Book TWO Part 6 Chapter 41

[Maggie] After which while Amerigo watched her, and in fact quite because of it, she had an inspiration, to which she presently yielded. If he was wondering what she would say next she had found exactly the thing. “In that case he will leave you Charlotte to take care of in our absence. You’ll have to carry her off somewhere for your last evening; unless you may prefer to spend it with her here. I shall then see that you dine, that you have everything, quite beautifully. You’ll be able to do as you like.”

[Maggie, Prince] They were all, apparently, queer for him, but she had at least, with the lapse of the months, created the perception that there might be something in them; whereby he stared there, beautiful and sombre, at what she was at present providing him with.

[Maggie to Prince of Charlotte] This was eminent sense, but it didn’t arrest the Princess, who, the next moment, had found a form for her challenge. “But shan’t you then so much as miss her a little? She’s wonderful and beautiful, and I feel somehow as if she were dying. Not really, not physically,” Maggie went on—”she’s so far, naturally, splendid as she is, from having done with life. But dying for us—for you and me; and making us feel it by the very fact of there being so much of her left.”

“You spoke just now of Charlotte’s not having learned from you that I ‘know.’ Am I to take from you then that you accept and recognise my knowledge?”
He did the inquiry all the honours—visibly weighed its importance and weighed his response. “You think I might have been showing you that a little more handsomely?”
“It isn’t a question of any beauty,” said Maggie; “it’s only a question of the quantity of truth.”
“Oh, the quantity of truth!” the Prince richly, though ambiguously, murmured.
“That’s a thing by itself, yes. But there are also such things, all the same, as questions of good faith.”
“Of course there are!” the Prince hastened to reply. After which he brought up more slowly: “If ever a man, since the beginning of time, acted in good faith!” But he dropped it, offering it simply for that.

He was so near now that she could touch him, taste him, smell him, kiss him, hold him; he almost pressed upon her, and the warmth of his face—frowning, smiling, she mightn’t know which; only beautiful and strange—was bent upon her with the largeness with which objects loom in dreams. She closed her eyes to it, and so, the next instant, against her purpose, she had put out her hand, which had met his own and which he held.

Book TWO Part 6 Chapter 42

The question of the amount of correction to which Charlotte had laid herself open rose and hovered, for the instant, only to sink, conspicuously, by its own weight; so high a pitch she seemed to give to the unconsciousness of questions, so resplendent a show of serenity she succeeded in making. The shade of the official, in her beauty and security, never for a moment dropped; it was a cool, high refuge, like the deep, arched recess of some coloured and gilded image, in which she sat and smiled and waited, drank her tea, referred to her husband and remembered her mission. Her mission had quite taken form—it was but another name for the interest of her great opportunity—that of representing the arts and the graces to a people languishing, afar off, in ignorance

[‘His sentiment’ =Adam’s] The tenderness represented for her by his sacrifice of such a treasure had become, to her sense, a part of the whole infusion, of the immortal expression; the beauty of his sentiment looked out at her, always, from the beauty of the rest, as if the frame made positively a window for his spiritual face: she might have said to herself, at this moment, that in leaving the thing behind him, held as in her clasping arms, he was doing the most possible toward leaving her a part of his palpable self.

[Of Charlotte] “Oh, but naturally!” On which, as the warranted truth of it hung in the air—the truth warranted, as who should say, exactly by the present opportunity to pronounce, this opportunity created and accepted—she found herself lost, though with a finer thrill than she had perhaps yet known, in the vision of all he might mean. The sense of it in her rose higher, rose with each moment that he invited her thus to see him linger; and when, after a little more, he had said, smoking again and looking up, with head thrown back and hands spread on the balcony rail, at the grey, gaunt front of the house, “She’s beautiful, beautiful!” her sensibility reported to her the shade of a new note. It was all she might have wished, for it was, with a kind of speaking competence, the note of possession and control; and yet it conveyed to her as nothing till now had done the reality of their parting. They were parting, in the light of it, absolutely on Charlotte’s VALUE—the value that was filling the room out of which they had stepped as if to give it play, and with which the Prince, on his side, was perhaps making larger acquaintance. If Maggie had desired, at so late an hour, some last conclusive comfortable category to place him in for dismissal, she might have found it here in its all coming back to his ability to rest upon high values. Somehow, when all was said, and with the memory of her gifts, her variety, her power, so much remained of Charlotte’s! What else had she herself meant three minutes before by speaking of her as great? Great for the world that was before her—that he proposed she should be: she was not to be wasted in the application of his plan. Maggie held to this then—that she wasn’t to be wasted. To let his daughter know it he had sought this brief privacy. What a blessing, accordingly, that she could speak her joy in it! His face, meanwhile, at all events, was turned to her, and as she met his eyes again her joy went straight. “It’s success, father.

A compilation of excerpts from the main passages in which ‘The Fear’ is discussed in Kafka’s letter’s to Milena. Some passages of especial interest to me were:

• Letter of Milena to Max Brod, Jan.-Feb., 1921. Maybe the most direct statement about ‘the fear’, Milena calls it a fear of all that’s “shamelessly alive.” (How does this comport with Kafka’s idea of what the fear is?)
• Letter of Kafka to Milena, Aug., 1920. Kafka’s most involved statement, the letter contrasts fear and longing and discusses a casual affair Kafka had with a shop girl.
• Letter of Kafka to Milena, Aug. 1920. Kafka mentions that his story ‘The Judgment’ has very much to do with the fear. (Another of his now published works mentioned in this connection is his letter to his father –see the letters of June & Aug. 1920.)

Elsewhere, he calls it the fear “inherent in all faith since time began” and in another place compares it to a spouse. The translator is Philip Boehm; the page numbers refer to the Shocken edition.

[43, June 12, 1920] “I cannot determine whether you still want to see me after my letters of Wednesday and Thursday; I know my relationship to you (you belong to me, even if I should never see you again) […] these I know, insofar as they do not fall into the indistinct realm of fear, but I don’t know your relationship to me at all; this belongs entirely to fear. Nor do you know me — I repeat this, Milena.”

[45, June 13, 1920] “(understand, Milena, my age, the fact that I am used up, and, above all, my fear, and understand your youth, your vivacity, your courage. And my fear is actually growing, since it is a sign of my retreating from the world; which causes the world in turn to exert more pressure, which causes a further increase in fear; your courage, however, indicates an advance, hence a decrease in pressure, hence an increase in courage)

[45, the same letter] “But whenever these letters come, Milena […], then, Milena, I literally start to shake as if under an alarm bell; I am unable to read them and naturally I read them anyway, the way an animal dying of thirst drinks, and with that comes fear and more fear; I look for a piece of furniture to crawl under; trembling, totally unaware of the world, I pray you might fly back out of the window the way you came storming in inside your letter. After all, I can’t keep a storm in my room; in these letters you undoubtedly have the magnificent head of Medusa, the snakes of terror are quivering about your head so wildly, while the snakes of fear quiver even more wildly about my own.”

[pp. 56, June 23, 1920] “The only thing I do fear –and I fear this with my eyes wide open, I am drowning in this fear, helpless (if I could sleep as deeply as I sink into fear I would no longer be alive) — is this inner conspiracy against myself (which the letter to my father will help you understand better, although not entirely, since the letter is much too focused on its purpose), which is based on the fact that I, who am not even the pawn of a pawn in the great chess game, far from it, now want to take the place of the queen, against all the rules and to the confusion of the game– I, the pawn of a pawn, a piece which doesn’t even exist, which isn’t even in the game– and next I may want to take the king’s place as well or even the whole board. Moreover, if that were what I really wanted, it would have to happen in some other, even more inhuman way. That’s why the suggestion I made to you means more to me than it does to you. At the moment it’s the only thing beyond doubt, the only thing not sicklied over, the only thing which makes me unconditionally happy.”

[86-7, July 15, 1920 / whole letter] “Just briefly before I leave for the office: I didn’t want to say anything, at least now, while you are fighting this terrible battle- I’ve been choking on it for 3 days — but it’s impossible not to, I have to, after all it’s my battle as well. You may have noticed that I haven’t slept for several nights. It’s simply the “fear.” It really is stronger than I am, it tosses me around at will, I don’t know up from down anymore or right from left. This time it began with Stasa. There truly is a sign above her saying: “Abandon all hope ye who enter here,” Besides that, there were 2,3 remarks which got mixed up in your last letter. These remarks made me happy, but only despairingly so, since although what you say about the fear is very persuasive –to mind, heart, and body all at once– I have an even deeper conviction– I don’t know exactly where- which evidently nothing can persuade. Finally –this really contributed to weaken me– the wonderful calming-uncalming effect left by your physical presence is wearing off as the days go by. If only you were already here! As it is I have no one, no one here except the fear, together we roll through the nights locked in each other’s arms. This fear is really something very serious which strangely enough was always only directed at the future, no, that’s not right. Moreover, it is partly explained by the fact that it constantly forces me to realize I must admit–and this is a great confession–that Milena, too, is only human, What you say about this is really very beautiful and kind–having hear that I would want to hear anything else; nevertheless, to maintain that the stakes here are not very high is a very questionable assertion. After all, this fear is not merely my private fear –although it also, terribly enough– but it is also the fear inherent in all faith since time began.
………..Just having written you that cools my head.”

[pp.90, July 16, 1920] “There was no letter today, but I’m not afraid, Milena, please don’t misunderstand me; I’m never afraid about you, even if it sometimes seems that way and it often does –it’s simply a weakness, a mood of the heart, which knows exactly why it’s beating nevertheless. Giants have their weaknesses as well; I believe even Hercules fainted once. With my teeth clenched, however, and with your eyes before I can endure anything: distance, anxiety, worry, letterlessness. […] To continue what I was saying above: With you in my heart I can bear everything, and even if I did write that the days without letters were horrifying, it’s not true; they were just horribly difficult — the boat was heavy and it’s draught was horribly deep, but on your tide it floated nonetheless. There’s only one thing I cannot bear without your express help, Milena: the “fear.” I’m much too weak for that, it’s so immense I cannot see beyond it– and this monstrous flood is washing me away.
………..“What you say about Jarmila is precisely one of those weakness of the heart; your heart stops being true to me just for a moment and that’s when such an idea pops into your head. In this sense are we still two different people? And is my ‘fear’ much different than the fear of self-abuse?”

[96-97, July 19, 1920] Fourth, all the doubts you so quietly express concerning the trip to Prague are correct. ‘Correct’ is also what I wired, although there it referred to speaking with your husband, and that was indeed the only correct thing to do. This morning, for instance, I suddenly began to fear, to fear out of love, to fear in anguish that you might come to Prague, misled by some trivial, accidental whim.”

[100-01, July 21, 1920] “Furthermore: it’s not a question of what will happen later on, the only certainty is that I cannot live apart from you without completely submitting to fear, giving it even more than it demands, and I do this voluntarily, with delight, I pour myself into it.
………..“You are right to reproach me in the name of fear for my behavior in Vienna, but this fear is particularly mysterious; I do not know its inner laws, only its hand on my throat –and that really is the most terrible thing I have ever experienced or could experience.
………..“Perhaps the logical conclusion is that we’re both married: you in Vienna, I to my fear in Prague, in which case you’re not the only one tugging vain at marriage. For you see, Milena, if you had been completely convinced by me in Vienna (even agreeing to take that step of which you were unsure), you would no longer in Vienna in spite of everything: oor rather in that case there would not be an ‘in spite of everything’ — you’d simply be in Prague. Moreover, everything you console yourself with in your last letter really is mere consolation. Don’t you agree?
………..“Had you come to Prague right away or had you at least decided right away to do so, it would still not have served as any proof for you — I don’t need any proofs for you; there is nothing in my mind as clear and certain as you. but it would have been a tremendous proof for me and this is what I’m missing now. Occasionally the fear feeds on this lack as well.
………..“In fact it may even be much worse and I myself, the ‘savior,’ may be tying you down in Vienna like no one else has ever done.”

[pp.146-148, Aug 8-9, 1920] “I’ll try answering the question of ‘strach–toucha [footnote: fear–longing]’. I probably won’t succeed in my first attempt, but if I keep coming back to it, I may manage after several letters. It would help if you read my (incidentally bad and unnecessary) letter to my father. Maybe I’ll take it along to Gmund.
………..“If we restrict ‘fear’ and ‘longing’ the way you do in your last letter, the question is not easy, but very simple to answer. In that case I ONLY have ‘fear.’ It’s like this:
………..“I recall the first night. At the time we lived in the Zeltnergasse, opposite a clothing store, a shopgirl was always in the door. I was constantly pacing back and forth in my room upstairs, a little over 20 years old, nervously preparing for the first State examination, trying to cram facts that made no sense to me into my head. It was summer, very hot, probably this time of year, completely unbearable. I kept stopping in front of the window, my mouth full of disgusting Roman law; finally we came to an understanding using sign language. I was to pick her up at 8:00, but when I went down that even somebody else was already there. That didn’t really change much, however; I was afraid of the whole world, hence afraid of this man as well; I also would have been afraid of him had he not been there. Although the girl did indeed take his arm, she nonetheless gave signs for me to follow them. This way we came to the Schutzeninsel, where we all drank beer; I sat at the next table. They then walked to the girl’s apartment, slowly, with me in tow; it was somewhere near the Fleischmarkt. There the man took his leave, the girl ran into the house, I waited for a while for her to reappear and then we went to a hotel on the Kleinseite. It was all enticing, exciting, and disgusting, even before we reached the hotel, and it wasn’t any different inside. And as we walked home over the Karlsbrucke toward morning –it was still hot and beautiful– I was actually happy, but this happiness was only because my eternally grieving body had given me some peace at last, and above all because the whole thing had not been more disgusting, more dirty than it was. I met the girl once again –2 nights later, I think — everything went as well as the first time, but then right away I left for the summer holidays. In the country I played around a bit with another girl, and could no longer bear the sight of the shopgirl in Prague; I never spoke to her again, she had become (from my point of view) my evil enemy, although in reality she was friendly and good-natured. She kept on following me with her uncomprehending eyes. And although the girl had done something slightly disgusting in the hotel (not worth mentioning), had said something slightly obscene ( not worth mentioning), I don’t mean to say this was the sole reason for my animosity (in fact, I’m sure it wasn’t); nonetheless the memory remained. I knew then and there I would never forget it and at the same time I knew –or thought I knew– that deep down, this disgust and filth were a necessary part of the whole, and it was precisely this (which she had indicated to me by one slight action, one small word) which had drawn me with such amazing force into this hotel, which I would have otherwise avoided with all my remaining strength.
………..And it’s stayed that way ever since. My body, often quiet for years, would then again be shaken by this longing for some very particular, trivial, disgusting thing, something slightly repulsive, embarrassing, obscene, which I always found even in the best cases — some insignificant odor, a little bit of sulfur, a little bit of hell. This urge had something of the eternal Jew — senselessly being drawn along, senselessly wandering through a senselessly obscene world.
………..On the other hand there were times when my body wasn’t calm, when actually nothing was calm, but when I nonetheless felt no pressure whatsoever; life was good, peaceful, it’s only unease was hope (do you know a better one?). I was always alone at such times, for as long as they lasted. Now for the first time in my life I am encountering such times when I am not alone. This is why not only your physical proximity but you yourself are quieting-disquieting. This is why I don’t have any longing for smut (during the first half of my stay in Meran I kept making plans day and night –against my own clear will– about how I could seduce the chambermaid– and even worse. Toward the end of my stay a very willing girl ran right into my arms; I more or less had to translate her words into my own language before I could even begin to understand her). More to the point, I just don’t see any smut — nothing of the kind that stimulates from the outside, but there is everything that can bring forth life from within; in short, there’s some of the air breathed in Paradise before the Fall. Enough of this air that there is no ‘longing,’ but not enough that there isn’t any ‘fear.’ — So now you know. And that’s also why I ‘feared’ a night in Gmund, but this was only the usual ‘fear’ (which unfortunately is quite sufficient) I have in Prague as well; it wasn’t any special fear of Gmund.

[pp.150, Aug 9, 1920] ” Your most beautiful letters (and that’s saying a lot, since in their entirety as well as in almost every line, they are the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me) are the ones where you accept me ‘fear’ as justified and simulatneously attempt to explain why it isn’t necessary. Because deep down I also resemble a defense lawyer whom it has bribed: it really is a part of me and perhaps the best part. And since it’s the best part it may also be the only part you love. What else about me could be so loveable? But this is worthy of love.
………..“And when you once asked how I could have called that Saturday ‘good’ with this fear inside my heart, it isn’t difficult to explain. Because I love you (you see, I do love you, you dimwit, my love engulfs you the way the sea loves a tiny pebble on its bed– and may I be the pebble with you, heaven permitting) I love the whole world […]

[173. August 28, 1920] [Of The judgment]. “The translation of the final sentence is very good. Every sentence, every word, every –if I may say so– music in that story is connected with the ‘fear.’ It was then, during one long night, that the wound broke open for the first time, and in my opinion the translation catches this association exactly, with the magic hand which is yours.”

[194. September 14, 1920]. “This couldn’t last. Although you were stroking me with the kindest of hands, you had to recognize certain peculiarities pointing to the forest, my true home and origin. Next came the necessary and necessarily repeated discussions about the ‘fear,’ which tortured me (and you, but you were innocent), to the point of touching my raw nerve; the feeling kept growing inside me what an unclean pest I was for you, disturbing you everywhere, always getting in your way.”

[219. November 1920]. ” I keep trying to convey something that cannot be conveyed, to explain something that cannot be explained, something in my bones, which can only be experience in these same bones. In essence it may be nothing more than that fear we have already discussed so often, but extended to everything, fear of the greatest things as well as the smallest, fear, convulsive fear of pronouncing a single word. On the other hand, maybe this fear isn’t simply fear, but also longing for something greater than anything that can inspire fear.
………..“‘Dashed to pieces on me’ is utter nonsense. Only I am at fault, because there was too little truth on my part, still far too little truth, still mostly lies, lies told out of fear of myself and fear of people […]”

[248, 249/ Milena to Max Brod, Jan-Feb, 1921]. “I understand his fear down in my deepest nerve. Furthermore, it was always there, before he met me, all the time he didn’t know me. I knew his fear before I knew him. I armed myself against it by understanding it. In the four days Frank was next to me, he lost it. We laughed about it. I know for certain that no sanatorium will succeed in curing him. He will never be healthy, Max, as long as he has this fear. And no psychic reinforcement can overcome this fear, because the fear prevents the reinforcement. This fear doesn’t just apply to me; it relates to everything that is shamelessly alive, also to the flesh, for example. Flesh is too uncovered; he can’t stand the sight of it. This is what I was able to dispel back then. Whenever he sensed this fear, he would look me in the eye, and we would wait a while, as if our feet hurt or we had to catch our breath, and after a moment it would pass […]

[The Same.] “If I could have brought myself to go with him, he would have been able to live happily with me. But it’s only today I realize all of this. At the time, I was an ordinary woman, like all women in the world, a small, impulsive female. And that is what led to his fear. It was correct. Is it possible for this man to feel anything that isn’t correct? He knows ten thousand times more about the world than everyone else. This fear of his was correct.”

A list suggested by Stuart Gilbert in his James Joyce’s Ulysses (though, looking casually, I think that ‘eye’ is mentioned about as much in this chapter as it is in others). Gutenberg.

292 (286): “I was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D.M.P at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye.” “Did you see that bloody chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his brush?”

295 (289): “Then he rubs his hand in his eye and says he: –What’s your opinion of the times?”

296 (290): “The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero.”

296 (290): “The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower.”

297 (291): “The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Joe Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O’Sullivan Beare.”

297 (291): “So anyhow Terry brought the three pints Joe was standing and begob the sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid O, as true as I’m telling you. A goodlooking sovereign.”

297 (291): “I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill land and Greek street with his cod’s eye counting up all the guts of the fish.”

298 (292): “And lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth […]”

299 (293): “The long fellow gave him an eye as good as a process and now the bloody old lunatic is gone round to Green Street to look for a G. man.”

299 (293): “Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here, Terry, give us a pony. That bloody old fool! Ten thousand pounds. You should have seen long John’s eye. U. p…”

303 (296): “The tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his bloody hat.”

303 (297): “So Bloom slopes in with his cod’s eye on the dog and he asks Terry was Martin Cunningham there.”

309 (302): Hand by the block stood the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which his eyes glowered furiously.

310 (303): Big strong men, officers of the peace and genial giants of the royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye in that record assemblage

311 (305): And one or two sky pilots having an eye around that there was no goings on with the females, hitting below the belt.

311 (305): “Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it and the hydrophobia dropping out of his jaws.”

312 (305): “We are not speaking so much of those delightful lovesongs with which the writer who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving world but rather (as a contributor D.O.C. points out in an interesting communication published by an evening contemporary) of the harsher and more personal note which is found in the satirical effusions of the famous Raferty and of Donald MacConsidine to say nothing of a more modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye.”

314 (307): And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the Catholic religion, and he serving mass in Adam and Eve’s when he was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new testament, and the old testament, and hugging and smugging.

315 (308): “Pisser Burke was telling me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears sometimes with Mrs. O’ Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of fat all over her. Couldn’t loosen her farting strings but old cod’s eye was waltzing around her showing her how to do it.”

318 (311): “What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and the training of the eye.”

319 (312): “The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and, when the bell went, came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime.”

320 (313): “Playing cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, drinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders.”

320 (314): “Compos your eye! says Alf, laughing.”

321 (314): “Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.”

321 (314): “The signor Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street.”

322 (315): “And begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Corny Kelleher with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin.”.

322 (315): “Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody blarney.”

322 (315): “Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.”

322 (316): “And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feast day of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law.”

325 (318): “So J.J. puts in a word doing the toff about one story was good till you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy putting your blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation and Bloom trying to back him up moderation and botheration and their colonies and their civilization.”

326 (319): “Some people, says, Bloom, can see the mote in others’ eyes but they can’t see the beam in their own.”

326 (320): “Europe has its eyes on you, says Lenehan.”

327 (320): “Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays […]”

327 (321): “And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen.”

331 (324): “Bloom was talking and talking with John Wyse and he quite excited with his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about.”

332 (325): “Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland’s Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Patrick, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness […]”

333 (326): Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye.

335 (328): Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a horse in anger in his life?

336 (329): “Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show.”

338 (331): “Not as much as would blind your eye.”

340 (332): “And all came with nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies, buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, stags’ horns, watertight boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills, unicorns.”

341 (334): “Courthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver.”

342 (335): “…and Jack Power trying to get him to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a patch over his eye starts singing If the man in the moon was a jew, jew, jew…”

343 (336): “Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he’d have left him for dead.”

344 (337): “From the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character.”

344 (337): “Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed south west by west.”

Wax
Ambiguities
directions scene
1…. 2…. 3…. 4 …. 5…. 6
Psalm 137 The Burrow respice finem
re: the reading experience. Hannah chart. tamarisk.

…

Although beneath mentioning, I was surprised not to see footnoted this apparent factual error in the blue octavo notebooks (kaiser/ Wilkins translation, pp.19):

“In order to be safe from the Sirens, Odysseus stopped his ears with wax and had himself chained to the mast.”

The siren adventure of the Odyssey is at book 12, lines 153-200 –Odysseus was tied to the mast, but it was his companions’ ears that were plugged.

It’s an error similar in kind to the one in America with the Statue of Liberty wielding a sword but.. on the subject of this being beneath mentioning, this humorous Pierre passage is offered:

As every evening, after his day’s writing was done, the proofs of the beginning of his work came home for correction, Isabel would read them to him. They were replete with errors; but preoccupied by the thronging, and undiluted, pure imaginings of things, he became impatient of such minute, gnat-like torments; he randomly corrected the worst, and let the rest go; jeering with himself at the rich harvest thus furnished to the entomological critics.

1.4 “In the country then Nature planted our Pierre; because Nature intended a rare and original development in Pierre. Never mind if hereby she proved ambiguous to him in the end; nevertheless, in the beginning she did bravely.”

2.2 “Whereupon, the young officers took it upon themselves to think—though they by no means presumed to breathe it—that they had authoritatively, though indirectly, accelerated a before ambiguous and highly incommendable state of affairs between the now affianced lovers.”

3.2 “Ay; but then, in ten minutes after your leaving them, all the houses in Saddle Meadows would be humming with the gossip of Pierre Glendinning engaged to marry Lucy Tartan, and yet running about the country, in ambiguous pursuit of strange young women. That will never do.”

3.2 “In such an hour it was, that chancing to encounter Lucy (her, whom above all others, he did confidingly adore), she heard the story of the face; nor slept at all that night; nor for a long time freed her pillow completely from wild, Beethoven sounds of distant, waltzing melodies, as of ambiguous fairies dancing on the heath.”

4.2 “And then, in her heart, she wondered how it was, that so excellent a gentleman, and so thoroughly good a man, should wander so ambiguously in his mind; and trembled to think of that mysterious thing in the soul, which seems to acknowledge no human jurisdiction, but in spite of the individual’s own innocent self, will still dream horrid dreams […]”

4.4 “[…]and the face in the picture still looked at them frankly, and cheerfully, as if there was nothing kept concealed; and yet again, a little ambiguously and mockingly, as if slyly winking to some other picture […]”

4.4 ” […] yet the cunning analysis in which such a mental procedure would involve him, never voluntarily transgressed that sacred limit, where his mother’s peculiar repugnance began to shade off into ambiguous considerations, touching any unknown possibilities in the character and early life of the original.”

4.5 “Consider this strange, ambiguous smile, Pierre; more narrowly regard this mouth. Behold, what is this too ardent and, as it were, unchastened light in these eyes, Pierre?”

4.5 “Consider; for a smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities, Pierre. When we would deceive, we smile; when we are hatching any nice little artifice, Pierre; only just a little gratifying our own sweet little appetites, Pierre; then watch us, and out comes the odd little smile.”

4.5 “[…] thus sometimes stood Pierre before the portrait of his father, unconsciously throwing himself open to all those ineffable hints and ambiguities, and undefined half-suggestions, which now and then people the soul’s atmosphere […]”

4.5 “But now, now!—Isabel’s letter read: swift as the first light that slides from the sun, Pierre saw all preceding ambiguities, all mysteries ripped open as if with a keen sword, and forth trooped thickening phantoms of an infinite gloom. Now his remotest infantile reminiscences—the wandering mind of his father—the empty hand, and the ashen—the strange story of Aunt Dorothea—the mystical midnight suggestions of the portrait itself; and, above all, his mother’s intuitive aversion, all, all overwhelmed him with reciprocal testimonies.”

5.1 “He looked up, and found himself fronted by the no longer wholly enigmatical, but still ambiguously smiling picture of his father.”

8.3 “For over all these things, and interfusing itself with the sparkling electricity in which she seemed to swim, was an ever-creeping and condensing haze of ambiguities.”

10.3 “But here we draw a vail. Some nameless struggles of the soul can not be painted, and some woes will not be told. Let the ambiguous procession of events reveal their own ambiguousness.”

12.3 “Face up, it met him with its noiseless, ever-nameless, and ambiguous, unchanging smile.”

12.3 “And as his father was now sought to be banished from his mind, as a most bitter presence there, but Isabel was become a thing of intense and fearful love for him; therefore, it was loathsome to him, that in the smiling and ambiguous portrait, her sweet mournful image should be so sinisterly becrooked, bemixed, and mutilated to him.”

12.3 “[…]now I know this, that in commonest memorials, the twilight fact of death first discloses in some secret way, all the ambiguities of that departed thing or person […]”

15.1 “Pierre thanked him kindly; but in certain little roguish ambiguities begged leave, on the ground of cloying, to return him inclosed by far the greater portion of his present […]”

15.2 “BUT little would we comprehend the peculiar relation between Pierre and Glen—a relation involving in the end the most serious results—were there not here thrown over the whole equivocal, preceding account of it, another and more comprehensive equivocalness, which shall absorb all minor ones in itself; and so make one pervading ambiguity the only possible explanation for all the ambiguous details.”

16.3 “The fellow—maliciously diverted by what had happened thus far—made some ambiguous and rudely merry rejoinder.”

18.2 “In the operative opinion of this world, he who is already fully provided with what is necessary for him, that man shall have more; while he who is deplorably destitute of the same, he shall have taken away from him even that which he hath. Yet the world vows it is a very plain, downright matter-of-fact, plodding, humane sort of world. It is governed only by the simplest principles, and scorns all ambiguities, all transcendentals, and all manner of juggling.”

19.1 “This dreary posture of affairs, however, was at last much altered for the better, by the gradual filling up of the vacant chambers on high, by scores of those miscellaneous, bread-and-cheese adventurers, and ambiguously professional nondescripts in very genteel but shabby black, and unaccountable foreign-looking fellows in blue spectacles; who, previously issuing from unknown parts of the world, like storks in Holland, light on the eaves, and in the attics of lofty old buildings in most large sea-port towns.”

23.3 “Pierre spoke not; he but listened; a terrible, burning curiosity was in him, that made him as heartless. But still all that she had said thus far was ambiguous.”

25.2 “And when these things now swam before him; when he thought of all the ambiguities which hemmed him in; the stony walls all round that he could not overleap; the million aggravations of his most malicious lot; the last lingering hope of happiness licked up from him as by flames of fire, and his one only prospect a black, bottomless gulf of guilt, upon whose verge he imminently teetered every hour;—then the utmost hate of Glen and Frederic were jubilantly welcome to him; and murder, done in the act of warding off their ignominious public blow, seemed the one only congenial sequel to such a desperate career.”

26.1 “With the aspect of the Cenci every one is familiar. “The Stranger” was a dark, comely, youthful man’s head, portentously looking out of a dark, shaded ground, and ambiguously smiling. There was no discoverable drapery; the dark head, with its crisp, curly, jetty hair, seemed just disentangling itself from out of curtains and clouds. But to Isabel, in the eye and on the brow, were certain shadowy traces of her own unmistakable likeness; while to Pierre, this face was in part as the resurrection of the one he had burnt at the Inn. Not that the separate features were the same; but the pervading look of it, the subtler interior keeping of the entirety, was almost identical; still, for all this, there was an unequivocal aspect of foreignness, of Europeanism, about both the face itself and the general painting.”

26.6 “‘Here, then, is the untimely, timely end;—Life’s last chapter well stitched into the middle! Nor book, nor author of the book, hath any sequel, though each hath its last lettering!—It is ambiguous still.'”

refers to a scene in Chapter 6 of the criterion collection edition.

Onodera asks, Is the sea on this side? and points across his body to his right. Shukichi says no, it’s on that side, nodding to his own right. And the shrine is that way, right? says Onodera, pointing sort of up and to his left. No, says Shukichi, and he points with his right arm ahead of him and to his left. Where’s Tokyo, says Onodera. Shukichi points with his right arm to his right, a bit behind him. So East is that direction, says Onodera pointing straight ahead. No that direction, says Shukichi, pointing with his right arm, ahead and to his right.

A difficulty I’m having with this is that looking at a map of Kamakura and environs [map] it seems as if Tokyo and the ocean should be on basically opposite sides, north and south, while Shukichi wants to have them on the same side and to the south (I don’t know whether I’m confused, which is likely, or if there is some other intention at work.) Perhaps interesting as well, this scene occurs between Noriko and Shukichi’s trip to Tokyo on the one hand and Noriko and Hattori’s trip to the seaside on the other (– incidentally, our first image of the sea, which is also the movie’s concluding image.)

(n.b. It doesn’t quite makes sense to say “orientation according to Onedera” in this chart, as probably Onodera’s sense of orientation changes with each new piece of information he gets from Shukichi as to the true location of things. Nevertheless, the above does indicate his expressed guesses about where things are –guesses which might be better than Shukichi’s.)

Plato’s Symposium, 189 A5:

πανυ γαρ ευθυς επαυσατο επειδη αυτω τον πταρμον προσηνεγκα.

πταρμος, m. A Sneeze… [For all at once it stopped when a sneeze came on]? (for it stopped directly when I brought a sneeze to it) (perseus)

Light in August, William Faulkner, pp.35

…………The newcomer turned without a word. The others watched him go down to the sawdust pile and vanish and reappear with a shovel and go to work. The foreman and the superintendent were talking at the door. They parted and the foreman returned. “His name is Christmas,” he said,
…………“His name is what?” one said.
…………“Christmas.”
…………“Is he a foreigner?”
…………“Did you ever hear of a white man named Christmas?” the foreman said.
…………“I never heard of nobody a-tall named it,” the other said.
…………And that was the first time Byron remembered that he had ever thought how a man’s name, which is supposed to be just the sound for who he is, can be somehow an augur of what he will do, if other men can only read the meaning in time.

The mention of a medallion hanging from a watch chain with the inscription respice finem in Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilyich reminded me of a watch with the same inscription in Wallace’s Good Old Neon. (Quotes Below). Perhaps the authors simply hit upon the same trope, but there are also thematic parallels to the stories (the falsity of living and of oneself, the revelation of death) which may indicate that Wallace, in making this reference, was consciously alluding to Tolstoy’s work.

*

“This falsity around and within him did more than anything else to poison his last days.”~Death of Ivan Ilyich

watch chain quotes. _{“Another of my stepmother’s treasured antiques was a silver pocket-watch of her maternal grandfather’s with the Latin RESPICE FINEM inscribed on the inside of the case.” (Good Old Neon.)}

_{“Ilych ordered himself clothes at Scharmer’s, the fashionable tailor, hung a medallion inscribed respice finem on his watch-chain” (Death of Ivan Ilyich)}

Probably not related but this part of a letter from Kafka to Milena (June 12, 1920) brought to mind his story The Burrow, which was written three years later. “What a terrible story,” he writes (speaking of something Max Brod had written him about)–

Once I caught a mole and carried him into the hops garden. When I tossed him on the ground he plunged into the earth like a madman, disappearing as if he had dived into water. That is how one would have to hide from this story.

And, a couple months later, pp. 138 of the Boehm translation, he writes these lines (speaking of his dashed hopes of seeing her):

I wouldn’t have to mention this at all, it’s just that I was so happy to find this narrow tunnel leading out of the dark apartment to you. I had thrown myself into it with all my soul, into this passageway which could […] lead to you but which instead runs smack into the impenetrable stone of Please-don’t-come. So now I have to turn back, again with all my soul, slowly return though the passage I had dug so quickly, and fill it in. That hurts a little, you see, but it can’t be all that bad, since I’m able to write about it in such a tedious manner. In the end one always finds new tunnels to burrow, old mole that one is.

From psalm 137:

5 If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,

let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;
if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

Because I’ve never understood Faulkner’s naming of If I Forget Three Jerusalem, I wonder if this Brothers Karamazov quote might have had to do with it. (Its themes of conception/ abortion contrasted with grief for a child’s death in Dostoyevsky). Garnett:

“I don’t want a good boy! I don’t want another boy!” he muttered in a wild whisper, clenching his teeth. “If I forget thee, Jerusalem, may my tongue….” He broke off with a sob and sank on his knees before the wooden bench. Pressing his fists against his head, he began sobbing with absurd whimpering cries, doing his utmost that his cries should not be heard in the room.

*
(Other literary references to Psalm 137.)

banausic netball weltanschauung
numerosity
americium
“I buy but few things,
and those till not lo
ng after I begin to w
ant them, so that whe
n I do get them I am
prepared to make a pe
rfect use of them and
extract their whole s
weet.”~Thoreau (Journ
als)

Thomas Pynchon, Against The Day (722):

As it turned out, however, this was too much to expect of Derrick Theign, who, ordinarily a bit more taciturn, now flew without warning into high-tessitura dismay, the moment Cyprian arrived at the pensione in Santa Croce loudly ejecting what would soon amount to gallons of mucus and saliva […].

Tessitura: the general pitch level or average range of a vocal or instrumental part in a musical composition: an uncomfortably high tessitura. (Pensione.)

Melville, The Bell Tower:

The casting of such a mass was deemed no small triumph for the caster; one, too, in which the state might not scorn to share. The homicide was overlooked. By the charitable that deed was but imputed to sudden transports of esthetic passion, not to any flagitious quality. A kick from an Arabian charger; not sign of vice, but blood.

Flagitious/ villainous.

The four mentions of the tamarisk in The Iliad (none in the Odyssey): [6.37-50]; [10.465-468]; [21.17-26];[21.342-355].

–Each time the tamarisk is mentioned it is involved in a scene of supplication: a combatant is captured and seen pleading for his life.

–In each of the four mentions it is a Trojan who is the supplicant, and an Achaian being supplicated, never the other way.

–In three of the four mentions it is a single Trojan supplicating two Achaians.

–In at least three of the four mentions there seems an underlying ambiguity as to how the scene will turn out: will the supplicant be treated mercifully?

–In three of the four mentions mercy is denied to the supplicant, resulting in his execution.

*
How the fourth mention of the tamarisk fits in with the others requires some additional explanation. But the principal differences are:

— they are not Trojans and Achaians per se, but their representatives from among the immortals (Hera and Hephaistos for the Achaians, Xanthos for the Trojans).

— the supplicant’s plea is granted (Hera tells Hephaistos to leave Xanthos alone, and he does.)

Additionally, it’s notable that the tamarisk (along with other plants) is said to be burnt in this mention. (Does that symbolize an end of merciless treatment toward supplicants as well.)… The Greek word translated as ‘tamarisk’ is murikay (μυρίκη) (a further note on this subject here).

A graphic to help have an idea of the movie. By low, high and middle art, I mean: rock/ television; classical/ painting; Jazz/ drama. (Though not apparent from the graphic it’s notable how people associated with one art form will confront people associated with other genres; for instance, Fredryck, the painter, watches television and meets a rock star. Holly, a fan of rock music, goes to the opera, etc.) Also, people on the right side evince a sort of resistance toward Hannah’s self-reliance and control, while on the left they are admiring and appreciate the order she gives.

doryphore
Diaspora
judder cannellini
Jugendstil…. Calgacus chaparral
junkettaceous ……………….. corny
Jambudvipa ………….. chryselephantine

A passage here in which Kierkegaard is speaking about how to read properly a devotional text, but I think there might be a broader secular application as well (an idea of how to read anything seriously-intended properly).

In the usual course of things, says Kierkegaard, a priest or devotional writer is viewed as a kind of actor and a congregation is like an audience sitting in judgment over whether the actor’s performance has been good or not.

But the way it should be, Eternity is the audience; the listener (reader) is the actor reciting to Eternity; and the author (priest) is a prompter (prompter) telling the listener which words to recite.

It may not make sense to substitute “novelist” for “speaker” in what’s below, but perhaps “reader” for “listener” does work, whatever is being read …. From Purity of Heart is To Will One Thing (Steere Translation, pp.180)

Alas, in regard to things spiritual, the foolishness of many is this, that they in the secular sense look upon the speaker as an actor, and the listeners as theater goers who are to pass judgment upon the artist. But the speaker is not the actor — not in the remotest sense. No, the speaker is the prompter. There are no mere theatergoers present, for each listener will be looking into his own heart. The stage is eternity, and the listener, if he is the true listener (and if not, he is at fault) stands before god during the talk. The prompter whispers to the actor what he is to say, but the actor’s repetition of it is the main concern — is the solemn charm of the art. The speaker whispers the word to the listeners. But the main conern is earnestness: that the listeners by themselves, with themselves, and to themselves, in the silence before God, may speak with the help of this address.

………
………