Balthazar’s encounter with Arnauti in Venice. The violet sunglasses, the torn overcoat, pockets full of crumbs to feed the pigeons. The scene in Florian’s. The shuffling walk of general paralysis. Conversations on the balcony of the little
* * *
The northern journey of Narouz, and the great battle of the sticks.
Smyrna. The manuscripts, The Annals of Time. The theft.
SOME NOTES FOR CLEA (by Pursewarden)
*
Big advances are not made by analytical procedures but by direct vision. Yes, but
* * *
Art is not art unless it threatens your very existence. Could you repeat that, please, more slowly?
* * *
As you get older and want to die more a strange kind of happiness seizes you; you suddenly realize that all art must end in a celebration. This is what drives the impotent mad with rage. They cannot provoke that fruitful compulsion of the Present, even though their scrotums be as hairy as Cape Gooseberries.
* * *
* * *
Language is not an accident of poetry but the essence. The lingo is the nub.
* * *
A
With member more or less erect,
Snake-worship is the creed I hold
And shall do till I get too old.
The saucy serpent symbolizes
A hundred Freudian surprises;
With mine, I do the Indian trick
Though it’s become a shade too thick
To stand up like an actual rope —
I leave that to the Band of Hope.
Nor can I manage kundalini
And play on it like Paganini …
Mere beanstalk with a tower atop
I’m just like Jack, I cannot stop,
Hand over curious hand I climb
Until I hear the belfries chime
And some companionable she
Asks is there honey still for tea?
* * *
Perhaps it would be better just to start rewriting La Rochefoucauld, beginning with some such aphorism as ‘
* * *
You must put yourself into deep soak, psychologically speaking.
* * *
A phrase from Bacon: ‘Prize bulls made fierce by dark keeping.’
* * *
Ah, my compatriots! What shall it profit a man to become a utilitarian jujube — to go thrilling off each morning in his electric brougham to the offices of the
* * *
To become a poet is to take the whole field of human knowledge and human desire for one’s province; yes but, this field can only be covered by continual inner abdications.
* * *
The more I read of those artists who have reached the bounds of human knowledge — and there is a permissible bound to the humanly knowable — the more it becomes apparent to me that statement becomes simpler as it becomes profounder. Finally it becomes platitude. At this point one begins to understand the religious claim that only initiates can communicate with each other because they use, not concept but symbol. For them all speech based on concept becomes an indiscretion; one can only really exchange what is mutually understood. In this sense every work of art is an indiscretion — but a
* * *
Death is a metaphor; nobody dies to himself.
* * *
There must always be a breath of hope if you are to fully enjoy the quality of our despair; yes, and also remember that where there is faith there is doubt.
* * *
Art is as unimportant as banking, unless it comes from a spirit in free play — then it really is banking.
* * *
Vision is exorcism.
NOTES IN THE TEXT
*
THE AFTERNOON SUN
This little room, how well I know it!
Now they’ve rented this and the next door one
As business premises, the whole house
Has been swallowed up by merchants’ offices,
By limited companies and shipping agents …
O how familiar it is, this little room!
Once here, by the door, stood a sofa,
And before it a little Turkish carpet.
Exactly here. Then the shelf with the two
Yellow vases, and on the right of them:
No. Wait. Opposite them (how time passes)
The shabby wardrobe and the little mirror.
And here in the middle the table
Where he always used to sit and write.
And round it the three cane chairs.
How many years … And by the window over there
The bed we made love on so very often.
