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>An automobile can be various things; in our eyes, it is a useful means
of transportation that we can no longer imagine doing without.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But automobiles do not exist merely to be
driven on the street sooner or later; they are also a permanent weapon in the
battle between the automobile industries of France, Italy, Germany, etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even if one wanted to shorten the working
hours in the factories of a given country in the interest of its workers, one
couldn’t do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One would run the risk
of being squeezed out of the market by foreign automobile industries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A system of regulations could only succeed if
it were implemented on an international basis and were predicated on a uniform
curtailment of production.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simone Weil
says that when the statisticians observe that production is being ramped up even
further and for the umpteenth time, this by no means signifies progress—that to
the contrary, it is a step backwards towards the most extreme and appalling
form of slavery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This hectic competitive
struggle finds its most graphic expression in arms production, which of course
no country will restrict in the absence of international regulations.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: To be sure, Simone Weil’s demands, which in the
1930s still enjoyed a fair chance of being realized, seem merely illusory
today, even though they have lost very little of their persuasiveness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was actually writing during a period when
she scarcely could have guessed how right she was already turning out to be,
specifically in connection with Hitler:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">If international praxis is increasingly being neglected,
progress could come in a specifically national social context.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But progress in this case would march hand in
hand with an increasingly dictatorial system of government.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In dictatorships the citizenry are
hermetically sealed off from foreign products, from human contact, and from
communication with people from other countries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Say hello to full employment, higher wages, and, concurrently, the
upward and outward expansion of an enormous arms-manufacturing industry.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: But the “misfortune” of the worker remains
unaffected by any of this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She calls this
misfortune “mysterious” and believes that the workers’ misfortunate inability
to speak articulately about their own misfortune is itself a part of the
misfortune.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For when they do speak about
it, they employ the phraseology of people who are certainly not workers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The slogans of workers are for the most part
borrowed [from] non-workers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">The factory with its atmosphere, which is inimitably evoked by
Weil, with its rhythm, which causes a human being moving among machines in
motion to feel as if he is no longer in control of his own body, imposes a
state of servitude on that human being, on the worker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the factory, the worker is not “his own
man.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If its monotony is interrupted,
the workers inwardly kick up a fuss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is appropriate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the
reason it is appropriate is that any new task must be performed in conformity
with certain instructions, just like the old task.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither the old task nor the new one has any
intrinsic connection to the worker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
only thing that ever changes is the instructions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the worker makes ten parts, ten movements
of his hand, in a minute, and so forth, it is certain that he will make another
ten parts, ten hand-movements, and so forth, until he receives the next set of
instructions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But his suffering is not
confined to working hours; his commute to work and back home, his Sundays off,
even his handful of idle minutes garnered during working hours thanks to, say,
the malfunctioning of his machine, are “contingent.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He lives his life in continuous oscillation
between monotony and contingency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
circle cannot be broken.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Misfortune
is a mystery</i>, she repeatedly insists.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And she makes a surprising turn to the following proposition: even if
working hours and working conditions were improved (as in most respects they
have been in many countries by now), misfortune wouldn’t disappear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In what sense would it survive?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: It would survive inasmuch as a worker has no
future; for if he “works his way up to the top of the ladder” he will no longer
be a worker.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His existence is stuck in a
paradox.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A dentist who is starving to
death (or any other starving person who has a profession) will still be a
dentist no matter how rich he becomes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But a worker who manages to get control of a factory is no longer a
worker, but rather the manager of a factory. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Nothing about his lot can ever be changed, even
if he calls himself “comrade” or whatever else.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: So there are many forms of freedom, lamentable
and dignified forms of it, but only one form of slavery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Beyond the monotony, all that is left to the
enslaved is the short-lived desire for change and for pleasure, and cheek by
jowl with it stand the temptations: idleness, nausea, disgust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The oscillation between mealtimes and work
and rest and work again, this “eating in order to be able to work and working
in order to be able to eat,” this absence of a goal, of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">finalité</i>, is the hallmark of naked existence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Accordingly, Simone Weil believes that revolt against social
injustice is necessary; it is necessary to the curtailment of evil, to the
establishment of an approximation of equilibrium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she also believes that to promise the
workers a successful revolt against their misfortune is to lie to them.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “These lies lead to the abuse of workers’ greatest
strengths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They promise them a paradise
that is impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marx said that
religion was the opium of the people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No, revolution is the opium of the people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Revolutionary hopes are stimulating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All final systems are fundamentally
mistaken.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">NARRATOR: To be able to understand Simone Weil’s next move, we
must be familiar with her conception of the world beforehand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the moment when she supposes she has found
the solution, we are already setting foot on the proscenium of her religious
creed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for the sake of being able to
follow her, we wish to make it clear in advance that she believed in God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet we intend to reserve for ourselves her
peculiar form of Christian theism, her borderline heretical “Catholicism,”
which refused to affiliate itself with the Church because the Church was not
truly “catholic,” not “universal.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence
she sees the inescapable misfortune of the worker, his essential misfortunateness,
as a peculiar distinction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For a human
being who enjoys no possibility of orienting his desire towards goals, towards
things that could exist or will exist, can only orient his desire towards
something that already exists.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “This something is beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything beautiful is an object of desire,
but its desirer has no desire for it to be different, to change anything about
it; he desires it as it already is…what he desires is precisely…something he
already possesses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the people are
compelled to orient their desire entirely towards what they already possess,
beauty is made for them and they are made for beauty…The people need poetry as
they need bread.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not the poetry immured
in words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They need to have poetry as
the substance of their everyday lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Such poetry can only have one source.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That source is God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This poetry can never be anything but
religion.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">17</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: By this Simone Weil means that the worker’s fundamental
misfortune produces a vacuum between man and God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A human being whose view was not blocked by
any desires, by any goal, would only need to raise his head and look upward to
realize that nothing separates him from God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The difficulty would lie only in getting him to raise his head.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: But it would be wrong to infer from this that
she wishes to justify social misfortune, to justify deficiencies of this kind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In an earlier passage, we said that she involved
herself in revolts against social deficiencies, and she did indeed involve
herself in one very materially when she supported the French metalworkers’
strike in [1936] by greeting it with enthusiastic words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet in her eyes man’s essential
misfortune is ineradicable, although she believes it may be possible to
eradicate its concomitant, the accidental misfortune that robs him of the
strength to raise his head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later she
formulates this principle as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “Misfortune must be eradicated from social life to the
greatest possible extent, for misfortune serves grace alone and our society is
not a society of the elect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There will
always be sufficient misfortune for the elect.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">18</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: The fact that [she] was free [of] every trace
of sentimentality, even in her unconditional championing of the downtrodden,
and that she viewed both her struggle and her fellow-strugglers <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sub specie æternitatis</i>, so to speak, was
owing to something that at first blush cannot but be quite off-putting, namely
her conception of the entire social and political sector as an appurtenance of
“evil.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “The good does not enter into the social domain at all</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">19</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">…The
social domain is irreducibly the prince of this world’s domain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the social domain one’s only duty is to
try to curtail evil.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">20</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: This because:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “It is the social domain that imparts the color of
absoluteness to relativism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The remedy
for this is contained in the idea of relatedness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Relatedness takes a violent leap out of the
social domain.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">21</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: But with this leap we have already arrived at
a new station of her journey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally,
the stages of this journey overlap—although her religious thought finally
crystallizes only in the last years of her life, and although the social and
political problematic of the thirties remains the soil in which she took root
and the material of the period [tended] toward dematerialization [---].</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">22</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Simone Weil and her journey to God are of a peculiar
kind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She is a maverick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, it has not even occurred to us
to situate her in relation to the other French Christian intellectuals of her
time, and it is probably also no accident that she never drops the names of
Péguy, Bernanos, or Bloy; and it is a moot question whether she was unaware of
them or disregarding them or deliberately setting herself apart from them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her connection to twentieth-century
literature and philosophy seems to be merely tenuous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She makes one mention of Arthur Koestler’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spanish Testament</i>, which probably
impressed her because of its preoccupation with the Spanish Civil War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are also one-time mentions of Proust,
Valéry, and Joseph Conrad, all of whom she held in high regard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In truth her attention was absorbed by things
of an entirely different nature, not including her interest in the social-scientific
theories that delineated the social and political landscape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These other things were texts in the canons
of ancient Greek literature, above all the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Iliad</i>;
and ancient Greek philosophy, above all, Plato, and also Pythagoras.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She translated and interpreted classical
Greek texts, because she believed that they were essentially conveyors of “pre-Christian
intuitions.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is of course an open
question whether the classical Greek conceptions of God and divine knowledge
were actual anticipations of the Christian conceptions of them or have merely
come to look like such anticipations in hindsight, since their absorption and
assimilation [into] those conceptions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
her engagement with certain texts—those of classical Greece, the writings of
the Christian mystics, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, Shakespeare, and
Racine—Simone Weil is prone to ardent love and veneration; whereas towards
certain others she feels nothing but an implacable antipathy: for the most
part, the Old Testament, Aristotle, and classical Roman literature simply
disgust her; whatever she cannot love she must toss onto the rubbish heap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only texts that matter to her are the
ones that have been the recipients of “sacrifices,” or, to put it another way, those
in which she is capable of seeing traces of such sacrificial offerings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her criticism often comes across as
presumptuous, and scarcely any reader will find it possible to share her view
of everything; but a good many readers will come to share her view of most of
the things that she found admirable—this because in a few of her essays she
manages to convey the beauty of ancient texts in a new and fascinating way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Such is the upshot of the emollient and insightful words that
T.S. Eliot found to bestow on her and her work in recommending patience to readers
immersing themselves in Weil for the first time:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">ELIOT: “Certainly she could be
unfair and intemperate; certainly she committed some astonishing aberrations
and exaggerations. But those immoderate affirmations which tax the patience of
the reader spring not from any flaw in her intellect but from excess of temperament…and
as for her own mind, it was worthy of the soul which employed it. But the
intellect, especially when bent upon such problems as those which harassed
Simone Weil, can come to maturity only slowly; and we must not forget that
Simone Weil died at the age of thirty-three. […S]he had a very great soul to
grow up to…”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">23</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">NARRATIVE: On account of this,
we will also avoid giving very close consideration to her opinions on this or
that subject—not because these opinions do not deserve such attention, but
rather because we wish to keep our eyes on her journey, which, although it did
indeed bring her into constant contact with bodies of literature and
philosophy, remained unique to her.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">There is much talk nowadays of
a “pilgrimage to the absolute.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now in
simple terms Simone Weil isn’t so much a pilgrim as an anti-pilgrim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her journey is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">via negativa</i>, a journey away from God intended to increase the
distance between herself and God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
this infinite distance [to] which she is brought by acceptance of the utmost
extremity of “misfortune,” is intended to make it possible for her not to confront
God as an individual, as a personality, whether from the perspective of a sceptic
or from that of a believer, but rather to experience grace as an extinguished
and naked existence. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus in our hands
her multifaceted and multilayered work becomes an attestation of pure
mysticism, perhaps the only such attestation we have received since the Middle
Ages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is probably under this aspect,
the aspect of an incomprehensible inspiration, that we should view her
writings if we are to do them full justice. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: A system, for
example, of a philosophical kind, is not contained in Simone Weil’s writings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where they do evince the rudiments of a
system, they are downright weak; they are strong in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rapport</i>—a word that is difficult to translate into German and that
means entering into a relationship.</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">24</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rapport </i>occurs between her reason and
the absent God, for in everything that we think, learn, and experience, God is
nowhere to be found.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “God cannot be present in
the creation except in the form of absence.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">25</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“One must situate God at an
infinite distance in order to conceive of him as innocent of evil:
complementarily, evil reveals that God must be situated at an infinite
distance.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">26</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“Inasmuch as this world is
completely devoid of God it is God himself.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">27</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“One must exist in a desert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For he whom one must love is absent.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">28</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“Nothing that exists is
unconditionally deserving of love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One
must therefore love that which does not exist.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">29</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: This mere
handful of statements by Simone Weil fully conveys a sense of the version of degree
zero from which she tenaciously refused to budge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in her case refusing to budge did not entail
idleness but rather thought and action, conscientiousness, discharging “one’s
duties to one’s fellow-man with the utmost stringency” possible, plodding indefatigably
onwards into the void for the sake of curtailing evil, and establishing
conditions for contact with “spiritual reality.” For as she says:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “A paralytic is incapable
of perception.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">30</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: But she
categorically and especially will have no truck with anything that deceptively
distances us from this ground zero—with the search for consolation, hope, or
the remediation of suffering, with any attempt to flush out the void via an exercise
of the imagination.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “The imagination is
constantly striving to caulk all the cracks that grace could possibly seep
through.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">31</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“In its effort to fill the
void, the imagination is essentially duplicitous.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">32</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“The past and the future
forestall the salutary effect of misfortune in affording a field-day to
imaginative flights of fancy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is
why the renunciation of the past and the future is the most important of all
acts of renunciation.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">33ball to</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Next she draws
into this terrifying logical nexus those central imaginative concepts of the Christian
religion from which its adherents derive their chief consolation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She reasons as follows: divine mercy consists
in the utter absence of God’s mercy from the earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a belief in immortality as a prolongation
of life only prevents the believer from making the proper use of death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One must prohibit oneself from entertaining
this belief for God’s sake, for it does not lie within our power to imagine the
soul as a disembodied entity.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">FIRST SPEAKER: But she thinks
along these lines because there is one thing she is keen on avoiding at all
costs—namely the creation of an imaginary God, a new “great beast”—the term is
taken from Plato’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Republic</i>—that
would join forces with the other “great beasts.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She numbers among the great beasts everything
that wields power and everything that ever has wielded it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “Rome: the atheistic,
materialist great beast, which worships itself alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israel: the religious great beast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither of them is loveable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The great beast is always repulsive.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">34</span></sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“To the extent that Marxism is
true, it is contained in its entirety in Plato’s passage on the great beast,
and its refutation is also contained therein.”</span><sup><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">35</span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">“Service rendered to false gods…purifies evil in eliminating
its horror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the eyes of someone who
renders such service, nothing seems evil but any lapse in this rendition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But service rendered to the true God allows the
horror of evil to subsist and even intensifies the horror.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">36</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: The fact that Simone Weil’s most vehement
strictures on all forms of totalitarianism are directly connected to her love
of God is readily inferable from these passages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we would like to single out another
feature of them in order to clarify her attitude towards the Catholic
Church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a single breath and using the
term<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> great beast</i> she dismisses not
only the entire trajectory leading from Allah to Marxism and the Roman Empire
to Hitler, but also the God of the Old Testament.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the divine mission of Israel is the basis
of the New Testament, and consequently the basis of the Christian Church.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eliot is of the opinion that her rejection of
Israel prevented her from becoming an officially confirmed Christian, that the
difficulties that emerged from this rejection made it impossible for her to
undergo conversion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This may indeed be
the explanation; in any case, it is certain that she did not wish to
convert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She set out her reasons in her
letters to the Dominican monk Father Perrin, the warmest and most personal
letters she ever wrote.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here for the
first time is a person who understands her, who does not bemusedly shake his
head at the very thought of her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
brusqueness was transformed <…>.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “Being continually ready to admit that another being [un
autre] is something different [autre] from what one reads in him when he is
present (or when one is thinking of him).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Or rather to read in him that he is assuredly something different,
perhaps something entirely different from what one reads there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Every being is a silent cry to be read differently.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">37</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: The letters to Perrin date from 1942, before
she leaves Europe; this is a year before her death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In them she explains why she cannot join the
Church.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “Christianity must
encompass all vocations without exception, because it is catholic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hence the Church must also be so
all-encompassing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in my eyes
Christianity is catholic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de jure</i> and
not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So many things are outside of it, so many
things that I love and do not wish to abandon, so many things that God loves,
for otherwise they would be devoid of existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entire immense expanse of past centuries,
with the exception of the last twenty; all the countries inhabited by people of
color; the entirety of secular life in white people’s countries; in the history
of these countries, all the traditions accused of heresy, like the Manichean
and Albigensian traditions; all the things that came out of the Renaissance,
which have been too often debased, but never absolutely devoid of value.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">As Christianity is catholic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de jure</i> and not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i>, I regard it as legitimate on my part to be a member of
the Church <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de jure</i> and not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">de facto</i>…”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">38</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: She speaks of the
necessity of the Church as a collective protectress of dogma, but she believes
that it is abusing its authority whenever it imposes its language as a norm on
our reason and our love.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">WEIL: “This abuse of power does
not emanate from God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It comes from the natural
tendency of all collectivities, without exception, to abuse their power.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;">39</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">SECOND SPEAKER: She continues
along these lines in another passage:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">WEIL: “In order for the
Church’s current attitude to be efficacious and genuinely penetrative of social
existence, the Church would have to admit that it has changed or wishes to
change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Otherwise how could anyone who
remembers the Inquisition take it seriously?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You must pardon me for mentioning the Inquisition; owing to my friendly
regard for you, which extends beyond you to your order, it pains me very much
to call to mind this institution here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the institution existed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After
the fall of the Roman Empire, which was totalitarian, it was the Church which
drafted the first blueprint of totalitarianism in Europe, in the thirteenth
century, after the Albigensian Crusade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This tree has borne ample fruit.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 14pt;">...</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Moreover, it
was via a judicious transposition of this practice that all the parties established
by totalitarian regimes in our own time were founded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a historical moment that I have
studied with particular attention.”</span><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small;">40</span></sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none; text-indent: 0.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">FIRST SPEAKER: But after
drawing attention to this criticism of the Church, of that portion of the
Church belonging to the social and political sector, it would be unfair not to
highlight her profound reverence for the Christian religion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In her eyes Christ is the model of
righteousness because he was naked and dead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His healing of the sick, his resurrection of the dead, seems to her the
most trivial part of his mission, its human part; she singles out as the
supernatural part of his mission his unfulfilled longing for human
consolations, his feeling of being forsaken by God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Through this feeling one can strive to equal
God, not God Almighty, but God who died on the cross, for whom God is likewise
absent.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">SECOND SPEAKER: But [in] all
her reflections, which she repeatedly and insistently elucidates to Perrin, she
keeps returning to the question of what must be done “now.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one passage she speaks of one of her
contemporaries—Maritain—and takes up his call for a new type of holiness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, she points out, Maritain has
contented himself with enumerating aspects of earlier versions of holiness that
have fallen into temporary obsolescence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">WEIL: “The world needs saints endowed with
genius as a city infested with the plague needs doctors.”</span><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small;">41</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">SECOND SPEAKER: And she hopes
that where need is in evidence, a sense of obligation will also emerge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">NARRATOR: Needless to say, the description
of a complex body of work and of the numerous themes that it deals
with—especially given that they are not dealt with in a systematic, coherent
fashion; the description of a life that is ever-so-intimately bound up with
this body of work, must confine its attention to a handful of highly significant
and readily discernable features.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
even if this description can be said to have succeeded in shining some light on
the phenomenon that is Simone Weil, something else is still missing—that
something being an elucidation in the fullest sense of the word.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Her first editor—Gustave
Thibon, with whom she was also personally acquainted—has to some extent
provided this elucidation in expressing the understandable fear that after
publication her writings would be interpreted in the light of current political
life, by which he may have principally meant the distorted versions of politics
practiced by political parties.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">THIBON: “No social group or
worldview has the right to claim her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her
love of the people and hatred of all oppression do not suffice to ally her with
any of the parties of the Left; nor do her negative stance towards progress and
her reverence for tradition authorize her classification as a member of the
Right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every time she committed herself
politically, she did so with the selfsame passion with which she engaged in
every activity; but by no means did this amount to anything like the
deification of an idea, a nation, or a class…”</span><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small;">42</span></sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">NARRATOR: This is all quite true, but for precision’s sake one
must add that not even the Church can claim her as an ally.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wherever she found herself, she always
remained standing at the threshold, rigorously consistent to the last.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">To interpret Simone Weil’s work in the light of genuine
current political reality, which includes all current realities, is
nevertheless still necessary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She may
yet contribute to the demolition of relations, to the recognition of the “Great
Beast” in every form in which it manifests itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anybody who recognizes it will cease to serve
it and instead do everything in his power to curtail the evil engendered by
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Championing the curtailment of evil
will then become an authentic social duty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For Simone Weil this was a duty that had to be performed “in all
circumstances” lest the love of one’s neighbor remain nothing but an empty
phrase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neighborly love is a universal
love and loves every human being who needs help regardless of whether it knows
his name.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus Weil wished, for example,
to go to Russia when the Germans had penetrated deep into that country, even
though she regarded the Soviet State as an evil, as a modification of Marxism,
of the “Great Beast.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When fulfilling
this wish proved impossible, she still had enough time left to give proof of
the sincerity of her neighborly love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The suffering inflicted on her by the persecution and annihilation of
the Jews in Germany, the misery of the occupied French, destroyed her
psychically; the work she undertook in the hope of alleviating the sufferings
of others destroyed her physically.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">Her faith in God, which sometimes seemed impossible [to her]
in the light of the ever-increasing horror, was not destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The relationship with the absolute into which
she entered was sustainable for her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This relationship made it possible for her to believe that there was
love in the “worst of all possible worlds,” because it repudiated the presence
of God in that world.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 107%;">There is nothing about this mystical
entering-into-a-relationship-with-the-absolute that we can make our own in any
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would be madness to maintain
that we can participate in it, that we can exploit it for our own uses like a
system of knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the
case, this portion of Simone Weil’s journey is impracticable in the strictest
sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was always only ever
vouchsafed to a few and will only ever again be pursued by the few in sundry ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has always been pursued in sundry ways and
always will be pursued in sundry ways. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">But to the extent that we are receptive
to it, the beauty that inheres in everything that is thought and lived in
purity ultimately finds a refuge in us. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once illuminated by this beauty, we repeatedly
catch glimpses of something concealed from us by the darkness—the
indestructible visage of the human individual in a world that has been
conspiring to bring about his destruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">WEIL: “After my year of factory
work, before my resumption of teaching, my parents had brought me to Portugal,
and there I left them and went to live alone in a small village. My body and
soul had both been ripped to pieces after a fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That contact with misfortune had murdered my
youth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until then I had not experienced
any misfortune apart from my own, which seemed unimportant to me because it was
my own, and which in any case was merely semi-misfortune in being of a
biological rather than a social nature. I was well aware that there was a great
deal of misfortune in the world; I was obsessed with it, but I had never
observed it while being in sustained contact with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>During my time at the factory, lost as I then
was in the anonymous mass in both everyone else’s eyes and my own, the
misfortune of others seeped into my flesh and into my soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing separated me from it, for I had
genuinely forgotten my past and I expected nothing from the future, as I found
it difficult to imagine surviving that period of constant fatigue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I suffered then has marked me…indelibly…There
I received the mark of the glowing iron that the Romans burned into the
foreheads of their most despised slaves. Ever since then, I have regarded
myself as a slave.”</span><sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: small;">43</span></sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; text-autospace: none;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 16px;">THE END</span></div>
</div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Notes</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">First
broadcast in the first half of 1955 on Bavarian Radio in Munich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The specific broadcast date is no longer
known. [editors’ note (hereafter Ed.)]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Misfortune and Divine Love</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> is my fairly literal
translation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Das Unglück und die
Gottesliebe</i>, the title of Kemp’s translation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Attente de Dieu</i>, a title more literally known in English translation
as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Waiting for God</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Awaiting God</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gravity
and Grace</i> is the standard English title of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Pesanteur et la grâce</i>, which Kemp likewise literally rendered as
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Schwerkraft und Gnade</i>. [translator’s
note (hereafter Tr.)]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Having been
born on February 3, 1909, Simone Weil was actually already 34 years old at the
time of her death [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gravity and Grace</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, translated
by Friedhelm Kemp (Munich: Kösel Verlag, 1952), p. 159, modified. [Ed.] Here,
as elsewhere when I have access to the original French source (<a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/pesanteur_et_grace/pesanteur_et_grace.pdf">in
this case, p 79 of the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi electronic edition of
"La pesanteur et la grâce"),</a> I have collated the German with that
original to produce a composite translation, and when the editors have noted modifications,
I have pointed out substantial divergences from the original that may
correspond to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I do not have
access to Kemp’s translations, I cannot be certain that such divergences in passages
taken from these translations (such as the one cited in the present note) are the
result of liberties taken by Bachmann rather than by Kemp. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only substantial divergence in this
passage is the presence of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">zu erreichen</i>
(to attain), which introduces a sense of striving and movement not immediately
entailed by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pour la pureté</i> on its own.
[Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Simone Weil, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cahiers</i> [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Notebooks</i>] II, (Plon: Paris, 1953), p. 260f., modified. [Ed.] As I
do not have access to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cahiers</i>, I
have translated this passage, along with the one from them cited later in the
essay, exclusively from Bachmann’s German. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">As the editors
do not cite a source for these passages, I have translated them exclusively
from the German. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">7.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Journal
d’Usine (Factory Diary) 1934-1935,” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La
condition ouvrière</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gallimard,
Paris: 1951.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paperback edition, p.119.
[Ed.] <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Translated directly from p.79 of <a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/condition_ouvriere/la_condition_ouvriere.pdf">Université
du Québec à Chicoutimi electronic edition of "La condition ouvrière,"</a>
with approximations of Bachmann’s ellipses. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">8.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Fragments” in
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La condition ouvrière</i>, p. 130. [Ed.]
Translated directly from <a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/condition_ouvriere/la_condition_ouvriere.pdf">ibid.</a>,
p. 100. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">9.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 153.
[Ed.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/condition_ouvriere/la_condition_ouvriere.pdf">Ibid</a>.,
p. 101. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">10.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Journal
d’Usine,” p. 130. [Ed.] Translated directly from <a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/condition_ouvriere/la_condition_ouvriere.pdf">ibid.</a>,
p. 86. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">11.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 131.
[Ed.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Translated directly from <a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/condition_ouvriere/la_condition_ouvriere.pdf">ibid.</a>,
p. 87, with the exception of the bracketed sections, which correspond to
alterations made by Bachmann but unnoted by the editors. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">12.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 134.
[Ed.] Translated directly from <a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/condition_ouvriere/la_condition_ouvriere.pdf">ibid.</a>,
p. 88. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">13.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Fragments,”
p. 168. [Ed.] Translated directly from <a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/condition_ouvriere/la_condition_ouvriere.pdf">ibid.</a>,
p. 111. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">14.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gravity and Grace</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, p. 238<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">.</i> [Ed.]</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Translated
directly from <span style="color: black;"><a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/pesanteur_et_grace/pesanteur_et_grace.pdf">the
Université du Québec à Chicoutimi electronic edition "La pesanteur et la
grâce,"</a> p. 138. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">15.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Since
published in a translation by Friedhelm Kemp entitled “Studie für eine
Erklärung der Pflichten gegen das menschliche<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wesen” in Simone Weil, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Zeugnis für
das Gute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Traktate—Briefe—Aufzeichnungen</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Walter Verlag, Olten and Freiburg: 1976.
[Eds.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bachmann is presumably referring
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Enracinement </i>(1949), whose 1952 English
translation by Arthur Willis is entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties towards Mankind</i>.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; mso-prop-change: "Windows User" 20181127T1244; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">16.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Condition
première d’un travail non servile” in: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La
condition ouvrière</i>, p. 358, modified. [Ed.] I have translated from Bachmann’s
German, as it differs so dramatically from the original passage (on p. 218 of <a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/condition_ouvriere/la_condition_ouvriere.pdf">the
electronic edition</a>) as to be more accurately regarded as a paraphrase than
as a translation, and the explicit equation of revolution to opium comes from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La pesanteur et la grâce</i>. (<a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/pesanteur_et_grace/pesanteur_et_grace.pdf">See
p. 178 of the electronic edition</a>.) [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">17.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 265
f. [Ed.] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/condition_ouvriere/la_condition_ouvriere.pdf">La
condition ourvrière</a></i>, p. 219.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">18.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gravity and Grace</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, p. 264.
[Ed.] <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La pesanteur et la grâce</i>, p. 157. [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">19.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 266,
modified. [Ed.] Ibid, p. 159.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bachmann’s
modification consists in the trimming of a sentence that in full may be
translated, “The vegetative and the social are the two domains into which the
good does not enter.” [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">20.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 266.
[Ed.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid., p. 159 [Tr.]<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">21.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 266.
[Ed.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">22.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“Tended” is my
guess at the identity of the clause’s missing second verb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">23.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Misfortune and Divine Love</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, translated
by Friedhelm Kemp, preface, p. 12. [Tr.] <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The passage puzzlingly corresponds to one in
Eliot’s preface to<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>a different book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Need for Roots</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I quote the original English source, as
presented <a href="http://ringmar.net/politicaltheoryfornomads/index.php/simone-weil-the-need-for-roots-prelude-to-a-declaration-of-duties-towards-mankind-london-routledge-and-kegan-paul-1952/">here</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-autospace: none; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">24.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The peculiar definition
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rapport</i> as entering into a
relationship rather than as an already-established relationship is all
Bachmann’s (“entering into a relationship” is my rendition of Bachmann’s
“In-Beziehung-Setzen,” most literally translated as “placing-in-relation”), and
it entails the unidiomatic “occurs” (for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">findet
statt</i>) in the following sentence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">25.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gravity and Grace</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, p. 200. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[Ed.] <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La pesanteur et la grâce</i>, p. 110. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">26.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid. [Ed. and Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">27.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid. [Ed. and Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">28.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid. [Ed. and Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">29.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 200.
[Ed.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid., p. 111. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">30.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Simone Weil, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cahiers</i> [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Notebooks</i>] II, p. 272, modified. [Ed.] See n. 5. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">31.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Gravity and Grace</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, p. 78. [Ed.]
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La pesanteur et la grâce</i>, p. 24.
[Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">32.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 79.
[Ed.] Ibid., p. 25. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">33.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 82.
[Ed.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid., p. 27 [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">34.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 268.
[Ed.] Ibid., p. 161. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">35.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 269.
[Ed.] Ibid. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">36.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 270.
[Ed.] Ibid. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">37.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 233.
[Ed.] Ibid., p. 133-134. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">38.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Misfortune and Divine Love</span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, p. 58 f.
[Ed.]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Attente de Dieu</i>, </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><a href="http://classiques.uqac.ca/classiques/weil_simone/attente_de_dieu/attente_de_dieu_1966.pdf">Université
du Québec à Chicoutimi electronic edition</a><span style="color: black;">, p. 42.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">39.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid., p. 65. [Ed.] Ibid., p. 46. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">40.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ibid. p. 67 f. [Ed.] Ibid. pp. 47-48. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">41.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., p. 88.
[Ed.] Ibid., p. 63. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">42.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">The editors do
not attribute this passage, but it is to be found in Gustave Thibon’s introduction
to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La pesanteur et la grâce</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the Chicoutimi electronic edition of the
book does not include this introduction, I have translated from Bachmann’s (or,
as it may be, Kemp’s) German. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">43.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid. [i.e.,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Misfortune and Divine Love</i>], p. 47.
[Ed.] <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Attente de Dieu</i>, p. 35. [Tr.]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Translation
unauthorized but Copyright ©2018 by Douglas Robertson</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: rgb(254, 253, 250); color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Source: </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Ingeborg Bachmann, </span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Werke</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">, edited by
Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, and Clemens Münster (Munich: Piper,
1978), Vol. IV, pp. 128-155.</span><span face=""arial" , sans-serif" style="color: #333333; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-71707594430155157802018-09-07T18:16:00.002-04:002018-09-07T18:24:12.170-04:00A Translation of Hommage à Maria Callas by Ingeborg Bachmann<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;">Hommage </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;">à</span></b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 107%;"><b> Maria
Callas</b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A Draft</span></i><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">1</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I have
always been astonished that people who have heard Maria Callas have not been
able to get beyond hearing in her an extraordinary voice subjected to every
conceivable peril.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was never—oh by
no means—merely a voice in an age in which so many outstanding voices could be
heard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maria Callas is no “vocal
wonder”; she is far indeed from being one of those, or very near indeed to
being one, for she is the only creature [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kreatur</i>]
that has ever set foot on an opera stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A creation [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Geschöpf</i>] about
which the tabloid press must hold its peace, because every one of this
creation’s sentences, every breath it takes, its weeping, its joy, its
precision, its delight in producing art—a tragedy that one need not be familiar
with in the usual way—are obvious. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
is uniquely extraordinary is not her coloraturas—and they are staggeringly
magnificent—not her arias, not her skill as a singing partner; but rather her respiration,
her pronunciation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>M[aria] C[allas] has
a way of pronouncing a word so that everyone who has not entirely lost his ear
for music owing to apathy or snobbery, who is not incessantly on the hunt for
fresh sensations of the lyrical theater [---] she will never make us forget
that there are such things as an I and a Thou, that there are such things as
pain and joy; she is great in hatred, in love, in tenderness, in brutality; she
is great in every mode of expression, and when her expressiveness misses the
mark, as it indisputably has done on many occasions, she has still merely fallen
short, but never been small.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She can miss
a specific target of expressiveness, because [she] knows what expressiveness in
general is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She was
great ten or more times over, in every gesture, in every cry, in every movement
she was great, which <…> is reminiscent of Duse: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ecco un artista</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She never
sang roles, but rather lived on the razor’s edge; she had a style of recitative
that seemed old-fashioned, newly made—ah, not newly made; she was so timelessly
contemporary that all the composers who wrote her roles, from Verdi to Bellini,
from Rossini to Cherubini, would have seen in her not merely their fulfillment
but something vastly superior.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ecco un artista</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">: she is the only person who has lawfully
acted onstage in this century in order to make the [listeners] in the stalls
freeze to death, suffer, shiver; she was always art—ah, art—and she was always
a human being, always the most wretched, the most haunted, of women, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la Traviata</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She was, if
I [may be forgiven for] drawing on the stuff of fairy tales, the nightingale of
those years, and the tears that I have wept—I need not be ashamed of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are so many meaningless tears shed, but
the ones shed for Callas—they were not so meaningless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was the last fairy tale, the last reality
whose blessings any listener can still hope to enjoy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She always directly
confronted those detours around libretti, around characters, that one must truly
love in order to be able to accept them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She was the lever that set in motion a world inside the listener; one
could suddenly listen through everything, listen through the centuries; she was
the last fairy tale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It is very
difficult or very easy to acknowledge greatness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Callas—yes, when did she live?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When will she die?—is great, is a human
being, is an alien in a world of mediocrity and perfection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bachmann’s editors remark
that she first heard Callas in a production of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Traviata</i> by Luchino Visconti at La Scala in Milan in 1956 and
that the draft probably dates from a few years later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 12.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">THE END</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2018 by
Douglas Robertson</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="background: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Source: </span><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Ingeborg
Bachmann, </span><i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Werke</span></i><span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">, edited by Christine Koschel, Inge von
Weidenbaum, and Clemens Münster (Munich: Piper, 1978), Vol. IV, pp. 342-343.</span></div>
Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-12490148330552216192018-08-16T19:47:00.000-04:002018-08-31T19:32:04.864-04:00A Translation of Der Schein trügt by Thomas Bernhard<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Appearances Are Deceptive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’ve got a right to
our annuity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we have done our work
honestly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to the utmost
perfection<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dramatis
personae<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">an elderly
circus performer<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his
brother, an elderly stage actor<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
large city at year’s end</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Act I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tuesday<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
Karl’s house<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Scene I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Old,
uncomfortable furniture<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
woman’s wardrobe and a man’s wardrobe with a dozen pairs of men’s shoes <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>underneath and in front of it<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
sink with a canary in a gilded cage beside it<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
large table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
pile of women’s clothes on a small table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pictures
displayed as mementos of Karl’s career as a circus performer<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
photograph of his deceased common-law wife<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An
old radio, an old record player<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">crawling
on the floor in winter underwear and with a pair of spectacles hanging from a
string around his neck, looking for his nail file<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="gjdgxs"></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
mustn’t let ourselves be defeated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">especially not now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in this abhorrent age<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after
a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps it isn’t all
that abhorrent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What matters most is
virtuosity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in other words character<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if we allow ourselves
to be made fools of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we’ve already lost<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How I loathe these Tuesdays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I loathe the
Thursdays even more<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sameness isn’t
similarity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A probate court<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s nice that we
never sought out a university<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How nice that we’ve
stayed in Europe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our mistakes haven’t
done us in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">addressing
Maggi the canary point-blank</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our zest for life has
never deserted us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not even now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Even if we’ve been
unhappy most of the time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our organs have atrophied<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilda has deserted
us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but we’ve got our
zest for life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as
he looks for the file under the woman’s wardrobe</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Never monkeyed around<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">too often frightened<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Inexcusable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">capriciousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after
a pause</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The weekend cottage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bequeathed to Robert<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the actor deserved it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not the circus
performer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the impostor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not the common-law
husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So much dirty laundry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ladder-ridden
stockings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We take a wife for
eternity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">commit ourselves to
her forever<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and she deserts us at
the most unpropitious moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks
for the file under the man’s wardrobe</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I waved the baton<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she danced<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to
Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Conductors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the extraordinary
ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the outstanding ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">have always made
things difficult for themselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sticks
his head under the man’s wardrobe then says</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A bad omen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the vacancy left behind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">glancing
at the pile of women’s clothes</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The dresses won’t be
auctioned off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the dresses are
staying here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks
for the file under the sink</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">these revolting
procedures for getting dressed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now I even need
reading glasses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to cut my nails<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Through the same glasses
I read Voltaire with<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I see my toenails<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">effortfully
stands up</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We shouldn’t live
long enough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to need eyeglasses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to cut our nails<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s depressing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">because we certainly
haven’t become any cleverer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">only more sniveling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And at the most
unpropitious moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we also lose the
person closest to us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to
Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The spice of life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the spice of my life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I would have simply
called you Hans or Karl<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Women are always in
search<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of grandiosity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of extraordinariness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as
he looks for the file under the bookcase</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The catastrophe
begins the moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">one’s visual acuity
starts to decline<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when we<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">unintentionally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">pass water<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stop hearing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the doorbell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What an effort it
took me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to make it up the
stairs yesterday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with just a sausage
and the bottle of milk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in my net<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surveys the floor of the room</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
first I thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’d go
to the cemetery every day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I
haven’t been to the cemetery<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">since
last Friday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
wasn’t an oath<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">just a
plan<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
shouldn’t be taken in by doctors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they
cut us up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and
ruin us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they
sound us out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and
discover a terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as he looks for the file under the sink</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My loss
of appetite<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is just
a symptom<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of
mourning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">don’t</i> auction them off <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">her
dresses <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">won’t</i> be auctioned off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ll
tell Robert<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">her
dresses <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">won’t</i> be auctioned off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nothing</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> will be auctioned
off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rises and picks up one of the dresses and sticks his hand into
it</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the
most unpropitious moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">puts the dress back down on the pile</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She </span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was the one who bought you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks for the file under the sink</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How I
loathe these Tuesdays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I
loathe the Thursdays even more <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This is
more convenient<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert comes
to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Thursdays are arduous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No elevator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
repulsive furniture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
tasteless wallpaper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
nauseating stench of toilets in Trappistenstrasse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
typical bachelor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">performed
for the queen of England<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ridiculous
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Never
dreamed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of
getting married <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">out of
avarice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">out of
laziness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Always
been bone idle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a
mamma’s boy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a
lifelong lisper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Playing
King Lear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ridiculous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But I
adored his Tasso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">adored
it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
was magnificent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My toenails
are poking through my socks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">two
pairs of English socks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks for the file under the bed</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Who
will mend them now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t
like to part company with objects<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but it
was my idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not
Robert’s idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everything
must go to the pawnshop I said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at the
very first moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
only gradually becoming clear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
she’s gone for good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everything
is more or less<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">distressing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but her
piano playing was too lousy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mozart<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">got her
hands on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mozart<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So she
decided<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to
become a pianist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she
became hell-bent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on
playing classical pieces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in a
schoolmasterly way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
first I thought Yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">then I
thought No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">then
Yes again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I
didn’t marry her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Her
playing was amateurish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
piano won’t be sold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up and sits down in exhaustion at the table</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mozart
sonatas every Sunday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">now we
miss it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I let
her get away with that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’ve
got to put up with a horrible lot of stuff<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when we
have a partner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She was
terrified of thunderstorms<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
was simply ludicrous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">her
with her face contorted by panic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in that
corner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">points at the corner</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">There<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it
disgusted me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surveying the room</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nobody
cooked such fine potato soup<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a fine
cook<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a lousy
seamstress<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In her
gray dress<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she
looked quite nice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on her
deathbed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Her
last wishes were granted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Literally
crammed into her gray sonata dress<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a real
job of work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I
did it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
didn’t let her take the emerald with her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">fatuously<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">spouting
inane bilge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Funerals
aren’t <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">all
that expensive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">finds the file under the sink, grabs it, lifts it up into the
air as though admiring it and sits down in one of the chairs to cut his
toenails</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as he is cutting his toenails</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
forbade myself music<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a page
of Voltaire<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or a
page of Pascal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that is
our salvation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">raises the file up into the air</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No
matter who we are<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">keeping
our socks from getting full of holes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is more
important than anything else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">continues filing his nails</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We are
a wreck<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and
fancy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we are
an intellectual giant <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rises and goes to the sink and continues cutting his toenails
there</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On the
other hand it’s important <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for us
not to break off contact<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with
people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">these
Tuesdays are important<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">just
like the Thursdays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sometimes
I say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">half</i> brother<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">which
offends him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Seeing
each other regularly like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is
actually a nuisance for both of us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not
giving up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surveys the room</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not
giving up Maggi<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everybody’s
dying off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
thought I’d be the first<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our
numbers are dwindling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s
not good for anybody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks out the window</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
nadir of a moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
the days first start getting longer <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve
lived quite properly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">appropriately<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">been
neither too dissipated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nor self-indulgent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but
also not abstemious<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
shouldn’t get so old<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
everyone we’re left in touch with<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is in
the cemetery<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To be
honest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">whether
they were family or not<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we were
never really in touch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with
anyone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Fulfilled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">unfulfilled
desires <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s
only once they’re dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that we
realize<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they
were ever here at all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">speaking lingeringly</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">dusts off the file</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">People<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
none who have ever given us anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
never kidded ourselves either<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">did we<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">reflectively</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They
say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
after death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">your
nails and your hair<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">keep
growing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for a
while<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We aren’t
moving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you’ve
no need to worry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a
foolish idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">moving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We
won’t give up this place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
would be the death of us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A sip of
cold milk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s
refreshing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surveys the room</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">forgoing
everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a
familiar place <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with a
perfect view<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and an
elevator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks at the window</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An old
house<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is an
asset<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nobody
notices anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
it’s falling apart<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We were
never indecent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">were we<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Some
small-time con jobs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but no
indecency<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Surviving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">whatever
that means<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks at his shoes, notices that they are not pointing straight
ahead, stands up and points them straight ahead</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">while contemplating his shoes</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You
pedant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sits down again and resumes filing his toenails</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Naturally
I had no patience<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for
backtalk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
exacerbated the situation naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Asparagus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">her
favorite dish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The box
at the opera<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I never
had any use for the opera<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
theater yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
opera no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Little
streams of garrulity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">behind
my back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
she was alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she’d
eat snacks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or
she’d write to her sister in Oberolingen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we
don’t need to fraternize with everybody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Can you
believe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that I
once played the trumpet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when I
was about twenty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">goes up to Maggi, taps on the cage</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my
secret observer <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Scene Two<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ten
minutes later<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: .2in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt; tab-stops: 346.5pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as he is hanging the dresses up in the wardrobe<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nothing</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> will be auctioned
off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nothing</i> is going to the charity shop
either<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Scraps
of memory<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">quite
personal scraps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
very idea was distasteful<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At
government offices<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she’d
get so agitated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she
could hardly write her own name<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she’d
forget her birthday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
didn’t care for reading<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Playing
chess<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Philosophy
of any kind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As a
child she had nothing to laugh at<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">fingernails
bitten to the quick<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the
unfortunate child<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who was
always knocking over everything at the dinner table<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">constantly
soiling her clothes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not a
pretty voice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks at the clock</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">half-past
five<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
introduced her to beauty to style<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">little
by little pulled her out of her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">petit-bourgeois
shell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
she came to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">where
the hell did you get those scars on your bottom from<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">reaches out and touches a dress</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Daily
beatings from her father<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">her
mother held her peace<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no
vacations no festivity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Grocers
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">what
awful people <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">drunkards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But he
let her take piano lessons<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">admittedly
from a charlatan<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not a
single flawless passage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she
couldn’t express <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">syncopations</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bursts out laughing</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She was
a pianist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">doubtless
a certain similarity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to our
sister<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the
sensitive child<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks at the bed</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She was
blindsided<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">how
pleasant it is to lie in such a big bed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on such
a nice broad mattress<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had
to teach her everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
came to us completely clueless<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but at
the same time at just the right moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
promised her that trip to Tuscany<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and
then we traveled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She was
always worried<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">her
father would catch me with her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I read
Voltaire to her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when I
asked her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if she
understood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she
said no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">just
plain no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I found
that disarming<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">while polishing his shoes, then putting on his stockings and
socks</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Finally
I was the one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who
taught her German<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and a
bit of French<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I made
her presentable first<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I took
her to the theater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lessing</i> to her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she had
never heard the name before<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Basically
none of it was of any use<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> wanted to take you in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
didn’t come up with any part of the idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I kept
reminding her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to
brush her hair every day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Grocers
are introverts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">her
father was a lecher<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of
course that doesn’t mean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that we
have to give up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the
weekend cottage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but it
irritates me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that
she bequeathed it to Robert <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I can relax in it as
I can nowhere else <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I can regenerate
there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as I can nowhere else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She wanted to live on
the ground floor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s understandable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She was a grocer’s
daughter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s why she had
that attachment to the ground floor <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but it would have
been tacky<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Given that we’ve got
the elevator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Basically no facility
whatsoever with languages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Complete
incomprehension<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">where comprehension
was essential<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It never occurred to
me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that she was making a
will<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of course I had
thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she didn’t own
anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and I’d forgotten<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">about the weekend
cottage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She didn’t leave it
to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but to Robert<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It bothered her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when I was busy
thinking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she tried to hide it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I noticed it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a poor performance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rises and hangs the remaining dresses up in the wardrobe</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The actor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who used his
illnesses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">more than his
artistry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to draw attention to
himself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I can listen to
Schoenberg’s music for hours on end<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he’s bored to tears
by it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In truth he is an
anti-artist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">like actors in
general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Twenty-one plates at
a time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and in a sold-out
Olympic stadium<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that was something<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not a hoax by any
means<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">everything was public<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But I never thrust
myself into the foreground<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s not my style<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to make a spectacle
of myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On the other hand I
loved<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">his Tasso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in a certain way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">his helplessness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">suddenly he ran out
of breath<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">goes to the window and looks out</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Trumpets were played<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and not at all badly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">always a preference
for wind instruments<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Music has always been
my salvation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> was the musical one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she wasted her
energies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in the kitchen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She often said the
phrase<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the common good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When she forgot your
birdseed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’d chase her back
into town<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It serves you right </span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’d say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she’d have to be back
in twenty minutes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No mercy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We didn’t let her get
away with anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns on the radio</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If you come<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">by the thirty-first<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a thirty-percent
discount<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if you come
punctually by the thirty-first<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a thirty-percent
discount<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns off the radio</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">seats himself in one of the chairs and stretches his legs out as far as
possible</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On New Year’s Day she
was allowed to pin on the emerald<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that I had bought her
in Grenoble<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nineteen fifty-eight<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my farewell
performance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mountains snow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a nightmare<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rises and sweeps up the toenail clippings from the floor with the
clothes brush</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the Tuileries<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had stomach pains
for the first time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">throws the toenail clippings into the wastebasket</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In my youth I basically
traveled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">everywhere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I performed
everywhere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at the Lido<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">everywhere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at the Circus Renz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Baden-Baden<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">London<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sinks down exhausted into one of the chairs</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Manchester<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Napoleon left<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the Bourbons came
back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it wasn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">thanks to </i>Napoleon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">along with</i> Napoleon that Europe fell to
pieces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Europe incinerated
its genius at Elba<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and thereby finished
itself off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">glances at his watch</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m no longer
interested in travel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sits down at the sink and lathers his face</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Made history<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Did I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">make history<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sticks out his tongue, then</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everybody makes
history<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The day she died was
a Tuesday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I never noticed that
at all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She said rendezvous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in that funny way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If I said something
in Latin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she would get cross<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Her soft spot for the
aristocracy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was off-putting in a
certain way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sticks his tongue out</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I always had more
instinct<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">than Robert<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Twenty-one plates all
at the same time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nobody else ever
managed that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was one of a kind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stretches his head forward so that he is looking directly into the
mirror, exclaims</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Acrobat
tightrope-walker<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">laughing with his head held high</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Plate-spinner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I didn’t have to
answer to anybody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">apart from myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I mastered my art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Lyon I came a
cropper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a select audience<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I repeated the routine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">instead of twenty-one
plates<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had thirty-one
plates in the air<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my greatest triumph<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my greatest tribute
of applause<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">wrested from the jaws
of my bitterest defeat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my highest pinnacle
attained<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">within a span of
three minutes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then Grenoble<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and I quit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at the pinnacle of my
success<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Unlike Robert I
didn’t wait<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for a
career-terminating case of strep throat etcetera<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">shaves</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A world-conquering performer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I never gave lessons<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I showed what I could
do<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that was all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nobody else ever
managed that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I got by without any
help whatsoever from the classics<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and so I managed to
travel the length and breadth of Europe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Grenoble on my
fiftieth birthday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I treated myself to
that luxury<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">quite simply stopped<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had insured myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was never dependent
on anyone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And I didn’t miss it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">later<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I never even
attempted a comeback<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and I didn’t talk
about it anymore either<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde had no use<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for the word
plate-spinner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">After</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Grenoble the feminine sex so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Naturally I didn’t
dream of getting married<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">never dreamt of it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a union sure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a coupling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a shared destiny<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I took in the failed
pianist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I clothed her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I taught her the
German language<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and initiated her in
the culinary arts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I didn’t show her how
to do anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On Sunday I let her
play Mozart sonatas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">so we lived a
pleasant life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">from the first year
to the last <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A frustrated
childhood so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a character-maiming
house to grow up in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a dimwitted father<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a rachitic mother<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I liberated her from
that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">washes his face, cools it with an expensive aftershave lotion<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Don’t exaggerate
anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">don’t accelerate
anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">pats his cheeks and sticks out his tongue</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The present is always
bad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we must get through
it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in the end we’ve got<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a pleasant
inconspicuous nest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">an oasis <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a mental oasis<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">isn’t that right
Maggi<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">goes to the window and sits down</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">November days<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">even when they drag
on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">don’t bore us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">because we have our
great intellects<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">goes to the bookshelf and fetches a book and sits back down at the
window after glancing at his watch</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A master of the art
of the soliloquy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Time for the other
sex<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that was the real
surprise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">basically too late<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">naturally I didn’t
dream of getting married<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but of being with
someone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Consideration<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A grocer’s mentality</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">known from childhood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">glances at his watch, sets aside the book, stands up, goes to the man’s
wardrobe and puts on his trousers, slips into the trousers, exclaims</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Instinct<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">what a word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A zest for life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Strength of character<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">puts on his shirt</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">slips his suspenders over his shoulders</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">From the bottom up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s always
incredibly difficult<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks at his shoes</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now and then a
certain delicacy<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">polishes his shoes as he says</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A wealth of
experience<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Gladly acquired<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands erect, looks at the window</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’ve drawn the right
conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’re just spending
the night here in the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At about this time
she’d be sitting down at the piano<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and playing Mozart<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Even though it was
all played wrongly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The dilettante always
profanes the greatest of great works<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the holiest of holies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The cutlet that was
burnt to a crisp<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">do you remember that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the end everything
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">falls prey to
ludicrousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">opens the table-drawer and takes several tablets out of a glass,
swallows them, and slams the drawer shut</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I can’t forgive her
for drawing up a will<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve always been
quite partial to the phrase<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">“cemeterial duration ”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No singing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no songs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no eulogy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It was all over in
twelve minutes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">picks up the photograph of Mathilde and contemplates it for a while</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I pulled you out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">pulled you out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">out of that morass<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and up to my level<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">puts the photograph back on the table</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A mania for compromise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">glances at his watch, puts on his jacket, buttons his shirt, and looks
at the shoes under the man’s wardrobe</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A shoe-fetishist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pathological<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">glances at his watch</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Unpunctuality is
something we’ve never had any patience for<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we have no patience
for it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we can’t have any
patience for it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sits down at the window</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Every Tuesday this
same enormity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the thespian who
fails to make his entrance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How I loathe these
Tuesdays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This anti-actor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">basically he’s always
had a lisp<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Opportunism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks down at the street</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Infantalism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Megalomania<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surveys the room</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Never managed a clear
U<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or an open O<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the way he said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dying</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">figure of speech</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Those great roles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he played<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The obnoxious thing
is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we just waste time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as we’re waiting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because we can’t do
anything intelligent then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">can’t read further
along in Voltaire<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or Rabelais<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As soon as I open the
book<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he shows up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Half</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> brother<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">undoubtedly an
offensive term<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He’s acted at the
Burgtheater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">what does that
actually mean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Droned out
Shakespeare <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in miserable
translations<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It vexes me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that she bequeathed
the weekend cottage to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">him</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the end of her
life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">yet another slip-up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if not a vile prank<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A prank played on
high art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on a deity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the love of her life
was supposed to exit empty-handed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">harshly</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> the one who needs to be helped<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> was always the one in a precarious situation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I </span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I never bellyached<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">perhaps I was too
wrapped up in myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with his gaze fixed on Maggi</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Women make
catastrophic wills<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">shamelessly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rises and puts two glasses on the table</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">treacherously<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">unfairly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Their starry-eyedness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">has always really put
me off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">adjusts the position of the glasses</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They look up to stage
actors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not to circus
performers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">seats himself at the table and stretches out his legs</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I could have
squirreled it away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the will<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we coddle and cosset
a person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and she bequeaths her
weekend cottage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to somebody else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hypocrisy was always
abhorrent to us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">picks up the book and leafs through it</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We detested<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">disloyalty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Deviousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Brazen chicanery<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sets the book aside and rises and goes to the window</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We aren’t
regenerating as quickly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as quickly as we
thought we would<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sits down and looks out at the street</span></i><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Scene Three</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Fifteen minutes later</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sitting on the bed, tying his necktie <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Electric light<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Gas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">all the bills paid<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surveys the room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Won’t have it painted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If we have the furniture
reupholstered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’ll have to be an
armchair upholsterer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of the first rank<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Craftsmanship’s gone to
rack and ruin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A sign of the times<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It doesn’t all have to be
new<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But we also mustn’t fall
through the chair<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when we sit down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rocking back and forth on the bed<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Forty-year-old feathers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">handmade after all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s got to be clean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">too</i> clean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We go quickly to seed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if we let ourselves go<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Don’t let go<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Once my goal was to be a
philosopher<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A writer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">an extravagant publisher<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An author of books<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no novels<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Philosophy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no descriptions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everything firmly nailed
down in my brain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rocks back and forth on the bed<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Orthodox in all things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">generally <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">incorruptible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rises and goes to the window, looks out<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a high-ranking clergyman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not a monk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A cathedralist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">clerical celebrity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No contact<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with my relatives<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">except my intellectual
relatives of course<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kept my nieces and nephews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at arm’s length<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Two people could live on
this annuity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I told her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">kept my assets a secret<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">an absolute secret<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This because I had been
planning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to live alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That lisp<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that he’s always had<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he got it from our mother<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A mannerism so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">pushed to the limit <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In a certain sense all
actors are morons<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">even the greatest ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">even the most famous ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">run away from their
mediocrity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and their mediocrity
catches up with them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">all of them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They make things too easy
for themselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Brilliant</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> the people say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">brilliant</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but it’s really nothing
but dilettantism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everything in their
vicinity is tasteless<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Simulated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Superficial<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">even the noblest things
start to stink<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On the other hand it’s
really quite impressive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">those endless lines
learned by heart<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">lines he basically didn’t
understand in the least<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Once I asked him quick as
a flash<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">what it was<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he’d just recited<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he was incapable of
answering<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they don’t know what
they’re saying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">either what they’re saying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or what they’re pretending
to do<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of course I’m no flatterer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A devotion to consistency<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This hundred-and-thirtieth
line of Goethe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">what does it mean in
relation to the one forty-six lines earlier<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that really put him in a
tight spot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He wriggled out of it
that’s exactly what he did<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">chickened out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had twenty-three plates
in the air at once<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that was really something
different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in all honesty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the impression I made in
Lyon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">There wasn’t a man woman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or child there who<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">glances at his watch, sits down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I could be on my deathbed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he wouldn’t come<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At least it’s a matter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of intolerance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve <span style="background: white; color: black;">never spoken about</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my infirmities</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Developed my art in
the background</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in a discreet manner</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">didn’t make every
head cold into a tragedy</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was never the spoiled
one</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bends over, looks at his shoes, pulls out a rag and polishes them</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’ve got a right to
our annuity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we have done our work
honestly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to the utmost
perfection</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">goes with the rag to the small table, sets the rag aside</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When he comes</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he never sits in the
chair</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I offer him</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he takes the other
one</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">shifts it out of its
proper place</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If we have no
relationship with geometry</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we have no
understanding of the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as I understand it</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A confused lapse in
taste</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When our mother read
to us</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he would fall asleep</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she was smitten</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with her badly-behaved
child</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not with her obedient
one</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I eagerly absorbed</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everything</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">from my very infancy
onwards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Literature poetry
aphorisms<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He’s a case of arrested
development<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was always an early
riser<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">still in bed at half-past
nine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s no way to live<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde was besotted with
him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Actors haven’t a trace of
imagination<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a weak sense of smell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">everything’s got to be
beaten into him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Actors’ heads<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">are revoltingly hollow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On the other hand I’ve
always loved Robert<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">been incessantly moved to
tears just thinking about him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">tried to get closer to him
all my life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a well-nigh suffocating
act of futility<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">glances at his watch, goes to the window, sits down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Egoist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks down at the street<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Egocentrism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Unpunctuality<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I never allowed myself to
be idle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 176.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Maggi point-blank<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We need people Maggi<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we perish if we’re alone
for very long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we think we can get by on
our own<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not true<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we break down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">unbuttons his jacket, stands up, sits back down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Unpunctuality is
unacceptable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks down at the street<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Metz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had a great day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I said to that director<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">make my check out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for twenty-two thousand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and don’t ask any
questions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">don’t make a fuss<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he made out the check<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Courage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">then composure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">takes his notebook out of his pocket, opens it<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde’s fur boa<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for our niece<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">re-pockets the notebook<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Read Baudelaire by
seventeen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Racine by nineteen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">
did not him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for my own pleasure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I saw a girl near the east
train station<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I put the mink on her
shoulders<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">glances at his watch<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the end we hardly need
anything anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Two jackets<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Two pairs of trousers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Two pairs of shoes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not even a toothbrush
anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surveys the room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We wonder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if there’s still any point
in buying anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If we had our druthers we’d
even stop getting out of bed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that is the truth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks at the floor<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but we also don’t kill
ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">curious<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up and picks the book up off the table, sits back down
at the window, opens the book; the doorbell rings; he jumps up</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Scene Four<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 107.25pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ten minutes
later<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Karl and Robert are
sitting at the large table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert is wearing a thick
winter coat</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Miss her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Shared everything with her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for at least thirty years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Cardiomyopathy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a remarkable expression<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A heart attack lasting just seconds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thought I wouldn’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">make it upstairs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with the sausage and the bottle of milk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s less about me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">than about Maggi<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Extemporizing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Robert point-blank<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Won’t you at least take off your coat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it irritates me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">helps Robert take off his
coat<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This lovely garment from our grandfather<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Garments have<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">their own history<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">hangs the coat on the
door, comes back, sits down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Scottish wool<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">from the Hebrides<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We love them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">till they fall off our backs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">reflectively<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was interested in geometry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">from the beginning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in mathematics in general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">whence my interest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in music<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The tailor who made this coat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for our grandfather<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">has supposedly gone insane<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">suddenly<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Have you brought me the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Times<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert pulls the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> out of his jacket pocket<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Karl takes the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">opens it<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not a day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">without the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Times<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I haven’t subscribed to it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but since you started subscribing to it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s not rising anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The price of gold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes the price of gold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">leafing through the paper<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Won’t you at least<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">have a cup of tea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or a glass of mineral water<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for your kidneys<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">puts the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> down on the table<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What does the doctor say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Did you see him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nothing to cause any worry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not even about your liver<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My liver is spotless<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So you’re really watching yourself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Especially as regards booze etcetera<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not a sip of it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">since Mathilde died<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not a trace of a need for it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I sit there all day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and stare at the floor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">points at the place<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is where it hurts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Probably your gall bladder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the same old story<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up and fetches a
bottle of mineral water and two glasses, fills the glasses<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had another go<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with Lear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I keep forgetting the lines<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I can’t retain anything anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The words quite simply<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">leak out of my mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pacing up and down in the park<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Visited Mathilde’s grave<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">everything had wilted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">probably it’d be a good idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to get another gardener<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but it’s hard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to get any plants that bloom<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">this time of year<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bought my tablets in silence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">carried the barest necessities home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not a word exchanged with anyone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Letters from America<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">torn up and thrown away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">People write because they’re bored<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">never for any other reason<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The doctor thinks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Arosa would do some good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I’m not going to Switzerland<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He recommends an altitude of two thousand meters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My lungs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my kidneys<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my spleen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and now my gall bladder as well<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">takes a sip of mineral
water<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lay on the bed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">listening to Brahms<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">fully dressed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">thinking about the music<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with my eyes closed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Karl takes a sip of
mineral water, picks up the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, leafs
through it</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Call it quits at fifty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">couldn’t make a commitment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turned fifty and then some<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turned sixty and then some<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turned seventy and then some<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">every decade a mistake<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mankind never changes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Have you never had the faintest interest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in riding<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I mean in horseracing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’d have quite enjoyed that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">do you know what an oxer is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Irish officers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">are the best<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Equestrians have got to be in good shape<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if they break their necks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns a page of the paper</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">predominantly rich people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">elegant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a select class of spectators<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 323.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Equestrians don’t
absolutely need to be intelligent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Horses are stupid<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pigs are the most intelligent animals<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s why pigs are so difficult to train<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A woman’s won an Olympic medal for dressage, for
horse-training <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">well now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A grand pig routine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that would have been something<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a pig on the tightrope<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on the high wire<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">doing a headstand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde was right<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">one</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> doctor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not several<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">one person to ruin another<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not several<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tomato soup is good for me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a green salad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">chopped meat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">minced meat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve always been interested in fashion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Men’s fashion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">obviously I always took pleasure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in being well dressed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">people often took me to task<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for my quest for elegance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that expensive robe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I have never given a damn<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">about people’s opinion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns a page<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mexico<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An aversion to a transatlantic crossing perhaps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A fear of ocean voyages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to be able to live on deck and not on land<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at my leisure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">leafs
through the newspaper<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She maintained<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Maggi was blind in one eye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in all seriousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she said she’d noticed this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A three-year-old child from Modena<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ate so much orange marmalade<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that he dropped dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sets the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> aside</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Blind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in one eye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Maggi<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A crazy idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In a certain respect<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she was crazy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">all her life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde my darling child<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Maggi blind in one eye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the left one <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she had proof <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she tested it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tested it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she had tested it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But how<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She came up with something<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">came up with something<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">crazy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a test<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">picks up the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> and leafs through it</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Always loathed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bullfighting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Loved Spain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Catholic Church<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">has always dissembled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I left it way back in forty-three<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you didn’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was courageous enough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it wasn’t about the taxes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Money played<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no role at all in it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My worldview<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My world-penetrating worldview<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a nauseating figure the pope<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Robert point-blank<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Have you subscribed to the new treasury bond<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’d also advise you against buying stocks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns a page<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Do you still remember<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when we rescued that nun<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at Attersee<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and she wasn’t even grateful<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps I’ll go<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Zermatt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Would you like to come with me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not necessarily<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 10.1pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Billeting in a first-class hotel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in the best room in that hotel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the best food<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">first-rate food<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Taking walks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">doesn’t that appeal to you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not necessarily<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Or to Bodenmais<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Where we were with Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 209.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I loathe the Bavarian
forest <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 209.25pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">even the goats get bored
there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">puts down the newspaper,
surveys the room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What this place needs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is a basket chair<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">lightweight<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">comfortable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A wicker chair<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">like from the old days<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A wicker chair<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s comfortable to sit in <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t find these chairs comfortable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to sit in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">do you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But when I get<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a basket chair like that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">possibly we’ll need two here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">so that we can both sit in comfort<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Black Forest or the Bavarian Forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s no good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Switzerland’s no good either<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I can’t say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I find it comfortable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to sit in these chairs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our grandmother brought them into the family as
part of her dowry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">gazing appraisingly at the
chairs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Slovakian craftsmanship<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">so-called curved wood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a spectacular novelty at the time<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">resumes leafing through
the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On Monday an X-ray<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">More lab work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Wrote a letter to Copenhagen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of course I write letters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">from time to time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">out of habit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not that there’s any obvious point to it</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It just makes the evenings seem shorter</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I wanted to know</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">whether Edith had left the business</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">probably she isn’t even in Copenhagen at all
anymore</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Malmö</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s no good either</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">had Chinese food with Mathilde</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">two days before she died</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">got a horrible stomachache</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I detest Chinese food</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it clogs up my intestines</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she absolutely loved it</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Did you know</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she had a brother in Canada</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">born out of wedlock</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">near Ottawa</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes I knew</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She never</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">talked about it</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not to me at least</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I knew about</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">almost everything else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He killed himself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">threw himself off a high-rise building<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at the age of sixty-four<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">emigrated at thirty-seven<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sold lumber<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">married two children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">an unhappy marriage naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">takes a sip of water<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Went on an expedition to Alaska<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they wrote to each other occasionally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">did you know that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You never said anything about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Terrified <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of housecats<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ailurophobia<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">remarkable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Rome she told me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that she had always loved you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on the Spanish steps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when we were staying at the Hotel de la Ville<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">next door to your beloved Hassler<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The papal audience<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that she wanted to have<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stayed Catholic all her life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">despite your influence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She had a curious<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">relationship with Maggi<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and with Russian short stories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You taught her everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of substance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she was clever<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but you wanted to make her even more than that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s your style<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">forcing everyone to give their all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">whatever the cost<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perfectionism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in every part of life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A kind of inhumanity perhaps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">opening the Times<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I loathe purebred dogs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">People lose their partner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and get themselves a dog<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A substitute for a love
interest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And the dog dictates the
entire course of their day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they center their lives
entirely on the dog<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They want to go the
Riviera<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but the dog says no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they want to go to India<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but the dog says no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They want to go to London<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but the dog says no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they want to take a steam
bath<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the dog forbids it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They prepare better meals
for the dog<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">than they’ve ever prepared
for themselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s said that a professor
at Oxford<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">used to ask his dog for
permission<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to deliver each of his
lectures<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if the dog said yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he would deliver the
lecture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if the dog said no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he wouldn’t deliver it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I once knew a breeder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who had his pet bitch
impregnated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in Northern Ireland<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">fifty-five years ago<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when that was still quite
complicated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns a page<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps I should have
played Lear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as long ago as ten or
fifteen years ago<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">maybe even earlier<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and if I could play him
today<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I wouldn’t be allowed to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">because everybody I used
to know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who had any real influence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is dead now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">all those general managers
of theaters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">are dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At least I got to play
Tasso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">which you liked didn’t you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes very much<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the end<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the writer locked himself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in the cage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I liked that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We performed Tasso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">over a hundred times<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in front of a sold-out
house<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">until I broke my leg<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 153.75pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns a page<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Social hypocrisy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Palaver about peace<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">suddenly<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Take a look at that seagull<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">shows Robert the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A flying seagull<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">resumes browsing the</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Times <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">by himself<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve always loved flying seagulls<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the sea in general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">its expansiveness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The English style of photography<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but what a seagull<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns a page<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’ll make the weekend cottage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">an even cozier place for us to stay at<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">plant a couple of trees<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">prune the others<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lots of grass around everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">possibly winterize it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Possibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">possibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Possibly dig a well<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Possibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I imagine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it can be heated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’ll be a nice place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for us both<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">possibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sets the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> down on the table; both men take a sip of water<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our mother didn’t have to die<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The victim of the family<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">typical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a sacrificial victim<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of the family morass<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stretches out his legs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Does the phrase fashion accessories<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">mean anything to you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it should mean something to you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If there’s one thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve always loathed <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">about you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s your unpunctuality<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not that I’m reproaching you for it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I love you all the same<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but it’s interesting to observe <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The word discipline <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was our maternal grandfather’s pet word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">goes to the woman’s
wardrobe, pulls out a fur boa and drapes it around his shoulders<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">striking a pose<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Venice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">just round the corner from the Gritti<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is where I bought this boa<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">walks to and from the
window, passing the table on his way back<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns round to face Robert<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That craving for luxury<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It was my craving <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not hers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she was<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as frugal as could be<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Scene
Five<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A quarter of an hour later<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Karl is sitting at the
table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the music room Robert
is playing the Mozart sonata that Mathilde always used to play<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">With his legs stretched
out in front of him<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve always been interested in history<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Napoleonic period<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">certainly more in the nineteenth century<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">than in the twentieth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in the intelligent century so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as opposed to the brutal one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Global slavery<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the whole thing a political cock-up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s for sure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The world of intelligence the Devil’s world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as if he is only now
beginning to pay attention to Robert’s performance<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Too little pedal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">too punctilious<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and lackluster on the other hand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">musical feeblemindedness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A trial run<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">shouting into the music
room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Enough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">enough of this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I can’t stand to hear any more of this music<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I listened to it for thirty years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">enough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s perverse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert stops playing<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When we have such magnificent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">musicians<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Plenty of recordings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">by magnificent musicians<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I should have stopped up my ears<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">thirty years ago<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I didn’t stop them up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">out of consideration for Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">out of consideration for humankind in general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Benevolence perhaps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Compassion possibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thirty years of repressing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">what I should have openly expressed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert audibly slams shut
the lid of the piano and emerges from the music room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Out of consideration for my ears<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for my sensitivity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m still in mourning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert sits down at the
table</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Studied composition at one point<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">then stopped for good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the truth is that I understand a thing or two
about music<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m not even a practicing musician<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I understand more about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">than most of them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I know what I’m hearing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To think of what these ears have had to listen to
over thirty years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now that’s all over<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When we run through it again in our minds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s frightening<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">what we’ve had to put up with all our lives<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It was just a trial run<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a little reminiscence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of course I can’t play it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I play it even worse than Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To the contrary<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you play it much better<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of course that’s exactly why<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it irritated me so much<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">thirty years of listening to that dilettantism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">thirty years of wrong notes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mastery of the piano requires daily practice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s been years since I last played it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You don’t need to play it either<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it really doesn’t sound good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s demoralizing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I tolerated my life-companion’s playing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde’s playing sure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but there’s no need for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> to play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at least not the Mozart sonata<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">please don’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The piano is pretty badly out of tune<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That’s a problem as well<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">still<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it won’t be auctioned off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nothing will be auctioned off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">everything will stay as it is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stand and sit where it is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">People don’t spend big money on used stuff anyway<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">let everything stand and sit in place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Turning a profit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s a thing of the past<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Suddenly everything would be empty here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Empty empty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At least it reminds us of Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of her presence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She loved Brahms too<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That was it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A thoroughly classical-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">romantic disposition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and so unmusical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No sense of pitch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">whereas of course I have absolute pitch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">And on top of that you’re musically educated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a philosopher of music so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if you say so<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Music was always the main thing for me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps acrobatics was even<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a terrible mistake<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I could have achieved<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a certain level of excellence as a musician<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I opted for the circus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m a circus performer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Whereas you are musically inclined<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Acting is musical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Circus performance is something different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Recently I read an article<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">about cold-bloodedness as a prerequisite for being
an actor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">very interesting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but these interconnections deserve more careful
thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve always been interested <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in actors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in the important ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A philosopher could grow old<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">just pondering the concept of the curtain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">exclaims<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Corrosive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">now I’ve found the word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve been looking for the whole time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">jumps up and goes to the
window, looks back into the room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Possibly I could have<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">existed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">without the circus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as a kind of artist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An anti-musical artist so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No matter what I would have achieved something<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I would have become great<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What fascinated me above all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was the idea of being famous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of causing a sensation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of being number one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">goes to the bed and sits
on it<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On the trampoline<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was only thirteen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I got the idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of being a plate-spinner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Robert point-blank<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You had an actor inside you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">from the very beginning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had no clear idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">something interpretive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The stage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">generating yourself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">realizing yourself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bred to be a lawyer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">born to be an actor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Bad Cannstatt at the age of twenty-one you
played<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">an eighty-year-old<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Right<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An English actor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of the nineteenth century<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A Victorian verse play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">catastrophically translated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The unfortunate man threw himself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">into the Thames<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">because his life companion had cheated on him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In old age I haven’t played<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">old men so well<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I played old men successfully<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">until the age of thirty-five<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">For years I only played nephews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">reflectively<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s never been a passion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Zurich I played Faust<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Alongside a feeble Mephisto<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">beyond the pale<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Eight months of work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and a single scathing review<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s never been a passion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">As far as I’m concerned<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">always<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve got to say this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It was always at the same level<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but never the same thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">completely different each time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was never so hell-bent on absolute supremacy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on supremacy sure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not on absolute supremacy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Sure there was kudos<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but it always made me suspicious<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The circus ring isn’t the stage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Vaudeville isn’t the Burgtheater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Nothing’s ever fall into my lap<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Into any of our laps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The theater was a possibility<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I didn’t have any other<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’re more or less<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">credulous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Even when we do see a way out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s always just a dead end<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The less art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the greater the possibility<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of regularly being around other people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of giving up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of going to pieces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">out of nothing but fear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A completely<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">unmusical family<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Erudite<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but unmusical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">thoroughly unartistic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">an obsessive idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A lawyer to start with he said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">then the stage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I spared myself that detour<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">broke with Father<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In a certain sense with Mother as well<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but she had faith in me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It would be nice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if that were true<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our parents wanted to hold us down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and smother us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I would have killed myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s so easy to say now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but every day I was on the verge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of killing myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tried to distract myself by reading<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Pulp novels and the like<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was too much of a coward to do it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Weak sniveling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To be sure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Private instruction<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in other words<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not a penny from home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not a bit of support<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surveys the room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s not actually cold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and yet I’m freezing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Two large basket chairs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">perhaps also a new table<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on the other hand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I wouldn’t change a thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Scene
Six<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A quarter of an hour later<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert sitting at the
table, reading a book<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Standing at the cage,
staring at Maggi, suddenly exclaims<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve never had<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">domestic warmth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Robert<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps you’ve had it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ostracized<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that was it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">driven to the margins<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I struggled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">against atrophy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">against shutting down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Being on my guard<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that was it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it made me strong<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Self-sufficiency<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of course she only loved me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on account of my afflictions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">exclaiming<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Afflictions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Imaginary ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hypochondriacal ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’ve always had<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a two-columned relationship<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">brotherly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but two-columned<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I preferred<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to cower<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">cowered for twenty years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">thirty years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">broke free only slowly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was punished later<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Neither of us had<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">domestic warmth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An average family<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with thoroughly disastrous effects<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on the progeny<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bends over and straightens
the shoes on the floor<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In a certain respect<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">everybody deserves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">what’s happened to him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Quite shamefully<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">left on our own by our tutors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">introduced to toys<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our sister<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">up and took off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at a propitious moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was dislodged for the first time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">by the weaker sex<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she gave me self-confidence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to Robert point-blank<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You’ve always been afraid to leave<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">until today<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Illnesses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A never-ending stream of maladies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">All figments of your imagination<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">First my lungs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">then my kidneys<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes yes your kidneys<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">first you lungs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">then your kidneys<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up with a pair of
shoes in his hands<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I bought them in Bad Homburg<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">handmade<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">thirty-five years old<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and good as new<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert looks at the shoes<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">those were the days<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">puts the shoes back down
on the floor<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When I think back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on where we’ve come from<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">middle-class origins<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a rough upbringing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">unsympathetic parents<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who had been planning on making us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">into their literal successors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sits down exhausted at the
table</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in a certain sense<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in my case as well<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it was art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">all-consuming artistry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that came to the rescue<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">perhaps the artistry of a circus performer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">should even be rated higher<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">than that of an actor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> always thought it should
be<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everybody wanted me to do it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the way it had always been done<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I did it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the way <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i>
wanted to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the way <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i>
thought was proper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that was undoubtedly the secret of my success<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of my unsurpassed success undoubtedly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up and picks up a
photograph in which he is performing his plate routine in Paris; contemplates
the photograph<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Paris<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that was an unusual night<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a once-in-a-lifetime venue <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I won them all over completely<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in the long run<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">contemplating the
photograph<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the Lido<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the Lido yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That was what made you famous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I got famous in Paris<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">undoubtedly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at the Lido<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">puts the photograph on the
table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Our parents were appalled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">by me as well as<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">by you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but more by me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">their favorite child<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">whom they’d bred for a career in the civil service<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Bred to be a successor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Things took a different turn<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the Tuileries<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I used to brood along those lines<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">back then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Just after the war<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">wild entertainments<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">without looking up from
the page he is reading <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I played Tasso<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">guilelessly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that made me successful<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that spurred me on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They were all hungry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">culture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Performances of all kinds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Possibly the war<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was our salvation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Maybe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Enormous enthusiasm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rapturous reviews<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But I really miss Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A touching creature<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in a certain sense<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I spend the evenings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sitting here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">thinking about her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">without moving a muscle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then towards one I go to bed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and I can’t fall asleep<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I keep thinking about Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I wasn’t expecting that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">suddenly to Robert<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It would do you good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to take a walk in the zoo every day<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and then walk back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or in the cathedral<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and then walk back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You pretend every little sniffle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is a terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to him point-blank<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lose more weight<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">take walks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">consume next to nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for a while<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve hardly been eating anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">since Mathilde died<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You’ll outlive me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I can picture you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">standing at my grave<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A literally stunted figure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">helpless<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">left on your own<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You can’t enjoy anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s what it is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up, goes to Maggi,
stares at Maggi<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Blind you say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">blind in one eye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Windows User" 20180810T1553;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">slams the book shut<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In one eye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How can you tell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She could tell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She could tell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She could tell from what<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">From the way his left eye looked<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">presses his face against
the cage<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">From the way his left eye looked<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">blind in his left eye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t see anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">taps on the cage, carries
it to the table, puts the cage down on the table, sits down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He’s getting skittish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s quite natural<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Blind in his left eye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">turns towards Robert,
looks at the window, stands up, takes the cage back to the sink and covers the cage<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">What time is it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">picks up the </span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Times<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, starts reading it<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Half-past seven<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At this time of year she<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">always<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">used to cook us that fine St. Peter’s fish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Act
Two<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thursday<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At Robert’s apartment<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Scene One<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Comfortable furniture<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A photo of Robert as Tasso
on the wall<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A record player<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in a warm dressing gown,
sitting in the room’s only armchair, staring at the floor<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Acted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">until old age<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Didn’t let go of anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Irreparable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A beauty-fanatic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Touched the dead pigeon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in St. Mark’s Square<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with my left shoe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Naturally that was the exception<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Reached my peak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at sixty-five<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Negotiations about the inheritance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The word megalomaniacal was said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">immediately afterwards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The people quickly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">went home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Discontentment with myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An excess of solitude<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was going<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to play Lear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to make it big<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">First my lungs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">then my kidneys<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Blather medical jargon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A trampoline moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How I loathe these Thursdays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not a single pain-free moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not even in the park<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Chichester has been rechanneled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The sailing ship<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was all that interested him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The weekend cottage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A music fanatic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we’re too reproachful<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">especially towards ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Self-reproachers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up and takes some
tablets out of a chest of drawers and swallows them, looks out the window<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A specialist’s clinic in Basel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It was on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the eighteenth of November<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ll never forget it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he wanted a packet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of English stockings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sits back down in the
armchair<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Didn’t subscribe to the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Times<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bad lighting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Stinginess<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A disastrous relationship<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with Father<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mother was often treated like dirt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">perfidious sibling incest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as a child he’d put out the light<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and secretly suck away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was incapable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of making her privy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to his fortune<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he went so far<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as to prescribe to her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">what kinds of clothes to wear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Haggled down the price of the boa<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to the tune of eight thousand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde warned me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">about Basel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An actor driven snivellingly mad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the theater a pit of ignominy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I didn’t deserve<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to have to carry his coat for him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that time at the train station<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A weak constitution<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he laughed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I took three steps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and got winded<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the hypochondriac<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the evangelist of illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Platonic he said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">mostly absent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not absentminded<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">absent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">which is much worse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No interest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in what I think<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the train station the first<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to enter the compartment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and sit down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">never asks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">where I want to sit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">pronouncing the phrase very
slowly<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sick and tired of life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">perhaps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Philosophy in small doses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Intellectual extravagance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The first half of life melodramatic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the second<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Confusion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hotel fetishism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Shoe fetishism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mind fetishism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Incommensurable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">His favorite word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of course there’s no need for the
theater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when we’ve got hundreds of first-rate
novels<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that we can read<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">without having to feel embarrassed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Loathes dance to a remarkable degree<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Survives everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You have become obsessed with Lear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and in the process made yourself
unhappy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you and the people around you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you exude this Lear-induced
depressiveness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Didn’t say a word at the funeral<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">didn’t utter the name Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a single time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hanging around with you makes everything darker<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You’ve given up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It is getting darker<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the end<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the past<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">doesn’t matter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Between you and me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the Iron Curtain has descended<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He walked briskly into the restaurant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at the very threshold of the cemetery wall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he suppressed his appetite<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He talked about Chaliapin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">All of a sudden in town<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">came this remark<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde gave me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">cold compresses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I can’t make those cold compresses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on my own<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Helpless Robert Helpless<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He went home immediately<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Loathes people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who need to use a cane<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">everybody and everything that’s crippled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">talks incessantly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ceases talking abruptly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A great craving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to tread the boards again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Plays are performed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">so sloppily nowadays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Shamelessness theatrical illiteracy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">strut at will onstage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Suddenly in the park<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of course we also<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">could have run into the dog<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up and switches on a
lamp, sits back down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A flight into the arms of religion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">despicable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">He’d always told Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that he had nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that we had nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that she had to be thrifty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we couldn’t splurge on anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not a single penny in savings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in debt up to our necks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">She died thinking this was true<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A choreography of existence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">his patented invention<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the doorbell rings; he stands
up and goes to the door<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Enter Karl</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who immediately helps him
out of his coat<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was getting worried<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">about you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s wet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and cold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Every time I come to see you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s cold and wet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ll sit right down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sits down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">has hanged up Karl’s coat,
asks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No thank you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Tuileries you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a colossal experience<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Metternich was misunderstood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">absolutely misunderstood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stretches out his legs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">On my way over here I thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lohengrin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but that’s not for us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">possibly it could have distracted us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Too much mourning makes <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a person unhappy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">causes depression in the long run<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve thought this through<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It needn’t be opera<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No not opera<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not Wagner no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not Wagner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Surveys the room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">More congenial than I thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">At least the atmosphere here isn’t mentally
poisonous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was a bit worried it would be<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a little bit worried<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t know if it’s a good idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to do this every Thursday and Tuesday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">perhaps Friday and Monday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">or Sunday and Wednesday would be better<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">let’s stick to this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Habit’s got to be king<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s only now that I’m gradually getting a clear
sense<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of what Metternich was like<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">he was misunderstood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">given the cold shoulder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’m hot on his trail<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">soon the mystery will be solved<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert sits down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Those hideous faces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on my way over here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">always the same thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">mindlessness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">helplessness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Cluelessness about life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Probably we’re setting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">our standards too high<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we’re put off by these things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we’re disgusted by them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">looks at his suit<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had this suit made<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when she was still only ill<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it had to be black of course<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">as it was going to be worn <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in mourning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">since by then everybody could already see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that she was bound to die<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">more or less bound to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I felt a need to wear a new black suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to the funeral<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was planning to spend a fair amount on it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">strikes a pose<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But the suit wasn’t ready<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">until eight days after Mathilde’s funeral<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I wanted a loose-fitting suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a more or less all-purpose suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">do you think I look good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in this suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">first class workmanship<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and not just made for mourning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was thinking of wearing it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on festive occasions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">possibly at a gala<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">don’t you think<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s appropriate for a gala<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for example the opening of the opera season<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">naturally I never go<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to the opening of the opera season<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for the New Year’s ball<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">naturally I never go<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to the New Year’s ball<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for something extraordinary<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for a gala<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">contemplates the suit from
all angles<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert has stood up and is
also contemplating the suit<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I said <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it would have to be a suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for a variety of purposes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for mourning naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but also for festivities<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde would have been thrilled by it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Do you think so<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I think so<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes I think<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she’d have been thrilled by it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I always refused to have<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a new jacket made<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I resisted the impulse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">resisted Mathile’s incessant nagging<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">now I’ve got that kind of evening suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">strikes a pose<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ve never before owned<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">such an elegant garment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">excellent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">isn’t it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Excellent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">undoubtedly excellent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Undoubtedly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bends down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I wonder if they’re a bit too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the trousers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ll have them hemmed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">have them hemmed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trousers aren’t too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trousers aren’t too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trousers are too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">an excessively long pair of trousers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trousers aren’t too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was thinking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of having them hemmed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the trousers aren’t too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Karl stands back up, draws
himself up to his full height</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT [Thus in the original. Has Bernhard neglected to delete the speech prefix or iterated this line one too many times and in the wrong place? (DR)]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trousers aren’t too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bending down again<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Not too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT [Thus in the original, although Karl still seems to be speaking (DR)]<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trousers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">aren’t by any means to long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Karl stands back up, draws
himself up to his full height<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was thinking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of having them hemmed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">having them hemmed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">having them hemmed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bends over again<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">just a tad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trousers aren’t too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">draws himself up to his
full height<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They aren’t too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you say they aren’t too long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">falls exhausted into the
armchair<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert sits down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Never thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of getting married<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in this kind of suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">never<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stretches out his legs,
with his eyes closed<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">never<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Quite comfortable quite comfortable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My place isn’t this comfortable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lived together with Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for at least thirty years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You never thought of getting married<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not once<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of getting hitched<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not once<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of getting hitched<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Possibly you could have spared yourself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">all these illnesses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if you’d gotten married<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Naturally we love our brother<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When I say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">half-brother<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You take offense<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The most expensive imported cloth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the lightest fabric<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">touches the suit<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I once had a blazer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">made of the same fabric<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">English<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We automatically become elegant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in clothes like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A formal dinner suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the kind of suit you’ve always loathed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with his eyes closed<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Have I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you’ve always loathed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">these sorts of suits<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">These sorts of suits<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You’ve always refused<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to put on this kind of suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Have I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You have<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">possibly I used to loathe them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">loathe them loathe them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on account of Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not on account of people in general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">only on account of Mathilde <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">suddenly raising his eyes<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’d very much like<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to listen to some music<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t want to talk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up, goes to the
record player, puts on a record of the beginning of Moses and Aron and sits
down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you love Brahms most of all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">shuts his eyes and
stretches out his legs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Scene
Two<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">An hour later<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Both men are drinking
mineral water<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">making a guess<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Dostoyevsky<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Turgenev<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Tolstoy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">triumphantly<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lermontov<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of course not<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">raising his voice<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Lermontov<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">how preposterous<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Stendhal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Flaubert<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Voltaire<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Voltaire of course<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It’s really quite impossible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to imagine a Russian <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">writing that sentence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">quite impossible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you should have <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sensed</i> that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nothing Russian<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nothing from a novel naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was completely convinced<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that it was a quote from a Russian author<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">French of course<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Voltaire of course<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stretches out his legs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">reflectively<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We used to try this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with Nine Men’s Morris with checkers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Something philosophical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">nothing from a novel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Gynophobia<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">again that word’s popping into my head<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">this concept<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you always suffered from it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">never got involved in anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you’ve always hoped for it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but the ideal isn’t coming<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">there’s no such thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then one fine day it’s too late<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We make excessive demands<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when we quite simply <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">should have been content with what we had<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Having children really early<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">lots of children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">without thinking about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s the key<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But that’s not happiness either<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Evasive flights into megalomania<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s been the upshot of this catastrophic
procrastination<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Anyone who’s fussy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who thinks too much<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who broods<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ends up a failure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">sits down in another
armchair<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">By the way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I paid for the obituary<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You did<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I discreetly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">had three lines put in the paper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I don’t know if you noticed it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">this horrendous kinship<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">They disparaged us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for just saying goodbye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In deference to Mathilde’s wishes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I had said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she frequented the BLUE GOOSE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In that cold dank weather<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I could get away with wearing my coat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my old suit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That was a stroke of good luck<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Move somewhere else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’d be silly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to give up this nice apartment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">where I’m only a couple of steps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">from the park<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and the greengrocer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and the milkmaids<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that’s important<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">you underrate that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when you’re young<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Illness sharpens your senses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In the morning a couple of pages in Lear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">while pacing up and down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">at the window<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Walking makes you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">memorize it better<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">My chats in English with the tobacconist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">do me good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">blind in both eyes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that strengthens your wits<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stands up and picks a
photograph up from the table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">shows it to Karl<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">With MINETTI<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the great stage actor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Minetti<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">In Berlin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">seventy-two<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Chichikov Boarding-House<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">do you remember<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">on the Kurfürestendamm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when I woke up at the crack of dawn<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and there were people standing there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in my room<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and buying up all the furniture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">three marks the landlady said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and pointed at the chair<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">eighteen marks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she pointed at my bed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when they’d priced everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they vanished again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I thought I’d dreamt it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I hadn’t dreamt it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I was playing a racing cyclist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Curious<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I already had pains<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in my legs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the first symptoms<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Windows User" 20180814T1247; text-indent: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the first symptoms of what<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Windows User" 20180814T1247; text-indent: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Of my kidney problems<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Windows User" 20180814T1247; text-indent: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Right<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">stops showing Karl the
photograph<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Suddenly the idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of giving my notice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">goes back to the chest of
drawers with the photograph<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Latin America <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">was my watchword<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">puts the photograph down
on the chest of drawers<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But the military regimes there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">disgusted me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">comes back, sits back down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Going to other countries <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to other hemispheres<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that just makes you weak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it just ruins you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Do you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that I once had the idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of buying a small island<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a Robinsonade so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not of giving up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">just a Robinsonade<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Reading<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a couple of hundred steps from one end<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to the other and back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">eating sleeping<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surrounded by the ocean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A crazy idea of course<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after that I fell into that state of extreme
anxiety<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when I was in Rome<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">when I was thinking of breaking up with Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I didn’t want to do it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it was already impossible by then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the child was stuck to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a strong emotional affinity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a union of souls<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">brought about quite uncalculatedly I think<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">First the performative phase<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">then the philosophical phase<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">one makes oneself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">makes oneself so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">into a philosopher<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">into a philosophizer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not a philosopher<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A philosophizer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we lived almost as though we were performing
philosophical etudes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Etudes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>We ended on a philosophical note so
to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There was also a pathological
process<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Naturally a pathological process<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">suddenly <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">A large room<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">so that I can walk for a long time in one
direction<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and then in the other<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">without going outdoors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and in a thoroughly cultivated manner mind you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with a single thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">taking up this thought just one time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and chewing and mulling it over<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">until there’s nothing left of it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">working on all thoughts in that way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">working</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> on them all mind you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert fills both their
glasses<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Proceeding in a tactical manner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">utterly nonchalant towards my own mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but equally so towards everything outside of it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not giving a single hoot about the rest of the
world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">bearing the universe so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">alone on my head and shattering it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">pulverizing it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">drinks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To be sure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s only a thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">fleeting like all the others<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Put Mathilde’s letters in order<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Glossing over things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I always loathed that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Expressing oneself against the grain of one’s
convictions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">spoken written hypocrisy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">So is none of Mathilde’s stuff<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is going to be auctioned off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">probably not any of it ever<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in the end they’re not just her things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">they’re also mine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> bought everything after
all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">purchased it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Had the piano tuned for the first time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a year ago<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This humidity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is bad for it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a piano is sensitive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">like the human body<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in; tab-stops: 151.5pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert coughs</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">This high humidity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">is bad for it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If I go through with the auction<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and the whole house ends up empty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I’ll at least have the smell<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">of those happy times<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">still<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Cremation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">she wouldn’t have it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert coughs <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Financially we’ll be secure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">if you’ll only just listen to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">and not get involved in anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that I don’t know about<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">surveys the room<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When a place gets this old<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it gets those cracks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I like them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We’re constantly thinking about renovations<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but we never have them done<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">our aestheticism forbids it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">How comfortable it is here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">much more comfortable than at my place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">but I’ve always wanted it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to be that way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">more or less uncomfortable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">my unusual temperament<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">has got a lot to do with it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the fact that I’ve been obsessed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">with the great minds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">more or less obsessed with them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in a preposterous way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trip to Italy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">didn’t
</i>take with Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I could now take with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">a mourning trip so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">in remembrance of her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Florence Pisa<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">perhaps even Rome<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">the Spanish steps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But then the Hassler by all means<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">If we can find a good place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">for Maggi<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it will be difficult<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Put all the photographs in order<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Colleagues<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Didn’t leave the house for two days<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thought about our sister<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">who had had to die<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">so early<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Some book purchases<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">no desire to read<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Then what<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">apart from that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thought about the time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">we went to Switzerland<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde warned me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No mail<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">We completely forgot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">how to write letters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">When the days start getting longer again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Incessant back pains<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">had an excessively long dream<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that I was walking through town in perfect health<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">not the slightest trace of discomfort<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I happened upon a lot of things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that I hadn’t seen in years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">I admire your style<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Always hanging around other people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">You always refused to fall ill<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No confidence in doctors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No confidence in yourself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">rises and goes to the
chest of drawers to take his tablets and comes back<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Voluntary self-restriction<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Never yet fallen flat on your face<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Or at the Riviera<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Robert sits back down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">No power of resistance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Everything too loud<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Always thinking about you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">confidingly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">celebrated belatedly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">now we miss her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It irritates me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">that she left the weekend cottage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Windows User" 20180815T1156; text-indent: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">slowly and emphatically<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mathilde left it to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Windows User" 20180815T1157; text-indent: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">To me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It went from Mathilde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">to you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Windows User" 20180815T1157; text-indent: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">That irritates you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it irritates me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">ROBERT<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Windows User" 20180815T1158; text-indent: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It irritates you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">KARL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">It irritates me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .2in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">it’s irritating<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">THE END<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Translation
unauthorized but Copyright ©2018 by Douglas Robertson<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Source:
Thomas Bernhard, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stücke 3 </i>(Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1988), pp. 388-463. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Der
Schein trügt</i> premiered on January 21, 1984 at the Schauspielhaus Bochum with
Bernhard Minetti as Karl and Traugott Buhre as Robert in a production by Claus
Peymann.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
authorized translation, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Appearances Are
Deceiving</i>, is by Gitta Honegger and was published in 1983 in Volume 15,
Issue 1 of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Theater</i>.</span></div>
Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-69477744777428116282018-08-03T18:43:00.000-04:002018-08-03T18:52:37.110-04:00A Translation of Die Serapions-Brüder by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Part VI.<h4 align="center" style="background: #FEFDFA; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 12.0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Serapionian Brethren</span><span style="color: #d52a33; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 16.5pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></h4>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Part VI</span></span></b><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">NUTCRACKER AND THE KING OF THE MICE<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Christmas Eve<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">All day long on the
twenty-fourth of December the children of Dr. Stahlbaum the public health
officer were expressly forbidden to enter the drawing room, let alone the
adjoining stateroom. Marie and Fritz sat cowering in a corner of the parlor at
the back of the house; the gloom of late dusk had already set in, and they were
beginning to find their surroundings downright gloomy because, in keeping with
another of the day’s traditions, the servants where refraining from bringing
candles into the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a whisper
betokening the strictest secrecy, Fritz informed his younger sister (she had
only just turned seven) that from early morning onwards clicking and clanging
and faint hammering sounds had been heard in the two locked rooms. Moreover, he
added, only a short while earlier he had seen a dark little man with a large
box under his arm slinking through the vestibule, and he was quite sure that
this man had been none other than Godfather Drosselmeier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon Marie clapped her little hands
together for sheer joy and cried, “Ah, Godfather Drosselmeier will have made
something lovely for us!” Drosselmeier the high court councilor was hardly a
man of prepossessing appearance, being rather dwarfish and gaunt and bearing a
thoroughly wrinkled face, a large black patch in place of a right eye, and
absolutely no hair of his own, on account of which he wore an exquisitely
beautiful white periwig made not of hair but of spun glass—in other words, a
piece of completely artificial construction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All in all, the children's godfather was both an artifice himself and a
master of artifices who understood the inner workings of clocks and watches and
could even build entire timepieces from scratch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly whenever one of the beautiful
clocks in Stahlbaum’s house was ill and unable to sing, Godfather Drosselmeier
would come, remove his glass periwig, doff his little yellow frock coat, don a
blue apron, and prod the insides of the timepiece with various pointed tools,
thereby genuinely paining Marie but causing no harm whatsoever to the clock,
which to the contrary would invariably come back to life and immediately begin
whirring, chiming, and singing to the joy of everybody present. Whenever he
came he would bring along in his satchel something nice for the children; one
time it would be a little fellow who drolly rolled his eyes and presented his
compliments to the ladies, the next it would be a box out of which leapt a
little bird, the next something else entirely. But for Christmas Eve he had
always prepared artifices of especially wondrous beauty whose construction cost
him a good deal of time and labor; and in acknowledgement of this cost, as soon
as the gifts had been presented to the children, the parents took them away and
kept them under solicitous lock and key. “Ah, Godfather Drosselmeier will have
made something lovely for us!” Marie now cried; but Fritz was of the opinion
that this something could only be a fortress wherein all sorts of handsome
soldiers would march up and down and perform their drills, and then some other
soldiers who wanted to break into the fortress would have to show up, but then
the soldiers inside the fortress would bravely open fire with cannons on the
outside ones, thereby raising a thunderous devil of a racket. “No, no,” Marie
interrupted Fritz: “Godfather Drosselmeier has told me of a lovely garden; in
the garden is a large lake on which majestic swans with golden necklaces swim
about and sing the prettiest songs. Then a little girl comes from the garden to
the lakeshore and lures the swans to her, and she feeds them sweet marzipan.”
“Swans don’t eat marzipan,” Fritz somewhat gruffly rejoined, “and Godfather
Drosselmeier can’t make an entire garden either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And actually, we don’t even have very many of
the toys he’s made; they’ve always been taken away from us straight-away;
that’s why I much prefer the toys Papa and Mama give us—because we can keep
them as long as we want and do what we like with them. Now the children began
bandying back and forth guesses as to what this year’s parental gifts would be.
Marie was of the opinion that Missy Trutchen (her one large doll) was very much
changing for the worse, for more and more often she could not be set upright
for an instant without gracelessly pitching over on to the floor, which never
failed to leave the ghastliest dirt-streaks on her face; to say nothing of the
prospective impossibility of ever restoring her clothes to their original
pristine cleanness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All her vigorous
chastisement of the doll had come to naught. Moreover, she said, Mama had
smiled at the ecstasies she had been sent into by Gretchen’s little
parasol.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fritz for his part averred that
nothing would spruce up his royal stable like a wily fox, and that his army had
not a single cavalryman in its ranks, as Papa was well aware. So the children
knew full well that their parents had bought them all sorts of lovely presents
that they were now in the midst of arranging; they were equally certain that
these presents were imbued with the divine light shed with childlike piety and
benevolence by the eyes of their dear savior Jesus Christ, and that, as if
touched by the benedictory hand of God, each and every Christmas gift imparted
a delight for which there was no substitute in point of sheer splendor. Of this
their older sister Luise reminded the children even as they continued their
whispered conference about the prospective gifts, and she added that their
parents were but proxies for their dear savior Jesus Christ, who knew much
better than the children themselves what was capable of imparting real pleasure
and delight; and that on this account they must by no means hope and wish for
everything under the sun, but instead silently and piously resign themselves to
whatever they were actually to receive. Little Marie now grew quite pensive,
but Fritz murmured to himself, “I’d really like to have a fox and some
hussars.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">By now it was
completely dark. Fritz and Marie huddled close together and no longer dared to
speak a word; they were wafted by a gentle breeze that seemed to have been
stirred up by wings of pure down, and they fancied that they could hear quite
faint but distinctly majestic music playing in the distance. A luminous glow
played on the wall opposite the children, informing them that now the Christ
child had flown away on refulgent clouds to the houses of other happy
children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At that moment the silvery
“ting-a-ling, ting-a-ling” of a bell sounded, and the doors sprang open,
letting in such a flood of bright light from the great drawing room that the
children cried out, “Ah! Ah!,” and stood transfixed at the threshold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then Papa and Mama stepped through the
doorway, took the children by the hand, and said, “Come along now, come along
now, dear children, and see what the holy Christ child has given you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The Presents<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I call upon you
personally, my dear gentle reader or listener—Fritz or Theodor or Ernst or
whatever your name may be—to revivify in your mind’s eye the image of the last
Christmas table you saw, to picture all those lovely, parti-colored,
jewel-encrusted presents, so that you will be able to imagine how the children
with their shining eyes stood transfixed and completely speechless in the middle
of the drawing room; how by and by Marie, fetching a deep sigh exclaimed, “Ah,
how beautiful! How beautiful!” and Fritz attempted to cut a few brisk capers
around the room with remarkable success. The children must have been especially
well-behaved and attentive to their religious duties throughout the preceding
year, for never before had they received a Christmas offering of such beauty
and splendor as this one. The great Christmas tree in the middle was festooned
with dozens of golden and silver apples; and sugared almonds, parti-colored
bonbons, and virtually all other types of confectionery sprouted from its every
branch like so many buds and flowers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But the most beautiful attribute of this marvelous tree was surely the
hundreds of tiny candles that twinkled like little stars amidst its dark
greenery, whereby in both radiating and containing light it seemed practically
to be inviting the children to help themselves to its treasury of fruits and
flowers. All the objects heaped up around the tree shone with superlative
splendor and brilliance of color; every type of beautiful object imaginable was
represented there; it was indeed quite literally indescribable! Marie could
espy dolls of exquisitely delicate features, all manner of sprucely constructed
items of dolls’ furniture, and what was most beautiful of all to behold, a
little silk dress trimmed with delicate, parti-colored ribbons, which hung on a
frame positioned in such a way that little Marie could contemplate it from all
sides, as she proceeded to do while exclaiming over and over again, “Ah what a
beautiful, ah what a lovely, lovely little dress: and to think that I shall
actually—and most certainly—be allowed to put it on!” Fritz had meanwhile
galloped and trotted around the table another three or four times in search of
his new fox, which he did indeed find tethered to the table. Dismounting from
his invisible horse, he said that the fox was a wild beast and basically a
do-nothing, that he would come back for him later; and turned to the inspection
of his new squadron of hussars, which were clad in red and gold, equipped with
weapons of pure silver, and mounted on horses of such a lustrously white sheen
that one would have thought that they, too, were made of pure silver. Now that
the children had calmed down somewhat, they asked for their picture-books,
which were duly brought over and placed open before them; on the pages of these
books they could behold lovely flowers of all species, men and women of various
colors, and even adorable, frolicking children, all of them painted so
naturally that they seemed to be living and speaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no sooner did the children ask for these
marvelous books than the bell sounded again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They now knew that Godfather Drosselmeier was about to present his gifts
to them, and they ran to the table standing against the wall. Briskly the
screen behind which he had been hiding for so long was whisked aside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what did the children then behold?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On a verdant lawn bejeweled with flowers of
various brilliant colors stood a most majestic castle with numerous
looking-glass windows and gates of gold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A glockenspiel began playing, gates and windows flew open, and in the
halls inside the castle one could see tiny but daintily elegant ladies and
gentlemen in plumed hats and long-trained gowns promenading about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the middle room, which seemed to be
virtually bathed in fire—so many miniature candles were burning in its
chandeliers—children clad in little doublets and gowns were dancing to the
accompaniment of the glockenspiel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
the while a gentleman in an emerald-green cloak repeatedly peeped through one
of the windows, waved at the spectators, and then vanished; he looked just like
Godfather Drosselmeier, and yet he was hardly bigger than Papa’s thumb; from
time to he would appear downstairs at his window by the gate of the castle, and
then he would once again withdraw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now
that he had propped his arms up on the table and taken a good look at the
beautiful castle with its dancing and promenading little figures, Fritz said,
“Godfather Drosselmeier! Please let me go into the castle!” The high court
councilor gave him to understand that at present this was utterly
impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he was not mistaken, for
it was sheer madness on the part of Fritz to propose entering a castle that
even with its lofty golden towers included was still shorter than Fritz
himself. Now Fritz himself realized this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By and by, as the ladies and gentlemen kept promenading to and fro, the
children kept dancing, and the emerald man kept peeping through the same
window—all exactly as they had been doing from the beginning—Godfather
Drosselmeier interposed himself between Fritz and the front gates of the
castle, prompting Fritz to cry out impatiently, “Godfather Drosselmeier, why
don’t you come out of the castle at that other gate over there?” “That is not
possible, my dear little Fritz,” replied the high court councilor. “Well then,”
Fritz resumed, “why don’t you let that green man who keeps sticking his head
out like a cuckoo walk about with the other people?” “That won’t be possible
either,” demurred the high court councilor once again. “Well then,” cried
Fritz, “the children will have to come downstairs so that I can get a better
look at them." “For crying out loud!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nothing you have asked for is possible,” the high court councilor
peevishly rejoined: “the mechanism must perform as it was designed to perform.”
“Oh, re-e-e-ally?” asked Fritz, in an excruciated tone, “is it <i>really</i>
impossible? Listen here Godfather Drosselmeier: if those dainty little doohickies
of yours can’t do anything but move about in the same way over and over again,
they aren’t worth a fig, and I shan’t take any further interest in them. No,
give me my hussars over them any day: they have to maneuver forwards,
backwards, whichever way I want them to, and they’re not locked up in some
house.” And with that he dashed over to the Christmas table and let his
squadron trot and traverse and assemble and fire to and fro on their sliver
steeds to his heart’s content. Marie, too, had moved away from the castle, but
softly and by degrees; for although she too had quickly grown tired of the
little dolls’ promenading and dancing, she was much nicer and better behaved
than her brother and did not wish to draw so much attention to herself.
“Artifices of such intricacy as mine,” Drosselmeier rather dyspeptically
remarked to the children’s parents, “are wasted on children as stupid as yours;
I shall pack up my castle forthwith”; but their mother temporized by allowing
the high court councilor to show her the inner workings of the castle and the
marvelously intricate clockwork mechanism whereby the various movements of the
little dolls were actuated. The councilor took the whole thing apart and then
put it back together. This demonstration restored Drosselmeier’s good cheer in
its entirety and prompted him to present a few more gifts to the children—a
small assortment of lovely brown-skinned men and women with gilded faces,
hands, and legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were made of
briarwood and exuded an aroma as sweet and agreeable as that of gingerbread, to
the enormous delight of both Fritz and Marie. In conformity with her mother’s
wishes, their sister Luise had donned the lovely dress that she had received as
a present, and was looking wonderfully pretty, but Marie—who had been told to
don her own dress—preferred to spend a bit more time looking on. This privilege
she was readily granted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The Fosterling<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">In point of fact,
Marie was none too keen to leave the Christmas table, for there was one object
on it that she had yet to look at as closely or attentively as she wished. Amid
the thickly clustering parade of Fritz’s hussars, she could make out a quite
splendid little man who was standing there silently and unassumingly at the
base of the tree as if calmly awaiting the moment when the processing ranks
would draw level with him. Admittedly, an exacting connoisseur of the human
form would have found much to object to in his physique, inasmuch as, on top of
the fact that his tall and hefty torso was entirely out of proportion with his
short, spindly legs, his head was far too large. His costume, however, did much
to make up for these shortcomings in suggesting that he was a man of both good
taste and good breeding. Specifically, he was clad in a truly gorgeous hussar’s
tunic of iridescent violet festooned with a multitude of white braids and
little buttons, along with matching trousers and as lovely a pair of little
boots as had ever graced the feet of any university student—nay, of any army
officer. They fitted his dainty little legs more tightly than a pair of gloves,
as though they had been painted on. To be sure, the splendor of his costume
proper was rather drolly offset by the shabby, literally wooden-looking cape
that hung from his shoulders and the tiny miner’s cap that surmounted his head;
and this contrast set Marie musing that Godfather Drosselmeier was no less
lovable a godfather for all his similar predilection for tatty capes and
unsightly caps. And yet, Marie reflected, even if Godfather Drosselmeier were
to dress as dapperly as the little man, he would certainly not be as handsome
as him by a long chalk. The longer Marie gazed at this attractive man whom she
had taken a shine to at first sight, the more keenly and intimately she became
aware of the profound good nature bespoken by his face. His pale green,
slightly bulging eyes evinced nothing but a combination of friendliness and
benevolence. Luckily for him, the neatly trimmed beard that graced his chin was
of white cotton and so made it especially easy to see the gentle smile that
played upon his bright red lips. “Oh,” Marie at length exclaimed, “oh, dear
father, to whom does that adorable man at the foot of the tree belong?” “That
man,” replied her father, “that man, my dear child, “is here to work diligently
for you all; with his teeth he will make mincemeat of the toughest nut; and he
belongs just as much to Luise as to you and Fritz.” Whereupon her father
carefully picked the man up off the table, and as he lifted the wooden cape as
high as it would go, the little man’s mouth opened very, very wide, revealing
two rows of white, pointy teeth. At her father’s behest, Marie shoved a nut
into the opening and—Crack!—the man had bitten right through the nut, causing its
shell to crumble away and letting its sweet kernel fall into Marie’s hand. Now
there was no concealing from anybody including Marie the fact that this elegant
little man was a latter-day member of the ancient Nutcracker family and a
practitioner of the eponymous profession of his ancestors. Marie emitted a
great cry of joy, prompting her father to say to her, “As you are so very fond
of our friend Mr. Nutcracker, you must take especial care of him and protect
him, even though, as I said, Luise and Fritz are as fully entitled as you are
to make use of him!” Marie immediately took the nutcracker into her arms and
started cracking nuts with him, but she selected only the smallest specimens so
that the little man would not have to open his mouth too wide, but on the whole
this did not become him. Marie was presently joined by Luise, and thus was
Marie’s friend Nutcracker conscripted into cracking nuts for her sister, which,
to judge by his unflaggingly friendly smile, he seemed more than game to do. By
this point Fritz was worn out from his numerous marching drills and riding
exercises, and having been highly delighted to hear the sound of cracking nuts,
he bounded over to his sisters and burst into a hearty laugh at the expense of
the funny little man who now, as Fritz also wanted to eat some nuts, passed
from hand to hand, and what with all the snapping open and shut he scarcely got
to keep his mouth still for a second. Fritz kept shoving in the biggest and
toughest nuts, until finally, all at once—crack…crack—two little teeth fell out
of the nutcracker’s mouth and his entire lower jaw went slack and wobbly. “Oh
my poor dear nutcracker!” Marie cried, and snatched the little man from out of
Fritz’s hands. “That is one dopey, simple-minded fellow you’ve got there,” said
Fritz. “He wants to be a nutcracker, and he hasn’t even got a proper set of
teeth; I’ll even bet he doesn’t know a single thing about his trade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Give him back to me, Marie! The stupid
good-for-nothing is duty-bound to keep biting open nuts for me, even if he
loses the rest of his teeth and his whole chin into the bargain, which is what
he deserves anyway.” “No, no,” cried Marie, who was now past the verge of
tears: “you shan’t take my little nutcracker from me; just look at how sadly
he’s gazing at me and pointing at his wounded little mouth! But you are
completely heartless: you whip your horses and think nothing of having a poor
soldier shot to death.” “These things have to be done,” cried Fritz, “as you
obviously don’t understand; but that nutcracker belongs to me as much as to
you; hand him over this instant.” Marie began weeping fervently and swathed the
ailing nutcracker in her little pocket handkerchief. Now their parents came
over with Godfather Drosselmeier. To Marie’s distress her godfather sided with
Fritz. But her father said, “I have expressly placed the nutcracker in Marie’s
care, and as I see that care is what he stands in greatest need of at present,
he must receive it from her, to the exclusion of all other contenders. I must
add that I am truly astonished at Fritz’s exacting of gratuitous service from
an ailing subordinate. As a seasoned military man ought he not to know better
than to include a wounded soldier in the active rank and file?” Fritz was
thoroughly abashed by this lecture, and without giving a single further thought
to nuts and nutcrackers, he slunk away to the opposite side of the table, where
his hussars,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>having posted the requisite
sentries, had retired to their quarters for the night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marie gathered up the nutcracker’s missing
teeth; she had bound his broken chin in a slip of a white ribbon taken from her
dress, and had subsequently swathed him in her kerchief even more solicitously
than before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so she cradled him like
a little child in her arms, while browsing the lovely pictures in the new
picture-books that lay amongst the day’s profusion of other presents. She grew
quite uncharacteristically cross when Godfather Drosselmeier, laughing heartily
all the while, repeatedly asked her how she could ever take such pleasure in
flirting with such an incredibly hideous little man as this? That curious
comparison to Drosselmeier that she had made the first time she laid eyes on
the little man now came rushing back into her mind, and in a tone of the utmost
seriousness, she said, “Who knows, dear Godfather, whether even if you dressed
yourself up as nicely as my dear nutcracker, and put on such lovely, shiny
little boots as he’s wearing—who knows if even then you’d look as handsome as
he does!” Marie was at a complete loss to explain why her parents now burst
into such uproarious peals of laughter, or why the high court councilor’s nose
was now turning such a deep shade of red, or why he was not laughing with them
nearly as loudly as he had done before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Perhaps there were certain peculiar causes that accounted for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Marvels<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">To your immediate
left as you as you enter the public health officer’s sitting room, there stands
against the broad wall a tall, glass-windowed cabinet, in which the children
store up all the lovely Christmas presents they have received from year to
year. Luise was still a very little girl when her father commissioned the
cabinet from a highly skilled carpenter, who fitted it with panes of such
heavenly pellucidity, and contrived to assemble the whole thing so artfully,
that everything in it looked almost shinier and prettier than it would have
looked in the viewer’s own hands. On the top shelf, which Marie and Fritz could
not reach, stood Godfather Drosselmeier’s artifices; immediately beneath it was
the shelf for the picture-books; the two lowest shelves Fritz and Marie had
permanently at their joint disposal; for all that, Marie always ended up
stowing her dolls in the bottom shelf, while Fritz billeted his troops in the
one above it. Today had witnessed no exception to this arrangement, for while
Fritz had installed his hussars on top, Marie had placed Missy Trutchen off to
the side underneath, inserted her lovely, immaculately clean new doll into the
extremely well-appointed doll’s room, and treated herself to the sweets she had
with her. I said that the room was extremely well- appointed, and that is very
much the truth, for I do not know whether you, my attentive auditress Marie,
just like little Miss Stahlbaum (you know full well, of course, that your first
name is also Marie) but anyway!—as I was saying, I do not know whether you,
like her, own a tiny sofa upholstered in a lovely floral pattern, a handful of
the most delightful-looking little chairs, a dainty tea-table—but above all
possessions a plain, neatly made little bed upon which the loveliest little
dolls repose themselves? All these things were to be found in the corner of the
cabinet, whose walls here were actually papered with colorful little pictures,
and you can well imagine how the new doll whom Marie had only just learned to
call Missy Claerchen must have felt very much at home in <i>this</i> room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">It had grown quite
late; indeed, midnight itself was impending, and Godfather Drosselmeier had
long since departed, and yet the children had hardly gotten their fill of the
glass cabinet, for all their mother’s ardent admonitions to the effect that
they really should at long last be getting to bed. “Granted,” Fritz at length
exclaimed, “these poor fellows” (i.e., his hussars) “really could do with a
snooze, and I’m sure as heck sure they’ll have a fat chance of getting one as
long as I’m here!” Whereupon he left the room; Marie, on the other hand,
ardently entreated her mother thus: “Please, dear Mother, let me stay here just
a little while longer, just the tiniest bit longer; I have a few things left to
attend to, and once I have attended to them, I certainly plan to go straight to
bed!” Marie was a thoroughly pious and sensible child, and so her worthy mother
felt no qualms whatsoever about leaving her on her own with her
playthings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at this moment Marie
hardly seemed to be interested at all in her new doll and lovely playthings,
and yet again she also seemed completely oblivious of the candles that were
burning in a circle around the cabinet; her mother extinguished them all one by
one, leaving only the lamp that hung suspended from the middle of the ceiling
to disperse a gentle, ingratiating light throughout the room. “Don’t stay up
too much longer, Marie dear, if you want to be able to get up on time
tomorrow!” cried her mother, as she withdrew into her bedroom. As soon as Marie
found herself alone, she immediately turned to the object of her heart’s
preoccupation, a preoccupation that—for all its urgency, and for reasons
unknown even to herself--she was quite incapable of disclosing to her mother.
All this time she had been carrying slung over her arm the ailing nutcracker,
who was still swathed in her pocket handkerchief. Now she carefully laid him on
the table, gently, gently unwound the kerchief, and looked after his wounds.
The nutcracker was very pale, and yet smiling with an intensely wistful
geniality, such that the sight of him pierced Marie straight through the heart.
“Ah, my little nutcracker,” she said ever so gently, “don’t be angry at Fritz
for having hurt you so much; he didn’t mean to be so cruel; it’s just that this
savage soldier’s life he’s been leading has made him a bit
hard-hearted—otherwise he’s a truly worthy young man; I can assure you of that.
But now I intend to care for you solicitously until your good health and good
cheer are entirely restored to you; as for having your teeth set firmly back in
place and your shoulder straightened out: that will have to be left to
Godfather Drosselmeier, who is an expert at such things.” But Marie could not
finish saying her piece, for as soon as she mentioned the name <i>Drosselmeier</i>,
her friend Mr. Nutcracker cocked his jaw at a devilishly wry angle, and his
eyes scintillated with pinpricks of green light. But in the next instant, before
she could be properly horrified by this grotesque transformation, she once
again beheld the honest nutcracker’s familiar face with its familiar wistful
smile, and she realized that its disfigurement a moment earlier had been owing
entirely to a brief flaring up of light cast by the ceiling lamp thanks to an
equally transitory draught of air. “I am not some silly little girl who scares
so easily as to fancy that a wooden doll is pulling faces at her! But I am too
fond of Nutcracker by half because he is so droll and yet so good-natured, and
so he has to be taken care of, as is only proper.” Whereupon Marie cradled her
friend Mr. Nutcracker in her arms, approached the cabinet, crouched down in
front of it, and addressed her new doll thus: “I heartily beseech you, Missy
Claerchen, to give up your bed to the injured nutcracker, and to commit
yourself, for lack of a better alternative, to the sofa. Remember that you are
in perfect health, and in full possession of your strength; otherwise your
cheeks would not be so plump and such a deep shade of red; and also remember
that very few of even the loveliest dolls own such a cushy sofa as yours.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Missy Claerchen,
resplendent and resentful in her Yuletide brand-newness, refused to say a word.
“But why am I making such a fuss about this?” said Marie said, pulled out the
bed, gently and tenderly laid the nutcracker in it, wrapped around his injured
shoulders a lovely little ribbon that she usually wore around her waist, and
tucked him in right up to the underside of his nose. “But,” she continued, “I
can’t very well leave him in the same room as naughty Clara,” and so saying,
she placed the little bed, nutcracker and all, in the shelf above hers, so that
it came to nestle alongside the lovely village where Fritz’s troops were
billeted. She shut and locked the cabinet and headed towards her bedroom, but
then—listen up, children!—then she began to hear a faint, ever so faint,
whispering and swishing and rustling on all sides of the room—behind the stove,
behind the chairs, behind the cupboards. All the while the clock on the wall
was whirring ever more loudly and yet somehow failing to chime. Marie looked at
the clock: the gilded owl perched on top of it had covered it from top to
bottom with its lowered wings, and its hideous hook-beaked cat’s head was
outthrust at a grotesque distance from its body. And it whirred even more
violently, and in its whirring the following words could clearly be discerned:
“softly whirr and cause no fear: that’s the task of every gear. King of the
mice has a subtle ear; rouse him with an ancient tune; softly sound the
nightside noon; he will hear it very soon!” And in exact conformity with these
orders the clock struck twelve as softly and unreverberantly as could be! Marie
began to be genuinely quite frightened, and she nearly fled the room in horror
when she saw Godfather Drosselmeier sitting in place of the owl on top of the
clock, with his yellow coat-tails dangling down on either side of the clock
like wings; but she pulled herself together, and cried out loudly and
tearfully, “Godfather Drosselmeier, Godfather Drosselmeir, what are you doing
up there? Come down and stop frightening me so, you naughty Godfather
Drosselmeier!” But then from all sides of the room issued peals of demented laughter
and whistling, and a thousand tiny feet could be heard scampering and scurrying
behind the walls, and a thousand tiny lights could be seen gleaming through the
cracks between the floorboards. Wait: no!—they weren’t lights, but tiny
flashing eyes, and Marie suddenly realized that all around her mice were poking
their noses out and pulling themselves up from beneath the floor to its
surface. Soon they were trotting, trotting, trotting, and hopping, hopping,
hopping, into every side and corner of the room; ever thicker and ever more
luminous heaps of mice were galloping to and fro; and at length they arranged
themselves into ranks and files of the sort that Fritz would arrange his troops
into when he was about to lead them into battle. Marie found this all extremely
comical, for unlike many other children she had no natural aversion to mice;
and the very last trace of her fear was on the point of vanishing when there
suddenly commenced a peculiar, steady whistling sound that was so ghastly and
piercing that it made icy chills run down her spine! Ah what things she now
beheld! No, in all frankness, my dear and honored reader Fritz, I know that
you, just like the wise and courageous General Fritz Stahlbaum, have your heart
in the right place, but if you had seen what Marie <i>now</i> saw before her
very eyes, in all frankness you would have run away; I even believe you would
have leapt straight into bed and pulled the covers much farther over your ears
than was strictly necessary. But of course poor Marie was hardly in a position
to do any of those things now, for—listen up, children!—right smack dab in
front of her feet a jet of sand and lime and pieces of broken marble stones
shot up from the floor with a truly ghastly hissing and whistling sound, and
seven mouse-heads with seven brightly scintillating crowns heaved themselves to
the surface. Presently the body of the mouse on whose necks the seven heads had
grown worked its way completely above ground and the large mouse with the seven
diadems squeaked a resonant cheer at the entire horde, which proceeded to set
itself in motion and--giddy-up and off!—galloped, galloped, galloped, right up
to the very doors of the cabinet, right up to Marie herself, who was still
standing directly in front of it. So far Marie’s heart for sheer terror and
panic had been throbbing so violently that she had been thinking that it was
bound at any second to burst out of her chest and thereby kill her; but now she
suddenly felt as though the circulation of the blood in her veins had come to a
standstill. Half unconscious, she tottered backwards; then she heard a rumble
and a clink, and the glass front of the cabinet, with which her elbow had just
collided, collapsed in shards. She immediately felt a stabbing pain in her left
arm, but also a sudden and pronounced relaxation of tension around her heart;
the cheeping and whistling had stopped, and complete silence permeated the
room; and although she could not see them, she assumed that the mice were still
nearby, and had merely been frightened back into their holes by the sound of
the shattering glass. But then what was this? Directly behind her in the
cabinet she heard a curious rumbling as the faintest voices began muttering as
follows: “We’re up and about, up and about—to arms and the field, before the
night's out—we’re up and about—let’s put them to rout!” And immediately
thereafter she heard several little bells sounding together concordantly, to
the most exquisitely charming effect. “Ah, of course: it’s my little
glockenspiel!” Marie delightedly exclaimed, and briskly leaping aside to get a
view of the cabinet, she saw therein the most strangely lit and peopled and
busied sight she had ever seen. Several dolls were running in every which
direction and thrusting at and parrying each other. Then all of a sudden,
Nutcracker flung aside the counterpane, leapt out of the bed with both feet
forward, and loudly exclaimed: “Crack, crack, crack—you stupid rodent
pack—stupid crazy guff –enough’s enough—crick and crack and huff and puff—the
purest guff.” And with that he drew his tiny sword and flourished it in the air
and cried, “You, my dear retainers, friends, and brothers—do you intend to
assist me in my arduous struggle?” Immediately three scaramouches, a pantaloon,
four chimney-sweeps, two zither-players, and a drummer heartily rejoined, “Yes,
sir: we are your loyal servants; we’ll struggle alongside you through thick and
thin—win or lose, live or die!” and hastened to follow the lead of the ecstatic
Nutcracker, who was now bravely risking the leap to the bottom shelf. Yes! The
other dolls had all successfully made the plunge, for not only were they clad
in splendid garments of lawn and silk, but also their very innards were
basically nothing but cotton and chaff, so that they plumped down on to the
bottom shelf just like little sacks of wool. But as for poor Nutcracker: well,
he would certainly have broken both his arms and legs—for I’ll have you know it
was a two-foot drop to the bottom shelf, and his body was as brittle as if it
had been carved directly out of a single piece of linden-wood—had not Missy
Claerchen leapt from the sofa and caught our sword-brandishing hero in her
accommodatingly pliant arms just in the nick of time. “Oh my dear, worthy,
wonderful Claerchen!” sobbed Marie: “How sorely I misjudged you! You were in
fact only too happy to give up your little bed to our friend Mr. Nutcracker!”
But now Missy Claerchen spoke thus, as she tenderly clasped the young hero to
her silken bosom: “For pity’s sake, my lord, give heed to your present wounds
and infirmities and avoid the battlefield; behold how your valiant retainers
are rallying with gusto for battle and in full certainty of victory. The
scaramouches, the pantaloon, the chimney-sweeps, the zither-players, and the
drummers are already down there, and the motto-figurines on my shelf are
already up and bestirring themselves with remarkable alacrity; I beg you, my
lord, to rest out the battle in my arms, or else to spectate on your victory
from the lofty security of my plumed hat!” Thus spoke Claerchen, but Nutcracker
grew so refractory and started kicking so hard to be set free that Claerchen
ultimately had no choice but to set him down on the floor. But no sooner had he
been set free than he fell with exemplary gallantry to his knees and whispered,
“Oh dear lady! In every battle and in all adversity that comes my way, I shall
treasure the memory of your most gracious and merciful succor!” Then Claerchen
stooped down low enough to grab him by his little arm, gently lifted him up,
quickly undid her sequin-spangled waistband, and made as if to wrap the little
man up in it, but he fell back two steps, laid his hand on his breast, and
solemnly intoned, “Waste not your kindness on me, dear lady, for—” he broke
off, fetched a deep sigh, tore off the little ribbon in which Marie had swathed
his shoulder, pressed it to his lips, tied it round his neck like a scarf, and,
brandishing his drawn sword, leapt as quickly and nimbly as a sparrow over the
ledge of the cabinet and on to the floor. Note well, my most dear and gentle
listeners, that long before he had come properly to life Nutcracker was most
cannily sensible of Marie’s tender and virtuous feelings for him, and that it
was only on account of his settled attachment to Marie that he refused to accept
or wear Missy Claerchen’s ribbon, for all its lustrous handsomeness. Out of
loyalty and affection Nutcracker preferred to trick himself out in Marie’s
unassuming little ribbon. But what ever was to happen next? As soon as
Nutcracker touched down, the cheeping and squeaking started up again. Oh no!
Beneath the large table in the center of the room the hideous and immeasurably
huge horde of mice were gathered, and the abominable mouse with seven heads
stood tall and proud amidst the lot of them! What ever was to happen next?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The Battle<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">“You, my loyal
retainer, Mr. Drummer,” cried Nutcracker: “summon the troops to march!”
whereupon the drummer launched into a tattoo of such extraordinary virtuosity
that it set the windows of the cabinet shaking and trembling. Now from within
the cabinet Marie heard a good deal of bashing and clattering, and it
eventually dawned on her that the lid of the case that served as the quarters
of Fritz’s army had been forced open, and that the soldiers had escaped and
jumped to the bottom shelf, where they were now assembling in neatly serried
ranks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nutcracker dashed up and down the
lists, mercilessly hectoring the troops in his enthusiasm. “Not a dog of a
trumpeter is shifting or stirring!” he furiously exclaimed, only to turn abruptly
to the pantaloon—he whose face had turned rather pale and whose oversized chin
was shaking quite violently—and solemnly address him thus: “General, I know of
your courage and experience, I entrust to you the command of the complete
cavalry and artillery; you have no need of a horse, as your legs are so long
that you can reach a tolerable gallop on your own two feet. Now follow your
function.” So pantaloon immediately thrust two of his lanky little fingers into
his mouth and whistled so forcefully, that the resultant sound was as strident
as a hundred toy trumpets sounding simultaneously at full volume. Then there
was a tremendous amount of whinnying and stamping inside the cabinet, and lo!
Fritz’s cuirassiers, dragoons, and, most spectacular of all, his resplendently
shiny new hussars, emerged from the case and descended to the floor, where they
presently drew to an expectant halt. Now with standards flying and drums and
trumpets sounding, regiment upon regiment paraded past Nutcracker and contributed
its long row of soldiers to an army that eventually covered the entire floor of
the room. But now in front of the front-most row of troops were posted Fritz’s
cannons, attended on all sides by their gunners, and before Marie knew it,
there was a boom and another boom; and she beheld whole crowds within the horde
of mice covered in powder to their great embarrassment. Especially damaging to
them, though, was a heavy discharge from the battery that had been assembled on
Mama’s footstool and that now—Boom!—Boom!—fired one round of gingerbread
ordnance after another into the mice and sent them toppling over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet the mice continued to draw ever
nearer and even managed to overrun a few of the cannons, but then there was a
noise that went PRR—PRR—PRR, and Marie could scarcely see what was happening
for all the smoke and dust. But this much was certain: that each side was
laying into the other with the bitterest intensity, and that victory was in no
hurry to yield itself up to either one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The army of mice was continuing to grow larger and larger, and the tiny
silver pellets that they wielded with considerable aplomb as missiles were now
smashing into the cabinet itself. Despair-stricken, Claerchen and Trutchen were
running about in every which direction and wringing their tiny hands raw. “Am
I—the loveliest doll yet sewn--destined to die in the most efflorescent hour of
my maidenhood?" cried Claerchen. “Have I preserved myself so well for so
long only to perish here within the four walls of my own apartment?” cried
Trutchen. With that they fell into each other’s arms, and wailed so loudly that
they could be heard even above the infernal din of the battle. For of the
spectacle that was now commencing you, my honored listeners, will scarcely form
an adequate notion. First Marie heard a sound like this--Prr, prrr—puff,
piff—shnetterding—shnetterding—boom, brrroom, boom, brruom, boom—which set the
mice and their king squeaking and squealing, and then she once again heard
Nutcracker’s powerful voice, parceling out orders for needful tasks; and
finally she saw Nutcracker in person striding directly through the beleaguered
battalions! Pantaloon had accrued considerable glory in a handful of cavalry
charges, but Fritz’s hussars were being pelted with the fetid discharge of the
mice’s artillery, which bored lethal holes into their red jerkins and thereby
prevented them from even attempting to advance. Pantaloon let them turn aside
to the left and in the delirium of command, he forced his own cuirassiers and
dragoons to do the same; so that they all turned left and headed homeward. In
so doing, they left the battery posted on the footstool exposed to attack; and
in no time flat, a hideous troop of mice assailed it with such force that they
overturned the entire footstool, including the gunners and cannons. Nutcracker
seemed quite dismayed and ordered the right wing to make a retrograde movement.
Now you know full well, my dear listener Fritz, what with all your experience
of war, that to make such a movement is virtually tantamount to retreating; and
you will have already begun to join me in mourning in advance the disaster that
was all but destined to overwhelm the army of Marie’s beloved little
Nutcracker! For all that, avert your eyes from this calamity and behold the
left flank of Nutcracker’s army, wherein everything is still very much in
order, and commander-in-chief and army alike still have very good reason to be
hopeful. During the most heated period of the battle several mouse cavalry
squadrons had quietly, quietly debouched from under the chest of drawers, and,
emitting loud squeaks of rage, had pounced on to the left flank of Nutcracker’s
army—but what resistance did they meet with there for all their fury!
Slowly--because the roughness of the terrain would not allow them to proceed
quickly-- the battalion of motto-figurines, escorted by two Chinese emperors,
had advanced and gathered themselves together into a square formation. This
valiant, splendid, and brilliantly parti-colored contingent composed of
numerous gardeners, Tyroleans, Tunguses, hairdressers, harlequins, cupids,
lions, tigers, meerkats, and monkeys, fought with exemplary composure, courage,
and stamina. In the light of its Spartan-worthy valor, this elite battalion
most certainly would have snatched victory from the foe’s jaws had not a
charging enemy cavalry captain been so rash and impertinent as to bite off the
head of one of the Chinese emperors, which in then falling to the floor struck
dead a meerkat and two Tunguses. These casualties produced a gap through which
the enemy surged, and in short order the entire battalion was gnawed to bits.
But the enemy gained precious little advantage from this outrage. No sooner did
one of the mouse-army’s cavalry officers gnaw through his valiant adversary
than he received a tiny printed label in the neck, whereupon he immediately
died. But what did this avail Nutcracker’s army, an army that had long been
steadily diminishing in strength and losing more and more men, such that by now
the unfortunate Nutcracker was standing with his back flush against the cabinet
and defending it with the assistance of only a tiny handful of subordinates?
“The reserves must report to me at once! Pantaloon, Scaramouche, Drummer—where
are you?” Thus cried Nutcracker, who still hoped to elicit one more deployment
of fresh troops from the cabinet. And in fact a handful of brown-skinned
briarwood men and women with golden faces, hats, and helmets did report, but
they thrashed about so fumblingly that their weapons never even grazed any of the
enemy; such that, indeed, if left to their own devices they surely would have
knocked their own general’s—Nutcracker’s—cap off his head. In any event, the
enemy chasseurs soon bit their legs off, causing them to topple over and
collaterally crush to death several of Nutcracker’s comrades in arms. Now
Nutcracker was completely surrounded by the enemy and at the highest pitch of
fear and need. He tried to leap over the threshold of the cabinet, but his legs
were too short; Claerchen and Trutchen lay unconscious, dead to the world; they
could not help him. The giddy capering of mounted hussars and dragoons in every
direction but towards him prompted him to cry out in abject despair, “A horse,
a horse!—A kingdom for a horse!” In the blink of an eye, two enemy skirmishers
seized hold of him by his wooden cape; and then, squeaking triumphantly from
all seven of his voice-boxes, the king of the mice came bounding up to him.
Marie could no longer contain herself: “O my poor Nutcracker—my poor
Nutcracker!” she exclaimed through a succession of sobs; then, without being
quite fully aware of what she was doing, she pulled off her left shoe and flung
it with main force into the thick of the horde of mice at their king. In the
blink of an eye they all seemed to fly away and vanish even as Marie felt a
second--and this time much more strident—stabbing pain in her left arm, and
fainted dead away on to the floor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The Illness<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">When Marie next
woke up, from a sleep of deathlike profundity, she was lying in her own little
bed, and the sun was shining brightly and coruscatingly through the frosted
panes of her bedroom window. A strange man was sitting close beside her, but
she soon recognized him as Mr. Wendelstern the surgeon. He quietly announced,
“She is awake!” Whereupon her mother drew near and gazed at her with harriedly
searching eyes. “Ah, Mother dear,” little Marie gently murmured: “does this
mean that all the horrible mice are now gone, and that my worthy Nutcracker is
safe and sound?” “Don’t talk such foolish nonsense, Marie dear,” replied her
mother: “what do mice have to do with the nutcracker?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you, you naughty child, have caused us no
end of worry and grief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the kind
of thing that happens when children are froward and headstrong and don’t obey
their parents. Last night you were up very late playing with your dolls; you
got sleepy, and it’s possible that you were frightened by some little mouse—not
that we’ve ever had any mouse problems here—dashing out into the room;in any
event, you hit your arm against one of the door-panes of the glass cabinet and
cut your arm so badly that in the opinion of Mr. Wendelstern, who has removed
the shards of glass that were still stuck in the wound, if one of those shards
had touched an artery you might very well have ended up with a paralyzed arm,
or even have bled to death. Thank the good Lord I happened to wake up at
midnight and, on noticing that you were still absent despite the lateness of
the hour, to get out of bed and go into the sitting room. You were lying there
unconscious on the floor next to the cabinet, and bleeding profusely. In my
terror I came quite close to fainting dead away myself. You were lying there,
and I saw strewn all around you multitudes of Fritz’s lead soldiers and other
dolls—figurines, gingerbread men; but Nutcracker was lying clasped in the crook
of your bleeding arm, and not far away from you lay your left shoe.” “Oh mother
dear, mother dear,” Marie interjected, “don’t you see? Those were just traces
of the mighty battle between the dolls and the mice, and the only reason I got
so frightened was that the mice were about to capture poor Nutcracker, who was
the commander of the army of dolls. Then I hurled my shoe into the horde of
mice, and I don’t remember anything that happened after that.” Mr. Wendelstern
exchanged a significant glance with Marie’s mother and whispered gently to
Marie, “That really will do, my dear child! Calm yourself: the mice are all
gone, and your little nutcracker is residing happily and healthily in the glass
cabinet.” Then the doctor entered the room and spoke at length with Mr.
Wendelstern; then he took Marie’s pulse, and she could clearly hear that they
were conferring about a case of septic fever. And so she had to stay in bed and
take medicine for the next several days, even though, apart from the occasional
twinge in her arm, she did not feel the least bit unwell. She knew that little
Nutcracker had escaped unscathed from the battle, and from time to time as if
in a dream she fancied she heard him say quite distinctly but sadly, “Marie, my
dearest lady, I am much obliged to you, but there yet remains something you can
do for me!” Marie tried as hard as she could to think of what this something
could be; but in vain, for nothing came to mind. Marie could not play with her
toys at all on account of the injury to her arm, and she tried instead to read,
or rather leaf through, her picture-books; but the images swam before her eyes
in such a bizarre fashion that she was forced to leave off. And so time passed
for her with wearisome slowness, and she could hardly wait for the close of
each day, when her mother would sit down at her bedside and read and tell her
many splendid things. Her mother had just finished the excellent story of
Prince Fakardin when the door opened, and Godfather Drosselmeier walked in,
saying, “I really must see with my own eyes how this ailing and injured girl
Marie is faring.” As soon as Marie beheld Father Drosselmeier in his little
yellow coat, the image from that night when Nutcracker lost the battle against
the mice came quite palpably to life before her eyes, and she reflexively cried
out to the high court councilor, “O Godfather Drosselmeier, you behaved really
horribly; I saw you sitting on the clock and covering it with your wings so
that it wouldn’t make any noise when it struck, lest the mice should be scared
away; and I heard you calling out to the king of the mice! Why didn’t you come
to the aid of Nutcracker? Why didn’t you come to my aid, you horrible Godfather
Drosselmeier? Wasn’t it really all your awful fault that I ended up ailing and
injured in bed in the first place?” “What ever has gotten into you, Marie
dear?” asked her mother in a thoroughly appalled tone of voice. But Godfather
Drosselmeier started pulling the most outlandish faces and uttered the
following words in a burring monotone: “The clock could not but softly whirr:
its pendulum refused to stir.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>P-p-pendulums must whirr and burr--softly whirr.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the bells sound loud and clear--ding and
dong and dong and ding--little girl-dolls have no fear; the chime has sounded
in the night to put the King of the mice in full flight. And now the owl has
taken wing; the chime’s still sounding ding, ding, ding. The clocks must only
softly whirr: their pendulums refused to stir; whirr and purr and purr and
whirr; purr and whirr.” With<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>eyes wide
open, Marie stared transfixed by the sight of Godfather Drosselmeier, for he
now looked both altogether different from and much more hideous than he usually
did, and his right arm was flitting this way and that as though it were being
jerked about like some sort of marionette. These antics of her godfather’s
would have been enough to make her shudder had her mother not been present from
their beginning, and had Fritz not slunk into the room in their midst and
eventually interrupted them with peals of boisterous laughter. “There you go
again, Godfather Drosselmeier,” cried Fritz: “acting much too silly by half;
you’re behaving today exactly like my old jumping jack, which I threw away
behind the kitchen stove ages ago.” The children’s mother remained obdurately
unsmiling and said, “My dear High Court Councilor, this fooling about of yours
is downright bizarre; what, pray tell, exactly do you mean by it?” “Good
heavens!” replied Drosselmeier with a laugh: “Have you all quite forgotten my
little watchmaker’s ditty? It is my constant wont to sing it to such invalids
as Marie.” Whereupon he made a beeline for Marie’s immediate bedside, and said,
“Please don’t be too cross with me because I failed to gouge out all fourteen
of the King of the Mice’s eyes, for it just wasn’t to be; but in lieu of this
achievement, I am determined to do something that will properly enrapture you.”
With these words, the high court councilor reached into his satchel and gently,
ever so gently, extracted from it nothing less than Nutcracker himself, whose
missing teeth he had expertly remounted and whose broken jawbone he had no less
skillfully reset. Marie gave out a loud cry of joy, but her mother said with a
smile, “Don’t you see at last now how kindly disposed Godfather Drossemleier is
to your nutcracker?” “But you must of course make allowances, Marie,” said the
high court councilor, disregarding the public health officer’s wife’s remark,
“for the fact that even before he was hurt Nutcracker wasn’t exactly an ideal
specimen of an adult male human, and that his face hasn’t ever been exactly
pretty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you are inclined to listen to
it, I shall be more than happy to recount to you the story of how this strain
of hideousness was introduced into the Nutcrackers’ family bloodline and
subsequently transmitted to generations of Nutcrackers. But perchance you are
already familiar with the history of Princess Pirlipat, Mistress Mauserinks the
sorceress, and the master watchmaker? “Wait a minute, Godfather Drosselmeier,”
broke in Fritz from out of the blue; “wait a minute: you’ve sure enough reset
Nutcracker’s teeth, and his chin isn’t wobbly any longer; but why is he missing
his sword? Why haven’t you bothered to sling a sword round his waist?”
“Ai-ai-ai!” exclaimed the high court councilor in utter exasperation: “Must you
nitpick and bellyache about absolutely everything, my boy? What the devil do I
care about Nutcracker’s sword? I’ve cured his physical ailments; now he can
jolly well scrounge up for himself whatever blasted kind of sword he wants.”
“That’s right!” cried Fritz: “He’s quite a clever fellow, so he certainly must
know how to go about finding weapons.” “So Marie,” resumed the high court
councilor: “Are you or are you not familiar with the history of Princess
Pirlipat?” “Indeed I’m not,” replied Marie: “do tell it, dear godfather; do
tell it!” “I hope, my dear high court councilor,” said the public health
officer’s wife, “I hope that this story will not be as horrifying as the ones
you usually tell?” “On the contrary, my dearest lady,” replied Drosselmeier:
“the account that I am about to have the honor of relating is downright
comical.” “Do tell us the story, dear Godfather, do tell it!” cried the
children, and so the high court councilor began thus:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The Fairy Tale about the Hard Nut<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">“Pirlipat’s mother
was the wife of a king, hence she was a queen; and Pirlipat herself was from
the very instant of her birth onwards a born princess. The king was beside
himself with joy at the sight of his lovely little daughter lying in her
cradle; he gave a great shout of jubilation; he jigged and pirouetted about on
one leg and exclaimed over and over again, ‘Huzzah! Has anyone ever seen
anything more beautiful than my little Pirlipat?’ Whereupon all the ministers,
generals, presidents, and field-officers leapt about on one leg just like their
sovereign, and shouted ‘No, never!’ And indeed it could hardly be denied that
no fairer child than Princess Pirlipat had been born in the history of the earth’s
existence. Her little face seemed to have been woven from lily-white and
rose-red silk fleece, her little eyes were scintillating orbs of living azure,
and the sight of her hair curling in tiny locks of golden thread was downright
adorable. In addition, Pirlipat had brought into the world two rows of tiny
pearl-white teeth, with which, only two hours after her birth, she bit the
finger of the chancellor as he was trying to get a closer look at her features,
and thereby provoked him to exclaim, ‘By jiminy!’ Actually, some people
maintain that he exclaimed, ‘Ouch!’; to this day the question remains hotly
disputed. In any case, she really did bite the chancellor’s finger, and thereby
proved to the delight of the entire country that not only beauty but also
spirit, brains, and courage dwelt in Pirlipat’s angelic little body. As I said,
everybody was very merry—apart from the queen, who was exceedingly anxious and
restless; nobody knew why. Her anxiety manifested itself most conspicuously in
the extreme elaborateness of her arrangements to keep intruders away from
Pirlipat’s cradle. Not only were two gentlemen-at-arms posted at the entrance
to the child’s room; but also, in addition to the two nurses stationed
immediately beside the cradle itself, six others were disposed about the room
and obliged to sit up all night every night. But even more incomprehensibly,
and to all appearances downright insanely, each of these six nurses was
required to take a tomcat into her lap and stroke it throughout her vigil, so
that the animal was kept in a state of constant agitation. No matter how long
you tried, my dear children, you would never guess the reason for the queen’s
institution of all these bizarre rituals; fortunately, I know what that reason
was and intend to disclose it to you forthwith. Some years earlier a number of
noble kings and handsome princes had gathered at the court of Pirlipat’s
father; and for the duration of their stay there was no shortage of pomp and
pageantry as the guests were regaled with a succession of jousting-matches,
plays, and balls. To show that he was not lacking in gold and silver on this
occasion, the king planned to dig deep into the royal treasury and put on a
truly lavish entertainment. And as the palace chef had privately informed him
that according to the astronomer royal the present moment was an especially
propitious one for pig-slaughtering, he decided that the great event would be a
mighty sausage-fest; and having done so, he jumped into his carriage and
personally invited all the kings and princes ‘round for a spoonful or two of
soup,’ grossly understating the scale and nature of the event so that he might
revel in the surprise his guests would feel at the sight of all those
mouth-watering sausages. Then he addressed his wife, the queen, in
affectionately coaxing tones, thus: ‘Now you know very well, darling, how much
I love sausage!’ The queen indeed knew very well what he meant by this, namely
nothing less than that, as on all previous sausage-exigent occasions, she
herself should personally undertake the needful task of preparing the sausages.
The treasurer was obliged immediately to deliver the large gold sausage-pot and
the silver saucepans to the cook; a mighty sandalwood-fueled fire was lit; the
queen donned her damask apron, and soon the pot was exuding the fragrant steam
of sausage-soup. The ingratiating aroma permeated every room in the palace,
including the privy council chamber; the king could not contain himself for
sheer enraptured delight. ‘Excuse me, gentlemen!’ he cried, then dashed to the
kitchen, embraced the queen, stirred the mixture in the pot a bit with his
golden scepter, and returned pacified to the privy council chamber. A critical
moment had just been reached—the moment when the lard was to be sliced into
cubes and roasted on silver gridirons. The ladies-in-waiting stood aside, as
the queen, out of reverent devotion to her regal spouse, insisted on attending
to this business entirely on her own. But no sooner did the lard begin to
sizzle than a reedy little voice was heard to whisper, ‘Give me a bite of the
sausage, sister! I will have my share of the feast, for I too am a queen, after
all. Give me a bite of the sausage!’<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The queen instantly
recognized the voice as that of Mistress Mauserinks. Mistress Mauserinks had
been living in the King’s palace for quite a number of years. She claimed to be
related to the royal family and even to be queen of a realm called Mausolea,
and in keeping with these pretensions she presided over a sizable court of her
own under the stove. The queen was a kind and charitable soul, and so, although
she had no intention of acknowledging Mistress Mauserinks as a queen and her
sister, she sincerely harbored no wish to see her starve on this festive day,
and therefore cried, ‘Come on out, Mistress Mauserinks: of course I’ll let you
have a taste of my lard.’ Whereupon Mistress Mauserinks very nimbly and gaily
leapt out and onto the top of the stove and with her dainty little paws
snatched away one after the other the little dollops of lard that the queen
guilelessly handed out to her. But then all of Mistress Mauserinks’s godfathers
and aunties came leaping out along with her seven sons (very naughty boys); the
lot of them laid into the lard, and, alone as she was, the affrighted queen was
powerless to stop them. Fortunately, just then the mistress of ceremonies
walked in and chased away the importunate guests in time to spare a small
portion of the lard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mathematician
royal was immediately summoned, and under his direction this portion was
ingeniously distributed among all the sausages. Drums and trumpets sounded, and
all the visiting princes and potentates—some on white palfreys, others in
crystal coaches—processed in their resplendent ceremonial robes to the
sausage-fest. The king welcomed them warmly and respectfully and sat down at
the head of the table as behooved the crowned and sceptered ruler of the land.
As early as the serving of the liver-sausage course, one could see the king
growing paler and paler and lifting his eyes heavenward; faint sighs escaped
his breast; a violent pain seemed to be gnawing at his heart! But with the
serving of the black pudding, he sank back into his easy chair sobbing and
groaning; he clasped both hands over his eyes; he wailed and moaned. The banqueters
all leapt from their chairs; the physician in ordinary labored in vain to
ascertain the unfortunate king’s pulse-rate; a profound and nameless affliction
seemed to be tearing him to pieces. At last, at long last, after many lengthy
entreaties, after the application of such strong remedies as burnt
goose-feathers and the like, the king came round after a fashion, and stammered
out the scarcely audible words ‘Not enough lard.’ Whereupon the queen in
despair threw herself at his feet and sobbed, ‘O my poor, unfortunate royal
spouse! O what pain must you have suffered! But behold the culprit here at your
feet—punish her, punish her severely—ah—Mistress Mauserinks with her seven
sons, godfathers, and aunties devoured the lard and—’ here she broke off and
fell over in a dead faint. But now the king leapt up freshly afire with rage
and exclaimed, ‘Mistress of Ceremonies, how did this happen?’ The mistress of
ceremonies related to him as much as she knew, and the king resolved to take
revenge on Mistress Mauserinks and her family for having gobbled away his lard.
The privy council were summoned; they resolved to bring Mistress Mauserinks to
trial and to confiscate all her goods and chattels; but the king, convinced as
he was that pending her conviction she would continue stealing lard from him,
decided to turn the entire matter over to his watchmaker royal-cum-china
manufacturer. This gentleman, who happened, just like me, to be named Christian
Elias Drosselmeier, promised that by means of a most peculiar political
operation he would drive Mistress Mauserinks and her family away from the
palace for all time. The operation centered on a collection of ingenious little
machines of his own construction, machines into which one placed a tiny sliver
of grilled lard. Drosselmeier installed these machines all around Mistress
Mauserinks’s dwelling. Mistress Mauserinks herself was far too shrewd not to
see through Drosselmeier’s stratagem, and she did her best to apprise her
dimmer relatives of it; but all her warnings and expostulations came to naught:
lured by the sweet aroma of grilled lard, all seven of her sons and her many,
many godfathers and aunties marched straight into Drosselmeier’s machines,
wherein, just as they were about to nibble up the lard, they were trapped by
the abrupt descent of a metal grating—and immediately thereafter they were
ignominiously executed right there in the kitchen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mistress Mauserinks now took up her little
bundle of possessions and quitted this scene of horror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sorrow, despair, and revenge swelled her
breast. Everybody at court heartily rejoiced at this turn of events; but the
queen was distraught, for she understood Mistress Mauserinks’s cast of mind and
knew full well that she would not let the death of her sons and relations go unavenged.
And indeed one day not long afterwards, while the queen was in the midst of
preparing for her royal spouse a lung puree that he especially fancied,
Mistress Mauserinks appeared out of nowhere and said, ‘My sons, my godfathers,
and my aunties have been slain; be vigilant, Mistress Queen, lest the mouse
queen bite your little princess in half; be very vigilant.’ Whereupon she
vanished once again, apparently for good; but the queen was so startled by the
whole event that she dropped the puree into the fire; thus once again one of
the king’s favorite dishes was ruined thanks to Mistress Mauserinks, and once
again the king was wildly enraged as a consequence. But that’s enough for
tonight; the rest will have to wait until next time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The more ardently
Marie begged Godfather Drosselmeier to continue telling the story, by which she
was utterly captivated, the more obdurately he refused to be persuaded; until
finally he leapt to his feet and said, “Too much all at once is unhealthy; the
rest really must wait until tomorrow.” Just as the high court councilor was
about to step out the door, Fritz said, “But tell me, Godfather Drosselmeier:
is it really true then that you built the mousetraps?” “What a foolish
question!” cried Fritz’s mother, but the high court councilor smiled a very
peculiar smile and softly said, “Am I not after all a master watchmaker?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet people are wondering if I can even
build a simple mousetrap.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The Fairy Tale about the Hard Nut
Continued<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">“Now you know
children,” resumed High Court Councilor Drosselmeier the following evening,
“now you know, children, exactly why the queen had the exquisitely beautiful
little Princess Pirlipat so solicitously watched over. Was she not compelled to
fear that Mistress Mauserinks would carry out her threat, and bite the little
princess to death? Drosselmeier’s machines were of no use whatsoever against
the shrewd and clever Mistress Mauserinks, but the astronomer royal, who was
also an augur and an astrologer, claimed as a certainty that tomcats of the
Purr family were capable of keeping Mistress Mauserinks away from the cradle;
and it was for this reason that each of the nurses held a son of this
family—who had meanwhile been engaged as undersecretaries for foreign affairs
by the court—in her lap, and was obliged to try through judicious petting to
alleviate some of the tediousness of his service to the State. One night on the
very stroke of twelve, one of the two head-nurses sitting right next to the
cradle awoke with a start as if from a profound slumber. The entire room was
fast asleep: nary a purr could be heard; the silence was so profoundly dead
that you could make out the pecking of the woodworms against the background of
it!—but imagine the shock the head nurse got when right under her nose she
beheld a large and extremely hideous mouse standing erect on its hind legs and
already nuzzling the princess’s face with its repulsive muzzle. With a
horrified shriek she leapt to her feet; everybody else immediately woke up, but
by then Mistress Mauserinks (for the large mouse in Pirlipat’s cradle had been
none other than she) was dashing towards one of the corners of the room. The
undersecretaries rushed after her, but too late—she had vanished through a
crack in the floor. All the uproar woke up little Pirlipat, who began crying
most pitiably. ‘Thank Heaven!” exclaimed the nurses: ‘she’s alive.’ But how
great was their horror when they glanced at Pirlipat and noticed what had
become of the tender, lovely little infant! In place of her roseate little
angel’s head crowned with golden tresses, a disproportionately large, misshapen
giant’s noggin sat atop the scrunched-up body of a diminutive hunchback; her
wee button eyes of clearest azure had metamorphosed into a pair of huge,
goggling green bug eyes, and her delicate little mouth had been distended into
a hideous rictus stretching from ear to ear. The queen in her woe and
lamentation was fain to die; and the king’s study had to be lined with padded
rugs because he now did nothing but run over and over again headfirst into its
walls while exclaiming in an exceedingly lugubrious tone, ‘Oh what an
unfortunate monarch am I!’ Although he now readily perceived that he would have
done better to eat lard-free sausages and leave Mistress Mauserinks and her
kindred in peace under the stove, it never occurred to him to admit as much;
instead, he simply laid all the blame for his calamity on his watchmaker
royal-cum-china manufacturer, Christian Elias Drosselmeier from Nuremberg. In
this spirit, he sagely decreed that unless within the next four weeks
Drosselmeier restored Princess Pirlipat to her former condition or at least
prescribed an infallible means of effecting this restoration, he was to suffer
an ignominious death under the executioner’s axe. Drosselmeier was more than
mildly terrified; but for all that, he did not scruple to stake his future on
his luck and his professional skill, and he immediately set to work on the
operation that first struck him as likely to be effectual. With great dexterity
he took little Princess Pirlipat apart, unscrewed her little hands and feet,
and forthwith examined her inner structure; but to his disappointment he
discovered that the Princess would keep getting more grotesque as she grew up,
and he was at an utter loss what to say or do about this problem. He carefully
put the princess back together and sank dejectedly to the floor before her
cradle, which he was forbidden to leave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>By now the fourth week had arrived; indeed, it was already Wednesday,
and the king stopped by the nursery to glare at him with rage-enkindled eyes
and wave his scepter menacingly at him as he cried, ‘Christian Elias
Drosselmeier, cure the princess, or thou needs must die!’ Drosselmeier then
began to weep bitterly, but little Princess Pirlipat gaily cracked nuts. For
the first time the china manufacturer was struck by Pirlipat’s unusual appetite
for nuts, and by the coincidental circumstance that she had come into the world
with a full set of miniature teeth. In point of fact, just after her metamorphosis
she would not stop crying until by chance somebody offered her a nut, which she
promptly cracked open; then she devoured its contents and immediately calmed
down. And since then the nurses had found that nothing but nuts would do the
trick of pacifying her. ‘Oh holy instinct of nature, eternally inscrutable
mutual sympathy of all beings!’ cried Johann Elias Drosselmeier: ‘thou hast
pointed me to the door of the mystery; I will knock, and it will open.’ He
immediately asked for permission to speak with the astronomer royal, to whom
under heavy guard he was then led. The two gentlemen embraced amid much
weeping, for they were intimate friends; then they withdrew into a secret
closet and consulted numerous books treating of instinct, of sympathies and
antipathies and other mysterious subjects. Night settled in; the astronomer
royal gazed at the stars, and with the help of Drosselmeier, who was also
highly skilled in this art, he cast Princess Pirlipat’s horoscope. This was no
easy task, for the orbits of her stars and planets kept getting more and more
tangled up in each other the longer they studied them; but eventually—O joy of
joys!—it became clear to them that to undo the spell that was disfiguring her
and regain her former beauty the princess needed only to partake of the sweet
kernel of the krakatuk nut.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The krakatuk nut
had such a hard shell that a forty eight-pound cannon could run over it without
breaking it. And yet according to the horoscope, this selfsame hard nut would
have to be bitten open in the presence of the princess by a man who had never
before shaved or worn boots, and who was subsequently supposed to proffer to
her the nut’s kernel while keeping his eyes shut. Only after then taking seven
steps backward without stumbling would the young man be permitted to open his
eyes. Drosselmeier had been working with the astronomer for three days and
three nights straight, and the king was just sitting down to lunch on Saturday,
when Drosselmeier, who was scheduled to be beheaded at the crack of dawn the
following day, dashed flush with joy and jubilation into the dining-hall and
announced the means he had discovered of restoring to Princess Pirlipat her
lost beauty. The king embraced him with hearty goodwill, and promised him a
diamond-studded sword, four medals, and two new Sunday coats. ‘Right after
lunch,’ he chummily added, ‘we’ll get to work; see to it, my dear china
manufacturer, that the requisite krakatuk nut-bearing unshaven young fellow in
low-tops is ready to hand, and don’t let him touch a drop of wine before the
job, lest he stumble while doing that seven-step crabwalk; afterwards he can
drink himself into a stupor if he likes.’ Drosselmeier was mightily dismayed by
this little speech of the king, to whom he only just managed to stammer out
amid much quaking and quailing that although the hard nut and the young man
with the powerful bite had been definitively ascertained as the means to effect
the desired retransformation, it nonetheless remained a matter of some doubt
whether the nut and the nutcracker themselves could ever be found. Incensed in
the extreme, the king brandished his scepter high in the air, above the top of
his crown, and exclaimed in a leonine roar, ‘Then be it on your own head!’
Luckily for the fear and sorrow-stricken Drosselmeier, the king had very much
enjoyed his lunch on that day and was therefore more disposed than usual to
give audience to rational arguments; arguments with which the magnanimous queen
did not neglect to ply her husband, moved as she was by Drosselmeier’s plight.
Drosselmeier himself eventually screwed up enough courage to point out that he
had after all accomplished in full the task that had been assigned to
him—namely, that of specifying the means by which the princess was to be
cured—and had consequently earned the privilege of continuing to live. The king
dismissed this remonstration as mere artless quibbling and idle twaddle, but in
the end, after drinking a glass of stomach-tonic, he resolved that the
watchmaker and the astronomer should hit the road and not return until they had
bagged an authentic krakatuk nut. Meanwhile, in an arrangement devised by the
queen, the nut-biter would be procured by way of a series of summonses to be
run as advertisements in the major newspapers and intelligence-gazettes both at
home and abroad.” Here the high court councilor once again left off, and he
promised to tell them the rest of the tale the following evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The Fairy Tale about the Hard Nut
Concluded<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">And indeed, first
thing the following evening, right after the candles had been lit, Godfather
Drosselmeier turned up again and resumed his tale thus: “Drosselmeier and the
astronomer royal spent fifteen whole years on the road without managing to
track down the krakatuk nut. I could fill four entire weeks telling you
children all about the places they passed through and all the strange and
peculiar things that happened to them during this period; in lieu of that,
though, I shall content myself with saying that at the end of those fifteen
years, in the midst of his despondency over the nut, Drosselmeier was suddenly
seized by a profound yearning for his beloved native city of Nuremburg. This
yearning came upon him with especial acuity on one occasion in particular, when
he and his friend were smoking a little pipe of shag tobacco in the middle of a
huge forest in Asia. ‘O fair native city of Nuremburg—fair city: he who thee
lately has not seen—wheresoever else he may have been, from London to Paris to
Petrovaradeen—must find his own heart a cold and empty shell; within thy walls
he always longs to dwell—within the walls of Nuremberg, fair city, whose
windowed houses look so pretty.’ As Drosselmeier carried on in this exceedingly
lugubrious vein, the astronomer was sympathetically overcome by his friend’s
sorrow and launched into a moan so reverberantly pathetic that it could be
heard throughout the length and breadth of Asia. But he presently recovered his
composure, wiped the tears from his eyes, and asked, ‘But why, my esteemed
colleague, are we sitting here moaning? Why don’t we just go to Nuremberg; for
after all, does it really make any difference where or how we look for this
blasted krakatuk nut?’ ‘No, I guess it doesn’t,’ replied Drosselmeier, who was
much consoled by his friend’s reflection. The two men instantly stood up,
emptied their pipes, and straightaway made a beeline out of the forest in the
middle of Asia and towards Nuremburg. As soon as they got there, Drosselmeier
dashed off to visit his cousin, the doll-maker, varnisher, and gilder Christoph
Zacharias Drosselmeier, whom he had not seen in many, many years, and to whom
the watchmaker now related the entire history of Princess Pirlipat, Mistress
Mauserinks, and the kraktuk nut, during which tale Christoph Zacharias
repeatedly clapped his hands and exclaimed in astonishment, ‘Ah cousin, cousin:
what marvelous events are these!’ Drosselmeier also told him about the
adventures he had met with during his extensive travels—about how he had spent
two years at the court of the Date King, how he had been haughtily refused an
audience by the Almond Prince, how he had futilely consulted the scientific
researchers at the Acorn Institute—in short, about all the ways and places in
which he had failed to catch the faintest whiff of a trail to the krakatuk nut.
During this second narrative, Christoph Zacharias frequently snapped his
fingers, pivoted about on one foot, clicked his tongue, and followed up this
series of movements with an ejaculation of ‘Hm hm—ee—ai—oh—speak of the devil!’
Finally he threw his wig and cap into the air and cried, ‘Cousin, cousin! You
may put your mind at ease; at ease may your mind be put, I tell you; for as
sure as I’ve ever been right about anything, I know I’m in possession of the
very krakatuk nut of which you have been speaking.’ Whereupon he produced a box
from which he pulled out a gilded nut that was no bigger or smaller than a nut
usually is. ‘You see,’ he said, while showing the nut to his cousin; ‘You see,
there’s a rather interesting story behind this nut. Once many years ago there
came to Nuremberg at Christmastime a strange man with a bag full of nuts, nuts
that he was offering for sale. Directly in front of my puppet stall in the town
market, he got into a fight, and he put the bag down in order to defend himself
more capably against his opponent, our local nut-vendor, who had pounced on the
stranger because he did not want him selling nuts here. At that moment a
heavily laden wagon drove over the bag; all the nuts inside it were smashed to
bits—all, that is, except one, which the strange man, smiling a peculiar smile,
offered to sell for a single shiny twenty-thaler coin from the year 1720.
Miraculously enough, I discovered a twenty-thaler piece from that very year in
my wallet, and I bought the nut without quite knowing why I was willing to pay
so much for it; then I gilded it without quite knowing why I thought it
deserved such an honor.’ Any suspicion that Cousin Cristoph’s nut might not be
the sought-after krakatuk nut after all vanished the instant it was examined by
the astronomer royal, who had been summoned to the doll-maker’s house and who,
after scraping the gold shell of the nut clean, descried on its surface the
word <i>krakatuk</i> engraved in Chinese characters. The delight of the
travelers was boundless, and Cousin Christoph was the happiest man under the
sun when Drosselmeier averred to him that his fortune was made, in that in
addition to a handsome pension he would from now on be receiving as much
gilding-gold as he needed for free. Both the china-manufacturer and the
astronomer had already donned their nightcaps and were about to go to bed, when
the latter—namely the astronomer—remarked, ‘Esteemed and most worthy colleague,
good things only ever happen in pairs. Is it not possible that we have
discovered here not only the krakatuk nut but also the young man who will bite
it open and restore the princess’s beauty? The youth I am referring to is none
other than the son of your esteemed cousin! No,’ he enthusiastically continued:
‘I refuse to sleep a wink; rather, I shall devote tonight to casting this young
man’s horoscope, which I am determined to have finished doing by dawn.’
Whereupon he tore off his nightcap and immediately began his observation of the
heavens. Cousin Christoph’s son did indeed happen to be a tall, attractive
youth who had never either shaved or worn boots. Granted, in his early
adolescence he had performed a stint as a jumping-jack for a few consecutive
Christmases, but nobody ever held this against him, for the performance had
merely been a part and consequence of the painstaking course of study his
father had imposed on him. On all twelve days of each of these Christmases he
wore an outfit consisting of a beautiful gold-trimmed scarlet coat, a sword, a
hat—which he kept off his head and tucked under one arm—and an exquisitely
coiffed bag wig. Thus resplendently attired he would stand in his father’s
stall and crack open nuts for young girls out of instinctive chivalry, in
recognition of which service the girls sweetly dubbed him the Handsome Little
Nutcracker. The next morning the astronomer exultantly threw his arms around
the china-manufacturer and cried, ‘He’s the one! We’ve got him! We’ve found
him! My dearest colleague, there are only two things we must make sure of.
First of all, you’ve got to braid your excellent nephew a sturdy wooden pigtail
to be attached to his lower jawbone in such a fashion that the latter can be
raised and lowered with great speed and vigor; next, when we go to the palace
we must take great care not to let on that we have brought the young nut-biter
along with us; he must arrive some time after us. I have read in the horoscope
that after a few unsuccessful dental attempts on the nut, the king will promise
the hand of the princess and succession to the throne to whoever bites open the
nut and restores to the princess her lost beauty.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cousin Cristoph the doll-maker was highly
gratified that his little son was to marry Princess Pirlipat and become a
prince and a king, and without hesitation he confided the boy to the exclusive
care of the two emissaries. The pigtail that Drosselmeier attached to the jaw
of his young and promising nephew worked amazingly well, enabling him to
pulverize spectacularly the super-tough peach-stones on which he was practicing
his biting skills. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">No sooner did
Drosselmeier and the astronomer inform the royal court of their discovery of
the krakatuk nut than the necessary summonses were issued, and by the time the
travelers arrived at the palace with the magic restorative of beauty in hand,
the royal residence was already teeming with scads of extremely handsome young
men, some of whom were even princes and all of whom wanted to employ their
healthy young chops in an attempt at reversing the spell on the princess. The
emissaries were more than slightly appalled when they beheld the princess for
the first time in sixteen years. Her little body with its tiny hands and feet
could scarcely bear the weight of her huge, shapeless head. The hideousness of
her face was compounded by a thick white cotton moustache-and-beard that had
sprouted from her upper lip and chin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everything the astronomer had read in the horoscope came to pass. One
shoe-shod greenhorn after another bit his teeth and jaws sore on the nut without
doing the princess the slightest good, and afterwards, as he was dragged away
half unconscious to the dentist in attendance, each of them would sigh, ‘That’s
a hard nut to crack!’ When desperation finally prompted the king to promise his
daughter and kingdom to anyone who succeeded in breaking the spell, the polite
and mild-mannered Drosselmeier boy came forward and asked for permission to
begin his attempt. Princess Pirlipat had not fancied any of the other
contenders nearly as much as she did young Drosselmeier; she clasped her tiny
hands to her heart and ardently sighed, ‘Ah, if only <i>he</i> should be the
one finally to bite open the krakatuk nut, and to become my husband!’ After
saluting the king, queen, and, finally, Princess Pirlipat, with courtly grace,
young Drosselmeier received the krakatuk nut from the hands of the master of
ceremonies, placed it between his teeth without further ado, gave a hefty tug
to his pigtail, and—crack! crack!—the shell of the nut crumbled into a heap of
fragments. He deftly picked the kernel clean of the fibers of the inner
integument that still clung to it, then handed it over to the princess with a
low ceremonial bow, and finally shut his eyes and began walking backwards. The
princess directly swallowed the kernel and—o wonder of wonders!—the deformed
figure vanished, and in its place appeared a young woman of angelic beauty
whose face seemed to have been woven from flocks of lilywhite and rose-red
silk, whose eyes were as dazzlingly blue as the sky, whose full lustrous
tresses were like crimped filaments of gold. The music of trumpets and
kettledrums mingled with the uproarious jubilation of the crowd of spectators.
The king and all his courtiers danced about on one leg each just as they had
done on the day of Pirlipat’s birth, and eau de cologne had to be administered
to the queen because she had fallen into a swoon for sheer joy and delight. All
this hullabaloo was more than slightly detrimental to the concentration of
young Drosselmeier, who had yet to complete his sequence of steps, but he
retained enough composure to continue all the way to the seventh and final one,
which he was just extending his right foot to execute when who should emerge
from beneath the floor but Mistress Mauserinks, squeaking and squealing in a
most hideous timbre; such that when Drosselmeier lowered his foot he stepped on
her and stumbled so precipitately that he very nearly fell over. And then—o
misfortune of misfortunes!—all of a sudden the young man became as deformed as
the princess had been a few minutes earlier. His body was wizened and shriveled
and could scarcely bear the weight of his fat, misshapen head with its large,
bulging eyes and broad, gaping mouth. In place of the pigtail, there now hung
along his back a short wooden cape with which he controlled the movement of his
lower jaw. The watchmaker and astronomer were beside themselves with terror and
revulsion at this metamorphosis, but for all that they could not help taking in
the simultaneous spectacle of Mistress Mauserinks wallowing on the floor in her
own blood. Her wickedness had not gone unavenged, for the sharp heel of young
Drosselmeier’s shoe had cut into her neck so forcefully that she was bound to
die of the wound. But even in the midst of her death throes she squeaked and
squealed most pitiably, ‘O super-hard nut krakatuk, thou brings’t an end to all
my luck. Nutcracker you’ll receive your boon: you too will be in death’s hands
soon; my seven-crownèd little son will pay you back for what you’ve done; his
mother’s vengeance he’ll secure; of that, Nutcracker, do be sure. O life, so
fresh and red to see, how loathly am I torn from thee!’ With this cry Mistress
Mauserinks expired and was removed by the royal stove-heater. Meanwhile
everybody had quite forgotten about young Drosselmeier; but by and by the
princess reminded the king of his promise, whereupon he immediately ordered the
young hero to be brought into the royal presence. But when the unfortunate
young man stepped forward in all his misshapenness, the princess covered her
face with both hands and screamed, ‘Away, away, with this abominable
nutcracker!’ And with that the court marshal seized him by his diminutive
shoulders and flung him out of the front door of the palace. The king was flush
with rage at the thought that a nutcracker had been presented to him as a
prospective son-in-law; he blamed the whole debacle on the ineptitude of the
watchmaker and the astronomer and banished them both from his court for all
time. The fact that none of these misfortunes had been mentioned in the
horoscope he had cast at Nuremberg did nothing to deter the astronomer from
once again consulting the stars, which he construed as predicting that young
Drosselmeier would acquit himself so well in his new station in life that he
would become a prince and king despite his disfigurement. But the disfigurement
would vanish only after he had slain the king of the mice—a title to be assumed
by the seven-headed son born to Mistress Mauserinks after the death of her
first seven sons—and won the heart of a lady in spite of his unprepossessing
shape. And indeed at subsequent Christmases young Drosselmeier has been
allegedly sighted at his father’s stall at Nuremburg, where he is said to carry
on his old vocation of nutcracker—but now with the regal bearing of a prince!
That, children, is the fairy tale about the hard nut, and now you know why
people so often say that somebody or something ‘is a hard nut to crack,’ and
how nutcrackers came to be so hideous.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thus the high court
councilor concluded his tale. Marie was of the opinion that Princess Pirlipat
was basically nothing but an ungrateful little so-and-so; Fritz for his part
assured her that if Nutcracker would just start acting like a brave fellow, he
would make short work of the king of the mice and get back his old handsome
face and body straight-away.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Uncle and Nephew<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">If any of my most
highly honored readers or listeners has ever been unlucky enough to cut himself
on a piece of glass, he will know at first hand how painful it is when it is
happening, as well as what a nasty business it tends to make for one
afterwards, in that it takes such a long time for the wound to heal. But on top
of these vexations, Marie had to stay in bed for almost a full week, because
every time she tried to get up, she would immediately feel violently dizzy. At
long last, though, she recovered completely, and felt quite well enough to
gambol about the sitting room as merrily as she had done before the accident.
The glass cabinet presented an exquisitely lovely appearance, for its shelves
were lined with brand new-looking trees and flowers and houses and beautiful
dolls in dazzling attire. But none of these objects delighted Marie nearly as
much as the rediscovery of her Nutcracker standing on the second shelf and
grinning at her through two uninterrupted rows of perfectly straight little
teeth. As she was joyously gazing at her darling, she suddenly realized with an
anxious tremor of the heart that everything that Godfather Drosselmeier had
related during those three nights at her bedside had been nothing less than the
prehistory of <i>this</i> nutcracker’s quarrel with Mistress Mauserinks and her
son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now she knew that her Nutcracker
could be none other than young Drosselmeier from Nuremberg, Godfather
Drosselmeier’s charming but regrettably witch-cursed nephew. For at no point
during her godfather’s tale had she doubted that the expert watchmaker at the
court of Pirlipat’s father had been High Court Councilor Drosselmeier himself.
“But why then didn’t your uncle help you; why didn’t he help you?” Marie
wailed, as it became ever more keenly apparent to her that in the battle she
had witnessed Nutcracker had been fighting to save his kingdom and crown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For after all, were not all the rest of the
dolls now his subjects, and hence had the astronomer royal’s prophecy not been
fulfilled, and young Drosselmeier not become king of the realm of dolls?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the course of pondering all these matters
so thoroughly, clever Marie also came sincerely to believe that if she merely
credited Nutcracker and his vassals with life and the power of motion, they
would immediately come to life and start moving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this did not happen; rather, the dolls
remained standing there impassive and motionless, and Marie, far from
renouncing her deep conviction in her own animating power, simply blamed their
catatonia on the lingering influence of the spell Mistress Mauserinks and her
seven-headed son had cast on them. “And yet,” she said aloud to the nutcracker,
“even if you are incapable of moving or uttering a single word to me, dear Mr.
Drosselmeier, I still know that you understand me and know how much I am
looking out for you; you can count on my help if you need it. At the very least
I intend to ask your uncle to rush to your aid with his expertise the next time
you are in a fix.” Nutcracker remained silent and composed, but it seemed to
Marie that he was breathing a gentle sigh through the glass doors of the
cabinet, which thereupon seemed to sing in a tiny tintinnabulatory voice the
scarcely audible words: “Oh little Marie, protectress of me: yours shall I be,
my little Marie.” The blood-chilling shudders that now shook Marie’s frame
paradoxically imbued her with a curious but pronounced sense of well-being.
Dusk had set in; the public health officer entered the house in the company of
Godfather Drosselmeier, and it was not long before Luise had set the tea-table
and the family were all sitting around it and conversing about all manner of
mirthful topics. During the first general lull in the conversation, Marie fixed
her big blue eyes directly on Godfather Drosselmeier’s and said, “I now know,
dear Godfather Drosselmeier, that my Nutcracker is your nephew, young
Drosselmeier from Nuremburg; that he has actually become a prince, or, rather,
a king, as your companion the astronomer predicted; but you of course know that
he is now involved in a war to the death with Mistress Mauserinks’s son, the
hideous king of the mice. Why won’t you help him?” Marie now once again
recounted the entire history of the battle and of how she had come to witness
it, although numerous times she was forced to leave off by the peals of raucous
laughter her tale elicited from her mother and Luise. Of all present only Fritz
and Godfather Drosselmeier seemed completely unamused. “Where ever does the
girl get all these crazy notions from?” asked the public health officer.
“Well,” replied the girl’s mother, “you know she has a very active imagination,
but these particular products of it are just daydreams she had under the
powerful influence of septic fever.” “The whole story is a lie,” said Fritz:
“my red hussars—by Pasha Manelka’s wounds!—are by no means such cowards as she
makes them out to be, as I could show you in any pitched battle.” But now
Godfather Drosselmeier smiled a peculiar smile, picked up little Marie, set her
down on his lap, and said more gently than ever before, “Ah, our dear Marie is
more blessed by fortune than everybody else here including me: like Pirlipat,
you, Marie, are a born princess, for you reign unchallenged in a kingdom of
shimmering beauty. But much suffering awaits you if you take our poor misshapen
Nutcracker under your protection, for the king of the mice is determined to
destroy him by hook or by crook. But I cannot save him; you and you alone can
do so; be steadfast and true.” Neither Marie nor anybody else understood what
he meant by these words; and the public health officer found them so odd that
he checked Drosselmeier’s pulse and said, “My dear friend, your blood is
strongly congested towards your head; I shall prescribe you something.” But the
public health officer’s wife thoughtfully shook her head and softly said, “I have
something like a notion of what the high court councilor means, only I can’t
quite put it into words.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>Victory</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">One moonlit night
not long afterwards, Marie was awoken by a strange racket that seemed to be
coming from a corner of the room. It sounded like tiny pebbles being rolled and
tossed to and fro, interspersed with a truly nauseating succession of squeaks
and squeals. “Ah, the mice, the mice are coming back!” Marie exclaimed in
terror, and she wished with all her heart to wake up her mother; but every
sound she tried to make stuck in her throat, and every muscle she tried to move
refused to budge, as she beheld the king of the mice, complete with seven
scintillating crowns and seven scintillating pairs of eyes, emerging from a
hole in the wall, circling the room along the wainscoting, and finally leaping
in a single mighty bound from the floor on to the little table right beside
Marie’s bed. “Hee-hee-hee, little girl: give me all your sugar peas and your
marzipan, or I’ll bite your nutcracker in two—in two!” Thus squealed the king
of the mice, snapping and gnashing his teeth all the while, before dashing
straight back to and through the hole in the wall. Marie was so terrified by
this ghastly vision that next morning her face was as pale as could be, and on
the inside she was thoroughly discomposed, almost too confused to utter a
single word. A hundred times she was on the point of telling her mother or
Luise or at least Fritz what had happened to her, but each of these times she
was checked by this thought: “Will any of them believe me anyway, and won’t
they all laugh me out of the room besides?” But one thing was quite clear to
her: if she wanted to save Nutcracker’s life, she would have to hand over her
sugar peas and marzipan to the king of the mice. Accordingly, the following
evening she placed her entire store of these two confections at the foot of the
toy-cabinet. In the morning the public health officer’s wife said, “I don’t
know where all these mice that have suddenly appeared in our sitting room are
coming from. Look, Marie, my poor child!—they have eaten up all your candy.”
Indeed most of the candy was now gone; although for all his voracity the king
of the mice had not found the stuffed marzipan quite to his liking and so had
merely nibbled at it with his sharp teeth, such that it was inedible anyhow and
would have to be thrown away. But Marie was far from being at all upset about
the candy; to the contrary, she was immeasurably delighted because from its
disappearance she inferred that her Nutcracker’s life had been saved. But just
imagine how she felt when the following night she heard something squeaking and
squealing right next to her ear. It was once again the king of the mice; his
eyes were scintillating even more abominably, and he was squeaking even more
revoltingly through his teeth, than two nights before. “Give me your sugar
dolls and gum dragon dolls, little girl, or I’ll bite your nutcracker in two,
in two!” were his words this time, and then he once again dashed off. Marie was
quite distraught; next morning, she went to the cabinet and gazed with the most
woebegone expression at her little sugar dolls and gum dragon dolls. But she
was well within her rights to be upset; for you, the other Marie, my attentive
auditress, can only begin to imagine what a superlatively lovely collection of
sugar and gum dragon figurines little Marie Stahlbaum possessed. Right abreast
of an adorable shepherd who in company with his shepherdess was grazing a
complete herd of tiny milk-white sheep round whom his little sheepdog friskily
leaped about; right abreast of this shepherd, I say, two postmen trudged along
with letters in their hands, and four adorable little couples—four sprucely
attired swains and four resplendently groomed maidens—swung to and fro in a
Russian swing-set. Then, behind a small group of dancers, were Farmer Caraway
and the Maid of Orleans, neither of whom Marie cared very much about; but even
farther back, in one of the rear corners of the shelf, stood a rosy-cheeked
little boy whom she loved more than all the others; and as Marie sighted him
her eyes welled up with tears. “Ah,” she cried, turning to Nutcracker: “dear
Mr. Drosselmeier, you know I’m doing everything in my power to try to save you;
but it’s really hard!” Yet so tearful was the expression on Nutcracker’s face,
and so vivid in her mind was the image of king of the mice’s seven sets of jaws
agape to devour the unfortunate youth, that Marie resolved to sacrifice her
entire collection to the loathsome rodent. And so that evening she did the same
with the little sugar dolls as she had done with the candy: she set them at the
foot of the cabinet. She kissed the shepherd, the shepherdess, the lambkins,
and finally pulled her favorite, the rosy-cheeked little gum dragon boy, out of
his corner; though she then placed him at the very back of the group on the
floor. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Farmer Caraway and the Maid of
Orleans, on the other hand, were obliged to stand in the first row. “No, this
is too much,” cried the public health officer’s wife next morning: “there
really must be some mouse of monstrously huge size living in the glass cabinet,
because all of Marie’s lovely little sugar dolls have been gnawed and chewed to
pieces.” Marie naturally could not forbear weeping at first, but she was soon
all smiles again upon thinking, “What difference does it make as long as
Nutcracker’s life has been saved?” That evening, as Marie’s mother was telling
the high court councilor about the mischief that a mouse had wrought in the
children’s glass cabinet, the public health officer said, “It’s a truly
abominable pity that we can’t manage to exterminate this rotten mouse that has
gotten up to so much mischief in the glass cabinet and devoured all of poor
Marie’s candy.” “Hey,” Fritz merrily chimed in: “the baker downstairs has a
really first-rate gray undersecretary for foreign affairs that I’ll go borrow
for us. This undersecretary will put an end to the whole thing straight away by
biting the head off the awful mouse, whether she is Mistress Mauserinks herself
or her son, the king of the mice.” “And not only will he take care of the
mouse,” said the public health officer’s wife with a laugh, “but he’ll also
jump all over our chairs and tables, and overturn cups and glasses, and cause a
thousand other kinds of damage.” “No, he won’t,” dissented Fritz: “the baker’s
undersecretary is a highly capable fellow; I’d give anything to be able to walk
along pointy rooftops as gracefully as him.” “Please, let us not have any cats
prowling around here at night,” pleaded Luise, who could not stand cats. “In
all fairness,” said the public health officer, “in all fairness, Fritz’s idea of
getting a cat is a very good one; for now, though, let us try setting a trap.
Haven’t we got one?” “We really should get Godfather Drosselmeier to make us
one,” cried Fritz, “for after all he invented the thing.” Everybody laughed,
and in the wake of the public health officer’s wife’s subsequent assurances
that not a single mousetrap was to be found in the entire house, the high court
councilor announced that he owned several machines of that sort, and he
immediately had a truly first-rate mousetrap brought over from his lodgings. At
this point Fritz and Marie realized that they were about to witness in the
living present the events of their godfather’s fairy tale about the hard nut.
While their cook Dottie was grilling the lard, Marie quivered and trembled, her
imagination suffused with the tale and its marvels, and she said to this simple
woman whom she had known all her life, “Ah, your majesty, my queen, beware of
Mistress Mauserinks and her family.” Fritz, for his part, had drawn his trusty
broadsword, and he said, “I wish they’d show their snouts right now, because
I’m just itching for a chance to wipe one of them out.” But not a creature
stirred either on or beneath the stove. Next, after the high court councilor
had secured the lard with a piece of thin thread and gently, ever so gently,
placed the trap at the foot of the glass cabinet, Fritz cried, “Make sure,
Godfather Watchmaker, that the king of the mice doesn’t play any tricks on
you.” But oh, what a horrible night the following one was for Marie! She woke
up to ice-cold shivers rippling up and down her arm, and a nauseatingly scraggy
something brushing against her cheek, and a telltale succession of squeaks and
squeals sounding in her ear. The abominable king of the mice was actually
sitting on her shoulder, drooling blood from all seven of his mouths, and
gnashing and snapping his teeth, as he hissed in the ear of the
terror-and-horror-stricken Marie: “Tee-hee, tee-hee, I’m not coming to tea!
You’ll never catch me, tee-hee! Give me all your picture-books, your little
dress too, or you’ll never get a minute’s rest. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if all this you fail to do, your little
Nutcracker will be bit in two, and then you’ll sure be feeling blue. Tee-hee,
tee-hee, squeak, squeak!" Now Marie was full of sorrow and sadness; she
looked quite wan and perturbed when next morning her mother said, “That naughty
mouse still hasn’t been caught,” whereupon her mother, believing that Marie’s
pallor was owing to grief at the loss of her candy, continued, “but don’t
worry, my dear child: we’re bound to get rid of this awful mouse in the end. If
the traps don’t work, we’ll just have to let Fritz bring in his gray
undersecretary for foreign affairs.” No sooner did Marie find herself alone in
the sitting room than she stepped up to the glass cabinet, and sobbingly
addressed the nutcracker thus: “Ah my dear, worthy Mr. Drosselmeier, what can
I, a wretched unfortunate young girl, do for you? Suppose I do now offer up all
my picture-books, and even that lovely little new dress that the Holy Christ
Child gave me, to the teeth of the abominable king of the mice? Won’t he then
just keep asking for more and more things anyway, until I finally have nothing
left to give, and he tries to bite me instead of you in two? Oh, what ever am
I, poor child that I am, to do now? What ever am I to do now?” As little Marie
was bemoaning and lamenting her plight thus, she noticed that over the course
of the previous night Nutcracker had acquired a large spot of blood on his
neck. Since learning that her Nutcracker was actually the young nephew of the
high court councilor, she had stopped carrying him about and kissing and
cuddling him; indeed, out of a kind of bashfulness she had been reluctant even
to touch him; but now, she carefully took him off the shelf and began wiping
away the bloodstain from his neck with her handkerchief. But just imagine her
state of mind when she suddenly felt Nutcracker's body growing warm in her
hands, and then beginning to stir. Straight-away she set him back down on the
shelf, whereupon the little Nutcracker's tiny mouth started wobbling to and
fro, as he laboriously and softly murmured, "Ah, most worthy Mademoiselle
Stahlbaum, my dear and most excellent friend, how grateful I am for all that
you have done for me! But don't, please don't, sacrifice any picture-books or
Christmas dresses for my sake. Just find me a sword, a sword, I promise to take
care of the rest, no matter–” Here Nutcracker’s power of speech deserted him,
and his eyes ceased being animated by the most ardently wistful melancholy and
became cold and lifeless once again. But Marie felt not the slightest trace of
horror; to the contrary, she fairly leapt for joy at the realization that she
now had a means of saving Nutcracker without making any further aggrieving sacrifices
to the king of the mice. But where was she to get hold of a sword for the
little fellow? Marie decided to seek Fritz’s advice; and that evening, as the
two of them were sitting on their own in the sitting room before the glass
cabinet, she told him of all her experiences with Nutcracker and the king of
the mice, and of the need for someone to intervene to save Nutcracker’s life.
No part of Marie’s account made Fritz more gravely pensive than her report that
his hussars had been so badly routed in the battle. He asked her very earnestly
whether such a thing had actually happened, and after Marie gave him her word
that it actually had, Fritz marched briskly up to the cabinet and harangued his
hussars with great pathos; then, by way of punishing them for their selfishness
and cowardice, he snipped the insignias off their caps one by one, and forbade
them to play their regimental trumpet march at all during the next year. After
he had finished administering punishment to his troops, Fritz returned to Marie
and said, “As for the sword, I can fit the nutcracker out with one, because
just yesterday I gave an old colonel in my cuirassiers an honorable discharge
with a retirement pension, so he won’t be needing his fine, sharp saber any
longer.” The aforesaid colonel was spending his newly awarded retirement in one
of the rear corners of the third shelf. He was summarily fetched down and
forced to relinquish his splendid little silver saber, which was then slung
round the waist of Nutcracker.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Next night Marie
could not get to sleep for sheer panicked worry; round midnight, she fancied
she could hear a curious din of rustling and rattling somewhere in the room.
Then all of a sudden there came a loud “Squeak!” “The king of the mice, the king
of the mice!” cried Marie, leaping out of bed in terrified shock. Now all was
silent, and remained so for a while; but by and by there was a faint, faint
knock at the door, followed by a dainty little voice exclaiming, “Dearest
Mademoiselle Stahlbaum, I pray you, open up at once; I have wonderful, happy
tidings for you!” Marie recognized the voice as young Drosselmeier’s and
immediately threw on her nightgown and flung open the door. There in the
passageway stood little Nutcracker, holding a bloody sword in his right hand
and a wax candle in his left. As soon as he saw Marie, he fell to his knees and
said, “Dear lady! You alone steeled my knightly courage and gave my arm the
strength to do battle with the wanton villain who dared fleer and gibe at you.
The perfidious king of the mice now lies vanquished and writhing in his own
blood! Do not, I beseech you, dear lady, disdain to accept the trophies of this
victory from the hand of your eternally devoted knight!” Whereupon with
exemplary dexterity he shook the king of the mice’s seven golden crowns off his
left arm and into the hands of Marie, who received the diadems with boundless
joy. Nutcracker rose and continued thus: “Ah, worthiest Mademoiselle Stahlbaum,
what glorious sights I could reveal to you now that I have vanquished my foe,
if you should only deign to follow me for a few brief paces! Oh please do, most
worthy, worthy young lady; please do!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>The Kingdom of Dolls</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">I trust that on
this occasion not one of you children would have scrupled for an instant to
follow honest, good-natured Nutcracker, to whom nothing was more foreign than
an unkind thought. But Marie was all the more willing to follow him because she
was well aware of the extent of Nutcracker’s debt of gratitude to her, and was
confident that he would be as good as his word and indeed show her many a
glorious sight. Accordingly, she said to him, “I will go with you, Mr.
Drosselmeier, but you mustn’t take me very far, and I mustn’t be gone for very
long, because I certainly haven’t got anywhere near a full night’s rest yet.”
“For that very reason,” replied Nutcracker, “I have chosen the shortest route,
although it is somewhat arduous.” He led the way, and Marie followed him to the
vestibule of the house, where he drew to a halt before the enormous wardrobe
stationed there. Marie noticed to her astonishment that the doors of this
wardrobe, which were normally kept shut and locked, were now standing wide
open, so that she could distinctly see her father’s traveling coat of fox fur
hanging at the very front. With great agility, Nutcracker climbed on to the
bottom ledge and over its ridge of ornamental woodwork, so that he could reach
and lay hold of the great tassel attached to the end of a thick cord that hung
from the back of the fox-fur coat. Nutcracker gave a mighty tug to this tassel,
and immediately a very elegant flight of cedar-wood steps descended from the
coat’s nearer sleeve. “Will your ladyship very kindly ascend?” cried
Nutcracker. Marie would and did, but no sooner had she climbed through the
sleeve—no sooner was she gazing out at the coat’s collar—than she was met by a
flood of dazzlingly bright light, and suddenly found herself standing in a
vast, splendid meadow fragrant with the sweetest smells and sparkling with a
million tiny lights like so many scintillating precious stones. “We are now
standing in the Candy Meadow, said Nutcracker, “but we are just about to walk
through that gateway.” Now, upon raising her eyes, Marie first became aware of
the beautiful gateway rising from the meadow only a few paces ahead of them. It
looked as if it were made entirely of white, brown, and crimson–streaked
marble, but as Marie drew nearer to it she could clearly see that the entire
structure consisted of sugared almonds and raisins that had been fused together
by baking, for precisely which reason—so Nutcracker assured her, as they were
passing through the gateway—it was known as the Almond-and-Raisin Gate. Vulgar souls
very boorishly called it the Students’ Slop Portal. On a gallery built into
this gateway, a gallery made to all appearances out of barley-sugar, six little
monkeys in scarlet jackets performed janissary music of such unexampled beauty
that Marie scarcely noticed that she was steadily moving ever farther forward
into the meadow of parti-colored marble that was really nothing more than an
exquisitely wrought tissue of sweetmeats. By and by she was wafted by the
sweetest aromas, which emanated from a marvelous little forest that was
unfolding on either side of their path. The gloom of the foliage was shot
through here and there and from time to time by tiny flashes of light that
shone so brightly that during their brief term one could clearly see fruits of
gold and silver dangling from brilliantly parti-colored branches, and
tree-trunks and boughs festooned with ribbons and bunches of flowers, like so
many betrothed couples and their merry wedding guests. And when the draughts of
fragrance emanating from the orange trees began soughing like undulating
zephyrs, they set the twigs and the leaves stirring and the tinsel crinkling
and tinkling in a way that sounded just like jubilant music, to whose
accompaniment the scintillating little points of light could not help frisking
about and dancing. “Ah, how lovely it is here!” cried Marie for sheer
overwhelming bliss and delight. “We are in the Christmas Forest, most worthy
young lady,” said little Nutcracker. “Ah,” Marie continued, “If only I could
linger here for just a little while! Oh, it’s really too lovely by half here.”
Nutcracker clapped his little hands and straight-away they were approached by a
small band of tiny shepherds and shepherdesses and hunters and huntresses who
were so white that one might have thought they were made of pure sugar, and
whom Marie hitherto had not noticed, even though they had been roaming about
the forest all the while. They brought up to Marie a delightful armchair of
pure gold, laid a white licorice cushion on its seat, and with courtly
politeness invited her to be seated. No sooner had she done so than the
shepherds and shepherdesses launched into a very nicely choreographed ballet,
which was most genteelly accompanied by the hunters on their horns and
trumpets. “I beg your pardon, most worthy Mademoiselle Stahlbaum,” said
Nutcracker, “I beg your pardon, for the miserable quality of the dancing; but
those people all hailed from our automated ballet corps, who are incapable of
doing anything but the same steps over and over again, and there is likewise an
explanation for the somnolence and insipidity of the hunters’ trumpeting. You
see, while the sugar-basket does indeed hang above their nose in the Christmas
trees, it is suspended from a rather great height! But shall we not walk a bit
farther?” “Ah, it was all very nice indeed, and I liked it so very much!” said
Marie as she rose from the chair and set off behind Nutcracker, who was already
leading the way forward. They were walking along a sweetly rushing and
whispering stream from which all the glorious fragrances that pervaded the
entire forest seemed to be wafting. “It is the Orange Stream,” said Nutcracker
in reply to Marie’s query about it, “but for all its fragrance, it cannot
compare in point of breadth and beauty with the Lemonade River, which likewise
empties into the Almond-Milk Sea.” And in point of fact, very soon afterwards
Marie became aware of a pronounced rushing and babbling sound as her gaze
alighted upon the broad course of the Lemonade River, which meandered along in
proud, cream-colored rapids surging between carbuncles of a vividly
incandescent green. A breeze of exceptional coolness, fortifying to heart and
lungs alike, billowed up from the noble current. Not far from it a creek of
deep yellow-hued waters plodded laboriously along; on its banks were seated all
manner of adorable little children angling for plump little fishes that were no
sooner caught than devoured. On drawing nearer Marie noticed that these fish
looked like hazelnuts. A short distance away and beside this river lay an
exceedingly pretty little village; all its buildings—houses, church, parsonage,
barns—were dark brown in color, yet adorned with golden roofs, and many of the
walls were so colorfully painted that it looked as though whole candied
lemon-peels and almonds had been applied to them. That is Gingerbreadville,”
said Nutcracker, “which lies on the banks of the Honey River; its inhabitants
are quite charming but also generally rather ill-tempered, because they suffer
from the most horrible toothaches, and so I don’t think we should even stop by
there.” At that moment Marie noticed a little town composed of a colorful
assortment of houses that were both literally transparent and charming to
behold. Nutcracker made straight for the town; and Marie heard a ridiculously
loud din like that of a celebrating crowd as they approached its market square,
where she beheld thousands of overladen carts—like so many dainty little people—stopping,
trying to unload, and just on the point of unloading. But to all appearances,
their cargo entirely consisted of brightly colored pieces of paper and of bars
of chocolate. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“We are in Bonbonton,”
said Nutcracker, “where a consignment from Paperland and the Chocolate King has
just arrived. The poor Bonbontonians were recently badly menaced by the Admiral
of the Gnats, and this is why they are now covering their houses with the
presents from Paperland and erecting fortifications made of the sturdy
wall-segments sent to them by the Chocolate King. But most worthy Mademoiselle
Stahlbaum, we simply haven’t the time to visit every little town and village in
this country: to the capital! To the capital! Nutcracker hurried onwards, and
aglow with curiosity, Marie followed him. It was not long before a magnificent
perfume of roses began to pervade the air and everything in every direction
seemed to be bathed in a gentle roseate luster. Marie noticed that this was all
the reflection of a glittering pinkish-red pool whose waters were surging and rippling
towards them in little waves like a succession of marvelously lovely notes and
melodies. On the surface of this charming body of water, which extended far in
every direction like a large lake, a number of majestically beautiful silver
swans with gold necklaces swam about and vied with each other for first prize
in the singing of the prettiest songs, in time to which hundreds of tiny
diamond fishes leapt out of and into the roseate waters like so many
coordinated dancers. “Ah!” cried Marie in rapt delight, “Ah: this is the real-life
original of the lake that Godfather Drosselmeier was planning to build for me,
and I myself am the girl who was going to caress the lovely little swans.”
Little Nutcracker smiled a highly derisive smile that she had never seen on his
face before, and said, “My uncle certainly could never manage to build such a
thing; you, dear Mademoiselle Stahlbaum, are much better qualified to do so—but
let us stop brooding over this at once and begin our voyage across the Rose
Lake to the capital."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>The Capital<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Little Nutcracker
clapped his little hands once again, whereupon the Rose Lake began to surge
more violently; the waves splashed at a higher crest, and from off in the
distance there drew ever nearer an object that Marie gradually realized was a
seashell-shaped coach made out of actual sunbeam-scintillating precious stones
and drawn by two dolphins covered in scales of pure gold. Twelve of the most
adorable little Moors in little caps and aprons woven out of lustrous
hummingbird feathers leapt on to the shore and, gliding ever so gently through
the intervening waves, carried first Marie and then Nutcracker into the coach,
which forthwith launched itself back into the lake. Oh, what a beautiful sight
was Marie’s traversal of that lake in that seashell coach wafted all about by
the fragrance of roses and coddled all about by roseate waves!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two gold-scaled dolphins raised their
nostrils and spouted into the air jets of pure crystal, which in subsequently
descending into the shimmering and sparkling waves sounded like two delicate
little silver voices sweetly singing thus: “Who swims these waters pink and
bright? The sprite! Little midges! ding ding little fishes, sim sim—swans! swa
swa, golden bird! trarah, surging waves—at ease! ring, sing, fly, pry—little
sprites, little sprites come along; rose waves, chill, swill, swill aloft!
aloft!” But the twelve little Moors who had leapt up on to the back of the
seashell coach seemed genuinely offended by the singing of the jets of water,
for they shook their parasols so violently that the date-leaves out of which
they were made crinkled and crackled, and with their feet stamped out an
extraordinarily curious rhythm and sang: “Clap and clip and clip and clap, up
and down—Moors’ dance-riots shan’t be quiet; at ease, fish—at ease, swans,
drone on seashell coach, drone on, clap and clip and clip and clap and up and
down!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">“Moors make for
very amusing company,” said Nutcracker in a somewhat disconcerted tone, “but
they are going to turn my lake into one huge enclave of insurrection.” And in
actual fact, there presently commenced a bewildering din of marvelous voices,
which seemed to be swimming through both the lake itself and the air above it,
but Marie paid it no mind and instead gazed into the aromatic rose-waves, from
each of which the fetchingly gracious countenance of a young girl smiled up at
her. “Oh,” she joyfully exclaimed while clapping together her tiny little
hands, “oh, do come take a look, dear Mr. Drosselmeier! That girl down there
smiling that magically lovely smile at me is Princess Pirlipat. Oh, do please
just come and take a look, dear Mr. Drosselmeier!” But Nutcracker simply sighed
a quasi-lugubrious sigh and said, “O most worthy Mademoiselle Stahlbaum, that
girl is not Princess Pirlipat, but you; and each and every one of those faces
smiling so fetchingly up at you from the rose-waves is none other than your own
sweet countenance.” Whereupon Marie suddenly started back from the reflection
and firmly shut her eyes for sheer shame and embarrassment. At this same moment
the twelve Moors were lifting her out of the seashell coach and conveying her ashore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She found herself in a little copse, which
was almost even more beautiful than the Christmas Forest, given how
resplendently the whole of it shimmered and sparkled; but the most
exceptionally wonderful part of it was its array of exotic fruits, which hung
on every tree and not only bore skins of the most peculiar colors but also
exuded an assortment of truly marvelous scents. “We are in the Grove of
Preserves,” said Nutcracker, “but the capital is over yonder.” And what did
Marie now behold? How shall I ever begin to describe to you, children, the
beauty and majesty of that city that now loomed so resplendently before Marie’s
gaze, on the horizon at the far end of a meadow teeming with flowers? Not only
were the walls and spires of the town bedecked with the most majestic colors,
but even from a strictly architectural point of view its buildings were simply
beyond compare. For in lieu of roofs the houses were topped by crowns wrought
in an elegant wickerwork pattern, and the towers were wreathed in the most
elegant and colorful crockets the human eye had ever seen. As they passed
through the city gate, which looked as though it had been built out of whole
macaroons and candied fruits, a division of silver soldiers presented arms and
a little man in a brocaded dressing-gown threw his arms around Nutcracker’s neck
and cried, “Welcome, my most worthy lord and prince, welcome to Sweetsburg!”
Marie marveled not a little at seeing young Nutcracker acknowledged as a prince
by this man who was obviously of a very high rank. But now she heard a chorus
of well-tuned little voices that was so clamorous, so joyful and mirthful, so
lyrical and playful, that Marie could pay no mind to anything else, and simply
asked Nutcracker point-blank what ever the meaning of the whole thing was. “O
most worthy Mademoiselle Stahlbaum,” replied Nutcracker, “it is nothing
unusual; Sweetsburg is both a populous and a merry town, here one is always
surrounded by people singing and laughing like this; but if you please, don’t
let us tarry.” The very briefest of walks brought them to the town’s large
market square, which afforded an especially splendid view. On all sides the
buildings were made of filigreed confectionery, gallery upon gallery towered
overhead, in the center stood a tall, sugar-glazed baumkuchen obelisk
surrounded by four exquisitely wrought fountains that sprayed orsade, lemonade
and other noble sweetened beverages into the air, and the basin was filling
with pure cream that looked so delicious that one wanted to spoon it up. But
prettier than all of this were the superlatively lovely little people that
jostled against one another cheek by jowl in the thousands and shouted for joy
and laughed and jested and sang—this was, in short, the source of the clamor
that Marie had already heard in the distance and that proximity was now swelling
to a near-deafening volume. The crowd was composed of beautifully attired
ladies and gentlemen, Armenians and Greeks, Jews and Tirolians, officers and
enlisted soldiers, and priests and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">shepherds and
clowns–in short, every possible sort of people to be found in the world. In one
corner of the square, the tumult increased; the sea of people parted to make
way for the grand mogul, who was being carried along on a palanquin, escorted
by ninety-three grandees of the kingdom and seven-hundred slaves. But it
happened that in the opposite corner the five hundred-strong fishermen’s guild
were holding their annual parade, such that it was most untimely of the Turkish
sovereign to get it into his head to ride through the square with three
thousand janissaries, who were followed by the great procession from the
interrupted Feast of the Sacrifice, playing their tintinnabulatory
marching-tune, singing, “Thanks be to the almighty sun-god,” and heading
straight for—and eventually reaching—the baumkuchen. What a prodigious amount
of crowding and jostling and surging and squeaking it all amounted to! And soon
it was augmented by many a wail of lamentation, for amid all the bustle a fisherman
had knocked off a Brahmin’s head, and the Grand Mogul had come very close to being
run over by a clown. The din grew more and more riotous, and people were
already beginning to kick and punch one another throughout the crowd, when the
man in the brocaded dressing gown who had greeted Nutcracker at the gate
scrambled up on to the baumkuchen and, after ringing a bell with a highly
resonant peal three times, called out three times very loudly: “Pastry-Cook!
Pastry-Cook! Pastry-Cook!” The tumult immediately subsided; everybody attended
to his own safety as best he could, and after the two processions had
extricated themselves from each other, the begrimed Grand Mogul had been dusted
off, and the Brahmin had had his head reset, the clamor recommenced in its
original merry tone. “What was the meaning of that business about the
pastry-cook, worthy Mr. Drosselmeier?” asked Marie. “Ah, most worthy
Mademoiselle Stahlbaum,” replied Nutcracker, “in this place Pastry-Cook is an
unknown but very horrible power that people believe can fashion human beings
into whatever it desires; it is the doom that rules over this merry little
nation, and they fear it so very much that the mere mention of its name can
calm the most riotous outbreak of disorder, as our esteemed mayor has just
demonstrated. When Pastry-Cook’s name is mentioned, everybody gives over all
thought of earthly matters, all thought of breaking ribs and smashing heads,
and looks into himself and asks, ‘What is man and what can be made out of him?’”
Marie could not contain a loud cry of wonderment, nay of the utmost astonishment,
as she now suddenly found herself standing before a castle bathed in a roseate
luster and topped with a hundred skyscraping towers. But here and there against
the castle’s outer walls were strewn refulgent bouquets of violets,
narcissuses, tulips, and gillyflowers, whose darkly incandescent hues only
enhanced the dazzling, pinkishly opalescent whiteness of the background. The
large cupola of the central structure and the pyramidal roofs of the towers
were studded with a thousand coruscating little gold and silver stars. “Now we
are standing before the marzipan castle,” said Nutcracker. Marie was totally
overwhelmed by the sight of the magic palace, but in the midst of her
excitement she did not fail to notice the badly damaged state of the roof of
one of the taller towers, which a number of tiny little men on a cinnamon-stick
scaffold seemed to be trying to repair. Before she had a chance to ask
Nutcracker about this, he was already explaining it to her. “Not long ago this
beautiful castle was threatened with devastating damage, if not outright
destruction. Our city had fallen into the baneful path of Sweet Tooth the
giant, a path whose traversal very speedily saw the giant making short work of
the roof of that tower and beginning to tuck into the great cupola itself; but
at this point the Sweetsburgers brought him as tribute an entire city district
plus a considerable portion of the Grove of Preserves, and having managed to
sate himself on these offerings, he pressed on to fresher feeding-grounds.” At
that moment gentle and highly ingratiating strains of music were heard; the
castle gates flew open and out stepped twelve tiny pages with lighted clove
stems that they carried like torches in their tiny little hands. Each of their
heads consisted of a single pearl, their bodies were made of rubies and
emeralds, and, what was more, they moved about on the most exquisite little
feet of pure wrought gold. The pages were followed by four ladies, each of whom
was nearly as tall as Marie’s doll Missy Claerchen; but they were all so
exquisitely and resplendently attired that Marie instantly recognized them as
the born princesses that they were. They embraced Nutcracker with the utmost
tenderness, all the while exclaiming in bittersweet tones, “O my prince! My
most worthy prince! O my brother!” Nutcracker seemed very much moved; he wiped
copious tears from his eyes, then he took Marie by the hand and said with great
pathos, “This is Mademoiselle Marie Stahlbaum, the daughter of a highly
estimable public health officer, and the savior of my life! Had she not flung
her slipper just in the nick of time, had she not secured for me the saber of a
certain retired colonel, I would now be lying in my grave thanks to the
mercilessly riving teeth of the execrable king of the mice. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ah, this Mademoiselle Stahlbaum!—is Pirlipat, although
a born princess, truly her equal in point of beauty, kindness, and virtue? No,
I say, no!” All the ladies cried in echo, “No!” and threw their arms around her
neck and exclaimed through heartfelt sobs, “O you noble savior of our dear
princely brother—most excellent Mademoiselle Stahlbaum!” Now the ladies
escorted Marie and Nutcracker into the heart of the palace, specifically into a
hall whose walls were made out of iridescently coruscating pure crystals. But
what Marie delighted in more than anything else were the exquisitely lovely
little chairs, chests of drawers, writing-desks, etc. disposed about the room;
all of these were made out of cedar or Brazil-wood and strewn with golden
flowers. The princesses entreated Marie and Nutcracker to be seated, and said
that they would forthwith prepare a dinner with their own hands. Next they
carried in a heap of tiny little pots and little bowls made from the finest
Japanese porcelain; of spoons, knives, and forks; of graters, stew-pots, and
other requisites for cooking. Then they brought in the loveliest pieces of
fruit and confectionery that Marie had ever seen, and with the daintiest
motions of their tiny little snow-white hands they began to squeeze the fruit,
to pulverize the spices, to grate the sugared almonds—in short to act the
housewife with such aplomb, that Marie could easily perceive that they were all
consummate masters of the culinary arts, and that she and Nutcracker could look
forward to a truly exquisite meal. In her keen desire to familiarize herself
properly with such things, Marie secretly wished she could join in the
princesses’ activities as a full-fledged fellow-cook. Whereupon the most
beautiful of Nutcracker’s sisters, as if having divined this wish, handed Marie
a little golden mortar and pestle and said to her, “O my dear friend, the
precious savior of my brother, do pulverize a little of this sugar-candy!” As
Marie now cheerfully betook herself to the pestle, and thereby elicited from the
mortar the most charming and delightful reverberation, like the strains of a
winsome little ditty, Nutcracker began to recount in considerable detail how
his army had come to fight a gruesome battle with the army of the king of the
mice, how he had been half defeated by the cowardice of his own troops, how the
king of the mice had subsequently tried to bite him in two, and how Marie in
order to save Nutcracker from this fate had had to sacrifice several of his
subjects who had entered into her service, etc. At some point during this
story, Marie noticed that the words Nutcracker was uttering, and indeed the
blows of her pestle, were sounding more and more remote and less and less
distinct; soon she saw ascending heaps of silver gauze like banks of fog, in
which the princesses, the pages, Nutcracker, and, indeed, even she herself,
were swimming—she could hear a curious singing and humming and whirring sound
that seemed to be dying away into the distance; now Marie felt herself rising,
as if on ascending billows of air, ever higher and higher—higher and
higher—higher and higher…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;"><i>Conclusion</i><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">With a “Prr!,” nay,
a “Puff!,” Marie hit the ground from an immeasurable height. Now <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> was quite a jolt! But straight-away
she opened her eyes, and found herself lying in her own little bed; it was
broad daylight, and her mother was standing beside her and saying, “I don’t
know how you can stand to sleep so late; breakfast was over ages ago!”
Doubtless you, my distinguished readers and listeners, will have correctly
gathered by now that Marie, having been fairly stupefied by all the wonders she
had beheld, eventually fell asleep in the great hall of the marzipan palace,
and that the Moors or the pages or possibly even the princesses themselves then
brought her home and put her to bed. “O mother, dear mother, you won’t believe
all the places young Mr. Drosselmeier took me to last night, and all the lovely
things I saw there!” She then proceeded to relate all the events of the night
before almost as accurately as I have just done, and her mother gazed at her in
utter astonishment. When Marie had finished, her mother said, “You have had a
long and very lovely dream, Marie dear, but now you must clear your mind of all
that.” But Marie maintained with hard nut-like obstinacy that she had not been
dreaming, that she had really and truly seen everything she had just described;
and so her mother went to the glass cabinet, took out Nutcracker, who had been
standing at his usual place on the third shelf, and said, “You foolish girl!
How can you possibly believe this wooden doll from Nuremberg capable of life
and motion?” “But mother dear!” cried Marie, “I am as certain as can be that my
little Nutcracker is young Mr. Drosselmeier from Nuremberg, Godfather
Drosselmeier’s nephew.” Whereupon both the public health officer and his wife
burst into peals of resounding laughter. “Ah” Marie continued in an almost
lachrymose voice, “father dear, to think you’re actually laughing at my
Nutcracker even though he spoke some very kind words about you, because you
see, when we had arrived at the marzipan palace and he was introducing me to
his sisters, he said that you were a highly estimable public health officer!”
The laughter at her expense grew even louder, as Luise, and eventually even
Fritz, joined in it. And so Marie ran into the next room, pulled out of her
tiny little jewelry box the king of the mice’s seven crowns, and handed them
over to her mother with these words: “See, mother dear: these are the king of
the mice’s seven crowns, which last night Mr. Drosselmeier handed over to me as
tokens of his victory.” In rapt astonishment the public health officer’s wife
contemplated the little crowns, which had been so finely wrought out of some
unidentifiable but highly scintillating metal, that she found it hard to
believe that they were the work of human hands. Even the chief medical officer
could not get enough of gazing at the little crowns, and soon father and mother
alike were pressing Marie to tell them where she had got the crowns from. But
of course she could not help sticking to what she had originally said, and when
her father then scolded her roundly and even called her a no-good little liar,
she began copiously weeping, and she wailed, “Oh what a poor child am I! Oh
what a poor child am I! What ever am I supposed to say?” At that moment the
door opened. The high court councilor entered and cried: “What’s this? What’s
this? My little goddaughter Marie weeping and sobbing? What’s this? What’s
this?” The public health officer informed him of everything that had just
happened, at the same time showing him the crowns. No sooner had the high court
councilor set his eyes on them, than he laughed and exclaimed, “Poppycock,
poppycock! These are the little crowns that years ago I used to wear on my
watch-chain, and that I gave to little Marie as a present for her second
birthday. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t you two remember?” Neither
the public health officer nor his wife could remember anything of the kind, but
Marie, now realizing if nothing else that her parents’ faces were both looking friendly
again, rushed up to Godfather Drosselmeier and cried, “Ah, of course you know
the whole truth about it, Godfather Drosselmeier; why won’t you come out and
say it? Why won’t you say that my Nutcracker is your nephew, young Mr.
Drosselmeier from Nuremberg, and that it is he who gave me the crowns?” But the
high court councilor merely scowled at her with fearsome glumness and muttered,
“What inane, simple-minded poppycock.” Whereupon the public health officer took
little Marie aside and said to her in a very serious tone, “Listen to me,
Marie: I want you to stop all this joking and tall tale-telling at once, and if
I hear you say one more time that that silly, misshapen Nutcracker is the high
court councilor’s nephew, I swear I will throw not only Nutcracker but also
every single one of your other dolls—Missy Claerchen included—straight out the
window.” Now poor Marie was obviously debarred from talking about the very
thing that was her heart and mind’s chief preoccupation, for you may well and
rightly believe that a person who has experienced such splendid and beautiful
things as Marie had experienced can hardly forget them. Even—note well, my
distinguished reader or listener Fritz—even your comrade Fritz Stahlbaum would
immediately turn his back on his sister if she started to tell him about the
marvelous kingdom in which she had been so very happy. He is said even to have
occasionally muttered the phrase “Silly goose!” through clenched teeth, but I
find it very hard to believe that in the light of his otherwise universally
attested kind-heartedness; in any case, this much is certain—that he no longer
believed a word that Marie had ever told him; at a public parade of his hussars
he made a formal apology to them for the aspersions he had cast on them; he
affixed replace their lost standards with much taller and more lustrous tufts
of goose-quills, and he even allowed them to play their regimental march again.
Well, now! You and I know better than anyone else the kind of showing the
hussars’ courage made once those awful bullets started staining their scarlet
jerkins! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Marie was no longer
allowed to speak about her adventures, but images of the marvelous fairy
kingdom flitted about her in sweetly undulating delirium and mild beauteous
euphony; she had only to concentrate her thoughts on the beloved kingdom to
behold it once again in its entirety, and so by and by she ceased to play with
her toys and began to spend all her time sitting motionless and silent and
withdrawn, which caused her to be upbraided as a silly little dreamer by
everyone in the house. One day the high court councilor happened to be
repairing a clock at the public health officer’s house. Marie was sitting before
the glass cabinet, immersed in her dreams and gazing at the nutcracker; then
all of a sudden, as if involuntarily, she blurted out, “Ah, dear Mr.
Drosselmeier; if only you were actually alive, I would never act like Princess
Pirlipat and spurn you because for my sake you had stopped being a handsome
young man!” Like a shot the high court councilor cried out, “Poppycock,
absolute poppycock!” But at that same instant, from out of nowhere came a loud
bang, like the sound of an explosion, that was of such volume and forcefulness
that it knocked Marie unconscious and out of her chair. When she came to, she
found her mother busying herself about her and saying, “I don’t see how a big
girl like you can’t even manage to keep her place in a chair! Here is the high
court councilor’s nephew just arrived from Nuremberg: do please be on your best
behavior!” She looked up; the high court counselor had re-donned his glass wig
and yellow frock coat, and he was placidly smiling; but he was also holding the
hand of an admittedly short but extremely well-proportioned young man. This
young man’s little face was like a composition in milk and blood; he was
wearing a magnificent scarlet frock coat trimmed with gold brocade, white silk
stockings, and low-cut shoes; in his frilly shirt-front he sported an
exquisitely lovely bunch of flowers; his hair was elegantly coiffed and
powdered, and down his back hung a truly splendid pigtail. The tiny sword at
his side shone as resplendently as if it were made of actual jewels, and the
little hat tucked under his arm had been woven out of flocks of silk. The
ingratiating impeccability of the youth’s manners was instantly attested to by
the heap of splendid sweetmeats and playthings—including notably some exquisite
marzipan and the very same figurines the king of the mice had gnawed to
bits–that he had brought with him for Marie, and to which he had not forgotten
to add a saber of wondrously beautiful workmanship for Fritz. During dinner
this polite young man cracked nuts for the entire table; the hardest of these
nuts were no match for him; with his right hand he would stick the nut in his
mouth, with his left he would tug at his pigtail, and—crack!—the nut would
crumble to pieces. Marie had turned bright red the moment she set eyes on the
well-mannered youth, and she turned even redder when after dinner young
Drosselmeier invited her to go with him to the glass cabinet in the sitting
room. “Play together to your hearts’ content, children,” cried the high court
councilor: “now that my clocks are all in fine working order, my objections are
at an end.” But no sooner did young Drosselmeier find himself alone with Marie
than he fell on one knee and said, “O my supremely excellent lady, Mademoiselle
Stahlbaum, you behold at your feet the blessed Drosselmeier whose life you
saved on this very spot! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You graciously
declared that you would not try to shame me as that loathsome Princess Pirlipat
did after I became ugly for her sake!—at that instant I stopped being a lowly
nutcracker and regained my original, not-disagreeable form. O my excellent
lady, bless me with the gift of your dear hand, share with me my kingdom and my
crown, rule alongside me at the marzipan castle, for there I have been
enthroned as king!” Marie raised the youth to his feet and gently said, “Dear
Mr. Drosselmeier! You are a sweet and virtuous person, and as you also rule
over an attractive country inhabited by extremely charming and merry people, I
shall accept you as my husband!” Whereupon Marie was immediately betrothed to
Drosselmeier. They say that exactly one year later he had her brought to him in
a golden carriage drawn by silver horses. Their wedding ball was attended by
twenty two-thousand exquisitely resplendent dolls bedizened from head to foot
with pearls and diamonds, and as of this very hour Marie is said still to be queen
of a realm in every corner of which one may behold coruscating Christmas
forests, translucent marzipan castles; in short, all manner of superlatively
splendid things—provided one has eyes that can perceive them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">That was the fairy tale about Nutcracker and the king
of the mice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Tell me,” said Theodor, “tell me, my dear Lothar,
how you can get away with calling your ‘Nutcracker and the King of the Mice’ a
children’s fairy tale, given that no child could possibly discern the fine
threads that run uninterruptedly through the whole thing and hold together what
superficially comes across as a collection of completely heterogeneous
segments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At most a child will be struck
by these segments as individual episodes and every now and then be delighted by
them.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“And is that not enough?”
retorted Lothar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It seems to me,” he
continued, “that it is a very grave error to suppose that children with lively
and fertile imaginations (and these are perforce the only children of concern
to us) can derive any enjoyment whatsoever from the vacuous fopperies that are
passed off to the world as fairy tales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No, they demand something better than that, and it is astonishing how
vividly and accurately their minds comprehend many things that completely go
over the heads of many super-intelligent dads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Take note of this and have some respect for them!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have already read my tale to the only
people I can acknowledge as competent critics, namely my sister’s
children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fritz, an accomplished
military campaigner, was enchanted by his namesake’s army; the description of
the battle positively enraptured him—he imitated my <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">prr</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pooff</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">schnetterdeng</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">boom</i> in piercing shrieks; he shifted nervously to and fro on his
chair—indeed!—every now and then he glanced at his saber, as if he were just on
the point of racing out into the fray to aid poor Nutcracker as the latter was
drawn into greater and greater danger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
can assure you that as of then my nephew Fritz had not read either Shakespeare
or the latest dispatches from the front, and so he most certainly had no
inkling of the significance of ‘A horse!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A horse!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My kingdom for a horse!’
or of the allusions to the military evolution of that most horrifying of all
battles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My dear, tender-hearted niece
Eugenie no less intuitively grasped Marie’s sweet devotion to the little
nutcracker, and she was moved to tears when Marie sacrificed sweetmeats,
picture books, and even her little Christmas dress solely in the hope of saving
her darling’s life; not for an instant did she doubt the reality of the
coruscating candy meadow onto which Marie descended from the ominous collar of
the fox-fur coat in her father’s wardrobe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The kingdom of dolls delighted the children beyond all measure.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“That part of the tale,”
chimed in Ottmar, “is most certainly the most successful part, if you have
children in mind as your ideal readers or listeners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the interpolation of tale about the
hard nut, although it contains the binding core of the entire story, I think it
was a mistake, because it makes the plot too complicated, and in it the various
threads of the story are stretched and spread over too great a distance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“To be sure, you have
already termed us incompetent critics and thereby enjoined us to silence, but I
cannot conceal from you my conviction that if you ever present your work to a
general readership, you will find that many reasonable people—and in particular
the far from negligible subclass of reasonable people who have never been children—will
shrug and shake their heads by way of signifying that they regard the whole
thing as a lot of crazy, motley, madcap tosh, or at least that you must have
had the assistance of a mightily powerful case of brain fever, inasmuch as (so
they will reason) no person of sound mind ever could have produced such an
absurdity.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“In that case,” said Lothar
with a laugh, “in that case, I shall bow my head to the excellent head-shaker,
lay my hand on my breast, and woefully assure him that it is of precious little
assistance to the poor author to be visited by any number or manner of
fantastic visions in the delirious confusion of his dreams; to the contrary, he
must utterly eschew the use of such fantastic materials until he has carefully
and judiciously pondered them at the tribunal of his understanding, and spun
all the threads of his narrative to its required degree of delicacy and
strength.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, I would even go so far
as to say that there is no kind of literary work that more exactingly demands a
clear and calm frame of mind on the part of its executant than a story that
blazes in every which direction with all the anarchic playfulness of unbridled
caprice, a work that for all its waywardness should and must contain a firm and
solid core.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“And who,” said Cyprian,
“who would ever think of gainsaying you on this point?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But be that as it may, it is still quite an
audacious undertaking to splice pure fantasy into everyday life, to slap enchanted
jester’s caps onto the heads of serious ordinary people such as high court
councilors, archivists, and students, thereby causing them to slink like
freakishly fantastic ghosts through the busiest streets of the most illustrious
cities in broad daylight, and to fly off the handle at each and every one of
their honest next-door neighbors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
true that in the course of your narrative there spontaneously arises a certain
ironic tone that nettles sluggardly minds, or, rather, imperceptibly lures
these minds into your foreign realm of enchantment like a good-natured rogue.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“This ironic tone,” said
Theodor, “could be the most dangerous of all hazards, for it is a jagged rock
on which the inventive and descriptive charm that we demand from every fairy
tale can very easily run aground and founder.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Is it even possible,”
chimed in Lothar, “to ascertain a set of prescriptive criteria for such fictive
compositions?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That noble, profound
master, Tieck, the creator of the most charming fairy tales imaginable, has put
only a few scattered if intelligent and instructive remarks on them into the
mouths of the personae in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Phantusus</i>.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>According to these remarks, the principal
desideratum of a fairy tale is a silently momentous narrative tone, a certain
innocence in the descriptive language; a quality that captivates the soul like
gently rhapsodizing music, without din or bombast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A work of fantasy, according to Tieck’s
personae, ought not to leave behind the faintest trace of a bitter aftertaste;
it should be followed, rather, by an after<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">savor</i>,
a melodious echo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But do these remarks
really specify the single infungible note that must be struck by this genre of
fiction?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am not about to give any
further consideration to my ‘Nutcracker,’ because I myself confess that it is
dominated by a certain indefensible wantonness, and because in it I have dwelt
at rather too much length on adults and their actions; but I must observe that
our distant friend’s fairy tale ‘<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The
Golden Pot</span>,’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>to which you,
Cyprian, alluded earlier, perhaps contains something more of what the master
requires, and perhaps for this very reason it has received many a favorable
sentence at the courts of criticism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What is more, I have bound myself under oath to bring a new fairy tale
to the little critics in my sister’s nursery next Christmas, and I solemnly
promise you to luxuriate less in wanton fantasy, and to be gentler, more
childlike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For now, be content that I
have brought you out of the terrifying, horror-ridden great pit at Falun and
into the light of day, and that you have become merry and of good cheer as
befits the brethren of Serapion, especially at the moment when they must take
leave of one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For even as I
speak I can hear the midnight hour chiming.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“May Serapion,” cried
Theodor, as he rose from his chair and raised aloft his brimful glass, “may
Serapion henceforth stand by us and give us the strength and the courage to
recount what we have beheld with the eyes of our true spirit!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“With this invocation of
our patron saint, let us part once again as worthy Serapionian brethren!” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">So said Cyprian, and once
again they all clinked their glasses together, rejoicing from the very bottom
of their hearts in the intimacy and warmth of feeling that were ever more
firmly consolidating their fair union. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; text-align: center; text-indent: 9.35pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Volume 2<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal; text-align: center; text-indent: 9.35pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">(Part 3)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“There can be no doubt
whatsoever,” said Lothar at the next gathering of the Serapionian Brethren,
“there can be no doubt whatsoever that today our friend Cyprian has something
quite peculiar on his mind and in his mind’s eye, just as he did on that St. Serapion’s
Day that catalyzed the formation of our new union.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He looks quite pale and distracted; he is bending
only half an ear to our conversation; and although he is most certainly of
sound body and sitting here in our midst, mentally speaking he seems to be very
much elsewhere.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“And by being elsewhere,”
chimed in Ottmar, “he may be bringing himself closer to the madman whose name
day he is perhaps celebrating at this very moment.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“And perhaps,” added
Theodor, “he is also discharging the surplus energy of his psyche in eccentric
sparks, as he takes all too much pleasure in doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I am sure that once he is finished, he
will regain his old subtle sensitivity to his fellow human beings and rejoin
our circle, in which he will be quite unable to help enjoying himself.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“You are doing me an
injustice,” said Cyprian, “for the cause of my distraction is not some lunatic
intellectual construct but rather a piece of news that will undoubtedly delight
you all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Allow me to inform you that
today our friend Sylvester has arrived back in town from his sojourn in the
country.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The friends rejoiced
vociferously at this announcement, for they all heartily loved and esteemed
Sylvester, a silent, companionable man whose inner poetry shone forth most
splendidly in beams of gentle, beauteous radiance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“We couldn’t ask for a
worthier Serapionian brother,” said Theodor, “than our friend Sylvester.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, he is silent and withdrawn, and
it costs him a great deal of effort to get going as a contributor to a full-fledged
conversation, but at the same time no writer has ever been more sensitively
receptive to the work of a colleague than he is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doesn’t need to say more than a few words
himself, for the expression on his face clearly and eloquently reveals to others
the impression being made on him by his friend’s words, and whenever his inner
contentment irradiates his features, and, indeed, his entire body, I feel more
content, happier, freer, merely in virtue of being near him!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“In point of fact,” began
Ottmar, “it is this very quality that makes Sylvester such an unusual
person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems as if our most recent
writers have been quite studiously raging against that unassumingness that
might very well be the most characteristic quality of true poetic genius, and
even the better-minded among them could stand to be warier of whipping out
their sword merely in order to defend their claims, given that they are
absolutely incapable of re-sheathing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sylvester roams the world unarmed like an innocent child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have often accused him of being too
easygoing, of having accomplished far too little in virtue of the very
fecundity of his genius.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But must one
always, constantly be writing and writing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When Sylvester sits down and takes the true measure of an idea or object
in words, it is because he is irresistibly impelled to do so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He certainly never commits to paper anything
that he has not intimately felt and beheld in his soul of souls, and for this
reason alone he must be admitted to our society as a true Serapionian Brother.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Apart,” said Lothar,
“from that mystical and agreeable numeral, seven, I loathe all odd numbers and
believe that five Serapionian Brethren will never be capable of flourishing;
six, by contrast, will sit very gracefully around this circular table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sylvester has arrived in town today, and as
it happens, that unsettled, unsteady soul Vincenz will soon be dropping anchor
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We all know him well; we know that
aside from his fundamental good-naturedness, which he shares with Sylvester, he
embodies the most strident contrast to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whereas Sylvester is silent and withdrawn, Vinzenz brims over with
knavish impertinence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has an
indefatigable ability to representing everything, the most humdrum and the most
extraordinary phenomena, by means of the most bizarre images, and what is more,
he declaims all his utterances in a clear, almost strident tone and with an
extremely droll degree of pathos, such that his conversation is often akin to a
gallery of the most brilliantly parti-colored magic-lantern images, images that
in their incessantly restless alternation sweep your senses along and will not allow
you to get anything in the way of a sustained, contemplative view of any
subject.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“You have indeed,” chimed
in Theodor, “described our friend Vinzenz very accurately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in connection with him you must not
forget something notably peculiar—namely that his splendidly luminous erudition
and his unstoppable and brilliantly combustive sense of humor are both
subservient to his soul’s utter captivation by all things mystical, and that he
invariably injects a strong dash of mysticism into his scientific speculations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are all doubtless aware that he has
become positively addicted to the study of the science of medicine?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“To be sure,” rejoined Ottmar, “and what is
more, he is the most zealous proponent of mesmerism alive, and I cannot deny
that I have heard straight from his mouth the most sagacious and profound
pronouncements that are to be uttered on this obscure subject.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Ho ho!” cried Lothar, laughing. “My dear
Ottmar, have you really been tutored by every mesmerist since the time of
Mesmer himself?—for I don’t see how you could otherwise so confidently proclaim
your ability to recognize the most sagacious and profound pronouncements that can
be made about mesmerism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is
indeed true that in virtue of the pellucidity of his gaze he is better
qualified than a thousand other people to conjure dreams and intimations into a
system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what is more, he discusses
the subject with a jovial lightheartedness that I find quite ingratiating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not long ago, when Vinzenz’s wanderings
brought him into a town where I already happened to be, I was plagued by an
absolutely unbearable nervous headache.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All the usual remedies had proved fruitless; Vinzenz stepped into the
room; I immediately started complaining to him about my affliction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘What?’ he cried in his patented clear voice,
‘What?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re suffering from a
headache.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing more than that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’ll be a cinch!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In ten minutes I can exorcise your headache
to wherever you like—into the back of that chair, into that ink bottle, into
that spittoon, out of that window.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
with these words he began his mesmeric operation!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It didn’t relieve my headache in the
slightest, but I could not help laughing heartily, and Vinzenz delightedly
exclaimed, ‘Do you see, my friend, how I have soundly trounced your headache in
a trice?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alas, I could not but ruefully
avow to him that my headache was every bit as agonizing as before, but Vinzenz
assured me that my present headache was but a delusory echo of the earlier
one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet that pesky echo lasted
several more days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I must take this
opportunity to confess to you, my worthy Serapionian Brethren, that I have
absolutely no faith in the curative power of so-called mesmerism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ingenious intellectual efforts undertaken
on its behalf remind me of the disquisitions of the English academicians whom
the king directed to determine why a bucket of water with a ten-pound fish in
it weighed no more than another one filled with water alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several of them had already successfully
solved the problem and were pining to demonstrate their ingenuity to the king,
when somebody sagely suggested that the very question at issue should be
investigated beforehand.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Whereupon the fish fully asserted its rights; on
the scales it contributed its exactly appropriate addition to the weight on its
side; and lo and behold, the very problem to which these sages had produced the
most magnificent solutions by dint of the most penetrating reflections proved
to be absolutely nonexistent.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Now, now,” said Ottmar,
“hold on there, you unpoetic, schismatic infidel!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you don’t believe in mesmerism, how do you
explain the fact that not so very long ago—but at this point I am obliged tell
you two, Cyprian and Theodor, a quite ponderously circumstantial story that
will make all Lothar’s ignominiously disdainful expressions of unbelief come
tumbling back on to his own head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You
will already have heard that not so very long ago our Lothar was suffering from
an ailment that principally attacked his nerves; it had an indescribably
debilitating effect on him: it spoiled his sense of humor and drained away all
his pleasure in living.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day I enter
his room as the very embodiment of sympathy, the very embodiment of
commiseration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lothar is sitting there
in his armchair, a nightcap pulled down over his ears, pale, sleep-starved, and
bleary-eyed; sitting across from him, whom God has certainly not blessed with a
superfluity of height, is a man of equally short stature who starts breathing
on him and then runs his fingers over his hunched back and places his hand on
the hollow beneath his breastbone and gently whispers: ‘How do you feel now,
Lothar my dear fellow?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Lothar opens
his little eyes and smiles quite a tearful smile and says through a sigh:
‘Better—much better, dearest Doctor!’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
short, Lothar, who has no faith in the curative power of mesmerism, who
explains away everything as an empty mental phantom, Lothar, who pours scorn on
all mesmerists—who sees nothing but empty mystification in their activities—Lothar
allowed himself to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mesmerized</i>!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Cyprian and Theodor
laughed heartily at the grotesque image Ottmar had conjured up before their
very eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“How dare you,” said Lothar,
“how dare you breathe so much as a word about such things, Ottmar?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The physical principle exerts such a
deleterious influence on the psychic principle, and every human being is so
lamentably weak in virtue of the extremely peculiar constitution of his
organism, that every abnormal condition, every illness, engenders in him a fit
of anxiety, a momentary madness, that impels him to engage in the most bizarre
activities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Highly intelligent men who
have found the remedies of the physicians ineffectual have been known to take
refuge in old crones’ cures and to make fervently religious use of homeopathic
prescriptions and Lord knows what else!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fact that once upon a time I succumbed to the lure of mesmerism
during a violent attack of nerves is an illustration of my ordinary human
frailty and of nothing beyond that.” </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“You must forgive me,”
chimed in Cyprian, “you must forgive me, my dear Lothar, for regarding your
present inclination to cock a skeptical eye at mesmerism as the product of a
mere passing fit of pique.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is
mesmerism, conceived as a means of healing, other than the potential energy of
the psychic principle, which energy enables us to master the physical
principle; to sound it to its uttermost depths; to apprehend even the slightest
abnormality in its condition, and to make right this condition through the
comprehensive understanding of such abnormalities?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is impossible for you to deny the power of
our psychic principle, impossible for you to even to wish to turn a deaf ear to
the wondrous chords that resound into us and out of us, to the mystery-laden
music of the spheres, which is the great immutable animating principle of
nature itself.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“You are carrying on,”
retorted Lothar, “in your usual vein; you are reveling in mystical
ravings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will concede to you that the
doctrine of mesmerism, in veering quite noticeably into the domain of the
phantasmal, is endlessly appealing to everyone of a poetic disposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I myself can hardly deny that the dark matter
of that doctrine has innervated and vivified my very soul of souls or that I
continue to find it powerfully stimulating, but I must ask you to hear me out
as I deliver a brief and candid recitation of my credo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whoever is so audacious and foolhardy as to
attempt to penetrate the deepest mystery of nature axiomatically wishes to
acquire definitive knowledge, or failing that, a distinct intimation, of the
essence of that mysterious ligature that conjoins the mind and the body and
thereby conditions our soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet
mesmerism is entirely based on the presumption of this knowledge, and as long
as the latter remains unattainable, the doctrine in the derivation of its data
from individual perceptions, which are often simply illusions, will be of no
greater value than the heuristic groping of those who have been blind since
birth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is certain that there are
heightened states in which the mind overpowers the body, inhibiting its
movement, and thereby exerts a powerful influence productive of some extremely
peculiar phenomena.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Intimations, dark
presentiments, take on distinct shapes, and we behold with all the force of our
complete comprehensive capacity that which torpidly slumbered deep in our soul;
one such state is the dream, which is undoubtedly the most marvelous phenomenon
in the human organism, whose highest potentiality may very well (to my mind) be
manifested in so-called somnambulism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But it is equally certain that such a state presupposes some kind of
abnormality in the relationship between the psychic and physical
principle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our most vivid and forceful
dreams come upon us when the body is in the grip of some pathological
emotion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mind then exploits its
fellow-sovereign’s impotence, and taking sole possession of the throne, makes
the body its feudal vassal, utterly beholden to its every beck and call.</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Of course mesmerism is also supposed to be indicated by some
pathological condition of the body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
may moreover be the case that from time to time nature permits a psychic
dualism wherein the twofold reciprocity of spiritual intercourse engenders the
most remarkable phenomena, but in my opinion, such a dualism must be permitted
by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nature</i>, and it seems to me that
any attempt to evoke it at will and without the license of the queen is
possibly treasonous and most certainly a very hazardous act.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will go even further.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cannot deny that experience has shown me that
the deliberate evocation of that potential state of the soul, if that state is
indicated by some abnormality in the organism, is possible; moreover, I shall
concede that the alien psychic principle can in highly mysterious manner
capture the spiritual potential of the mesmerized person in some fluid—or
whatever else one cares to term it—in the medium fully embodied in and
radiating from the mesmerist (thanks to magnetic manipulation) and by capturing
it produce that condition that deviates from the rule of all human life and
existence and that even in its much-vaunted ecstasy carries within it all the
horror of the alien spiritual realm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
say I cannot deny any of that, but in defiance of all theories to the contrary,
I will always regard this procedure as a recklessly perpetrated act of unholy violence
whose effects have yet to be ascertained.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Somebody somewhere has said that mesmerism is a dangerously sharp
scalpel in the hands of a child, and I second that dictum wholeheartedly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If people must be so presumptuous as to try
to exert an influence on the spiritual principles of their fellow men and
women, it seems to me that the barbaric doctrine of the spiritualists—which
without recourse to any manipulation engages nothing but conscious desires and
beliefs—is by far the purest and the most innocent.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">To secure a strong will is
to pose a modest question to nature, the question of whether she will allow
spiritual dualism, and she alone can make that decision. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In this respect a proper
mesmerism at the baquet in which the mesmerist refrains from intervening may at
least be less harmless, inasmuch as during such an event the exertion of any
adverse effects by an alien spiritual principle is unimaginable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet!: the world is now teeming with
people recklessly—and indeed, in the throes of arrant self-deception and
unwitting ostentation—practicing that darkest of all the dark sciences, if one
may by any stretch of the imagination term mesmerism a science.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A certain foreign doctor has related that like
Bartels in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Physiology and Physics of
Mesmerism</i> he was astonished to find German doctors treating mesmerized
individuals as despotically and experimenting on them as brazenly as if they
had a physical apparatus in the room with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the light of the these unfortunate goings-on, I would much—very
much—rather disbelieve in mesmerism, or at least in its curative powers, than
be prepared to accept the notion that my very own life might someday be
irrevocably destroyed by that spooky dalliance with an alien force.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“The only conclusion,” chimed in Theodor, “the
only conclusion to be drawn from all the far from superficial or spurious
things you have just said about mesmerism is that it was in direct defiance of
your own convictions that you regaled us earlier on with the little anecdote
about the ten-pound fish, that you actually believe wholeheartedly in the
influential powers of mesmerism, that out of pure dread you have firmly
resolved not to let any mesmerist’s manipulative fingers anywhere near the
ganglia of your back or any other part of your body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it happens, I am just as fearful of alien
spiritual principles as you are, and you must permit me to append to your credo
an illustrative footnote in the form of a story about how I got mixed up in
mesmerism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was thanks to a certain
university friend of mine who was zealously studying the science of medicine that
I was introduced to the mysterious doctrine of mesmerism. As you all are well
acquainted with the kind of person I am, it will not surprise you to learn that
I was profoundly captivated by everything pertaining to that doctrine that came
my way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I read everything about it that
I could get my hands on, including, eventually, a well-known and clever
description of mesmerism as a medical treatment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From the beginning this book tended to arouse
my skepticism, for it gave no specifically scientific consideration to its
subject and largely consisted of a catalogue of examples; and it also
uncritically mixed together proven facts with the stuff of fairy tales and
indeed with phenomena that had been conclusively debunked as pure myth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My friend was impervious to all my attempts
to persuade him of the reasonableness of my reservations and finally averred to
me that a purely theoretical study of mesmerism could never awaken in me the
faith that was indispensable to an acceptance of the doctrine, and that this
awakening would take place only once I had witnessed some mesmeric operations
with my own eyes.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">But in those days there were no opportunities to
do that at the university; even if a promising mesmerist had been locatable
there, not a single person there evinced the slightest inclination towards
somnambulism or clairvoyance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“I came to the capital of
our kingdom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just then mesmerism was in
full flower there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entire town was
talking about the marvelous mesmeric crises of an intelligent and highly
cultivated lady who after a few not especially significant attacks of nerves
had almost spontaneously become a sleepwalker and then a clairvoyant whom the
most assiduous devotees of mesmerism termed the most psychically gifted person
there had ever been or ever could be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
succeeded in making the acquaintance of the doctor who was treating her, and as
he instantly perceived that I was an enthusiastic student with a hunger for
knowledge, he promised to bring me into the presence of this lady as soon as
she began to slip into one of her crises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And so he did: at six o’clock one evening, he said to me, ‘Come along; I
am certain that my patient has just fallen into a mesmeric slumber.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On tenterhooks with anticipation, I entered
the lady’s elegant, and indeed ornately decorated, apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The windows were completely covered by drawn
pink silk curtains, so that the rays of the setting sun magically bathed the
entire interior of the room in a roseate luster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The somnambulist lay supine on the sofa and
attired in a highly alluring negligée; her eyes were firmly shut, and she was
breathing softly as though immersed in the deepest of slumbers.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Gathered around her in a circle of
substantial circumference were a small number of true believers—a pair of young
women who were rolling their eyes, heaving deep sighs, and generally giving
every sign of being all too eager to be in the somnambulist’s place to the
edification of two young men, an army officer and a well-educated civilian, who
both seemed to set very ardent hopes on this important moment, and a pair of
elderly ladies who with bowed heads and clasped hands were eavesdropping on
their somnambulistic friend’s every breath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Everybody was awaiting her attainment of the authentic peak of
receptiveness to clairvoyant visions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At
length, the mesmerist, who had initially forborne entering into communication
with his subject—for, as he had assured them all, once established any
communicative link would be extremely difficult to break–approached the
somnambulist and began speaking with her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>She described to him certain moments during which he had been thinking
about her with especial intensity earlier that day and also mentioned many
other things that had happened to him in the course of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally she asked him to cast aside the ring
that he was carrying with him in a red morocco leather box<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and that he had never before had on his
person—to cast it aside because, she said, its gold and more especially its
diamond were exerting an inimical influence on her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Evincing every sign of the most profound
astonishment, the mesmerist stepped back and produced the just-mentioned case
and ring, which he had received from the jeweler’s only a few hours earlier, so
that the somnambulist could have learned of its existence only via the mesmeric
link. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">This miracle with the ring exerted such a powerful
influence on the two young ladies that, heaving a deep sigh apiece they
instantly sought refuge in an armchair, and by means of a few well-aimed taps
from the mesmerist, they both collapsed into a mesmeric slumber. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once the fatal box had been cast aside, the
mesmerist performed a few stunts with his somnambulist especially for my
delectation.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">She sneezed when he took a pinch of snuff, she
read a letter that he had placed against the hollow beneath her breastbone,
etc.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At length he tried to use his
influence to establish a communicative link between the somnambulist and me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The attempt was magnificently
successful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She described me from head
to toe and averred that she had long since known that the mesmerist had a
certain friend of whose features she had formed an exact picture and that she
had been expecting the mesmerist to bring him to see her this very day.</span> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">She seemed to be highly
gratified by my presence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suddenly she
stopped speaking and sat bolt upright; it seemed to me that her eyelids were
trembling, that her lips were twitching slightly</span>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The mesmerist reported to the inquisitive
spectators that the somnambulist was passing over into the fifth level, into
that state in which the mind is capable of contemplating itself in isolation
from the external world of the senses. Thanks to this news the young men’s
attention was distracted from the slumbering demoiselles at the very moment
when they were beginning to become interesting. One of them had already averred
with conviction that the young officer’s hairstyle, with which she now enjoyed
a mesmeric link, had a very agreeable aura; but the other maintained that the
general’s wife who lived on the ground floor of the house was just then
drinking fine caravan tea whose aroma she could smell through the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>first floor, and she clairvoyantly prophesied
that in a quarter of an hour she would awake from her mesmeric slumber and
drink some tea herself and even have a bit of cake to boot.</span> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The somnambulating lady
recommenced speaking, but in a strange new voice that I must admit I found
uncommonly euphonious.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Moreover, she was speaking in such a mystical vein
and employing such outlandish figures of speech that I could not make head or
tail of what she was saying; meanwhile the mesmerist assured us that she was
saying the most magnificent, profound, and instructive things about her own
stomach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could not but sincerely believe
he was telling the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next the
mesmerist explained that having broken free of her stomach she was now really
soaring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From time to time she seemed to
be uttering entire sentences I had read somewhere before—for example in</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Novalis’s fragments or Schelling’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On the Soul of the World</i>.</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Then she stiffened and
sank back into the cushions.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The mesmerist believed that she would soon be
waking up and asked us to leave the room because, he said, the sight of so many
people standing round her at that moment might have an adverse effect on her. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">So we were sent home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two demoiselles, to whom everybody had
long since ceased paying any attention, had thought it proper to awaken even
earlier and now softly slunk out of the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You can hardly imagine what a peculiar effect the entire scene had on
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Setting aside the two fatuous young
women, who had been happy enough to occupy the uninteresting position of inert
spectators, I could not fend off the thought that the lady somnambulist on the
sofa had been giving a well-thought out, scripted, and impeccably rehearsed
performance with great artistry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I knew the mesmerist too well—namely, as a man of
the utmost probity and candor who could not but have abhorred a comedy of this
sort from the very depths of his soul—to harbor the faintest suspicion that he
might have contributed to any such imposture for his own material benefit, let
alone out of some tedious proselytizing impulse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If such an imposture was being practiced, it
must have been the exclusive handiwork of the lady, whose artistry was
presumably more than a match for the scientific knowledge, insight, and powers
of observation of the doctor, who was perhaps rather too keenly infatuated with
the new theory for his own good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
not within my rights to ask what purpose such self-torture—for there was no
other word for the simulation of such a violently disruptive state—what purpose
such self-torture could serve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For had I
not already learned of the Devil-possessed Ursuline sisters of Loudon, of the
meowing nuns, of those women contorted into hideously disjointed postures by
their ecstasies, not to mention that woman in the hospital at Würzburg who, in
utter disregard of the most excruciating pain, drove needles and shards of
broken glass into the holes left in her arms by bloodletting merely in order to
surprise her doctor with the presence of these foreign bodies in her
bloodstream, or, indeed, the case of the notorious Manson woman in very recent
times—indeed, I reflected, did not every age have its passel of women willing
to put their health, their lives, their reputations, their freedom, at risk,
merely for the sake of persuading the world to regard them as extraordinary
beings and to speak of them as miraculous apparitions?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But back to my somnambulizing lady!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did at least venture to hint gently at my
doubts about her to the doctor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he
averred with a smile that these doubts were but a defeated man’s last feeble
gasps of shammed scepticism.</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">He said that the lady had
repeatedly told him my presence was exerting a beneficent influence on her, and
that such being the case, he very much hoped that I would become a regular
guest of hers during these sessions, and that in doing this I would become wholly
convinced of the validity of the theory.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And in point of fact, I attended several more of
the sessions and gradually found myself inclining to a belief in mesmerism, and
this inclination approached a full-fledged conviction when, after I had got the
mesmerist to put me in communication with her during one of her somnambulistic
trances, she began telling me about the most inconceivably arcane events of my
own life, including a nervous illness I had contracted after death had snatched
a beloved sister away from me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to my
great annoyance, the number of my fellow-guests kept increasing, and the
mesmerist began trying to pass the lady off as a veritable soothsaying Sybil,
inasmuch as he started having her utter oracular pronouncements on the lives
and states of health of total strangers with whom he put her in
communication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One day I recognized one
of the spectators as a famous old physician who was known to be the most
cantankerous doubter, the fiercest adversary, of the mesmeric cure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before he arrived, the lady, already immersed
in her mesmeric slumber, had predicted that this time the trance would last
longer than usual, and that she would not awake until two full hours had
passed. Soon afterwards she reached the highest level of clairvoyance and began
her mystical oration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mesmerist
assured us that at this highest level of genuine ecstasy the somnambulist, a
spiritually pure being, had completely sloughed off her corporeal integument
and was utterly insensible to every form of physical pain. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The old doctor was of the
opinion that for the benefit of science and for the sake of convincing all the
unfaithful a radical experiment was now in order.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He proposed pressing a red-hot iron against
the sole of one of the lady’s feet and seeing if she subsequently remained
impassive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He acknowledged that such an
experiment might seem barbarically cruel, but that in this case it would not
be, as the medicament necessary to alleviate any ensuing burns could be applied
immediately, for he happened to have ready to hand a goodly quantity of just
such a remedy, together with a small iron.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He produced from his bag both the iron and the medicine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mesmerist assured everyone that upon
waking the lady would pay no mind to the pain she would be suffering for the
benefit of the noble cause of science, and he called for a stewpot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The vessel was brought in; the doctor stuck
his little iron into the embers of the hearth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At that moment the lady made a sudden, convulsive movement, fetched a
deep sigh, woke up, and complained that she was indisposed!</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The old doctor cast a withering glance at her, unceremoniously
cooled his iron in the mesmerically charged water directly within reach on the
tea-table, stuck the iron back into his bag, took up his hat and cane, and
exited the premises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scales fell
from my eyes; I hurried away, exasperated, infuriated by the ignoble piece of
mystification that the refined lady had foisted upon her kind-hearted mesmerist
and upon all the rest of us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The news that neither the mesmerist nor
those pious souls who regarded their visits to the lady’s salon as a kind of
divine service had been enlightened in the slightest by the old doctor’s
stratagem should surprise you no more than the news that for my part I then rejected
the whole practice of mesmerism as a wholly chimerical simulation of clairvoyance
and did not care to hear another word about it ever again.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">My destiny brought me to B----.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There, too, mesmerism was much talked about,
but no mention was made of any attempts to practice it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People did talk about a certain doctor, an
estimable and famous physician who was of an advanced age like the doctor back
in the capital who carried gruesome anti-somnambulistic irons in his bag; he
was the director of the city’s splendidly appointed hospital and a firm and
outspoken adversary of mesmeric healing, and it was said that he had cavalierly
forbidden his subordinates to practice it.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">It therefore naturally came as a great
surprise when I eventually learned that this selfsame physician was practicing
mesmerism at the hospital, albeit under conditions of the utmost secrecy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">After I had gotten to know the worthy man
fairly well, I tried to get him talking on the subject of mesmerism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He eluded my efforts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually, when I had been talking about that
dark science long enough to prove that I was something of an authority on it,
he asked me how the practice of mesmeric healing was faring in the capital.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without further ado, I quite frankly and
candidly told him the marvelous story about the somnambulistic lady who
suddenly returned from celestial rapture to terrestrial soil when she learned
she was about to receive a slight burn on one of her feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“That will do, that will do!” he cried as
sparks of lightning flashed in his eyes, and he abruptly broke off the
conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually, after I had
more firmly secured his trust and goodwill, he said that numerous indisputably
authentic experiences had convinced him of the existence of this mysterious
natural force known as mesmerism and of the beneficence of this force in
certain cases, but that he regarded the awakening of this force as the most
dangerous experiment ever effected, an experiment that only physicians capable
of maintaining perfect spiritual composure in the presence of the most
passionate enthusiasm should be entrusted to carry out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that in the practice of no other
science was self-deception likelier, nay, easier; and that he regarded as
inauthentic every experiment in which the mesmeric patient had been told very
many tales about the wonders of mesmerism beforehand and was intelligent and
cultivated enough to have some idea of what it was all about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That poetic or fundamentally highly strung
souls found the allure of existing in a higher spiritual world far too
seductive to avoid reflexively yielding to all manner of outlandish imaginings
in their ardent yearning to attain this state of being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That the mesmerist’s fancied dominion over
the foreign psychic principle was quite an amusing thing when he surrendered
unconditionally to the rhapsodic fantasies of such overwrought persons instead
of curbing them with the bit and bridle of prosaic reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, he by no means denied that he
himself practiced mesmeric healing at his hospital.</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And yet, he said, he believed that his manner of applying it,
with a pure, firm sense of conviction and with the help of doctors especially
chosen by him and operating under his strictest supervision, precluded any
possibility of malpractice, that indeed his method could only eventuate in both
beneficent effects on the patients and the amplification of mankind’s knowledge
of this most mysterious of all medical remedies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He concluded by promising to break all his
own rules and allow me to witness a session of mesmeric healing if a case
requiring it should arise, provided that I promised to forestall the
importunities of the inquisitive mobility by maintaining absolute silence after
the session. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Chance soon afforded me the sight of one of
the most remarkable somnambulists the world has yet known. </span><span class="QuoteChar"><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font: major-fareast;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">In the house of a poor
farmer in a village about 20 miles from B. the chief doctor of the mesmeric
circle discovered a girl of sixteen whose parents bewailed her condition amid
the shedding of bitter tears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They said
that their daughter could be properly termed neither ill nor healthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That she felt no pain, no discomfort, ate and
drank, often slept for days on end, and at the same was losing weight and
getting wearier and weaker with each passing day, such that for some time it
had been quite out of the question for her to do any work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The doctor convinced himself that the
condition afflicting the poor child was rooted in a nervous malady and that the
mesmeric cure was most certainly indicated in this case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He explained to her parents that that it
would be quite impossible to cure their daughter there in the village, but that
in B. she could be cured completely if they would only resolve to bring the
child to the hospital there, where she would receive the best care and
medicines, for neither of which would they be charged a single kreutzer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After much difficult wrangling they consented
to this proposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even before the
administration of the mesmeric cure had begun, I repaired to the hospital with
my medical friend to witness it. I found the girl in a well-lighted,
high-ceilinged room that had been scrupulously furnished with every conceivable
convenience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had a very delicate bone-structure
for a woman of her humble station, and her finely sculpted face could have been
called almost beautiful had it not been disfigured by her lifeless eyes, the
cadaverous pallor of her complexion, and her bloodless lips.</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">It seemed to me that her illness might very well have been
exerting a detrimental influence on her intellectual faculties; she seemed to
be possessed of very limited powers of comprehension, and she answered every
question posed to her only with great effort and in the broad, execrable,
incomprehensible dialect of the peasantry in that part of the country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The director had chosen as her mesmerist a
young, vigorous medical student whose entire visage radiated candor and
good-naturedness and in whose interventions he had convinced himself the girl
would acquiesce.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The course of mesmeric
treatments began.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was never any
talk whatsoever about admitting idle curiosity-seekers, having the patient
perform any showy tricks, or the like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nobody apart from the mesmerist was ever in attendance but the director,
who supervised the all the sessions with the utmost concentration and the most
scrupulous attention to their minutest details, and myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first the child seemed fairly unreceptive,
but soon she was regularly making rapid ascents from level to level, until
after three weeks she attained the state of genuine clairvoyance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You must spare me the labor of mentioning
every single one of the miraculous phenomena that now manifested themselves in
each of these crises; let it suffice for me to assure you here, where no
deception is possible, that in my heart of hearts I was convinced of the
reality of that state that the professors of magnetism describe as the highest
level of clairvoyance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this state,
Kluge says, the rapport with the mesmerist is so intimate that the clairvoyant
not only instantaneously knows when the mesmerist’s thoughts are wandering and
not intently dwelling on the clairvoyant’s condition, but can also ever-so-
distinctly apprehend all the images and ideas forming in the mesmerist’s soul. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time the clairvoyant becomes
completely subservient to the will of his mesmerist, at the behest of whose
psychic principle alone he is capable of thinking, speaking, or acting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This description exactly corresponds to the
condition in which our somnambulistic peasant girl found herself.</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">I’ve no wish to bore you with everything that happened to the
patient and her mesmerist when they were in this state, but let me give you
just one example, and for me the most telling one!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While still in this condition, and while
smiling the most charming smile, the child spoke in the pure, cultivated German
of her mesmerist, and she repeatedly delivered her replies in the most
cultivated tone, and by means of the most judiciously selected words—in short,
exactly as the mesmerist himself would have delivered them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as she was thus holding forth, her cheeks
blushed, her lips turned an incandescent purple, and each and every lineament
of her countenance seemed genuinely ennobled!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Naturally I was impressed, but more
significantly the utter absence of willpower on the part of the somnambulist,
her total surrender of her ego, her dismally abject dependence on a foreign
spiritual principle—nay, the predication of her very existence on this foreign
principle—filled me with horror and disgust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Indeed, I could not help feeling the most profound, heartrending
compassion for the poor girl, and this feeling persisted even as I was
compelled to observe that the course of mesmeric treatment was proving highly
salutary as the little darling blossomed into the very picture of vigorous good
health and thanked the mesmerist, the director, and even me for all the
improvement she was enjoying—all the while speaking her dialect more broadly
and more incomprehensibly than ever before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The director seemed to notice my unfavorable attitude and to share it.</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">We have never come to a consensus on this case, and with very
good reason!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have never since been
able to bring myself to be present at a session of mesmeric treatment, for I
cannot bear to think of the kinds of experiences I might have at such a session
now that I have followed the course of treatment administered to that peasant
girl, an example of mesmeric treatment whose complete authenticity demonstrated
the marvelous power of mesmerism to me while at the same time placing me at the
edge of a terrible abyss that I could not gaze down into without
shuddering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so I have been firmly
converted to Lothar’s opinion.”</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“And I,” chimed in Ottmar, “and I should
like to add that I am of the exact same opinion as both of you, and so we now
we are all of one mind regarding this marvelous mystery that we have been
discussing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, my fellow
champions of mesmerism, any competent physician who is a proponent of mesmerism
will quite rationally and soundly rebuke us, nay, scold us like children, for
daring to pit our vague, untutored laymen’s hunch against a clear and
professionally formed conviction; nevertheless, I believe we shall prove hard
to convince.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we also mustn’t forget
that none of us can ever be entirely averse to mesmerism, given that in our
Serapionian efforts mesmerism can quite often serve as quite an effective lever
for setting unknown, mysterious forces in motion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You yourself, my dear Lothar, have often
availed yourself of this lever, and even in your edifying tale about Nutcracker
and the Mouse King, Marie is occasionally nothing other than a little
somnambulist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But whither have we rambled
so far afield of our original subject, namely our friend Vincenz?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“The transition was a natural one,” said
Lothar; “our path through the field forged itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Vinzenz becomes a member of our
brotherhood, we shall inevitably end up spending even more time discussing the
mysterious matters with which he is quite genuinely obsessed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But several minutes ago Cyprian stopped
paying attention to our conversation and produced a manuscript from his pocket,
and he has been leafing through that manuscript instead of listening to us ever
since.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Protocol requires us to give him
the floor now so that he can disburden his heart.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“As a matter of fact,” said Cyprian, “I did
find your conversation about mesmerism tedious and annoying, and if you don’t
mind, I’ll read you a Serapionian tale that Wagenseil’s history of Nuremberg
inspired me to compose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as you are
listening, you must bear in mind that it was never my intention to pen some
critical antiquarian disquisition on that famous War of the Wartburg; that
instead and after my own fashion, I exploited that event as the subject of a
story in which I described everything exactly as it appeared to me in all the
pellucid clarity of my soul’s eye.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Cyprian read:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><b>The
Contest of the Singers</b></span></div>
<h4 align="center" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-weight: normal;"><o:p> </o:p></span></h4>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">During the night of the
equinox, when winter and spring are just on the point of parting company, a man
was sitting in a solitary chamber with Johann Christoph Wagenseil’s book on the
ingratiating art of the Meistersingers lying open before him on his desk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Outside a roaring, blustering tempest was
sweeping the fields amd beating fat raindrops against the clattering windows,
and winter was whistling and howling its frantic farewells through every
chimney in the house as the beams of the full moon flitted and fluttered on the
walls like pale ghosts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the man paid
no heed to any of this; instead, he slammed the book shut and, still utterly
captivated by its enchanting depiction of a long-bygone age, gazed pensively
into the crackling and spluttering flames in the fireplace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he felt as though some invisible being
were draping one veil after another over his head, so that everything around
him seemed to be dissolving into an ever-thickening mist. The savage fury of
the storm and the crackling of the fire were transformed into gentle harmonic
whispering and murmuring, and an inner voice told him that this was the dream
whose wings so fetchingly soughed whenever it lay down to sleep on the bosom of
humankind like a pious child and awkened the inner eye with a sweet kiss, thus
enabling it to behold the images of a higher life full of luster and
splendor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A blindingly bright light
flared up from below with all the suddenness of a bolt of lightning; the
veil-hooded man opened his eyes, but his gaze was no longer occluded by any
veils or misty clouds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">He was lying on a patch of flowering greensward
in the middle of a beautifully luxuriant forest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The springs were murmuring, the bushes were
whispering as if exchanging amorous secrets, and intermittently a nightingale
sang its sweet plaint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The matutinal
wind rose, and by rolling along the clouds in its way as it forged ahead, it
cleared a path for the bright, ingratiating sunlight, which by and by was
shimmering on all the luscious green leaves and awakening the little birds, who
then burst into gladsome trills and began flitting and hopping from twig to
twig.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the merry sound of horns
being winded resounded from afar; the quarry rustlingly shook itself out of its
slumbers; does and stags with canny eyes peeked out of the bushes for a look at
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">man</i> lying on the ground and then
timorously sprang back into the covert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The horns fell silent, but immediately afterwards a new sound commenced,
the sound of harps and voices playing and singing together in magnificent
harmony like the music of heaven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
beauteous vocal music drew nearer and nearer; hunters with their spears in
their hands and their shiny hunting-horns slung over their shoulders emerged on
horseback from the depths of the forest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They were followed by a fine figure of a gentleman riding a handsome
golden-brown steed and attired in the old German style; at his side on a
palfrey rode a dazzlingly beautiful lady in exquisite finery.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">But
now astride six steeds of various colors there arrived six men whose attire and
expressive faces were redolent of a long-bygone age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>They</i> had laid their horses’ reins
across their necks and were playing lutes and harps and singing in wondrously
clear-toned voices as their horses, at once pacified and guided by the sweet
music’s enchantment, danced along the forest path behind the royal couple in a
succession of short jumps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when,
every so often, the music fell silent for a few seconds, the hunters would wind
the horns, and the neighing of the steeds would resound like an exuberant cry
of jubilation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sumptuously liveried
pages and footmen rounded out the festive procession, which then vanished into
the deep undergrowth of the forest.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Still profoundly
dumbstruck by this curious, marvelous spectacle, our man pulled himself up from
the ground and cried out in an enraptured tone: “O Lord of heaven and earth:
has that noble antique age really emerged from its tomb in the churchyard of
history?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">were</i> all those magnificent people?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then a deep voice behind him said: “Hey, dear sir!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can you really have failed to recognize those
men and women who still hold your thoughts and your senses in thrall?” He
turned around and took in the sight of a serious and highly preposessing man in
a long, curly wig and an entirely black suit that looked as though it dated
from about the year 1680.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He instantly
recognized this man as the learned old Professor Johann Christoph Wagenseil,
who continued speaking thus: “You really should have known that the fine figure
of a gentleman in a princely cloak was none other than the redoubtable
Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lady
riding beside him was the jewel of his court, the noble Countess Mathilde, the
astonishingly young widow of the late elderly Count Cuno von Falkenstein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The six men riding behind behind them while
singing and playing lutes and harps are the six masters of song whom the noble
landgrave, a ruler devoted body and soul to the beauteous art of vocal music,
has assembled at his court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The merry
hunt has just commenced, but afterwards the singers will gather in a lovely
clearing in the middle of the forest and begin a singing competition. Let us
repair thither forthwith, so that we shall already be there at the conclusion
of the hunt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They set out for the
clearing, and as they were walking, the forest and the distant cliff-faces
reverberated with the winding of the horns, the baying of the hounds, the
huzzahing of the hunters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything
unfolded as if in obliging conformity to Professor Wagenseil wishes; no sooner
did they reach the luminously golden-green clearing than the landgrave, the
countess, and the six masters were just visible in the distance and slowly
drawing nearer: “I will now” began Wagenseil, “I will now, my dear sir!, point
out to you each of the masters and tell you their names.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you see that man who is so gaily looking
in every which direction as he holds the reins taut and lets his horse approach
us with a merilly mincing gait?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See the
landgrave nodding at him; see him bursting into a resounding peal of
laughter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is the ebullient Walther
von Vogelweid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The one with the broad
shoulders, with the thick curly beard, with a knight’s armaments; the one who
is riding towards us at a ponderous pace on the back of a steed striped like a
tiger—that is Reinhard von Zwekhstein.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hey, hey—look at that man on the little piebald horse who is actually
riding deeper into the woods instead of towards us!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is gazing meditatively into space; he is
smiling as though beauteous images were rising up from the earth before his
eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is the formidable Professor
Heinrich Schreiber.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His mind is indeed
very much in another place; he obviously is not giving a thought either to this
clearing or to the singing competition, for as you can see, my dear sir, by now
he has burrowed so deeply into the narrow forest path that the tips of the
tree-branches are grazing his temples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now Johannes Bitterolff is trotting over to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you see Bitterolff—that handsome
red-bearded man on a dun?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is calling
out to the professor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The latter</i> is awakening from his
reverie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the two of them are
rejoining the group. What is that tremendous roar coming from that dense patch
of shrubbery? Do roving whirlwinds really keep so close to the ground in the
forest? Hey! It is no whirlwind, but a horseman spurning his steed with such
ferocity that it is ascending into the air with its sides covered in lather.
Just take a look at that beauteously pale youth with his eyes all ablaze and
every muscle in his face drawn taut with suffering, as though he is being
tormented by some invisible being sitting behind him in the saddle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is Heinrich von Ofterdingen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So what can possibly have come over him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first he was riding towards us so calmly
and singing along with the other masters so majestically!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But O, behold, now, the magnificent rider on
the snow-white Arabic horse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Behold him
leaping down from the saddle, behold how, with the reins slung round his arm,
in a gesture of truly knightly gallantry he reaches his hand over to Countess
Mathilde and floats her gently down from her palfry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How gracefully he stands there radiantly
gazing at the lovely woman with his clear blue eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is Wolfframb von Eschinbach!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now they are all taking their places; the
singing competition is about to begin!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Each of the
masters, one after the other, now sang a majestic song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was easy to perceive that each of them was
striving to surpass the master who had sung before him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in the end not one of them seemed to have
attained his goal; it was quite impossible to determine which of them had sung
most majestically—and yet Lady Mathilde was leaning over towards Wolfframb von
Eschinbach as if she were about to crown him with the victor’s wreath she was
holding in her hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At that moment
Heinrich von Ofterdingen leapt up from his seat; sparks of savage fire flashed
from his dark eyes; as he swiftly stepped forward into middle of the clearing,
a gust of wind tore his beret off his head, leaving his bared forelocks
standing upright like spikes atop his death-pale brow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Stop!” he shrieked, “stop!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The prize has not been won yet; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> song, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> song must be sung, and only then may the landgrave decide who is
entitled to receive the wreath.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whereupon by some utterly inscrutable agency there appeared in his hand
an instrument of eldritch construction, a lute in the shape of some petrified
creature never before seen on earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
began strumming <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this lute </i>so
forcefully that its drone carried to the very verge of the forest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he began singing along in a sonorous
voice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His song praised and extolled the
foreign king who was more powerful than all other kings, a king to whom all
masters were obliged to pay homage if they shunned the path to shame and
ignomy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From time to time the lute
emitted certain strangely jarring tones that had an unmistakably derisive sound
to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The landgrave glared furiously
at the impetuous singer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the other
masters rose and began singing a different song in unison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seemed that Ofterdingen’s song was about
to be drowned out completely by this chorus, but he kept plucking the strings
of his instrument; forcefully and ever more forcefully he plucked them, until
they all broke with an ear-rending wail of terror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the place of the lute, which Otterdingen
had been cradling in his arm, a horrifying tenebrous figure was standing
directly in front of Otterdingen, who was starting to sink to the ground; the
figure then embraced him and lifted him high into the air. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The masters’ singing died away in an echo;
black fog descended on the forest and into the clearing and draped everything
in nocturnal darkness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then a
majestically coruscating milk-white star ascended from the depths and ambled
upwards along the celestial path, drawing along behind it the singers sitting
atop refulgent clouds and strumming their instruments and singing.</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">A shimmering luminescence trembled through
the meadow; the voices of the forest awoke from their torpid slumber and
swelled skywards and mellifluously joined in the music of the masters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">You will readily perceive, dearest
reader!, that the man who dreamed all this is the selfsame man who is about to
lead you into the company of the masters who<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>with whom he was made acquainted by Professor Johann Christoph
Wagenseil.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">It sometimes happens that when we see
unidentifiable figures approaching us from the twilit distance, our heart
palpitates with curiosity as to who they could possibly be, as to what schemes
they could possibly be contriving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
they keep coming nearer and nearer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
can distinguish the colors of their clothing, their faces; we can hear that
they are talking, although their words dissolve into the distant air currents
before they can reach us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now the
figures plunge into the azure mist of a deep valley.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At this point we scarcely expect them to
climb back out of the depths and to walk up to us and salute us, thereby allowing
us to touch them and converse with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For were they to do so we should be hard-pressed indeed to say how <i>these
people</i> who have assumed such familiar forms and shapes in our immediate
presence could possibly be the same as those other figures who looked so
astonishingly strange when seen from afar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">May the dream that is about to be
recounted to you, dear reader, excite sensations like these in your mind’s
sensorium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>May you graciously vouchsafe
your humble narrator the privilege of escorting you forthwith to the court of
the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia at the fair Wartburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
Master Singers at the Wartburg<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">It might have been in about the year of our Lord 1208 that the
noble landgrave of Thuringia, a zealous admirer and vigorous patron of the
beauteous art of vocal music, had gathered six master singers at his
court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The members of this assembly were
Wolfframb von Eschinbach, Walther von der Vogelweid, Reinhard von Zwekhstein,
Heinrich Schreiber, Johannes Bitterolff, all of knightly rank; and Heinrich von
Ofterdingen, a private citizen of Eisenach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The masters lived together in harmony and loving piety like priests of a
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">single</i> church, and day in and day out
it was their sole and constant endeavor to glorify and pay genuine reverence to
vocal music, the fairest celestial gift with which the Lord has seen fit to
bless mankind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, each of them
had his own melody, but just as every note in a chord sounds different from the
all others and yet all the notes sound together with the most ingratiating
euphony, the various melodies of the masters sounded in harmonious simultaneity
and shone like the various beams of a single star of love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In consequence, none of the singers regarded
his own melody as the best one; rather, each of them revered all the others and
sincerely believed that his melody could never sound as beautiful on its own as
when accompanied by its fellows, for it is only once the individual note has
been bidden a loving welcome by one of its newly awakened kindred that that it
can truly soar and joyously ascend to the heavens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">When Walther von der Vogelweid’s and
the landgrave’s songs were courtly and graceful and full of cheeky good humor
to boot, Reinhard von Zwekhstein would sing in a rumbustious, marital vein with
weighty words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Heinrich Schreiber
waxed scholarly and profound, Johannes Bitterolff would brim over with radiance
and abound with elaborate similes and turns of phrase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heinrich von Ofterdingen’s songs penetrated
the listener’s very soul of souls; being thoroughly suffused with the agonies
of yearning himself, he knew how to enkindle the deepest melancholy in every
breast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But these tender lays were often
interrupted by harsh and hideous tones, tones that seemed to issue from his
sore and riven heart, in which spiteful contumely was lodged, boring into it
and feeding off it like some parasitic poisonous insect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nobody knew how Heinrich had come to be
afflicted by such a pestiferous force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wolfframb von Eschinbach had been born in Switzerland.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His songs were like the winsome grace and
clarity of the skies over his native country; his melodies evoked the beauteous
continuous sounding of bells and shawms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But they were interrupted in their own right by the savage roaring of
waterfalls, by the rumbling of thunder through the precipitous montane
ravines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he sang, each of his
listeners miraculously floated alongside him on the glittering waves of a
mighty, beauteous river, at one moment gliding gently along its surface, at the
next braving the onslaught of storm-churned billows, and finally steering the
boat into a secure port with triumphal merriment once the danger had been
overcome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Despite his youth, Wolfframb von Eschinbach might very well
have been the most experienced of all the masters gathered at the court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since his earliest childhood he had been
utterly devoted to the art of vocal music, and the moment he ceased to be a
child and became a youth he set out on a journey that took him through many
countries until he met the great mastersinger named Friedebrand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This man faithfully instructed him in his art
and introduced him to the manuscripts of many masters’ poems, poems that imbued
his inner world with light and enabled him to discern in sharp outline
everything that had formerly seemed turbid and shapeless to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But most significantly, at Siegebrunnen in
Scotland, Master Friedebrand gave him several books from which he selected stories
that he adapted into German songs; the most important of these were one about
Gamurret and his son Parcivall and another about the Margrave Wilhelm von
Narben and the stalwart Rennewart; another master singer subsequently rewrote
this second poem in common German rhyme at the request of some people of rank
who had trouble understanding Eschinbach’s songs, and he also expanded it into
a long book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so perforce Wolfframb’s
fame as an artist spread far and wide, and he found favor with many princes and
great lords.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He visited many courts, and
in every one of them he was handsomely honored for his mastery of his art,
until finally the highly enlightened Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia, who had
heard him praised from every point of the compass, called him to his
court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thanks not only to his great
artistry but also to his meekness and humility, Wolfframb won the landgrave’s
favor in very little time, and it may very well have been the case that
Heinrich von Ofterdingen, who had formerly stood in the noontime sunlight of
the sovereign’s grace, was obliged to withdraw ever so slightly into the
shadows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless, none of the other
masters was more generously or lovingly devoted to Wolfframb than Heinrich von
Ofterdingen himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb
recipcrocated this devotion from the very bottom of his heart, and the two of
them stood face to face engulfed in their mutual love, as the other masters
surrounded them like a beauteously luminous wreath.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Heinrich
von Ofterdingen’s Secret<o:p></o:p></span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></i></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The ascendancy of the restless,
strife-riven element in Ofterdingen’s character increased with each passing
day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His gaze grew gloomier and more
vagrant; his countenance grew paler and paler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unlike those of the other masters—who had composed songs on the most
exalted subjects in Holy Scripture and now raised their joyful voices in praise
of the courtly ladies and their gallant lordly champion—Ofterdingen’s songs
only bewailed the immeasurable torments of earthly existence and often
resembled the piteous woebegone cries of a mortally wounded soul yearning in
vain for deliverance in death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everybody
believed he was hopelessly in love; but all attempts to elicit the particulars
of his secret from him proved futile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The landgrave himself, whose very heart and soul were devoted to the
youth, ventured in a solitary hour to ask him to reveal the cause of his
sorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gave him his word as a prince
that he would summon up all his strength to banish whatever evil menanced him
or, by bringing him closer to whatever object of desire he now despaired of
attaining, to transform his grievous affliction into high-spirited hope; but
like the others, he proved utterly powerless to persuade the youth to disclose
to him the innermost chamber of his heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Ah, my noble liege,” cried Ofterdingen, as scalding tears welled up
from his eyes, “Ah, my noble liege, do I myself even know what infernal monster
has seized me with its incandescent claws and is now holding me aloft between
heaven and earth so that I no longer belong here below and thirst in vain for
the joys of the realm above me? The pagan poets tell of certain shades of the
departed who belong neither in Elysium nor in Hades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They range along the banks of the Acheron,
and the murky river-vapors, through which not a single star of hope ever so
feebly gleams, echo with their terrified sighs, with the horrifying woebegone
expressions of their nameless torment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Their
wailing, their pleading, is futile; the old ferryman implacably rebuffs them
when they try to climb into the baleful boat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My own existence is tantamount to such a state of terrible damnation.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Not long after speaking with the
landgrave in this manner, Heinrich von Ofterdingen became genuinely ill and
left the Wartburg for <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Eisenach</st1:place></st1:city>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In tones of bitter lamentation, the masters
averred that one of the fairest flowers of their wreath was now ineluctably
condemned to wither away before his time as if he were being blasted by some
fatal miasma.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time Wolfframb
von Eschinbach had by no means given up all hope, for he was of the opinion
that inasmuch as Ofterdingen’s spiritual malaise was being transformed into
corporeal suffering at this very moment, a full recovery might yet be an
imminent possibility; for did not the soul often fall ill as a consequence of
its intuitive premonition of corporeal pain? And he reasoned that this might
well have happened to Ofterdingen, whom he now intended to nuture and comfort. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">And so Wolfframb set off immediately
for Eisenach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he entered
Ofterdingen’s chamber, the singer was lying stretched out on a daybed; he was
as listless as a man on the utmost verge of death, and his eyes were
half-closed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His lute was hanging on the
wall; it was covered in dust, and many of its strings were broken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After Wolframb had sat down at his side,
delivered the heartfelt salutations of the landgrave and masters, and uttered
some further sincerely pleasant pleasantries, Heinrich began speaking in a
listless, ailing voice: “I have undergone many peculiar experiences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I very probably behaved like a madman towards
all of you; you all very probably believed that it was some terrible secret, a
secret I was deliberately keeping locked up in my breast, that was wrenching me
to and fro to such pernicious effect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ah!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is that my
cheerless condition was a mystery even to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My breast was riven by furious anguish, but try as I might I could not
fathom the cause of this affliction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All
my achievements struck me as wretched and worthless; all the songs that I had
formerly valued so highly sounded false, feeble—unworthy of the most
incompetent schoolboy. Yet at the same time, besotted by the delirum of vanity
as I was, I ardently yearned to outstrip you, Wolfframb—to outstrip all the
other masters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An unknown happiness,
heaven’s highest bliss, was poised high above me, like a coruscating golden
star, and I was impelled either to soar up to that star’s level or to sink
disconsolately into nonexistence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
gazed up at the sky; I stretched my arms yearningly upward, whereupon I was
wafted by bloodcurdling gusts of wind fanned towards me by a pair of ice-cold
wings, and a voice said, “What is the aim of all your hope, of all your
yearning?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have you not been blinded; has
your strength not been broken; are you not now quite incapable of withstanding
the radiance of your hope, of embracing your celestial happiness?” Now—now the
mystery has been solved, and I myself am privy to my own secret.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is killing me, but in giving me death it
it is also vouchsafing me eternal heavenly bliss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was lying ailing and infirm here in this
bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It might have been during the
night, for the feverish delirium that had been tossing me to and fro in
paroxysms of roaring and raging was ebbing away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt calm; a gentle, beneficent warmth was
gliding through my psyche.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt as
though I were floating along on dark clouds in the vast expanse of the
celestial realm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then a coruscating bolt
of lightning flashed through the darkness, and I cried out: “Mathilde!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was awake; the dream had vanished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My heart thrilled with a strange, sweet
terror, with indescribable ecstasy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
knew that I had cried out: “Mathilde!” and I took fright, for I believed that
the meadows and the forests, that all the mountains and ravines, were now
echoing with her sweet name, that a thousand voices would be directly reporting
to her that I loved her with an inexpressible intensity and would love her unto
death; that she, she was the coruscating star that had radiantly awoken that
all-consuming pain of inconsolable yearning in my soul of souls—indeed that
flames of love were now blazing up within me and that my soul was now thirsting
for, craving, her beauty and graciousness!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>You now know my secret, Wolfframb, and I implore you to bury it deep in
your breast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are aware that I am
calm and of good cheer, and you will surely take me at my word when I assure
you that I would rather perish than make myself a laughingstock for you all by
fatuously toiling away at my métier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i>, who love Mathilde, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> to whom she is drawn in turn by a
complementary love—are the one to whom I am obliged to say everything that I
still have to say, the one to whom I must confide all of it unreservedly and in
full.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As soon as I have recovered I
shall be departing for foreign lands with the mortal wound still gaping in my
bleeding breast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You are therefore now
hearing that I have reached the end, and so you may tell Mathilde that I—”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The young man was incapable of speaking any further; he sank
back into the bedclothes and turned his face to the wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His violent sobs betrayed the struggle raging
within him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb was more than
slightly dismayed by what Heinrich had just revealed to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With his gaze sunken earthwards, he sat there
at the edge of the bed and pondered and pondered how to go about resucing his
friend from the delirium of fatuous passion that would otherwise inevitably
plunge him into perdition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">He tried to utter every possible formula of consolation, nay,
even to persuade the ailing youth to return to the Wartburg, fortify his breast
with hope, and boldly step into the clear sunshine that the noble lady Mathilde
radiated in every direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said
that he was even inclined to believe that he, Wolfframb, himself had nothing
but his songs to thank for Mathilde’s kindly disposition towards him, and that
Ofterdingen needed only to soar comparably aloft in his own beauteous vocal
compositions in order to secure Mathilde’s favor in his own right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Poor Heinrich gazed at him with a gloomy mien
and said, “You will never see me at the Wartburg again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Would you really have me hurl myself into the
flames?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shall I not in fact enjoy a
sweeter and more beauteous death by dying of longing for her at this great
distance?” Wolframb left, and Ofterdingen remained in Eisenach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
Further Life History of Heinrich von Ofterdingen<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">It often happens
that after threatening to tear our breast asunder, the pain of love at length
becomes a downright homey feeling, so much so that we even come to nurture it
and cherish it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And the searing cries of
lamentation formerly extorted from us by unspeakable torment metamorphose into
melodious peals of sweet woe that reverberate in our psyche like a distant echo
and soothingly and curatively lay themselves to rest on the bleeding
wound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heinrich von Ofterdingen’s pain
underwent just such a transformation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
remained ardently, yearningly in love, but he no longer gazed into the black
abyss of despair; rather, he raised his eyes skyward towards the iridescent
clouds of springtime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this point
onwards it seemed to him as though his beloved were gazing at him from the
distant heights with her sweetly gracious eyes and kindling in his breast the
noblest songs he had ever sung.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He took
his lute down from the wall, restrung it, and stepped out into the beauteous
spring, which had just sprung into bloom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And once he was outdoors it was only a matter of a very little time
before he was drawn with ineluctable force to the environs of the
Wartburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And when he at last descried
the castle’s coruscating battlements and reflected that he would never see
Mathilde again, that his life was destined to remain nothing but a continuous
spasm of inconsolable yearning, that Wolfframb von Eschinbach had already won
the noble lady’s heart thanks to the mighty prowess of his vocal music, all the
beauteous images limned in his mind by the pencil of hope sank into the gloom
of night and his soul of souls was riven by all the mortal torments inflictable
by boundless jealousy and despair. </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Whereupon
he fled with the celerity of a man goaded by evil spirits; he fled back to his
solitary chamber, where he at once found himself able to sing songs that
brought him sweet dreams in which his beloved herself figured.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">For a long time he managed to avoid
coming anywhere near the Wartburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
one day, quite without even knowing how himself, he wandered into the forest
that was faced by the Wartburg and upon emerging from which one was afforded an
immediate view of the castle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had
reached the part of the forest where strangely shaped stones overgrown with
brightly colored moss reared up amid thick shrubs and all kinds of hideous
prickly undergrowth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He clambered
laboriously into the middle of this area, where through a gap between the rocks
he beheld the spires of the Wartburg towering in the distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thereupon he sat down on the ground, and
fending off all malevolently tormenting thoughts, he lost himself in sweet
reveries of hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">The sun had long
since set; from out of the murky fog that had settled atop the mountain peaks
the incandescent red disc of the moon ascended.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The nocturnal wind whirled through the tall trees, and the blast of its glacially
cold breath caused the shrubbery to shiver and shudder like a fever
patient.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shrieking nocturnal birds
soared skyward from out of the rocks and commenced their manic flight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The babbling of the sylvan brooks became more
vociferous; even the rippling of their distant sources grew audible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But then as the moon began shining more
brightly through the woods, a distant sung melody surged towards him from its
direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He realized that the masters
at the Wartburg had just begun singing their pious evening songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He pictured Mathilde still gazing at her
beloved Wolfframb in the circle of singers as she retired for the night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the love and bliss in the universe
resided in this gaze, which could not but awaken the enchantment of dreams of
incomparable sweetness in her beloved’s soul.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Heinrich, whose heart was on the point of bursting with longing and
desire, took up his lute and began a song, and in so doing he sang as he
perhaps had never sung even once before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The night wind subsided and then ceased; the trees and shrubs fell
silent; the notes of Heinrich’s performance shone through the tenebrous
stillness of the forest as though they were enveloped in moonbeams.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When at length the last beat of his song was
on the point of dying away into the distance, a burst of shrill and strident laughter
suddenly erupted directly behind him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
terror he turned swiftly around and beheld a tall, shadowy figure, and even
before he could take stock of what was happening, the figure was screaming at
him in a genuinely hideous voice, “Ah, I’ve been wandering around here a good
while in search of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">whoever</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">in the world </i>could be singing such
magnificent songs in the midst of the pitch-dark night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So it’s you, is it, Heinrich von
Ofterdingen?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I really should have known,
for you are without a doubt the very worst of the so-called masters up there at
the Wartburg, and that inanely demented song utterly devoid of thought and
melody could have issued from no mouth but yours.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Half in residual terror, half in nascent rage,
Heinrich cried, “And who might you be—you who recognize me and fancy yourself
entitled to taunt me in such insulting terms here?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With these words, Ofterdingen laid a hand on
the hilt of his sword.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the black figure
immediately burst into another peal of shrilly raucous laughter, and as he was
laughing a beam of moonlight fell on his face and afforded Ofterdingen a brief
but distinct glimpse of his savagely coruscating eyes, his sunken cheeks, his
pointed red beard, his mouth, twisted by laughter into a contemptuous grimace,
his sumptuous black raiment, his black feather-surmounted hat. “Hey,” said the
stranger, “hey, young fellow, surely you’re not going to use a lethal weapon on
me just because I criticized your songs?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Admittedly, you famous singers probably don’t appreciate criticism much,
and in fact you probably even expect people to praise to the skies every little
ditty you come up with no matter how fundamentally execrable it actually
is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But precisely because I don’t care
for your songs and am willing to come right out and tell you that you are
certainly no master and at most a mediocre student of the art of vocal music,
you really ought to realize that I am a true friend who has nothing but kind
intentions towards you.” “How,” said Ofterdingen, as he shuddered from head to
toe in reaction to the uncanniness of what he had just heard, “can you be my
friend and have kind intentions towards me when I cannot recall having ever
seen you so much as once in my life?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without
answering this question, the stranger continued thus: “This is a curiously
beautiful spot; the night that surrounds us is downright cozy; I shall now sit
down with you in the dear old luster of the moon, and as we both know you won’t
be heading back to Eisenach straight-away, we can have ourselves a little chat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pay some heed to what I am about to say; you
may find it instructive.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With these
words he seated himself on the large moss-covered stone right next to
Ofterdingen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter was now
struggling with the most peculiar emotions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although he had no real reason for being timorous, in the desolate
solitude of the night in this eerie place he could not quell the profound
horror aroused in his soul by the strange man’s voice and indeed by his entire
being.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He felt a well-nigh-irresistible
impulse to send him tumbling down the steep declivity at their feet and into
the roaring mountain stream at its base.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But immediately thereafter felt as though every one of his limbs was
paralyzed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Meanwhile the stranger sidled
even closer to Ofterdingen and said softly, almost whisperingly, into his ear,
“I have just come from the Wartburg: up there I heard the downright execrable,
pedantic singing of the so-called masters; but the Lady Mathilde is perhaps the
sweetest and loveliest being on the face of the earth.”</span> <span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">“Mathilde!” cried Ofterdingen in a tone of exquisitely
poignant sorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Ho ho!” laughed the
stranger, “Ho ho, young fellow, am I right in thinking you take an interest in
the young lady?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for now let us talk
of more serious, or, rather, higher matters: I am referring to the noble art of
vocal music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may well be that you lot
up there are all well-intentioned with your songs, that all that stuff comes
out of you quite smoothly and naturally, but you haven’t got the foggiest
notion of what the deeper art of the singer is actually all about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I intend to give you just a few hints as to
the true essentials of this art, and then perhaps you will manage to understand
on your own how the path you are ambling along can never lead you to the goal
you have set yourself.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now the
black-clad man began to extol the art of vocal music in a most peculiar
discourse that sounded almost like a series of outlandish songs of foreign
origin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the stranger spoke, image
upon image arose in Heinrich’s soul and vanished as if blown away by a tempest;
he felt as if he were becoming privy to an entire new world brimming over with
luxuriant shapes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each of the stranger’s
words ignited dazzling flames that swiftly blazed up and just as swiftly died
away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two men were sitting in the
full and direct light of the moon, and Heinrich now noticed that the stranger’s
countenance was by no means as hideous as it had first seemed to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Sparks</st1:place></st1:city>
from an otherworldly fire were emanating from his eyes, and yet (Heinrich
fancied) a downright endearing smile was playing about his lips and his large
aquiline nose and high forehead served only to impart a supremely eloquent
expression of redoubtable strength to his features.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I don’t know,” said Ofterdingen when the
stranger fell silent, “I don’t know what to call the peculiar feeling your
speech is awakening in me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel as
though the first intimation of the art of vocal music is only now awakening
within me, as though everything I have believed about it until now has been
altogether vulgar and wrongheaded and the true nature of the art is only now
dawning on me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As you yourself are
undoubtedly a grand master of that art, I implore you to accept me into your
tutelage, for I ardently crave greater knowledge and promise to be a diligent pupil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The stranger burst into another peal of his
hideous laughter and rose from his seat; and upon seeing this veritable
colossus with savagely distorted features standing at his full height, Heinrich
von Ofterdingen was once again seized by all the horror he had originally felt
when he was first accosted by the stranger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The latter now said in a booming voice that resounded far and wide
through the chasms, “You think that I am a grand master of the art of vocal music?</span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Well, I may very well be one of those
every now and then, but I most certainly cannot take on any pupils.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am, however, only too happy to offer good
advice to people who crave knowledge, as you indeed seem to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have you perchance heard tell of Klingsor,
that master of song profoundly schooled in all branches of knowledge?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People say that he is a great necromancer and
even fraternizes with a certain person who is not a welcome sight in all
quarters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But don’t let that scare you
off, because people always assume that any skill they can’t understand or
practice themselves is some superhuman power that can be wielded only by divine
or infernal agents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Master Klingsohr will show you the path that
will lead you to your goal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He resides
in <st1:place w:st="on">Transylvania</st1:place>; hie yourself thither
forthwith. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There you will learn how
science and art have procured the grand master an abundance of everything
pleasurable under the sun—glory, wealth, the favor of women.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You heard me aright, young fellow!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If Klingsohr were here,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>would the fair Countess Mathlide care even if
he slew the tender Wolfframb von Eschinbach, the sighing Swiss shepherd, for
her sake?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Why do you mention her
name?” Wolffram von Eschinbach furiously demurred; “Leave me at once; your very
presence makes me shiver!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Whoa,”
laughed the stranger, “don’t lose your temper, my little friend!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you’re shivering, it’s the cool night air
and the thinness of your doublet that are to blame, not me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Weren’t you having a perfectly fine time when
I was sitting right next to you and keeping you nice and toasty just now?” Why
need you shiver?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why need you freeze,
when I can serve you with blood and ardor?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As for what I said about Countess Mathilde, why I naturally only meant
that the favor of women may be obtained through the mastery of the art of song,
which Master Klingsohr can teach you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Earlier on I poured scorn on your songs in order to draw your attention
to your egregious incompetence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But because
you intuitively grasped the truth straight-away when I was speaking to you of
the authentic art of song, I am sufficiently convinced that you possess real
ability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps it is your destiny to
tread in Master Klingsohr’s footsteps; if so, once you have fulfilled this
destiny, you will certainly be able to compete successfully for Mathilde’s
favor. Sally forth! Hie yourself to <st1:place w:st="on">Transylvania</st1:place>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But wait: if you can’t hie yourself to
Translyvania straight-away, I highly recommend your sedulously studying a small
book that Master Klingsohr has written and that contains not only the rules of
the true art of vocal music, but also a few excellent songs by the master.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">With these words
the stranger pulled out a small book whose blood-red cover glimmered brightly
in the moonlight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He handed the book
over to Heinrich von Ofterdingen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">As soon as the
latter took hold of it, the stranger stepped back and vanished into the
thicket. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heinrich sank into a deep slumber.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he awoke, the sun had already climbed to
a great height.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the red book had no
longer been lying in his lap, he would have regarded his entire encounter with
the stranger merely as a peculiarly vivid dream.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">On the Countess
Mathilde.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Events at the Wartburg</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Undoubtedly, my highly beloved reader,
you have at some point found yourself in a social circle composed exclusively
of lovely women and sensible men, a group of acquaintances worthy of being
likened to a beauteous braided garland of flowers of the most diverse variety
of scents and brilliant colors, to a wreath of blossoms all vying to excel one
another in splendor and sweetness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
just as the euphonious breath of music awakens joy and delight in every breast
it passes through as it wafts across the world, in this circle it was surely
the superlative loveliness of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">single</i>
nobly resplendent woman that irradiated every member of this group and thereby
produced that graceful harmony that governed its collective motion. By virtue
of walking in the luster of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">her</i>
beauty, of adding their words and voices to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">her</i>
music, the other women seemed more beautiful, more gracious than they had done
before; and the men felt their hearts expand and found themselves newly capable
of giving effusive utterance in words or melodic notes to the rapture that had
formerly remained timidly pent up within them, such that this eloquent
uninhibitedness soon became the norm within the group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However laboriously and kind-heartedly the queen
might have striven to apportion her benevolence equally among all her
courtiers, one could not help noticing that she let her heavenly gaze linger
with particular emphasis on that youth who was standing silently face to face
with her and whose dazzling eyes tearful with sweet emotion betrayed the
blissfulness of the love that was surging up within him. Many a man in the
garland might have envied this youth’s good fortune, but none could hate him on
account of it; indeed, to the contrary, every one of them who was separately
bound to him in friendship could not but love him all the more deeply for his
love’s sake.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Now the fairest flower in the fair
garland of ladies and poets at the court of the Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia
happened to be the Countess Mathilde, the widow of the Count Cuno von
Fallkenstein who had died in advanced old age, and she outshone all the others
in point of fragrance and splendor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Wolfframb von Eschinbach was deeply moved by her
graciousness and beauty the moment he first saw her and soon fell ardently in
love. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other masters, who were
likewise enraptured by the countess’s loveliness and graciousness, celebrated
her beauty and clemency in a great number of ingratiating songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reinhard von Zwekhstein called her the lady
of his thoughts, a woman for whose honor he would fain fight either sportingly
in jousting tournaments or earnestly on the battlefield; Walther von der
Vogelweid let his knightly love boldly blaze forth in frank declarations, while
Heinrich Schreiber and Johannes Bitterolff labored to exalt the Lady Mathilde
in marvelously intricate similes and other figures of speech.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Wolfframb’s songs came from the depths of
his enamored heart and pierced Mathilde’s breast like coruscating sharp-tipped
arrows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The other masters were well
aware of this, but in their eyes Wolfframb’s amorous bliss surrounded them all
with radiance like a beauteous solar corona and imparted strength and grace
even to their own songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The first dark shadow that fell on
Wolfframb’s illustrious life was Ofterdingen’s unfortunate secret.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he recalled that the other masters loved
him even though they had also been smitten by Mathilde’s beauty, that it was
solely in Ofterdingen’s heart that malevolent resentment had taken up joint
residence with love, that Ofterdingen alone had been banished into the
wasteland of friendless solitude by his passion for the countess, the bitter
sorrow of the realization was more than he could bear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It often seemed to him as though Ofterdingen
was simply in the grip of some baneful access of lunacy that would eventually
spend itself, but then he would immediately be struck by the acutely painful
reflection that he himself would undoubtedly have found his existence
insufferable had he courted Mathilde’s favor in vain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Besides,” he asked himself, “by the
authority of what power dare I maintain that I have a juster title that to
favor?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do I really deserve to be
preferred to Ofterdingen?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Am I better,
more intelligent, more worthy of love, than him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In what sense are the two of us different
from each other?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the formidable power
of a balefully adversarial fate is crushing him to the ground, and I, his loyal
friend, am blithely passing by without deigning to offer him a hand up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ruminations such as these ultimately led him
to resolve to go to Eisenach and do everything possible to convince Ofterdingen
to return to the Wartburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But by the
time he reached <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Eisenach</st1:place></st1:city>,
Heinrich von Ofterdingen had vanished, and nobody knew where he had gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sorrowfully Wolfframb von Eschinbach returned
to the Wartburg and announced Ofterdingen’s disappearance to the landgrave and
the masters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only now that they
all truly realized how deeply they loved him in spite of his pain-riven and
often quite bitterly sullen disposition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They mourned him as though he were dead, and for a long time these
obsequies covered the masters’ music like a shroud of gloom and deprived their
songs of all luster and melody, until at length the image of the lost man began
retreating ever further into the distant recesses of their memories.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">By then
spring had arrived, and with it all the gusto and good cheer of newly
refortified life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At a charming spot in
the castle garden surrounded by beautiful trees the masters had gathered to
salute the young verdure, the burgeoning blooms and blossoms, in joyous
songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The landgrave, Countess Mathilde,
and the other ladies had sat down on the grass in a circle, and Wolfframb von
Eschinbach was just about to begin a song, when a young man with a lute in his
hand stepped forward from behind the trees.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In an access of joyous astonishment,
they all instantly recognized him as the man they had given up for lost,
Heinrich von Ofterdingen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The masters
all stepped up to him and greeted him with hearty warmth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But without paying any particular regard to
their salutations, he approached the landgrave and bowed reverentially to him
and then to Countess Mathilde.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He then
said that he had completely recovered from the virulent illness that had so grievously
afflicted him and that if for whatever special reason they did not wish to
accept him back into the circle of the masters, he would greatly appreciate
their allowing him to sing his own songs through alongside them despite this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The landgrave rejoined to Ofterdingen that
although he had indeed been absent for some time, he had by no means stricken
himself from the masters’ membership rolls in consequence and that he, the
landgrave, was hard pressed to understand why Ofterdingen<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>now believed himself to be alienated<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>from the fair circle gathered there at the
Wartburg. Whereupon the landgrave embraced him and even directed him to
reoccupy his old place in the circle, the one between Walther von der Vogelweid
and Wolfframb von Eschinbach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone soon
perceived that Ofterdingen’s entire character had completely changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead of slinking along with his head bowed
and his gaze cast earthward as before, he now strode boldly forward with his
head held high. His visage was as pallid as before, but his gaze, formerly
frenzied and erratic, was now steady and penetrating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In place of dejection a proud and gloomy
earnestness sat on his brow, and every now and then a curious play of the
muscles of his lips and cheeks bespoke a scorn that was downright eerie. He did
not deign to speak a single word to the masters but rather took his seat in
slience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While the others were singing
he gazed up at the clouds, shifted his sitting position this way and that,
counted sums on his fingers, yawned—in short, evinced nothing but boredom and
annoyance in every conceivable manner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb
von Eschinbach sang a song in which he first praised the landgrave and then
turned to the subject of the return of their friend whom they had all believed
lost and whom he depicted with such deeply heartfelt affection that they were
all very powerfully moved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But Heinrich
von Ofterdingen knitted his brows, turned his back on Wolfframb, took up his
lute, and strummed a few wondrously beautiful chords.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he stationed himself in the middle of
the circle and began a song whose style was so entirely unlike anything any of
the others had ever sung, so outrageously unprecedented, that they were all
extremely astonished—indeed, utterly stupefied in the end. It was as though he
were using the mighty notes of his song as fists that were pounding on the
gates of an ominous foreign kingdom and summoning the mysteries of the unknown
power residing there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he called
upon the stars and other heavenly bodies, and as the notes sounded on his lute
subsided into a gentle whisper, the listeners fancied they could hear the
tintinnabulation of the celestial spheres’ round dance. Now the chords soughed
more vigorously, and incandescent fragrances wafted from his instrument as
images of voluptuous amorous bliss blazed in the newly arisen Eden of all
pleasure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each of the listeners felt
inwardly convulsed by a series of peculiar shudders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Ofterdingen had finished singing and
playing, profound silence prevailed all around, but then a jubilant round of
tumultuous applause erupted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Countess
Mathilde rose from her seat, walked up to Ofterdingen, and pressed onto his
brow the garland that she had been carrying as the prize for the best song.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt; text-indent: 9.6pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Ofterdingen’s countenance flushed a
fiery red; he sank to his knees and ardently pressed the beautiful woman’s
hands to his breast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he was rising,
his coruscating, stinging gaze alighted on his loyal friend Wolfframb von
Eschinbach, who was trying to move closer to him but at the same time backing
away from him, as though he were being physically detained by some spitefully
inimical power. Only a single listener refrained from adding his voice to the
otherwise unanimous acclaim, and that was the landgrave, who had become very
serious and pensive as Ofterdingen was singing, and who now found himself
scarcely capable of uttering a single word in praise of his marvelous
song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ofterdingen seemed markedly angry
about this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Late that evening, when deep
dusk had already set in, in a walkway in the castle garden, Wolfframb von
Eschinbach happened to encounter his beloved friend, whom he had been seeking
in vain for everywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He ran up to
him, he pressed him to his breast and said, “So, my dear brother, you may very
well have become nothing less than the world’s preeminent master of song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How in heaven’s name did you even begin to
prepare for this triumph that none of us—possibly not even you yourself—ever
suspected you would achieve?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What spirit
placed himself at your command and taught you the marvelous lays of another
world?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>O noble and exalted master, let
me embrace thee yet again.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“It is
good,” said Heinrich von Ofterdingen, “it is good that you realize that I have
soared to greater heights than you so-called masters, or rather that I alone have
alighted and settled in that realm that you are striving in vain to reach in
your aimless rovings along errant paths. You will therefore not take it amiss when
I say that I find you lot and your despicable ditty-mongering downright asinine
and tedious.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“So,” replied Wolfframb,
“do you now despise us whom you formerly held in the highest regard?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will you henceforth hold us in utter contempt
and disdain to have anything further to do with any of us? All friendship, all
love, has vanished from your soul because you are a greater master than us!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you no longer even regard <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wolfframb</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>as worthy of your love because
perchance I have not managed to soar as high in my songs as you have in yours? Ah,
Heinrich, if I were to tell you how your song made me feel in my heart of
hearts—” “—Please,” said Heinrich von Ofterdingen with a scornful laugh,
“Please don’t keep this from me, as I might find it quite instructive.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Heinrich!” Wolfframb began in a very firm
and serious tone, “Heinrich!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is true
that your song had a marvelous and undreamt-of melody and that its musical
ideas ascended far beyond the heights of the highest clouds, but my innermost
self told me that unalloyed human nature could not have served as the
wellspring of such a lay, that it must rather have been engendered by alien
powers, just like those strange, utterly foreign plants that our native soil is
capable of bringing forth once the necromancer has liberally manured it with
all the magic charms at his disposal. Heinrich, you have undoubtedly become a
great master of the art of vocal music, and you are undoubtedly dealing with
things of a truly grand significance—but do you still recognize the sweet
salutation of the evening breeze as you are wandering through the deep shadows
of the forest?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does your heart still
leap with joy at when you hear the rustling of the trees, the roaring of the
sylvan stream?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you still behold
flowers with the pious eyes of a child?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Does the nightingale’s lament still make you wish to expire in an access
of amorous pain? At such a moment do you still feel an infinite yearning
attacking your breast, which has disclosed its loving essence to you in turn</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Ah, Heinrich, there was much in your
song that filled me with an unspeakable terror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I could not but be put in mind of that horrifying image of the shades
ranging along the bank of the Acheron that you once limned for the landgrave
when he asked you to reveal to him the cause of your melancholy. I could not
but believe that you had abjured love in its entirety and that what you had
obtained in exchange was merely the cheerless treasure of some wanderer lost in
the desert.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I feel as though you have
purchased your mastery with all the joy in living that is vouchsafed exclusively
to the pious, childlike soul. A gloomy intimation is taking hold of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am recalling what drove you away from the
Wartburg, and I am also recalling the circumstances of your reappearance
here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Success at many an endeavor now
lies within your reach–perhaps the beauteous star of hope that I have hitherto
beheld shining over me is setting on my own labors for ever—but Heinrich!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Take my hand; no grudge of any sort towards you can ever be welcome in
my heart!</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Notwithstanding
all the good fortune you are awash in at present, one day you may suddenly find
yourself at the brink of a bottomless abyss and reeling in the whirlwind of
vertigo, and just as you are about to plunge helplessly over the edge, I shall
be standing behind you with a firm heart and holding you firmly in place with
dependably strong hands and arms.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Heinrich von Ofterdingen had listened
to everything Wolfframb von Eschinbach said in profound silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now he covered his face with his cloak and
leapt quickly into the thicket of trees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wolfframb heard him softly sobbing and sighing as he moved ever farther into
the distance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">The
Wartburg Contest<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">For all the enthusiasm with which the other masters initially
admired and exalted Heinrich von Ofterdingen’s songs, they soon began talking
of the impure melodies, the vain meretriciousness, nay, the outright wickedness
of the lays produced by Heinrich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only
Countess Mathilde addressed herself with her entire soul to the singer, who
extolled her beauty and gracefulness in a manner that all the masters—apart
from Wolfframb von Eschinbach, who would not allow himself to express an
opinion—denounced as heathenish and execrable</span><span style="line-height: 115%;">. </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">And before long Countess Mathilde’s entire
bearing underwent a complete and total transformation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She looked down on all the other masters with
scornful pride, and she even withdrew her favor from poor Wolfframb von
Eschinbach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things came to such a pass
that Heinrich von Ofterdingen was obliged to instruct Countess Mathilde in the
art of vocal music, and she herself began composing songs that were intended to
sound exactly like those sung by Heinrich von Ofterdingen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at that moment all the beguiled woman’s
gracefulness and sweetness seemed to vanish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Neglecting all the arts with which comely women adorn themselves,
renouncing all commerce with everything of a feminine nature, she metamorphosed
into an eerily repellent hermaphrodite, loathed by women and derided by
men.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The landgrave, fearing that the
countess’s madness would spread to the other ladies at the court like a
virulent disease, issued a severe decree forbidding any lady to write poetry on
pain of banishment, for which the men, being positively terrified by Mathilde’s
fate, heartily thanked him. Countess Mathilde left the Wartburg and moved into
a castle not far from Eisenach, and Heinrich von Ofterdingen would have
followed her there had the landgrave not ordered him to stay and accept the
masters’ challenge to engage in a contest with them. “You, sir,” said Landgrave
Hermann to the high-spirited singer, “you, sir, thanks to your eerie,
outlandish lays, have thrown the beauteous circle that I have assembled here
into appalling confusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have always
been impervious to your besotting charms, because from very first instant I
realized that your songs do not come from the upright heart of a virtuous
singer but are rather the fruit of the pernicious tuition of some false
master.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of what use is all the pomp, all
the pageantry, all the splendor in the world, if it is merely made to serve as
the shroud of a lifeless corpse? You speak of lofty things, of the mysteries of
nature, but not as they manifest themselves in the human breast, as sweet
intimations of a higher life; but rather as the astrologer conceives of them
and presumptuously attempts to measure them with his compass and
yardstick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shame on you, Heinrich von
Ofterdingen, for having allowed your valiant spirit to submit to the tutelage
of an unworthy master.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“I do not know,” replied Heinrich von Ofterdingen, “I do not
know, my lord, what I have done to deserve your wrath, your reproaches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps your opinion of me will change once
you have learned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the name</i> of the
master who has disclosed to me the mysteries of that kingdom of song that is
vocal music’s homeland in the truest sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I left your court in a state of profound dejection, and the pain that
was on the point of annihilating me may very well have been but the
aggressively thrusting shoot of the fair flower that lay buried in my soul of
souls and yearning for the fecundating breath of a loftier strain of
nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a most curious manner I came
into possession of a small book in which the world’s greatest master of vocal
music had elaborated the rules of the art with the most profound erudition and
even included a few of his songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
the more I read in this little book the clearer it became to me that the
composition of songs would turn out to be a shabby business indeed if the
singer were capable of verbalizing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nothing</i>
but what he believed he was feeling within the confines of his own puny
heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it certainly didn’t end
there: by and by I felt as though I were intimately conjoined to unknown powers
that often sang from within me in place of myself, and yet all the while on
each of these occasions I still felt that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i>
was the one doing the singing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
yearning to see the master in the flesh and hear his profound wisdom and
impeccable rationality pouring forth from his own lips became an irresistible
urge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hit the road and headed for
Transylvania.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, my lord, you heard me
aright!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is Klingsohr himself whom I
visited and to whom I owe the audaciously superterrestrial buoyancy of my
songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perchance by now you have arrived
at a more favorable opinion of my efforts.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“The Archduke of Austria,” said the landgrave, “has said and
written to me a great deal indeed in praise of your master.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Master Klingsohr is a man schooled in some
profound and mysterious bodies of knowledge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He calculates the course of the stars and discerns the well-nigh miraculous
entanglement of their orbits with the humble trajectories of our terrestrial
lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mysterious phenomena
underlying the structures of metals, vegetables, and minerals are an open
secret to him, and he is also intimately acquainted with the machinations of
the world’s politicians and always stands within immediate reach of the
Archduke should either his counsel or action be needed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I do not know how all of this can be
consistent with the purity of soul of a true singer, and indeed I am inclined
to believe that precisely because Master Klingsohr is so wise in the ways of
the world, his songs will never be capable of stirring <i>my</i> soul, however
artful and well-thought out, however beautifully shaped, they may be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, Heinrich von Ofterdingen, my masters,
who are virtually fuming with rage at your proud, high-handed attitude, would
like you to compete with them in song over the course of a few days for the
usual prize, and it is high time you did so.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
masters’ contest commenced.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But whether
because Heinrich’s mind had become unhinged by false teaching and was no longer
ever competent as a composer in the presence of the pure radiance of spiritual
honesty or because the other masters’ powers were being redoubled by their
newly heightened enthusiasm—never mind which!—one by one they pitted themselves
against Ofterdingen in song, and one by one they defeated him and carried away
the prize for which Heinrich was repeatedly striving in vain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ofterdingen was positively incensed by this
disgrace and now began to sing songs that amid derisive allusions to Landgrave
Hermann exalted Ludwig the Seventh the Archduke of Austria above the stars and
dubbed him the resplendently blazing sun that shone on all true art in glorious
solitude.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On top of this he also
attacked the ladies of the court with disdainful words and proceeded to extol
the beauty and graciousness of Countess Mathilde alone in profane and
heathenish terms, such that all the other masters, gentle Wolfframb von
Eschinbach not excepted, inevitably flew into a righteous rage and dragged his
musical reputation through the mud in songs of the utmost ruthlessness and
vehemence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By stripping away the false
pomp of Ofterdingen’s songs,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Heinrich
Schreiber and Johannes Bitterolff revealed the wretchedness of the scrawny
little man who had been hiding himself beneath them, but Walther von der
Vogelweid and Reinhard von Zwekhstein went further.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They</i>
said that Ofterdingen’s undertaking deserved implacable vengeance, and they
intended to wreak it on him personally, with swords in hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So Heinrich von Ofterdingen now saw his reputation as a
singer and a composer dragged through the dirt and even found his life
threatened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brimming over with rage and
despair, he called upon the noble-minded landgrave to protect his life, and
even beyond that, to cede his office as arbitrator of the quarrel over
supremacy in vocal music to the most famous singer of the age—namely, Master Klingsohr.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Things,” said the landgrave, “between you
and the masters have come to such a pass that your quarrel is no longer merely
over supremacy in vocal music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In your
demented songs you have insulted me, and you have insulted the fair ladies of
my court.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, your contest no
longer impinges merely on the masters’ virtuosity but also on my honor and on
the honor of those ladies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all that,
everything must be settled through a singing competition, and I shall allow
your Master Klingsohr to serve as judge at that competition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of my masters will be your opponent; he
will be selected by lot, and then each of you may sing whatever material he
chooses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my executioner will be
standing behind you with his unsheathed sword in his hands, and whichever of
you loses will be executed immediately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Go; see to it that within the next year Master Klingsohr comes to the
Wartburg to adjudicate this life-and-death contest.” Heinrich von Ofterdingen
left the court, and thus peace was restored to the Wartburg for a time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="centersml" style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">During this interval the songs that the
masters had sung in opposition to Heinrich von Ofterdingen were collectively dubbed
the Wartburg Contest.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--></span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt; text-align: center; text-indent: 9.6pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Master Klingsohr Comes to Eisenach<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Nearly an entire year had elapsed by
the time the Wartburg received news that Master Klingsohr was actually in
Eisenach and that he had taken lodgings at the house of a citizen by the name
of Helgrefe who resided just inside the city wall at St. George’s Gate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The masters were delighted not a little that
the vexing quarrel with Heinrich von Ofterdingen was finally about to be
settled, but none of them was more ardently impatient to see the world-famous
man than Wolfframb von Eschinbach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Perhaps what people say,” he said to himself, “perhaps what people say
about Klingsohr is true: perhaps he is devoted to the black arts, perhaps
infernal powers stand ready to do his bidding, nay, perhaps these powers have
even helped him to attain a mastery of every science in its entirety; but
doesn’t the noblest wine sometimes grow out of the cinders of lava? What does
the thirsty wanderer care if the grapes with which he refreshes himself have
germinated out of the glowing fire of hell itself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus I resolve to revel in the master’s profound
scientific knowledge and erudition without probing its mysteries and without
appropriating any more of it than can be borne by an unsullied soul of true
piety.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Wolframb went down to Eisenach straight-away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the doorstep of Helgrefe’s house he
encountered a crowd of people who were all gazing longingly up at the house’s
bay window.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He recognized many of these
gazers as students of vocal music, and they were asserting one thing after
another about the famous master.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of
them said that he had transcribed the words Klingsohr had spoken on being
greeted by Helgrefe, another that he knew exactly what the master had been
having for lunch; a third maintained that the master had actually looked at him
and smiled because he had recognized him as a fellow-singer on account of the
fact that he, like Klingsohr himself, had been wearing a beret, and a fifth
even began singing a song that he said he had composed in imitation of
Klingsohr’s style.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In short, it all
added up to a lot of tumultuous to-ing and fro-ing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually Wolfframb von Eschinbach forced
his way through the crowd with great effort and entered the house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Helgrefe warmly welcomed him and at his
request ran upstairs to inform the master that he was there to see him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But upon returning, Helgrefe declared to
Wolfframb that the Master was deeply immersed in his studies and could not
speak with anybody at the moment; that he, Wolfframb, would have to inquire
again in two hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb had no
choice but to acquiesce in this delay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After he had returned two hours later and waited an additional hour,
Helgrefe was given permission to lead him up to the master’s chamber.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A manservant dressed in a curiously colorful
sort of silk opened the door, and Wolfframb entered the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therein he beheld a tall, handsome man who
was dressed in a long, wide-sleeved gown of deep red silk trimmed with
sumptuous sable, and pacing slowly and solemnly up and down the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His face was almost a living version of that
of the heathen god Jupiter as typically represented by sculptors, so instinct
with imperious earnestness was his brow, and so menacing were the flames that
blazed forth from his large eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
chin and cheeks were covered in a thick, curly black beard, and his head was
surmounted by either a strangely shaped beret or an oddly folded kerchief; it
was impossible to tell which it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
master had his arms crossed over his chest, and in a resonant voice he was
declaiming and exclaiming words that Wolfframb found completely unintelligible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On taking a look around the room, which was
full of all manner of outlandish-looking instruments, Wolfframb espied a pale
little old man, scarcely three feet tall, sitting in a high chair at a desk and
seemingly diligently employing a silver pen to commit everything Master
Klingsohr was saying to a sheet of parchment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A goodly interval elapsed before the Master’s rigid gaze finally
alighted on Wolfframb von Eschinbach, and he left off speaking and drew to a
halt in the dead center of the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wolfframb now greeted the master in a set of gracious verses composed in
the black strophic form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said that he
had come in order to be edified by Klingsohr’s mastery as a composer and asked
him if he would do him the kindness of replying in the same strophic form and
thereby allowing him to hear a sample of his art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon the master looked him up and down
from head to foot with a furious eye and said, “Just who do you think you are,
young fellow, to barge in on me like this with your silly verses and even
challenge me to compose something on the spot, as though we were in the middle
of a proper singing contest?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ha!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are you perchance none other than Wolfframb
von Eschinbach, the most incompetent and ignorant greenhorn of all in that pack
of amateur songsmiths up at the Wartburg who call themselves masters of the art
of vocal music?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, my dear boy, you
will have to do a great deal more growing before you next entertain the idea of
trying conclusions with me.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb
von Eschinbach had most certainly not expected a reception like this one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The blood surged in his veins as he took in
Klingsohr’s scornful words; never before had he been so acutely sensible of the
strength that dwelt within him thanks to the largesse of heavenly power.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="background: white;">He looked the
proud master earnestly and firmly in the eye, and said, “You have not behaved
well, Master Klingsohr, in lapsing into such a severe and bitter tone instead
of addressing me as kindly and amiably as I greeted you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know that you excel me in all domains of
knowledge and indeed in the art of singing as well, but that does not entitle
you to indulge in this vain boasting, which you ought to contemn as unworthy of
yourself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I must now frankly declare to
you, Master Klingsohr, that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>henceforth I
shall believe all the rumors that have been circulating about you in the
world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I shall believe that you have the
powers of Hell at your command, that the eldritch and sinister sciences you
have been practicing have enabled you to fraternize with evil spirits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I shall believe that your mastery as a
composer is abjectly beholden to those infernal powers, because you have
conjured forth out of the depths and into the light of day the dark spirits
from which the human soul recoils in horror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Hence I shall further believe that it is this horror alone that has
secured you your supremacy over other musicians, that your virtuosity owes
nothing to the profound emotion of love that flows from the singer’s pure soul
into every kindred heart and thereby captivates it in bands of sweet
subjection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, I shall believe
that it is your corruption by this horror that has made you as proud as you
are, and as no singer who has retained the purity of his heart can ever
be.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Ho ho!” retorted Meister Klingsor,
“ho ho, young fellow, climb down from that lofty pinnacle before you fall!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Regarding my supposed fraternization with
eldritch and sinister powers you would do well to hold your tongue, for you don’t
know a thing about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The notion that I
owe my mastery as a composer to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">them</i>
and to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">him </i>is nothing but silly
simpleminded children’s gossip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But do
tell me, where does <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</i> acquaintance
with the art of vocal music hail from?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Do you really suppose that I am unaware that in </span>Siegebrunnen in <span style="background: white;">Scotland Master Friedebrand lent you several books
that you in your ingratitude have never returned, and that you have based all
your own songs on compositions contained in those books?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If the Devil has been <i>my</i> helpmeet, you
have likewise had a helpmeet in your own ungrateful heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb was well-nigh appalled by this
loathsome accusation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He placed his hand
on his breast and said, “So help me God!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The spirit of falsehood is mighty indeed within you, Master Klingsohr.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Surely you don’t actually believe I could
have been base enough to rob my exalted Master Friedebrand of his majestic
compositions so shamelessly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will have
you know, Master Klingsohr, that I held on to those compositions only as long
as he wished me to, and that I returned them to him as soon as he asked for
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Have you yourself never derived
any instruction at all from the compositions of other masters?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>“Perhaps,” resumed Master Klingsohr,
evidently none too impressed by Wolfframb’s oration, “perhaps I have indeed,
but what is the ultimate source of the principles of your art?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What entitles you to regard yourself as my
peer?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you not know that I have
diligently applied myself to courses of study in Rome, in Paris, in Krakow;
that I have personally journeyed to the most distant countries of the Orient
and investigated the mysteries of the Arab sages; that I have since excelled at
all the singing academies and wrested the laurels from the brows of every
singer I contended with; that I am a certified master of all seven liberal
arts?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as for you, you who have lived
all your life as an untutored layman cut off from all art and knowledge in the
emptiness of Switzerland: how ever could you have attained fluency in the art
of authentic vocal music?<span style="background: white;"> By now Wolfframb’s
fury had subsided, perhaps because thanks to Klingsohr’s boastful speech the
priceless gift of song in his soul of souls shone forth more brightly and
joyously than before, just as sunbeams scintillate more beauteously when they
victoriously pierce through the turbid clouds blown into their path by a savage
thunderstorm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A mild, ingratiating smile
had settled over his entire countenance, and it was in a calm, equable tone
that he said to the enraged Master Klingsohr, “Now my dear master, I could very
easily rejoin to you that although I have certainly not studied at Rome and Paris
and visited Arab sages in their native country, in addition to my great mentor
Master Friedebrand, whom I followed to the very heart of Scotland, I have
conversed with a good many talented singers whose instruction has proved most
profitable to me, and that like you I have won singing-prizes in many of our
principal German princes’ courts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>And
yet I am of the opinion that all the instruction and conversation of the
greatest singers in the world would have been of no use to me whatsoever if the
eternal power of heaven had not implanted in my soul of souls the spark that
flickers up in the beauteous beams of song, if I had not kept and if I did not
still lovingly keep at arm’s length everything false and evil, if I did not
endeavor with sincere enthusiasm to sing only those words and notes that
utterly saturate my breast with sweet and joyous wistfulness.</span><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Wolfframb von Eschinbach himself was at a loss to explain
why he began singing a magnificent song in the golden key that he had composed
only a short time before.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Master Klingsohr paced up and down in scarcely containable
fury; then he drew to a halt and stood staring at Wolfframb as though he wished
to drill straight through him with his blazing, unblinking eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once Wolfframb had finished singing,
Klingsohr laid both his hands on Wolfframb’s shoulders and softly and coolly
said, “Now, Wolfframb, because you refuse to have it any other way, let the two
of us have a singing contest, one with songs employing all sorts of keys and
scales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But let us go elsewhere first;
this room is unsuitable for such an activity, and you must enjoy a goblet of
noble wine with me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">At that moment the little man who had been writing earlier
fell off his chair, and as he hit the floor with a thud he emitted a miniature
moan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Klingsohr quickly turned round and
kicked the dwarf into the cabinet at the base of the podium and shut its
door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb could hear the little
man softly weeping and sobbing within.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Next Klingsohr shut all the open books that were lying about here and
there, and each time a book-cover snapped shut, the room was pervaded by a
strange and unearthly sound like a heavy sigh heaved by someone on the verge of
death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="background: white;">Now
Klingsohr took hold of certain peculiar-looking roots which at that moment were
behaving like strange, spooky creatures: their filaments and branches were
writhing like arms and legs struggling to break free; indeed, from time to time
a tiny grotesque human face would peep out and grin and laugh in a most hideous
manner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And at the same time something
began restlessly stirring inside the cabinets along all the walls and a large
bird with blindingly gold wings whirred frantically around the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Deep dusk had set in; Wolfframb was seized by
a deep feeling of horror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now Klingsohr
produced a box out of which he took a stone that immediately flooded the entire
room with dazzling sunlight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything
fell silent, and Wolfframb no longer saw or heard a trace of any of the things
that had terrified him only seconds earlier.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Two manservants dressed in the same curiously colorful silk
livery as the one worn by the man who had let Wolfframb in entered with a
magnificent suit of clothes that they helped Master Klingsohr to don.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Then Master Klingsohr and Wolfframb von Eschinbach went to
the rathskeller.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Having drunk to reconciliation and friendship, they
proceeded to challenge each other to sing melodies of the greatest diversity
and artistry imaginable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no
master present to determine which of them was prevailing against the other, but
if there had been he undoubtedly would have declared Klingsohr the loser, for
although he labored to exploit his great artistry and mighty intellect to their
utmost, he never came close to matching the strength and grace of the simple
songs improvised by Wolfframb von Eschinbach.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt; text-indent: 9.6pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Wolfframb had just finished singing quite a splendid song
when Master Klingsdohr leaned back in his cushioned chair, lowered his eyes,
and softly and dejectedly said, “Earlier today you called me boastful and
cocksure, Master Wolfframb, but you would be gravely mistaken if you supposed
me to be so blinded by sheer vanity as to be unable to recognize the artistry
of a true singer when I hear it; I would now be happy to meet with you in the
wilderness, or in the hall of the masters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nobody is here to judge between us, but I will tell you myself that you
have defeated me, Master Wolfframb, and I hope that you will recognize that
this concession proves that my form of artistry is authentic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Oh, my dear Master Klingsohr,” rejoined
Wolfframb von Eschinbach: “it is entirely possible that a peculiar joyousness
has swelled my breast and thereby rendered the songs I have sung today more
accomplished than my typical productions, but far be it from me regard this as
a sign that I am an intrinsically greater artist than you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps today your soul of souls happened to
be inaccessible to you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From time to
time isn’t everyone weighed down by some oppressive burden like a dark cloud
thank hangs over a bright meadow and keeps its flowering plants from raising
their dazzling tops skyward?</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">But although <i>today</i> you have conceded to defeat to me,
I heard many splendid things indeed in your beautiful songs, and for all either
of us knows <i>you</i> may well prove the victor <i>tomorrow</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Master Klingsohr cried, “Of what use to you is your pious
humility?,” leapt up from his chair, stood beneath the window near the ceiling
and with his back turned to Wolfframb, and gazed silently up at the pale
moonbeams shining down from the heavens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">After quite a
number of minutes of this, he turned round, stepped briskly up to Wolfframb, and,
his eyes flashing with rage, he said in a strong voice, “You are correct in
believing that dark powers are subservient to my knowledge; our inner essence
must ever divide us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have defeated
me, but tomorrow night I shall send you a man named Nasias.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Begin a singing contest with him, and take
care that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">he</i> does not defeat you.”</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.8pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.8pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">With these words Master Klingsohr stormed out of the
ratskeller.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="centersml" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .05in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .05in; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Nasias
Pays Wolfframb von Eschinbach a Nocturnal Visit<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Wolfframb
was staying at the house of a citizen named Gottschalk who lived opposite
Eisenach’s municipal granary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gottschalk
was an amiable, pious man who held his guest in high regard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is quite possible that although Klingsohr
and Eschinbach had believed that they were alone and out of earshot in the
Ratskeller, certain people—perhaps some of the young students of vocal music
who followed the famous master wherever he went and tried to snatch up every
word that fell from his lips—had found a way of eavesdropping on the masters’
singing contest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The account of how
Wolfframb had beaten the mighty Master Klingsohr at impromptu singing had
spread through all of Eisenach, and so Gottschalk was among those who had heard
it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brimming over with high spirits, he
dashed upstairs to his guest’s room and asked him how in the world the proud
master had been prevailed upon to engage in a singing contest at the ratskeller.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb faithfully related to him
everything that had happened and made no secret of the fact that Master
Klingsohr had threatened to sic a man called Nasias on him that night and that
he was supposed to pit himself against him in song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On taking this in, Gottschalk turned pale
with terror, threw up his hands, and exclaimed in a woebegone tone, “Ah, great
God in heaven, do you really not know, my dear sir, that Master Klingsohr has
dealings with evil spirits that are under his control and that must do his
bidding?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Helgrefe, with whom Master
Klingsohr has taken lodgings, has been telling his neighbors the most
incredible things about his activities. He says that at nighttime it often
seems as though there is a large assembly of people gathered in his room, even
though nobody has been seen going into the house, and that then this strange
singing starts, and there is an insane amount of bustle, and blinding light
pours out of the window!</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> Ah, perhaps this Nasias fellow that
he’s threatened to sic on you is the Archfiend himself, who will plunge you
into ruin!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Leave here at once and take
lodgings elsewhere, my dear sir; don’t sit here waiting to see if this visitor
drops by; I implore you: leave here at once.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Come now,” rejoined Wolfframb von Eschinbach, “Come now, Mr.
Gottschalk, my dear landlord: I have been offered an opportunity to join in
competition with another singer; I can’t very well shun this opportunity like a
coward; such behavior would be most unworthy of a mastersinger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether Nasias is an evil spirit or not, I
shall await his arrival calmly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps
he’ll completely drown out my lays with all manner of songs composed on the far
side of the Acheron, but if he tries to bewitch my pious heart and injure my
immortal soul, he will undoubtedly fail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“I know full well,” said Gottschalk, “I know full well that you are a
courageous gentleman who can’t be cowed by the Devil himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if you are determined not to change
lodgings, I hope you’ll at least let my servant Jonas stay up with you in your
room tonight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is a hardworking,
pious, and broad-shouldered fellow who’s completely incorruptible by singing.
If at any point the infernal babbling starts making you feel faint and dizzy
and Nasias tries to pull a fast one on you, Jonas will give a holler, and then
we’ll move in with holy water and consecrated candles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They also say that the Devil can’t bear the
smell of musk, which a certain Capuchin monk has worn in a sack on his breast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will follow his example, and as soon as
Jonas hollers, I’ll burn the musk in a way so that Master Nasias’s breath will
give out on him as he’s singing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wolfframb von Eschinbach smiled at his landlord’s goodhearted solicitude
and said that he was fully prepared for everything and determined to be more
than a match for Nasias.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he also
said that Jonas, the pious, broad-shouldered fellow forearmed against every
kind of singing, could stay up with him anyway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The fatal night had fallen. But all remained quiet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the church clock’s weights whirred and
clanged as it struck twelve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A gust of
wind roared through the house, hideous voices howled in confusion, and there
arose a savage, cawing cry of fear like that of a flock of nocturnal birds
scared into flight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wollframb von
Eschinbach had been quiescently yielding to all manner of pious and beauteous
poetic reflections and had almost forgotten about the baleful visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, though, icy shudders were coursing
through the very core of his body and being; but with great effort he managed
to pull himself together and step into the center of the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">Under
the force of a violent blow that made the entire house rumble, the door flew
open, and a tall figure surrounded by a fiery red luster was standing
face-to-face with him and glaring at him with incandescently spiteful
eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The figure was so horribly ghastly
to behold that many another man would have lost every last dram of his courage
at that moment—nay, would have sunk to the floor in savagely abject terror—but
Wolfframb remained standing and asked in a firm and serious tone, “What are you
doing or seeking in this place?” The figure cried out in a repellently shrill
voice, “I am Nasias, and I have come here to do battle with you as a
practitioner of the art of singing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nasias flung open his long cloak, and Wolfframb noticed that under his
arms he was carrying a large number of books, which he then dropped onto the
table just next to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Immediately
thereafter, Nasias launched into a peculiar song about the seven planets and
about the music of the heavenly spheres as described in Cicero’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Dream of Scipio</i>, and he varied his
melodies with formidable and exceptionally curious artistry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb had taken a seat in his large
upholstered armchair, and he listened to the entirety of Nasias’s performance calmly
and with his eyes closed</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;">. </span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">When he had finally finished his song,
Eschinbach began singing a beauteous, pious song of religious devotion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first during this performance Nasias leapt
to and fro and made as if to blubber out some indignant interjections and to
throw some of his weighty tomes at the singer, but as Wolfframb’s song became
more and more sonorous and powerful, Nasias’s fiery aura grew fainter and
fainter, and his body became increasingly small and wizened, until finally he
was only a span high and was climbing up and down the cabinets in his red cloak
and thick ruff, squeaking and meowing in the most repellent fashion all the
while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After concluding his song,
Wolfframb tried to catch him, but he instantly shot back up to his original
height and breathed out hissing jets of flame in all directions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Hey, hey,” Nasias then cried in a
horrifyingly hollow voice, “Hey, hey, don’t trifle with me, mate!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You may well be a fine theologian and fully
conversant with all the sophistries and erudition contained in your fat book,
but that doesn’t prove you are a singer who can try conclusions with my master
and me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let us sing a fair song of love,
in doing which you may have to be a little more mindful of your skills.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now Nasias began a song about fair Helen of
Troy and about the boundlessly rapturous joys of the Mountain of Venus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In point of fact the song had a downright
seductive sound, and the flames that Nasias sprayed all over the room as he was
singing it seemed to metamorphose into perfumes redolent of wanton
concupiscence and the delights of love, perfumes in which the mellifluous notes
of the melody undulated up and down like fluttering cupids.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb was listening to this song just he
had listened to the earlier ones—calmly and with his eyes closed.</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif;">But by and by he began to feel as though he were wandering in
the shady lanes of a lovely garden and the beauteous notes of a noble melody
were slipping over the flowerbeds and breaking in through the dark foliage like
glimmers of dawn sunlight, and as though the evil demon’s song were sinking
into the night before them and the timorous nocturnal bird were cawing and
plunging into the depths of the abyss in its flight from the victorious
day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as the notes effulged more and
more resonantly, his breast trembled with sweet foreboding and inexpressible
longing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">she</i>, the sole sustenance and constituent of his life, emerged from
the thick underbrush in all the resplendence of her beauty and adorableness,
and the leaves rustled and the radiantly pristine fountains bubbled as they
saluted this supremely majestic woman in a thousand amorous sighs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As if borne along by the wings of a beauteous
swan, she soared towards him on the pinions of song, and no sooner did his gaze
alight on her celestial form than all the blissfulness of love of the purest
and most pious kind was enkindled within his heart of hearts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In vain he struggled for words—and for
notes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The instant she had vanished, he
flung himself in superabundantly blissful rapture onto the parti-colored
grass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He called her name into the air;
in the ardency of his yearning he embraced the tall lilies; he kissed the roses
with his burning lips, and all the flowers partook of his happiness; and the
morning breeze, the springs, and the bushes spoke with him of the unutterable
delight of pious love!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so as Nasias
continued reeling off his vacuous love songs, Wolfframb recalled that moment
when he first beheld Lady Mathilde in the garden at the Wartburg; just as at
that moment, she was standing bodily before him in all her comeliness and
adorableness; just as at that moment, she was lavishing on him a gaze instinct
with piety and love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb had not
hearkened to a single measure of the evil demon’s vocal music, but when this
music fell silent, Wolfframb began a song that extolled the celestial bliss of
the pious singer’s pure love in notes of unsurpassable potency and splendor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The demon grew more and more restless, until
finally he began moaning in a loathsome manner and leaping about and causing
all sorts of mischief all over the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>At this point Wolfframb rose from his armchair and in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost commanded the demon to pack up his things
and be gone. Spraying mighty jets of flame in all directions all the while,
Nasias snatched up his books and through a burst of scornful laughter cried,
“Piety, schmeity: you’re basically nothing but a lumbering layman, so yield the
palm of victory to Klingsohr with all speed!” He roared out of the room like a
tempest, and thick clouds of asphyxiating sulfur vapor filled the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Wolfframb opened the windows, and the
fresh morning air poured in and chased away the demon’s foul scent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Jonas woke with a start from the deep slumber
he had fallen into and was then more than slightly surprised to learn that the
whole contest was already over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
called his master into the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Wolfframb recounted all the particulars of what had happened, and much
as Gottschalk had revered the noble Wolfframb even before the contest, he now
regarded him as a kind of saint whose pious benison was capable of routing the
pernicious powers of Hell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Gottschalk
was rounding out his tribute to his lodger he happened to glance upward,
whereupon he noticed the following words written above the doorway in fiery
characters: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Piety, schmeity: you’re
basically nothing but a lumbering layman, so yield the palm of victory to
Klingsohr with all speed!<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">So in the course of his flight the
demon had inscribed his parting words on the wall like an eternally standing
challenge to a duel.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“Not a single waking hour,” cried Gottschalk, “I’ll never be
able to enjoy a single waking hour here in my own house while that abominable
Devil’s script is blazing forth from that wall in derision of my dear Master
Wolfframb von Eschinbach.” So saying, he ran straight to the masons’ to ask
them to come over and whitewash the writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But their efforts proved futile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They slathered on a layer of lime as thick as a finger, and yet the
letters quickly burned through to its surface; indeed, even after they had hewn
away not only all the lime but also all the plaster beneath it, Nasias’s
message came blazing back through the red bricks at the heart of the wall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gottschalk volubly lamented the
ineffaceability of the writing and implored Wolfframb to sing a song eloquent
and expressive enough to compel Nasias to wipe away the abominable words
himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb said with a smile
that such a feat might very well exceed his, Wolfframb’s, powers, and that it
would be best for Gottschalk’s piece of mind for Wolfframb to leave Eisenach
altogether because once he was gone, the writing might very well vanish on its
own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">It was broad midday when Wofframb von
Eschinbach left Eisenach with a gaily courageous heart and brimful of
ebulliently high spirits, like a man with only the most dazzlingly resplendent
prospects in sight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not far from the
town he crossed paths with Count Meinhard of Mühlberg and Walther von Vargel
the cupbearer; each of them was clad in lustrous garments, riding a beauteously
bedizened horse, and accompanied by a large retinue of servants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb von Eschinbach greeted them and
learned from them that Landgrave Hermann had dispatched them to Eisenach to
collect the famous Master Klingsohr with all due ceremony and then conduct him
to the Wartburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Klingsohr had been
spending his nights patiently and attentively observing the stars from a
balcony on the topmost floor of Helfgrefes’s house.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When at length he committed to parchment the
lines of his first horoscope, two students of astrology who happened to be
present at that moment concluded from his curious gaze, from his entire
bearing, that his soul was harboring some important secret that he had read in
the stars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They did not shrink from
asking him what it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In response
Klingsohr rose from his chair and solemnly said, “Know that tonight the wife of
the King Andrew II of <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Hungary</st1:country-region></st1:place>
has borne him a daughter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she will
be christened <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:city w:st="on">Elizabeth</st1:city></st1:place>,
and after her death Pope Gregory IX will canonize her for her piety and
virtue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in the meantime this future
St. Elizabeth will be chosen as the wife of Ludwig, your Landgrave Hermann’s
son!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">This prophecy was immediately
communicated to the landgrave, who was delighted by it to the very core of his
heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was more, his opinion of
Klingsohr underwent a radical change now that the famous master’s mysterious
science had caused such a fair and auspicious star to shine on his house, and
he resolved to have him conducted to the Wartburg with all the pomp and
ceremony befitting a prince and a nobleman.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Wolffbramb now voiced the conjecture that owing to these
developments the Klingsohr-arbitrated singing contest to the death would not
take place, especially given that Heinrich von Ofterdingen was nowhere to be
seen and had yet to send word of his whereabouts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The knights assured him to the contrary that
the landgrave had already received news of Heinrich von Ofterdingen’s arrival,
that the inner courtyard of the Wartburg was being fitted out as a site for the
contest, and that Stempel the executioner had been summoned to the Wartburg
from Eisenach.</span><o:p></o:p><br />
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<i><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Master
Klingsohr Leaves the Wartburg. Arbitration of the Poetry Contest<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">In a handsome chamber at the uppermost storey of the Wartburg,
Landgrave Hermann and Master Klingsohr had a tête-à-tête conference; Klingsohr
asseverated that the previous night he had indeed beheld a constellation in
which Elisabeth’s birth had figured, and then he advised the Landgrave to
dispatch a legation to the king of Hungary immediately and have the newborn princess
wooed as a bride for his eleven-year-old son.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="background: white;">The landgrave was highly gratified by
this counsel, and when he went on to praise the master’s command of his
science, Klingsohr began to descant on the mysteries of nature, on the
microcosm and the macrocosm, so learnedly and eloquently that the landgrave,
himself not entirely unschooled on such matters, was overcome with profound
admiration.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Ah,” said the landgrave,
“Ah, Master Klingsohr, I wish I could enjoy the pleasure of your instructive
conversation at all times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quit the
inhospitable plains of Transylvania and take up residence at my court, at
which, as you will acknowledge, art and science are more highly regarded than
they are anywhere else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The masters of
song will embrace you as their teacher, for you must surely be as richly gifted
in that art as in astrology and other weighty sciences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So stay here for evermore, and think no
longer of returning to Transylvania.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Your
highness,” rejoined Master Klingsohr, “your highness, I implore you to allow me
to return to Eisenach within the hour and to continue thence to
Transylvania.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That country is by no
means as inhospitable as you may suppose, and it also happens to be highly
salutary to my intellectual labors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You
must also bear in mind that I may not on any account risk offending my liege
King Andreas II, thanks to whom, on account of my knowledge of mining, which
has already afforded him access to many a shaft abounding in the most precious
stones, I now enjoy an annual salary of three thousand silver marks and
consequently a life imbued with that carefree tranquility in whose absence art
and science can never thrive.” </span>And even if perchance I could forgo this
salary, here at the Wartburg I would be obliged to spend all my time wrangling
and quarrelling with your masters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
art is based on different principles than theirs, and it is bound to be
realized in performances that will differ from theirs both in manner and in
matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may indeed be the case that
what they term their piety and magnanimity is all they need in order to compose
their own songs, and that like timorous children they are disinclined to
venture into an unfamiliar place; far be it from me to disparage them on that
account, but I shall never find it possible to join their ranks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“But surely,” said the landgrave, “you will
still be staying long enough to serve as arbitrator of the lately irrupted
quarrel between your pupil Heinrich von Ofterdingen and the other masters?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I most certainly shall not be,” replied
Klingsohr, “for how ever could I serve in such a capacity?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And even if I could, I would not wish
to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You, your highness, should arbitrate
the quarrel yourself and in doing so simply make certain that your judgment
reaffirms the voice of the people, which will assuredly be loud and clear
enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But please do not call Heinrich
von Ofterdingen my pupil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I used to
think he had courage and strength, but he only ever gnawed at the bitter shell
of the nut and never tasted the sweetness of its kernel!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But never mind that!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Go ahead and select the date of the contest;
I shall see to it that Heinrich von Ofterdingen shows up for it punctually.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The landgrave’s most pressing
entreaties left the intractably stubborn master completely unmoved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He stuck to his resolution, and, richly laden
with presents from the landgrave, he left the Wartburg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<br /></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The fatal day on which the contest
between the singers was appointed to begin and end had arrived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the central courtyard of the fortress
lists had been set up, almost as if a proper tournament were going to take
place there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the middle of the circle
there were two black-draped chairs for the competing singers, and behind them a
high scaffold had been erected.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
landgrave had chosen two gentlemen of the court who were well-schooled in the
art of vocal music—the very same two who had conducted Master Klingsohr to the
Wartburg, Count Meinhard of Mühlberg and Walther von Vargel the cupbearer—as
arbitrators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Opposite the contestants’
chairs a richly festooned dais had been erected for the arbitrators and the
landgrave, and the dais was adjoined by rows of seats for the ladies of the
court and the remaining spectators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
a separate black-draped bench next to the contestants and the scaffold had been
allocated to the masters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Thousands of spectators had shown up,
and every place available for viewing the contest was occupied; from every
window of the Wartburg, nay, from its very rooftops, some portion of the
eagerly curious crowd was peering down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To the subdued sound of muted trumpets and kettledrums the landgrave,
accompanied by the arbitrators, emerged from the gateway giving on to the
courtyard and mounted the dais.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Next the
masters entered in a solemn procession led by Walther von der Vogelweid and
took their places on the bench allocated to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">On
the scaffold alongside his two assistants the executioner from Eisenach,
Stempel, a colossal fellow of a savage, defiant aspect, stood swathed in a
broad crimson cloak out of whose folds protruded the coruscating hilt of an
enormous sword.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A priest seated himself
in front of the scaffold; he was Father Leonhard, whom the landgrave had
appointed to give spiritual succor to the loser in the hour of his death.</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">An ominous silence, one in which every
sigh was audible, hung over the crowd.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Everybody was transfixed with dread in
anticipation of the unprecedented event that was about to take place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the landgrave’s marshal, Franz von
Waldstromer, attired in the raiment of his office, stepped into the circle and
once again read out both the official description of the quarrel that had
occasioned the contest and Landgrave Hermann’s irrevocable decree mandating the
loser’s execution by the sword.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Father
Leonhard raised his crucifix, and all the masters bared their heads, knelt
before their bench, and swore to abide by the landgrave’s decree both willingly
and cheerfully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Stempel swung his
broad, lightning-flashing sword three times through the air and menacingly
thundered that he would execute his charge with the greatest of skill and the
clearest of consciences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trumpets
sounded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Marshal von Waldstromer stepped
into the center of the circle and loudly and emphatically cried out, “Heinrich
von Ofterdingen!” three times in succession.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">And just as though Heinrich had been waiting unobserved
at the very edge of the lists when the last cry of “Heinrich von Ofterdingen!”
was subsiding into silence, he suddenly appeared next to the marshal in the
middle of the circle. He bowed to the landgrave and said in a resolute voice
that he had come at the landgrave’s behest to engage in combat with <i>whichever
</i>master should be pitted against him, and that he would accept whatever
judgment should be delivered by the chosen arbitrators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon the marshal presented the masters
with a silver container from which each of them was required to draw a lottery
tile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Upon unwrapping his tile,
Wolfframb von Eschinbach beheld on it the sign betokening its holder’s
appointment as Heinrich von Ofterdingen’s opponent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first he was nearly overwhelmed with
mortal terror at the thought that he would now have to engage in a combat to
the death with his dearest friend, but by and by he came to feel instead that
he should actually be grateful to the merciful powers of heaven for having
chosen <i>him</i> as their champion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While he was certainly willing to die if he lost, he had also resolved
that if he should prove the winner he would likewise submit to the fatal blow
rather than allow Heinrich von Ofterdingen to die at the executioner’s
hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so with good cheer and a
gladsome countenance he seated himself in one of the black-draped chairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no sooner did he take in the sight of the
countenance of his friend sitting across from him in the other chair than he
was seized by a peculiar feeling of dread, for while in this deathly pallid
face he undoubtedly beheld the features of Heinrich von Ofterdingen, its
uncannily incandescent, coruscating eyes could not but put him in mind of
Nasias.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Heinrich von Ofterdingen began his sequence of songs, and Wolfframb
was almost beside himself with horror upon recognizing it as the exact same
sequence that Nasias had sung on that ominous night down in Eisenach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he pulled himself together with main
force and countered his opponent’s effort with a song of such supreme nobility
that its melody soared ever-farther skyward as it was taken up one by one by a
thousand jubilant tongues, and by its conclusion the people were already
prepared to declare him the victor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Nevertheless, at the command of the landgrave, Heinrich von Ofterdingnen
was obliged to continue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He now began
singing songs whose superlatively wondrous melodies exuded such exhilaration,
such delight in living, that everyone sank into a sweet stupor, as if under the
tranquilizing influence of the ardent, efflorescent breath of the foliage of
distant India.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even Wolfframb von
Eschinbach felt as though he had been transported to a foreign realm; he could
no longer recollect his own songs, nor even recollect who he himself was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At that moment there came a murmur from the
entrance to the circle, on both sides of which the crowd was falling back to
make room for some new arrival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An
electric shock pulsed through Wolfframb’s frame; he awoke from his reverie; he
looked towards the source of the murmur, and—O Heaven Above!—beheld Lady
Mathilde stepping into the circle, resplendent in all her comeliness and grace,
just as on the very first occasion he had seen her, in the garden of the
Wartburg.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She cast at him a supremely
soulful glance instinct with love of the utmost tenderness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whereupon celestial delight, a veritable
superlatively incandescent rapture, soared jubilantly skyward to the strains of
the same song by means of which he had defeated the demon on that night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The people tempestuously and uproariously
proclaimed him the victor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The landgrave
and the arbitrators rose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trumpets
sounded; the marshal took the wreath from the landgrave’s hands in preparation
for bringing it to the singer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Stempel
readied himself to execute his office, but just as his henchmen were taking
hold of the loser, they suddenly found themselves clutching at a cloud of black
smoke that shot up into the air with a roar and a hiss and then
evaporated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Heinrich von Ofterdingen had
vanished in some inconceivable manner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All the spectators were running about in bewildered confusion, their
faces pale with horror; there was talk of infernal apparitions, of the
Archfiend himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the landgrave
gathered all the masters around him and said to them, “I understand now what
Master Klingsohr was actually insinuating in speaking about the singing contest
in such peculiar and mysterious terms, and why he so adamantly refused to
arbitrate the contest himself; and he is doubtless highly gratified that
everything has turned out as it has done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whether our victor’s opponent was Heinrich von Ofterdingen himself or
some other person whom Kingsohr sent in lieu of his pupil is now
immaterial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The outcome of the contest
has redounded to your credit, my brave masters, and we are now free to give due
reverence to the noble art of vocal music in peace and unity and to do
everything in our power to further that art!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">A few of the landgrave’s servants who
had been guarding the entrance to the fortress reported that at half-past six,
when Wolfframb von Eschinbach had just defeated the supposed Heinrich von
Ofterdingen, a figure who looked almost exactly like Master Klingsohr had
dashed through the gates and out into the night on a snorting black horse. </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Conclusion<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Meanwhile Countess Mathilde had betaken
herself to the Wartburg garden and Wolfframb von Eschinbach had followed her
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">When he found her sitting on a flower-covered
grassy bank, her hands folded in her lap, her beautiful head hanging almost to
the ground in dejection, he threw himself speechlessly at the lovely woman’s
feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mathilde bestowed on her beloved
an embrace instinct with ardently yearning desire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pair shed copious fervid tears of sweet
melancholy, of lovesickness. “Ah Wolfframb,” Mathilde said at length, “Ah
Wolfframb, what a terrible dream has had me in its spell!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How did I, a blind and guileless child, ever
come to surrender myself to the demon that was hounding me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can you ever find it in your heart to forgive
me?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Wolfframb clasped Mathilde in his arms, and
for the very first time he pressed a succession of ardent kisses to the lovely
woman’s sweet and roseate lips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
assured her that all along his heart had belonged to her alone; that in
defiance of the infernal powers he had remained true to her; that she alone had
been the lady of his thoughts, the lady who had inspired him to compose the
song that had put the evildoer to flight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“O,” said Mathilde, “O my beloved, let me just explain to you the
wondrous manner in which you rescued me from the baleful snare in which the
fiend had caught me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One night not at
all long ago, I found myself surrounded by outlandish and ghastly images.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I myself did not know whether it was delight
or anguish that was constricting my breast so violently that I was scarcely
able to breathe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the behest of some
irresistible force, I began writing down a song, a song very much in the style
of my uncannily inscrutable master and teacher, but then my senses were
overwhelmed by a sound that was half euphonious and half cacophonous, and it
suddenly seemed to me that what I had just written was not my song but rather
the terrible spell that would infallibly summon the powers of darkness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A figure of savage and horrific appearance
materialized, embraced me with arms as bright and hot as fire, and tried to
drag me down into the black abyss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
suddenly the darkness was pierced through by the light of a song whose notes
shimmered gently like twinkling stars in the firmament.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dark figure had fallen into a swoon and
been forced to let go of me; now it furiously stretched its glowing arms out
anew towards me, but it only managed to get hold of the song I had just
composed, whereupon it threw itself into the abyss with a shriek.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</i>
song, the song you sang today, the song the evildoer was forced to flee, that
came to my rescue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now I am entirely
yours; my songs have been replaced by my loyal love for you, a love whose
superabundant bliss cannot be expressed in mere words!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once again the lovers sank into each other’s
arms, whereupon they found it impossible to leave off discussing the torments
they had withstood and the sweet moment of their mutual rediscovery. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">But in a dream she had had on the same
night as the one on which Wolfframb completely defeated Nasias, Mathilde had
distinctly heard and understood the song that Wolfframb was then singing at the
utmost pitch of exaltation and with the most heartfelt, pious love, the same
song that he subsequently performed to the same victorious effect during the
contest at the Wartburg.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Late that evening Wolfframb von
Eschinbach was sitting alone and thinking through some new songs in his room,
when Gottschalk his landlord came in and joyously exclaimed, “O my noble,
worthy sir, you have really soundly trounced the fiend with your great
artistry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His loathsome words have
spontaneously vanished from your room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A
thousand thanks are your due.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I have
here something that was delivered to my house with instructions to forward it
to you.” With these words Gottschalk handed him a folded letter tightly sealed
with wax.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="background: white;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Wolfframb von Escinbach tore open the
letter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was from Heinrich von
Ofterdingen and read as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">“My dear Wolfframb! I salute you like a man who has recovered
from a grave illness that bade fair to end in his unspeakably painful
death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have confronted many strange
perils—but let me pass over in silence the hardships of a period that lies
behind me like a dark, impenetrable mystery.</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">You will still remember the words you spoke when
in a surfeit of foolish high spirits I boasted of my inner strength, and of how
it was destined to exalt me above you, and indeed above all masters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the time you said that I might someday
find myself at the edge of a bottomless abyss, reeling with vertigo and on the
verge of falling in; and that at that moment you would be standing behind me
with a steadfast heart and would take hold of me and keep me firmly in place
with your strong arms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wolfframb! What
your prescient soul foretold actually came to pass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was standing at the edge of the abyss, and
you held me in place when I was completely dazed by a baleful access of
vertigo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was your glorious victory
that in annihilating your opponent restored the gladsome gift of life to
me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, my dear Wolfframb!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your song caused the heavy veil of fog that
surrounded me to vanish, and I found myself once again gazing up at the
cloudless firmament.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Must I not then
love you doubly?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have singled out
Klingsohr as a great master of the art of vocal music, which he undoubtedly is,
but woe betide anyone who though not endowed with Klingsohr’s peculiar strength
dares strive for relations with that dark realm whose power he exploits at
will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have forsworn my master; I am no
longer inconsolably ranging along the bank of the infernal river; I have been
restored to my native land.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mathilde!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, it was surely not
that noble lady but rather some tenebrous apparition that filled my mind with
illusory images of vain terrestrial pleasure!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Forget all I did in a temporary phase of lunacy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Give my salutations to the masters, and tell
them how I am faring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adieu, my dearest
Wolfframb; perhaps you will hear of me soon.”</span><span style="line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Not long afterwards, news reached
the Wartburg that Heinrich von Ofterdingen was residing at the court of Leopold
VII, the Duke of Austria, and singing many splendid songs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shortly later still, Landgrave Hermann
received a fair copy of these songs including both their words and their
melodies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the masters rejoiced from
the bottoms of their hearts, for they were convinced that Heinrich von
Ofterdingen had forsworn all commerce with falsehood and that despite all the
fiend’s temptations he had preserved his pure, pious singer’s soul intact.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; line-height: 115%;">Thus Wolfframb von Eschinbach’s unimpeachable
command of the art of vocal music, in imbuing a soul of the utmost purity,
secured him a glorious victory over the archfiend and in so doing delivered
both his mistress from captivity and his friend from eternal perdition. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif;">END OF PART VI<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br />
Translation Copyright </span><span style="background: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">© 2018 by Douglas Robertson</span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Source: </span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/die-serapions-bruder-3106/1"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Projekt
Gutenberg DE edition of Die Serapions-Brüder</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-68338606924298998162018-06-29T17:44:00.001-04:002018-07-18T20:10:37.220-04:00A Translation of "Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften," a Radio Essay by Ingeborg Bachmann<div class="MsoCaption">
<b><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">The Man Without Qualities<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Incomplete</span></i><sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1</span></sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<sup><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></sup></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Voices: First Speaker, Second Speaker, Ulrich, Musil<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Before we address the topic we have chosen, we
must ask, <i>Who was Robert Musil?</i> We ask because his name has been on quite a
few people’s lips for a considerable time—because even a few histories of
literature have dedicated a paragraph, if only a brief one, to him and because,
as seems more important to us, a major German publisher has just now issued a
new edition of his work, a literary corpus that had vanished from the book
market.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Robert von Musil; born in 1880 in Klagenfurt,
Austria; died in 1942 in Geneva. A
novel, <i>The Confusions of Young Törless</i>
(1906), kept the German literary reviews busy with its unprecedented treatment
of psychology and even caused quite a sensation purely on account of its
subject-matter, because it dared to depict the confusions of a boy going
through puberty. Even though Musil later
emphatically distanced himself from German expressionism, expressionist prose
took this work as its starting point.
Moreover, the German literary reviews gaped at the stupendous
psychological knowhow of its author, who had succeeded at evoking and limning even
the most inarticulable mental experiences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Long intervals of silence were interrupted by the publication
of two collections of novellas, <i>Associations</i>
(1911) and <i>Three Women </i>(1924).<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: In these prose pieces, Musil had already
dramatically outdistanced his first novel.
And yet after their initial success they were scarcely noticed. What did Hofmannsthal’s enthusiastic praise
of one of these novellas matter to him?
He had allowed himself to pursue a path that nobody was expecting him to
take.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: In 1920 he began working on a novel that he
left unfinished at his death 22 years later.
The first two volumes were published in 1930 and 1932; the third volume had
to be published by a subscription started by the author’s widow. This was in 1943.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And at the time it seemed as though Musil had
been cut off from his German readers forever.
<i>The Man without Qualities</i>—this
is the work we are speaking of—a project that had consumed an entire life, met
with no further response. It had never
enjoyed much popularity. All the same, a
few reviewers realized that the first two volumes were an unprecedented work
for which there was no parallel in German literature, a work whose qualities
couldn’t be fairly appraised because there were no criteria for doing so. And so there emerged those tentative and
rather inapposite comparisons to James Joyce’s <i>Ulysses</i>, and Marcel Proust’s <i>À
la recherche du temps perdu</i>, to Balzac’s <i>Comédie humaine</i> and Voltaire’s <i>Candide</i>. Musil was now regarded as a member of a
highly select society, but hardly anybody was reading him, and he was acquiring
a very peculiar sort of fame that quite nonplussed him:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “What a singularly odd hue and cry [<i>Ruf</i>]! It is vigorous but not loud. When I think about it, I am often compelled
to conclude that it is the most paradoxical example imaginable of the
simultaneous existence and nonexistence of a phenomenon. It is not in the grand reputation [<i>Ruf</i>] writers enjoy, the specialists’
reputation engendered by the grandees of the literary conventicle, in which their
profile (however rarified it may be) is reflected. I venture to say of my reputation (not of
myself) that it is that of a great writer who is published in small print
runs. He misses out on social impact…I
am missing out on the tens of thousands of copies that can barely be secured by
the others or must be guaranteed to them.”<sup>2</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: This passage appears on a page at the top which
are written the words, “I can’t go on…”—what lies behind those words is
distressing: the decades-long and ultimately doomed effort to bring this <i>one </i>book that mattered to him to a
conclusion, and the despair-ridden existential struggle of a writer to write in
the service of his native country when it did not acknowledge him as one of its
own—as he himself bitterly described his plight.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Musil was born into a well-to-do old Austrian
family of bureaucrats, scholars, engineers, and military officers. His father had been a professor at the
technical academy in Brno for some time and was later elevated to the nobility
as a councilor at the patent court. His
mother was the daughter of one of the builders of one of the first continental
railways, the Linz-Budweis line. Like
many sons of the haut-bourgeois milieu, he was dumped into a military boarding
school—<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: —the world of the confusions of young Törless—<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: —and prepared for a career as an officer in
the imperial and royal military. </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">While studying the
science of artillery he discovers his technical capabilities. He changes his area of concentration to
mechanical engineering, passes the state engineering examination, and becomes
an assistant professor at the technical academy in Stuttgart.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: Our pursuit of this writer’s life history is not the result of a
dubious obsession with thoroughness but an integral part of a well-defined
plan. For Ulrich, the <i>Man without Qualities</i> with whose embassy
we must preoccupy ourselves, has almost undisguisedly passed through the phases
of Musil’s life before we walk into his life.
When Ulrich thinks back on this period, he describes it as that of his
attempts to become a man of significance.
This is an attempt that fails along with certain others; nevertheless,
he owes to it the rudiments of his morality.</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL:
“From the moment he entered the lecture hall of mechanical science onwards
Ulrich was in the grip of a feverish passion.
Why did one still need the Apollo Belvedere when one had the new ideal
form of a turbo-dynamo or the play of the members of a steam-machine mechanism
before one’s eyes! Who need be shackled
by the multi-millennially ancient palaver about the nature of good and evil
when it has already become evident that there are absolutely no ‘constants’ but
rather only ‘functional values,’ such that the value of achievements is
contingent upon historical circumstances and the value of human beings upon the
pyrotechnical skill with which one makes the most of their respective
qualities.”<sup>3</sup></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: In a word: like our writer himself at one point, Ulrich had developed
a vigorous idea of the business of being an engineer. The technically minded men whom he was
getting to know had a few advantages over their military counterparts: they
were laudably brimming over with proficiency and audacity and were moving the
world another step forward with every passing hour, and yet…There was something
about them that disturbed him—namely, that their thoughts and emotions were by
no means keeping pace with this specialized audacity. For example, they pinned “brooches with
stag’s teeth” onto their lapels or miniature horseshoes onto their neckties;
they wore suits that put one in mind of the early days of the automobile;
indeed, they never would have dreamed of bringing their intellectual audacity
to bear upon themselves; they would have rejected such an activity as…</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL:
“…a perverse impertinence tantamount to misusing a hammer as a murder weapon!”<sup>4 </sup></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND
SPEAKER: Musil changed his career plan once again: he went from Stuttgart to
Berlin and studied logic and experimental psychology under Carl Stumpf, the
distinguished experimental psychologist, with such success that a few years
later he was up for consideration as a lecturer at the universities of Munich
and Graz.</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST
SPEAKER: Viewed alternatively as an episode in the biography of the Man Without
Qualities, this period seems to constitute his most important attempt. Ulrich undergoes a similar course of
intellectual training as a mathematician.
He underwent it because he was “humanely in love” with mathematics in
virtue of its razor-sharp, razor-cold body of thought. And he loved it on account of the people who
“couldn’t stand it,” on account of those guys…</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL:
“…who blamed the collapse of European civilization on mathematics as the mother
of the exact natural sciences, as the grandmother of technology, and also as
the matriarch of that spirit from which poison gas and fighter planes
ultimately emanated. <i>He</i> understood it
as the origin of a colossal intellectual reorganization for the benefit of a
science that was vigorously and courageously opening one fold after another of
God’s mantle in His very presence.</span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">“And
Ulrich sensed that people simply didn’t know this, that they had no inkling of <i>how</i> one could think at all; that if one could
teach them to think in a new way, they would also live in a different way.”<sup>5</sup></span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND
SPEAKER: Despite its generous terms, Musil rejected the offer of a lectureship. Meanwhile he had written <i>The Confusions of Young </i></span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Törless</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> and
sensed that there was now only one path left that he could pursue.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: This path offered no guarantees—no bourgeois
security, no steady advancement through the ranks; it offered him nothing but
inextinguishable doubt and secret certainty, disappointment, solitude, and that
fortunate misfortune—distance, which sets great minds apart from the age they
represent. What subsequently happens is
the effect of happenstance.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: He lives in Vienna as a librarian until the
outbreak of the First World War, in which he serves at the Italian front. After the war he becomes a technical adviser
at the Austrian army ministry and eventually goes to Berlin, where in those
years—this is the period of the Weimar Republic—the tensions and conflicts of
German intellectual life are most palpable.
After Hitler’s seizure of power, although under no external compulsion
to leave, he returns disheartened to Vienna and resumes work on <i>The Man without Qualities</i>, whose first
volumes are now published. Now he is a freelance
writer in the bitterest sense of the word.
His fortune had vanished in the great inflation. He is one of the few who leave Austria
voluntarily and shares the fate of most political and Jewish emigrants. Unknown, out of money, out of friends, he
lives in Zurich, a nameless figure, one of that city’s all-too-numerous
unwelcome guests. Then in Geneva until
his death on April 15, 1942. Only eight
people bid him farewell at the Cimetière de Saint Georges. Only when his widow advertised for
subscribers to the posthumous volume did the conversation about Musil
resume. But it would have to wait nearly
another ten years to reach Germany.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And as an emigrant this same man had once written:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “I dedicate this novel to the German youth…to the youth
who will arrive in the near future and will be obliged to begin precisely where
we…left off…This novel takes place before 1914, in other words, during a period
that young people are no longer familiar with at all. And it does not describe this period as it
actually was, in a way that would allow one to use the book as a historical
primer. It describes this period,
rather, as it is reflected in a single person who is by no means an authoritative
figure.”<sup>6</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: So in what sense does this book matter to
people who are alive today? But let’s
first take a look at this unauthoritative figure, who we learn is named Ulrich,
and in whom the world of his time is reflected.
Let us release the man imprisoned in the mirror even as we ourselves
dive into the mirror and behold its world and regard it as a model rather than
as reality. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: A young man who we know is an unauthoritative
figure—just like us—who has struggled with various career plans, returns to
Vienna one fine day in 1913, at a moment when his life seems to be petering out
into nothing. He recalls that his native
country is known as a place with a mysterious knack for letting people put down
roots… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “…and he took up residence in it feeling like a
wanderer settling down on a bench for eternity even though he senses he will be
standing up again right away.”<sup>7</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: As his means permit him to do so, he moves
into rented lodgings in a chateau and resolves to take a year-long break from
his life.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: To take a break from his life—in other words,
to do nothing. And for a healthy young
man who is capable of doing a multitude of useful things, this is tantamount to
doing something forbidden. But in
Ulrich’s eyes, doing nothing for a year is worth the “effort” it costs.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: How in the world might a young man who calls
doing absolutely nothing an expenditure of “effort” be constituted?<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Well, let us say that he is a thoroughly
impractical man who will always behave in an unpredictable way towards other
people and is always pursuing eccentric projects. He is—let us say—a man without qualities.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: The time has come for us to attempt to specify
what a man without qualities is. The
phrase evokes all sorts of misleading associations—from a human being concocted
in an alchemist’s retort to a human being devoid of moral character.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Ulrich is neither the one nor the other—rather,
and in short, he has a greater sense of possibility than a sense of reality,
and this quality—no, not a quality, for if it were one he would have one—makes
him a man without qualities. As a man
without qualities, he is subject to supervision from two sides—from that of his
disciplined intellect and that of his sensitivity to emotional phenomena. Naturally he also has a sense of reality, for
he is neither a fantasist nor an idealist inclined to flee from reality. But his sense of the as-yet unborn reality,
in other words of possibility, impels him to engage in an intellectual struggle
for a reality that must be engendered afresh, a struggle that must be fought
out ahead of the front lines of existing reality. He is—and this must be said, even at the risk
of making him misunderstood—a utopian.
At an early point in his life, Ulrich has realized that his own age, for
all its learning, for all the abundance of learning it enjoys by comparison
with previous ages, seems to be incapable of making any decisive change in the
course of history. And the reason for
this seems to be that reality is being shaped today by a pitifully small
proportion of humankind itself because human beings are no longer creative
because they have dwindled into a tiny heap of qualities and habits and
experience <i>life itself</i> within the
confines of a prefabricated schema. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “Their experiences have gone into research institutes
and into reports on research expeditions, into intellectual and religious
collectivities, the predetermined modes of experience, at the cost of
compelling them to treat other people like the subjects of a social
experiment…So who today can still say that his rage is actually rage, when so
many people are interfering with it and can understand it better than he
does?! A world of qualities without man has
emerged, a world of experiences without anyone to experience them…”<sup>8</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Ulrich now realizes that he is “as close to and
distant from” all qualities as other people are, but that he is sincerely
indifferent to all of them. He is
capable of detaching the value of an action or the value of a quality from the
goals they serve and extricating them from the nexuses in which they have
become implicated. He sees through to
their essences and investigates them like an anatomist.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “In his eyes, a character, a vocation, a fixed
mentality, are notions in which the skeleton he is destined to leave behind is
already adumbrated.”<sup>9</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: He shudders to think of this. We may safely assert that Ulrich, Musil’s
protagonist, naturally also hails from a family that we already familiar
with. To a certain extent, he is a
descendant of Hofmannsthal’s <i>difficult
man</i> and also a descendant of all the likeable and unlikeable malcontents
who breathed Nestroy’s air. He has the
visual acuity, the proclivity for lethal criticism and self-criticism, that has
often thrived in the Viennese climate, and like a few other worthy minds who
preceded him, he moves above the uncanny undertow which nobody dares to discuss
and into which he knows he will be dragged to his destruction the moment his
consciousness and his skepticism forsake him.
From such ancestors and such air he derives his unacknowledged suicidal
or mystical disposition, a disposition towards irony and towards “not wanting
to be original,” and—last but not least—towards a hostility to metaphysics.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: This “difficult man’s” family, of which Ulrich
is also a member, was at home in the country that is preserved in our history
books because it has ceased to exist, in a polity that was “somehow already
just playing along” even in its own lifetime—in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. But it is otiose to say anything about this
country, since Musil has said the most trenchant things that can be said about
it:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “There, in Kakania, that…dilapidated, misunderstood
polity in which so much that was commendable failed to be appreciated, there
was also a tempo, but not too much of a tempo…Naturally automobiles rolled
along its streets, but not too many automobiles! People were working towards the conquest of
the skies here as well, but not too intensively. Now and then a ship was launched on a voyage
to South America or eastern Asia, but not too often.”<sup>10</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: There in Kakania…<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “In writing it was called the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy,
and it allowed itself to be spoken of as Austria; so it had a name that it had
cast aside with a solemn political oath, but that it continued to abide by in
all emotional matters, as a token attesting that emotions were just as
important as public law and that the seriousness of life was not reducible to
regulations. It was constitutionally
liberal, but it was ruled by its clergy.
It was ruled by its clergy, but its people lived like freethinkers.”<sup>11</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Regarding its national conflicts:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “They were so violent that several times a year they
caused the machinery of State to grind to a standstill, but during the
intervals and pauses in governmental business everybody got along splendidly.”<sup>11</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: It was there in Kakania that Musil sited the
“parallel campaign,” the central plotline of the novel, to the extent that it
is possible to speak of its having any sort of “plot” at all. Its protagonist’s individual destiny is
closely tied to the story of this ramblingly organized cultural and political
undertaking, of this salvaging operation on behalf of the spiritual “values of
the occident.” The fact that this
macabrely patriotic undertaking was carried out under the auspices of the
Danube Monarchy, which Musil depicted with so much erudition, so much
clandestine love and redoubtable criticism, would lead one to believe that we
are dealing with a historical novel, with a swansong for the dying
Kakania. But Musil himself once tried to
obviate potential misconceptions about his work by defining it thus:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “It is not the great Austrian novel that everybody has
been waiting for from time immemorial…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is by no means a naturalistic depiction of a certain
period, in which Mr…can be spotted in all his living and loving actuality…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is by no means an avowal of a credo, but rather a satire…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is by no means a satire, but rather an affirmative
edifice…”<sup>13</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: At any rate, the first part of the novel is in
large measure a satire and a critique of the period in which it is set. It leads us through the labyrinth of
now-desolated ruling ideas, and we make the acquaintance of the leading
exponents of these ideas, who allow us to understand how the breakdown of
civilization came about. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: With the exception of Ulrich, all of the
novel’s characters may be regarded as incarnations of specific types of
worldview. Let us survey each of them in
turn:</span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: The “great author” Arnheim: his pet project
consists in dealing with business matters exclusively in connection with
intellectual questions—in applying, for example, Maeterlinck’s or Bergson’s
philosophy to the settlement of disputes about the price of coal and the
political regulation of cartels. He
regards his own age as an age lamentably bereft of deities and therefore
descants enthusiastically on the necessity of reorganizing the psychological
faculty of emotional sensitivity as a means of saving humankind from the curse
of soullessness. He travels a great
deal, enjoys audiences with cabinet ministers, gives lectures, serves on all prize-awarding
juries, signs all public appeals, delivers all the important birthday speeches,
issues statements on all important events, professionally wages war against the
intellectual perversity of the age and evinces intellectual probity. His intrinsic shortcoming: he acts like a
businessman and talks of non-material perspectives; he is an administrator of
the heavy industry of the spirit of our age. </span><o:p></o:p><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: General Stumm von Bordwehr, head of the
military, cultural, and educational division at the ministry of war—<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER—who has been tasked with “keeping a bit of an
eye on what’s going on” in the parallel campaign, and is interested in familiarizing
himself with the most important “civilian questions.” A lover of art and music who dreams of a
world in which questions about the military and its armaments are virtuously decided
by popular consensus. His last piece of
advice for the parallel campaign: given that no global peace conference has ever
yet been convened, one might as well build up the army and the navy, if only as
a precautionary measure.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Count Leinsdorf:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: The actual deviser of the parallel campaign; a
typical Austrian aristocrat: he is striving to practice “Realpolitik.” In other words, in his opinion:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “Doing the very opposite of one would really like to
do; on the other hand, one can win people over to one’s side by catering to
their petty whims!”<sup>14</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: He doesn’t wasn’t to make noble ideas into
realities but rather to—<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “…pull the people together!”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: In other words, in his opinion: to counter all
proposals with a proposal to form a collective, for—<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “…when a large number of people are in favor of
something, you can be pretty sure something will come out of it.”<sup>15</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: In a word, he has </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">at his command firm, healthy
political opinions, believes in the necessity of the considerate integration of
every human individual into the political system, believes that the people are
“good,” and traces all his less benign volitions to “fundamentally kindhearted
impulses.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: By contrast, the Jewish bank manager Fischel—<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: —a representative of economic life who views the
patriotic campaign with suspicion, has a tragic battle to fight in his own
house, a battle against his daughter’s Germanic Christian circle of friends and
their brazenly flaunted antisemitism.
Formerly a respected freethinker, he now suddenly finds himself being
pigeonholed as a “Jewish capitalist.” Despite all this, he believes in an idea of
progress that must somehow have been modeled on the progressively increasing
profitability of his bank and—<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “—As a man who was competent in his professional sphere,
he naturally knew that one could only ever have a conviction about something
one really knew inside and out…the colossal proliferation of his activities at
work did not leave room for their development in other places.”<sup>16</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Lindner the university professor, nicknamed “The
Do-Gooder”—<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: —transforms everything he comes into contact
with into an ethical challenge. His
maintenance of his personality through body and character-flexing exercises
fails to prevent him from falling almost embarrassingly in love with Ulrich’s “morally feebleminded” sister and bungling the education of his son
under the auspices of his regimen of virtue.
This son will soon figure as a representative of a rising generation signalized
by its rebellion against its pharisaical fathers: in the terms of his own
lexicon, Lindner himself would describe his son as an “Evildoer.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: The round dance continues, via the socialist
Schmeisser and the homosexual Meingast, behind whose features may be descried
those of the philosopher Klages, to the ambitious young poet Friedel Feuermaul
with his extraordinarily bombastic outbursts of “Humankind is good.” Musil is said to have limned this character
as a portrait of Franz Werfel. But a
list of the most important characters must undoubtedly include Moosbrugger, the
murderer of prostitutes, and Clarisse, a dubious woman whom Ulrich befriended
in his youth—two pathological figures, extreme incarnations of the pathology of
the age.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Some lines in Musil’s notebook distinctly describe
Moosbrugger’s significance in the context of the novel:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “Nations are legally unaccountable for their actions
because they are mentally impaired…comparison with mentally ill
individuals. They have no wills. But they do things to one another.”<sup>17</sup><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><sup><br /></sup></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Moosbrugger lives on the dark side of life. His world is a mystical one. He is a symptomatic symbol of the established
order and an image, but one that is no more alien than any of the rest of the
world’s images. And because he suffers vicariously for
humankind, as Clarisse asserts, he constitutes part of the religious nodus of
the novel—<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: —a nodus whose actuality Musil acknowledges
when he says that this book is religious but subject to the requirements of unbelievers.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Clarisse, obsessed with Nietzsche’s and
Klage’s world of ideas, driven by a yearning for salvation, eventually succumbs
to madness. She is imbued with a mixture
of the most contradictory religious tendencies—she regards herself as a
superman and as the great hermaphrodite, as a composite of man and woman; she
doesn’t wish to be “one” like Ulrich and Agathe, but “two”; but she is also
Christ and wishes to reenact all the stations of his passion and believes that
she is capable of taking on the sins of the world in an increasingly drastic succession
of irrational sacrifices that culminates in her complete breakdown.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Musil has overlaid the entire novel with a
giant shadow of the collapse. A shadow is
cast by the people on their country and by the country on its people. But the Hapsburg Monarchy is explicitly
singled out by Musil as but an especially sharply defined case in illustration
of the modern world, because it was the first polity that had taken it upon
itself to champion belief in the Christian God.
Its internal and external breakdown allows it to illustrate the fate of
the modern world in general. Even
Ulrich’s antagonist, Arnheim the Prussian—behind whose features may be descried
those of [Walther] Rathenau; a man who, like the figures who congregate in the highbrow
salon of the Viennese hostess Diotima, is beset by human and political
confusions—treads the boards of this miniature global stage only to give
visibility to Germany’s fate as the fate of Europe.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So we shall have to deny ourselves the pleasure of dwelling on
the superstructural narrative complex that every reader regards as one of the
work’s most charming features; of dwelling on its captivating portraits of
milieus and depictions of people, on its black humor and its bitter comedy. For this complex is but a means to an
authorial end—a means of engaging in an audacious experiment in the philosophy
of history, an experiment that has accidentally wandered into the realm of imaginative
literature.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: In point of fact the book has little in common
with traditional narrative prose works.
It is nearly crushed to death by its superabundance of reflection, by the
obliqueness of its <i>mise en scène</i>. It is a conglomeration of essays, aphorisms,
and the interior monologues of Ulrich and two dozen secondary characters.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And yet it is more meticulously composed and
structured than any other book written in this century. Musil is an intellectual strategist who labors
at the execution of his plan with a supremely fascinating intelligence, who
employs all manner of linguistic devices, every possible style, every
displacement of consciousness, every possible mode of experience. And he is actuated by a passion of an
exceedingly cold-blooded and peculiar kind:<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “This book is imbued with a passion that in our time
has to some extent been displaced into the domain of imaginative literature—a
passion for accuracy, for precision.”<sup>18</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: A good many years before starting work on his
great novel, Robert Musil had published in a magazine an essay in cultural
criticism entitled <i>Defenseless Europe</i>. In this essay he for the first time
decisively spoke out against the notion—one still quite popular in our own
time—that the European “crisis” was owing to the increasing mechanization of
existence, that the use of our intellect, the proliferation of forms of
knowledge made available by scientific thought and the consequent proliferation
of new technologies, was leading to spiritual dissolution and was to blame “for
everything.” In opposition to this, he
propounded the thesis that something that was no longer intact could no longer
be preserved and that the intellect could not subvert anything that had not
already been subverted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “We therefore cannot be dealing with anything other
than a misalignment, a mis-synchronized cohabitation of intellect and soul. The problem is not that we have too much
intellect and too little soul, but rather that we have too little intellectual
understanding of questions pertaining to the soul.”<sup>19</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: This insight is at the basis of Ulrich’s
conflict. This thought also constitutes the starting point of Ulrich’s thoughts. And although he has been conceived as a “man
without qualities,” hence as a protagonist who lacks the qualifications for
being a man of action, once set in motion by this thought, he throws himself
into an adventure that is a completely new one for the protagonist of a novel. He resolves to reactivate his powers of
thinking and acting “instead of howling with the wolves.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: This seemingly rather theoretical undertaking
is derived from the reflection that the reactivation can only come from a new
morality—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: —and since the root of morality is religious
belief, it can only come from a new religion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">SECOND
SPEAKER: Instead of setting off in search of the lost religion and the lost
morality, the Man Without Qualities engages in bold—and, when necessary, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">circumspect—experiments
aimed at unleashing a new form of intellectual atomic energy. And he liberates forces that he and his age
are as yet unable to utilize.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">But let us
not delude ourselves: a conflict is always a moral conflict, and in contrast to
the book’s other characters, Ulrich, whom Musil ironically classes among the
“morally feebleminded decadents,” is engaged in a conflict that dwarfs all
other conflicts. He is preoccupied with
the “morality of morality,” because our morality is lodged in a mindset that is
several centuries out of date. Ulrich
recognizes that the moral values towards which everyone around him is
orientating himself are “function concepts.”
In other words: the same act can be both good and evil and in the final
analysis proves to be a unique characteristic of European morality, such that the
commandments of this morality hopelessly contradict one another.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is during one of his first encounters with his sister
Agatha that Ulrich first lets himself express these sentiments unreservedly:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">ULRICH: “You asked me what I believe…I believe that all the
prescriptions of our morality are concessions to a society of savage beasts.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I believe that none of these concessions is just.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A different meaning shimmers behind them. A fire that ought to melt them into something
new.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I believe that nothing is finished. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I believe that nothing is ever in a state of equilibrium, that
to the contrary everything is always trying to hoist aloft everything else.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I believe this; it was born with me or I with it…<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It seems to me that without my having had anything to do with
it, I was born with a morality that sets me apart.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">You asked me what I believe!
I believe that I can be shown why something is good or beautiful via a
thousand valid proofs and be left unmoved, and I shall be guided solely and
exclusively by my sense of whether being close to that something will make me
rise or fall. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Of whether or not I will be awakened to life by it.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Of whether it is being spoken of merely by my tongue and my
brain or by the radiant shiver in my fingertips.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But I myself cannot prove anything either.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And I am even convinced that a person who surrenders himself
to that something is lost. He ends up
stuck in a twilight state. In fog and
bilge. In inchoate tedium.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">If you take away the unequivocal out of our life, what’s left
is a hornet’s nest with nobody to stir it up.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I accordingly believe that chicanery is actually our good
angel, our guardian angel! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So I don’t believe anything!<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But I believe least of all in the enslavement of evil by good
that defines our gallimaufry of a civilization: that disgusts me!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">………………..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But perhaps I believe that not long from now people will be
very intelligent on the one hand and mystics on the other. Perhaps our present morality is already
decaying into these two elements. I
might even say it’s decaying into mathematics and mysticism. Into pragmatic melioration and unknown adventure!<sup>20</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: Ulrich embarks on that unknown adventure with
his sister Agathe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: He has not seen her since his childhood and
reencounters her at his father’s funeral and a moment when her life is likewise
beginning to peter out into nothing. The
two of them begin to feel a wondrous, bashful affection for each other. Ulrich withdraws further and further from
cultural activity and discovers in Agathe his Siamese twin, his shadowy double.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: The path of their thought coincides with that
of their love, and what now takes place is not the unfolding of a love story,
but rather that of the “last love story.”
Brother and sister stumble onto a path that has much in common with that
of the “God-smitten.” They pore over the
testimonials of great mystics with the aim of figuring out how to strip away
the boundaries of the world and of consciousness, and for a brief period they
attain “another state of mind” in which they are morally dissolved into a
primevally subatomic state—the “other state of mind.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: In an unpublished poem from his posthumous
papers, “Isis and Osiris,” Musil has left us a variation on the theme of love
between siblings…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">MUSIL: On the stellar leaves the young lad lay<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> ’Neath silver moon’s
repose,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And the solar circle
turned his way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And watched him there
adoze. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> From the desert wastes the red wind blew,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> And
from the coast no sail’s in view.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .4in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And the sleeper’s sister gently sliced<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; text-indent: .4in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> his penis off and it devoured.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And in its place her
heart she spliced, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And there the soft red
organ flowered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And as he
dreamed his beauteous sex grew back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And she enjoyed
it as a snack.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Lo: then the sun began
to thunder,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> The sleeper started from
his slumber,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Stars reeled and swayed like
sailing vessels,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Like trees connected to chains<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> When the great storm
sheds its rains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Lo: then his brothers stormed
and raged<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> By the lovely brigand
shrouded,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And the rainbow he
uncaged,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And the blue expanse disclouded,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Woodlands broke beneath
their stride,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And the anxious stars ran
by their side.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> But the tender girl with the bird-shoulders<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Outpaced them all, run as far as they might.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Only the lad whom she summoned
at night<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> A single one of all her
hundred brothers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> Finds her, when moon
where sun once was now is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;"> And
he eats her heart, and she devours his.<sup>21</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: All of
Ulrich’s thoughts are now circling around the question, “What is it possible to
believe in at all?” Mysticism as a state
of perpetual God-smittenness strikes him as “slovenly”: he fashions the concept
of a “clear-eyed mysticism” as a possible means of deviating from the customary
organization of lived experience. In
virtue of its tendency to transmute into a direct orientation towards God, this
deviation is repugnant to him. As a
scientist, he knows that it cannot lead to any advances in cognition. Indeed, every orientation that wishes to be
fruitful must take as its point of departure an “intuition based on the best of
one’s knowledge.” As for everything else,
as he shouts at his sister one day:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">ULRICH: “It’s nothing
better than Icarus’s wax wings, which melted away in the heavens. Anyone who doesn’t just want to fly in his
dreams has got to learn how to fly with metal wings!”<sup>22</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: One will find the Man Without Qualities’
recourse to the idea of the Thousand-Year Reich, his hankering for “the other
state of mind,” for the “unio mystica,” less off-putting if one joins [Ulrich]
in conceiving of it as a possible utopia.
And keeps it in view not as a goal but as a vector. For Musil’s body of thought is averse to
goals, motile. It flies in the face of the
dominant systems, in which everything has been reduced to a single actualization
of its manifold possibilities. Indeed,
every system strikes him as absurd and wax dummy-ish whenever anybody takes it
seriously and clings to it after its expiration date. He prefers the notion that the world—as a
system—is merely one of <i>x</i> trial runs
and that God perhaps only ever provides partial solutions—a partial solution
out of which the world is forever fashioning a relative totality, but a
totality that no solution ever fits. To
be sure, God is a hypothetical entity.
One must abandon oneself to intuition. <…><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: So what significance is now to be attributed
to the utopia of that “other state of mind?” On the surface it is realized in
the siblings’ tendency towards flight from the world; they go away to Italy. Ulrich perceives this “journey to paradise”
as being deeply interconnected with his rejection of the world, and as an
experiment, and he has resolved to take his own life if this experiment fails.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: To make a long story short: the experiment
fails and with it fails the utopia of the “other state of mind,” and Ulrich can
no longer find any compelling reason to kill himself. The siblings part company. In order to avoid having to love Ulrich
again, Agathe will have liaisons with other men. And Ulrich will go off to war, even though he
could take refuge in Switzerland, even though he execrates war, in which he
also sees a version of the “other state of mind”—<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “…but mingled with evil.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And Musil elaborates on his interpretation of
this love story:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “Ulrich and Agathe’s relationship is actually an
attempt to put anarchism into practice in an amorous context. The attempt itself then has a negative
ending. This bespeaks the profundity of
the connection between the love story and the war!”<sup>23</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SPEAKER: But before talking about this love story’s connection
to the war, one must realize that the war is the novel’s all-embracing
problem. All the lines that Musil has
traced lead to the war; the one that leads there most conspicuously is of
course the parallel campaign, and everyone welcomes it in some fashion or other
because everyone has found in it something known as “belief” or
“conviction”—something that Ulrich despises and against which he pits his
utopia, his “other state of mind,” pure contemplation. Nevertheless, this utopia comes to a tragic
conclusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Musil knows that this utopia is doomed to failure, for:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “Renunciation of the world has no purpose. This is owing to the fact that it is always
aiming for God, for a goal that is unreal and unattainable.”<sup>24</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And yet this utopia is also a guiding image for
another guiding image that can liberate humankind from its ideological fetters. For after the miscarriage of his journey into
the Thousand-Year Reich, is not Ulrich still left with the very intuition in
which the moving force of spirit unflaggingly keeps itself alive and in
readiness? Love as negation, as a state
of emergency, cannot last. Like
religious faith, self-externalization and ecstasy endure for only an hour. Of course, the “other state of mind” has led
from society to absolute freedom, but Ulrich now knows that the utopia of this
other life can provide no prescriptions for the praxis of life. For those who live in society this utopia
must be replaced by the utopia of the established social reality. Musil also calls it “the utopia of the
inductive mindset” from time to time. But
both ideologies make it possible for open ideologies to take the place of
closed ones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SECOND SPEAKER: Musil could no longer execute the last
chapter. But at bottom it was intended
to articulate the “final outcome of the utopia of the inductive mindset.” For Ulrich this was to mean:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">MUSIL: “Gaining insight, working, being pious without
make-believe plus the final outcome of the inductive mindset.”<sup>25</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">FIRST SPEAKER: And this insight comes to him at a moment in
which the insanity that breaks out in the summer of 1914 is ushering in the
collapse of civilization and of the idea of civilization. And now there arises [---]<sup>26</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br />
NOTES<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">1.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bachmann’s editors report that she began work on this
essay sometime after December 1952, when Rowohlt’s edition of <i>Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften </i>[<i>The Man Without Qualities</i>] was published,
that its broadcast date and broadcaster are no longer ascertainable, and that
the conclusion of its typescript is missing, whence its breaking off in
mid-sentence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">2.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Robert Musil, <i>Der
Mann ohne Eigenschaften</i>, (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1958 [fourth printing of
the 1952 edition]), p. 1646 f. This
citation and all those that follow, along with all associated commentary unless
otherwise noted, are taken from Bachmann’s editors’ notes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">3.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p. 37.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">4.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p. 39.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">5.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p. 40., with modifications, and p. 41.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">6.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., pp. 1638-1639.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">7.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p. 19.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">8.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p. 154, slightly modified.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">9.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid. p. 257.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">10.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p.
33.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">11.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p. 34.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">12.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">13.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p.
1642. The order of the last two sentences has been reversed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">14.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p.
356.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">15.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p.
360.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">16.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid. p.
138f.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">17.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid. p. 1618.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">18.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid. p.
1640.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">19.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Robert
Musil, <i>Tagebücher, Aphorismen, Essays und
Reden</i> [<i>Diaries, Aphorisms, Essays,
and Speeches</i>]. (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1955), p. 638.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">20.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span></i><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <i>Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften</i>, p. 786f.<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">21.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Contrary to Bachmann’s assumption, this poem
was published for the first time in <i>Die
Neue Rundschau</i> in Berlin in 1923. Republished
in: Robert Musil, <i>Prosa, Dramen, späte
Briefe</i> [<i>Prose, Plays, Late Letters</i>]
(Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1957), p. 597.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">22.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> <i>Der
Mann ohne Eigenschaften</i>, p. 782, with modifications.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">23.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p.
1619.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">24.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p.
1616.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">25.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., p.
1617.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">26.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> “Arises” is a conjecture whose virtual
arbitrariness is excusable by the fact that the concluding sentence-fragment, “Und
nun stellt,” contains no subject and the probability that <i>stellt</i> is part of a longer verb—e.g., <i>darstellt</i> or <i>vorstellt</i>
(DR). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">THE END</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">Translation
unauthorized but Copyright ©2018 by Douglas Robertson</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: #fefdfa; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Source: </span><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"> Ingeborg Bachmann, </span><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Werke</span></i><span style="background: white; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">, edited by Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, and
Clemens Münster (Munich: Piper, 1978), Vol. IV, pp. 80-102.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-37294304888696718592018-05-18T18:54:00.000-04:002018-05-21T18:15:15.106-04:00A Translation of "Der Welt Marcel Prousts--Einblicke in ein Pandämonium," a Radio Essay by Ingeborg Bachmann<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Marcel Proust’s World—Insights into a Pandemonium</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Voices: Author, Speaker<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: As I was starting to prepare some notes for this essay on
Marcel Proust, I received a letter from an editorial office that was also
taking an interest in this topic, a letter that included a few remarks that I
would like to quote here at the beginning, because they caused me to doubt
something that I had regarded as self-evident—namely, that Proust’s novel can
count on being met with passionate interest today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this letter I was told:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SPEAKER: We cannot—and far be it from me to complain about this—expect
our readers to take a snobbish sort of literary interest in the book from the
outset.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To the contrary, what we will
inevitably be faced with, even from readers who do take an interest in
literature, is that certain prejudice against Proust as a writer who is
exclusive, decadent, hard to read, and in any case long-since outmoded, a
writer who basically poses only stylistic problems.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: Thus was I forewarned of the reception that would presumably
greet this work, and of the necessity of following up the already numerous
existing interpretations of it with yet another one devoted to the analysis of
its style, structure, and composition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Proust criticism in Germany began with a now-famous book by Ernst
Robert Curtius, who in 1925 was already saying that soon people would be
mentioning the author of </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">In Search of
Lost Time</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> alongside Balzac, Stendhal, and Flaubert.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Later Walter Benjamin and much more recently
Günter Blöcker drew our attention to the new realities to be found in Proust,
and I wouldn’t know what to add to these outstanding works if I didn’t have the
desire, even at the price of greater lopsidedness, to rid the book of the
stigma of snobbism, aestheticism, and classicism with which it seems to be
tainted in many people’s eyes.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">For in
the eyes of anyone who understands how to read it properly, it is a severe,
tragic, and revolutionary book that can continue the tradition only because it
breaks with it.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Because it is as
wide-ranging as </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">A Thousand and One Nights</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">,
full of relationships and worldliness, it affords as many possible ways of
being read, and one of them might be to inspect its sheen and the arrangement
of its folds, its nuances and oscillations—but another certainly might be to
step into the modern Inferno that this work contains, into the circles of hell
in which Proust’s characters, already damned in the here and now, reside.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Today we know that Proust was originally
planning to call his work not </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">In Search
of Lost Time</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> but </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sodom and Gomorrah</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">,
but he ended up retaining this title only for a single volume of it.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Earlier something similar happened to the
work of Baudelaire, whose </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Flowers of Evil</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">
was actually meant to be published under the title</span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"> The Lesbians</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">In Proust’s
diaries there is a passage that takes issue with this curious plan:</span><sup style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">1</sup></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SPEAKER: “How could Baudelaire take enough interest in lesbians to
want to make them the eponyms of his magnum opus?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given that an author like Vigny had a
jaundiced view of women and attributed this to the mysteries of her peculiar
physiology, we understand why his amorous disenchantment and jealousy impelled
him to write: ‘Woman will be in Gomorrah and man in Sodom.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at least he segregates them far from one
another as irreconcilable enemies: ‘And exchanging an irritated distant look /
The two sexes will die, each in its private nook…’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The nature of Baudelaire’s case is nothing
like this.”<sup> 1</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: And the nature of Proust’s case was nothing like that
either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But at the moment we must
consider how to get some sort of purchase on the horrifying truths that this
book is in search of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Proust enters the
two accursed cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, almost compulsively, as the first
writer to do so in order to investigate the connection between the individual
and society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, this subject
was virulently popular with writers long before him, from Saint-Simon to Balzac
to Zola, who acknowledged that it was of enormous psychological and social
interest but strived in vain to come up with a way of presenting it that would
not result in an “outcry.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Proust feared
no such outcry; he merely feared being applauded by the wrong side of the
house, the side who were absolutely incapable of understanding his artistic
intentions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he managed to forestall
both the outcry and the applause via the sheer persuasive purity of his
depiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was scarcely any
protest from the critics, but to this day this portion of his work is met with
either passive resistance or stone-cold silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the first French reviewers wrote:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SPEAKER: It’s appalling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
can’t talk about it!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: But every time a new writer enters a previously unexplored, unshaped
domain, he seems to be committing a sacrilege.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When Dumas <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fils</i> depicted
prostitution and Flaubert adultery—both of which had existed from time
immemorial—with meticulously objective precision, neither of these subjects had
ever been considered fit for artistic representation either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, then as now, the taste of the
average reader was characterized by horrified revulsion from any direct
confrontation with reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But inasmuch
as the passing away of a single generation often suffices to allow new truths
to be received as actual truths, ours may already be an age in which Proust’s
audacious revelations can be dispassionately seen for what they are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In keeping with his method of composition, he does not merely summon
up the ghosts of the two Biblical cities in one or two chapters; rather, he
introduces them as a motif time and again; this motif is a thread that runs
through his entire book, all the way to the last volume—of which there is more
to be said—in a gloomy, gruesome wartime scene leading to a vision of
humankind’s fundamental misery and predestination to destruction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We scarcely pick up on the insinuations at the beginning—when, for
example, we are introduced to the Baron de Charlus, around whom in his capacity
as Sodom’s master of ceremonies all the other characters later congregate, and
are told that he deeply mourned the death of his late wife—“but as a brother
mourns a cousin, a grandmother, a sister.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Let us now pose about Proust the question that Proust posed about
Baudelaire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How and why could he take
such a keen interest in sexual inversion?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Why is his world half populated by people like Charlus and Morel, Jupien
and Saint-Loup, and on the other hand by Mademoiselle Vinteuil and her girlfriend,
by Albertine and Esther?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And how can he
give us a compelling representation of humankind and of human suffering and
passions by fixating on these characters?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">One might be inclined to believe that like André Gide in the same
period he had been in search of a new attitude towards life, that he had
yearned for vindication and transfiguration and the reawaking of a Greek
ideal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what Proust fancies most is
not romanticism but rather the truth and nothing but the truth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He presupposes that inversion is an incurable
illness, that it is pathological, and concludes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SPEAKER: “An idealization of Sodom is impossible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The entire young-people’s version of
homosexuality, the homosexuality of Plato and of Virgil’s shepherds, vanished
nineteen-hundred years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its
glorification as a passion of the human individual, a passion that he freely
chooses out of a taste for beauty, friendship, and masculine intelligence, is
an absurdity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only the geniuses, who are
great and independent enough to live above their epoch in a young and fresh
world, are capable of soaring to the level of a sublime friendship.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In others, nothing comes into being but
confusion; they confuse their mania with a friendship that resembles it no
respect whatsoever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus this passion
expresses neither an ideal of beauty nor satanic dissoluteness, for that would
mean that it is intentional.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is
an illness whose consequences are social in character.”<sup>2</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: So it is necessary for Proust to investigate the phenomenon
anew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Along with this mysterious caprice
of nature as it is documented by him at the beginning of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sodom and Gomorrah</i>, a caprice in which Baron Charlus and the caretaker
Jupien participate, he becomes more and more and especially preoccupied with
homosexuality as a manifestation of the conflict between the individual and
society.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latent revolt of the
individual against society, of nature against morality, leads him to the
concept of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">homme traqué</i>, of the
type of person who is hounded, cornered, a type of which the invert is merely a
conspicuous example.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">This is why we are capable of identifying with the human structure of
Proust’s characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why in our
eyes Dostoyevsky’s characters, who are almost consistently epileptics as he
was, are not outlandish invalids or lunatics, but, rather, living and suffering
human beings with whom we can identify.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The most mournful brushstrokes of the portrait of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">homme traqué</i> are supplied by the story
of the inverts, for it is a history of lying, hiding, hypocrisy, lifelong
unrest, and fear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the case of the
Baron de Charlus his incessant efforts to repress his passion are the key to his
personality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In its absence we would
fail to comprehend his kindness and his baseness, his rage and his humor, his
alternately tyrannical and cringing demeanor. At some point Nietzsche asks the
outsiders:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “What do you lust after, what do
you need in order to placate yourself?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">To console myself…what are you
saying?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Please, give me…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">What? What! Perfect…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Yet another mask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another mask!”<sup>3</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR: Charlus’s entire life is a
performance acted behind a mask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only
for a few seconds at a stretch, for the sake of disclosing himself to others of
his kind, does he dare to make a gesture that reveals his true essence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The very next instant, trembling with the
fear of being discovered, he dons a mask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In a salon he can always be found at the elbow of the most elegant woman
in attendance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Towards young men he
affects an air of nonchalance, haughtiness, arrogance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The baron, who can be gentle and obliging,
refuses to let people be introduced to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And yet he is never secure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does
somebody harbor doubts?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does somebody
harbor suspicions about him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the end
he is no longer an enigma to others, but everyone who surrounds him is an
enigma to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the eyes of the masked
person the entire world is wearing a mask the sight of which he finds
excruciating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He can no longer
distinguish his friends from his foes; he thinks he hears insulting
insinuations everywhere he goes; he perceives everybody as a judge and stands
without respite before the Bench.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">He carries himself like a criminal, and
among his peers he behaves as though he is a member of a gang of thieves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually he goes so far as to accuse
everyone in the world of being prey to his vice in order to exculpate himself
more easily. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The demonized sphere around Charlus has
its analogues in the sphere of ordinary people, for a pervasive idea in
Proust’s work and world is the idea of the human individual’s futile search for
joy, for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">plaisir</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This search is that individual’s secret
mainspring and the unacknowledged determiner of his actions and his
behavior.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sacrifice that he offers
to this search bears absolutely no relation to its fulfillment, because the
latter never supervenes when it is necessary to us but only at a later time, a
time by which we have long since set off in pursuit of a different goal. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The inverts merely allow us more
forcefully to comprehend the impossibility of fulfilling our desires because in
the course of their search for happiness they behave in a more visibly
delusional manner than we ourselves generally do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “…their happiness is far greater
than that of any normal lover could ever be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Knowing so well the hazards that beset their search for a partner, they
feel that their form of love is not, like that of heterosexuals, born of the
moment, is not a mere instant’s fancy, but must be far more deeply in rooted
in…life…that the answer to their call has come from somewhere far beyond the
passing minute, that the ‘beloved’ thus miraculously given has been his
affianced love from days before his birth, has found his way to this moment of
meeting from the depths of limbo, from those stars where all our souls dwell
before they are incarnate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such love,
they will be more than ever tempted to believe, is the only true love…”<sup>4</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR: His idea of love is thus a different
one from the classical and romantic one that has been dominant up until the
present age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The depictions of love in
Proust are quite new and based on a more precise investigation of its genesis,
of its crystallization, of its expiration, and ultimately of its indifference.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="gjdgxs"></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It amounts to a
tragic view of love to which have hitherto been blind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The depth of our feeling and the longevity of
our passion are decided not by the merit of the woman or the man whom we love
but rather by our own condition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
offer music, flame, and perfume to the other and nourish his being for our own
benefit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is why we find the love
affairs of others so hard to comprehend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All the lovers in Proust are genuinely in love with people who are
unworthy of them and often deeply inferior to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Odette, a demi-mondaine, lays waste years of
the life of the exceedingly intelligent Swann and ruins his social position;
Albertine, a vulgar and mediocre figure, becomes the great love of the
narrator’s life and continues to spellbind him and poison his existence long
after her death; the plebian violinist Morel takes complete possession of
Charlus, one of France’s foremost gentlemen of rank; the radiant youth Saint-Loup
loses a fortune to Rachel, a woman who only slightly earlier could have been
had by anyone for a couple of francs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1fob9te"></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">All love is luckless, and under its merciless dispensation lovers are
drawn into a gearworks of anxiety, jealousy, and lies, and into a form of pain
that not even death and absence are capable of assuaging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At first the vacuum that emerges from
forgetting allows them to readjust to reality—for a while at least, until
another person steps into this position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Thus the narrator, the “I” of the novel, has repeatedly thought of a
single person as signifying the entire world—his grandmother, his mother,
Gilberte, the Duchesse de Guermantes, and Albertine, and each time he traverses
the Way of the Cross, until time does its part and forgetting sets in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This tragic interpretation of love—love as a
catastrophe and preordained doom—is naturally determined by Proust’s specific
experiences and suffers every now and then from the “transference” that he
effects—for example of Albert into Albertine—but only to the extent that lasting
relationships and marriages are excluded from the analysis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There are of
course also moments of happiness, of joy and the fulfilment of its spirit in the
analysis and meticulous dissection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
only exceptions are the brief instants of contemplation and mystical
meditation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The famous passage with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Captive</i> begins, the passage in which
the narrative is immersed in contemplating the sleeping Albertine, coincides
with a cessation of the plot, of action, of movement; immediately after it her
awakening will bring back the pain, and the inferno will be here once again,
and work will be resumed on the fabric of lies on which both their patterns are
being embroidered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mysteries
surrounding Albertine become operative once again; the shadows of Gomorra fall
on her, and there are conversations that constitute a singular sort of torture:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER:
“‘Albertine, can you swear to me that you have never lied to me?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She stared into space, then answered: ‘Yes—in
other words, no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was wrong of me to
tell you that Andr<span style="color: #222222;">ée had had a huge crush on Bloch;
we’d never set eyes on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘But then
why did you say that she had?’ ‘Because I was worried that you believed other
things about her, that’s all.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>[…]<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She gazed into space again and said: ‘When I
talked to you about Léa just now, it was wrong of me to not to tell you about a
three-week trip I took with her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I
barely knew you when that happened!’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>‘Was this before Balbec?’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Before
the second time, yes.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the morning of
that same day she had told me that she didn’t know Léa […]!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was watching a torch instantly reducing to
ashes a novel I had taken millions of minutes to write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To what end?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To what end?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be sure, I fully
understood that Albertine was disclosing these facts to me because she thought I
had learned them indirectly from Léa, and because there was no other reason for
a hundred other such facts not to exist.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I also understood that when you questioned Albertine, her words never
contained an atom of truth […]. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘But two
things: that’s nothing,’ I said to Albertine; ‘let’s make it four so that you
can give me something to remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What
else can you reveal to me?’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">She
gazed into space again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To what notions
of her future life was she trying to make her lie conform, with what gods, gods
less accommodating than she had believed, was she trying to strike a deal?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She must not have been finding this easy,
because her silence and the immobility of her gaze both lasted rather a long
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Nothing; there’s nothing else,”
was what she ended up saying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in
defiance of my insistence on hearing more, she stuck tenaciously—and now effortlessly—to
“nothing else.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what a remarkable
lie this was!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For from the moment she
had first felt these cravings until the first day of her sequestration in my apartment
there was no telling how many times, in how many houses, during how many walks,
she must have gratified them!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
daughters of Gomorrah are both so rare and so numerous that it is impossible
for one of them to escape the notice of another in a crowd of any size.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once they have sighted each other,
establishing physical contact is an easy matter.”<sup>5</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR:
At the center of Gomorrah, Albertine is flanked by Mademoiselle Vinteuil, the
daughter of the composer whose sonata and septet play such an important role in
the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her father died of a broken
heart caused by her, and his portrait serves merely as her and her girlfriend’s
habitual object of scornful profanation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But a couple of years later something remarkable happens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a Paris salon the composer’s posthumous
opus is performed in circumstances of which, to be sure, scarcely anybody is
even remotely aware but which afford the narrator the insight that public
acclaim and artistic immortality are often jointly catalyzed only by the
interaction of the basest elements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
this case the immediate cause was to be sought in amorous relations, namely:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER:
“…the relations that bound Charlus and Morel to each other, relations that made
the Baron wish to give the biggest possible boost to the artistic successes of
his young idol and to obtain the cross of the Legion of Honor for him; the
ultimate cause, the thing that had ultimately made this concert possible, was
the fact that a young girl whose relations with Mlle. Vinteuil had paralleled
those of Charlie with the baron had brought to light an entire series of works
of genius that had been such a revelation that before long a subscription to
erect a statue of Vinteuil had been started under the patronage of the Ministry
of Public Education.”<sup>6</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR:
According to Proust, this alliance of degrading passion and art is one of
life’s most enigmatic phenomena, and it points back to his idea of love, which
is of course pure illusion and self-deception but at the same makes feasible
the liberation of our best energies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Without suffering, even suffering of the most degrading sort, we would
be inhuman in our self-righteousness, and we would also be mindless, because
only our pain enables us to understand and recognize other people, to make
distinctions and to produce art.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
fraught relationship between the individual and society, between his private
self and his public exterior, undergoes an intensification via the struggles
over power and position that a human being in a social setting is incessantly
compelled to engage in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This war of all
against all finds expression in snobbery, or more precisely a multiplicity of
snobberies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is nobody in Proust’s
world—not a single duchess, cook, doctor, or man of letters—who is invulnerable
to injury by these weapons, or who would scruple to use them on his inferiors
or his superiors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we are spectators
of the unmasking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The outsiders want to
figure among the chosen few; the chosen few defend their prerogatives and
punish the outsiders with contempt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
identities of the specific social groups from which Proust derives his
observations on this process are of absolutely no importance, because his
conclusions are of universal validity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although he never set any great store by the notion of being an
expressly practicing social critic, he unveiled and even expressed this system
of laws in a stupendously impressive fashion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The accusation that he was indifferent to the public life, to the social
and political development, of his age, is probably the most fatuous one that
was ever leveled at him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One would do
better to go one step further and see more than a social critique in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Search of Lost Time</i>, and conceive of
it as a conspectus of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">conditio humana</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
would like to turn now to another facet of Proust’s work, a facet that for all
its independence ultimately converges with the one that has just been
adumbrated; from the perspective of the last volume, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Time Regained</i>, all the revealed truths are reducible to a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">single</i> account balance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this volume, Proust leads us, along with
Marcel Proust the novel’s first-person narrator, into the Paris of the First
World War, which is now no longer the city in which as a child he played in the
Champs Elysées with his first love, Gilberte, in which he enjoyed his social
triumphs and discovered his entrée into the world of the upper aristocracy, or
of his life with Albertine, his incarcerated and absconded mistress, but rather
a Paris that has changed no less than its inhabitants--a Paris in the ghastly
grip of supraindividual passions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “...The city
seemed a black, amorphous mass which suddenly passed from the nocturnal depths
into the light and into the sky where one by one the aviators were ascending at
the earsplitting summons of the sirens, all the while that in a movement that
was slower but more insidious, more alarming—for the sight of it made one think
of the still-invisible and perhaps already-near object that it was searching
for—the searchlights stirred without interruption, stalked the enemy,
surrounded him with their beams up to the moment when the piloted planes were
to give lunging chase to him and seize him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And thus in flight after flight each aviator, now transported into the
sky like a Valkyrie, soared from the city.”<sup>7</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR: This is the period
in which everything apart from the war has been put on indefinite hold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the actual event that is taking place is
not the war itself, as a site of the exchange of gunfire or the potential
subject of a historical painting, but rather the war’s reflection, which is
something more real: its permeation of the everyday language of all and sundry,
its backfiring onto life in the salons and onto fashion, and its ability to
transform towns and cities into different towns and cities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The little hawthorn path at Méseglise has
become Hill 507.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bridge over the
Vivonne and its idyll have both been exploded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Parisian ladies have put away their pearls and now flaunt their
patriotism by sporting dark military tunics over short skirts and gaiters
reminiscent of those worn by the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">poilus</i>
in the trenches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has been a long time
indeed since people were despised for being Dreyfusards; in the eyes of the
trendsetters the new bugbears are those who oppose the mandatory three-year
term of military service.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All varieties
of opinion are here, from blind Germanophilia to blind Germanophobia, and in
the midst of their exponents stands the placatory Saint-Loup, the narrator’s
formerly super-radiant friend, who will soon meet his death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “Just as heroes of
a mediocre and banal cast of mind writing poems during their convalescence went
about describing the war not at the level of its events, which in themselves
are nothing, but at that of the banal aesthetic rules they had been following
theretofore, speaking, as they would have done ten years earlier, of the
‘bloody dawn,’ of the ‘trembling flight of victory,’ Saint-Loup, who was much
more intelligent and artistic, remained intelligent and artistic, and when he
was immobilized at the edge of a marshy forest he jotted down tasteful
observations on the landscape for my benefit, but as if in preparation for a
duck hunt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To make me appreciate certain
contrasts of light and shadow that had ‘enchanted his morning,’ he referenced
certain paintings that we both admired and did not scruple to allude to a page
of Romain Rolland, even of Nietzsche, with that independence characteristic of
men at the front who lacked the fear of pronouncing a German name felt by those
stationed in the rear echelons, or even to quote one of the enemy with a
certain dash of coquetry…”<sup>8</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR: It is via such
illuminations that Proust invariably arrives at allusions to these years’ monstrous
events.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the lyrical letters of his
friend contrast with the trench in which he is lying, the comportment of the
queen of the Paris salons, Madame Verdurin, whose house is crisscrossed by the
comings and goings of officers and politicians, contrasts with the sinking of
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lusitania</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “These Verdurins
(and then Mme Verdurin on her own, after her husband’s death) hosted dinner
parties, and M. de Charlus pursued his pleasures, while hardly reflecting on
the fact that the Germans—immobilized, to be sure, by a bloody barrier that was
constantly being rebuilt—were only an hour’s car drive away from Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yet it must be admitted that the
Verdurins were indeed thinking about this because they had a political salon
where the situation of not only the army but also of the navy was discussed
each evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They really were thinking
about those hecatombs of annihilated regiments, of drowned ship passengers; but
an inverse operation multiplies what impinges on our well-being to such an
extent and divides what does not impinge on it by such a colossal figure that
the death of millions of strangers is whispered to us as softly as and almost
less disagreeably than a draught of air.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mme Verdurin, suffering from her migraines on account of not having a
croissant to dunk in her café au lait, had obtained from Cottard a prescription
that allowed her to order them at a certain restaurant of which we have
spoken.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This prescription had been as
difficult to obtain from the authorities as the nomination of a general.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She received her first croissant on the
morning when the newspapers reported on the sinking of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lusitania</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As she dunked the
croissant in the coffee and repeatedly flicked her newspaper to keep it spread
flat without having to leave off dunking, she said: ‘How horrible!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is more horrible than the most terrible
tragedy imaginable.’ But the death of all those drowning victims must not have
seemed more than a billionth of its actual magnitude to her, for as she engaged
in these dolorous reflections with her mouth full, the expression that was
floating on the surface of her face—an expression probably brought there by the
flavor of the croissant, so preciously curative of migraines—was actually one
of mild satisfaction.”<sup>9</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR: Because the war
exerted such a deeply astonishing influence on Proust’s novel and almost
exploded its original plan, to my mind it is important to present a few cases
in illustration of this influence along with the new perspectives under whose
auspices he allows his characters to continue developing pathologically in a
state of war-induced shock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He brought
increasingly merciless observation to bear on the collective emotion that is so
closely akin to the emotions of individuals, and in this hectic, perfervid
atmosphere he registers the derailment of people, of classes, of nations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even more than the Dreyfus Affair, by which
Proust was first schooled in the entire problem of character and the mutability
of character, of opinion and the mutability of opinion, the war tore Proust out
of the world of good taste, of convention, and of the aristocratic and artistic
attitude towards life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only through his observation
of the sudden transformation and the constants of the war did he wrest his
standpoint free of all the milieus that could make him suspicious, and from the
perspective of the end of the book, all parties receive their proper
emphases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus do his characters turn
into the “monsters” that have such an appalling legitimacy in our eyes. Saint-Loup
turns into a hero, which he has been all along unbeknownst to himself; Mme
Verdurin soars with exaggerated chauvinism into the most exclusive social
circles; a formerly anti-militaristic literary critic switches over to the avid
contemplation of military maneuvers; Charlus, now shunned by multitudes, isolated,
and headed for an appalling dissolution, reminiscences about his Bavarian
ancestors and is incapable of countenancing the annihilation of Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “The reason for
this was that in these disputes the large aggregations of individuals called
nations behave like individuals to a certain extent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The logic that guides them is strictly of an
internal kind and is perpetually being overhauled by passion, like the logic of
people offended in an amorous or domestic dispute, in a dispute between a son
and his father, between a cook and her mistress, between a wife and her
husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The party in the wrong for all
her wrongness believes that she is in the right--as did Germany—and the party
in the right sometimes adduces arguments in her favor which she finds
irrefutable only because they vouch for her passion...The surest means of
remaining blind to the unjust aspects of the German individual’s cause, of
recognizing at every moment the just aspects of the French individual’s cause,
was not for a German and a Frenchman to be of poor judgment and sound judgment
respectively, but to be patriotic.”<sup>10</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR: Irony authenticates
Proust’s magisterially incorruptible view of unfolding events, notwithstanding
the fact that during the war, as during the Dreyfus affair, he himself was a
highly partisan figure--a champion of France as he had previously been a
champion of Dreyfus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But his partiality
never prevented him from investigating with scientific objectivity the
murderous drives those later years first brought to his attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maturity makes him misanthropic, and a novel
that begins on a note of enchantment, a novel whose personages are still
regarded with tenderness, gives way to an ever-increasingly lackluster one; its
characters discolor one another and become darker: the Duchesse de Guermantes
goes completely to seed; beneath a hypocritical semblance of meekness, Madame
de Marsante turns traitor to her incurable aristocratic pride; Saint-Loup
eventually becomes yet another inhabitant of Sodom and a client of the utterly
depraved Jupien.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the absence of the
war, which delayed the novel’s publication and impelled Proust to continue
working on it, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In Search of Lost Time</i>
would have ended up being much shorter and much closer in spirit to the
classical ideal of the French novel; but it would have lacked the disconcerting
and oceanic quality to which it owes its absolute uniqueness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Once Proust has presented to us his principal characters
disfigured by the stigmata the war has imprinted on them, night descends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a night in which the narrator
unexpectedly wanders into a Parisian brothel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He recognizes its owner as Jupien, his old caretaker, who has become the
curator of the baron’s vices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The events
of this night constitute the centerpiece of the work’s terminal phase; they
take place in the innermost circle of hell and are a grisly spectacle of human
misery and human irredeemability in which the scum of the earth—of the common
people—and the scum of the ether—of high society—mingle with one another. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The universal lunacy is represented by this particular
instance of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The grand pandemonium is
represented by this minor one—and the writer Proust, the aesthete of
yesteryear, has arrived at a place where inurement to horror renders horrific
visions superfluous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the course of
this night Jupien even says to him:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “It is not children but poets whose education
consists of a course of spankings.”<sup>11</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: And Proust, still reeling from the impression made on
him by the events he has witnessed in the house, rejoins:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “In the meantime…this house is quite a different
thing, more than a madhouse, since the madness of the patients here is acted
out, reconstituted, visible; it’s a genuine pandemonium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had thought, like the caliph in </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
Thousand and One Nights,</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
that I would arrive just in time to come to the aid of a man who was being
beaten, and it was a different tale from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Thousand and One Nights </i>that I saw dramatized in front of me, the one in
which a woman who has been transformed into a dog willingly has herself beaten
in order to reassume her original shape.”<sup>12</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR: But nobody is reassuming his original shape anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the hour in which everyone is being
turned into a “Pompeian” on whom the volcanic fire could rain down at any
moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “The streets had become completely black.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only occasionally a fairly low-flying enemy
plane would illuminate the spot on which it was planning to drop a bomb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was no longer able to find my way; I
thought about that day when, en route to Raspelière, I had encountered a plane
like a God who had made my horse bridle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I reflected that this encounter would be different and that this time
the God of Evil would kill me. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I quickened
my pace to take flight like a seafarer pursued by a tidal bore; I was running
in a circle around the darkened squares from which I could no longer escape…I
thought about Jupien’s house, perhaps reduced to ashes at that moment, for a
bomb had fallen quite close to me right after I had left it, a house on whose
walls Monsieur de Charlus could have prophetically written ‘Sodoma’ as that
anonymous inhabitant of Pompeii had done no less presciently or at the
beginning of the volcanic eruption and of a catastrophe that had already begun.”<sup>13</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR: After this nocturnal exodus, the end of the war is absorbed
into a handful of brief reflections, in utterances, death notices, and deliberations
that seem to the younger among us to have been written not after the First
World War but after the Second, couched as they are in a mode of thought that allows
us to believe that the transparency of facts is superior to prophecy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The meticulous stocktaking of this positivist who refuses to indulge himself
in so much as a glance at anything above or beyond what is immediately given,
whose world is unillumined by any light from above and whose ecstasies are
merely a means of searching for the truth, has brought to light more of the
mystery of the human and inanimate realms than undertakings with higher
aspirations. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This stocktaking emerged in
the course of his mind’s struggle against time, against incapacitation, the
struggle to find a fixed point of reference in his evanescent life, to find an
idea that might have served as a rule by which that life could have been lived.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “[…] How many people turn away from writing, how many other
tasks one assumes in order to avoid attending to that one!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Each event, be it the Dreyfus Affair, be the
it the war, had furnished other excuses to writers for not deciphering the
aforementioned book; they wished to secure the triumph of justice, reestablish
the moral unity of the nation, and had no time left to think about
literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But these were nothing but
excuses because they lacked genius or possessed something more than genius—namely,
instinct.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instinct dictates duty and
intelligence furnishes pretexts for shirking it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But excuses have no place whatsoever in art;
intentions count for nothing in its sphere; at each and every moment the artist
must obey his instinct, which is what makes art the most essentially real thing
in existence, the severest school of hard knocks, and the actual Last
Judgment.”<sup>14</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">AUTHOR: And so he becomes the translator, the interpreter, of that
reality that has disclosed itself to him through time, and his book had to be
tantamount to a betrayal of all the people and things that had moved him,
because the truth could not have been given utterance by any other means.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After the War he returns to Paris once again
in order to take leave of the “world.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He visits the salon of the Princesse de Guermantes once again and is
once again taken aback—this because as so many years have passed, he is faced
with people on whom the ashes have fallen, people whom he no longer recognizes,
old men and old women, and young people whom he has never seen before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What has time wrought?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Old friends have fallen out with each other
and new friendships have been formed; political passions have cooled, families
have fallen asunder; the social classes have undergone another shakeup; things
that used to be beautiful and expensive are no longer either; and those who
used to be loved are no longer loved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An
inexorable current has swept the victors and the vanquished along to their
deaths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But other people don’t recognize
him either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He must come to terms with
the fact that he too has grown old—and he becomes cognizant of an idea of time that
calls into question every form of an afterlife, even that of the afterlife of
art.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this same idea, in being the
only idea, also gives him his creative impetus and his will to bring his work
of art to completion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He now begins to
fear death and to count the days remaining to him, but not because he fears his
own destruction, for he feels as though he has passed through all the circles
of hell and died several times already.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> who loved Albertine died
when it ceased to love her, and the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i>
who loved the Duchesse de Guermantes died when it ceased to love <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">her</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He was no longer the being who had been capable of such passions and
suffering, but rather a being who saw himself as having been presented with a
task that had to be carried out at all costs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His dread in the face of this task has supplanted his dread of all other
things.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">SPEAKER: “For my part, I shall aver
that the cruelty of art’s fiat consists in the fact that human beings die and
that we ourselves may die in devoting every last drop of our suffering to preempting
the germination of the grass of oblivion via that of the grass of eternal life,
the lush grass of productive artworks, upon which future generations will come
to partake merrily of their ‘</span><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">déjeuner sur l’herbe’</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> without giving a thought to those
who are slumbering in the earth beneath them.”<sup>15</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: He intends to crouch down on
a mountaintop and gaze down into the depths of bygone years, even as he himself
is imperiled by his attempt to cling to himself with all his strength to avoid
sliding downhill, and he concludes his work with a sentence that prepares the
way for the one with which it opens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
end has become a beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last
word precedes the first.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="tab-stops: 399.75pt;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SPEAKER: “If at least I was afforded
enough time to complete my work, I would not fail to mark it with the seal of
this Time, the idea of which was imposing itself on me with so much force
today, and in this work I would describe men and women faithfully, even if this
meant making them seem like veritable monsters, by representing them as
occupying a substantially larger place in Time than the painfully limited one
vouchsafed to them in space, a place that is, by contrast, of such immeasurable
extent that, like giants completely immersed in years, they brush against the
mutually distant epochs through which they have lived—epochs bracketing the
accumulated accretion of so many days—in TIME.”<sup>16</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: But how do we ourselves fare
when we look back on this novel, on its holy sites, which are not our own, on
the lives and deaths of these monsters that it has kept in suspended animation for
us? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are there, I believe, in order
to allow us to possess them, so that we can enter into every process of love,
jealousy, and mendacity, ambition and disappointment and ultimately truth and extinction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is of course not a book that centers on a
given person but rather a book in which a given set of central characters can
be suffused with life—a book of pure relationships, in which every sentence and
every passage is an “Open, Sesame” and causes a door within ourselves to open.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SPEAKER: “In reality every reader, as
he is reading, is the reader of himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The writer’s work is nothing but a kind of optical instrument that he
presents to the reader with the aim of allowing him to discern what he never
would have been able to see within himself without the aid of the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fact that the reader recognizes within
himself what is said by the book is proof of the book’s truth, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">vice versa</i>, at least to a certain
extent; the difference between the two often being attributable not to the
author but to the reader. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moreover, the
book can be too scholarly, too obscure for the naïve reader and thus present
him with nothing but a clouded lens through which he will be unable to read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the treatment of other peculiarities
(such as inversion) can require the reader to read in a certain manner in order
to read well; the author need not be offended by this, but, to the contrary,
accord the reader the greatest degree of liberty by saying to him: ‘Take a look
even if you see better through this lens, through that one, or through yet
another one.’”<sup>17</sup> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: This liberty that Proust
accords his reader has been made use of here, for there are any number of
possible ways of reading him: as a social critic, as a theoretician of art, as
a philosopher—and here I have attempted a few of these ways of reading; to be
sure, these cannot yield a picture of the work in its entirety, but they are
worth attempting in order to show how he himself would like to be seen—as the
creator of men and women who henceforth will be consolingly walking among us
with their sufferings and errors, and as the creator of places that we shall admittedly
never find on a map but because they were inhabited by these people, because
they were loved and were witnesses of so much misery like those marvelous
places that attracted great myths and were populated by heroes, demigods, and
gods, will henceforth be renowned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
as for Proust himself, who in the end admittedly renounced everything in order
to liberate the imprisoned images of the world, who, fasting and painfully
working within four bare walls in solitude, has markedly increased our share of
truth, let him be represented by a message he has forwarded to us in tribute to
Ruskin:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SPEAKER: “Though dead, he continues
to light our way like a long-extinct star whose light is still finding its way
to us…Those eyes that have been closed forever and are resting in the depths of
the grave will still be affording a view of nature generations after we
ourselves are gone.”<sup>18</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">AUTHOR: For this positivist and
mystic for whom the world of art was the only absolute and who never allowed
himself to gaze hopefully through the window of his prison cell here nevertheless
wrote of one of his characters, the great writer Bergotte:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">SPEAKER: “They laid him in the earth,
but throughout the night of mourning, his books, displayed in groups of three in
illuminated shop fronts, kept vigil like angels with outspread wings, and for
this man who was no more they seemed to symbolize his resurrection.”<sup>19<o:p></o:p></sup></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="text-align: center;">
<sup><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">*<o:p></o:p></span></sup></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Translator’s Notes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">As Bachmann’s editors point out, this
passage is not from Proust’s diaries but rather from his 1921 essay <i>À Propos Baudelaire</i> as quoted in André
Maurois’s<i> À la recherche de Marcel Proust</i>,
published in German as <i>Auf den Spuren von
Marcel Proust</i> and in English (at least in the U.S.) as <i>Proust: Portrait of a Genius</i>.
I have translated the passage directly from the essay. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">2.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Bachmann’s editors do not provide a
footnote for this passage; consequently, I have translated it from the German.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">3.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Friedrich Nietzsche, <i>Jenseits von Gut und Böse</i> [<i>Beyond Good and Evil</i>], Aphorism No. 278,
very liberally modified.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">4.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">From Proust’s <i>Cahiers </i>(unpublished when Bachmann wrote her essay) as quoted in <i>À la recherche de Marcel Proust</i>. As I have no access to the original French
texts of either the <i>Cahiers</i> or Maurois’s
book, I have quoted with minor modifications the English translation of the
latter, as it sounds more Proustian to my ears than the German translation
quoted by Bachmann.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">5.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Proust, <i>À la recherche du temps perdu</i>, Vol. V, <i>La Prisonnière</i>, Chapter III, “Disparition d’Albertine.” Bachmann quotes Eva Rechel-Mertens’s German
translation with modifications according to the editors. As near as I can tell in the absence of
access to this translation, these modifications consist entirely of omissions. I have translated this passage, along with all
subsequent quotations of </span><i style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; text-indent: -0.25in;">À la recherche du temps perdu</i><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">,</span><i style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;"> </i><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">from
</span><a href="https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Prisonni%C3%A8re/Chapitre_3" style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">the
original French</a><span style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; text-indent: -0.25in;">. I have also
indicated the lacunae in the German with square-bracketed ellipses.</span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .25in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">6.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ibid., Chapter II, <a href="https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Prisonni%C3%A8re/Chapitre_2">“Les
Verdurin se brouillent avec M. de Charlus.”</a> The editors remark that the
passage has been “slightly modified,” but I detect nothing beyond the bounds of
a more or less faithful translation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">7.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">À la recherche du temps perdu</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">, Vol. VII, <i>Le
Temps Retrouvé</i>, Chapter II, <a href="https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Temps_retrouv%C3%A9/II">“M. de Charlus
pendant la guerre; ses opinions, ses plaisirs.”</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">8.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">9.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">10.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">11.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid.
It is not Jupien but the narrator himself who states this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">12.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">13.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">14.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid., Chapter III, <a href="https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Le_Temps_retrouv%C3%A9/III">“Matinée chez
la Princesse de Guermantes,”</a> “slightly modified” according to the editors. The only modification I detect is the indicated
omission of the first word of the first sentence, <i>aussi</i> (<i>also</i>).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">15.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">16.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">17.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Ibid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">18.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Proust as quoted without attribution
in Maurois’s<i> À la recherche de Marcel
Proust</i>. Here, in contrast to the
passage annotated by n. 4, I have found the English translation less satisfying
than the German, which I have consequently translated rather than quoting the
English.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">19.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></i><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> <i>La Prisonnière</i>, Chapter I, <a href="https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Prisonni%C3%A8re/Chapitre_1">“Vie en
commun avec Albertine.”</a><i><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">
</span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpLast">
<br /></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">THE END<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Translation
unauthorized but Copyright ©2018 by Douglas Robertson</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Source: Ingeborg
Bachmann, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Werke</i>, edited by Christine
Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, and Clemens Münster (Munich: Piper, 1978), Vol.
IV, pp. 156-180.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bachmann’s essay was first
broadcast on May 13, 1958 on Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The complete essay can be heard <a href="https://www.swr.de/swr2/programm/sendungen/essay/swr2-essay-am-19-maerz-2018-die-welt-des-marcel-proust/-/id=659852/did=21142806/nid=659852/1c1exmd/index.html#utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=SWR%2Ede%20like">here</a>.
</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-36487605360273546692018-05-04T18:34:00.000-04:002018-05-09T18:06:35.137-04:00An Alternative Translation of Die Jagdgesellschaft by Thomas Bernhard<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The Hunting Party<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">For Bruno Ganz<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I asked about the mechanism of
these figures, and about how it had been possible without having myriads of
threads on one’s fingers to govern the individual limbs thereof and their
joints as the rhythm of their movements or the dance dictated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 5.5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Kleist<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">*<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 5.5in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Dramatis personae<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">FIRST MINISTER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">SECOND MINISTER<sup>1</sup><br />
PRINCE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">ANNA, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the cook<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">ASAMER, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a woodcutter<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The general’s hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Before the Hunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A large tiled stove<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Armchairs, other chairs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A record player<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A deck of cards on a table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; text-indent: -.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">standing
at the window</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1138; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Constantly pacing up and down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1138; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with both hands pressed against my temples<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1138; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1138; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">without hitting on the decisive word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1138; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in the aphorism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The GENERAL’s WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sitting at the table, gazing outside<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1139; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s snowing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1139; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The constant opening<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1139; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and shutting of the window <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1145; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">was making it impossible <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1145; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for me to keep warm <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1145; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and so I was forced <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1145; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to put on my fur waistcoat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1145; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You know this waistcoat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1145; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">parts the
front of his fur waistcoat, then draws it back together<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1145; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my Polish fur waistcoat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1145; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Which immediately reminds me of Poland of course<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1145; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Three days in Krakow <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
no conversation <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nothing
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife picks up the deck of cards as
if planning to start a game; the writer takes the cards away from her; tossing
the cards on to the table he says<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Of
course I sent you the Gobelins’ design<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
wild mouflon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Ovis
musimon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">goes to the window<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Remember
how when I got to Warsaw <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">literally
six or seven steps ahead of me <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
falling icicle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly
killed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">quite
suddenly killed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
young woman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
wife of a young agrarian engineer as it turned out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
hunts in Poland are very popular nowadays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">How
many times has the general been to Poland<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180417T1149; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Three times<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stepping away from the window<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
love that country <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">literally
like no other<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It
snows<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">uninterruptedly
it seems<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At
first no snow at all <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
it snows uninterruptedly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At
first I thought <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
warm winter <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
it’s a cold winter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">clear
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
cold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
been incessantly thinking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
course I’ve got my Polish waistcoat on<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this
waistcoat I bought in Krakow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And your Lermontov in the waistcoat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">returns to the window<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">So
then I’ve naturally stopped<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">being
able to keep warm even in bed <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">takes A HERO OF OUR TIME out of his waistcoat and
reads</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">:<sup>2</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">So
far as I am concerned, said the doctor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
am convinced of one thing only<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
that is? I asked, desirous of learning the opinion <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
a man who had been silent till then. Of the fact, he answered,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
sooner or later, one fine morning, I shall die <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">shuts the book and pockets it<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">As
you know I’ve constantly <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">been
reading Lermontov<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sherry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pours himself and the general’s wife a glass of sherry and steps back
up to the window<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Two
hours of Lermontov <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
then another two hours of Lermontov<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Or
two hours of Mayakovsky <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
then another two hours of Mayakovsky<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Or
Pushkin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">All
at once I remembered the aphorism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Rest
puts everything back to rights<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
I didn’t get any further <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">over
and over again rest puts everything back to rights <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">after a pause<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">No
puts nothing back to rights<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
again nothing further nothing further<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
aphorism I kept thinking The aphorism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Rest
puts everything back to rights <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
its continuation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">No
rest puts nothing back to rights<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
yet and yet and yet <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">do
you understand <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
whole time I was thinking <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
I said to myself quite distinctly quite loudly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
yet and yet and yet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">pacing
to and fro<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">over
and over again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
opened all the windows<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because
I couldn’t handle the madness <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
closed windows do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
cold madam <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the thought <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
having to suffocate <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
that it was all about an error<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
I came down here <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
shuffled the cards <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
continually shuffled the cards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Those cards that you abominate so much<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Shuffled
and shuffled <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
an hour <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
again in my room upstairs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Rest
puts everything back to rights Rest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
I failed to recall the decisive word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
you want to crush your head to a pulp <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
your own two hands<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
once again I thought about <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">stoking
the stove myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
I wasn’t strong enough to do it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
had literally locked myself in my room <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
taken away the key <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
for more than an hour I searched for <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
key <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
opened the windows <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
closed the windows again <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the key was gone <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
for more than an hour I searched for <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
key <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
the same time I was constantly thinking <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
the aphorism <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
the key on the one hand <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
the aphorism on the other<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What
a state I was in<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Do
you understand madam when one simply cannot recite<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an
aphorism from beginning to end anymore <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">so
I spent the entire night with the thought <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
not being able to recite the aphorism in its entirety anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">By
reading I hoped to distract myself from the aphorism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
kept thinking <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
distracting myself by reading<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
the morning I got up <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">without
having slept for a single instant <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
the entire time <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
I was getting dressed <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">washing
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">getting
dressed <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
I was shaving and combing my hair <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
awful ordeal with my bootlaces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
all at once as I was walking to the post office <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
I was thinking of something completely different <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">while
walking to the post office <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
hence in the middle of all the people in the village square <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">while
fornicating with my thoughts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Fornicating<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
that cold air <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
I was saying something to the mayor <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">who
had said something <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
remembered the aphorism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Correctly
phrased the aphorism goes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Rest
puts everything back to rights<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">No
it isn’t rest that puts everything back to rights <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
rather <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">more
salubrious movement<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
rather <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">more
salubrious movement<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
the blink of an eye I was exhausted <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Do
sit down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The writer sits down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Once
you’re agitated <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
calm back down <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
long stretches you’re agitated <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
you’re calm again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It's
a terrible thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">using
language<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">using
your mind<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL'S WIFE. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
you just sit there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">dumb
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">mum<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">hanging
your head<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
you're driven almost to the point of madness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">by
staying silent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">by
nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Nothing
time and again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL'S WIFE.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
then you hit upon the idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
playing blackjack<sup>3</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nonstop<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">all
day long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
saying nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
winning <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
constantly winning <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
terrifying certainty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
I lose<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
the same<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">uninterrupted
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">terrifying
certainty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">picks up the deck of cards<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
most mindless of all card games<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">takes the cards from the general’s wife and puts
them on the table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which
exerts the greatest fascination on me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
be sure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">To
think that in the afternoons<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
in the evenings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
for entire nights <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
you’re keeping yourself from your work <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’m
shuffling myself to death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughs and again says</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">shuffling
myself to death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> laughing<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Shuffling
yourself to death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">shuffling
yourself to death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
I’m completely exhausted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Apathetic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Apathetic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">exhausted
and apathetic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180418T1131; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When you loathe this game like nothing else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
I am completely exhausted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one
more game<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
then over and over again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one
more game one more game<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
say it threateningly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">threateningly
mind you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything
about you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">within
you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
threatening<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It
never occurs to you to quit doing it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
quit doing it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because
I am exhausted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
literally everything in me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
in you as well<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
exhausted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one
more hand you say one more<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one
more one more one more<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
keep playing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
play as if we<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">were
about to go mad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">There’s
no game<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
exerts a greater fascination on me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
that allows me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">all
the while that I am flying into a rage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
calm down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
greater certainty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You’re
torturing me <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because
right now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we’re
not playing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we’re
not playing now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
want to torture me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">torture
me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">torture
me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
when I’m in the mood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
don’t play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
when you are in the mood to play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
the game continues without interruption<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
the point of unconsciousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Let’s
play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
hand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
you’ve immediately refused<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’ve
always flat-out refused <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
want to play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
refuse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rises, goes to the window<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">As
if a condition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an
inner condition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
mental condition <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">could
be improved<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">by
playing cards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
a way to pass the time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nothing
but a way to pass the time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gazes outside</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
it snows outside<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">until
my husband comes back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
I always get<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
same headaches<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
same headaches<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Now
you’re digressing about your headaches<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">All
of a sudden you were talking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
were refusing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">let’s
play I said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">let’s
play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180418T1151; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s become a shared habit of ours<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
as you yourself say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there’s
nothing like<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">playing
cards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
keeping one’s head together<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">picks up the deck of cards and puts it back down
on the table</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
I’d like to play cards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
won’t play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
immediately digressed from playing cards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</i> headache<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">from
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> head complaint<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your</i> head complaint<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
impossible to play nonstop<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">without
literally going mad<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">looks outside</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
getting dark<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Throughout
the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it
suddenly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gets
dark <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Once
the forest has been felled <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">That
won’t happen <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">ever<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
silence of a mortal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
an enormity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">enter Asamer from stage left with an armful of
firewood with which he then stokes the fire inside the tile stove<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
sudden darkness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
abrupt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
now know everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about
the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything
madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
about the eye condition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
is termed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
cataract<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Through
this colossal forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
the background<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
abrupt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
cataract I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
one a terror<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the other a monster<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Later<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
all the trees have been chopped down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
darkness won’t descend<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">abruptly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
it’ll set in slowly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">To
think that the general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has
dinner with the ministers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
addition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
his regular dinner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
husband does <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what’s
proper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
a quarter of an hour shut<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
stove<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">fill
it up now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
in a quarter of an hour shut it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
general could come at any moment now <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Have
the beds for the ministers been made<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
the rooms all well-heated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">well-heated
Asamer well-heated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">aside</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
been two months<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">since
the place was last heated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
cold all over the lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
not enough<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
start heating the lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
day before we get here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
lodge has got to be heated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
an entire week<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">before
we get here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
walls are cold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
walls exude coldness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
know everything about the bark beetle <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
about cataracts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’m
better informed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">than
the ophthalmologists<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
walls need an entire week<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
get properly warm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
my husband says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
too expensive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
start heating the place a whole week before<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
get here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the cataracts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
prevent him from seeing the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">addressing the general’s wife point-blank</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
his kidney disease<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an
abrupt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
less awkward<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">way
of rounding out one’s life madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Even
though we’ve got so much wood <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laughs</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
colossal amount of wood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Once
the forest has been felled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we’ll
have so much wood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
it will crush us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the funny thing is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I </span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">wasn’t
the one who used to worry about the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it
was my husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">me</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
husband always used to go on about the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">put
as much wood as possible in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">after
a quarter of an hour<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">shut
it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
the stove will deliver just enough heat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">For
twenty years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
known how to time it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
the lodge has still never been heated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">early
enough beforehand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
never succeeded in convincing my husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
the fact<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
a full week<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180419T1238; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At least</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> a week<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At
least a week<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">before
we get here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
lodge has got to be heated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">exit Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
husband worries<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
these people could be<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">using
more of the firewood than necessary<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
they could be up to something<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
don’t know about<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what
a strange name<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">That
we can’t see everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
get up to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
now the whole forest has got to be chopped down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because
the bark beetle has infested the whole forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Bostricida<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Xylophaga<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">With
his eyes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
can go wherever likes <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
doesn’t see the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
fails to see the whole infestation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
as long as nobody says anything about it to him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
won’t know about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
ministers come here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
drop him <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
prop him <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughs</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
one minister props<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">his
left arm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which
he hasn’t got<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the other minister props<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">his
right arm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
they both drop him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Sixty-by-ninety
kilometers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">have
you any notion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
how big that is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
colossal surface area madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
properly grand grand estate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Throughout
the year<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
keeps saying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">keep
a close eye<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
the woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the other woodsmen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">keep
a close eye on them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
often says that in his sleep<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
he suddenly wakes up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
a sweat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
a sweat you know in a sweat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Keep
a close eye on the woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It
really beggars the imagination<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Sixty-by-ninety
kilometers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the whole thing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
full of bark beetles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
so<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because
a forest infested so heavily with the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">must
be felled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we’ll
end up with a huge expansive surface of completely bare land<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">According
to the letter of the law madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
tree<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
is infested with the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">must
be felled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
if the whole forest is infested with the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
whole forest must be felled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
if the proprietor of the bark beetle-infested forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">lacks
the wherewithal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
have his forest felled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
government will fell his forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
as long as he has got the wherewithal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
wakes up at night<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
suddenly says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Keep
a close eye on the woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s
constantly tormented by the thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
something is being done <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
isn’t supposed to be done<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
he is always talking about two worlds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one
of them is behind his back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
world that must be looked into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">suddenly <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
he says <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">unexpectedly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
trusts the prince implicitly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">if
something that goes against my husband’s wishes happens <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
prince has got to make a report<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
prince is responsible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
husband trusts him one hundred percent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
loves the princess<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
account of her eye complaint<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Who
sees nothing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
almost nothing in such beauty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
prince is my husband’s closest confidant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
prince protects my husband <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">from
the woodcutters’ ever-recurring shamelessness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">just
as he protects the woodcutters <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">from
my husband’s ruthlessness<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">There
won’t be anybody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
the hunting lodge anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">once
the forest has been leveled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
live in an age<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
which the demands of the rabble<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
pandered to<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
is unprecedented he says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">picks up the cards and shuffles them<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Death
by shuffling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">death
by shuffling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws the cards onto the table</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">An
interruption of my work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
harmless<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
one takes one’s head<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">unexpectedly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">quite
unexpectedly madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">into
another landscape suddenly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
when one plunges it into a refreshing spring<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">An
interruption<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
my work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
forgetting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
writing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">if
that were possible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
constant fear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
being found out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
here in the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">after
the war<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">only
hunger<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
denunciation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">prevailed
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">along
with the severest of all winters <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to Asamer, who is stoking the fire<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
a quarter of an hour shut it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
art of heating up a stove<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
the art of conscientiousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
stoking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the art of punctuality<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
shutting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Most
people fail to master this art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
it’s got to be swept<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
regular intervals<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Asamer stands up and makes as if to go<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to him<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Make
sure all the rooms are well-heated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">put
a hot brick in the general’s bed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
also put hot bricks in the ministers’ beds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We’ll
wait until the lady and gentlemen get here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
have dinner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Anna
must serve the compote cold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Has
everything been shoveled clean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Asamer
make sure everything’s been shoveled clean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">exit Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
snow-in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
everything is entirely snowed in all at once<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
not at dawn<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
at dusk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whereas
in the morning everything is heralded slowly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">slowly
do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
the evening the darkness descends<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">abruptly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
suddenly dark<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Leaving
the lights off for a long time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Hearing
people speak <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
not seeing them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Hearing
the fire in the stove<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
seeing nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">hearing
the fire in the stove<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
seeing nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
at least only so<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
it isn’t painful<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
the forest has been chopped down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there
won’t be any more of this painful abrupt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">descent
of darkness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
if the daylight<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
suddenly being extinguished<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Two
hundred extra woodcutters are going <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
have to be hired<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180420T1205; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The prince said something about bribery<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Can
you even imagine it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">twenty-eight
tractors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">goodness
knows how many chainsaws<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If
a mind can allow itself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
put up with such an awful din<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
won’t be here <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
won’t see anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
won’t see anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
hear anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
first I thought <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
wouldn’t be here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
now I think <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ll
have to be on hand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
I was the only one who couldn’t bear the thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
the entire forest is going to be chopped down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Of
looking on as the trees fall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Enter Asamer with a message on a slip of paper,
which he hands to the general’s wife <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The general’s wife reads the message, then says</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Fine
Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Exit Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Anna
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">doesn’t
dare come in here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">she
wants to go home<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
a half-day tomorrow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
you’re here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">she
doesn’t dare come in here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Instead
she sends a message<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
was it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
did you make the discovery<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
year-and-a-half ago<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
by then it was already too late<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And his illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A year ago<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">People
with this kind of condition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">stop
being able to hold their water<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it
is a tedious<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
at the same time painful process<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">So
his development of cataracts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
quite timely<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
quite impossible to explain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">how
every part of the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Of
a truly colossal forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Has
become infested with bark beetles <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
the same time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
inexplicable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
professors at the University of Life Sciences and Natural Resources<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
burying their faces in their hands<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At
first they said It’s impossible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">out
of the question<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there’s
absolutely no rational explanation for it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it
even quite literally defies the laws of nature<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">They
find this situation quite unimaginable<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
experts were irritated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Every
science<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
always at a loss for words madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
nobody believed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
the possibility<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
simultaneity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
such a thing quite simply<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">contradicts
the laws of nature<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Natural law<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
bark<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
all the trees almost simultaneously<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Simultaneously
turned<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">dry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">withered
madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
couldn’t see it anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
everybody else sees it<br />
all the more clearly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It
was Asamer who in seeing it first<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">made
the discovery<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Luckily<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
husband believed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">just
a couple of trunks were infested<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
can still see my husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there
where you’re standing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there
at the window<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
was sitting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">where
I’m now sitting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
Asamer comes in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
stokes the stove<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
couple of trees have got the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
then my husband laughs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
laughed so heartily<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
then my husband asks Asamer where<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
Asamer says right behind the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
husband quickly forgot about the whole thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Right
then I already knew the extent of the catastrophe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">knew
that the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">was
in every tree <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the professors have been coming here in perfect secrecy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
keep my husband from learning anything about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If
he’s got cataracts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
he has got cataracts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
won’t see a thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">They
were standing there at the window<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">where
you’re standing now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">All
week long the forestry people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">were
conducting inspections<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">here
there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
everywhere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there
were bark beetles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Abandon
it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">abandon
all the dead dry wood<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
thought<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
bark beetles are bound to devour the lot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Seen
in this light<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which
is very much the right light his illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
a blessing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
so are the cataracts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180423T1318; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I have silenced everybody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
forest infested by the bark beetles like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">must
be chopped down in its entirety<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
always been worried<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
word of it would spread<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
my husband would hear about it<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
fact that he’s working on his book<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
his life’s work madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
is completely preoccupied with this life’s work of his<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
is constantly holed up in his room in the city<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
doing him good<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
young officers are doing his work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
the ministry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">On
the other hand he thinks of nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nothing
but the forest matters to him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
has concentrated all his inner energies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
we’ll be confronted here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
an enormous empty expanse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Here
my husband always came up with <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">his
best ideas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Impulses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Ideas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">With
his best ideas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not
in the city<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
the country<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
could be alone for days on end<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">even
the woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">disturbed
him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
avoided them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
his boots<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
with pencil and paper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
with his green hat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
his head<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
he heard the woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
would make a detour<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not
a word with them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">often
for years on end<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not
a word with them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">apart
from with Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
I’m in the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
always said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
the forest I’m thinking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">All
these changes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
basically<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">can
be traced back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
my husband’s walks in the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everything
that this government has changed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has
established<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
he’s always saying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’ve
got to have a forest like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
have ideas like that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
character<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">like
your husband’s character<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">An
ability to act in the background<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
also typical of it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">like<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
forest like this in which everything is to be found <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
rest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">quoting the general</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
forest like this one <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
which everything but rest may be found<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
everything for my mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At
the end of the war<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
hid out here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">if
they had found us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
would have killed us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
were in the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not
in the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
didn’t dare go into the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Anyone
who went into the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">was
killed by them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
killed everyone in the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
constant dread<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
being discovered you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
as you did<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one
comes into possession of such an enormous estate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
is then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
example forced to hide out in one’s own<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">enormous
forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
dread of being killed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
such an enormous forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Of
being suddenly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">discovered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
a forest like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
which everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
to be found<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
rest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
two colossal estates<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
combined into a single colossal estate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
which one is forced<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
hide away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gazing outside<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Now
it’s<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">completely
dark<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">enter Asamer, who then shuts the stove</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
you can still hear footsteps<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
see nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">still
hear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">see
nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">makes as if to turn on the lights</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">No<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">no
light Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Is
the stove shut tightly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’m
afraid<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
my husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
I loathe the ministers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
have loathed those two from the very beginning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
double-cross my husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
have been exploiting him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
decades they have exploited him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s
the one who got them their positions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one
of them was only twenty-four<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
he brought him into the ministry I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">those
ministers owe everything to my husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
now they’re double-crossing him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
want to get rid of him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">get
rid of him do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they’ve
come here now to coerce my husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">into
tendering his resignation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We’re
not safe from the lower ranks anywhere<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Preferably<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
the darkness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
first you’ve got to be coerced into it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
you love this situation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
first it’s coercion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Nobody
can withstand the darkness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
the point when nothing’s happening do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">coercion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’ve
got to coerce yourself into it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
you <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">love
this situation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">One
fine day you consolidated your estate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
your husband’s estate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
order to force yourself into hiding out <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
the resulting colossal estate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
now it’s restful<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">no
war<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180424T1400; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And the bark beetle has arrived on the scene<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Is
the stove shut Asamer<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">ASAMER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180424T1401; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Yes madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
incessant attentiveness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">indeed
dread you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">until
one feels completely warm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">exit Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife calling after him</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">turn
on the garden light Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
shovel everything clean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
ministers receive an incredibly huge subsidy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">from
the Church<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
husband loathes the Church<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180424T1406; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He’s the archetypal born atheist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rises and turns on the light; sits back down<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">One
more hunt <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">before
he checks into the clinic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
coaxed him into it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Little
by little<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">probably
under the influence of his terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
which he is oblivious<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s
starting to listen to you madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180424T1411; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I coaxed him into it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">all
of a sudden<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
don’t want to hurt him anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with great pathos</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
have erected a wall of silence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">around
him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
mustn’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">know
a thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about
the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">That’s
the question I’ve been posing to myself <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whether
the general actually doesn’t know anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whether
it’s actually the case that he doesn’t know anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
whether he’s only acting as if he doesn’t know anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
is undoubtedly the end madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Mark
my words madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
general is someone who can be told<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
told frankly mark my words madam frankly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what
must be told<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">namely
the prognosis of his condition<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
he isn’t <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
he<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Yes
because he’s a man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whose
signature trait<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
unsparing frankness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
person as enlightened as he is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">exists
with a completely different sort of mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
doesn’t know about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
mustn’t know about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Entirely
regardless of time or place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s
always talking about his forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nonstop<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">To
think that you have managed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
conceal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
bark beetle from him <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">To
bring the gamekeepers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the woodcutters to keep silent <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about
everything <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">having
to do with the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because
it’s hard madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
bring people who were born to talk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
keep silent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">especially
over such a vast area<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an
entire <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">community<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">incessantly
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">absorbed
by curiosity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the spreading of gossip<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Thanks
to incessant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
to my mind intelligent bribery<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
have successfully <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">achieved
what you set out to achieve<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Not
a soul<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nobody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has
said a thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
fact of the matter is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
eating up everything connected with the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
it’s destroying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">devouring
everything here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Like
you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
doctor talks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about
a terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">quite
frankly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
only a matter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
very little time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
is the reason<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">why
even though it’s only a matter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
very little time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
keep the bark beetle secret from him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
the cataracts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
has<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
your co-conspirators<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
frankness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">evinced
by doctors <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
certain circumstances<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
baffling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
minor procedure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
husband thinks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
yet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">even
before the doctors arrived here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
suspected<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">your
husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">was
suffering <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">from
a terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
said he had changed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">some
time before<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
suddenly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">changed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It
was<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
the road shoulder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
remember<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
the road shoulder<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">goes to the record player and puts on a record of
Handel’s Suite No. 5 for harpsichord</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
even though you believed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
would come down with the illness only much later<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there
was that incident with the chainsaw<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">An
injury<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">like
the injury he received from the chainsaw<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">causes
one to come down with a terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
the day after tomorrow when your husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
in the clinic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
perhaps exactly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
he’s undergoing the procedure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which
of course is no mere procedure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because
as you know it’s actually<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an
extremely complicated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
even quite risky operation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
you are anticipating the worst<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
first trees will be falling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
the period of convalescence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
time at the seashore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
time in Rome<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
he longs for<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The end will come in Rome<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
you’ll come back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the trees will already be gone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
possibly not a visible trace of the entire forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">will
be left<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Naturally
he knows something is up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
he doesn’t know the truth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
have spoken with the ministers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
have told that that he’s dying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Just
wait I’ve told them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
husband the general will die very soon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
man who’s going to die very soon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">doesn’t
need to be forced to resign<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">They’ve
got to have his decision now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">now
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He’s
going to die<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
he isn’t going to resign<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">do
you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
he’s not even thinking about resigning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
told the ministers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
the forest was full of bark beetles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
that the whole forest would have to be chopped down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It
had no effect<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Every
once in a while<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">under
the influence of his intelligence madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
man picks up a chainsaw<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
some other tool<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
he has absolutely no business handling <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">every
once in a while an intelligent man suddenly super-suddenly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">thinks
about<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">felling
a tree <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">all
of a sudden a man like this feels a need<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
hammer a nail into a wall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
man who’s been sitting at a desk year after year and without a break<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly
up and walks into a gravel pit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
quite simply into the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
man like this suddenly fancies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s
got to smash something to bits or cut something down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">just
as your husband the general super-suddenly <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">went
into the forest with a chainsaw<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly
a man like this goes out of his mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
goes into the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
fells a tree<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
he goes into the gravel pit or he kills a man do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
a man like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">who
has always worn underwear of the finest quality<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly
puts on a pair of the kind of underpants<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
woodcutters wear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">all
of a sudden a man like this runs off in a pair of sheepskin boots<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
he dons a felt cap<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">even
though he is accustomed to wearing nothing but the most expensive hats<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
leads to terrible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
very often lethal injuries madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
general cut his leg with the chainsaw<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
this injury actually precipitated the onset<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
his terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">each
and every one of us harbors a terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
some injury often an insignificant one and often indeed one that is scarcely
even <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>noticed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">precipitates
the onset of that illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Luckily
Asamer was with him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
dragged him out of the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
into the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
luckily he made it into the hands of a good surgeon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Outside there are footfalls, talking, laughing</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">stops the music</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">So
nothing disastrous happened<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Enter the general, who is missing his left arm,
the ministers, the prince, the princess, the cook, and Asamer, who takes their
coats and steps back outside</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The general embraces his wife<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The writer lingers in the background</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the prince and princess linger in the doorway</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
sudden snowfall<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything’s
snowed under<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything’s
snowed under<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
last bit on foot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
dry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">cold
winter general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">exclaims<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Ah
the writer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general and writer approach each other and
shake hands</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
keep my wife from getting bored<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Your
philosophy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
rather your philosophies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">distract
her<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Just
think of it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
secretary<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has
seen your comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">more
of an operetta than a comedy I think<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an
excellent production<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
history-maker<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
the so-called history-maker in your play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">more
of an operetta<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">delighted
her enormously<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">To
rehearse such a role<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one
needs a comedic mind doesn’t one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a mind
like a machine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
exceptional talent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">One
has got to have talent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Talent
talent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Actors
must have talent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
must be a machine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
a mind like a theater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not
with a theatrical mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
they arrive in the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughs</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to all the others</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Please
be seated <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">sit
down <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Please
be seated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everybody sits down<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">asks<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sherry brandy <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">EVERYBODY ELSE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">only vaguely in unison<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Brandy
sherry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Sherry
brandy <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the general<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
was worried<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
you wouldn’t be coming<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
something had happened<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Without the help of the ministers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">There’s
never been<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this
much snow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
writer in his lunacy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">writes
a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
rather an operetta<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the actors are taken in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">by
this comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">by
this <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">operetta<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
then the world the cultivated world is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">believes
it’s something philosophical <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
writer attacks philosophy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
a whole heap of philosophies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
quite simply imposes his mind on the actors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
if the play is a tragedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
maintains<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
if it’s a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
maintains<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
a tragedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
it’s actually nothing but an operetta<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
writers force actors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">into
a dramatic process<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
every medium is fine with them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">into
a dramatic process<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">inimical
to actors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the whole thing is nothing but an oxymoron<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Watch
what you say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this
gentleman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">puts
what he sees<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">onstage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">give
careful thought to what you share with us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
what you keep to yourself sirs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
any old vulgar claptrap<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">comes
across as something philosophical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">onstage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
gentleman will turn even you into an operetta<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the ministers laugh<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">No
man is more taciturn than the prince<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
no woman is more charming than the princess<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
prince writes poems<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which
he reads to us from time to time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">his
wife<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
preoccupied<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
taking care of their two delightful children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Our
writer is observing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s
observing something other<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">than
reality<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
understands nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about
ballistics gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
yet for him gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
term political intrigue is <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">enter the cook with an air of being about to say
something</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Dinner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">silently makes it clear to the cook that she is
to leave the room</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">exit the cook</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife rises</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everybody else rises <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
got a colossal appetite<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everyone begins exiting </span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general referring to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">An
inscrutable mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an
utterly and thoroughly inscrutable mind<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">exeunt omnes<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">*<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">During the Hunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The forest is quite distinctly visible through
the windows of the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">As the curtain rises the general’s wife and the
writer are playing cards, drinking brandy, laughing<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throwing her cards onto the table;
throughout the scene she keeps a running tally of wins and losses on a slip of
paper<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Picks up the deck of cards and shuffles it, deals
from it<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">That
loud laugh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Your
loud laugh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Looks at his cards, deals himself two more cards<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">There
is something highly interesting <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about
terminal illnesses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">really<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws his cards onto the table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
theatrical proceedings<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife shuffles, deals<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the writer drinks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If
we observe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
don’t get involved in events<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">looks at his cards, deals himself three more
cards<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Foolishness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
purposelessness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
means by which people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">who
simply aren’t cut out for this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pounding the table with both hands<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">drinks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
needn’t take part in things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
be sure we <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have</i> a part to play in
them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
we needn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">take</i> part in them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If
we exert our gift for observation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws his cards onto the table</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">shuffle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">shuffle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife quickly shuffles the cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A huge
sum of money<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an
enormous sum<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">really
an enormous sum<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">dealing himself a hand of cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Possibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">possibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dealing herself an unusually large hand of
cards<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What
do you mean by possibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Possibly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it
isn’t a terminal illness at all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughs</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">possibly
it’s the furthest thing in the world from <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">His
best anecdote is the one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">where
he talks about<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">his
left arm being torn off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
Stalingrad<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When he almost bled to death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Whenever
he tells that story<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
always round it out by saying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
almost bled to death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whereupon
he always rejoins<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
wouldn’t wish the Siberian cold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
my worst enemy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they both laugh<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
first thing he wanted to do<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">was
to take a trip to the Oktoberfest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
as it happened<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
ended up not going<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
when you’ve only got one arm <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
can’t sway back and forth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You can’t sway back and forth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
can’t sway back and forth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">sway
back and forth <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">sway
back and forth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throws her cards onto the table<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">do
you see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">now
I’m winning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">just
so I can start losing again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Shuffle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You’ve
got to shuffle quickly <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
whole point of this game<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
to shuffle the cards quickly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
play very quickly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Now
that we’ve been playing for an hour<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’re
suddenly shuffling awfully slowly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Shuffle
quickly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">quickly
do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">takes the cards out of her hand; shuffles quickly</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
quickly do you see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’ve
got to shuffle like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this
is how blackjack should be played<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">like
this like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">deals the cards<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">With
one arm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
can’t sway back and forth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">There
are so many things you can’t do<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
one arm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
yet cripples<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
crippled<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
the most ambitious people on earth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">deals himself five cards<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
observe this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
we take a close look <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
history<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
we go back into history<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
we get mixed up <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
that senseless pursuit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
cripples not the non-cripples<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
the rulers of the earth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throws down his cards<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife is shuffling
and dealing, now suddenly very quickly</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s a truism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s nothing but a truism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">deals himself six cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Time and again we expose ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as we get mixed up in repulsiveness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whether it’s a thing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or it’s people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we are dealing with a repulsive thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">time and again<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">time and again we’re also dealing with repulsive people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we’re attracted to what’s repulsive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">drinks</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The hunt for example<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is repulsive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the hunt repels me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The hunt is repulsive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He loathes you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but not as deeply<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as you loathe him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws down her cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Here we see a so-called distinguished man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for example <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He reads to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">from his manuscript<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but I’m disgusted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">by his voice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and even more so by what he’s reading<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At the same time it’s all quite cogent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything he writes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is quite cogent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And his competence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is peerless<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">An incorruptible individual<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws the cards onto the table</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Now you’re winning again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I win twice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and then you start winning <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and you keep winning<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">picks up the cards, shuffles,
deals</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Up in the attic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s still got his army coat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And under the army coat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the uniform<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that he was wearing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when his arm was torn off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When he almost bled to death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
has the key<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
the trunk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
which he has placed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">these
garments<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It
is his wish <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
be buried<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
this uniform<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And in a rough-hewn softwood coffin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And in a rough-hewn softwood coffin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throws his cards onto the table, drinks<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife suddenly bursts into laughter</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Why
are you laughing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Why
are you laughing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Your
loud laughter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife deals the cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A year
for pheasants <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
read it’s <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a year
for pheasants<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He
loathes playing cards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
always been this way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
he’s hunting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
wait here <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
always waited<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At
first cataracts occasion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">no
pain whatsoever<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly
the pains set in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">As
he’s aiming his gun<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
like a veil<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">like
he’s shooting <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">through
a veil<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">through
a veil<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throws down his cards<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife picks up the cards, shuffles,
deals</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
swore the foresters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
secrecy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">All
your energies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">have
been focused exclusively<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
keeping the bark beetle a secret<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">from
your husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">enter Asamer to check on the stove</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
fine Asamer <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Wait
until the others get back<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">then
stoke it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">wait
until then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">ASAMER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Yes
ma’am<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Exit Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
reality<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">these
simple people’s loyalty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has
always <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">repelled
me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it
quite simply repels me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">drinks <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there are sounds of shots being fired outside<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A year
for pheasants <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Blackjack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
got blackjack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
also got blackjack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Whenever
I’ve got blackjack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’ve
also got blackjack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">picks up the cards, shuffles, deals</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If
we double<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">your
luck will improve<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">takes eight cards<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Shut up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lays his cards on the table<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180427T1535; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Blackjack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws down her cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Playing
with you always means<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">losing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">losing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">do
you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">losing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">picks up the cards, shuffles, deals<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What
a huge sum of money<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’re
going<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
have to pay out to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">drinks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
truth is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
often say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">things
that aren’t supposed to be said<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You’re
the most ruthless person <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there
isn’t a human being alive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">who’s
more ruthless than you are<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lays his cards on the table<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve
got two aces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">picks up the cards and shuffles, deals<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
truth is that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whenever
anybody else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">takes
the smallest liberty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">On
the other hand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the other hand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On the other hand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>it’s a pleasure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>and the greatest pleasure of all is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">playing
cards with you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
you burst out laughing so loudly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
your mind <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
dwelling on a philosophical topic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
on something indecent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throws down his cards<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Did
you hear me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">something
indecent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">shuffles, deals</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">drinks</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
great thing about this little pastime<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
that you’re an appalling individual<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throws his cards down<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">picks up the cards, shuffles, deals<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then
I phone you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
write to you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
phone you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Gunshots<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
phone you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
always the uncertainty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whether
you’ll come at all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">disgraceful<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
quite often you say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’ll
come<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
then you never show up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Quite
often I write<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
I receive no reply<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">First
thing in the morning your wine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
your special label<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
placed in your room<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
baked deserts are served cold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throws his cards onto the table<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>drinks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">picks up the cards, shuffles, deals<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
all for you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
entire house <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has
geared itself up for you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
then you never show up <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">after
maybe eight days<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">if
I’m lucky<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
turn up here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">No
apology<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
if nothing had happened<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
eat and drink<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
laugh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
what a laugh you laugh <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what
a laugh you laugh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what
a laugh you can laugh<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lays his cards on the table, laughs<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">picks up the cards, shuffles, deals<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
we play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">blackjack
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
say nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Suddenly
you leave<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
we look at a person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">no
matter what sort of person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
are looking at someone who’s dying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
a dying person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
the moment we wake up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
always see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
are condemned to immobility<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Do
you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
are dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything
is dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything
in us is dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything
is dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws down his cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughing</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER and GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laughing<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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</v:handles>
</v:shapetype><v:shape id="_x0000_s1026" type="#_x0000_t87" style='position:absolute;
margin-left:4.5pt;margin-top:3.9pt;width:7.15pt;height:21.75pt;z-index:251658240'/><![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><span style="height: 31px; margin-left: 5px; margin-top: 4px; mso-ignore: vglayout; position: absolute; width: 12px; z-index: 251658240;"><img height="31" src="file:///C:/Users/DROBER~1/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image001.png" v:shapes="_x0000_s1026" width="12" /></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>WRITER: I win <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>GENERAL’S WIFE: You win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Whatever
something is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
hear a voice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">shots outside</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
ask who it is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
fine human being we say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He’s
death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
rigorous work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife shuffles the cards, deals</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the writer takes nine cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Whatever
we publish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
are alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
are defunct <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">All
these faces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ll
have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
suddenly dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
see them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
see them suddenly dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly
dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Every
face<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
a dead face<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
infamy with which people [ignore]<sup>4</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">their
dead face<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gunshots</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
means that we<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">drinks</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
we understand what’s what madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything
darkens<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
hesitate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">procrastin</i>ate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
loathe <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what
we are<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everything
we put on paper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lays his cards on the table<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What
we see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
moment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
terminus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
friend dies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything
is dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">do
you see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">lays his cards on the table</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">general’s wife picks up the cards, shuffles,
deals</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If
we go into our room<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
ask<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">why<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">where
are we located<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
we’re in our room<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gunshots</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
are alone<br />
or not alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
listen to music<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
we don’t listen to music<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Every
object madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everything
we touch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
defunct<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
defunct<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everything
we touch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">defunct<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">defunct
madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE and WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laughing, only vaguely in unison<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Defunct<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">defunct<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gunshots</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
despise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whatever
we hear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Whatever
we see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
despise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
this feeling we say <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this
person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
this past<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this
person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
this face<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">lays his cards on the table</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">general’s wife picks up the cards, shuffles,
deals</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
expect something<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">persistently
madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">sistently<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">That’s
why we’re ill<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that’s
why we<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">each
of us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has
a terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
always something different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
different person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that’s
why we’re unhappy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">takes five cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What
is this idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
ask ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">from
which we have emerged<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We
inquire after our own cause<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Is
it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
ask<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
when we’ve killed one of them off<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
other one is there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Where
do we end up when we<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">say
we to ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
we are incessantly citing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">our
own character as an authority<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
accuse individuals<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
weakness of character madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
at the same time we cite<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">injustice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
if it’s justice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
more properly speaking existence madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">raising his voice</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws his cards onto the table</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
a nightmare<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife picks up the cards, shuffles,
deals</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
we see a human being<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
must ask ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">where
does this person fit into everything else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
we see a character<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">where
does character fit into everything else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
so on in this fashion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
regard to every object we see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
are constantly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
the verge <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
going insane<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
incessantly rejecting everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">renouncing
one’s mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
an impossibility<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
facts are always terrifying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
are thoughts of this kind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">so
terrifying that they disintegrate matter itself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
everything is always in the process of dissolving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which
is why we have no choice but to despair<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
human being<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
a human being in despair<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything
else is a lie<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
then we lose<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because
we are so consistent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">making
connections time and again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at
every instant I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
everything is a crude falsification<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Suddenly
we remember<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
surface<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gunshots</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
bury our faces in our hands<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
a huge process of exploitation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nothing
else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lays her cards on the table<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gunshots<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gunshots</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the writer throws
his cards onto the table</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the general’s wife
picks up the cards, shuffles, drinks</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the writer drinks,
takes five cards</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then I ask myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>why do I come here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What is there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>for me to look for here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">takes two more
cards</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What is there<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>for me to do here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">general</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>what is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">president</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gunshots</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He is an idealist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The ministers will force him out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He will have to give in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Probably he’s already given them his word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I know what these people are like<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>these people are intransigent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cabinet
minister</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Take a good look at these people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But with disdain on its own<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>nothing gets done<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He is an idealist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">drinks<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
an idealist is an imbecile<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws his cards onto the table, exclaims</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">picks up the cards, shuffles, deals<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You with your <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>communist stockpile of ideas<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">laughs, takes four cards<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Blackjack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Blackjack<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Let’s double<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">General’s wife
shuffles, deals</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So when I crisscross the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>on foot with you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>it’s very nice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">drinks<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>These people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>my husband says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>who just want<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>to destroy everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>who are degrading everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>pulling everything apart<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">throws down his
cards<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
just won<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yours is a nature<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>always bent on changing everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">gunshots<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Listen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">listen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">shots</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
we are happy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
example here in the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
are pulling a fast one on ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
even when we’re unhappy and nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
an unhappy emotion <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
exist only in a state of delusion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What
we see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
something different madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
person, we say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
he is a different person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this
air that I am inhaling is a different air<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">These
cards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">holds the cards up in the air</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
all different do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
everything is so pathetic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
we can hardly stand it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Events
are only ever delusorily similar<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Our
understanding a different one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
completely pervading it all is death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
world is a crippled world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
human nature a crippled nature<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
when we speak of beauty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
are really only speaking in microscopic terms<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What
strikes us as most beautiful<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Mutilation
madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">To
be sure human beings turn up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
they are different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">do
you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This
entire hunting party<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
a different one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Quite
simply a figure of speech madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this
is philosophical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
the whole of philosophy is nonsense<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">lays his cards on the table</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general’s wife picks up the cards, shuffles</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the writer drinks, takes five cards</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
environment madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has
an ear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">against
the mind<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
it will stop at nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
destroy the intellect<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">throws his cards onto the table, exclaims</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
win<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pounding on the table with both hands<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You’ve
won<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You’ve
won<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gunshots<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Curtain<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">*<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">After the Hunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The general, the general’s wife, the ministers,
the prince, and the princess, along with the writer, drinking and smoking at
the table<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Around five in the morning<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="gjdgxs"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
dear writer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">life
in a general’s uniform<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
never at any time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an
affair for a sensitive person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
even for an exceptionally emotional character<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">To
be sure in the case of an independent person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">such
as yourself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the writer laughs loudly</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Who
can do what he likes with his independence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the writer laughs loudly</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
that’s a different affair<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
any case you’re a person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">who
keeps his eyes and ears open<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
keeps no secrets<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
is his nature<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="30j0zll"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3znysh7"></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">FIRST
MINISTER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Twenty-six
hares<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">General<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">four
pheasants<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">two
badgers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">That’s
a genuine record<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2et92p0"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3dy6vkm"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Very
much so gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
such an ultra-short hunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
then you must of course take into account<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
nearsightedness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the fact<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
I lost my left arm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
Stalingrad<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1t3h5sf"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2s8eyo1"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was literally torn off<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="17dp8vu"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="26in1rg"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Torn
off gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">torn
off<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="lnxbz9"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1ksv4uv"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My husband nearly bled to death<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="44sinio"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the general’s wife<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="z337ya"></a><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nearly bled to death<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3j2qqm3"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4i7ojhp"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
can’t tell you what it was like<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
was completely surrounded<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
held out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
the bitter end <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2xcytpi"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3whwml4"></a><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
greatest battle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
the history of all battles<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2bn6wsx"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3as4poj"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
the history of all battles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Doubtless
you exist in a different world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You’re
a commentator<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">drinks an entire glass of schnaps<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1pxezwc"></a><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2p2csry"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
husband has been most strictly forbidden<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
consume alcohol<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="147n2zr"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="23ckvvd"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Absolutely
forbidden my dear sirs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">absolutely<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="ihv636"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1hmsyys"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Calamity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
as we know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
inevitable product of all human natures<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the entirety of history is nothing but a calamity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
when we look into the future<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we
see nothing <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="41mghml"></a>else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="vx1227"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
day after tomorrow my husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
checking into the clinic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for
a couple of days so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">For a couple of days so to speak<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This sojourn at the clinic is coming<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">just in the nick of time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A pause for breath I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">so that I can move further along<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in my great undertaking my book<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My husband wanted to go<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on one more hunt beforehand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">SECOND MINISTER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is a celebrity as a hunter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to his colleagues</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The general has attained the highest distinctions<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that exist in the world of hunting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3fwokq0"></a><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">during a hunt I regenerate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I get a breath of fresh air<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’m a different person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a new person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Admittedly my wife abhors hunts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">She’s a woman under the influence of an artistic feeling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a feeling that puts her off the hunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And she’s a woman under the influence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">points at the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of this man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">With ideas like the ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you have<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you corrupt innocent minds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and thereby transform them from perfectly serviceable minds<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">into completely unserviceable ones<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Only a deranged society<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">can tolerate something like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughs, then addresses the
ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Complications ought to be abolished gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">abolished<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In a couple of weeks my husband will be back in the office<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">after his sojourn in the clinic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’ll go<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">back to work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with renewed energy<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If only you could have seen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">those incredible heaps of papers on government policy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that he had delivered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and that I’ll have to carry to him in the clinic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My husband is keenly attentive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to everything having to do with development<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Geopolitical development<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which is constantly accelerating nowadays gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then each and every day I’m ordered<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to bring the very latest newspapers<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and all the most important journals<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to him in the clinic<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My husband has got big plans<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the prince</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">naturally this is bad for the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When he spends more time on politics<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the forest falls into the background<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But the prince makes sure<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that the forest isn’t neglected <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">crying out<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Just try to find a gamekeeper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">like the prince<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve read<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that this has been a particularly good year for pheasants<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A good year for pheasants<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a good year for pheasants<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">did you hear that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">crying out</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And four whole pheasants <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">FIRST MINISTER<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Very fine pheasants<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">SECOND MINISTER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Very fine pheasants<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A diversion<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for example the hunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">facilitates concentration<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The mind is diverted<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to concentration<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Concentration is everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">isn’t it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">referring to the writer<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He won’t allow himself to be disturbed in the slightest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he won’t tolerate the slightest irritation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he completely sequesters himself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he won’t let anyone come near him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And of course one of my husband’s best-known sayings is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">These constant intrusive disturbances<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">have got to stop<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The prince shields me <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he protects my body from vexation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and even more importantly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my mind from it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and what’s more I can also still talk with him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about nature <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which I can’t do with anybody else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">No excuse for being irritated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my husband’s always saying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">no excuse for being irritated<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1v1yuxt"></a><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The time has come<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in which everything must be intensified<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">an intensification of the punishment<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as we see we are dealing with<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a society that’s completely gone to seed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a world that’s been thoroughly neglected<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="4f1mdlm"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">PRINCE<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="19c6y18"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A couple of weeks from now General<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we’ll see you here again in the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At the very height of the season<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In the meantime the work <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">will have been taken care of<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3tbugp1"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="nmf14n"></a> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">An estate as large as this one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">requires the absolutely unflagging attention<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of hundreds of people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The minutest particulars of such an estate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">must be paid the minutest attention to at all times<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If we didn’t own this forest <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my husband wouldn’t be <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what he is <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The army<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the restlessness of the city<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and the restfulness of the country<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in constant alternation don’t you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The ministers nod<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="37m2jsg"></a><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="46r0co2"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The one<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is like the other<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2lwamvv"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="3l18frh"></a><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The prince is the finest forest ranger around today<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A graduate of the University of Life Sciences and Natural Resources in
Vienna<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a thoroughly scientific character<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and yet he’s never lost touch<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with the earth beneath his feet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">His publications<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">regularly appear in professional journals<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and cause a sensation in the world of professional forestry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Such a well-grounded man can easily permit himself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to write poems in his spare time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Without the prince<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">absolutely nothing<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">point-blank to the prince</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You enjoy my husband’s<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">absolutely implicit trust<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Walking and thinking <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Thinking and walking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The forest is the main thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The fact that during a hunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my thoughts are honed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Breathing in the air<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">waiting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Feeling my way<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">groping my way do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The silence into which<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the shot falls next<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">SECOND MINISTER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has explained to me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">how to hold a firearm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">rejoining suddenly on how to hold a firearm<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">mimes the right grip</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Not like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">mimes the wrong grip and laughs<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">SECOND MINISTER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the general’s wife<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It had been ten years<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">since I last took part<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in a hunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In the Dolomites madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Walking by turns<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">walking and standing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and thinking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the princ</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">e<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Lepus europaeus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Ovis musimon<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Cervus sika<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Twenty-two hunters today<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">lots of new faces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Farmhands<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and the sons of woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A tavern packed to the bursting point<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the prince</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The higher pay rate for the hunters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">kicks in tomorrow<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the prince is writing
everything down</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the higher wage rate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for the woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If only we could<br />
hold onto people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">They simply leave for the factory<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">unless you double their pay<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s been a long time since I found it possible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to reward everybody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I went to school<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with most of them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">enter Asamer with an armful of
firewood in preparation for stoking the stove</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">How’s it going<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Is your wife well again<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">removal of a goiter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a completely bungled operation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">How’s your wife<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">how are her lungs <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Sometimes they’re better<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">sometimes worse<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughs</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">suddenly they’ll up and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>give
out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Seriously Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is she still coughing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">ASAMER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>No General<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">No General<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And your children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’ve got to ask people about their children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and not only the simple people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">first about their wives and then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about their children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">They all get good grades<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the best grades that children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at that village school have ever gotten<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers as Asamer is
stoking the stove</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at Christmastime my wife gets them all to memorize and perform <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a so-called Christmas <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Actual angels everything in white you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And from up above you hear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the voice of the Lord<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Your children always recite<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the verses beautifully<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not one of them has ever forgotten his lines<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then there’s always<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a good supper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and presents for the children of course<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">presents that my wife has selected herself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Before Christmas she drives to town<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in the car<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and buys things for the children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And how is your leg Asamer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are you going to the doctor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You don’t mess around<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with a smoker’s leg<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">With a smoker’s leg<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’ve got to go regularly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the doctor<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">regularly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to Asamer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Are you still a sexton<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">ASAMER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yes General<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And a gravedigger too<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">ASAMER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Yes General <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Asamer rises and exits<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What a fine human being<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s the last of his kind gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers and to the prince and
princess<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Please do eat<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">please do eat some more<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gives the writer a slice of
sausage<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">with the slice of sausage in his hand<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We’re squandering all our time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on a mere idea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that in any case leads to nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A human life madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is ultimately nothing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but a human catastrophe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The butcher’s son<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the teacher’s son<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the doctor’s son<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the woodcutters’ sons<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the rangers’ sons<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the prince’s children<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">all memorize<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my wife’s verses <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the ones she’s written<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A Christmas play gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a full-fledged theatrical play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">points at the opposite corner
of the room</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there in that corner<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the presents are laid out<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And there’s something individual<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">for each child<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">something utterly individual<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">original gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The first one of these Christmas plays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">was twenty full years ago gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In that first play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the prince played<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a prince<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and the princess<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a princess<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And my husband<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">spoke the Lord’s lines<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="206ipza"></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The prince’s genuflections<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
the king<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">are
still the handsomest genuflections<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
living memory <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
were fourteen then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It
was the mainstay of his mother’s existence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
cook a huge meal at each and every sort of hunting party<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
wedding reception<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
at each and every sort of funeral<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
she used to darn the laundry at the manor houses <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
at the castles<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the prince</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
colossal estate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
your forebears lost in Bohemia<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
princess’s father<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">was
a lieutenant<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
was killed in Finland<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
knew him when he was still a child<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I can
still hear his voice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
childlike<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
childlike voice<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the princess<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">During
the Corpus Christi procession your father got to carry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
Madonna<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">That
was a special distinction<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">One
time your father fell with the Madonna<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
injured his head<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
severe head injury I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Time
has passed over everything <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">passed
over it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">passed
over it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">passed
over it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">One
of the prince’s uncles is the French ambassador in Vienna<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
another of the prince’s uncles was an attaché at the French embassy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
prince writes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">poems
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
his spare time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">once
in a while he reads from them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to
my wife<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everybody
here writes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everybody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Would
it be fair of me to say that<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what
you write<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
always thoroughly philosophical <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Even
though you describe it as comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Or
would it be fairer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
me to say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
what you write is comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whereas
you yourself maintain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s
actually philosophy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">laughs</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everybody
who lives here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">writes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">if
he isn’t a woodcutter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he
writes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">even
the rangers write here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ll
have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
the one hand people walk a great deal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
the other hand they write<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">walking
and writing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
divide their time between the two<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When
you were last here you were plumb in the middle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of
writing a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
let us rather call it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">something
you yourself described as a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What
you describe as a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
personally don’t regard as a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
comedy is after all quite a hard and fast concept<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
what you’re writing has nothing in common with it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">What
you’re writing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">has
nothing in common with a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s
something different from what I think of as a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
even what I think of as a play<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
comedy you say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
the whole thing has got nothing in common with a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
one mustn’t discuss concepts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
the writer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
lot of the what you’ve observed here in the hunting lodge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
in this comedy that you’ve written<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
also had performed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">also
had performed mind you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
don’t go to see plays at the theater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I avoid
going as a matter of principle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
theater is a repulsive thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’m
constantly reminded of this repulsiveness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whenever
I’m at the theater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">although
I can’t explain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what
this repulsiveness is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
it is repulsive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But
perhaps you’re preoccupying yourself with the theater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">precisely
because you find it repulsive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
find actors revolting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">when
an actor speaks<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
get a headache<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
father also loathed actors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
stage performance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gives
me nausea<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
point of fact I can only tolerate dilettantism at the theater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
suburban stage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Amateur
theatricals at private parties do you understand<br />
but not theater<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as
high art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
dear writer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you
are practicing a despicable art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
wife admires you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
wife needs a person like him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">she’s
got no use for hunting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
solitude torments her here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You’ll
put what you’re seeing here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">onstage
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In
a comedy gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because
our esteemed writer is a comic playwright<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Enter the cook with several bottles of wine</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2zbgiuw"></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S
WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="1egqt2p"></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Put the wine over there<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">by
the stove<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the cook sets the bottles down next to the stove
and exits </span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">general’s wife to the general</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Anna
needs a man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
husband do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="2dlolyb"></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the ministers<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="sqyw64"></a><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Be patient gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Be
patient<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
want my decision<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I
have made my decision<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to everybody else</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">These
gentlemen say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
illness but of course they mean<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">my
political untrustworthiness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">They
say my stay at the clinic<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">My
convalescence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">they
mean my physical frailty do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
they say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
intellectual frailty resulting from this physical frailty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but
they mean my political untrustworthiness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">They
say that I shall be retiring as a man known entirely for his merits<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
man distinguished with the highest honors in the land<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
banquet hosted by the chancellor etc.<br />
The highest honors<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Be
patient<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You
must be patient<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one
must be patient<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">drinks<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everybody
writes here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everybody
writes here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everybody
plays cards<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
does nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or
writes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Our
writer <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
writing a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
every one of us sitting here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">will
appear in his comedy <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
curtain will rise<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We’ll
be sitting here<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
we’ll be a comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You’re
always taking notes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">even
when it looks as though<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you’re
not taking notes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">You’re
listening<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">attentively
listening<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
even when you’re looking away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">To the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Do
you see those interior walls inside his brain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s
filling it with writing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">filling
it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
brain full of writing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
brain chock-full of writing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
hence a completely darkened brain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">filled
with writing with such celerity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that
the whole thing has been already written over many times<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">like
a madman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
entire inner surface of his brain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which
even he can’t read anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">So
make sure you realize that not even you<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">can
read<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">anything
you’ve written down<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in
your brain anymore<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">like
a madman<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
my wife insists<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on
my inviting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the
writer personally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">So
I write to the writer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with
punctilious politeness I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Come
my dear sir our esteemed writer<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ll
have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we’re
having a hunt<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">With
such celerity in your brain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and
with such ruthlessness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which
you in your lunacy have written<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">anyone
who behaves like this<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is
consequently<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a
certifiably insane individual my dear sirs<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
comedy do you hear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A
comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And
if we tear up the whole thing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">simply
tear it to pieces like a sheet of paper<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">tear
it up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">tear
the comedy up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">drinks</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Super-suddenly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the writer</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Isn’t
that right<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’ll
be gone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">torn
to pieces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">after the general has clearly said his piece<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The
people who falter everywhere <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because their mind is a line<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and the surface of the world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a deformity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We suddenly give up completely<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We’ve got to be alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We are necrotizing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we are dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as soon as we see a person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with perfect clarity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that he is dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">one existence after another<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and what we hear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is something dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Which is said to us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which we must teach ourselves <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">constantly teach ourselves and drill into ourselves <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in the light of this we must say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">there goes a dead person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whenever we see a person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">walking by us<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If we know anything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that we are dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the general’s wife</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But naturally we cherish<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">our opportunities for necrotization<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we cherish them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and take notes on them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and publish them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We rely <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">on death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This person I think<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and everything is dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">so we are constantly worried<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about meeting this or that person<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because then we’ll<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we are dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When we wake up we see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that what we’re interested in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is nothing we say nothing to ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Not a human soul<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">no science<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and not the slightest hint of nature<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We embark on pursuits that are purely and simply lethal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the prince rises and fetches
two bottles of wine from the stove, uncorks the bottles and fills everyone’s
glass</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We wake up and see<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">no interests<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we make this observation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">uninterestedly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because we can take no interest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">let’s say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And we have breakfast and get dressed madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and establish contact<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Take refuge in a task madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">pick up an axe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or sit down at a desk<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or we hurry to the train station<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or we compose something<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or we take even more medicine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">more and more medicine madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We wake up feeling a fundamental lack of interest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">simply because we’re around other people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or we aren’t<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the prince sits down</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whether we wake up in town or not<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we always wake up in the same uninterested state<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we make this observation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because we can’t fall back asleep<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and we can’t kill ourselves yet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">over and over again not yet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that’s a fact<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because we haven’t got the strength to do it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The same people<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the same requirements madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the same relations and processes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which allow us to see quite distinctly madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that nature<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">nature in its entirety is nothing but uninterest madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and illness <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and strictly speaking a terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Each and every day we wake up into our terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we go to sleep and wake up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in the same terminal illness of nature<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and are always in an uninterested state<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the rest is lies<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this constant incessant walking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in a state of absolute mental and physical unconsciousness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is an undeniable fact<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We dread<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what we’re going to do<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">just as we dread<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what we’re not going to do<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And apart from this there exists entirely in our imagination<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the notion that our existence is a bearable existence madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a notion that allows us to exist<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But we don’t talk about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and when we do talk about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we talk about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as though<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we were talking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about whatever else we are talking about<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not real in any sense <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not in any real sense at all madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We are incessantly talking about something unreal<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">so that we can tolerate it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">put up with it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because we have made our existence into an entertainment mechanism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">into nothing but a shabby entertainment mechanism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">into an artificial natural catastrophe madam<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 24.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">motionless, staring at the floor with his
legs stretched out, echoing the writer</i> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>An artificial natural catastrophe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 24.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When we wake up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we observe<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that we are suffering <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">from a weakness of will<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because we are basically composed of nothing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we perceive a bearable life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Perceptions madams<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we perceive<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But the truth is spoken only by the deceased<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When I’m in the general’s company<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I enjoy hearing some talk about weaponry<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">especially about ballistics<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but he gets stuck on a philosophical subject<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In such a situation<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">no conversation can take place<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He wants to talk about literature<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about Heinrich von Kleist for example<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">don’t like talking about it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’m interested in military science<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but he asks me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">about my comedy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in this way your husband and I<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">encounter difficulties immediately<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Soon we stop talking completely<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then your husband ends up saying<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’m observing things<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">This kind of observation madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Which gradually irritates everybody<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The general rises, goes to the record
player, puts on a record of the “Haffner” Symphony and returns to his seat,
then resumes his previous posture. Very soft music <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The concept of guilt is nonsensical madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">If we’re afraid<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of description<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this is nonsensical<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">We stage a play for ourselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a play in which a general is one of the main characters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and this general has a terminal illness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in Stalingrad they tore his left arm off <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And one fine day he goes into the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and injures himself with his chainsaw<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and at the same time he’s diagnosed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with cataracts<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And there are also two cabinet ministers madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">who are forcing the general to retire<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I imagine I’m watching a hunt <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a hunting party<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at one of our finest hunting lodges<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in a forest completely cut off from the outside world<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">A privately owned forest just imagine it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Two well-dressed gentlemen are invited to the hunt by the general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and so is a prince<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">sitting beside the general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the princess<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as charming as she is silent<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And possibly madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I take the liberty of letting the bark-beetle be mentioned<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Whatever is described gentlemen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is something different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">just as whatever is observed is already something different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everything is different<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">possibly a philosophy<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general would say <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When a one-armed general figures in one of my plays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it’s somebody else<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And perhaps madam people will say<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I myself am a character in my plays<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">But it’s somebody else<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">referring to the general<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">When one is under such enormous strain <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as my husband is<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">such enormous strain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">such an important position I’ll have you know<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in an age of overwhelming ruthlessness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">fills her glass, then the
others’</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I’ve had a go at learning foreign languages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">foreign languages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">at studying the natural sciences<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">spills wine, knocks over a
glass, sets it upright again</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">At teaching myself foreign languages<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Every human being is imprisoned in<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">besotted with<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">his misfortune<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I now know everything about the bark beetle<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And about cataracts madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">looking through the window<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Clear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Clear and cold<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">It’s a clear night<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Everyone is looking out through
the window; only the general has not changed his posture<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">PRINCESS <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">after a pause and while looking out through
the window longer than the others<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180503T1541; text-indent: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Lovely<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And wipe away everything <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Nip everything in the bud<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">wipe away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">sciences<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">friendships<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">kinships<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">wipe them away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Thus for two years I preoccupied myself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with wiping away everything<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with simply wiping away every budding thing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">still gazing through the window<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Cold and clear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pulls his Lermontov out of his waistcoat,
opens the book and reads aloud from it:</i><sup>2</sup><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The events of that evening produced a somewhat deep<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">impression upon me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and excited my nerves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I do not know for certain<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">whether I now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">believe in predestination or not<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but on that evening I believed in it firmly <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The proof was startling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and I notwithstanding that I had laughed at our forefathers and their
obliging astrology fell involuntarily<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">into their way of thinking<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">However I stopped myself in time from<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">following that dangerous road<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and as I have made it a rule<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">not to reject anything decisively<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and not to trust anything blindly I cast metaphysics aside<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and began to look at what was beneath my feet<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The precaution was well-timed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I only just escaped stumbling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">over something thick and soft<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but to all appearance inanimate<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I bent down to see what it was<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and by the light of the moon which now shone right upon the road<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I perceived that it was a pig<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">which had been cut in two with a sabre<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">slams the book shut, pours
himself some wine; as he is pouring, everybody else apart from the general
suddenly bursts out laughing; as the laughter continues the writer starts
laughing as well</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Lermontov<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Lermontov gentlemen<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the general rises and goes into
the next room; no sooner has he done so than everybody else bursts out laughing
again</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Parentage<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Origins<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Ancestry <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">wipe everything away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">wipe everything away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">emphasizing what he is saying
with his right hand</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">One must liberate oneself<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Then all of a sudden<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">as a natural matter of course this force weakens<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Old age do you understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">People sell themselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">safeguard themselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">be it through a scientific discipline<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a party<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a form of art<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">everybody suddenly seeks refuge<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">all of a sudden they convert to Catholicism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">or reconvert to Catholicism<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to avoid going insane<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">To persevere in this state of insecurity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of fathomlessness<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of licentiousness madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that’s the thing <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to speak this unintelligible language<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">this single valid unintelligible language<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to put up a fight against making oneself intelligible<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with a motion of her hand the
general’s wife knocks over a glass; leaving the glass knocked over, she pours
herself more wine into a new one</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Because we have given up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">we are human<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">referring to the general</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In recent days<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he’s been reminiscing about Paulus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">who on the eve of his capture<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">was appointed field marshal general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because Hitler believed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he would kill himself <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">but even Paulus preferred life<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to immortality<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Every time he goes into the forest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and he comes across an animal that’s frozen to death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he thinks of the soldiers who froze to death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Of the thousands and hundreds of thousands of them<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Nothing but frozen corpses madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">How fascinating it was to hear<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">what I heard tell of then<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he says<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and straight-away<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">all those faces<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I see a limb on the ground<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">I think it’s an arm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a foot<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the head<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of a dead man<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">if you observe the general attentively<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">it is slowly getting lighter
outside</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">you will realize<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">that he hasn’t got the slightest hint<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">of resignation in him<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">And listen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a general at sixty<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the general’s wife</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The thing that made the deepest impression on me<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">to the ministers</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">and that expresses his keen intelligence<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with extraordinarily unusual clarity <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is the chapter<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in which the general describes his last meeting<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">with Field Marshall General Paulus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">He has an eye for the dead<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">because of course death in general<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">plays an enormous role in his work<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">he is peculiarly preoccupied with death<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">profoundly so<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">His description of the frozen corpses<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">is in my opinion the most unusual and compelling<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">vision of death there has ever been<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">a shot rings out from the next
room</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The general’s wife jumps up</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everybody else rises, looks at
the door of the next room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The prince
goes to the door and opens it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everybody
looks in at the corpse of the general lying in the next room</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: 12.95pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Enter Asamer and the cook<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The writer stops the record
player <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">to the cook<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Bring the wash basin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">quickly<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the wash basin<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Silence</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">the sound of saws and axes being
employed in felling the forest begins and becomes ever more intense, ever
louder</span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Listen madam<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>listen<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">GENERAL’S WIFE<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The woodcutters<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">WRITER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>How well they’re working<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">The End<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Author’s Note on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hunting Party</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">With the exception
of the general, who is to wear a general’s uniform, and the writer, all the characters
are to be attired in hunting outfits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The play is in three movements; the last movement is the “slow
movement.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Th.B. <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Translator’s Notes:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 30.95pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">1.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">In a revision made on May 7, 2018, FIRST MINISTER
and SECOND MINISTER replace PRIME MINISTER and DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER, which are
of course both untenable in the light of the general’s reference to a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">chancellor</i>, although I still like to
think of this play as taking place in some country that is not identical to
Austria or any other extant German-speaking country in every respect (yes,
despite the references to Vienna, the Battle of Stalingrad, etc.).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 30.95pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">2.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Here instead of Englishing Bernhard’s German or
Lermontov’s Russian I insert the corresponding passage from J.H. Wisdom Marr
Murray’s <a href="http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/eBooks/Russia/BOOKS/A%20Hero%20of%20Our%20Time%20Lermontov.pdf"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">1916 translation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Hero of Our Time</i></span></a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 30.95pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; mso-prop-change: "Doug Robertson" 20180507T1933; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">3.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span></i><!--[endif]--><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">Siebzehnundvier </span></i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">in the original.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Those who find <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">blackjack</i> too
evocative of Las Vegas may silently substitute <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">twenty-one</i>.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: 30.95pt; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo3; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">4.<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">“Ignore” is my own indisputably disputable guess
at the verb the writer has in mind before he trails off (or has his train of
thought interrupted by the gunshots).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>English word order, in contrast to German, requires this verb to be
supplied.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia;">THE END<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2018 by Douglas Robertson</span><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Source:
Thomas Bernhard, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stücke <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1 </i>(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988), pp.
172-249. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: #FEFDFA; line-height: normal;">
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
authorized translation is by Gitta Honegger and was published in <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3245132?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Vol. 5, No. 1 of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Performing Arts<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Journal</i></span></a>
in 1980.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt; text-align: center;"> </span></div>
Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-68987694037391561562018-03-23T18:39:00.003-04:002018-03-24T06:05:30.852-04:00A Translation of "Literatur ist Monolog" (2002), Wolfgang Hilbig's Georg Büchner Prize Acceptance Speech<br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Literature
Is a Monologue</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">When
Hans Erich Nossack was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in October 1961, the
Berlin Wall was still brand-spanking new, so to speak; perhaps it was even
still only nearing its completion; I can no longer precisely remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I also can no longer precisely remember
what I then thought of this most richly consequential European edifice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What a colossal expenditure, what a colossal
misappropriation of manpower and materials, are being expressly devoted to the
erection of a makeshift structure whose meaningfulness will be called into
question as a matter of course in no time flat!--such or similar thoughts must
have been passing through my mind on that Monday, the first workday after the
Sunday on which the construction of the Wall began.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scene in which we, the workers on a
gigantic factory-floor on which were assembled headstocks for machine tools, or
the monstrous barrel-channels for planing or sanding machines—all of them
valuable export goods that the GDR’s metals industry had rendered marketable
worldwide, as the sermon incessantly preached to us went—were apprised of the
government’s resolution, has remained reasonably clear in my memory; it was a
rather unsettling scene.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were called
together for a brief pause in the main hall of our shop; the din of the
machines fell silent for about twenty minutes; and a person from the plant
management office announced that the western border of the GDR, the border with
the imperialistic FRG, as well as the border with the special territorial
entity, the front-city of West Berlin, were to be considered closed as of
yesterday’s date in order to forestall the bleeding to death of the young GDR’s
economy and to put an end to the constant interference of enemy elements from
the West.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The speaker read his speech
from a prepared text with a pale and unmistakably nervous expression on his
face; it was remarkable that after speaking he received no or only very
scattered applause; the men in their oil-stained work uniforms silently took cognizance
of his remarks and pensively—with shaking heads and fairly inscrutable miens—returned to their work-stations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I gave no thought to any sorts of
consequences that the newly begun construction of the Wall might have: I simply
couldn’t imagine a barrier without freely accessible exits and entrances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I already found the scene unsettling: it
was unsettling because I now all of a sudden found myself imprisoned in a
country that I somehow regarded as my own house, as my home—I had been
furnished with a homeland by governmental force, and, as soon became apparent,
by armed force, and nobody had asked me whether I wanted this homeland or
not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A forcible attempt had been made to
instill in me a sense of having a homeland—if there is one means of permanently
excluding a so-called sense of having homeland from a human being’s heart, from
his mind, it is precisely this exertion of governmental force. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
first consequences of the construction of the Wall became evident very quickly:
at the beginning of the heating season of ’61, skilled workers from the
production division were condemned to repair to the boiler house for a month
straight and stoke the furnace there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Admittedly, this was a necessity, because at our factory, as at almost
all factories in the GDR, there was a perpetual shortage of stokers owing to
the fact that the prevailing working conditions there had not kept pace with
operational development, and the fact that there were far too few opportunities
for making money there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the manner
in which this was now happening was entirely new: the people were no longer
talked into accepting the necessity of such a measure; they were now banished
to the boiler house by orders from on high; all protestations proved
ineffectual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My own turn came, in
November or December of ’61: what had to happen happened; I took a sudden fancy
to the solitary sedulousness of a stoker in his boiler room; when my appointed
term came to an end, I didn’t report back to the floor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was probably there, in my first boiler house—on whose door was posted a sign
reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Authorized Personnel Only!</i>—that
I found myself first giving serious consideration to my future, and perhaps
also first thinking the thought that I was living in the middle of a fraudulent
environment—even if in this environment a refuge had suddenly opened up for me,
a refuge in which I could form such thoughts—all of a sudden I knew I wanted to
write, and indeed never, ever do anything but write.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I no longer remember whether this thought was
immediately bound up with a<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> decision</i>—it
is more likely that at that time I began carrying around that thought as a kind
of non-material ambush; every view that was brought to my notice stumbled into
the trap of this ambush, where, in my mind, it was immediately sabotaged: I didn’t
want anything that other people wanted from me, or that they might want from
me; I didn’t tell anybody else that I wanted it, that I wanted to write and do
nothing else; it was a secret [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Geheimnis</i>],
a secret that had irrupted within me in that boiler room with its rusty heating
appliances.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a secret that has
remained within me all along—admittedly it has been an open secret for a very
long time, but, I hope, still always a secret.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I shall presently come back to a certain way of keeping company with
this secret.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">There
is a remarkable sentence in Hans Erich Nossack’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Speech on Georg Büchner</i> that immediately seemed enlightening to me:
“Bizarrely enough, from time immemorial, all party-political doctrines, all
theologies, all sociologies, all chambers of commerce and public health
departments, have been in agreement on one point despite all their mortal
hatred of one another:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that there is
nothing more deserving of prohibition than the desire to be alone.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
most likely the so-called support service divisions that are responsible for
supplying heat to industrial plants may be unhesitatingly regarded as
affiliates of the aforementioned series of institutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the advantage—or disadvantage, depending
on your point of view—of support service divisions is that once you’re there
you can’t go any farther down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once a
stoker has proved that he is competent, that he can do his job satisfactorily,
nobody takes any further interest in what else he is thinking or
philosophically concocting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So he’s left
alone with his secret.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once or
twice, if merely in passing, I even directed a Stasi officer’s attention to the
door with the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Authorized Personnel Only!</i>
warning on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naturally that didn’t
work anymore in dealing with the German Postal Service, which of course is a
service organization, but by no means one with the status of a support services
division.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because I used the Postal
Service, specifically for the delivery of my manuscripts, which I always kept a
few copies of in reserve, it was finally becoming known that I was
writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And from then on, people were
always trying by various means to find out my secret: first it was the Stasi;
at the end it was the mass media—I wouldn’t presume to draw a comparison
between the two institutions; they figure here only as items in a chronological
sequence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Because
the Stasi no longer exists, except in the form of a phantom in a smattering of
scattered minds, I have subsequently come to find the mass media much more
interesting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mass media are
apparatuses for the exposure of every kind of secret, and they are therefore
apparatuses that abet forgetting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
seems to me that in the palaces of the mass media there exists no other aim
whatsoever than to snatch at everything new, everything that appears to be new,
no matter how old this newness may be, and hold it up to the light of
publicity, to clothe it in the terminology of up-to-date-ness in order to put
it up for sale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
then to cross it off the list and to forget it so that there will be room [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Platz</i>] for the next batch of up-to-date
things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the mass media live off this
circulation; it is the sole foundation of their existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It degrades the newspaper-reader to a mere
information-receiver who must cross off and forget every new piece of
information as quickly as possible, so that each and every day he has enough
room--and this room may safely be termed a void--for new, for up-to-date,
pieces of information.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And in a
comparable fashion the television-viewer is degraded to a mere object of the
entertainment industry; he is quite automatically consigned to the herd of
cattle that guarantees ratings and drives them as stratospherically high as
possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it must be mentioned that
a certain bit of terminology is really quite erroneous: the television receiver
isn’t the box with the screen but rather we ourselves, who sit in front of the
apparatus with the remote control in our hand so that we can be sprayed with
information in the form of entertainment, information that we can instantly
forget during the commercials interspersed throughout each program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 14.0pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Hans
Erich Nossack’s speech contains an uncommonly harsh sentence; I recall yet
again that it had already been written in 1961; in other words, at a time when
I was just beginning my first serious attempts at writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I had had the opportunity to read this
sentence back then, I believe I would have been beset by scruples of
incomparable severity: “The profound contempt in which literature stands now
that it is being alternately regarded as a harmless pastime and lavished with
plaudits when it allows itself to be abused as an instrument of power politics,
is so aggrieving that every literary person is obliged to ask himself whether
there is any longer any point whatsoever in writing at all.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“How is its situation looking today?” I ask myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I grew up in a country, I used to write in a
country, in which some very serious attempts were made to subordinate
literature to a power-political ideology—but here?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now, in this reunified Germany?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The position of literature is so vague and
diffuse, so marginal and compulsorily self-sustaining, that nobody can any
longer think of using it or abusing it for any sort of purpose; anybody who did
either would be slinging an albatross around his own neck, would be making a
laughingstock of himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for its
plaudits, literature collects them itself when it dances at all the festivities
of the media, when it devours the charity bread that is handed to it in the
palaces of the newspaper publishers and television networks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes I get the impression—but this may
be a paranoid suspicion that arose in my mind when the hunting hounds of the
media laid into me after it became known that I was this year’s Georg Büchner
prizewinner—that literature is involved in a constant onslaught on the palaces
of the public media, palaces in which a place [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Platz</i>] for it is nowhere to be found.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am coming better and better to understand
what Hans Erich Nossack meant when he wrote: “All that will ever possibly
survive of our literature is monologue.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The literature of our time has vacated its place; in any case, it is in
the process of doing this, and if it surrenders itself more and more swiftly
and unresistingly to this process, one fine day there will no longer be any
place for it anywhere at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ufrjx1axhpmz"></a><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In point of fact the place of literature is the monologue: here there is a solitary writer, a poet or
literary prose author, who is violating the prohibition of solitude and
committing his thoughts to paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he
is doing so he may be thinking of a reader, but he doesn’t know this
reader.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If this monologue turns into a
text or a book, the latter, via the detours of sales and distribution, reaches
an equally solitary reader who reads the monologue; as he is reading it he may
be thinking of the author of the monologue, but he doesn’t really know him;
perhaps he knows only very little about this author, and if things turn out
well, a monologue will likewise develop in the reader’s mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the way in which literature
functions, and it can only function in this way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything beyond this that a writer divulges
about his text is no longer a part of literature; it’s a part of the mass media
and the marketing of literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any
case, it demolishes the mystery [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Geheimnis</i>]
that consists in the peculiar coupledom of writer and reader, and in so doing,
perhaps it even demolishes the reader’s interest in literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_30j0zll"></a><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thus did he pass his life</span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">, reads the last sentence of Georg
Büchner’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lenz</i>, a text that Hans
Erich Nossack refuses to regard as a fragment on the grounds that this sentence
is “the most decisive conclusion imaginable.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>What may such a sentence set loose in the mind of a reader?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doubtless at the very least the question of
the way in which he, the reader, is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">passing
his own life</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And at this point the
monologue has already begun, a monologue that is actually a dialogue, a
centuries-long dialogue of a kind that can only be attained with the help of
literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this reader will,
perhaps, immediately stumble into a contradiction in another of Büchner’s
sentences, one that comes from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Woyzeck</i>:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="background: #FEFDFA;">He was
the same as everybody else in all his actions</span></i><span style="background: #FEFDFA;">.* And this very contradiction can be the beginning of a
transformation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps the mystery and
the greatness of man inheres in that very moment at which he begins to ponder
the possibility of transformation.</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Ladies and gentlemen, I am thankful for
my receipt of the Georg Büchner Prize; I don’t precisely know in which
institution these thanks would have found their proper place: such being the
case, I thank you, who have been patiently listening to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You have given me courage and strength to
continue further along my path; you have made me hopeful that my words and
sentences aren’t completely pouring into the void; such being the case, you
deserve all the credit for this prize-giving ceremony; I am solely and merely
your protagonist, and I have no wish to change this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thank you, and I hope you accept my thanks
in freedom.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">*Hilbig is either mistaken or using <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">comes from</i> [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">stammt aus</i>]
in a non-philological sense (i.e., one according to which Büchner came up with
the idea of a person who is “<span style="background: #FEFDFA;">the same as
everybody else in all his actions” </span>in the course of writing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Woyzeck</i>), for the quoted words are in
fact from the penultimate sentence of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lenz</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">THE END<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Translation
unauthorized but Copyright ©2018 by Douglas Robertson</span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Source: <a href="https://www.deutscheakademie.de/en/awards/georg-buechner-preis/wolfgang-hilbig/dankrede">Deutsche
Akadamie für Sprache und Dichtung</a></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7190184.post-10400391540800705952018-03-09T18:22:00.000-05:002018-03-11T18:49:52.346-04:00A Translation of "Literatur als Utopie," a Lecture on Modern Literature by Ingeborg Bachmann<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Literature as Utopia<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Ladies and Gentlemen,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">It has not been all that long since I
myself was sitting on a bench in a lecture hall, admittedly not in order to
hear any talk about literature [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Literatur</i>]<sup>1</sup>—and
the little that I did happen to hear every now and then only reinforced my
antipathy to such talk—this at a stage in life when a young person who writes
and wants to do nothing but write has already been regarding writing as the
center of all his thoughts and hopes for the longest time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My aversion to literature as treated by
professional scholarship may have been among other things a foolish mistake. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But you can be sure that that the study of
literature is unnecessary and superfluous to writers [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Schriftsteller</i>]<sup>2</sup> given that there are plenty of business
people and vagabonds, doctors and convicts, engineers, dandies, journalists,
indeed even professors, who have gained creditable reputations through writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Time and again one encounters this ominous
word “literature,” this eagerly all-encompassing term for an ostensibly clear
thing, a term that is deployed and employed not only by scholars but also by authors,
that is one of their principal nouns; they are quite partial to employing it
every now and then in their own wantonly mischievous way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is certain that the idea of not figuring
in the sphere of literature or someday no longer figuring in that sphere terrifies
the writer, who regards such a fate as tantamount to a death sentence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He competes relentlessly if secretly for
membership in the order of the knights of “literature,” and even if he never
receives a hint that he will enjoy a long-term membership in it he hopes for it
and never relinquishes this hope.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">One would think that there ought to be no
need for an explicit consensus about what this keyword means, what it unlocks,
what realm it discloses to our gaze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After all, everybody knows what, for example, German literature is, and
what European literature and world literature are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, we must totally disregard the fact
that in German-speaking countries the word “literature” tends to be used as a
pejorative, depreciative expression, or even as a term of abuse (in the word
“Literat” [i.e., literatus or man of letters] it has been devalued with almost
complete success!), and that in our linguistic community people say things like
“That’s nothing but literature!” and “That is so literary!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here people prefer the “poetic” [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dichterische</i>] and “creativity,” “poetry”
[<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dichtung</i>] and “creating,” but
because the use of these words is marked by a history of highly insalubrious
outbursts of passion, I would like to set them aside and fall back on the word
literature as a descriptive term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
what is this thing that I am describing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Is literature the sum total of all written works and beyond that the sum
total of all those who have bequeathed written works to posterity?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Which works?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only the outstanding ones?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By whom have they been deemed
outstanding?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which authorial personages?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only the ones whose works have survived, and
for whom have they survived?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once
someone or something has been admitted into the literary canon, is his or its
place therein unshakeable?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is this
treasure, this so-called hoard of eternal poetry which literary history so
zealously shelters and maintains, worth this piety and this incessant
evocation?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are these gold ingots of the
human mind all genuine; don’t a good many of them turn black; and don’t they
often sound as if they are a bit hollow?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And isn’t everything made of gold subject to the most incredible
fluctuations in market value?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your
teachers will be better able to tell you how often Goethe and Schiller have
been toppled, to tell you what plunges the Romantics, the Naturalists, and the
Symbolists have suffered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To tell you
how often a writer has been neglected, feted again, forgotten, and
resurrected—to tell you which works of the maestros have been unduly praised or
unduly disregarded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we ourselves are
of course standing in the middle of the process; we disparage, we reappraise;
on the one hand, we treat literature like an unshakable object, on the other
hand we abuse it at the same time, until it becomes something like an ideal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Admittedly, a chain of
evidence, a chain in which each link is a written work, suggests that there
really is such a thing as literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Let us just take as an example German literature--but here we are
already faltering, even though every beginner’s guide to the subject states
that German literature starts with the Merseburg Incantations and ends—just
where <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">does</i> it end?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are faltering because we have also heard
that in a precise sense we have never had a literature; our literature is said
to be lacking a tradition and to be very poorly suited to the observation and ascertainment
of what we understand literature to be—at least by comparison with French or
English literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this bit of
hearsay has much to recommend it, at least to those who stick to received opinion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But once one has shifted oneself to a
different vantage-point, it is no longer possible to see why French or any
other sort of literature should qualify as what we understand literature to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For what do we understand it to be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is an ideal that we are constantly
correcting into a more proper state, an ideal in which we abandon certain facts
and eradicate certain others.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">But today let us just take
a quick survey of the various opinions, the various definitions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because we can have strange experiences each
and every day, in conversations with our friends, for example.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a conversation about, say, painting, you
may hear the names Giotto, Kandinsky, and Pollock, but in that same conversation
everybody will take care not to mention Raphael’s name in the same
cadence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you’re a guest at somebody’s
house and looking for a record to put on, you may find Bach, a bit of baroque
music, Schoenberg, and Webern prominently on display, but you’ll have a very
hard time finding any Tchaikovsky at all in your host’s collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In conversations about literature with people
you’re staying with, you may hear calm pronouncements about Joyce and Faulkner,
Homer and Cicero, but names like Eichendorff or Stifter will possibly set off
alarm bells.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are by no means
fictional scenarios; we come across such scenarios every day, and we ourselves
are contributing participants in them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For whereas on the one hand literature and every other art are
benefiting from an official historical preservation industry that gives
everyone his due; on the other hand, this industry is counterpoised by an
unofficial reign of terror that subjects entire sectors of literature and every
other art to excommunication and exile. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
reign of terror has always been in force, and it will hardly do us any good to
get clear in our minds about it; we act as its agents out of sheer necessity;
our delight in one sector of literature is conditioned by our aversion to the
other, and by means of this unjust state of affairs we keep literature alive
and orient it towards an ideal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it
is entirely conceivable that in the not too distant future our idols both
ancient and modern will be toppled again and be obliged to step down, that our
questing and quarreling on behalf of the modern as we understand it will provoke
another quarrel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As long as we are here,
and everybody is always here in good faith, we don’t care.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Thus, even though and even
because it is always an omnium gatherum of the happened and the happened-upon,
literature is always the hoped-for and wished-for space that we furnish out of
the hoard in accordance with our desire--thus it is an anteriorly open-ended
realm whose borders are unknown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our
desire ensures that everything that has already been shaped in the medium of
language simultaneously partakes of that which has not yet been uttered, and
our enthusiasm for certain magnificent texts is actually an enthusiasm for the
white, blank page on which that which has yet to be gained seems to be already
inscribed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In our eyes, every great
work, be it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Don Quixote</i> or the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Divine Comedy</i>, has a certain withered,
weathered quality; in our eyes, there is always a defect that we ourselves
repair as a result of giving the work a chance today, of reading it and wanting
to read it tomorrow—a defect that is so massive that it impels us to proceed
with literature as with a utopia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Scholarship, too, ought to
find itself in this quandary, for there is no such thing as an objective
opinion about literature; there is only a living one, and this living opinion
entails such consequences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the course
of our life we frequently change our opinion of a writer several times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At twenty we dismiss him with a joke or call
him a plaster statue who is of absolutely no concern to us; at thirty we
discover his greatness, and then ten years later still our interest in him is
defunct or we have developed new misgivings and a new inability to tolerate
him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Or vice-versa, at first we
regard him as a genius, subsequently discover platitudes that disappoint us,
and cast him aside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We are merciless and
ruthless, but if we weren’t, we wouldn’t be engaged at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is always this or that thing about a writer
or an age that strikes us as exemplarily correct, and something else about it
that stands in our way, that must be disputed away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We quote in a triumphant or damnatory tone,
as though the works existed only for the sake of allowing us to prove something
to ourselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">The alternating successes
of the works or their failures tell us less about themselves than about our own
constitution and the constitution of our age, but nobody has yet written the
history of these constitutions, and more is being written about the history of
literature, and this historiography is being organized using the terminology of
criticism and aesthetics, as if it were a fait accompli that is subject to the
unanimous verdict of the sworn members of the jury—namely the reader, the
critic, and the scholar.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">But literature both old and
new is unclosed; it is more unclosed than every other domain—than the sciences,
in which every new form of knowledge outstrips the old one—it is unclosed because
its entire past pushes into the present.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With the force of all the ages it presses into us, into the temporal
threshold at which we stop, and its onrush with robust old and robust new forms
of knowledge makes us realize that not one of its constituent works had any
wish to be rendered <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">dated </i>and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> innocuous</i>, that rather they all contain
the prerequisites for eluding every peremptory arrangement and system of
classification. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">I would like to try to dub
these prerequisites, which inhere in the works themselves, the “utopian”
prerequisites.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Were it not for these
utopian prerequisites on the part of the works, despite our commiserating
participation, literature would be a cemetery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Were it not for them, we would merely be officiators at wreath-laying ceremonies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Were it not for them, each work would be
superseded and rectified by another one, each of them would be buried by a
subsequent one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">But literature needs no
pantheon; its forte is not dying, heaven, or any sort of salvation, but rather <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">the realization of the strongest design</i>
in every present,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>in this one or the
next one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">But literature, always
“literature”… <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Nor is any of this changed
by, for example, the very recent publication of a French book that is titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alittérature contemporaine</i> (Albin
Michel, Paris 1958) and attempts to prove that literature is being shunned by
writers [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dichtern</i>], that literature
or being-in-literature is being disowned by writers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are nuances that obviously must be
negotiated in a different way than the sentimental German aspiration to
separate literature and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dichtung</i>; for
it is easy enough to understand what this book’s author, Claude Mauriac, means
by the former, and yet it is irrelevant whether a work becomes a work of
literature because it wanted to stay “outside” or to be admitted into
literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">The ideal of aliterature is
itself a part of literature, and it says more about the literary industry of
the moment, about the social situation and the ineluctable revolt of artists
than about literature itself: an aliterature is taking shape within the
confines of literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as for this
literature, which itself is incapable of saying what it is, and which is
incessantly being told what it is and what it should be—how should one encircle
it, approach it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One might also go
looking for it via a detour that simply discloses a dozen blind paths. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is that nasty Flaubert novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bouvard and Pécuchet</i>, and the book’s two
knowledge-craving clerks’ adventure with literature is inextricable from the
grotesquery of our own adventure with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Bouvard and Pécuchet, the two <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">bonhommes</i>,
yearn for certainty, and their discovery of the uncertainty of human knowledge
does not make them mere objects of ridicule but rather transforms them into our
partners in suffering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For in the
tragicomedy in which Bouvard and Pécuchet are acting the tragicomedy of science
is also depicted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because they cannot
make do with simply reading the works; they seek refuge in science, which they
expect to set them on the right path.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Pécuchet had a bright idea: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">The
reason they were having so much trouble was that they didn’t know the rules.
They studied them, in d’Aubignac’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pratique
du Théâtre </i>and in other, less antiquated works.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Important
questions are debated here: Is verse permissible in comedy? Does tragedy
overstep its fixed limits when it takes its plot from modern history? Must
tragic heroes be virtuous?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What is the
essence of a tragic villain? To what extent should graphically horrific events
be represented on the tragic stage?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
be sure, Aubignac maintains, each particular event must contribute to a single
outcome, the dramatic interest must constantly be building, and the conclusion
must jibe with the beginning—obviously!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">“Devise
mainsprings that can hold my attention,” says Boileau.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">How
does one devise these mainsprings?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">“Be
sure that in all your speeches genuine passion seeks out the heart, warms it,
and moves it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">How
does one warm the heart?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">So
the rules aren’t enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One also needs
genius.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">And
genius isn’t enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Corneille
understands nothing about the theater, according to the </span><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Académie française.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Geoffery denigrated Voltaire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Racine was ridiculed by Subligny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>La Harpe blushed at the mention of
Shakespeare’s name.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">They got sick of
the old critics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">And later:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">...“Let’s
busy ourselves with prose first,” said Bouvard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">The
authorities formally recommend the careful imitation a specific classical work,
but all the classics have certain dangerous shortcomings as models--this on
account not only of their stylistic but also of their linguistic sins. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Bouvard
and Pécuchet were disconcerted by such an assertion, and they set about
studying grammar. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The grammarians, to
be sure, are at loggerheads with one another; where some of them behold a
beauty, others discover a deformity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They defer to principles whose consequences they spurn, champion
consequences whose underlying principles they scorn, prop themselves up on
tradition, reject the old masters, and evince the most bizarre affectations...From
this project they conclude that syntax is a fantasy and grammar an illusion.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">But perhaps the science
known as aesthetics could settle their dispute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; line-height: 135%; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">A friend...a professor of
philosophy, sent them a list of monographs on the subject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They worked separately, then convened to
share their reflections.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">First of all: what is beauty?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">For Schelling it is the infinite
expressing itself via the finite, for Reid it is an occult quality, for
Jouffroy an unanalyzable feature, for De Maistre it is what pleases virtue; for
Father André it is what suits Reason. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There exist several types of beauty…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; line-height: 135%; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Then they preoccupied
themselves with the sublime.</span><span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; font-size: 16.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; line-height: 135%; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Certain objects are intrinsically
sublime--the roar of a torrent, deep shadows, a tree felled by a storm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A character is beautiful when triumphant and
sublime when engaged in struggle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">“I
understand,” said Bouvard: “the Beautiful is the Beautiful and the Sublime is
the very Beautiful.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">How
can one tell them apart?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">“By
means of tact,” replied Pécuchet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“And where does tact come from?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">“From
taste!”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">“What
is taste?” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">It is defined as a special form of
discernment, rapidity of judgment, superiority at distinguishing certain
relations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="border: none; margin-left: .5in; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in; text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">“In
short, taste is taste, and none of this tells us how to go about acquiring it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">But in what manner has literature
so far been dealt with in earnest, and what methods and vicissitudes have
impinged on it during its journey to us?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is no idle question, for literature always retains some trace of
everything that has befallen it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">A literary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">history</i> has existed only since the
beginning of the nineteenth century, since the Romantic period; back then the
study of history was undertaken as a patriotic duty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It amounted to a pernickety chronicling of
the historian’s national literature, and often, if not invariably, the national
pride of the chroniclers forbade them to perceive that over huge stretches of
time this literature runs on empty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
smug, all-encompassing overview of something that was by no means an integral
entity but rather a shoddily underpinned optimistic ideal derived from the
blueprint of national pathos, has had a long and abiding influence on our
school textbooks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this more or less
depraved historiography of literature has borne unexpectedly unanticipated
fruits yet again in Germany of the twentieth century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to be sure, at the beginning of the
nineteenth century, Goethe had discovered a formulation that had comparably and
more felicitously abiding aftereffects:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">I
am seeing ever more clearly that poetry is the common property of humankind and
that it manifests itself in hundreds upon hundreds of human beings in all ages and
places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One person writes poetry a
little better than the next person and when swimming keeps his head above water
a little longer than the next person; that is all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">And later, to Eckermann:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">National
literature doesn’t mean much now; the epoch of world literature has arrived,
and everyone must now do his best to accelerate this epoch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in thereby esteeming productions of
foreign origin we must not cleave to any particular work and try to regard it
as exemplary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We mustn’t think that the
Chinese, or Calderon, or the Nibelungen, got it right; rather, in our need for
something exemplary we must always return to the ancient Greeks, in whose works
the human individual is invariably depicted in all his beauty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything else we must contemplate in a
merely historical light and, to the extent that this is possible, appropriate
whatever good it contains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">As excellent as the beginning of this
formulation still appears to us today—as laudable as we still find its lively
desire for something exemplary and the foundation of exemplarity on the works
of the Greeks, as well as its exhortation to contemplate everything in a merely
historical light—this prescription for keeping company with literature, like
most others we have encountered, has grievously suffered at the hands of
time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nevertheless, in its desire to
relegate something exemplary to a moment of origin still lurks the desire to
establish something up ahead, something unstandardized rather than a standard,
something that can never be reached no matter how closely it is approached.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">In any case, today we do not have what it
takes to defer slavishly to such and similar Olympian propositions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But if they appear to us in a new light, they
are likewise shifting to a new place in the horizon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Goethe’s Greeks can be conceived of as a cipher.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The alternation of outlooks, of standards,
that took place so slowly until the end of the nineteenth century that everyone
found time to pay due regard to particulars and everything achieved efficacy,
is giving way in the twentieth century to a previously unthinkable restless
temperature curve of criteria.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of
the reasons for this is what Jacob Burckhardt remarked on the situation in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World-Historical Meditations</i>: “The
destiny of modern poetry in general is its literary-historically conscious
relationship to the poetry of all ages and peoples.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So this fine mess that could not have failed
to materialize and that we have inherited from the nineteenth century has in
fact made us richer than the generations that preceded us, but also more labile
and more vulnerable, more defenseless against every association.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For today we are not only familiar with the
literature of all peoples, including those of Africa, but also conscious of the
availability of all grammars, poetics, rhetorics, aesthetics, of all formal and
normative possibilities in literature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For everything factual in literature is either accompanied by theory or
is itself theory at the same time, and literature’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have </i>is confronted with a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shall</i>
that orients it or would like to orient it, or has arisen from it as a stratum
of orientation and often overshoots it so far that it injures it or no longer
manages to reach it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">But we all want to substantiate
literature or to substantiate something with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the same time philosophy, psychiatry, and
every possible other discipline pounce on it, and it is straitjacketed into
laws and conditions or revelations that it—for the sake of everybody and
nobody—fits into satisfactorily today and yet will contradict tomorrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The literary historian—and we have almost
gotten used to this by now—smashes it into temporal fragments, colors it
ancient, medieval, and modern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Literary
criticism and philosophical literary scholarship X-ray metaphysical and ethical
problems with it—but literary scholarship has also leaned on other things, on
sociology, psychoanalysis, and art history—so vast is its scope for free
play.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It inspects literature in search
of stylistic periods; an intuition of essences is ventured or an existential
yield is expected from it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And because a
writer is too
deficient in detailed knowledge to negotiate a path through this labyrinth,
allow me to call to my aid one of our greatest scholars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In his preface to his book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">European Literature and the Latin Middle
Ages</i>, Ernst Robert Curtius writes of modern literary scholarship and a few
of its tendencies:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">It wants to be “intellectual
history.” This tendency, which leans on art history, operates with the
extremely questionable principle of ‘the mutual elucidation of the arts’ and
thereby engenders an obfuscation of objective states of affairs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It then proceeds to apply to literature art
history’s periodization according to styles that supersede one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we end up with a literary Romanesque,
Gothic, Baroque, etc., right on down to Impressionism and Expressionism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every stylistic period is then endowed by the
“intuition of essences” with an “essence” and peopled with a special
“individual.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “Gothic individual”
(to whom Huizinga has assigned a “pre-Gothic” comrade) has become extremely
popular, but the “Baroque individual” probably doesn’t lag too far behind
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are profound beliefs about
the “essence” of the Gothic, the Baroque, etc., that admittedly contradict one
another to some extent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is Shakespeare
Renaissance or Baroque?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is Baudelaire an
Impressionist, George an Expressionist?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Much intellectual energy is devoted to such problems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The stylistic periods are perambulated by the
art historian [Heinrich] W<span style="color: #181716;">ölfflin’s “foundational
principles.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For him there is an “open”
and a “closed form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is the end of
Goethe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Faust</i> open, and Valéry’s
closed?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here’s a big question: is there
even, as Karl Joël tried to show with great intelligence and abundant
historical intuition, a regular succession of “binding” and “loosening”
centuries (each one fitted out with its own “secular spirit”)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the modern age are the even centuries (the
14<sup>th</sup>, 16<sup>th</sup>, 18<sup>th</sup>, and, to all appearances, the
20<sup>th </sup>as well) “binding,” and the odd ones (the 13<sup>th</sup>, 15<sup>th</sup>,
and 17<sup>th</sup>) “loosening,” and so forth <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ad infinitum</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">And Curtius continues: “Modern literary
scholarship—i.e., that of the last 50 years—is a phantom.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">I don’t know if today, fifteen years
later, you still find yourself in the same situation as students; I hope you
don’t, but it no longer seems possible to be optimistic when keeping company
with literature, for not even its historiography has remained uninjured by
pessimism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A History of the Poetic National Literature of the Germans</i> reads
one of its first titles, and the last of which I am aware is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tragic Literary History</i>. But why does
literature always flee from literary research in such a disastrous manner; why
can we never catch hold of it in the way we would like to catch hold of it; for
it can’t only be the fault of the researchers, of the critics?!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They alone can’t be to blame for
contradictory definitions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There must be
a reason that is not solely rooted in the variable constitution of time and
that we can seek out on our own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">If we were as inexperienced and gullible
as those two poor fools <span style="color: #181716;">Bouvard und Pécuchet—and
often enough we are just that—we would be obliged to drop this and every other
object amid a great, anonymous burst of laughter, beneath which we ourselves
and literature are being buried. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">But literature, which itself is incapable
of saying what it is, which merely proclaims itself a thousand-fold and multi-millennial
offense against a bad language—for life only ever has a bad language—and which
therefore confronts life with a utopia of language; so this literature, however
tightly it may cling to time and its bad language, is glorious on account of
its despair-ridden never-ending journey towards this language, and it is only
for this reason that it is one of humankind’s glories and hopes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its most vulgar and affected languages still
have a share in the linguistic dream; every vocabulary, every syntax, every
sentence, every punctuation-mark, metaphor, and every symbol fulfills some
portion of our dream of expression, a dream destined never to be totally
realized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">In the dictionary one
reads: “Literature is simply the aggregate of written intellectual products.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this aggregate is contingent and
unfinished, and the intellect contained therein is has not been given to us
exclusively in written form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When we
turn off our searchlights and extinguish every other source of illumination,
literature, left in the dark and in peace, renders its own light, and its
genuine products have their own form of emanation, one that is timely and
stimulating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are products that
shimmer and that have dead patches; pieces of a realized hope for integral
language, for integral expression for an ever-changing humanity and an
ever-changing world. What we call perfection in art does nothing but activate imperfection
afresh. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">And because this
imperfection is still active, the writer is undaunted by the greatness of what
was written before his time--and they could not but find this greatness
daunting if it were great in the sense of being unattainable,
unsurpassable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And they likewise could not
but feel daunted if in this case, as in all others centering on achievements,
they could be overtaken by greater writers; for then tomorrow they would be the
sacrificial victims that they are not yet today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in literature there are no finishing
lines, no achievements of this kind, no such things as overtaking and falling
behind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Nevertheless, from the
point of view of the present, it looks as though literature were merely an
overwhelming past being constantly played off against the present, which has
been condemned to lose from the outset.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The writer himself is afflicted by the past and at the same time by the
present, in which he privately feels that he and his contemporaries are
nonentities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">In Robert Musil’s diary
there is a passage of great candor, in which he confesses that he has only ever
opened up to a handful of writers—Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, and others, but that
not a single one of his contemporaries figures among them, that they all wrote
between twenty and a hundred years earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If we subtract the small dose of vanity and resentment that is also
saying its piece here, we are still left beholding the astonishingly authentic
and in impartial terms impossible residue of appreciation of his
contemporaries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In another passage one
finds the following note: “‘Who’s around who counts nowadays?!’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That pessimistic appraisal of the value of
contemporary literature—myself included.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Further: “And yet the average level is definitely high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reason: akin to longing for the
‘Savior’.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this figure who is the
object of longing is also merely an ideal figure, and when he casts his mind
back, the following occurs to him:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">Virgil,
Dante, Homer…set them aside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any
case, loving them requires an illusion and a love of the world that surrounded
them…But Balzac, Stendhal, etc.; picture them to yourself; they lived and were
‘colleagues.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How much aversion to those
scribblers and that fop!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their imaginary
worlds would be insufferable if one didn’t suppose them to be sited in sundry
places and ages.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are they combinable or
mutually exclusive?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How does one account
for the fact that the effect is attenuated when one accepts an author with all
the baggage of his bygone age?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">And this note is
superscribed by the words <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On the Utopia
of Literature</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here and there in
Musil’s work one can encounter these words <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">utopia</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">utopian</i> being used in connection
with literature, with the authorial [</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">schriftstellerischen</span></i><span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">] </span><span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">existence; he has not elaborated
these ideas but merely given me the keyword that I have tried to come to grips
with here today. But if those who write [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">die
Schreibenden</i>] now had the courage to declare themselves in favor of utopian
existences, they would no longer need to adopt that country, that dubious
utopia—that something which tends to be called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">culture</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nation</i>, and so
forth, and in which they have hitherto carved out their place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was their former situation, and I
believe that for Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann it had already long since ceased
to be a natural one and had become, rather, a situation that could be
maintained only in an attitude of utter despair. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But was it ever thus naturally?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did not this utopia of culture fortunately
contain a much purer element of utopia as a vector that will remain open to
pursuit when our culture no longer keeps up appearances on High Holy Days, when
literature [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dichtung</i>] is no longer
conceivable “as the spiritual region of the nation”—today this is basically
already an impossibility—but rather is obliged to recoil from the exile of Here
and Now into the unspiritual region of our doleful countries?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For this at least remains true: we must labor
with the bad language that we happen to discover, labor at this language
towards a language that has never yet ruled, but that rules our intuition and
that we imitate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is such a thing
as imitation in its bad sense, in the conventional sense; I am not referring to
that; and there is such a thing as the kind of imitation about which Jacob
Burckhardt spoke and from which conservative criticism profits nowadays, either
contentedly or reprovingly, imitation, reverberation as a destiny; and I am not
referring to that either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am
referring, rather, to an imitation of this very language surmised by us, a
language that we cannot bring into our possession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We possess it as a fragment in literature [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dichtung</i>], concretized in a line or a
scene, and we conceive ourselves as breathing freely within it in having attained
our voices through language.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">It is vital to continue
writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">We shall undoubtedly be
obliged to continue toiling away with this word, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">literature</i>, and with literature itself, with what it is and what we
think it is, and we shall still often be greatly vexed by the unreliability of
our critical instruments, by the net out of which literature will always
slip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But let us be glad that it
ultimately eludes us, glad for our own sakes, so that it remains vital and our
life coalesces with it in hours when we swap our breath with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Literature as a utopia—the writer as a utopian
existence, the utopian preconditions of the work-----<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">If one fine day the
questions that crave to follow those dashes could be properly formulated, we
could perhaps write the history of literature and our history with it again and
afresh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the individual who writes,
who has been residing in this unwritten history from time immemorial, seldom has
words for it and lives in the hope of the unbroken secret pact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such being the case, allow me to close with
the words of a writer [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dichter</i>] that
seem almost to have been written with what I have been trying to say in
mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are the words of the French
poet [<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dichter</i>] René Char: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">“With each collapse of
proofs the poet responds with a salvo of futurity.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">1.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">All
subsequent occurrences of <i>literature </i>are
likewise renditions of <i>Literatur</i>
unless otherwise indicated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left: .75in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">2.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">All
subsequent occurrences of <i>writer(s)</i> are
likewise renditions of <i>Schriftsteller</i>
unless otherwise indicated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #181716; font-family: "georgia" , "serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: Georgia; mso-fareast-font-family: Georgia;">THE END<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2018 by Douglas
Robertson</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , "sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "serif";">Source: Ingeborg Bachmann, <i>Frankfurter Vorlesungen.
Probleme zeitgenössischer Dichtung</i> [<i>Frankfurt Lectures</i>. <i>Problems
in Contemporary Literature</i>], Munich and Berlin: Piper, 2016. This is
the last of a series of five lectures that Bachmann delivered at Goethe
University Frankfurt during the 1959-1960 winter semester and recorded for
Bavarian Radio in April 1960.</span></div>
Douglas Robertsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06195660217530594218noreply@blogger.com1