La Notte

Contempt

For some strange reason, I kept off reading Contempt and have realized what a mistake I made. I do not want to outline a plot of this novel here, for that is easily done anyway. what strikes me most about this novel is the mood, the evocation of mood, the sense of doom, the breathless energy of that mood, the unending melancholy of the prose, the pace of narration, the sense of elegiac destiny of the characters, the almost detective pace in the end. Moravia is well known to belong to the group of writers who gave us the essay- novel, like Musil for instance. I perceive that Moravia or reading him is out of fashion, particularly in America these days. Some of his books sadly are out of print as I discovered recently, like The Lie for instance. I acquired a dusty copy of Conjugal Love recently, which in its introduction calls Moravia a master of relating the war of the sexes!

Contempt is not just the dissection of love between a married couple but a narration of states of mind. what the narrator wants to know is ' why doesn't my wife love me any more?'. the question of there being any validity in his belief or any substance in his belief while being the focus of his narration, there is also a sub plot namely in that Moravia introduces the story of Ulysses, and a neat little interpretation of whether Ulysses didn't return to Penelope for so long because she detested him, he knew that, he kept away because she had contempt for him? contempt, that is what the narrators wife tells him she has for him. we go through his attempts to try to ascertain what he might have done to attract this contempt, and he is convinced that while he might have made a few mistakes, he hasn't actually done much to earn her contempt.

While Moravia is generally regarded as an existentialist writer, what strikes me most is his psychological characterization, his eye for depiction of mental states, the ceaseless digging at situations. In essence, this is a plot-less novel and more of a situational essay-novel. His attempt to portray a marriage is secondary, the chief concern is portrayal of character. 'You are not a man', the narrator's wife tells him. He finds that hard not to bear but to understand. After all, what should a man be like, a question that puzzles me much. Within Contempt the novel is woven a systematic deconstruction of those states of mind that we don't admit we actually entertain, even if occasionally.

Godard's movie, is extremely faithful to the novel. The movie has some stunning panoramic vistas that just is a pleasure for the senses including a very melancholic soundtrack. Does the movie read like a suspense thriller: no, does the novel: yes. The movie is as good as the novel, though I think the novel is better. Reading Moravia is like getting into a pincer, two pages and you know this is getting really uncomfortable fast. You want to read more to get out of your misery, you want to read more and more and finish the damn thing in one sitting. I have no more praise than that.

in the stillness now

In his moments of extreme stillness now, and unchanging silence, and this destiny for solitude, he thought of days when he knew her, remembering times when he had spoken to her so many times, he thought, though he had never actually talked to her. His natural effusiveness in her presence, he remembered now, was clouded by an air of forced stillness and this lack of clarity into her thoughts gave her an advantage over him he thought, which to his surprise he had preferred then. He had taken her beauty for granted and had assured himself of her beauty so unquestioningly; he however was not sure of what she thought of the world or herself or him. Any resolve on his part to break this silence between them only increased the hush of forced silence between them, leading it to become more still, till this silence between them became a source of comfort to him in her presence, for this silence allowed him in whatever way he allowed it to, to make or a seal an invisible pact between them, he remembered now. In essence his reticence to express himself before her was matched equally by her equal resolve to hide behind her silence. Sometimes it seemed to him that perhaps these thoughts were only imagined by him in a state of heightened susceptibility, and that there was no reason now to think of her any differently from all the others, for actually what he recognized as a weakness in others occasionally he failed to recognize in himself and thus he did see into the possibility of him actually having fallen into anything resembling any proximity to her. This self examination now occasionally lead him into uncomfortable introspection, for to him admitting any idea of falling into love was an admission into defeat, even now. However, how could it be love if he had never even spoken to her and when they had never been at any sort of proximity? The romantic notion of love distilled into him from an early age, that almost keatsian insistence on unrequited passion had never moved him to any ecstatic vision of himself and yet in her presence, he let his heart beat ever so fast almost as if not doing so was an admission of guilt, a trespass against her inviolable beauty.

Had he not felt morose when autumn days without her had seemed bereft of any meaning and hadn't he on so many occasions felt intensely melancholic at the mention of her name, for any other person acknowledging knowing her was a proof to him of his own distance from her. However, thinking of those days now, he reminded himself that he had felt content on many occasions of at least knowing her, for not to know her seemed to him to be the admission of the first guilt if not the first sin. On azure days and on cold autumn afternoons, had her eyes not seemed to have called him? Had she not appeared to have wanted to talk to him and was he not convinced that the melancholy touch of her fingers was destined for him alone? Had he not written countless poems for her, scores of which he had discarded? Had he not imagined the silk of her hair , the inescapable water of her mouth, the rising tide of her moons? Had he not felt excruciatingly tortured when he could not remember at times the exact shape of her mouth? How many countless times had he imagined the two of them together, walking the streets that he had wanted them to walk together? Had he not visited these thoughts on infinite occasions and had he not felt the most melancholic pain in his heart whenever he tried to remember the exact end of all their meetings, after having failed to remember each? These thoughts gave him no comfort now for she had left all times including the silence between them far behind when she had left.

what use are words

what use are my words now
when you called I did not turn
I let the world lead me into colours
that I always detest

what use are my words
I hate how they fall on your ears
how hollow they sound
as I live my life as if it is somebody else's

what use are my words whether I write them or
speak into the hollow of your eyes you will never
trust me to turn if you call again
and I no longer believe what I say to myself

what use are my words now
to whom do I say out loud that I do not
trust what I said to the flaming sky when
you called and I did not turn

what use are my words
the words that I inscribe are shallow as they leave
my fingers sad as they leave my lips
I shudder at my words I should have turned

Na dis rien

Contempt

Last Kiss

The taste of your last kiss is like rust in my mouth
as I survey all the time that has passed since
then. Your heavy eyebrows weigh on my heart now as
I spend all my time thinking about you in metaphors.

I lost equilibrium after you left and I coveted the musk
of your last touch. Each day after that is like a chain
around my neck.
Nothing has mellowed.

Some hours bring back the luxury of your skin as
I count all the times we swam in each other. Some moments
stand out like jagged peaks of pain and yet
everything smells of rust.

dreams of summer

Lying Poets

Adorno once famously said that poetry was impossible after Auschwitz. In a letter, Celan lamented on neo-Nazism in Germany after the war and wrote: "some of them even write poems. These men, they write poems! What all don't they write, the liars."
Reading this, very naively I think of all that these sensitive souls had to endure in a supposedly fascism purged society and yet face anti-semitism daily, in all it's obvious and less obvious forms.

Today, one thinks about the cultural racism that Muslims face in Euro-America, almost on a daily basis, in all it's obvious and less obvious forms and yet the perpetrators as Celan would have noted, are liars, they write poems. It seems inevitable that almost all nations and people have their blind spots which are quite noticeable to the those on the outside. In the aftermath of the foundation of the Zionist state of Israel and it's subsequent atrocities against the Palestinians and it's Arab neighbours, including atrocities of a political, human and military nature, these atrocities are almost lost on all Jewish writers, academics and Philosophers except a handful, so much so that the Palestinian catastrophe, properly called nakba, is lost on what Celan should have perhaps noticed as well. We must say that all those who don't recognise these criminal acts against the Palestinians are liars and they write poetry!

In it's present manifestation, the racism and the anti-Islamic stance adopted by those write the narratives of Euro-America are liable to be declared as liars too, and as Celan wrote, only true hands write true poems. It is to be seen that the blatant rejection of the Palestinian nakba can be seen as something that was ignored by all Jewish writers with exception and something which Celan like sufferers could not even point out. Nowadays in Europe on the whole, the politics of the day that revels in banning articles of clothing like the burqa are engaging in a kind of feminist politics that uses this feminist diatribe and perpetuates and reinforces this Muslim-phobic and cultural racism that raises wall after wall against immigrant Muslims on Euro-America and is pushing, day after day, these immigrants into a state, where after the next fifty years perhaps, the new holocausts could begin all over again.

While outwardly these immigrant populations seemingly have certain modicums of freedom and access to instruments of equality which languish in stolid disrepair in their original countries, yet, alas yet, there are clearly as Celan said:
Whichever stone you lift-/ you lay bare/ those who need the protection of stones.

Winter

It's falling Mother, snows in the Ukraine:
The saviour's crown a thousand grains of grief
Here all my tears reach out to you in vain
One proud mute glance is all of my relief....

We're dying now: why won't you sleep, you huts?
Even this wind slinks round in frightened rags.
Are these the ones, freezing in slag-choked ruts-
whose arms are candlesticks, whose hearts are flags?

I stayed the same in darkness forlorn:
Will days heal softly, will they cut too sharp?
Among my stars are drifting now the torn
Strings of a strident and discordant harp....

On it at times a Rose-filled hour is tuned.
Expiring:once.Just once,again....
What would come, Mother:wakening or wound-
if I too sank in snows of the Ukraine?

Paul Celan, 1938

this bitter earth

another evening in tangier

all night he waited for arrival, for the sudden beats of arriving
and felt nothing but the crushing weight of expectation
as his brave plans melted into a dawn unexpectedly clear.
and now with solemn steps he makes his way to the eastern beach,
away from urchins and tourists and lies barebacked on the sand
in the shade of an alcove, waiting to see those big waves later.

she did not give her promise though he waited long enough,
he thought as he lay on the sand all day long.

it is evening again he sits again in cafe paris smoking Kif
as other places beckon, the call of demanding days in uncertain times.
reflection does not bring him any more wisdom
than does looking at the sea or the sky.
she will never know his innermost heart and
he will soon forget her face any way.

his mood has changed from restless agitation to resigned sadness
as he discovers other colours that had lay hidden till then.
the sea and the sky no longer seem intent on meeting
in the old city life is making old noises as
big berber men walk alongside bare feet urchins smoking kif,
and riffian women hide their hennaed palms.
but now he only looks and moves on.

An American Tea Party

Politics in the USA at present? Politics or in the place of politics a space filled by hatred, an ungainly form of market hatred, a capitalist fed ignorance of the "other", a creation of the other, a perpetuation of the notion of the other, of the enemy, an insistence, a loud insistence on difference, and the negation of that loudness, a suffocation of real debate, a thorough insistence on a univocal vision of the now, of the past and the future, the restoration of all previously mellowed prejudices, a resurfacing of a new climate of the fear of the other, for the fear of the fear of the other, a departure from debate, an American insistence on gesture dictated occupation of the political space, a soap-opera type attitude towards realities and of realities, a "Friends" type of structuring of reality, of the structuring of the other, through the now and present, towards the future.

The Tea Party at present, in modern America, the negation of the multicultural model, the affirmation of hidden prejudices, the "greatest" country in the world as is declared every day, the climate of fear, for Muslims in the USA, the new realities of America, the other, the Muslim. The Palinisation of politics, the reduction of Islam to news, as a sound bite, the negation of Islam as a religion, the negation of space for the other, the open declaration of a war against the new pariah, the new Jew as not the old Jew but the old Jew as the Muslim, the Muslim as the enemy, the open lance thrown at the new enemy, the Euro-Americanization of this hatred,this attitude. Europe follows this prescription, this Tea Party redemption, this Anglo-Saxon angst, angst because there was never a real angst, an angst of the angst, fear because the idols of fear are still prescribing the attitude towards the other, the new Jew.


When Europe will open it's gas chambers again, we know now who will be there.

Bernhard: Prose

Thomas Bernhard's Prose, published in German in 1967 and available now in English comprises of sketches and short stories that, to those already familiar with his writings, will recognize the seeds of his future style and wit, which he was successfully to elaborate and develop upon. The themes which we face here, themes which he so masterfully developed later on are still in a rudimentary state but the caustic sometimes seering wit is evident. From middle aged gentlemen walking and thinking of killing themselves to hints of incest, from a critique of nearly everything of his favourite pastimes like art, theatre, and so on, Bernhard writes beautifully though not with the nonchalant ease of later novels. However, some of the stories or sketches have the same themes which he wrote in a longer form in novels such as Frost, Extinction, Cutting Timber and so on.

This new collection to his oeuvre is definitely for the Bernhard enthusiast and adds to the usually read books in English. There are some of the usual Bernhardisms and I found out some new ones, like destruction process, thought particles etc. The rants are not as long as one expects but on the whole, I enjoyed reading Prose. The stories draw from some real incidents especially those that Bernhard used to read avidly from newspapers, stories about crime, deceit and so on which allow him to develop his unique perception of all things human and further allow him to elaborate on sinister themes with that comic angle which makes it all the more sinister.

You and Me

To your reason I will give my silence and make it reasonable
To your caution I will give impulse and restless heart,
To you I give myself, to your hours palpitation,
To your heart restless tread of my feet, my lonely hands, What else?

I cannot think of an hour of repose, I have no peace,
I know no peace, I only wait and wait
and then you come and I have no peace still.
At night I try to read and I think of you, and then I smoke a lot
and cannot sleep and I have no peace or sleep.

To your measured silence I give words, spoken and unspoken alike
To your cautious reserve I give reckless hope
To your affable words I add poetry, some sad poems
To you I give myself, come take me, was that the sea?

Evening in Tangier

In Tangier, a summer evening and the sun sinks into the sea
and the sky turns a mellow red, a sad red.
In the old quarter, along the narrow lanes leading
to the eastern beach that overlooks an old fort
come the noises that life gives,
Berber men, barefeet urchins and
Riffian women with hennaed palms.
He sits in Cafe Paris, in the old quarter, smoking Kif,
and he sits and sighs, he sits and smokes,
planning to abduct the girl he loves,
the girl he thinks he loves.
He hears some drum beats in the distance,
old songs hummed outside the cafe, he feels
the din and bustle and the early melancholy of the hour.
Tough business this love is, he thinks as roguish policemen
accompany poor Riffian women to dark despair.
It is completely dark, his resolve tested, mind decided.
I will wait for her, he decides, smoke more Kif and
listen to the saddest songs.
Tall Berber men in soft hushed tones speak of
revolution and love as he sinks into his chair.
It is going to be a long night.

you should come to me

You should come and take me by surprise, he had been thinking of late, you should catch me by surprise as he allowed himself that thought, he thought, one of those strange light dark evenings, one of those wet evenings when it gets dark quite suddenly, he thought, it has been a long time since we have met and besides the uneasy summer is giving way to autumn and it has been a long time since we have met, he thought, and we could talk about this and that amid some talk of other things on a wet light dark evening. He began to see her now, as if they were standing face to face, in that certain way that they face each other, with an undecided space between each other, with distance that is neither close nor far. He would naturally want her to stand with her back to the window that opens on to the High Street, while he would face her, smoking a silent cigarette, smoking that silent way of his as she would begin to speak about the numerous things that bother her, she being a student of philosophy and he being a person at the margins of philosophy, he thought. Quite naturally, she would start her usual tirade about everything, including how it is possible for truth to remain hidden under disputatious rhetoric and how all her so called friends had drifted away without any leave taking, she would have added.
But all these were mainly his thoughts, he knew, and all that he thought was nothing more than a wish. He knew that such mercies were not granted anymore and that he would have to imagine her facing him, with her back to the window facing the High Street and himself smoking silently, and he would have to imagine her in a disputatious mood, which made her look beautiful and gave her eyes the colour of brown and brandy, he thought and imagine himself in his usual sense of apprehension, for at the moment of truth, he had never known effusiveness. He would have to, he thought, imagine her talking and looking into the distance and ignore the sometimes uncomfortable silences between each long difficult thought of hers, he thought, a gap that neither knew how to fill, or knew but didn't know if the time had come, he thought. But all this was merely an exercise in self-pity, he thought, for in reality their encounters had seldom been positive, she always in the throes of metaphysics, he thought, and he always in the grasp of speechless stupendour. Such were his thoughts as he wished these thoughts, and he could think of nothing else.

if

Mother and Son

Muslim, Muselmann, Concentration Camps

In Homo Sacer, Agamben elucidates on the issue of fact and law, wherein in under sovereign power, fact and law were considered different entities. However, bare life maintains Agamben, is subject to a state wherein this distinction is lost. The loss of this means that fact and law become interchangeable giving rise within normal public life to a state of concentration camps, which was the structure during the Nazi era in these camps but has since then lead to the evolution of camps in our public lives. We are effectively living under the aegis of life within a camp, bare life subject to a sovereign power, law suspended for ever. This has been an evolution in the scheme of things since the camps in Europe and lead to a similar situation in Bosnia and so on. Detention centres for illegal immigrants are the new concentration camps if not camps of extermination, since the immigrants are subject to adhoc laws and sovereign power and will.

Agamben borrows from Foucault's concept of Bio -politics and also makes it quite clear. Within the ambit of bio-politics, the state takes over the body and subjects it to its will, deriving from a loosening of association between fact and law. This is also a factor that eventually helps create a scene where productive and non-productive lives are differentiated and then lets in reign the medical scientists to allow the state to create a space where euthanasia can be debated, for bare life versus fact and law, camps and bio-politics merge together.

It is interesting to consider this conception of camps in our political and social midst as an aporia and also as a sign that needs recognition. In her Precarious Lives and now in her Frames of War, Judith Butler starts with her conception of precarity and precarious lives, focus sing on illegal detention in Guantanamo, and over indefinite detention and then over the distinction between useful and useless lives. Grieving over useless lives will never be an issue and hence the process of mourning and grieving must be considered in reference to grievable lives, lives that matter. Hence, Butler asserts, the American lives lost in New York are grievable under this concept and Iraqi and other Palestinian lives, lives belonging to faces that we don't know and see and hence cannot grieve over. However, Butler asserts that thses people, who are being killed by American- European sovereignty are already dead, faceless and nameless.

Butler scoffs at the idea of her brave writing and goes one step further in saying that the abuses at Abu- Ghraib in Iraq are the culmination of this process of ungrievability, useful and uselessness. She takes on Sontag's assertion that Photography is without narration and does not lead to any resolution and speaks of the frames within which such pictures of abuse and torture must be seen. That photos need an authorial signature and that this author must be considered present even outside the frame of this invisible author must never be forgotten, Butler adds the idea of the lack of mourning over these issues to her fundamental idea of precariousness of life. However, she laments that while all lives should be considered precarious, under the present frame, it is only some lives that are deemed so.

I think about the framework in which both Agamben and Butler work, basing theit thoughts on Foucault's concept of biopolitics and wonder whether the Guantanamo camps must also not be considered as concentration camps if not camps of extermination, for the individuals within this space are subject to a space that does not obey the customary distinction between fact and law. Sovereign power reigns supreme, the individuals are deemed indefinitely detainable and subject to a state of exception, which becomes the norm. Hence, the torture chambers of Abu Ghraib become a camp for this political experimentation, for not only are these people faceless, they are nameless and hence outside any legal status as either subjects or citizens or refugees. Arendt is quite clear about the rights of man in this reference though she does not ever write about bio-ploitics within the camp setting nor does Foucault make any reference to these camps.

Agamben refers to the title given to Jewish inmates of concentration camps as Muselmann, for a Muslim was a term used for these Jews in camps who were in a state of total apathy, devoid of life, will, power, face, name, useless, expendable and using Butler's terms, outside precarity, ungrievable. And now, in and outside Euro- America and under their patronage elsewhere, the Muslim not as Muslim but as Muslim, as Muselmann.