BERNEVAL

George Painter rewards the faithful reader of his biography of Marcel Proust. He elevates words of consolation from their specific and local context and turns them, by citing them at the end of a chapter called “The Prize”, into an emblem of the novelist’s oeuvre.

‘Keep what I said to you for the day when you will be able to use it,’ he wrote to Porel, ‘at present my words are meaningless for you, and may perhaps contradict bitter thoughts; but you will find them true, consoling and strengthening when you have made the journey from parting to memory, of which no one, alas, can spare you the cruel meanders.’ […] His words to Porel were not yet wholly true of himself.

The passage works because of the freight of grief that has accumulated. It means almost nothing decontextualized.

And so for day 249
20.08.2007

There is a fine ending to the first chapter of The Return of Martin Guerre by Natalie Zemon Davis. It underplays the ironies to come.

After an evening of banqueting, the couple was escorted to Bertrande’s marriage bed. Into their room at midnight burst the young village revellers […] carrying their “resveil.” Heavily seasoned with herbs and spices, the drink would ensure the newlyweds ardent mating and a fertile marriage.

It’s a marriage that produced a very long lived story, a fecundity of sorts.

Later when one considers the comment closing a later chapter one can appreciate further the imbricated ironies:

Here one can approve the cockolding of the once impotent and now faraway husband. Here Arnaud du Tilh becomes a kind of hero, a more real Martin Guerre than the hard-hearted man with the wooden leg. The tragedy is more in his unmasking than in his imposture.

And so for day 248
19.08.2007

It is a way of approaching the world in all its hermetic glory. It is a character describing another character’s writing. In Julia Kristeva’s The Samurai, Olga is describing a commentary she wrote about Sinteuil’s novel, Exodus.

Sinteuil saw a letter as a plastic image; a syllable as a symphony, and meaning as a torrent of sexual, political, and moral allusions.

My punctuation may be off. There may be more semicolons in there. Or less.

Overdetermined name, Exodus, for that which permits one to exit. Or rather entry into building, into a world of promise where holding a part is a passport to more. always on the way from “from” to “to”. Undetermined.

And so for day 247
18.08.2007

I have come across pieces of a project conceived back in 1997. It is no doubt inspired by the Quilt (the NAMES Project) and by the title of a line of poetry, “These waves of dying friends” from Michael Lynch.

In the comments in the HTML one finds the following remark.

– – PLEASE CHANGE BACKGROUND TO BLACK ON DEC. 1 (WORLD AIDS DAY) – –

And a set of simple instructions to achieve a certain look.

– – MAKE A SOUND FILE OF THE PERSON’S NAME
ANCHOR A LINK TO THE SOUND FILE ON BOTH SIDES OF THE NAME – –

The visual cues to the anchors were open and closed parentheses looking ever so much like sound waves.

My initial five names were

((( Jamie Perry )))

((( John Reeves )))

((( Michael Smith )))

((( Chris Ingold )))

((( Hal Tatelman )))

The Whispers Project is now mute. Its echoes reverberate.

And so for day 246
17.08.2007

R.D. Laing in the first chapter “Phantasy and Experience” in the collection of essays Self and Other takes up the 1952 work of Susan Isaacs “The nature and function of Phantasy”. Aside from whatever critique Laing mounts there is a very interesting statement in the summarized argument that deserves close attention:

The earliest phantasies are experienced as sensations: later they take the form of plastic images and dramatic representations.

This could be read as a syntagm: the sensation gives rise to a plastic image which in turn gives rise to a dramatic representation. Alternatively, the “and” can be read as a disjunction and lead to a non-succesive reading. The sensation gives rise to a plastic image or to a dramatic representation.

And now to speculate: a subsequent sensation is necessary to effect either the gelling into a plastic image or the move to a dramatic representation. A set of sensations is necessary to the transformation. Indeed in rereading Isaacs, one notices that the formulation of phantasies, plural, being experienced as sensations, plural, leaves open the possibility of a single phantasy being experienced as a set of sensations. Multiple sensations would be necessary to mediate the form taking whether of a plastic image or a dramatic representation. The multiple is the entry way into the domain of the comparable: up, down, before, after, etc. That which is open to comparison is situatable.

And it is intriguing that the next statement in the listing is concerned with localization:

Phantasies have both psychic and bodily effects, e.g. in conversion symptoms, bodily qualities, character and personality, neurotic symptoms, inhibitions and sublimations.

So much drama and so many plastic poses!

And so for day 243
14.08.2007

My copy of The Normal Heart by Larry Krammer came to me second hand and with it came a message from a previous reader. One single page in the whole of the book has been marked with a fold down the whole of the page, not a tiny dog ear in the corner, a fold down the length of the page. Page 105 folded over onto to page 106. There were no other marks or folds in this copy. The page is now unfolded; a crease remains. The previous reader marked the rhetorical and dramatic centre of the play. Scene 11, Act Two. The two antagonists embrace after one delivers a speech. The speech is delivered in two parts. Part one relates the battle to fly a person with AIDS to his mother. Airline pilot having refused to take off had to be replaced with another. The tale continues: the person with AIDS displays dementia; becomes incontinent; police van meets the plane with police in protective covering that made them look like astronauts; by the time the hospital is reached the object of attention has died. The stage direction is short but interpreted as full of compassion.

NED starts toward him.

There is more, other acts of discrimination. The speech continues with the aftermath of finding an undertaker willing to handle the body.

NED crosses to BRUCE and embraces him; BRUCE puts his arms around NED.

The play ends with another embrace after another death. (Ned and his brother Ben who too have been at odds).

The back cover copy positions the play as an indictment breaking the conspiracy of silence. Yes it is that. It is also testimony. Although, it may seem to call for rage, it enacts hope. It was important then.

And now by its sheer form it gives us beauty. Again.

Beauty, Rage and Love embracing in and through Art.

And so for day 242
13.08.2007