First proposition of the fifth book of Spinoza’s ethics…. Did I remember it (no, I did not remember it)–

Even as thoughts and the ideas of things are arranged and associated in the mind, so are the modifications of body or the images of things precisely in the same way arranged and associated in the body.

If modernism concerns the ordinary, the everyday, then how to explain Kafka as modern, or surrealism?

[i.] Dreaming is ordinary, therefore etc.
[ii.] The distortion of Kafka results from the effort to establish the truth of our emotional life in the midst of the ordinariness of family and commercial pressures.
[iii.] The ordinary almost by definition includes nothing strange, but does often include an appearance of strangeness.
[iv.] maybe surrealism and kafka has more to do with postmodernism than with the movement whose epicenters are Proust and Joyce.
[v.] Kafka is extremely geared to ordinariness in every respect (the turn of plot, the psychology and behavior of his characracters) but one: the conceit of his tales.
[vi.] The ordinary is, in fact, bizarre and surreal; it is only our habit of perception that makes them seem otherwise.

If modernism concerns the everyday, concerns today, then post modernism concerns the “right now” within the everyday, the ‘right now’ and ‘right here’ [Generally in the context of — here I am doing the same thing again; now what, again, is this ‘same thing’ I am doing? What can be said about this sameness, this finding myself in this position again] such that, for the artist, the making (the process) and the thing made have become conflated. [If I, as an artist, am concerned with the right now then, insofar as I am an artist, I must right now be in some way engaged with making art.] Is my doing by doing enough or must my doing somehow result in the done? In this conflation, like at the nodes of a sine curve, some have made their artistry that of “an actor on the loose” whiles others, sticking to older less demonstrative forms, seem attuned to how very much a moment can contain.

“People in these countries suffer from other people’s driving, other people’s manufacturing, other people’s attachment to things like flat screen TVs and Ipads that most Somalis and South Sudanese will touch only in their dreams…” [NYT]

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–Attire note. Like Miller’s Crossing and Against the Day, hats are a recurring theme of Sentimental Education of which a glimpse is to be found in that passage also.[1.4.39].) Dress hems and white cravates are two more frequently mentioned garments.)

–at Pellerin’s, one is presented with *two* paintings…. Other rooms that have so far had paintings (tableaux): the Arnoux store, and the office above it…

–I find it difficult to say if Frederic’s admiration of Pellerin’s paintings is sincere, or how to qualify his admiration. The general idea seems to be that Pellerin exhibited promise as an artist but was lead astray by thoughts of grandeur (not of his own grandeur, but of the grandeur of things). In this age, great things can’t get beyond the starting of them.

–having trouble for a couple reasons visualizing the lay out of the apartments above Arnoux’s shop. First Flaubert never mentions the three windows that are seen from outside the shop in his description of the interior of upstairs floor. Indeed, he mentions only window looking out on a courtyard. Second, as described here, Flaubert seems dramatically to require that there be two street entrances to the apartment when he has told us only of one… But I don’t think any of these descriptions exclude the possibility of the others, he leaves much of the upstairs undescribed.

–Is it important in some way that, from the outside, the upstairs is characterized by these three lighted windows while, when inside the upstairs room, one see only a small window, giving out on the courtyard?

All translations by Jeffrey Henderson, Loeb edition.
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Apple (μηλος): [1264-1271]. Barley meal (αλφιτα): [300-303]; [1304-1306]. Barley (καχρυς): [1304-1306]. Barley, (κριθη): [715-718]. Cumin: “cress-and-cumin peeling skinflint” [1351-1359]. Fig, (συκα): (adjectival form) “impeach wood” [144-145]; [300-303]; “impeach wood” [894-897].Dried Fig, (ιςχας): [293-298]. Fig Leaves (θριον): [433-436]. Garlic (σκοροδον): head of [673-679]; [1170-1172]. Grain, (σιτον): [715-718]. Grapes (βοτρυς): [448-452]. Hellebore (‘ελλεβορος): [1484-1489]; “Mustard” (καρδαμον): [453-455]; “cress-and-cumin peeling skinflint” [1351-1359]. Olive tree (ελαα): [448-452]; olive picker [706-712]. Pomegranate (ροα): [1264-1271]. Sesame (σησαμα): [673-679]. Vine (αμπελος): [1284-1291]. Vine, (ψευδαμαμαξυς): “bastard vine” [317-326]. Wheat (πυρος): [1401-1405].

General References: nut (καρυον) [56-61];whey w/ fig juice [350-353]; “onion” (ηδυσμα), vegetable seller (λαχανοπωλης) [488-499]; gruel [736-742.]; vine poles [1197-1204]; vine pole [1284-1291]; ]bran pile [1299-1315].

” It was the truth, vivid and monstrous, that all the while he had waited the wait was itself his portion”… The Beast in the Jungle.

The idea that Faulkner’s long parenthetical sentence became Wallace’s long footnotes and endnotes, but that maybe footnotes are working their way back into the body of the text.

Possibly the footnotes have become the main text (the footnote having replaced the footnoted?), possibly the footnotes are italicized in the main text or been made equivalent to it in other ways (the distinction between what is essential and what is by-the-way having been blurred or obliterated?), possibly the footnoted has been, as it were, impregnated with the footnote, so that the footnote exists within the footnote as something implied. (Question: is a footnote a mark of writing not thoroughly thought through in advance, either as a positive –stream of consciousness– or a negative? Is the very idea of the footnote one of ‘afterthought’?)

Jamais souverain pontife ne s’était permis un discours d’une telle sévérité envers sa propre maison. Le pape François a dressé, lundi 22 décembre, un « catalogue » de quinze maladies qui menacent le haut clergé, et plus particulièrement la curie (le gouvernement de l’Eglise), parmi lesquelles la mondanité, l’hyperactivité, les rivalités, les bavardages, les calomnies et la zizanie…. [Monde] [Curia ]

*

Son diagnostic est tombé à coup de formules chocs : « L’Alzheimer spirituel », « la fossilisation mentale et spirituelle », « le cœur de pierre », « le terrorisme des bavardages », « la schizophrénie existentielle », « le narcissisme faux », « la planification d’expert-comptable », « les rivalités pour la gloire », les « faces funèbres », « l’orchestre qui émet des fausses notes »…

Appelant les évêques et cardinaux à laisser « l’Esprit saint » inspirer leurs actions, il a souligné que « la guérison [était] le fruit de la prise de conscience de la maladie ».