Don´t use the telephone.
People are never ready to answer it.
Use poetry.
Birds singing
in the dark
—Rainy dawn.
***
The taste
of rain
—Why kneel?
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Monday, November 28, 2011
Jack Kerouac- American Haiku
Early morning yellow flowers,
thinking about
the drunkards of Mexico.
No telegram today
only more leaves
fell.
Nightfall,
boy smashing dandelions
with a stick.
Holding up my
purring cat to the moon
I sighed.
Drunk as a hoot owl,
writing letters
by thunderstorm.
Empty baseball field
a robin
hops along the bench.
All day long
wearing a hat
that wasn't on my head.
Crossing the football field
coming home from work -
the lonely businessman.
After the shower
among the drenched roses
the bird thrashing in the bath.
Snap your finger
stop the world -
rain falls harder.
Nightfall,
too dark to read the page
too cold.
Following each other
my cats stop
when it thunders.
Wash hung out
by moonlight
Friday night in May.
The bottoms of my shoes
are clean
from walking in the rain.
Glow worm
sleeping on this flower -
your light's on.
thinking about
the drunkards of Mexico.
No telegram today
only more leaves
fell.
Nightfall,
boy smashing dandelions
with a stick.
Holding up my
purring cat to the moon
I sighed.
Drunk as a hoot owl,
writing letters
by thunderstorm.
Empty baseball field
a robin
hops along the bench.
All day long
wearing a hat
that wasn't on my head.
Crossing the football field
coming home from work -
the lonely businessman.
After the shower
among the drenched roses
the bird thrashing in the bath.
Snap your finger
stop the world -
rain falls harder.
Nightfall,
too dark to read the page
too cold.
Following each other
my cats stop
when it thunders.
Wash hung out
by moonlight
Friday night in May.
The bottoms of my shoes
are clean
from walking in the rain.
Glow worm
sleeping on this flower -
your light's on.
მე შენში მიყვარს ოცნება ჩემი
ორგაზმის კიდევ ერთი დაუსრულებელი დოზა................
რაც უფრო შორს ხარ - მით უფრო ვტკბები!
მე შენში მიყვარს ოცნება ჩემი.
ხელუხლებელი - როგორც მზის სხივი,
მიუწვდომელი - როგორც ედემი.
და თუ არა ხარ ის, ვისაც ვფიქრობ, -
მე დღეს არ ვნაღვლობ, დაე, ვცდებოდე!
ავადმყოფ გულს სურს, რომ მას ოცნების
თეთრ ანგელოზად ევლინებოდე.
დაიწვას გული უცნაურ ტრფობით,
ცრემლით აივსოს ზღვა-საწყაული -
ოღონდ მჯეროდეს მე ჩემი ბოდვა
და სიყვარულის დღესასწაული.
1908
რაც უფრო შორს ხარ - მით უფრო ვტკბები!
მე შენში მიყვარს ოცნება ჩემი.
ხელუხლებელი - როგორც მზის სხივი,
მიუწვდომელი - როგორც ედემი.
და თუ არა ხარ ის, ვისაც ვფიქრობ, -
მე დღეს არ ვნაღვლობ, დაე, ვცდებოდე!
ავადმყოფ გულს სურს, რომ მას ოცნების
თეთრ ანგელოზად ევლინებოდე.
დაიწვას გული უცნაურ ტრფობით,
ცრემლით აივსოს ზღვა-საწყაული -
ოღონდ მჯეროდეს მე ჩემი ბოდვა
და სიყვარულის დღესასწაული.
1908
Thursday, October 27, 2011
First Surrealist Manifesto
From Le Manifeste du Surréalisme, 1924
ANDRÉ BRETON
We are still living under the reign of logic, but the logical processes of our time apply only to the solution of problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism which remains in fashion allows for the consideration of only those facts narrowly relevant to our experience. Logical conclusions, on the other hand, escape us. Needless to say, boundaries have been assigned even to ex- perience. It revolves in a cage from which release is becoming increasingly difficult. It too depends upon immediate utility and is guarded by common sense. In the guise of civilization, under the pretext of progress, we have suc- ceeded in dismissing from our minds anything that, rightly or wrongly, could be regarded as superstition or myth; and we have proscribed every way of seeking the truth which does not conform to convention. It would appear that it is by sheer chance that an aspect of intellectual life - and by far the most important in my opinion — about which no one was supposed to be concerned any longer has, recently, been brought back to light. Credit for this must go to Freud. On the evidence of his discoveries a current of opinion is at last developing which will enable the explorer of the human mind to extend his investigations, since he will be empowered to deal with more than merely summary realities. Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights. If the depths of our minds conceal strange forces capable of augmenting or conquering those on the surface, it is in our greatest interest to capture them; first to capture them and later to submit them, should the occasion arise, to the control of reason. The analysts themselves can only gain by this. But it is im- portant to note that there is no method fixed a priori for the execution of this enterprise, that until the new order it can be considered the province of poets as well as scholars, and that its success does not depend upon the more or less capricious routes which will be followed.
It was only fitting that Freud should appear with his critique on the dream. In fact, it is incredible that this important part of psychic activity has still attracted so little attention. (For, at least from man's birth to his death, thought presents no solution of continuity; the sum of dreaming moments - even taking into consideration pure dream alone, that of sleep - is from the point of view of time no less than the sum of moments of reality, which we shall confine to waking moments.) I have always been astounded by the extreme disproportion in the importance and seriousness assigned to events of the waking moments and to those of sleep by the ordinary observer. Man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all at the mercy of his memory, and the memory normally delights in feebly retracing the circumstance of the dream for him, depriving it of all actual consequence and obliterating the only determinant from the point at which he thinks he abandoned this constant hope, this anxiety, a few hours earlier. He has the illusion of continuing something worthwhile. The dream finds itself relegated to a parenthesis, like the night. And in general it gives no more counsel than the night. This singular state of affairs seems to invite a few reflections:
1. Within the limits to which its performance is restricted (or what passes for performance), the dream, according to all outward appearances, is continuous and bears traces of organization. Only memory claims the right to edit it, to suppress transitions and present us with a series of dreams rather than the dream. Similarly, at no given instant do we have more than a distinct representation of realities whose co-ordination is a matter of will.(1) It is important to note that nothing leads to a greater dissipation of the constituent elements of the dream. I regret discussing this according to a formula which in principle ex- cludes the dream. For how long, sleeping logicians, philosophers? I would like to sleep in order to enable myself to surrender to sleepers, as I surrender to those who read me with their eyes open, in order to stop the conscious rhythm of my thought from prevailing over this material. Perhaps my dream of last night was a continuation of the preceding night's, and will be continued tonight with an admirable precision. It could be, as they say. And as it is in no way proven that, in such a case, the 'reality' with which I am concerned even exists in the dream state, or that it does not sink into the immemorial, then why should I not concede to the dream what I sometimes refuse to reality - that weight of self-assurance which by its own terms is not exposed to my denial? Why should I not expect more of the dream sign than I do of a daily increasing degree of consciousness? Could not the dreams as well be applied to the solution of life's fundamental problems? Are these problems the same in one case as in the other, and do they already exist in the dream? Is the dream less oppressed by sanctions than the rest? I am growing old and, perhaps more than this reality to which I believe myself confined, it is the dream, and the detachment that I owe to it, which is ageing me.
2 I return to the waking state. I am obliged to retain it as a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind show a strange tendency to disorientation under these conditions (this is the clue to slips of the tongue and lapses of all kinds whose secret is just beginning to be surrendered to us), but when function- ing normally the mind still seems to obey none other than those suggestions which rise from that deep night I am commending. Sound as it may be, its equilibrium is relative. The mind hardly dares express itself and, when it does, is limited to stating that this idea or that woman has an effect on it. What effect it cannot say; thus it gives the measure of its subjectivism and nothing more. The idea, the woman, disturbs it, disposes it to less severity. Their role is to isolate one second of its discappearance and remove it to the sky in that glorious acceleration that it can be, that it is. Then, as a last resort, the mind invokes chance - a more obscure divinity than the others - to whom it attributes all its aberrations. Who says that the angle from which that idea is presented which affects the mind, as well as what the mind loves in that woman's eye, is not precisely the same thing that attracts the mind to its dream and reunites it with data lost through its own error? And if things were otherwise, of what might the mind not be capable? I should like to present it with the key to that passage.
3 The mind of the dreaming man is fully satisfied with whatever happens to it. The agonizing question of possibility does not arise. Kill, plunder more quickly, love as much as you wish. And if you die, are you not sure of being roused from the dead? Let yourself be led. Events will not tolerate deferment. You have no name. Everything Is inestimably easy.
What power, I wonder, what power so much more generous than others confers this natural aspect upon the dream and makes me welcome unreservedly a throng of episodes whose strangeness would overwhelm me if they were hap- pening as I write this? And yet I can believe it with my own eyes, my own ears. That great day has come, that beast has spoken.
If man's awakening is harsher, if he breaks the spell too well, it is because he has been led to form a poor idea of expiation.
4 When the time comes when we can submit the dream to a methodical examination, when by methods yet to be determined we succeed in realizing the dream in its entirety (and that implies a memory discipline measurable in generations, but we can still begin by recording salient facts), when the dream's curve is developed with an unequalled breadth and regularity, then we can hope that mysteries which are not really mysteries will give way to the great Mystery. I believe in the future resolution of these two states -- outwardly so contradic- tory -- which are dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak, I am aiming for its conquest, certain that I myself shall not attain it, but too indifferent to my death not to calculate the joys of such possession.
They say that not long ago, just before he went to sleep, Saint-Pol-Roux placed a placard on the door of his manor at Camaret which read: THE POET WORKS.
There is still a great deal to say, but I did want to touch lightly, in passing, upon a subject which in itself would require a very long exposition with a dif- ferent precision. I shall return to it. For the time being my intention has been to see that justice was done to that hatred of the marvellous which rages in certain men, that ridicule under which they would like to crush it. Let us resolve, therefore: the Marvellous is always beautiful, everything marvellous is beautiful. Nothing but the Marvellous is beautiful.
... One night, before falling asleep, I became aware of a most bizarre sentence, clearly articulated to the point where it was impossible to change a word of it, but still separate from the sound of any voice. It came to me bearing no trace of the events with which I was involved at that time, at least to my conscious knowledge. It seemed to me a highly insistent sentence - a sentence, I might say, which knocked at the window. I quickly took note of it and was prepared to disregard it when something about its whole character held me back. The sentence truly astounded me. Unfortunately I still cannot remember the exact words to this day, but it was something like: 'A man is cut in half by the window'; but it can only suffer from ambiguity, accompanied as it was by the feeble visual representation of a walking man cut in half by a window perpendicular to the axis of his body. ^ It was probably a simple mat- ter of a man leaning on the window and then straightening up. But the window followed the movements of the man, and I realized that I was dealing with a very rare type of image. Immediately I had the idea of incorporating it into my poetic material, but no sooner had I invested it with poetic form than it went on to give way to a scarcely intermittent succession of sentences which surprised me no less than the first and gave me the impression of such a free gift that the control which I had had over myself up to that point seemed illusory and I no longer thought of anything but how to put an end to the interminable quarrel which was taking place within me.(3)
Totally involved as I was at the time with Freud, and familiar with his methods of examination which I had had some occasion to practise on the sick during the war, I resolved to obtain from myself what one seeks to obtain from a patient - a spoken monologue uttered as rapidly as possible, over which the critical faculty of the subject has no control, unencumbered by any reticence, which is spoken thought as far as such a thing is possible. It seemed to me, and still does - the manner in which the sentence about the man cut in two came to me proves it - that the speed of thought is no greater than that of words, and that it does not necessarily defy language or the moving pen. It was with this in mind that Philippe Soupault (with whom I had shared these first conclusions) and I undertook to cover some paper with writing, with a laudable contempt for what might result in terms of literature. The ease of realization did the rest. At the end of the first day we were able to read to each other around fifty pages obtained by this method, and began to compare our results. Altogether, those of Soupault and my own presented a remarkable similarity, even including the same faults in construction: in both cases there was the illusion of an extra- ordinary verve, a great deal of emotion, a considerable assortment of images of a quality such as we would never have been capable of achieving in ordinary writing, a very vivid graphic quality, and here and there an acutely comic passage. The only difference between our texts seemed to me essentially due to our respective natures (Soupault's is less static than mine) and, if I may hazard a slight criticism, due to the fact that he had made the mistake of distributing a few words in the way of titles at the head of certain pages — no doubt in the spirit of mystification. On the other hand, I must give him credit for maintaining his steadfast opposition to the slightest alteration in the course of any passage which seemed to me rather badly put. He was completely right on this point, of course.(4) In fact it is very difficult to appreciate the full value of the various elements when confronted by them. It can even be said to be impossible to appreciate them at the first reading. These elements are outwardly as strange to you who have written them as to anyone else, and you are naturally distrustful of them. Poetically speaking, they are especially endowed with a very high degree of immediate absurdity. The peculiarity of this absurdity, on closer examination, comes from their capitulation to everything — both inad- missible and legitimate - In the world, to produce a revelation of a certain number of premises and facts generally no less objective than any others.
In homage to Guillaume Apollinaire - who died recently, and who appears to have consistently obeyed a similar impulse to ours without ever really sacrificing mediocre literary means - Soupault and I used the name SURREALISM to designate the new mode of pure expression which we had at our disposal and with which we were anxious to benefit our friends. Today I do not believe anything more need be said about this word. The meaning which we have given it has generally prevailed over Apollinaire's meaning. With even more justification we could have used SUPERNATURALISM, employed by Gerard de Nerval in the dedication of Filles de Feu.(5) In fact, Nerval appears to have possessed to an admirable extent the spirit to which we refer. Apollinaire, on the other hand, possessed only the letter of surrealism (which was still imper- fect) and showed himself powerless to give it the theoretical insight that engages us. Here are two passages by Nerval which appear most significant in this regard:
'I will explain to you, my dear Dumas, the phenomenon of which you spoke above. As you know, there are certain story-tellers who cannot invent without identifying themselves with the characters from their imagination. You know with what conviction our old friend Nodier told how he had had the misfortune to be guillotined at the time of the Revolution; one became so convinced that one wondered how he had managed to stick his head back on.'
'... And since you have had the imprudence to cite one of the sonnets composed in this state of SUPERNATURALIST reverie, as the Germans v/ould say, you must hear all of them. You will find them at the end of the volume. They are hardly more obscure than Hegel's metaphysics or Swedenborg's MEMORABLES, and would lose their charm in explication, if such a thing were possible, so concede me at least the merit of their expression . . .'(6)
It would be dishonest to dispute our right to employ the word SURREALISM in the very particular sense in which we intend it, for it is clear that before we came along this word amounted to nothing. Thus I shall define it once and for all:
SURREALISM, noun, masc., Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.
ENCYCL. Philos. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought. It leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to its substitution for them in the solution of the principal problems of life.
ANDRÉ BRETON
We are still living under the reign of logic, but the logical processes of our time apply only to the solution of problems of secondary interest. The absolute rationalism which remains in fashion allows for the consideration of only those facts narrowly relevant to our experience. Logical conclusions, on the other hand, escape us. Needless to say, boundaries have been assigned even to ex- perience. It revolves in a cage from which release is becoming increasingly difficult. It too depends upon immediate utility and is guarded by common sense. In the guise of civilization, under the pretext of progress, we have suc- ceeded in dismissing from our minds anything that, rightly or wrongly, could be regarded as superstition or myth; and we have proscribed every way of seeking the truth which does not conform to convention. It would appear that it is by sheer chance that an aspect of intellectual life - and by far the most important in my opinion — about which no one was supposed to be concerned any longer has, recently, been brought back to light. Credit for this must go to Freud. On the evidence of his discoveries a current of opinion is at last developing which will enable the explorer of the human mind to extend his investigations, since he will be empowered to deal with more than merely summary realities. Perhaps the imagination is on the verge of recovering its rights. If the depths of our minds conceal strange forces capable of augmenting or conquering those on the surface, it is in our greatest interest to capture them; first to capture them and later to submit them, should the occasion arise, to the control of reason. The analysts themselves can only gain by this. But it is im- portant to note that there is no method fixed a priori for the execution of this enterprise, that until the new order it can be considered the province of poets as well as scholars, and that its success does not depend upon the more or less capricious routes which will be followed.
It was only fitting that Freud should appear with his critique on the dream. In fact, it is incredible that this important part of psychic activity has still attracted so little attention. (For, at least from man's birth to his death, thought presents no solution of continuity; the sum of dreaming moments - even taking into consideration pure dream alone, that of sleep - is from the point of view of time no less than the sum of moments of reality, which we shall confine to waking moments.) I have always been astounded by the extreme disproportion in the importance and seriousness assigned to events of the waking moments and to those of sleep by the ordinary observer. Man, when he ceases to sleep, is above all at the mercy of his memory, and the memory normally delights in feebly retracing the circumstance of the dream for him, depriving it of all actual consequence and obliterating the only determinant from the point at which he thinks he abandoned this constant hope, this anxiety, a few hours earlier. He has the illusion of continuing something worthwhile. The dream finds itself relegated to a parenthesis, like the night. And in general it gives no more counsel than the night. This singular state of affairs seems to invite a few reflections:
1. Within the limits to which its performance is restricted (or what passes for performance), the dream, according to all outward appearances, is continuous and bears traces of organization. Only memory claims the right to edit it, to suppress transitions and present us with a series of dreams rather than the dream. Similarly, at no given instant do we have more than a distinct representation of realities whose co-ordination is a matter of will.(1) It is important to note that nothing leads to a greater dissipation of the constituent elements of the dream. I regret discussing this according to a formula which in principle ex- cludes the dream. For how long, sleeping logicians, philosophers? I would like to sleep in order to enable myself to surrender to sleepers, as I surrender to those who read me with their eyes open, in order to stop the conscious rhythm of my thought from prevailing over this material. Perhaps my dream of last night was a continuation of the preceding night's, and will be continued tonight with an admirable precision. It could be, as they say. And as it is in no way proven that, in such a case, the 'reality' with which I am concerned even exists in the dream state, or that it does not sink into the immemorial, then why should I not concede to the dream what I sometimes refuse to reality - that weight of self-assurance which by its own terms is not exposed to my denial? Why should I not expect more of the dream sign than I do of a daily increasing degree of consciousness? Could not the dreams as well be applied to the solution of life's fundamental problems? Are these problems the same in one case as in the other, and do they already exist in the dream? Is the dream less oppressed by sanctions than the rest? I am growing old and, perhaps more than this reality to which I believe myself confined, it is the dream, and the detachment that I owe to it, which is ageing me.
2 I return to the waking state. I am obliged to retain it as a phenomenon of interference. Not only does the mind show a strange tendency to disorientation under these conditions (this is the clue to slips of the tongue and lapses of all kinds whose secret is just beginning to be surrendered to us), but when function- ing normally the mind still seems to obey none other than those suggestions which rise from that deep night I am commending. Sound as it may be, its equilibrium is relative. The mind hardly dares express itself and, when it does, is limited to stating that this idea or that woman has an effect on it. What effect it cannot say; thus it gives the measure of its subjectivism and nothing more. The idea, the woman, disturbs it, disposes it to less severity. Their role is to isolate one second of its discappearance and remove it to the sky in that glorious acceleration that it can be, that it is. Then, as a last resort, the mind invokes chance - a more obscure divinity than the others - to whom it attributes all its aberrations. Who says that the angle from which that idea is presented which affects the mind, as well as what the mind loves in that woman's eye, is not precisely the same thing that attracts the mind to its dream and reunites it with data lost through its own error? And if things were otherwise, of what might the mind not be capable? I should like to present it with the key to that passage.
3 The mind of the dreaming man is fully satisfied with whatever happens to it. The agonizing question of possibility does not arise. Kill, plunder more quickly, love as much as you wish. And if you die, are you not sure of being roused from the dead? Let yourself be led. Events will not tolerate deferment. You have no name. Everything Is inestimably easy.
What power, I wonder, what power so much more generous than others confers this natural aspect upon the dream and makes me welcome unreservedly a throng of episodes whose strangeness would overwhelm me if they were hap- pening as I write this? And yet I can believe it with my own eyes, my own ears. That great day has come, that beast has spoken.
If man's awakening is harsher, if he breaks the spell too well, it is because he has been led to form a poor idea of expiation.
4 When the time comes when we can submit the dream to a methodical examination, when by methods yet to be determined we succeed in realizing the dream in its entirety (and that implies a memory discipline measurable in generations, but we can still begin by recording salient facts), when the dream's curve is developed with an unequalled breadth and regularity, then we can hope that mysteries which are not really mysteries will give way to the great Mystery. I believe in the future resolution of these two states -- outwardly so contradic- tory -- which are dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak, I am aiming for its conquest, certain that I myself shall not attain it, but too indifferent to my death not to calculate the joys of such possession.
They say that not long ago, just before he went to sleep, Saint-Pol-Roux placed a placard on the door of his manor at Camaret which read: THE POET WORKS.
There is still a great deal to say, but I did want to touch lightly, in passing, upon a subject which in itself would require a very long exposition with a dif- ferent precision. I shall return to it. For the time being my intention has been to see that justice was done to that hatred of the marvellous which rages in certain men, that ridicule under which they would like to crush it. Let us resolve, therefore: the Marvellous is always beautiful, everything marvellous is beautiful. Nothing but the Marvellous is beautiful.
... One night, before falling asleep, I became aware of a most bizarre sentence, clearly articulated to the point where it was impossible to change a word of it, but still separate from the sound of any voice. It came to me bearing no trace of the events with which I was involved at that time, at least to my conscious knowledge. It seemed to me a highly insistent sentence - a sentence, I might say, which knocked at the window. I quickly took note of it and was prepared to disregard it when something about its whole character held me back. The sentence truly astounded me. Unfortunately I still cannot remember the exact words to this day, but it was something like: 'A man is cut in half by the window'; but it can only suffer from ambiguity, accompanied as it was by the feeble visual representation of a walking man cut in half by a window perpendicular to the axis of his body. ^ It was probably a simple mat- ter of a man leaning on the window and then straightening up. But the window followed the movements of the man, and I realized that I was dealing with a very rare type of image. Immediately I had the idea of incorporating it into my poetic material, but no sooner had I invested it with poetic form than it went on to give way to a scarcely intermittent succession of sentences which surprised me no less than the first and gave me the impression of such a free gift that the control which I had had over myself up to that point seemed illusory and I no longer thought of anything but how to put an end to the interminable quarrel which was taking place within me.(3)
Totally involved as I was at the time with Freud, and familiar with his methods of examination which I had had some occasion to practise on the sick during the war, I resolved to obtain from myself what one seeks to obtain from a patient - a spoken monologue uttered as rapidly as possible, over which the critical faculty of the subject has no control, unencumbered by any reticence, which is spoken thought as far as such a thing is possible. It seemed to me, and still does - the manner in which the sentence about the man cut in two came to me proves it - that the speed of thought is no greater than that of words, and that it does not necessarily defy language or the moving pen. It was with this in mind that Philippe Soupault (with whom I had shared these first conclusions) and I undertook to cover some paper with writing, with a laudable contempt for what might result in terms of literature. The ease of realization did the rest. At the end of the first day we were able to read to each other around fifty pages obtained by this method, and began to compare our results. Altogether, those of Soupault and my own presented a remarkable similarity, even including the same faults in construction: in both cases there was the illusion of an extra- ordinary verve, a great deal of emotion, a considerable assortment of images of a quality such as we would never have been capable of achieving in ordinary writing, a very vivid graphic quality, and here and there an acutely comic passage. The only difference between our texts seemed to me essentially due to our respective natures (Soupault's is less static than mine) and, if I may hazard a slight criticism, due to the fact that he had made the mistake of distributing a few words in the way of titles at the head of certain pages — no doubt in the spirit of mystification. On the other hand, I must give him credit for maintaining his steadfast opposition to the slightest alteration in the course of any passage which seemed to me rather badly put. He was completely right on this point, of course.(4) In fact it is very difficult to appreciate the full value of the various elements when confronted by them. It can even be said to be impossible to appreciate them at the first reading. These elements are outwardly as strange to you who have written them as to anyone else, and you are naturally distrustful of them. Poetically speaking, they are especially endowed with a very high degree of immediate absurdity. The peculiarity of this absurdity, on closer examination, comes from their capitulation to everything — both inad- missible and legitimate - In the world, to produce a revelation of a certain number of premises and facts generally no less objective than any others.
In homage to Guillaume Apollinaire - who died recently, and who appears to have consistently obeyed a similar impulse to ours without ever really sacrificing mediocre literary means - Soupault and I used the name SURREALISM to designate the new mode of pure expression which we had at our disposal and with which we were anxious to benefit our friends. Today I do not believe anything more need be said about this word. The meaning which we have given it has generally prevailed over Apollinaire's meaning. With even more justification we could have used SUPERNATURALISM, employed by Gerard de Nerval in the dedication of Filles de Feu.(5) In fact, Nerval appears to have possessed to an admirable extent the spirit to which we refer. Apollinaire, on the other hand, possessed only the letter of surrealism (which was still imper- fect) and showed himself powerless to give it the theoretical insight that engages us. Here are two passages by Nerval which appear most significant in this regard:
'I will explain to you, my dear Dumas, the phenomenon of which you spoke above. As you know, there are certain story-tellers who cannot invent without identifying themselves with the characters from their imagination. You know with what conviction our old friend Nodier told how he had had the misfortune to be guillotined at the time of the Revolution; one became so convinced that one wondered how he had managed to stick his head back on.'
'... And since you have had the imprudence to cite one of the sonnets composed in this state of SUPERNATURALIST reverie, as the Germans v/ould say, you must hear all of them. You will find them at the end of the volume. They are hardly more obscure than Hegel's metaphysics or Swedenborg's MEMORABLES, and would lose their charm in explication, if such a thing were possible, so concede me at least the merit of their expression . . .'(6)
It would be dishonest to dispute our right to employ the word SURREALISM in the very particular sense in which we intend it, for it is clear that before we came along this word amounted to nothing. Thus I shall define it once and for all:
SURREALISM, noun, masc., Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.
ENCYCL. Philos. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought. It leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to its substitution for them in the solution of the principal problems of life.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
საღამო ღმერთთან-Steven King
საღამო ღმერთთან
სცენა ჩაბნელებულია. პროჟექტორი წყვდიადის შუაგულში თავისთვის მოქანავე პაპიემაშეს გლობუსს თანდათან ანათებს. სცენაზე შუქი ძლიერდება და ჩვენ მისაღები ოთახის დეკორაციას ვხედავთ: რბილი სავარძელი, იქვე მაგიდა (მაგიდაზე ლუდის გახსნილი ბოთლი დევს) და ტელევიზორი დასადგამი კარადითურთ. მაგიდის ქვეშ ლუდით სავსე საპიკნიკე მაცივარია. ირგვლივ ცარიელი ბოთლებია მიმოფანტული. ჩანს, ღმერთი თავს მშვენივრად გრძნობს. სცენიდან მარცხნივ კარებია.
ღმერთი – მოზრდილი ტიპი თეთრი წვერით – სავარძელში ზის, მონაცვლეობით ხან წიგნს კითხულობს („როცა კარგ ხალხს ცუდი ამბები მოსდით“), ხან ტელევიზორს უყურებს. კისრის წაგრძელება უწევს, ეკრანს რომ შეხედოს, რადგან გლობუსი (თოკზეა ჩამოკიდებული) ჰაერში პირდაპირ მისი მზერის გასწვრივ დაცურავს. ტელევიზორში სიტუაციურ კომედიას უჩვენებენ. ღმერთი კადრსგარე სიცილის სინქრონულად ხითხითებს.
კარზე აკაკუნებენ.
ღმერთი (ძლიერი, მჭექარე ხმით)
შემოდი, ჭეშმარიტად გეუბნები, ის შენთვის ღიაა!
კარები იღება. შემოდის წმინდა პეტრე, ბრწყინვალე თეთრ ტანისამოსში გამოწყობილი. ხელში პორტფელი უჭირავს.
ღმერთი
პეტრე, მეგონა შვებულებაში იყავი!
წმ. პეტრე
ნახევარ საათში მივდივარ, მაგრამ ვიფიქრე, წასვლამდე რაღაც საბუთები მომეტანა, ხელმოსაწერად. თავს როგორ გრძნობ, ღმერთო?
ღმერთი
ახლა უკეთ. უნდა მეფიქრა, სანამ იმ ცხარე წიწაკას შევჭამდი, ყველაფერი ჩამწვა. ეს რა არის, ჯოჯოხეთში გადასაგზავნი წერილებია?
წმ. პეტრე
ჰო, როგორც იქნა. მადლობა ღმერთს! ბოდიში კალამბურისთვის.
პორტფელიდან რამდენიმე ფურცელს იღებს. ღმერთი ქაღალდებს თვალს გადაავლებს და მოუთმენლად უწვდის ხელს, მაგრამ წმინდა პეტრე უკვე მოძრავ გლობუსს უყურებს. უკან მობრუნებული, დაინახავს, რომ ღმერთი მას ელოდება და კალამს გამოწვდილ ხელში ჩაუდებს. ღმერთი დაუდევრად მიაჯღაბნის ხელმოწერას, წმინდა პეტრე კი ისევ გლობუსს მიაშტერდება.
წმინდა პეტრე
ჰმ, ესე იგი, დედამიწა ისევ იქაა? მთელი ამ წლების შემდეგ.
ღმერთი ქაღალდებს უკან უბრუნებს და გლობუსს ახედავს. მის მზერაში გაღიზიანება იკითხება.
ღმერთი
ჰო, ეს მსახური სამყაროში ყველაზე გულმავიწყი ძუკნაა.
ტელევიზორიდან სიცილის ნიაღვარი წამოსკდება. ღმერთი შებრუნდება, რომ დაინახოს რა მოხდა. ვეღარ მიუსწრო.
ღმერთი
ჯანდაბა, ეს ალან ელდა იყო?
წმინდა პეტრე
მემგონი, სერ. ნამდვილად არ დამინახავს.
ღმერთი
არც მე.
გაემართება და მოქანავე გლობუსს ისე დაამსხვრევს, მტვრად აქცევს.
ღმერთი (კმაყოფილი სახით)
ესეც ამას! დიდი ხანია ამის გაკეთება მინდოდა, ახლა მაინც შემიძლია ვუყურო ტელევიზორს.
წმინდა პეტრე მწუხარედ შეჰყურებს დედამიწის დამსხვრეულ ნარჩენებს.
წმინდა პეტრე
მმ...მე მგონი, იქ ალან ელდას სამყარო იყო, ღმერთო
ღმერთი
და რა? (ტელევიზორს შეხედავს და ჩაიხითხითებს) რობინ უილიამსი! მიყვარს რობინ უილიამსი!
წმინდა პეტრე
მე მგონი ელდაც და უილიამსიც იქ იყვნენ, როცა თქვენ...ეეემ.. განაჩენი აღასრულეთ, სერ.
ღმერთი
უჰ, ყველა ვიდეოჩანაწერი მაქვს, რა პრობლემაა. გინდა ლუდი?
წმინდა პეტრე ლუდის ბოთლს იღებს, სცენის განათება თანდათან სუსტდება, პროჟექტორის სინათლის ნაკადი გლობუსის ნარჩენებსღა ანათებს.
წმინდა პეტრე
სიმართლე გითხრა, რაღაცნაირად მომწონდა ეს. დედამიწას ვგულისხმობ, ღმერთო.
ღმერთი
ცუდი არ იყო, მაგრამ ეს კიდევ ყველაფერი არაა. მოდი, ახლა შენი შვებულებისა დავლიოთ!
სუსტ განათებაში მხოლოდ ჩრდილებიღა ჩანს. თუმცა ღმერთის გარჩევა უკეთ შეიძლება, რადგან მისი თავის ირგვლივ მკრთალ შარავანდედს ვხედავთ. ერთმანეთს ბოთლებს უჭახუნებენ. ტელევიზორში ისევ სიცილი აუტყდათ.
ღმერთი
შეხედე, რიჩარდ პრაიორია. მკლავს ეს ბიჭი! მემგონი ის..
წმინდა პეტრე
დიახ, სერ..
ღმერთი
ჯანდაბა. (პაუზა) მგონი, აჯობებს სმას შევეშვა. (პაუზა) თუმცა...ის ხომ ჩემს მზერას ეღობებოდა.
ყველაფერს სიბნელე შთანთქავს, მხოლოდ პროჟექტორი ისევ ანთებს მოქანავე გლობუსის ნარჩენებს.
წმინდა პეტრე
დიახ, სერ..
ღმერთი (ბუზღუნით)
ჩემი შვილი დაბრუნდა, არა?
წმინდა პეტრე
დიახ, არც ისე დიდი ხანია.
ღმერთი
კარგია. ანუ, ყველაფერი რიგზეა.
პროჟექტორი ქრება.
(ავტორის შენიშნვნა: ღმერთის ხმა რაც შეიძლება მაღალი უნდა იყოს)
demo.ge
სცენა ჩაბნელებულია. პროჟექტორი წყვდიადის შუაგულში თავისთვის მოქანავე პაპიემაშეს გლობუსს თანდათან ანათებს. სცენაზე შუქი ძლიერდება და ჩვენ მისაღები ოთახის დეკორაციას ვხედავთ: რბილი სავარძელი, იქვე მაგიდა (მაგიდაზე ლუდის გახსნილი ბოთლი დევს) და ტელევიზორი დასადგამი კარადითურთ. მაგიდის ქვეშ ლუდით სავსე საპიკნიკე მაცივარია. ირგვლივ ცარიელი ბოთლებია მიმოფანტული. ჩანს, ღმერთი თავს მშვენივრად გრძნობს. სცენიდან მარცხნივ კარებია.
ღმერთი – მოზრდილი ტიპი თეთრი წვერით – სავარძელში ზის, მონაცვლეობით ხან წიგნს კითხულობს („როცა კარგ ხალხს ცუდი ამბები მოსდით“), ხან ტელევიზორს უყურებს. კისრის წაგრძელება უწევს, ეკრანს რომ შეხედოს, რადგან გლობუსი (თოკზეა ჩამოკიდებული) ჰაერში პირდაპირ მისი მზერის გასწვრივ დაცურავს. ტელევიზორში სიტუაციურ კომედიას უჩვენებენ. ღმერთი კადრსგარე სიცილის სინქრონულად ხითხითებს.
კარზე აკაკუნებენ.
ღმერთი (ძლიერი, მჭექარე ხმით)
შემოდი, ჭეშმარიტად გეუბნები, ის შენთვის ღიაა!
კარები იღება. შემოდის წმინდა პეტრე, ბრწყინვალე თეთრ ტანისამოსში გამოწყობილი. ხელში პორტფელი უჭირავს.
ღმერთი
პეტრე, მეგონა შვებულებაში იყავი!
წმ. პეტრე
ნახევარ საათში მივდივარ, მაგრამ ვიფიქრე, წასვლამდე რაღაც საბუთები მომეტანა, ხელმოსაწერად. თავს როგორ გრძნობ, ღმერთო?
ღმერთი
ახლა უკეთ. უნდა მეფიქრა, სანამ იმ ცხარე წიწაკას შევჭამდი, ყველაფერი ჩამწვა. ეს რა არის, ჯოჯოხეთში გადასაგზავნი წერილებია?
წმ. პეტრე
ჰო, როგორც იქნა. მადლობა ღმერთს! ბოდიში კალამბურისთვის.
პორტფელიდან რამდენიმე ფურცელს იღებს. ღმერთი ქაღალდებს თვალს გადაავლებს და მოუთმენლად უწვდის ხელს, მაგრამ წმინდა პეტრე უკვე მოძრავ გლობუსს უყურებს. უკან მობრუნებული, დაინახავს, რომ ღმერთი მას ელოდება და კალამს გამოწვდილ ხელში ჩაუდებს. ღმერთი დაუდევრად მიაჯღაბნის ხელმოწერას, წმინდა პეტრე კი ისევ გლობუსს მიაშტერდება.
წმინდა პეტრე
ჰმ, ესე იგი, დედამიწა ისევ იქაა? მთელი ამ წლების შემდეგ.
ღმერთი ქაღალდებს უკან უბრუნებს და გლობუსს ახედავს. მის მზერაში გაღიზიანება იკითხება.
ღმერთი
ჰო, ეს მსახური სამყაროში ყველაზე გულმავიწყი ძუკნაა.
ტელევიზორიდან სიცილის ნიაღვარი წამოსკდება. ღმერთი შებრუნდება, რომ დაინახოს რა მოხდა. ვეღარ მიუსწრო.
ღმერთი
ჯანდაბა, ეს ალან ელდა იყო?
წმინდა პეტრე
მემგონი, სერ. ნამდვილად არ დამინახავს.
ღმერთი
არც მე.
გაემართება და მოქანავე გლობუსს ისე დაამსხვრევს, მტვრად აქცევს.
ღმერთი (კმაყოფილი სახით)
ესეც ამას! დიდი ხანია ამის გაკეთება მინდოდა, ახლა მაინც შემიძლია ვუყურო ტელევიზორს.
წმინდა პეტრე მწუხარედ შეჰყურებს დედამიწის დამსხვრეულ ნარჩენებს.
წმინდა პეტრე
მმ...მე მგონი, იქ ალან ელდას სამყარო იყო, ღმერთო
ღმერთი
და რა? (ტელევიზორს შეხედავს და ჩაიხითხითებს) რობინ უილიამსი! მიყვარს რობინ უილიამსი!
წმინდა პეტრე
მე მგონი ელდაც და უილიამსიც იქ იყვნენ, როცა თქვენ...ეეემ.. განაჩენი აღასრულეთ, სერ.
ღმერთი
უჰ, ყველა ვიდეოჩანაწერი მაქვს, რა პრობლემაა. გინდა ლუდი?
წმინდა პეტრე ლუდის ბოთლს იღებს, სცენის განათება თანდათან სუსტდება, პროჟექტორის სინათლის ნაკადი გლობუსის ნარჩენებსღა ანათებს.
წმინდა პეტრე
სიმართლე გითხრა, რაღაცნაირად მომწონდა ეს. დედამიწას ვგულისხმობ, ღმერთო.
ღმერთი
ცუდი არ იყო, მაგრამ ეს კიდევ ყველაფერი არაა. მოდი, ახლა შენი შვებულებისა დავლიოთ!
სუსტ განათებაში მხოლოდ ჩრდილებიღა ჩანს. თუმცა ღმერთის გარჩევა უკეთ შეიძლება, რადგან მისი თავის ირგვლივ მკრთალ შარავანდედს ვხედავთ. ერთმანეთს ბოთლებს უჭახუნებენ. ტელევიზორში ისევ სიცილი აუტყდათ.
ღმერთი
შეხედე, რიჩარდ პრაიორია. მკლავს ეს ბიჭი! მემგონი ის..
წმინდა პეტრე
დიახ, სერ..
ღმერთი
ჯანდაბა. (პაუზა) მგონი, აჯობებს სმას შევეშვა. (პაუზა) თუმცა...ის ხომ ჩემს მზერას ეღობებოდა.
ყველაფერს სიბნელე შთანთქავს, მხოლოდ პროჟექტორი ისევ ანთებს მოქანავე გლობუსის ნარჩენებს.
წმინდა პეტრე
დიახ, სერ..
ღმერთი (ბუზღუნით)
ჩემი შვილი დაბრუნდა, არა?
წმინდა პეტრე
დიახ, არც ისე დიდი ხანია.
ღმერთი
კარგია. ანუ, ყველაფერი რიგზეა.
პროჟექტორი ქრება.
(ავტორის შენიშნვნა: ღმერთის ხმა რაც შეიძლება მაღალი უნდა იყოს)
demo.ge
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Literature Beat Generation
How sick i am! that thought Always comes to me with horror. Is it this strange for everybody? But such fugitive feelings have always been my metier.
- Allen Ginsberg
I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I'll never be sane.
- Allen Ginsberg
The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.
- Allen Ginsberg
How sick i am! that thought Always comes to me with horror. Is it this strange for everybody? But such fugitive feelings have always been my metier.
- Allen Ginsberg
...who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demaning instantaneous lobotomy, and who instead received the concrete void of insulin metrazol hydrotherapy electicity therapy occupational therapy pingpong and amnesia...
- Allen Ginsberg
...angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
- Allen Ginsberg
Dylan is about the individual against creation. Beethoven is about one man's fist in the lightining clouds, Allen Ginsburg is about a confused mind writing down newspaper headlines from Mars!
- Allen Ginsburg- "is about" ( $ ) ( ? )
A reading is a kind of communion. The poet articulates the semi-known for the tribe.
- Gary Snyder
Common Sense, Common Law, commom tenderness & common tranquility, our means in Americato control the money munching war machine, bright lit industry everywhere digesting forests & excreting soft pyramids of newsprint...burping Napalm on palm rice tropic greenery.
- Ginsberg
If you believe you're a poet, then you're saved
- Gregory Corso
Sure I'm old, and I'm evil, and I'm ugly, and I'm tired. But that isn't it. I've been this way for ten years, and I'm all down the main line.
- Herbert Huncke
Sure I'm old, and I'm evil, and I'm ugly, and I'm tired. But that isn't it. I've been this way for ten years, and I'm all down the main line.
- Herbert Huncke
Many ,many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now . Happily some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them-if you want to . Just as someday if you have something to offer , someone will learn something from you . And it isn't education . It's history . It's poetry.
- J.D Salinger
We should be wondering tonight, "Is there a world?" But I could go and talk on 5, 10, 20 minutes about is there a world, because there is really no world, cause sometimes I'm walkin’ on the ground and I see right through the ground. And there is no world. And you'll find out.
- Jack Kerouac
I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass.
- Jack Kerouac
...and everything is going to the beat - It's the beat generation, it be-at, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat...
- Jack Kerouac
But why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?
- Jack Kerouac
"Literature is no longer Necessary Teaching is left..
- Jack Kerouac
There's your Karma ripe as peaches.
- Jack Kerouac
My witness is the empty sky.
- Jack Kerouac
...colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets is each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness...
- Jack Kerouac
Mankind is like dogs, not gods--as long as you dont get mad they'll bite you--but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs dont respect humility & sorrow.
- Jack Kerouac
You never die enough to cry
- Jack Kerouac
the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace things, but burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes "AWWW!"
- Jack Kerouac
The charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power.
- Jack Kerouac
We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time.
- Jack Kerouac
I loved the way she said "LA"; I love the way everybody says "LA" on the Coast; it's their one and only golden town when all is said and done.
- Jack Kerouac
I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
- Jack Kerouac
"A man who allows wild passion to arise within, himself burns his heart, then after burning adds the wind that thereto which ignites the fire again, or not, as the case may be." IT'S ALL OVER
- Jack Kerouac
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
- Jack Kerouac
New York gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets.
- Jack Kerouac
My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I'm a wretch. But I love, love.
- Jack Kerouac, "Satori in Paris" ( $ ) ( ? )
Throw my thoughts into the breeze one last time and watch them float away in waves of relief. Tomorrow...... I shall never think again for the burden is too much to bear.
- Jamie Stem
The bottoms of my shoes are clean from walking in the rain
- Kerouac
God is not outside us but is just us, the living and the dead, the never-lived and never-died. That we should learn it only now, is supreme reality, it was written a long time ago in the archives of universal mind, it is already done, there's no more to do.
- Kerouac
Where doth go, America, in thy shiny car in the night?
- Kerouac
Rather, I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerly putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires.
- Neal Cassady
To rebel! That is the immediate objective of poets! We can not wait and will not be held back...The "poetic marvelous" and the unconscious are the true inspirers of rebels and poets
- Philip Lamantia
In wildness is the preservation of the world
- Thoreau
there are no differences, but differences of degree,between degrees of difference and no difference.
- William Henry James
Jeder macht eine kleine Dummheit (everyone makes a little dumbness)
- William S. Burroughs
I'm running out of everything now. Out of veins, out of money.
- William S. Burroughs
"The only possible ETHIC is to do what one wants to do."
- William S. Burroughs
There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination.
- William S. Burroughs
Language is a virus.
- William S. Burroughs
In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die or boredom.
- William S. Burroughs
Madness is confusion of levels of fact...Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
- William S. Burroughs
trip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a thousand to make the Pass.
- William S. Burroughs
- Allen Ginsberg
I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I'll never be sane.
- Allen Ginsberg
The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.
- Allen Ginsberg
How sick i am! that thought Always comes to me with horror. Is it this strange for everybody? But such fugitive feelings have always been my metier.
- Allen Ginsberg
...who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demaning instantaneous lobotomy, and who instead received the concrete void of insulin metrazol hydrotherapy electicity therapy occupational therapy pingpong and amnesia...
- Allen Ginsberg
...angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night...
- Allen Ginsberg
Dylan is about the individual against creation. Beethoven is about one man's fist in the lightining clouds, Allen Ginsburg is about a confused mind writing down newspaper headlines from Mars!
- Allen Ginsburg- "is about" ( $ ) ( ? )
A reading is a kind of communion. The poet articulates the semi-known for the tribe.
- Gary Snyder
Common Sense, Common Law, commom tenderness & common tranquility, our means in Americato control the money munching war machine, bright lit industry everywhere digesting forests & excreting soft pyramids of newsprint...burping Napalm on palm rice tropic greenery.
- Ginsberg
If you believe you're a poet, then you're saved
- Gregory Corso
Sure I'm old, and I'm evil, and I'm ugly, and I'm tired. But that isn't it. I've been this way for ten years, and I'm all down the main line.
- Herbert Huncke
Sure I'm old, and I'm evil, and I'm ugly, and I'm tired. But that isn't it. I've been this way for ten years, and I'm all down the main line.
- Herbert Huncke
Many ,many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now . Happily some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them-if you want to . Just as someday if you have something to offer , someone will learn something from you . And it isn't education . It's history . It's poetry.
- J.D Salinger
We should be wondering tonight, "Is there a world?" But I could go and talk on 5, 10, 20 minutes about is there a world, because there is really no world, cause sometimes I'm walkin’ on the ground and I see right through the ground. And there is no world. And you'll find out.
- Jack Kerouac
I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass.
- Jack Kerouac
...and everything is going to the beat - It's the beat generation, it be-at, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat...
- Jack Kerouac
But why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?
- Jack Kerouac
"Literature is no longer Necessary Teaching is left..
- Jack Kerouac
There's your Karma ripe as peaches.
- Jack Kerouac
My witness is the empty sky.
- Jack Kerouac
...colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets is each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness...
- Jack Kerouac
Mankind is like dogs, not gods--as long as you dont get mad they'll bite you--but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs dont respect humility & sorrow.
- Jack Kerouac
You never die enough to cry
- Jack Kerouac
the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace things, but burn like fabulous roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue center light pop and everybody goes "AWWW!"
- Jack Kerouac
The charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power.
- Jack Kerouac
We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time.
- Jack Kerouac
I loved the way she said "LA"; I love the way everybody says "LA" on the Coast; it's their one and only golden town when all is said and done.
- Jack Kerouac
I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
- Jack Kerouac
"A man who allows wild passion to arise within, himself burns his heart, then after burning adds the wind that thereto which ignites the fire again, or not, as the case may be." IT'S ALL OVER
- Jack Kerouac
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
- Jack Kerouac
New York gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets.
- Jack Kerouac
My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I'm a wretch. But I love, love.
- Jack Kerouac, "Satori in Paris" ( $ ) ( ? )
Throw my thoughts into the breeze one last time and watch them float away in waves of relief. Tomorrow...... I shall never think again for the burden is too much to bear.
- Jamie Stem
The bottoms of my shoes are clean from walking in the rain
- Kerouac
God is not outside us but is just us, the living and the dead, the never-lived and never-died. That we should learn it only now, is supreme reality, it was written a long time ago in the archives of universal mind, it is already done, there's no more to do.
- Kerouac
Where doth go, America, in thy shiny car in the night?
- Kerouac
Rather, I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerly putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires.
- Neal Cassady
To rebel! That is the immediate objective of poets! We can not wait and will not be held back...The "poetic marvelous" and the unconscious are the true inspirers of rebels and poets
- Philip Lamantia
In wildness is the preservation of the world
- Thoreau
there are no differences, but differences of degree,between degrees of difference and no difference.
- William Henry James
Jeder macht eine kleine Dummheit (everyone makes a little dumbness)
- William S. Burroughs
I'm running out of everything now. Out of veins, out of money.
- William S. Burroughs
"The only possible ETHIC is to do what one wants to do."
- William S. Burroughs
There is no line between the 'real world' and 'world of myth and symbol.' Objects, sensations, hit with the impact of hallucination.
- William S. Burroughs
Language is a virus.
- William S. Burroughs
In the U.S., you have to be a deviant or die or boredom.
- William S. Burroughs
Madness is confusion of levels of fact...Madness is not seeing visions but confusing levels.
- William S. Burroughs
trip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a thousand to make the Pass.
- William S. Burroughs
Friday, September 16, 2011
Beatnik Writers
The Beat Generation by Megan Feider
With such means at his disposal, the poet can enter on a career as a prophet and revolutionary, a cultist or a populist by turns. Or he can, in a more profound sense, become the person who keeps raising alternative propositions, eluding the trap of his own visions as he goes. (Jerome Rothenburg)
These revolutionary people who kept "raising alternative propositions" were the creative and suffering members of the Beat Generation. Many scholars and literary figures believe that up until the Beat era of the 1950's, poetry and social politics had frequently followed those who conformed to the standards that American society established.
From this era came extraordinary literary works from a generation of a professed bohemian writers, leading a lifestyle that raged against the economic conformity of the postwar 1950's. Rising from the epitome of a false and conformist America, they formed alternative ways of thinking and a new way of life. This group of "beat" writers, who formed in New York City, were at first few in number, but grew to have an impact on American society, especially in literature and politics, that still lasts today. Founders of this Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, not only started a new style of American literature but ignited the rebellion against social conformity in the 1950's through their poems of social and political criticism.
The materialistic decade of the 1950's was also a decade of conformity. The acquisition of material goods, which had been scarce in the Great Depression and during World War II, became the main focus of postwar lives. Material goods such as cars and other household items had become more affordable to middle class families and was viewed as an important addition to the suburban family. This significant acquisition of goods was driven especially by the new way the media of television and advertising portrayed the suburban family life as the ideal.
Conformity was everywhere in America - from cars to clothes, from social behavior to politics. Most women had one choice: conform to be a housewife and mother. During the Cold War, the United States led its allies against the communist Soviet Union. This allowed for American condemnation and even for the persecution of dissidents and social nonconformists as threats to U.S. national security. It was in this atmosphere that a group of writers came forward to declare their alienation and disgust from what they saw as the epitome of deplorable suburban conformity through their poetry and lifestyles: The Beats.
Jack Kerouac
The term "Beat Generation" was first used by poet Jack Kerouac in the late 1940's. It was while attending Columbia University in New York City that Jack Kerouac first met Allen Ginsberg. Together they were drawn to literature and began using drugs like benzedrine and marijuana in their dormitory rooms to inspire them to create what they called a "New Vision" of art. Kerouac, born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, was attending Columbia University on a football scholarship. During the outbreak of World War II, he dropped out of school and enlisted into the U.S. Navy, only to be soon discharged as an "indifferent character" after he refused to accept Navy discipline
This "indifferent character" of Kerouac's was a perfect match for the character of Allen Ginsberg. Born on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, Allen Ginsberg attended Columbia University on a scholarship from the YMCA. Like Kerouac, Ginsberg's rebellious and early insecure nature got him into much trouble. Twice he was suspended from the University. Once he was suspended for writing obscenity on a dirty dorm room window about the President of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, and the second time for letting Kerouac sleep in his dormitory room overnight. Ginsberg's temperamental emotions and his mother's depression and frequent nervous breakdowns played a large role in Ginsberg's life and became the subject of many of his infamous and revolutionary poems including "Kaddish" and "Howl." These two poems would later prove to be some of Ginsberg's most influential poems for America ever written.
According to Kerouac, the word "beat" had various definitions and connotations for the writers such as despair over the beaten state of the individual in mass society and belief in the beatitude, or blessedness, of the natural world and in the powers of the beat of jazz music and poetry. Later in the 1950's, the term "beatnik" was referred, often despairingly, to the people who held the ideas and attitudes of the Beat writers. Scholars during this decade described the lifestyle associated with the Beats as deviant. Kerouac, seeming to be the spokesman of the Beat Generation, was piled with questions and requests to explain it. Soon, a stereotype merged in the media showing beatniks to be spaced-out, always dressed in black and pounding on bongo drums muttering gibberish as poetry); nevertheless the media had no idea of what the Beat Generation would have to offer American society and politics in the late 1950's.
William Burroughs
William Burroughs, the author of "Naked Lunch" and "Junky" was an influential beatnik writer along side Jack Kerouac. The lifestyles which the group of beatnik writers adopted were against typical suburban, conformist family life in the 1950's. Beat poets would hold poetry readings at local cafes, coffee houses or art galleries where they would read their latest revelations to other members of the beat circle. These other beat artists and poets included William Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Neal Cassady and Carl Soloman; but this circle was still quite small in number. The women in the beat circle which included Diane di Prima, Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs, Carolyn Cassady, Joan Kerouac and Elise Cowen were then a large part of the Beat Generation; but ironically, were to a large extent eminently marginalized and ignored as prominent figures by journalists later on. Anne Waldman, an aspiring writer during the 1960's, wrote about the beat women: "The women of the Beat were considered the epitome of cool. They were black-stockinged hipsters, renegade artists, intellectual muses, and gypsy poets who helped change out culture forever. They were the feminist before the word was coined, and their work stands beside that of the men."
Jack Kerouac, who had many women in his life, concluded that, "The truth of the matter is we don't understand our women; we blame them and it's all our fault." For women, nothing was more exciting than leaving behind the boredom, safety and conformity found in most of the lives of a typical American women for the life of creativity. Long before feminist movement in the 1960's and 70's, the women of the Beat Generation dared to create a life of their own.
The Beats were one of the first groups in American history to partake in casual drug use. Among the more popular of these drugs were marijuana, benzedrine, heroine and amphetamines. While some experimented with drugs, some also experimented with sexuality. Allen Ginsberg, struggling with his own homosexuality, strived for a more open life. Being openly gay in the 1950's was not only uncommon, it was inadmissible. The lifestyles of the Beats were the most untamed, free-spirited lifestyles that were widely unaccepted by American social standards. Jack Kerouac was one of the first beat poets to have literature on this unconventional lifestyle published and recognized nationally.
In 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his best-known novel, "On the Road", a collection of stories about hitchhiking from coast to coast, living a "beaten" lifestyle. Published years later in 1957, the book celebrates freedom from conventional responsibilities, the emotional intensity of a life of hitchhiking, casual sex and recreational drug use. However, Kerouac retreats from these abundances, hoping to find the stability and security he needs for his writing. This novel was the start of the Beat Generation's journey into America's attention as journalists gave it much press, which for the most part was negative. Many classical and traditional literary scholars and poets disliked this "New Art" literature and lifestyle that Kerouac wrote about. Poet George Barker comically writes, in traditional British style, how he feels about Kerouac's works:
Now Jack, dear Jack
That ain't fair wages
For laboring through
Prose that takes ages
Just to announce
That Gods and Men
Ought to study
The Book of Zen.
If you really think
So low of the soul
Why don't you write
On a toilet roll?
(Charters xxiii)
Hoping to expand his knowledge and circle of beat friends, Allen Ginsberg later enrolled at the University of California - Berkeley in July of 1955, where his small group of poetic friends from New York would find expansion. This new circle of friends in San Francisco included poet Gary Snyder, writer and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, anarchist poet Kenneth Rexroth and Michael McClure among others. In early August of 1955, Ginsberg started writing a poem about his life. This poem was Howl, which gave him the courage to give up graduate school and make poetry a full-time career. Shortly after Howl was written, Ginsberg organized a poetry reading for October 7, 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. The reading was called the "Six Poets at the Six Gallery" and was the catalyst that brought together the literary style between the East Coast and the West Coast poets. It was finally when the East met the West that America started to take the Beat literary movement seriously. Michael McClure, who was at the Six Gallery poetry reading that night expresses:
150 people in the audience that night cheered
on Allen Ginsberg as he came to Howl's
conclusion. Everyone knew that a human
barrier had been broken, and that a human
voice and body had been hurled against the
harsh wall of America and its supporting
armies and navies and academies and
institutions and ownership systems and
power-support bases (Charters xxi).
Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who also attended the Six Gallery that night, sent Allen Ginsberg a telegram offering him to publish his poetry, featuring Howl in the Pocket Poems Series, published by his new company, City Lights. Soon after, a policeman got a copy of the poem, and seized it on the grounds of obscenity. Ferlinghetti and his one employee were charged with publishing and selling an obscene book, but Ferlinghetti strongly defended Howl, saying that "it is not the poet, but what he observes which is revealed as obscene." When Judge Clayton Horn came to a verdict, he ordered a release of the book and declared it to have literary merit. The Howl trial in San Francisco was widely publicized, bringing in attention from around the nation and also selling thousands of more copies. America now, more than ever before, was giving its attention to the Beats and their writings.
Through their journey of social revolution, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac began their quest with one idea for America in mind: Truth. Allen Ginsberg once proclaimed, "The original task was to widen the area of consciousness in America", and that is exactly what he did. From the age of conformity in the 1950's, through the political and social revolutions of the 1960's and 1970's, and until Ginsberg's death in 1997, the reforming minds of the Beats established themselves in the foreground of American minds. The visions of Kerouac and Ginsberg, along with their groundbreaking poetry and principled lives, inspired other revolutionary American poets and activists for five decades.
The Beat poetry and literature that scholars once scorned are now a large part of college curricula. In 1974, Ginsberg was awarded a National Book Award for poetry and became known as an antiestablishment media hero. Jack Kerouac, however, became severely depressed and died of alcoholism at the age of forty-seven. Nonetheless, before his death, Kerouac achieved recognition for his experimental prose style and phenomenal formulation of the beat literary movement. These accomplishments of the two original beat poets were not easily acquired. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were forced to overcome endless societal obstacles in order to accomplish their journey of liberation. Although these two poets faced much criticism and even severe condemnation, they never once gave into the America that would not listen to them.
With such means at his disposal, the poet can enter on a career as a prophet and revolutionary, a cultist or a populist by turns. Or he can, in a more profound sense, become the person who keeps raising alternative propositions, eluding the trap of his own visions as he goes. (Jerome Rothenburg)
These revolutionary people who kept "raising alternative propositions" were the creative and suffering members of the Beat Generation. Many scholars and literary figures believe that up until the Beat era of the 1950's, poetry and social politics had frequently followed those who conformed to the standards that American society established.
From this era came extraordinary literary works from a generation of a professed bohemian writers, leading a lifestyle that raged against the economic conformity of the postwar 1950's. Rising from the epitome of a false and conformist America, they formed alternative ways of thinking and a new way of life. This group of "beat" writers, who formed in New York City, were at first few in number, but grew to have an impact on American society, especially in literature and politics, that still lasts today. Founders of this Beat Generation, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, not only started a new style of American literature but ignited the rebellion against social conformity in the 1950's through their poems of social and political criticism.
The materialistic decade of the 1950's was also a decade of conformity. The acquisition of material goods, which had been scarce in the Great Depression and during World War II, became the main focus of postwar lives. Material goods such as cars and other household items had become more affordable to middle class families and was viewed as an important addition to the suburban family. This significant acquisition of goods was driven especially by the new way the media of television and advertising portrayed the suburban family life as the ideal.
Conformity was everywhere in America - from cars to clothes, from social behavior to politics. Most women had one choice: conform to be a housewife and mother. During the Cold War, the United States led its allies against the communist Soviet Union. This allowed for American condemnation and even for the persecution of dissidents and social nonconformists as threats to U.S. national security. It was in this atmosphere that a group of writers came forward to declare their alienation and disgust from what they saw as the epitome of deplorable suburban conformity through their poetry and lifestyles: The Beats.
Jack Kerouac
The term "Beat Generation" was first used by poet Jack Kerouac in the late 1940's. It was while attending Columbia University in New York City that Jack Kerouac first met Allen Ginsberg. Together they were drawn to literature and began using drugs like benzedrine and marijuana in their dormitory rooms to inspire them to create what they called a "New Vision" of art. Kerouac, born on March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Massachusetts, was attending Columbia University on a football scholarship. During the outbreak of World War II, he dropped out of school and enlisted into the U.S. Navy, only to be soon discharged as an "indifferent character" after he refused to accept Navy discipline
This "indifferent character" of Kerouac's was a perfect match for the character of Allen Ginsberg. Born on June 3, 1926 in Newark, New Jersey, Allen Ginsberg attended Columbia University on a scholarship from the YMCA. Like Kerouac, Ginsberg's rebellious and early insecure nature got him into much trouble. Twice he was suspended from the University. Once he was suspended for writing obscenity on a dirty dorm room window about the President of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, and the second time for letting Kerouac sleep in his dormitory room overnight. Ginsberg's temperamental emotions and his mother's depression and frequent nervous breakdowns played a large role in Ginsberg's life and became the subject of many of his infamous and revolutionary poems including "Kaddish" and "Howl." These two poems would later prove to be some of Ginsberg's most influential poems for America ever written.
According to Kerouac, the word "beat" had various definitions and connotations for the writers such as despair over the beaten state of the individual in mass society and belief in the beatitude, or blessedness, of the natural world and in the powers of the beat of jazz music and poetry. Later in the 1950's, the term "beatnik" was referred, often despairingly, to the people who held the ideas and attitudes of the Beat writers. Scholars during this decade described the lifestyle associated with the Beats as deviant. Kerouac, seeming to be the spokesman of the Beat Generation, was piled with questions and requests to explain it. Soon, a stereotype merged in the media showing beatniks to be spaced-out, always dressed in black and pounding on bongo drums muttering gibberish as poetry); nevertheless the media had no idea of what the Beat Generation would have to offer American society and politics in the late 1950's.
William Burroughs
William Burroughs, the author of "Naked Lunch" and "Junky" was an influential beatnik writer along side Jack Kerouac. The lifestyles which the group of beatnik writers adopted were against typical suburban, conformist family life in the 1950's. Beat poets would hold poetry readings at local cafes, coffee houses or art galleries where they would read their latest revelations to other members of the beat circle. These other beat artists and poets included William Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Neal Cassady and Carl Soloman; but this circle was still quite small in number. The women in the beat circle which included Diane di Prima, Joan Vollmer Adams Burroughs, Carolyn Cassady, Joan Kerouac and Elise Cowen were then a large part of the Beat Generation; but ironically, were to a large extent eminently marginalized and ignored as prominent figures by journalists later on. Anne Waldman, an aspiring writer during the 1960's, wrote about the beat women: "The women of the Beat were considered the epitome of cool. They were black-stockinged hipsters, renegade artists, intellectual muses, and gypsy poets who helped change out culture forever. They were the feminist before the word was coined, and their work stands beside that of the men."
Jack Kerouac, who had many women in his life, concluded that, "The truth of the matter is we don't understand our women; we blame them and it's all our fault." For women, nothing was more exciting than leaving behind the boredom, safety and conformity found in most of the lives of a typical American women for the life of creativity. Long before feminist movement in the 1960's and 70's, the women of the Beat Generation dared to create a life of their own.
The Beats were one of the first groups in American history to partake in casual drug use. Among the more popular of these drugs were marijuana, benzedrine, heroine and amphetamines. While some experimented with drugs, some also experimented with sexuality. Allen Ginsberg, struggling with his own homosexuality, strived for a more open life. Being openly gay in the 1950's was not only uncommon, it was inadmissible. The lifestyles of the Beats were the most untamed, free-spirited lifestyles that were widely unaccepted by American social standards. Jack Kerouac was one of the first beat poets to have literature on this unconventional lifestyle published and recognized nationally.
In 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his best-known novel, "On the Road", a collection of stories about hitchhiking from coast to coast, living a "beaten" lifestyle. Published years later in 1957, the book celebrates freedom from conventional responsibilities, the emotional intensity of a life of hitchhiking, casual sex and recreational drug use. However, Kerouac retreats from these abundances, hoping to find the stability and security he needs for his writing. This novel was the start of the Beat Generation's journey into America's attention as journalists gave it much press, which for the most part was negative. Many classical and traditional literary scholars and poets disliked this "New Art" literature and lifestyle that Kerouac wrote about. Poet George Barker comically writes, in traditional British style, how he feels about Kerouac's works:
Now Jack, dear Jack
That ain't fair wages
For laboring through
Prose that takes ages
Just to announce
That Gods and Men
Ought to study
The Book of Zen.
If you really think
So low of the soul
Why don't you write
On a toilet roll?
(Charters xxiii)
Hoping to expand his knowledge and circle of beat friends, Allen Ginsberg later enrolled at the University of California - Berkeley in July of 1955, where his small group of poetic friends from New York would find expansion. This new circle of friends in San Francisco included poet Gary Snyder, writer and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, anarchist poet Kenneth Rexroth and Michael McClure among others. In early August of 1955, Ginsberg started writing a poem about his life. This poem was Howl, which gave him the courage to give up graduate school and make poetry a full-time career. Shortly after Howl was written, Ginsberg organized a poetry reading for October 7, 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. The reading was called the "Six Poets at the Six Gallery" and was the catalyst that brought together the literary style between the East Coast and the West Coast poets. It was finally when the East met the West that America started to take the Beat literary movement seriously. Michael McClure, who was at the Six Gallery poetry reading that night expresses:
150 people in the audience that night cheered
on Allen Ginsberg as he came to Howl's
conclusion. Everyone knew that a human
barrier had been broken, and that a human
voice and body had been hurled against the
harsh wall of America and its supporting
armies and navies and academies and
institutions and ownership systems and
power-support bases (Charters xxi).
Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who also attended the Six Gallery that night, sent Allen Ginsberg a telegram offering him to publish his poetry, featuring Howl in the Pocket Poems Series, published by his new company, City Lights. Soon after, a policeman got a copy of the poem, and seized it on the grounds of obscenity. Ferlinghetti and his one employee were charged with publishing and selling an obscene book, but Ferlinghetti strongly defended Howl, saying that "it is not the poet, but what he observes which is revealed as obscene." When Judge Clayton Horn came to a verdict, he ordered a release of the book and declared it to have literary merit. The Howl trial in San Francisco was widely publicized, bringing in attention from around the nation and also selling thousands of more copies. America now, more than ever before, was giving its attention to the Beats and their writings.
Through their journey of social revolution, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac began their quest with one idea for America in mind: Truth. Allen Ginsberg once proclaimed, "The original task was to widen the area of consciousness in America", and that is exactly what he did. From the age of conformity in the 1950's, through the political and social revolutions of the 1960's and 1970's, and until Ginsberg's death in 1997, the reforming minds of the Beats established themselves in the foreground of American minds. The visions of Kerouac and Ginsberg, along with their groundbreaking poetry and principled lives, inspired other revolutionary American poets and activists for five decades.
The Beat poetry and literature that scholars once scorned are now a large part of college curricula. In 1974, Ginsberg was awarded a National Book Award for poetry and became known as an antiestablishment media hero. Jack Kerouac, however, became severely depressed and died of alcoholism at the age of forty-seven. Nonetheless, before his death, Kerouac achieved recognition for his experimental prose style and phenomenal formulation of the beat literary movement. These accomplishments of the two original beat poets were not easily acquired. Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg were forced to overcome endless societal obstacles in order to accomplish their journey of liberation. Although these two poets faced much criticism and even severe condemnation, they never once gave into the America that would not listen to them.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
amrica
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.
I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.
Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.
America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Howl
For Carl Solomon
I
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,
a lost batallion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,
who studied Plotinus Poe St John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the larva and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom,
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open full of steamheat and opium,
who created great suicidal dramas on the appartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery,
who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturerson Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,
with mother finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time—
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soulbetween 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,
and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
II
What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisable suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstacies! gone down the American river!
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
III
Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland
where you're madder than I am
I'm with you in Rockland
where you must feel strange
I'm with you in Rockland
where you imitate the shade of my mother
I'm with you in Rockland
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries
I'm with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humour
I'm with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I'm with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
I'm with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses
I'm with you in Rockland
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica
I'm with you in Rockland
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx
I'm with you in Rockland
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of actual pingpong of the abyss
I'm with you in Rockland
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse
I'm with you in Rockland
where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void
I'm with you in Rockland
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha
I'm with you in Rockland
where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb
I'm with you in Rockland
where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale
I'm with you in Rockland
where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep
I'm with you in Rockland
where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we're free
I'm with you in Rockland
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night
Thursday, September 8, 2011
THE MAN WHO TAUGHT HIS ASSHOLE TO TALK
THE MAN WHO TAUGHT HIS ASSHOLE TO TALK
By William S. Burroughs
________________________________________
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his ass to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard.
This ass talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell.
This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called "The Better 'Ole' that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?"
"Nah! I had to go relieve myself."
After a while the ass start talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his ass would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time.
Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in- curving hooks and start eating. He thought this was cute at first and built and act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth.
Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him: "It's you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we don't need you around here any more. I can talk and eat and shit."
After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpole's tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous- except for the eyes you dig.
That's one thing the asshole couldn't do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldn't give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes went out, and there was no more feeling in them than a crab's eyes on the end of a stalk.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
ტრისტან ტცარა ათამაშებს ”დადას” კუკლას
ტიციან ტაბიძე_დადა მანიფესტი
ჩემი სული დაგლეჯილი ხურჯინია
სპარსულ რომ ჩამოაქვს ენზელიდან
შიგ ეტევა მთლი აზიის სისულელე
და ხარკს არ გადაიხდის საკავშირო რესპუბლიკისთვის.
რაშეედრება, როცა ყრუ სომეხი მუცელს იცლის
ექსპრესის მოლოდინში ვოკზალის გადაღმა
თქვენ ყველას ოყნა გჭირდებათ თქვენი დედა მოვტყან
ჩემს იქით პარიზია…
ელისეის მინდვრები
ჩასუქებული ჟოფრი მოუტაციათ წმინდა ილიას ცხენეს
პოლ კლოდელი კოცნის ჩინელი ქალის ბალღამიან ფეხს
და ტრისტან ტცარა ათამაშებს ”დადას” კუკლას.
ვზივარ მოედანში.. შეღბილი ინით თათარი
ატორებს კამათლებს (ესეც კოსმეტიკაა და თავის გასართობი)
(ამბობენ არაბები ვარსკვლავთმრიცხველობენ).
უნდა იყო იდიოტი, რომ ძველებურად სწერო ლექსები
როცა სატურიის სანაობზე გლეხებს უხსნიან ელექტროფიკაციას
როცა პრეზიდენტია მიხა ცხაკაია.
მთაწმინდის შემოღამებას მარტო ბოზები ელიან
ერთი დარჩა ქუჩა გაუწითლებელი
ვის უნდა შენი ნაზი ლექსები
ორსული ქალიშვილები სიცილით იხოცებიან
თუ პოეტი ხარ, ყველაფერი მაგარი გქონდეს.
22 ოქტომბერი, 1923წ
ჩემი სული დაგლეჯილი ხურჯინია
სპარსულ რომ ჩამოაქვს ენზელიდან
შიგ ეტევა მთლი აზიის სისულელე
და ხარკს არ გადაიხდის საკავშირო რესპუბლიკისთვის.
რაშეედრება, როცა ყრუ სომეხი მუცელს იცლის
ექსპრესის მოლოდინში ვოკზალის გადაღმა
თქვენ ყველას ოყნა გჭირდებათ თქვენი დედა მოვტყან
ჩემს იქით პარიზია…
ელისეის მინდვრები
ჩასუქებული ჟოფრი მოუტაციათ წმინდა ილიას ცხენეს
პოლ კლოდელი კოცნის ჩინელი ქალის ბალღამიან ფეხს
და ტრისტან ტცარა ათამაშებს ”დადას” კუკლას.
ვზივარ მოედანში.. შეღბილი ინით თათარი
ატორებს კამათლებს (ესეც კოსმეტიკაა და თავის გასართობი)
(ამბობენ არაბები ვარსკვლავთმრიცხველობენ).
უნდა იყო იდიოტი, რომ ძველებურად სწერო ლექსები
როცა სატურიის სანაობზე გლეხებს უხსნიან ელექტროფიკაციას
როცა პრეზიდენტია მიხა ცხაკაია.
მთაწმინდის შემოღამებას მარტო ბოზები ელიან
ერთი დარჩა ქუჩა გაუწითლებელი
ვის უნდა შენი ნაზი ლექსები
ორსული ქალიშვილები სიცილით იხოცებიან
თუ პოეტი ხარ, ყველაფერი მაგარი გქონდეს.
22 ოქტომბერი, 1923წ
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Andre Breton freedom of love
My wife with the hair of a wood fire
With the thoughts of heat lightning
With the waist of an hourglass
With the waist of an otter in the teeth of a tiger
My wife with the lips of a cockade and of a bunch of stars of the last magnitude
With the teeth of tracks of white mice on the white earth
With the tongue of rubbed amber and glass
My wife with the tongue of a stabbed host
With the tongue of a doll that opens and closes its eyes
With the tongue of an unbelievable stone
My wife with the eyelashes of strokes of a child's writing
With brows of the edge of a swallow's nest
My wife with the brow of slates of a hothouse roof
And of steam on the panes
My wife with shoulders of champagne
And of a fountain with dolphin-heads beneath the ice
My wife with wrists of matches
My wife with fingers of luck and ace of hearts
With fingers of mown hay
My wife with armpits of marten and of beechnut
And of Midsummer Night
Of privet and of an angelfish nest
With arms of seafoam and of riverlocks
And of a mingling of the wheat and the mill
My wife with legs of flares
With the movements of clockwork and despair
My wife with calves of eldertree pith
My wife with feet of initials
With feet of rings of keys and Java sparrows drinking
My wife with a neck of unpearled barley
My wife with a throat of the valley of gold
Of a tryst in the very bed of the torrent
With breasts of night
My wife with breasts of a marine molehill
My wife with breasts of the ruby's crucible
With breasts of the rose's spectre beneath the dew
My wife with the belly of an unfolding of the fan of days
With the belly of a gigantic claw
My wife with the back of a bird fleeing vertically
With a back of quicksilver
With a back of light
With a nape of rolled stone and wet chalk
And of the drop of a glass where one has just been drinking
My wife with hips of a skiff
With hips of a chandelier and of arrow-feathers
And of shafts of white peacock plumes
Of an insensible pendulum
My wife with buttocks of sandstone and asbestos
My wife with buttocks of swans' backs
My wife with buttocks of spring
With the sex of an iris
My wife with the sex of a mining-placer and of a platypus
My wife with a sex of seaweed and ancient sweetmeat
My wife with a sex of mirror
My wife with eyes full of tears
With eyes of purple panoply and of a magnetic needle
My wife with savanna eyes
My wife with eyes of water to he drunk in prison
My wife with eyes of wood always under the axe
My wife with eyes of water-level of level of air earth and fire
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Jack Kerouac-man I am beat
როგორც პაპაჩემისთვის, ჩემთვისაც, ნამდვილი ამერიკა ველურ, თავდაჯერებულ ინდივიდუალიზმს ნიშნავდა. მაგრამ მეორე მსოფლიო ომის ბოლოსთვის, ამდენი კაი ბიჭის დაღუპვამ (რომელთა შორის ბევრი ჩემი ძმაკაციც იყო) ეს გრძნობა ნელ-ნელა გააქრო... თუმცა, მოგვიანებით, სრულიად მოულოდნელად, კვლავ ამოტივტივდა - გამოჩნდნენ ქუჩებში მოტასავე ჰიპსტერები, რომლებიც გამვლელებს ეღადავებოდნენ და წესიერ მოქალაქეებს მოსვენებას არ აძლევდნენ; ისინიც, თავის მხრივ, შეშლილი სიფათებით მიჰყვიროდნენ მათ: `ეეე, გარეკე???!!!` ჰიპსტერები პირველად თაიმს-სკვერში ვნახე, 1944 წელს, და სიმართლე ითქვას, მათი დანახვით არ აღვფრთოვანებულვარ. ერთ-ერთი მათგანი, ჩიკაგოელი ტიპი, მომიახლოვდა და მითხრა: `დავილეწე ძმაო!`, (Man, Im beat). ეგრევე მივხვდი რასაც გულისხმობდა. ამ დროისათვის ჯერ არ ვიყავი ბოპში გადავარდნილი (ჩარლი `ბერდ` პარკერი, დიზი გილესპი და ბეგზი ჯექსონი რომ უბერავდნენ; სვინგის უკანასკნელ, დიდ მუსიკოსად დონ ბაიეზს მიიჩნევდნენ, რომელიც მალე ესპანეთში აითესა), - მაგრამ მოგვიანებით გავრეკე... ჯერ ჩემი ძველი ჯაზ-ფირფიტები ამოვქექე მინტონ ფლეიჰაუსში; ლესტერ იანგი, ბენ უებსტერი, ჯონ გაი, ჩარლი კრისტიანი... და სხვებიც. როცა ჩიორასა და დიზის მოვუსმინე კლუბ “Three Dueces"-ში, მივხვდი, რომ ისინი სერიოზული მუსიკოსები იყვნენ; უთავბოლო, გალეშილი ახალი საუნდით უკრავდნენ, და ყველაფერი დავიკიდე, რასაც ადრე ვფიქრობდი მე, ან ჩემი ძმაკაცი სეიმური... არადა, იმ საღამოს ბარმენის დახლთან ვიჯექი და ლუდს ვწრუპავდი, როცა უცბად დიზი მოვარდა და ბარმენს ჭიქაში რაღაცა დაასხმევინა (ალბათ წყალი), თავად ჩემს წინ დადგა და ხელგაშვერილი ჭიქისკენ იქაჩებოდა, კინაღამ კისერი მომტეხა, შემდეგ კი ცეკვა-ცეკვით უკან დაახვია. ისეთი შთაბეჭდილება შემექმნა, თითქოს იცოდა, რომ ერთ მშვენიერ დღეს ხოტბას შევასხამდი... და რაღაც უაზრო გარემოებების გამო მის ერთ-ერთ გამოსვლას აღვწერდი. ჩარლი პარკერზე ჰარლემში ამბობდნენ, ჩუ ბერისა და ლუი არმსტრონგის დროიდან მოყოლებული, ეგეთი არავინ გვინახავსო.
ასე თუ ისე, ჰიპსტერები, თავისი ბოპით, ბანდიტებს ჰგავდნენ, მაგრამ ერთმანეთში ისეთ რამეებზე ლაპარაკობდნენ, რაც მეც მაგრა მაინტერესებდა: გრძელი ჩანახატები - პირადი გამოცდილებიდან და ხილვებიდან, განცდებით აღსავსე აკრძალული აღსარებები; ალიაქოთი, აურზაური, ახალგაზრდული სულის მოუსვენრობა (რომელიც ასე ჰგავდა პირველყოფილის სულს)... და როცა იმ ჩიკაგოელმა ტიპმა, უიმედო თვალებში გამკრთალი ნაპერწკლით, გვითხრა `გავილეწეო`, გაიჟღერა სიტყვამ, რომელიც შესაძლოა რაღაც კარნავალებიდან იყო ნასესხები, ან ნარკომანთა კაფეებში თუ გაიგონებდი მას. ეს ახალი ენა იყო, შავკანიანთა ნამდვილი ჟარგონი; სიტყვა, რომელიც ლაკონურად გამოხატავდა ათას რამეს (დავილეწე, განგრეული ვარ, გამოვქლიავდი) და რომელსაც ადვილად ეჩვეოდი, ისევე როგორც "Hung up"-ს.
ზოგი ჰიპსტერი მაგარი დაცენტრილი იყო, უაზროდ ფრთაშესხმული თავისას უბერავდა. ისე, მაგრა ხურავდა... კონცერტი ყოველ ღამე იმართებოდა და რამე... 1948 წლისათვის კი ყველაფერი ნათელი გახდა - ქუჩებში ვიბოდიალებთ და დავებაზრებით ყველას, ვინც კარგი თვალით შემოგვხედავს... სიმპათიას კი ჰიპსტერები კილომეტრზე გრძნობდნენ... სწორედ იმ წელიწადს შევხვდი მონტგომერ კლიფტს, გაუპარსავი იყო და ნახმარ ქურთუკს ატარებდა. მედისონ ავენიუზე ეშვებოდა მობუზული, მასთან ჩარლი `ბერდ` პარკერი იყო, მაღალყელიან შავ სვიტერში გამოწყობილი, ბებს გონსალესი და ვიღაც მაგარი ნაშა.
გაუგებრობის მიზეზი, რომელიც `ჰიპსტერებთან` და `დალეწილ თაობასთან` იყო დაკავშირებული, იმაში მდგომარეობდა, რომ ორი სახის ჰიპსტერიზმი არსებობდა:
1. "cool" (მშვიდი, უშფოთველი) - დუმილში ჩაძირული წვეროსანი ტიპები, სახეზე გესლიანი ღრმააზროვნება რომ ჰქონდათ აღბეჭდილი; ისინი ბიტნიკთა ბარებში ისხდნენ ხოლმე და მთელი დღე სიფათებს კერავდნენ... ლაპარაკობდნენ დაბალ ხმაზე, ნაშები კი შავებში იყვნენ გამოწყობილნი და როგორც წესი, ხმას არ იღებდნენ.
2. "hot" - ემოციური, დაუდგრომელი, შფოთიანი შერეკილები ანთებული თვალებით (თანაც ყოველთვის გულღია და გულახდილები); ისინი, ნაცნობებისა და თანამოაზრეთა ძიებაში ბარიდან ბარში გადარბოდნენ, მოუთმენლები მუდამ რაღაცაზე აქეზებდნენ უხალისო ბიტნიკებს, რომლებიც ცდილობდნენ ყურადღება არ მიექციათ ამ შებერტყილებისთვის. `დალეწილთა თაობის` მწერალთა უმრავლესობა, რა თქმა უნდა, ამ `შფოთიანთა სკოლას` ეკუთვნის - ყოველი დილა, როგორც წესი, ლუდით იწყებოდა ხოლმე, რათა შემდგომ, საღამოსთვის, ყველა სხვა სასმელის მრავალფეროვნებით აკიაფებულიყო გამტყვრალი ცნობიერება... ძირითადად, "hot" და "cool"-ის თანაფარდობა 50-50-ზე იყო. მაგალითად, ისეთი დაუდგრომელი ჰიპსტერი, როგორც მე ვარ, ბოლოს და ბოლოს, ღრმა ბუდისტურ მედიტაციაში ვეშვები ხოლმე; მაგრამ, როცა ჯაზ-კონცერტზე ვარ, ახლაც ვგრძნობ, როგორ ვიქოქები მუსიკოსთა შეძახილებზე: `მიდი, მიდი, შეუბერე` (blow, baby, blow!) - თუმცა კი უკვე დავბერდი ეგეთი რაღაცეებისთვის.
1948 წელს `შფოთიანი` ჰიპსტერები მანქანებით დაქროდნენ (როგორც ეს “On the Road"-შია აღწერილი) ველური, ცეცხლოვანი ჯაზის ძიებაში, ისეთის, ვილი დიქსონი, ლაქი თომპსონი და ჩაბი ჯექსონის ბიგ-ბენდი რომ უკრავდა; მაშინ, როცა `მშვიდები`, საკუთარ თავში ჩაძირულნი ლენი ტრისტანოსა და მაილს დევისის `წესიერ`, მაგრამ ძლიერ ჯგუფებს უსმენდნენ... ყველაფერი ეს, თავის მასშტაბებით ეროვნულ თაობად იქცა, რომელსაც "BEAT"-ის იარლიყი მიაკერეს. რა თქმა უნდა, ეს ტიტული არც ერთ ჰიპსტერს არ ევასა. სიტყვა beat-ით თავიდან უქონელ, გადაღლილ, ცხოვრების საზღვრებიდან მოსროლილ ადამიანს აღნიშნავდნენ და ასეთებში, როგორც წესი, დამწუხრებულ მაწანწალებსა და მიწისქვეშა გასასვლელების ბინადრებს გულისხმობდნენ. ახლა ამ სიტყვამ ოფიციალური სტატუსი მოიპოვა და მას იმ ადამიანთა მიმართ იყენებენ, რომელთაც ცხოვრებაში აზრადაც არ მოსვლიათ მიწისქვეშ ღამის გათენება, მაგრამ რომლებიც ერთმანეთში ახალ ენაზე საუბრობენ და ყველასგან განსხვავდებიან ზნე-ჩვეულებებით.
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გზად` 1951 წლის გასაოცარ მაისის თვემდე სამი კვირით ადრე დავასრულე, როცა მანჰეტენზე ვცხოვრობდი, ლოუერ უესთ საიდზე, ჩელსის რაიონში, 100 ფუტის სიმაღლეზე... სწორედ აქ იქცა სიტყვად `გალეწილი თაობის` სახე. დავწერე წიგნი და მას შემდეგ, თან დავათრევდი, საუნივერსიტეტო ღრეობები იქნებოდა ეს, თუ სხვა ველური თავყრილობა, სადაც პატარა ბიჭებს ვაბოლებდი ხოლმე, ძალზე მგრძნობიარე ახალგაზრდებს, რომლებიც ამ სიბინძურეში უკვე საბოლოოდ გამოთაყვანებულიყვნენ.
`გზად`-ის ხელნაწერი 100 ფუტიანი სიმაღლიდან მიწაზე დაეშვა... მაშინ, როცა ჩემმა გამომცემელმა, ძალზე ინტელიგენტურმა ადამიანმა, მითხრა, ჯეკ, თითქმის დოსტოევსკისეული რამეა... მაგრამ ახლა, ამ ქვეყანაში ვინ წაიკითხავს ასეთ წიგნს..?` მეც დავიკიდე... ბოლო 5 წლის მანძილზე ყველაფერი ვიყავი და ამავე დროს, არაფერიც: მაწანწალა, მეშახტე, მეზღვაური, გლახა, ჟურნალისტი, მექსიკელი ფსევდოინდიელი, მაგრამ წერას მაინც ვაგრძელებდი... ჩემი კერპი გოეთე იყო, მჯეროდა ხელოვნების ძალმოსილებისა, ვოცნებობდი, რომ ოდესმე ფაუსტის მე-3 ნაწილსაც დავწერდი, რაც შემდეგ `დოქტორ საქსში` განვახორციელე. 1955 წელს გამოჩნდა სტატია `დალეწილი თაობის ჯაზი`, ასე რომ, ეს სიტყვა სულ უფრო და უფრო ვრცელდებოდა, კატასავით მრავლდებოდა, იგივე სისწრაფითა და მსგავსი შესრულებით. ყველგან ნახავდით უცნაურ, მოჰიპო ტიპებს, კოლეჯის მოსწავლეებს, რომლებიც დასაყრდენს ეძიებდნენ და ლაპარაკისას ზუსტად იმავე სიტყვებს ხმარობდნენ, პირველად თაიმს სკვერზე რომ გავიგონე ოდესრაც.
1957 წელი. ბოლოს და ბოლოს გამოქვეყნდა `გზად`. თითქოს ყველაფერი შეიძრა, ბევრი გააერთიანა ამ აზრებმა და ყველა `გალეწილი თაობის` შესახებ ლაპარაკობდა... სადაც არ გამოვჩნდებოდი, მარცხნივ და მარჯვნივ, ინტერვიუს ვიძლეოდი, ზოგს ბიტნიკს უწოდებდნენ, ზოგს დალეწილს, ჯაზმენს, ბოპნიკს და საბოლოოდ მთელი ამ ალიაქოთის ავტორად მე გამომაცხადეს ბოიშვილი ვიყო.
source:literatura.ge
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
იესოსა და ღვთისმშობლის პროტოტიპები
ეგვიპტელთა ისიდა ჰორთან ერთად,დემეტრა,არტემიდა ეფესელი,ნეპტუნის ტაძრის იუნონას ქანდაკება ყრმა მარსთან ერთდ,დიანას ერთ-ერთი რომაული გამოსახულება -თავზე ჯვრით იქით-აქეთ და მთვარის გამოსახულებით.
ბევრი აქვთ საერთო იესოსა და მარიამს, აზიის წარმართულ სარწმუნოების ღმერთებთან თუ ქალღმერთებთან.მათ შორის აღსანიშნავია ყრმა აპოლონის უძველესი გამოხატულება შარავანდედით თავზე.
ქალღმერთი დიანა
რომაელთა იუნონა ყრმა მარსთან ერთად
დემეტრა
ეგვიპტელთა ისიდა და ყრმა ჰორი
ყრმა აპოლონი აბსოლიტურად იესოს იდენტურია
ბევრი აქვთ საერთო იესოსა და მარიამს, აზიის წარმართულ სარწმუნოების ღმერთებთან თუ ქალღმერთებთან.მათ შორის აღსანიშნავია ყრმა აპოლონის უძველესი გამოხატულება შარავანდედით თავზე.
ქალღმერთი დიანა
რომაელთა იუნონა ყრმა მარსთან ერთად
დემეტრა
ეგვიპტელთა ისიდა და ყრმა ჰორი
ყრმა აპოლონი აბსოლიტურად იესოს იდენტურია
Friday, January 14, 2011
არტო
კვირა დილას მოხუცმა ინდიელმა ბელადმა გულსა და ელენთას შორის მახვილის ჩაცემით გამიხსნა შემეცნება დამამშვიდებელი სიტყვებით: “გჯეროდეთ, არ შეშინდეთ, მე ცუდს არაფერს გაგიკეთებთ!” სწრაფად დაიხია უკან სამი - ოთხი ნაბიჯით, ჰაერში მახვილის ტარით წრე მოხაზა, მთელი ძალით წინ გამოექანა და ისე დამიმიზნა მახვილი, თითქოს ჩემი მოკვლა უნდოდა. თუმცა ოდნავ შემეხო და მხოლოდ ერთი წვეთი სისხლი მადინა. ტკივილი სრულიად ვერ ვიგრძენი და მქონდა შეგრძნება რომ განვთავისუფლდი თანდაყოლილი უიღბლობისა და არასწორი აღზრდისაგან; ვიგრძენი რომ ვივსები ნათელით, რომელიც არასოდეს მეკუთვნოდა. რამდენიმე დღის შემდეგ გამთენიას დავამყარე კონტაქტი ტუტუგურის ქურუმებთან და მესამე დღეს ვეზიარე სიგურის.
„იძირები ერთიანობაში, სადაც არ არის ღმერთი, რომელიც გშთანგთქავს და გქმნის, თითქოს თავად ქმნი საკუთარ თავს არარსებულში და ღვთის ნების წინააღმდეგ, განუწყვეტლივ შენი თავის შემოქმედი ხარ”
ეს სიტყვები ეკუთვნის ინდიელ ბელადს, მე მათ მხოლოდ გამოვთქვამ, თუმცა მხოლოდ ისე, როგორც შემიძლია აღვიდგინო, სიგურის ფანტასტიკური შუქით განათებულმა.
თუკი მზის ქურუმები მოიქცეოდნენ ისე, როგორც უფალი იესო ქრისტეს სიტყვის მოწმეები, პეიოტლის ქურუმების წყალობით მე შევძლებდი ჩავძირულიყავი მითიური საიდუმლოს საწყისებში და მათი საშუალებით შევსულიყავი საიდუმლოთა საიდუმლოებაში, დამენახა შემოქმედების ბოლო აქტი, ადამიანი – მამის და არა კაცის ან ქალის. პირველსავე ჯერზე არ შემეძლო მონაწილეობა მიმეღო სრულ რიტუალში, დამჭირდა გარკვეული დრო, რომ შემეცნო მრავალფეროვანი საცეკვაო მოძრაობები, პოზები და ფიგურები, რომლებსაც სიგურის ქურუმები გამოხატავდნენ ჰაერში, თითქოს თავს მახვევდნენ ამ ჩრდილებს ან გამოიხმობდნენ ღამის მღვიმეებიდან. თავად ქურუმებს უკვე აღარ ესმოდათ რას აკეთებდნენ: მათი სხეულები ემორჩილებოდნენ ერთის მხრივ ჩვევის ძალას, მეორეს მხრივ პეიოტლის საიდუმლო ბრძანებას. მათ ცეკვის წინ ნახარში მიიღეს, რადგან სურდათ გათვლილი საშუალებებით შესულიყვნენ ტრანსის მდგომარეობაში. მე მხედველობაში მაქვს, რომ ისინი აკეთებენ იმას, რასაც უბრძანებს მათ ეს მცენარე, იმეორებენ სავარჯიშოს, რასაც მიჩვეულია კუნთები და თავის წინაპრებზე მეტი არ იციან ნერვების მუშაობის შესახებ. თუმცა ნერვების მუშაობის როლი გადამეტებულად ესმით. ეს ყველაფერი მე არ მაკმაყოფილებდა და როდესაც ცეკვა დამთავრდა გადავწყვიტე ყველაფერში გავრკვეულიყავი, სანამ მონაწილეობას მივიღებდი პეიოტლის რიტუალში, რომელსაც ატარებენ ნამდვილი ინდიელი ქურუმები. გამოვკითხე ტარაუმარა, ბევრი ინდიელი, რომლებიც ცხოვრობდნენ მთაზე, და მთელი ღამე ვესაუბრებოდი ახალგაზრდა წყვილს: ქმარი ამ რიტუალების მიმდევარი იყო და ჩემი აზრით მისი საიდუმლოებების მცოდნე, მან ბრწყინვალედ ამიხსნა და ზედმიწევნით ზუსტად აღმიწერა როგორ გადის პეიოტლი ჩემს აღელვებულ სხეულში და აღადგენს მეხსიერებას იმ მაღალი ჭეშმარიტებების შესახებ, რომელთა წყალობით ადამიანური შემეცნება არ კვდება და უსასრულობას უერთდება.
ინდიელებს სიტყვა სიგურის გაგონებაც კი არ უყვართ. ჩემთან თარჯიმნად მუშაობდა მეტისი, მან გამაფრთხილა რომ ინდიელთან ამ თემაზე ფრთხილად და პატივისცემით მელაპარაკა, რადგან სიტყვა სიგური ინდიელებში იწვევს შიშს და წმინდა გრძნობებს აღძრავს, რაც საუბედუროდ გაუგებარია ევროპელისთვის, რადგან ის აქ პატივს არაფერს სცემს. ჩემთვის ნათელი გახდა რომ შიშმა შეიძლება ინდიელებს დამაშოროს. მე წარმოვთქვი სიტყვა სიგური და ჩემს წინ ჩაიარა მოძრაობათა რიგმა, რითაც შევიტყვე ადამიანური შემეცნების შესაძლებლობა, შეინარჩუნოს ღმერთის შეგრძნება.
ინდიელის პოზა გამოხატავდა შეძრწუნებას, მაგრამ ეს მხოლოდ ფარი იყო; ბედნიერს ჰგავდა – ისეთს როგორიც მხოლოდ არსებობის დიად წუთებში შეიძლება იყო; სიხარული და თაყვანისცემა ავსებდა მას. ასე ირინდებოდნენ კაცობრიობის პირველყოფილი ადამიანები ჯერ კიდევ როდესაც დაბადების ტანჯვაში იმყოფებოდნენ, როცა სული ჯერ არ შექმნილი ადამიანისა, მაღლდებოდა ჭექა ქუხილის ხმაურში, ცეცხლში გადაჭიმული სამყაროს თავზე; ალბათ ასე ლოცულობდნენ ადამიანის მოსვლისათვის კატაკომბებში და ამის შესახებ, ნათქვამია წიგნებში.
მან შეაერთა ხელები, თვალები გაუბრწყინდა, სახე გაუქვავდა და შეუვალი გახდა, მისი საოცარი მღელვარების გამოსხივების წყალობით, ვხედავდი როგორ მოდიოდა გონზე, ორჯერ თუ სამჯერ ის გადავიდა ერთი ადგილიდან მეორეზე და მისი თვალები უძრავად უკან ერთ შერჩეულ წერტილში იყურებოდნენ.
მივხვდი რომ ის უფრთხოდა დაუდევრობის ან თუნდაც უმნიშვნელო უპატივცემულობის გამომჟღავნებას ღმერთის მიმართ, რათა დაეცვა ცნობიერება იმისაგან რაც შეიძლებოდა ამას მოყოლოდა. ასევე გავიგე ორი რამ: ინდიელი ტარაუმარა არ ანიჭებს თავის სხეულს ისეთ მნიშვნელობას როგორსაც ჩვენი ძმა ევროპელი, რომლის წარმოდგენა ამ საკითხზე აბსოლუტურად განსხვავებულია. ინდიელი თითქოს ამბობს: „ეს სხეული მე არ ვარ”. როცა ინდიელი ყურადღების კონცენტრაციას ახდენდა, მექმნებოდა შთაბეჭდილება, რომ მისი სხეული თავად ათვალიერებს და აკვირდება საკუთარ თავს. „მე—მხოლოდ ის ვარ რაც სიგურიმ მიბრძანა რომ ვიყო და იქ ვარ სადაც მიბრძანა რომ ვიყო, შენ კი იტყუები და არ ემორჩილები. შენ არასოდეს არ გრძნობ იმას, რასაც მე. შენ ყოველთვის მაძლევ საპირისპირო შეგრძნებებს, შენ არაფერი გინდა იქიდან რაც მე მსურს. დიდი ნაწილი იმისა რასაც შენ მთავაზობ, ბოროტებაა, შენ ჩემთვის ყოველთვის იყავი დროებითი გამოცდა, ტვირთი, ერთ მშვენიერ დღეს როცა სიგური გახდება თავისუფალი, მე გიბრძანებ მოშორდე”. ამ სიტყვების დროს ის ტირის, „ოღონდ არ არის საჭირო საერთოდ წახვიდე, შენ მაინც სიგურიმ შეგქმნა და რამდენჯერ შემიფარე ქარიშხლის დროს, მაგრამ სიგური მოკვდებოდა მე რომ არ ვყავდე.”
კიდევ შევიტყვე, რომ ამ ლოცვის დროს ინდიელი - საკუთარი სხეულის მტერი, მსხვერპლად წირავდა ღმერთს თავის ცნობიერებას და ამ საქმეში მას პეიოტლის გამოყენების ჩვევა მართავდა. მის სახეზე ერთიმეორეს მიყოლებით ჩნდებოდა ემოციები რომლებიც თითქოს მისი არ იყო, ის არ ყოფილა ამით შეპყრობილი, არ გავდა ჩვენს წარმოდგენას პირადი განცდების შესახებ, ჩვენი ემოციები იბადება ელვისებური სისწრაფით, როგორც კი გამოჩნდება ობიექტი რისკენაც არის მიმართული, ჩვენ ვიღებთ, ან უარვყოფთ აზრებს რომლებიც გაიქროლებენ ჩვენს თავებში.
ამ ყოველივეს ხილვამ ჩამინერგა უზარმაზარი სურვილი ახლოდან მენახა ყველა რიტუალი, და მათში მონაწილეობის უფლება მომეპოვებინა, სწორედ ეს იყო ძნელი.
ახალგაზრდა ტარაუმარა არ შეუშინდა ლოცვის დაწყებას ჩემს სიახლოვეს, ეს მეგობრულობა უკვე იყო მტკიცებულება იმისა, რომ ჩემს წინაშე გაიღო რამდენიმე კარი.
პეიოტლისგან შეიძლება მიიღო მხოლოდ ის, რაც ადამიანს სჭირდება. ეს არაჩვეულებრივი მაგნიტური და ალქიმიური პრეპარატი მხოლოდ მაშინ მუშაობს როცა მისი მოხმარების წესი იცი; ანუ იცი რა დოზით. რა დროს ან რა მიზნით უნდა გამოიყენო.
მომდევნო საღამოს წავედი ინდიელების სოფელში, სადაც დამპირდნენ, რომ მაჩვენებდნენ პეიოტლის რიტუალს. ის სრულ სიბნელეში მიმდინარეობდა. ქურუმი მოვიდა ორ დამხმარე ქალთან, მამაკაცთან და ორ ბავშვთან ერთად; მან მოხაზა მიწაზე დიდი ნახევარწრე, რომლის შიგნითაც უნდა შესრულებულიყო დამხმარეთა თამაშები. შემდეგ გადააფარა მას სქელი საფარი რომელზეც შემეძლო მოვთავსებულიყავი. როგორც მივხვდი. ნახევარწრის თაღის, რვიანის ფორმის მარჯვენა ნაწილი, წარმოადგენდა ქურუმის წმინდა ადგილს. მარცხენა ნაწილში სიცარიელეს ბავშვები იკავებდნენ. წმინდა ადგილში მოთავსებული იყო ხის ქოთანი, რაშიც იდო პეიოტლის ფესვები: რიტუალის ჩასატარებლად პეიოტლის ქურუმები მცენარეს მთლიანად არ იყენებენ, ყოველ შემთხვევაში რიტუალური ქმედებების დროს.
ქურუმს ხელში ჰქონდა კვერთხი, ხოლო ბავშვებს პატარა ჯოხები. ბოლოს და ბოლოს მრავალფეროვან საცეკვაო მოძრაობებში გამოჩნდა პეიოტლის მოქმედება, რიტუალის შესრულების გზით სიგური შევიდა კულტის მიმდევრებში.
ვგრძნობდი, რომ ქურუმის დამხმარეთათვის ძნელი იყო მოქმედების დაწყება, ისინი არ აცეკვდებოდნენ თუ დარწმუნებულნი არ იქნებოდნენ, რომ დათქმულ დროს სიგური ჩაეშვებოდა მათში. სიგურის რიტუალი შემოქმედებითია, რომელიც მოვლენებს ისე ხსნის, როგორც ისინი იბადებიან სიცარიელეში და გადმოდიან რეალობაში. რიტუალი მთავრდება მაშინ, როდესაც ღმერთის ნებით სულს სხეულიდან იღებენ. აი რას გამოხატავს ქურუმის დამხმარეთა ცეკვა, ისინი ყვიროდნენ: „ჩვენ არ ვართ იმ მდგომარეობაში, რომ შევიცნოთ ღმერთი, სანამ ის არ შეეხება ჩვენ სულს, სხვა შემთხვევაში ჩვენი ცეკვა – მხოლოდ გრეხა და მოჩვენება. მოჩვენება, რომელიც უკან სდევს სიგურის, კვლავ აღორძინდება.”
გადაწყვეტილების მიღებამდე ქურუმმა ბევრი იფიქრა, შემდეგ ამოიღო უბიდან ტომარა და ინდიელებს ხელებზე თეთრი ფხვნილი გადმოუყარა, რომელიც მათ აუჩქარებლად გადაყლაპეს.
პეიოტლის ფხვნილის მიღების შემდეგ დაიწყეს ცეკვა. მათი სახის გამომეტყველებით მივხვდი, რომ ახლა მიჩვენებენ რაღაც ისეთს, რაც ადრე არასდროს მინახავს, დავძაბე მთელი ჩემი ყურადღება. რათა არაფერი გამომეტოვებინა..
ორივე დამხმარე ერთმანეთის პირისპირ დაწვა მიწაზე – ორი უსიცოცხლო გროვა. მოხუცმა ქურუმმა ალბათ ფხვნილი გადაყლაპა, იმიტომ რომ მისგან არაადამიანური ენერგია მოდიოდა. ის დაიჭიმა გასწორდა, თვალები აენთო, და მისგან უცხო, ძლიერმა ტალღებმა დაიწყეს გავრცელება. მან ორჯერ თუ სამჯერ ყრუდ დაჰკრა მიწას კვერთხი, შევიდა რვიანში, რომელიც რიტუალური მინდვრის მარჯვენა ნაწილში იყო მოხაზული. დამხმარეები უსიცოცხლო მდგომარეობიდან გამოვიდნენ. თავიდან კაცმა დაარტყა თავი და ხელის გულები მიწას – ქალს ზურგი შეერხა; ქურუმმა გადმოაფურთხა, მაგრამ არა ნერწყვი - ამონასუნთქი, კბილებიდან ხმაურით გამოცრილი. ერთდროულად შეიგრძნეს ჰაერის ნაკადი, ქალი და კაცი საბოლოოდ გამოფხიზლდნენ და ადგნენ, ისე იდგნენ ერთმანეთის პირისპირ თითქოს მათ იჭერდნენ სიცარიელის ნაკეცებსა და უსასრულობის ჭრილებში. ნათელი ხდებოდა, რომ იქ იყო არა ქალი და კაცი, არამედ ორი საწყისი: მამაკაცური და ქალური. კაცი – გაღებული პირით, ნერწყვის ბუშტუკებით, წითელ ანთებად სისხლმდინარე ღრძილებზე, რომლის მიღმა მოჩანდა კბილების ფესვები, რომლთა დანახვაც მორჩილებას გაიძულებს.
ქალი-უკბილო ნიღაბი, გადაქლიბული ფესვიანი კბილებით, ვირთხა ვირთხის საჭერში, დატანჯული ატეხვის ჟამს, ის სხლტება, იკლაკნება აგზნებული მამრის წინ, ისინი უცებ ეჯახებიან, ეკრობიან ერთმანეთს გამოთაყვანებული სახეებით, ისე თითქოს ერთმანეთს უთვალთვალებენ, ებრძვიან. ბოლოსდაბოლოს ერთი მეორეში შეაღწევს და ნელნელა განიდევნება უფლის დანაშაულით სავსე და არც ისე მოკრძალებული მზერა.
მათ ქცევაში საოცარი იყო, რომ ისინი ერთმანეთს ემუქრებოდნენ, ერიდებოდნენ შეჯახებას და ეჯახებოდნენ. ეს ყველაფერი იმისათვის, რომ ბოლოსდაბოლოს ერთად წასულიყვნენ; და არა იმიტომ რომ მამაკაცისა და ქალის საწყისი სხეულს იმორჩილებს, პირიქით ისინი განუხრელად რჩებიან ყოფიერების მიღმა, და მას დიდი ხანია ეწინააღმდეგებიან არამატერიალურ იდეებად, სადღაც ჩამობმულები; იმიტომ რომ ისინი, თავად ქმნიან საკუთარ სხეულს, სხეულს რომელშიც მატერიის იდეა სიგურის წყალობით გაქარწყლდა.
მე ბევრი ვიფიქრე პეიოტლის ფსიქიკური ზემოქმედების შესახებ. პეიოტლი აბრუნებს „მე”ს ჭეშმარიტ საწყისებთან. როდესაც ასეთი ხილვის მდგომარეობაში შეხვალ, უკვე აღარ შეიძლება როგორც ადრე, ტყუილი და მართალი ერთმანეთში აურიო. გესმის საიდან მოხვედი და რა ხარ, უკვე აღარ გეპარება ეჭვი საკუთარ არსებობაში; და არ არსებობს ისეთი გრძნობა, ან გარეშე ძალა, რაც დაგაეჭვებს.
მექსიკაში ქურუმები დამეხმარნენ პეიოტლის მიღებისას დამენახა რა ხდება ადამიანის ღვიძლში, მეხილა ის საიდუმლო ალქიმია, ის სამუშაო, რომლის წყალობითაც ყოველი პიროვნების „მე” გადაარჩევს, მიიღოს ან უარყოს ის შეგრძნებები, ემოციები, სურვილები რაც ფორმას აძლევს ჩვენს არაცნობიერს. აქ „მე” ხდება ცნობიერი, აქ იშლება მისი ორგანული ძალაუფლება ცნოს თუ უარყოს. იმიტომ რომ ზუსტად ამისთვის მუშაობს სიგური, გამოაცალკევოს ის, რაც არსებობს, იმისაგან რაც არ არსებობს. ღვიძლი ეს არაცნობიერის ორგანული ფილტრია.
რაც ვნახე იმის მიხედვით თუკი ვიმსჯელებთ, პეიოტლი აფიქსირებს ცნობიერებას, არ აძლევს მას საშუალებას აიმღვრეს, მიეცეს ყალბ შთაბეჭდილებებს. მექსიკელმა ქურუმებმა მაჩვენეს მე ღვიძლზე ზუსტი ადგილი, სადაც სიგური ანუ პეიოტლი აწარმოებს სინთეტურ გამყარებას, რომელიც დიდი ხნით ინარჩუნებს ცნობიერში ჭეშმარიტების გრძნობასა და სურვილს, აძლევს მას ძალას ჩაეფლოს მასში და ავტომატურად მოიშოროს ყველაფერი დანარჩენი.
ტარაუმარა ამბობს: „ღამე ისე მისდევს ღამეებს, როგორც ჩონჩხი ჩაივლის ბნელი რიტუალის შემდეგ
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