#117

“The kingdom of heaven will, in fact, appear on earth, but it will be ruled over by men – a mere handful to begin with, who will be the Cæsars, because they were the first to understand – and later, with time, by all men” (id, 60).

#116

“The romantic hero first of all brings about the profound and, so to speak, religious blending of good and evil. This type of hero is “fatal” because fate confounds good and evil without man being able to prevent it. Fate does not allow judgments of value. It replaces them by the statement that “It is so” – which excuses everything, with the exception of the Creator, who alone is responsible for this scandalous state of affairs” (id, 47-48).

#115

“The spirit of rebellion can exist only in a society where theoretical equality conceals great factual inequalities” (id, 20).

#114

“Beyond a doubt, certain characteristics of the Promethean myth still survive in the history of rebellion as we are living it: the fight against death (“I have delivered a men from being obsessed with death”), Messianism (“I have instilled hopes into men's minds”), philanthropy (“Enemy of Zeus... for having loved mankind too much”)” (id, 26-27).

#113

“It [absurdism] is contradictory in its content because, in wanting to uphold life, it excludes all value judgments, when live is, in itself, a vale judgment. To breathe is to judge. Perhaps it is untrue to to say that life is a perpetual choice. But it is true that it impossible to imagine a life deprived of all choice” (id, 8).

#112

“If our age admits, with equanimity, that murder has its justifications, it is because of this indifference to life which is the mark of nihilism. Of course, there have been peridos of history in which the passion for life was so strong that it burst forth in criminal excesses” (Camus, 1957: 6-7).

CAMUS, Albert (1957). The Rebel. Translation by Anthony Bower. New York: Vintage Books.

The Inventive Misread

“To be misread in anyway that bears thinking about, however, a writer has to be read as well. But those misreadings, conferred by skillful, cultivated, highly imaginative, widely read misreaders can be instructive, even when quite bizarre – witness Lawrence on American literature; or Freud, the all-time most influential misreader if imaginative literature. So are those misreaders the censors influential, though for other reasons. And are the Soviet censors necessarily misreading, in Solzhenitzyn's fiction, his political aims? Though censors may appear to be the most narrow-minded and perverse of all misreaders, at times they may be more discerning about the socially injurious implications of a book then the most tolerantly open-minded audience” (id, 151).

#110

“It occurred to me that I work in a society where as a writer everything goes and nothing matters, while for the Czech writers I met in Prague, nothing goes and everything matters” (id, 145).

#109

“Actually I think of pornography more as the projection of an altogether human preoccupation with the genitalia in and of themselves – a preoccupation excluding all emotions other than those elemental feelings that the contemplation of genital functions arouses” (Roth, 2007: 6).

ROTH, Philip (2007). Reading Myself And Others. London: Vintage.

#108

“she being Brand

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff i was
careful of her and(having

throughly oiled the universal
joint tested my gas felt of
her radiator made sure her springs were O.

K.)i went right to it flooded-the-carburetor cranked her

up,slipped the
clutch(and then somehow got into reverse she
kicked what
the hell)next
minute i was back I neutral tried and

again slo-wly;bare,ly nudg. ing(my

lev-er Right-
oh and her gears being in
A 1 shape passed
from low through
second-in-to-high like
greasedlightning)just as we turned the corner of Divinity

avenue i touched the accelerator and give

her the juice,good

(it

was the first ride and believe i we was
happy to see how nice she acted right up to
the last minute coming back down by the Public
Gardens i slammed on

the
internalexpanding
&
externalcontracting
braked Bothatonce and

brought allofher tremB
-ling
to a:dead.

Stand-
;Still)” (id, 77-78)

#107

“Theory:
Stanzaic metric verse
aims to put thoughts into
equal divisions, embodying
each thought in an equal
image, with an equal number
of sound for each image; symmetry.
To give concrete symmetry to
thought which is worthless, shifting,
meaningless as being incorporeal
make symmetrical corporeal the
mind. Make existent what is enexistent,
permanent what is impermanent.

Rhythm, as Holmes says,
is spontaneous in Pound
like bop – and Benyon's
comment (or Pound's) – “Slowness is Beauty”” (id, 501).

The Night-Apple

“Last night I dreamed
of one I loved
for seven long years,
but I saw no face,
only the familiar
presence of the body:
sweat skin eyes
feces urine sperm
saliva all one
odor and mortal taste” (id, 494)

Two High Up on a Balcony

“– “Why now, after all this time,
Which is no time at all,
May we not speak of the sublime
and act from soul to sou?”
“Oh lover, lover, so many years
Have come, and come to stay;
If you had tears, and I had tears,
We would weep years away

But words don't weep, and would I love
I had wept years ago;
Now two on a balcony but prove
What one in bed could know.”

– “But what you prove, and what I ask
are not such different things,
For you have made despair your task,
and I my imaginings.

You speak of my stiff fence of bones,
And I your wall of skin,
But though we talk thru telephones,
We both can hear within;

And though my speech may seem abstract,
Both fence and wall are one
And when you think of this as fact
The wall is broken down.”

– “The wall is banished, then, and we
Stand drunk in barren air,
And you laugh in your ecstasy;
But I laugh in despair.

For what we were and what we are
Change us as before;
Now heavens turn round in one big star,
And day is night no more:

Then stand here on this balcony
And wait for dawn, for dawn,
For sun keep you company;
Till then, I sleep alone”” (id, 477-478).

#104

“I place one rose upon her hair
And placed my hand upon her knee.
And as we breathed the summer air
She returned the rose to me

I twined a lovely rose into her hair
She leaned – we kissed – it fell upon her knee
And so we breathed the heavy summer air
She laughingly returned to rose to me” (id, 390).

#103

“Some have hinted that they love me – but I couldn't or didn't love them – certain creeps. Some I've said I love you to have said, on different occasions I love you to me, but not meaning the complete submission and self-delivery and total physical and spiritual sacrament and devotion (of body and soul)” (id, 358).

#102

“Should Jack and I ever write a book – and none but we alive can remember the beauty of certain days and nights – some acts – Lucien throwing money in the gutter, Neal in 106th St. in East Harlem – Bill, sitting in the window in the damp furnished gray room, above old Riordan's, landlady refugee – talking about Europe in the 30's, and afternoon and night in Denver when we talked of birds, and afternoon in York Avenue when we created “Pull My Daisy” and “The Shrouded Stranger” and “Dr. Sax”, and evening we played Sebastian's [Sampas] record and afternoon in his house with Luanne and Neal and Al Hinkle, moments with Vicki and Huncke – Bill Gilmore's manners and age, Phil White in the Great days, and Hal Chase in love with Celine” (id, 355).

#101

“We who have been fed on comic or saved endings have not seen public art show life in its deepest and beyond that and its purgation through a revelation of it on the screen, its deepest joy” (id, 314).

#100

“Jack [Kerouac]: “I am going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children”” (id, 250).

#99

“The minute you get your hands on something the power to keep something like that going you couldn't do it you couldn't even leave it alone for a few people still looking for something beautiful, people who'd rather hear a symphony than eat who can still, who hear a magnificent soprano voice singing ach nein when you hear this here lady singing up mine you can't get up to their level so you drag them down to yours if there's any way to ruin something, to degrade it to cheapen it...” (id, 659).

#98

“Player piano plays by itself get to shoot the pianist just read it Gid damn it says it right here, here where invention was eliminating the very possibility of failure as a condition for success precisely in the God damn arts there” (id, 604).

#97

“– Like I mean what's that.
– What.
– Like that arrow you made.
– What this? It's a diminuendo don't you, you read music don't you?
Plunk – like why do I want to read music man I mean I play music, like that's what music is isn't it man? I mean I play my own music what do I want to like read it for” (id, 551).

#96

“(...) changeover in the magazine's title form Her to She, passive to active image whole new concept came out of in-depth studies on potential readership modern gal's self-image came a long way baby clean freak from this old-fashioned passive Her flat on her back missionary position, new concept gets her right up in the saddle putting the boots to here” (id, 535).

#95

“Borges por él mismo”

BORGES, Jorge Luis (1995). Borges por él mismo. Madrid: Visor.