I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I travelled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain. I hadn't been back in fifty-six years, and I remembered nothing. My parents had moved out of the city when I was three, but I instinctively found myself returning to the neighbourhood where we had lived, crawling home like some wounded dog to the place of my birth. A local real estate agent ushered me around to six or seven brownstone flats, and by the end of the afternoon I had rented a two-bedroom garden apartment on First Street, just half a block away from Prospect Park. I had no idea who my neighbours were, and I didn't care. They all worked nine-to-five jobs, none of them had any children, and therefore the building would be relatively silent. More than anything else, that was what I craved. A silent end to my sad and ridiculous life.
[The Brooklyn Follies, Auster, P.]
Sunday, 30 June 2013
Sunday, 9 June 2013
...of signs
Having no further recourse but to leave, Kim is about to go back down the stairs. She takes one step to the side and notices again, at the bottom of the steep stairs, the little men moving about, increasingly numerous and threatening to rush up the stairs. She quickly draws back out of their hypothetical field of vision, to begin climbing the next flight of stairs which is exactly the same as the first but rising in the opposite direction. On the landing of the third floor there are only two doors, the first of which is barred by three slender wooden laths nailed one on top of the other across the frame, to form a cross with six branches: two horizontal and four oblique (along the diagonals of the rectangle). The second door is wide open: this is the source of the vague light which made climbing the steps easier. In a rather long room, where the light enters through a screened bay window opening onto a balcony covered with drying laundry, about a hundred people - mostly men - are sitting on benches arranged in parallel rows; they are all listening closely to an orator delivering a speech, standing on a little dais at one end of the room. But his speech is a mute one, consisting entirely of complicated, rapid gestures in which both hands play their part, and which is doubtless intended for deaf-mutes.
But now steps can be heard coming up from the lower part of the staircase, quick yet heavy steps, belonging to several individuals running at different rates of speed. They approach so quickly that the decision cannot await any further reflection. Since the stairs go no higher than this third floor, Kim quite casually enters the lecture hall where, with the assurance and naturalness of someone who had come here on purpose to attend this event, she sits down on the empty end of one of the benches. Yet some heads turn toward her and are perhaps surprised by her presence; her neighbours make signs to each other with their fingers, analogous to those of the speaker: it is not mostly men who are around her, but only men. She wonders what can be the subject of the meeting for which they are gathered; there are so many problems which do not concern women, or which at least cannot be discussed in front of them (which would make her situation more awkward). In any case, the question of discovering whether this is a speech in English or Chines should not come up. (Is this certain?) Two new arrivals appear in the doorway (do they seem out of breath from climbing the stairs too rapidly?) who glance around the room, looking for empty places, that are rare and difficult to determine because of the absence of individual seats. Once they have noticed two located side by side, they hastily occupy them. Is it their steps which are heard echoing up the wooden staircase? And was it deaf-mute gestures which the little men on the sidewalk were making to each other, in the rectangle of light?
[La Maison de Rende-vous, Robbe-Grillet, A.]
But now steps can be heard coming up from the lower part of the staircase, quick yet heavy steps, belonging to several individuals running at different rates of speed. They approach so quickly that the decision cannot await any further reflection. Since the stairs go no higher than this third floor, Kim quite casually enters the lecture hall where, with the assurance and naturalness of someone who had come here on purpose to attend this event, she sits down on the empty end of one of the benches. Yet some heads turn toward her and are perhaps surprised by her presence; her neighbours make signs to each other with their fingers, analogous to those of the speaker: it is not mostly men who are around her, but only men. She wonders what can be the subject of the meeting for which they are gathered; there are so many problems which do not concern women, or which at least cannot be discussed in front of them (which would make her situation more awkward). In any case, the question of discovering whether this is a speech in English or Chines should not come up. (Is this certain?) Two new arrivals appear in the doorway (do they seem out of breath from climbing the stairs too rapidly?) who glance around the room, looking for empty places, that are rare and difficult to determine because of the absence of individual seats. Once they have noticed two located side by side, they hastily occupy them. Is it their steps which are heard echoing up the wooden staircase? And was it deaf-mute gestures which the little men on the sidewalk were making to each other, in the rectangle of light?
[La Maison de Rende-vous, Robbe-Grillet, A.]
...of dubiety
...The two persons say nothing, each seeming to think it the other's obligation to speak first: the Chinese because he is the one being disturbed, the girl because she hopes to have nothing to ask, from the moment that she is expected and that the man with whom she has an appointment obviously knows why she has come. Unfortunately she sees the latter shows no intention of speaking, nor of letting her in without an explanation, nor even of encouraging her by a word or a gesture to indicate the purpose of her visit, which would however have facilitated her speaking. She therefore finally decides to say something on her own initiative. Very rapidly, she stammers a quite incoherent phrase, asking if this is where the agent lives, if the gentleman to whom she is speaking is the one she is supposed to meet here, if the merchandise is ready for her to take away, as planned... But no sound can have come from her mouth, for the little man in the empty suit continues staring at her exactly as before, still waiting for her to make up her mind to speak. It was, as a matter of fact, impossible for her to have broached so many questions in so few words (moreover she does not even know what words were involved). Everything has begun all over again.
[La Maison de Rendez-vous, Robbe-Grillet, A.]
[La Maison de Rendez-vous, Robbe-Grillet, A.]
...of an intrusion
At first he thought of the crack of the whip, a common enough sound to hear in the early morning when the dustmen went on their round.
But this noise hadn't come from outside. Nor was it the crack of a whip. There was more weight in it than that, more percussion, so much so that he had really felt a slight shock in his chest before his ears actually heard it.
As he looked up, listening, the expression on his face was one of slight annoyance at the intrusion. It might have taken for anxiety, but it wasn't that.
What was so impressive was the silence which followed. A silence more compact, more positive than any ordinary one, but which yet seemed full of strained vibrations. He didn't get up from his chair at once. He filled his glass, emptied it, put his cigarette back in his mouth, then heaved himself up and went over to the door, where he listened for a second before opening it.
When he switched on the light in the passage, three dusty lamps lit up receding stretches of emptiness. There was no one there, nothing except that weighty, tense silence.
[The Strangers in the House, Simenon, G.]
- submitted by Pearce, M A.
But this noise hadn't come from outside. Nor was it the crack of a whip. There was more weight in it than that, more percussion, so much so that he had really felt a slight shock in his chest before his ears actually heard it.
As he looked up, listening, the expression on his face was one of slight annoyance at the intrusion. It might have taken for anxiety, but it wasn't that.
What was so impressive was the silence which followed. A silence more compact, more positive than any ordinary one, but which yet seemed full of strained vibrations. He didn't get up from his chair at once. He filled his glass, emptied it, put his cigarette back in his mouth, then heaved himself up and went over to the door, where he listened for a second before opening it.
When he switched on the light in the passage, three dusty lamps lit up receding stretches of emptiness. There was no one there, nothing except that weighty, tense silence.
[The Strangers in the House, Simenon, G.]
- submitted by Pearce, M A.
...of suppression
The more closely and contentedly Hans clung to his friendship the more alien the school seemed. The novel happiness coursed through his blood and brain like new wine and Livy no less Homer lost his importance and thrill. The masters were horror-stricken to see the once exemplary Giebenrath transformed into a problem child and failing under the bad influence of the highly suspect Heilner. There is in fact nothing that horrifies the schoolmaster so much as those strange creatures, precocious boys in the already dangerous period of adolescence. Further, a certain element of genius had already seemed unwholesome to them in Heilner, for there exists a traditional hiatus between genius and the teaching-profession and any hint of that element in schoolboys is regarded by them with horror from the very first. As far as they are concerned geniuses are those misguided pupils who never show them any proper respect, begin to smoke at the age of fourteen, fall in love at fifteen, go to pubs at sixteen, read forbidden books, write scandalous essays, stare at their teachers with withering scorn and are noted down in the school day-book as trouble-makers and candidates for detention. A schoolmaster would rather have a whole class of duffers than one genius, and strictly speaking he his right, for his task is not to educate unusual boys but to produce good Latinists, mathematicians, and good honest fools. Which of the two suffers most, the master at the hands of the boy or conversely, which is the greater tyrant or tormentor and which of the two it is who destroys and profanes, partially at any rate, the life and spirit of the other, it is impossible to judge without thinking back to one's own youth with anger and shame. But that is not our present concern, and we have the comfort of knowing that in true geniuses the wounds almost always heal, and they become people who create their masterpieces in spite of school and who later, when they are dead and the pleasant aura of remoteness hangs over them, are held up by schoolmasters to succeeding generations as exemplary and noble beings. And so the spectacle of the perpetual battle between regulation and spirit is repeated in each school in turn, and we continue to watch the State and school eagerly occupied in nipping in the bud the handful of profounder and nobler spirits who grow up year by year. And it is still especially the boys who are always in trouble, the ones who run away or are expelled who seem destined to enrich the life of their country when they are older. Nevertheless many - and who can tell their number - waste away in mute rebellion and finally go under.
[The Prodigy, Hesse, H.]
[The Prodigy, Hesse, H.]
...of honouring the dead
Meantime the procession had reached the main road and before long they were back in the college where all the teachers, headed by the principal, were there to receive the dead Hindlinger who in his lifetime would have run a mile to avoid such an honour. Schoolmasters look at a dead school-boy very differently from the way they regard a living one; they are convinced, for the moment, of the worth and uniqueness of every individual life in their charge and every youthtime against which they sin with such indifference the rest of the time.
But that evening and the whole of the next day the presence of the frail corpse worked like a magic spell, damped down and subdued all activity and conversation so that for a brief interlude all wrangling, anger, noise and laughter were hidden away like water sprites who disappear momentarily from the surface of the water and leave it calm and apparently uninhabited. Whenever two people spoke together of the drowned boy they called him by his full name, for the nickname Hindu did not seem dignified enough now the boy was dead. And the quiet Hindu who had been wont to merge unnoticed into the crowd now filled the whole establishment with his name and his dead presence.
[The Prodigy, Hesse, H.]
But that evening and the whole of the next day the presence of the frail corpse worked like a magic spell, damped down and subdued all activity and conversation so that for a brief interlude all wrangling, anger, noise and laughter were hidden away like water sprites who disappear momentarily from the surface of the water and leave it calm and apparently uninhabited. Whenever two people spoke together of the drowned boy they called him by his full name, for the nickname Hindu did not seem dignified enough now the boy was dead. And the quiet Hindu who had been wont to merge unnoticed into the crowd now filled the whole establishment with his name and his dead presence.
[The Prodigy, Hesse, H.]
...of self-destruction?
Herr Giebenrath had cursed loudly when his son failed to return for supper. When it got to be nine o'clock and Hans was still not there, he put out a stout cane which had long lain idle. The lad thought he had outgrown the paternal rod, did he? Well, he would have a nice surprise when he got home! At ten o'clock he locked the door. If his son wanted to indulge in night revels, he would soon see where he got off.
Nevertheless Herr Giebenrath did not sleep; he waited with an anger that mounted every hour to hear a hand touch the door knob and timidly pull the bell. He pictured the scene - the gadabout could learn his lesson! Probably he would be drunk but he would soon sober him down, the blackguard, the sly-boots, the miserable wretch! If he had to break every bone in his body.
Finally sleep got the better of him and his rage.
At that same moment the object of all these threats was already slowly drifting, cold and silent down the dark waters of the river. He had shed all the revulsion, shame and sorrow; the blue, chilly, autumn night looked down on his dark, slender body; the black water played over his hands and hair and bloodless lips. No one had seen him except possibly some sly otter just before dawn, eyeing him cautiously as it slid silently past. Nobody knew how he came to be in the water. Perhaps he had strayed from the path and slipped down at some steep spot on the slope; perhaps he had been drinking and had lost his balance. Perhaps the water had exercised a fatal fascination for him as he bent over it, and night and the pale moon looked so full of peace and deep rest that weariness and fear had driven him with gentle relentlessness into the shadow of death.
They found him when it was day and took his body home. His father, horror-stricken, had to lay his rod aside and relinquish his accumulated anger. It was true he shed no tears and displayed little emotion, but the following night he stayed awake again and now and then looked through the door-opening towards his silent child who lay on the clean bed as still as ever and who, with his refined brow and pale intelligent face, looked like a creature who had an innate right to enjoy a different fate from the common run. On his brow and hands the skin rubbed and slightly livid in hue, the handsome features were in repose, the white lids were closed over his eyes and the slightly parted lips had a contented, almost gay expression. It was as if the boy had suddenly blossomed forth and had been snatched up on his cheerful course; even his father in his weariness and solitary grief was a victim of that happy illusion.
[The Prodigy, Hesse, H.]
Nevertheless Herr Giebenrath did not sleep; he waited with an anger that mounted every hour to hear a hand touch the door knob and timidly pull the bell. He pictured the scene - the gadabout could learn his lesson! Probably he would be drunk but he would soon sober him down, the blackguard, the sly-boots, the miserable wretch! If he had to break every bone in his body.
Finally sleep got the better of him and his rage.
At that same moment the object of all these threats was already slowly drifting, cold and silent down the dark waters of the river. He had shed all the revulsion, shame and sorrow; the blue, chilly, autumn night looked down on his dark, slender body; the black water played over his hands and hair and bloodless lips. No one had seen him except possibly some sly otter just before dawn, eyeing him cautiously as it slid silently past. Nobody knew how he came to be in the water. Perhaps he had strayed from the path and slipped down at some steep spot on the slope; perhaps he had been drinking and had lost his balance. Perhaps the water had exercised a fatal fascination for him as he bent over it, and night and the pale moon looked so full of peace and deep rest that weariness and fear had driven him with gentle relentlessness into the shadow of death.
They found him when it was day and took his body home. His father, horror-stricken, had to lay his rod aside and relinquish his accumulated anger. It was true he shed no tears and displayed little emotion, but the following night he stayed awake again and now and then looked through the door-opening towards his silent child who lay on the clean bed as still as ever and who, with his refined brow and pale intelligent face, looked like a creature who had an innate right to enjoy a different fate from the common run. On his brow and hands the skin rubbed and slightly livid in hue, the handsome features were in repose, the white lids were closed over his eyes and the slightly parted lips had a contented, almost gay expression. It was as if the boy had suddenly blossomed forth and had been snatched up on his cheerful course; even his father in his weariness and solitary grief was a victim of that happy illusion.
[The Prodigy, Hesse, H.]
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