From then on, concerned about his own faith, the priest did not come back to visit him and dedicated himself to hurrying along the building of the church. Rebeca felt her hopes being reborn. Her future was predicated on the completion of the work, for one Sunday when Father Nicanor was lunching at the house and the whole family sitting at table spoke of the solemnity and splendour that religious ceremonies would acquire when the church was built, Amaranta said: "The luckiest one will be Rebeca." And since Rebeca did not understand what she meant, she explained it to her with an innocent smile:
"You're going to be the one who will inaugurate the church with your wedding."
Rebeca tried to forestall any comments. The way the construction was going the church would not be built for another ten years. Father Nicanor did not agree: the growing generosity of the faithful permitted him to make more optimistic calculations. To the mute indignation of Rebeca, who could not finish her lunch, Ursula celebrated Amaranta's idea and contributed a considerable sum for the work to move faster. Father Nicanor felt that with another contribution like that the church would be ready within three years. From then on Rebeca did not say another word to Amaranta, convinced that her initiative had not the innocence that she attempted to give it. "That was the least serious thing I could have done," Amaranta answered her during the violent argument that they had that night. "In that way I won't have to kill you for three years." Rebeca accepted the challenge.
[One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez, G. G.]
Sunday, 18 January 2015
Tuesday, 13 January 2015
...of fatigue
At this moment someone Rita can't see shakes the ladder and Kien comes tumbling down like a blown scarecrow, flattened out as a dead seascroll over the shoulders of the crowd immediately below him. Jack Knowles also falls, but from lower down, a mere stumble that makes him disappear down among the bodies of the crowd. Kien is carried like a corpse by six warriors in various garbs from coat of mail to leopard skin to a green hussar's uniform to camouflage battledress to the white armour of the non-existent knight. So he's back, goodoh, thinks Rita irrelevantly. A passage opens in the crowd to let them pass, slowly, as if to a ceremonious funeral march, towards the big glass doors of the hotel. Outside the escort can be seen throwing their thin burden onto the street like so much waste paper. It is picked up by the cops outside and bundled into a paddy wagon, which drives off in a flashing blue light and a giggle of siren.
Dale Kohler, observing the silence, is about to resume his speech, but the silence is not a listening one. It is a fatigued silence, Rita notes. The Gay crowd, by nature the most tolerant of aberration, has merely parted the colourful sea to let it out, but seems also cowed into shame as its own quiet exclusion of it. The innumerable others too, from all ages and areas, are suddenly tired of listening, tired of asserting their existence and being treated as dead matter, crushed into politeness. The police don't even have to push and clamp. Slowly the mass percolates through the various exits, towards the elevators, back into Beverly and Kennedy, up their rooms, back to their panel-sessions, out of the gallery-doors marked NO EXIT, round the gallery towards other elevators, through to the backstairs, into the bar, out into the streets by the front and rear entrances. In fifteen minutes of quiet, murmuring at most, the lobby is empty again.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
Dale Kohler, observing the silence, is about to resume his speech, but the silence is not a listening one. It is a fatigued silence, Rita notes. The Gay crowd, by nature the most tolerant of aberration, has merely parted the colourful sea to let it out, but seems also cowed into shame as its own quiet exclusion of it. The innumerable others too, from all ages and areas, are suddenly tired of listening, tired of asserting their existence and being treated as dead matter, crushed into politeness. The police don't even have to push and clamp. Slowly the mass percolates through the various exits, towards the elevators, back into Beverly and Kennedy, up their rooms, back to their panel-sessions, out of the gallery-doors marked NO EXIT, round the gallery towards other elevators, through to the backstairs, into the bar, out into the streets by the front and rear entrances. In fifteen minutes of quiet, murmuring at most, the lobby is empty again.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
...of telepathy
At first he is unnoticed. The first hush comes from his immediate surroundings, and slowly reaches to the whole gallery, slightly lowering the decibels. The struggling groups below start looking up and stop struggling. The rhythmic roars quieten only gradually, the silence spreading like a contagion. Even the police cease their activities and stare.
He stretches out his hands. He starts speaking. In Russian, in Hebrew, in German, in Yiddish, in French. But everyone seems to hear him in English, as if he were dubbed, his lip-movements not quite corresponding to the words. Are there words? Rita can't hear any with her ears. But she absorbs immense and silent well-constructed phrases, interspersed with short sharp apostrophes, exclamations of love, proverbs, maxims, cliches of wisdom, brief prayers, blessings. Perhaps he is only pretending to speak, everyone hearing what they will. The effect is nevertheless electrical.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
He stretches out his hands. He starts speaking. In Russian, in Hebrew, in German, in Yiddish, in French. But everyone seems to hear him in English, as if he were dubbed, his lip-movements not quite corresponding to the words. Are there words? Rita can't hear any with her ears. But she absorbs immense and silent well-constructed phrases, interspersed with short sharp apostrophes, exclamations of love, proverbs, maxims, cliches of wisdom, brief prayers, blessings. Perhaps he is only pretending to speak, everyone hearing what they will. The effect is nevertheless electrical.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
...of the narrator
If she can't go on, I suppose I'll have to. I am not Mira of course, though many readers think I am. For one thing I have little Latin and less Greek. Curious how one can invent knowledgeable people without possessing their knowledge. One cheats, quite simply.
I didn't attend that I-narrator's little meeting - well, I wasn't even on the roll-call, any more than she was - because so far I haven't said I. As eye-narrator I've kept pretty quiet, effaced as they say, not a narrator at all, not fully-fledged, participating, not a character in my own right, a part entire, an expression which, as a child, I always heard as a parent tires, a phrase that would mean, if it existed, 'with a third-party parent', and that too could have its ring of truth in this context. But then, as a child, I was perpetually mishearing what I was taught. I would sing 'Le belge sortant du tombeau', a line in the Belgian national anthem, as 'Le belge sortant tambour'. A Protestant hymn learnt in Geneva went 'Avec allegresse, montons vers le ciel, Et chantons sans cesse notre Emmannuel'. But I sang 'Avec le negresse, montons vers le ciel'. Those were joyful visions. Clearly I do have that much in common with Mira, except she does it on purpose.
I say not a narrator at all because, when came the fashion for the vanishing author, the silent author, the transparent text (not language at all but window on the world), the critics, always quick to adapt their vocabulary to the latest bandwagon, started calling narrator both the character who narrates and the producer of the text, that is, the author, not of course the real author, who misheard anthems as a child, who had marital troubles or who is undergoing a long and painful dental treatment of implants, but the Author, Implied, Ideal, or whatever, thus losing an important distinction: the character who narrates is limited to what he can know, the producer of the text can move among many knowledges. He used to be called Omniscient. Well, anti-God intellectuals (anti-author-ity) objected to that. Objected to the rigging, the fateful feel of divine providence. The author was out. All authority rested in the text. And later all authority rested in the Reader, Implied, Ideal, or whatever. And so they passed imperceptibly from phrases such as 'the author's intention here is clearly' to 'the text clearly says', and then to 'the reader clearly infers'. But behind this lip-service to fads, what the author intends, what the text says, what the reader infers, is in every case what the one critic interprets. He too is Reader, he too is God.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
I didn't attend that I-narrator's little meeting - well, I wasn't even on the roll-call, any more than she was - because so far I haven't said I. As eye-narrator I've kept pretty quiet, effaced as they say, not a narrator at all, not fully-fledged, participating, not a character in my own right, a part entire, an expression which, as a child, I always heard as a parent tires, a phrase that would mean, if it existed, 'with a third-party parent', and that too could have its ring of truth in this context. But then, as a child, I was perpetually mishearing what I was taught. I would sing 'Le belge sortant du tombeau', a line in the Belgian national anthem, as 'Le belge sortant tambour'. A Protestant hymn learnt in Geneva went 'Avec allegresse, montons vers le ciel, Et chantons sans cesse notre Emmannuel'. But I sang 'Avec le negresse, montons vers le ciel'. Those were joyful visions. Clearly I do have that much in common with Mira, except she does it on purpose.
I say not a narrator at all because, when came the fashion for the vanishing author, the silent author, the transparent text (not language at all but window on the world), the critics, always quick to adapt their vocabulary to the latest bandwagon, started calling narrator both the character who narrates and the producer of the text, that is, the author, not of course the real author, who misheard anthems as a child, who had marital troubles or who is undergoing a long and painful dental treatment of implants, but the Author, Implied, Ideal, or whatever, thus losing an important distinction: the character who narrates is limited to what he can know, the producer of the text can move among many knowledges. He used to be called Omniscient. Well, anti-God intellectuals (anti-author-ity) objected to that. Objected to the rigging, the fateful feel of divine providence. The author was out. All authority rested in the text. And later all authority rested in the Reader, Implied, Ideal, or whatever. And so they passed imperceptibly from phrases such as 'the author's intention here is clearly' to 'the text clearly says', and then to 'the reader clearly infers'. But behind this lip-service to fads, what the author intends, what the text says, what the reader infers, is in every case what the one critic interprets. He too is Reader, he too is God.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
...of literary inundation
Well, as I was saying just now, it was Rita's fault. There was tremendous pressure from minority groups, who are now so numerous as to constitute a majority, those who want to alter the canon, you know, dig up forgotten works ignored by what they call white male warmongers - a lousy pun on canon-makers, hell - in favour, I guess, of black female peacemongers, Fine. Don't get me wrong, I'm for it, but the canon does change, has changed pretty drastically, in a natural way, and partly thanks to their efforts. We've always rewritten the past. But they're so aggressive. And their position is illogical. They ought to want to abolish the canon altogether, on their premisses that a canon is unconsciously a male preserve, a protection, like a club, a second matrix as Norman O. Brown used to say. So a female canon is a contradiction in terms. And deep down they know this, we can't work without some sort of institutional canon you know, to make some sort of sense, however changing, out of such a huge indiscriminate mass of literary facts. Well we could if we had unlimited resources, but we don't. Maybe with computers that'll come. But think of the chaos. It's already with us. There are far too many books in the world, the idea being I guess, that out of all that quantity some small quality will emerge.
Perhaps its true. Qualantity, qualantiquity, she adds silently to herself and raps herself on imaginary knuckles in her head.
You're dead right its true. I calculated yesterday that if you'd read one book a day from age fourteen to age eighty-four, you'd still only have read about point oh one percent of all that's available, isn't that scary? Just think of Chaucer, who was a learned man, and had forty books in his library. True, most of those are unread today, except by scholars. And if it isn't time that does the abolishing it's space. All those minority languages you know, so-called even when millions speak them, except us, the white West, too damned ignorant and arrogant, so that great works are only known to that one nation, except for those few that are translated, and most of us ignore those too. Not to mention all those states that excercise all their ingenuity to efface all cultural memory of books that don't suit their ideologies. This fortunately often has the opposite effect, so that characters from such books may even survive more vividly. But what are we to do? Still and all, that was a parenthesis. To return to our so-called minority groups, though why women should be called a minority Godalmighty knows, they don't want to do the abolishing, they think its we the white males that do it, their attitude is we bind them, without maybe meaning to, they do give us that. What they want is to replace the existing canon with theirs. So they want power too, and warmongering. But the canon does change, has changed, a deal faster than they'll admit, like I said. They want it to change even faster. It's the old revolution/evolution thing, and look where it's gotten us.
I see, says Mira. She is silent. She has followed this diatribal little lecture attentively, but part of her mind asks, am I abolished? Another part tells her that on the contrary she is inventing all this, and has no idea how to go on. Someone should enter now.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
Perhaps its true. Qualantity, qualantiquity, she adds silently to herself and raps herself on imaginary knuckles in her head.
You're dead right its true. I calculated yesterday that if you'd read one book a day from age fourteen to age eighty-four, you'd still only have read about point oh one percent of all that's available, isn't that scary? Just think of Chaucer, who was a learned man, and had forty books in his library. True, most of those are unread today, except by scholars. And if it isn't time that does the abolishing it's space. All those minority languages you know, so-called even when millions speak them, except us, the white West, too damned ignorant and arrogant, so that great works are only known to that one nation, except for those few that are translated, and most of us ignore those too. Not to mention all those states that excercise all their ingenuity to efface all cultural memory of books that don't suit their ideologies. This fortunately often has the opposite effect, so that characters from such books may even survive more vividly. But what are we to do? Still and all, that was a parenthesis. To return to our so-called minority groups, though why women should be called a minority Godalmighty knows, they don't want to do the abolishing, they think its we the white males that do it, their attitude is we bind them, without maybe meaning to, they do give us that. What they want is to replace the existing canon with theirs. So they want power too, and warmongering. But the canon does change, has changed, a deal faster than they'll admit, like I said. They want it to change even faster. It's the old revolution/evolution thing, and look where it's gotten us.
I see, says Mira. She is silent. She has followed this diatribal little lecture attentively, but part of her mind asks, am I abolished? Another part tells her that on the contrary she is inventing all this, and has no idea how to go on. Someone should enter now.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
...of no comment
After the call they walk towards Kennedy.
Hell, the journalists. Always arrive when its all over and there's nothing to film but afters. That's what my wife keeps complaining about, she says the news is always dead, they're never in on a real crash, nor, of course, on a murder. Though that's lucky for me, don't you agree, otherwise I'd be out of a job. Now sir, keep your cool, I'm gonna walk right through them saying no comment. But your picture'll be in the local papers and news. Just smile and keep mum.
Cameras on shoulders, flashes, an armoury of mikes held out like blunted swords, questions, jostlings, scufflings, hustlings. The two policeman at the door try to hold a passage for the inspector and his witness, who are prevented and pushed, push and prevent and reach the door at last as the cop holds the closest four journalists at strong arm's length. Columbo is experienced, opens the door, shoves Jack in, slips in himself and shuts the door. They're in.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
Hell, the journalists. Always arrive when its all over and there's nothing to film but afters. That's what my wife keeps complaining about, she says the news is always dead, they're never in on a real crash, nor, of course, on a murder. Though that's lucky for me, don't you agree, otherwise I'd be out of a job. Now sir, keep your cool, I'm gonna walk right through them saying no comment. But your picture'll be in the local papers and news. Just smile and keep mum.
Cameras on shoulders, flashes, an armoury of mikes held out like blunted swords, questions, jostlings, scufflings, hustlings. The two policeman at the door try to hold a passage for the inspector and his witness, who are prevented and pushed, push and prevent and reach the door at last as the cop holds the closest four journalists at strong arm's length. Columbo is experienced, opens the door, shoves Jack in, slips in himself and shuts the door. They're in.
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
...of ceremony
The din of conversation hushes suddenly as five people enter from a side-door near the platform and step up behind the red-draped table. The first two carry a big red book. One is a dishevelled brown-haired woman in a long white tunic and peplos, the other a slim young man in a black soutane with two narrow rectangular black bibs twice edged in white, whose extreme pallor only enhances his extreme beauty.
Emma catches her breath. It is the young man from the aerobrain. She is sitting in front, in her golden dress and ivory mantle, between Phillip II and the lady in the voluminous peachy skirts, also from the aerobrain. The young man in black and the dishevelled lady in white place the red book carefully upon a lectern on the table, then stand followed by a small, vacillating and very wrinkled old man, dressed in black robes, who has bright eyes and a bald head, except around the temples, and a sparse pointed white beard. He carries nothing. Behind him walks a tall, handsome man with greying hair, in a shabby grey cutaway coat, who precedes a small papal figure in white with a red shoulder-cape edged in white fur and a gold-embroidered green stole crossed over his chest. This last arrival takes his place at the centre of the table, flanked on his left by the pale young man and the dishevelled woman, on his right by the old man and the man in plain clothes.
The small white red and green priest raises his arms in welcome, then lowers them, to Emma's relief, who thought he was going to bless them with a sign of the cross. Felipe Segundo, next to her, is surprised that he does not, and crosses himself. Who are these two men on the left, he asks himself, not Protestants surely! And a woman at the altar! The silence is total now. What will he say? Emma wonders, Dearly Beloved Brethren?
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
Emma catches her breath. It is the young man from the aerobrain. She is sitting in front, in her golden dress and ivory mantle, between Phillip II and the lady in the voluminous peachy skirts, also from the aerobrain. The young man in black and the dishevelled lady in white place the red book carefully upon a lectern on the table, then stand followed by a small, vacillating and very wrinkled old man, dressed in black robes, who has bright eyes and a bald head, except around the temples, and a sparse pointed white beard. He carries nothing. Behind him walks a tall, handsome man with greying hair, in a shabby grey cutaway coat, who precedes a small papal figure in white with a red shoulder-cape edged in white fur and a gold-embroidered green stole crossed over his chest. This last arrival takes his place at the centre of the table, flanked on his left by the pale young man and the dishevelled woman, on his right by the old man and the man in plain clothes.
The small white red and green priest raises his arms in welcome, then lowers them, to Emma's relief, who thought he was going to bless them with a sign of the cross. Felipe Segundo, next to her, is surprised that he does not, and crosses himself. Who are these two men on the left, he asks himself, not Protestants surely! And a woman at the altar! The silence is total now. What will he say? Emma wonders, Dearly Beloved Brethren?
[Textermination, Brooke-Rose, C.]
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