Excerpt from Nadja

Andre Breton

Who am I? If this once I were to rely on a proverb, then perhaps everything would amount to knowing whom I 'haunt.' I must admit that this last word is misleading, tending to establish between certain beings and myself relations that are stranger, more inescapable, more disturbing than I intended. Such a word means much more than it says, makes me, still alive, play a ghostly part, evidently referring to what I must have ceased to be in order to be who I am. Hardly distorted in this sense, the word suggests t hat what I regard as the objective, more or less de liberate manifestations of my existence are merely the premises, within the limits of this existence, of an activity whose true extent is quite unknown to me. My image of the "ghost," including everything conventional about its appearance as well as its blind submission to certain contingencies of time and place, is particularly significant for me as the finite representation of a torment that may be eternal. Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind; perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten. This sense of myself seems inadequate only insofar as it presupposes myself, arbitrarily preferring a completed image of my mind which need not be reconciled with time, and insofar as it implies-within this same time-an idea of irreparable loss, of punishment, of a fall whose lack of moral basis is, as I see it, indisputable. What matters is that the particular aptitudes my day-to-day life gradually reveals should not distract me from my search for a general aptitude which would be peculiar to me and which is not innate. Over and above the various prejudices I acknowledge, the affinities I feel, the attractions I succumb to, the events which occur to me and to me alone-over and above a sum of movements I am conscious of making, of emotions I alone experience-I strive, in relation to other men, to discover the nature, if not the necessity, of my difference from them. Is it not precisely to the degree I become conscious of this difference that I shall recognize what I alone have been put on this earth to do, what unique message I alone may bear, so that I alone can answer for its fate?

Ownwanted Isolation

I want to condemn myself by an ownwanted isolation and exile … I want to be dissolved in the words and never came out … I want to forget myself … run … run … and run away far from the distances … It was all a mistake … my birth … my death … and my lif's game … The words fall in my brain and my body beigins to trembling in the wind .

(18 october 2007)

N.M

Samuel Beckett

It's a lie . I can't stir . I havn't stired . (I launch the voice? I hear a voice .) There is nowhere but here . There are not two places, there are not two prisons . It's my parlour (it's a parlour!), where I wait for nothing . I don't know where it is, I don't know what it's like, that's no business of mine . I don't know if it's big, or if it's small, or if it's closed, if it's open . (That's right, reiterate : that helps you on .) Open on what ? There is nothing else, only it . Open on the void, open on the nothing . (I've no objection : those are words .) Open on the silence, looking out on the silence, straight out – why not? All this time on the brink of silence, I knew it! On a rock, lashed to a rock, in the midst of silence . Its great swell rears twards me, I'm streaming with it .(It's an image : those are words .) It's a body, it's not I – I knew it wouldn't be I . I'm not outside, I'm inside, I'm in something, I'm shut up: the silence is outside . Nothing but this voice and the silence all round . No need of walls? Yes, we must have walls: I need walls, good and thick . I need a prison (I was right), for me alone . I'll go there now, I'll put me in it .

The Unnamable

Double Of Depression

It's a long that I've became the double of my depression … my mind is full of the echo of wild and unruly drumbs of this hell that all day pound and pond and pound in my head .

(24 May 2007)

N.M

The Voice Imitator
Thomas Bernhard

Hotel Waldhaus

We had no luck with the weather and the guests at our table were repellent in every respect. They even spoiled Nietzsche for us. Even after they had had a fatal car accident and had been laid out in the church in Sils, we still hated them.

Warning

A businessman from Koblenz had made his life's dream come true by visiting the pyramids of Giza and was forced, after he had done visiting the pyramids, to describe his visit as the greatest disappointment of his life, which I understand, for I myself was in Egypt last year and was disappointed above all by the pyramids. However, whereas I very quickly overcame my disappointment, the Koblenz businessman. took vengeance for his disappointment by placing, for months on end, full-page advertisements in all the major newspapers in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, warning all future visitors to Egypt against the pyramids and especially against the pyramids of Cheops, which had disappointed him most deeply, more than all the others. The Koblenz businessman used up his resources in a very short time by these—as he called them—anti-Egypt and anti-pyramid advertisements and plunged himself into total penury. In the nature of things, his advertisements did not have the influence upon people that he had hoped for; on the contrary, the number of visitors to Egypt this year, as opposed to last year, has doubled.

True Love

An Italian who owns a villa in Riva on Lake Garda and can live very comfortably on the interest from the estate his father left him has, according to a report in La Stampa, been living for the last twelve years with a mannequin. The inhabitants of Riva report that on mild evenings they have observed the Italian, who is said to have studied art history, boarding a glass-domed deluxe boat, which is moored not far from his home, with the mannequin to take a ride on the lake. Described years ago as incestuous in a reader's letter addressed to the newspaper published in Desencano, he had applied to the appropriate civil authorities for permission to marry his mannequin but was refused. The church too had denied him the right to marry his mannequin. In winter he regularly leaves Lake Garda in mid-December and goes with his beloved, whom he met in a Paris shop-window, to Sicily, where he regularly rents a room in the famous Hotel Timeo in Taormina to escape from the cold, which, all assertions to the contrary, gets unbearable on Lake Garda every year after mid-December.

The Voice Imitator
Thomas Bernhard

Pisa and Venice

The mayors of Pisa and Venice had agreed to scandalize visitors to their cities, who had for centuries been equally charmed by Venice and Pisa, by secretly and overnight having the tower of Pisa moved to Venice and the campanile of Venice moved to Pisa and set up there. They could not, however, keep their plan a secret, and on the very night on which they were going to have the tower of Pisa moved to Venice and the campanile of Venice moved to Pisa they were committed to the lunatic asylum, the mayor of Pisa in the nature of things to the lunatic asylum in Venice and the mayor of Venice to the lunatic asylum in Pisa. The Italian authorities were able handle the affair in complete confidentiality .


The Tables Turned

Even though I have always hated zoological gardens and actually find that my suspicions are aroused by people who visit zoological gardens, I still could not avoid going out to Schönbrunn on one occasion and, at the request of my companion, a professor of theology, standing in front of the monkeys' cage to look at the monkeys, which my companion fed with some food he had brought with him for the purpose. The professor of theology, an old friend of mine from the university, who had asked me to go to Schönbrunn with him had, as time went on, fed all the food he had brought with him to the monkeys, when suddenly the monkeys, for their part, scratched together all the food that had fallen to the ground and offered it to us through the bars. The professor of theology and I were so startled by the monkeys' sudden behavior that in a flash we turned on our heels and left Schönbrunn through the nearest exit

Funeral in the brain
Emily Dickinson

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain
And Mourners to and fro
Kept treading – treading- till it saamed
That sens was breaking through

And when thay all were seated,
A service, like a Drum
Kept beating – beating till I thought
My Mind was going numb

And then I heard them lift a Box
With those same Boots of Lead, again,
And creak across my soul .
Then Space – began to toll,

As all the Heavens were a bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Roce
Wretched, solitary,here

And then a Plank in Reason, broke,
And I dropped down, and down
And hit a World, at every plunge,
And Finished knowing – then .

Wondering holy spirit

Who am I ? … what am I doing in here midlle of these people ? … I'm the wondering holy spirit … I see the faces … and I hear the voices … but I can't do anything . just counting my faded roses with my hands … there is a truth through of a dark glass … There' s nothing here for me only death … I'm afraid that every thing will be a dream The truth is a nightmare that we're trying awake .

N.M

(25 January 2007)

Confession

I'm a dead one … I'm a soul withought body … I'm just a remembrance … just a memory … I don't exist … something is wrong in my life … I'm very wrong and it's my punishment … all this pain is my punishment … I've done many mistakes … many irreparable mistakes … I'm decived father … I was fool … I was blind … selfish and proud … It was a practice for me … for my life … because I must learn … I must learn many things about this world … I don't like this world anymore … … the winter has finished and I will born again … this is a story of my life … a fracture … a desolation … a death … for ever …

N. M

(12 January 2006)

Sylvia Plath

The poetry of Sylvia Plath is based not on mental illness or psychoanalysis, but rather on folk-tale, literature and myth . the profound knowledge of Plath enabled her to create a personal system of poetic symbols based on mythical archetypes. Plath recognized a correspondence between her personal experience and these collective mythical archetypes.her ability was to combine the personal and the mythical in her poetry . Plath explred different possibilities in trying to resolve the conflict between the selves. In her final poems she even distanced herself from the necessity of rebirth.The concept of the White Goddess intrigued both plath and her husband Hughes and inspired them in their work to create poetry with mythical roots.Plath recognized certain aspects of myth which corresponded to her personal experiences. In other words, Plath personalized the mythical and mythologised the personal.perhaps the reason why the images of Plath's poetry continue to fascinate readers is because, as Rank says, thay are fundamental to mankind.

Maria Theresa

Apprehensions

poem by Sylvia Plath

There is this white wall,
Above which the sky creates itself
Infinite, green, utterly untouchable.
Angels swim in it, and the starts, in indifference also.
Thy are my medium.
The sun dissolves on this wall, bleeding its lights.

A gray wall now, clawed and bloody.
Is there no way out of the mind?
Steps at my back spiral into a well.
There red wall winces continually:
A red fist, opening and closing,
Two gray, papery bags
This is what I am made of, this and a terror
Of being wheeled off under crosses and a rain of pietas.

On a black wall, unidentifiable birds
Swivel their heads and cry.
There is no talk of immortality among these!
Cold blanks approach us:
They move in a hurry.

(28 May 1962)