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Friday, February 13th, 2009
Another chapter of Elizabeth Costello, another bunch of references.
Robert Duncan is an American poet from California. (Ellen has heard him read but says he was "considered old-fashioned" by her cohort.) Elizabeth heard him read "A poem beginning with a line from Pindar", the only time she met him, and it turned her on. She thinks of him while reading Susan Mitchell's prose poem  "Erotikon (a Commentary on «Amor and Psyche»)" (this link is to Google Books, I'm not sure if it remains usable in the long term.)
And shall I come sweet sex to thee
bound truelovewise?
O take fast hold, said Sex to me,
of the moneybox, and night was our koine
with its bleats and glottic stops
its suctions and seductions.
All night we laved a fierce lallation.
Wake now, my love, I said to Sex.
Be not overly
subtle with periods and semicolons.
Take fast hold of the quim and quid.
By morning I was catamount.
Sex was microcephalic.
The legend of Eros and Psyche, which I feel like I really ought to know already, is the story of Venus attempting to humiliate her mortal daughter Psyche by the agency of her divine son Eros. (Duncan's poem also has reference to this legend.) Why the interest in Psyche among American poets, she wonders? Do they find something American in her, the girl who, not content with the ecstasies provided night after night by the visitor to her bed, must light a lamp, peel back the darkness, gaze on him naked? In her restlessness, her inability to leave well enough alone, do they see something of themselves? Anybody know what is the movie referenced here:
She thinks of a movie she saw once, that might have been written by Nathanael West though in fact it wasn't: Jessica Lange playing a Hollywood sex goddess who has a breakdown and ends up in the common ward of a madhouse, drugged, lobotomized, strapped to her bed, while orderlies sell tickets for ten minutes at a time with her. 'I wanna fuck a movie star!' pants one of their customers, shoving his dollars at them.
Please speak up in comments if you know. (Update: paledave says it is Frances (1982).)
Interesting that this is the first chapter not to include a speech. This makes me think the talk on censorship in Chapter 6 was a turning point for the novel, and that Coetzee is giving us an interlude here. (Would kind of like to know how the conference in Chapter 6 played out, what were the repercussions for Costello and for her reputation...)
posted evening of February 13th, 2009: 4 responses
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Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Interesting, so now I'm reading Elizabeth Costello and I'm seeing arguments about morality and animal rights everywhere I look. Today Saramago is writing about lobsters and geese: Putting a living lobster in boiling water and cooking it is an old culinary practice in the western world. It seems that if the lobster were dead in the bath, its final flavor would be different, for the worse. There are furthermore those who say that the rosy color with which the crustacean leaves the pot is due precisely to the high temperature of the water. I don't know it, I'm saying what I've been told, I am incapable of properly frying an egg. One day I saw in a documentary how to prepare chickens, how to kill and butcher them, and I was very close to throwing up. And the other day, if I am remembering right, I read a magazine article about the use of rabbits in the manufacture of cosmetics, and there I found out that the tests to prevent any possible irritation caused by the ingredients of shampoos involve applying them directly to the eyes of these animals, after the fashion of the dreadful Dr. Death, who injected petroleum into the hearts of his victims. Now, a brief notice appears in the periodicals informing me of how, in China, the birds' feathers which are destined to be stuffing for pillows are plucked out the same way, while living, after which they are cleaned, disinfected, and exported for the enjoyment of civilized societies which find it proper and fashionable. I will not comment, it is not worth the trouble, these feathers are enough.
posted evening of February 12th, 2009: Respond
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How will Amsterdam react to Elizabeth Costello in her present state? Does the sturdy Calvinist word evil still have any power among these sensible, pragmatic, well-adjusted citizens of the New Europe? Over half a century since the devil last swaggered brazenly through their streets, yet surely they cannot have forgotten.
Some notes on Chapter 6 of Elizabeth Costello:The novel Costello is reading at the beginning of the chapter is The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg by Paul West. West wrote a review of Elizabeth Costello for Harper's, under the title "The Novelist and the Hangman"; however that review is not available online. Costello refers to Stalin as "Koba the Bear, [Hitler's] older brother and mentor" -- this seems ahistorical to me and reeks vaguely of Holocaust denialism. Stalin and Hitler were both brutal tyrants and genocidaires; but there was not a mentor relationship. It is very interesting to watch Costello, the novelist, reading and reacting to West's novel. I'm still wondering what the student who tried to make a scene at Costello's lecture in Chapter 1 wanted to talk about. Was she a vegetarian? A person morally opposed to vegetarianism? Perhaps a biology student upset about Costello's stand against animal research? The Holocaust-belittlement would not have been an issue at that point in time unless she had made the same remarks previously; but that seems unlikely.
posted evening of February 12th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
I am a comic novelist, idiot-savant of the humanities; lecturing is outside my remit. Hendrik Hertzberg alerted me today to the publication of Zadie Smith's article "Speaking in Tongues" in the current NY Review of Books. It's adapted from a lecture she gave at the NYPL's "NYPL Live" series in December; you can download a recording of the lecture from the series page. Smith speaks very eloquently of Pygmalion and of Dreams from My Father, of Obama's "story of a genuinely many-voiced man".We'll see if Obama's lifelong vocal flexibility will enable him to say proudly with one voice "I love my country" while saying with another voice "It is a country, like other countries." I hope so. He seems just the man to demonstrate that between those two voices there exists no contradiction and no equivocation but rather a proper and decent human harmony.
posted evening of February 11th, 2009: Respond
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Saramago's blog entry today quotes one of my favorite passages from The Cave.
We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there's a will, there's a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarls to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skein, or indeed, if we may be permitted one more stock phrase, in the skein of life. I just love to read this sentence! It is the Alpha and the Omega of Saramago's beautiful voice.... Anyway I was meaning to post a translation of this entry of Saramago's, from a few days ago, because I found it touching:
Sigifredo López is the name of a Colombian lawmaker held captive for seven years by the FARC and who managed to recover his liberty thanks, among others, to the valor and persistence of senator Piedad Córdoba, principal director of the social and humanitarian movement, "Colombians for peace". Thanks to a set of circumstances which seemed impossible, Sigifredo López, who formed part of a group of eleven hostage lawmakers, of whom ten were not long ago assassinated by the terrorists, was able to escape the massacre. He is now free. In the press conference held in Cali after his escape, he believed he needed to express his gratitude to Piedad Córdoba in terms which would shake the world. Here we come to these words and these frightful images. I have never been able to brag of emotional fastness. I cry easily, and not because I am old. But this time I was obliged to break out in sobs when Sigifredo, to express his infinite gratitude to Piedad Córdoba, compared her to the doctor's wife in Blindness. Put yourself in my place, thousands of kilometers separate me from these images and these words, and poor me, melting away in tears, I had no other remedy but to take refuge in Pilar's shoulder and to let them run. My entire existence, as a person and as a writer, has been justified by this moment. Thank you, Sigifredo.
There is video of López' press conference at the link. The AP carried a brief story about his release. Democracy Now! has an interview (from last summer) with Piedad Córdoba, where she discusses negotiations with FARC.
posted evening of February 11th, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Imagine the scene in Correggio's studio that day, Blanche. With his brush the man points: 'Lift it up, so. No, not with the hand, just with two fingers.' He crosses the floor, shows her. 'So.' And the woman obeys, doing with her body as he commands. Other men watching all the while from the shadows: apprentices, fellow painters, visitors.Who knows who she was, his model that day: a woman from the streets? the wife of a patron? The atmosphere in the studio electric, but with what? Erotic energy? The penises of all those men, their verges, tingling? Undoubtedly. Yet something else in the air too. Worship. ... The humanities teach us humanity. After the centuries-long Christian night, the humanities give us back our beauty. This passage at the end of Chapter 5, where Elizabeth is taking up her pen to write about the conflict between religion and beauty, is reminding me of the objection I had to Death with Interruptions, that it was too predictable; reminding me of that objection because this book is so much the opposite of that one. Elizabeth's action here is completely unexpected, surprising, startling; and yet it fits, it is exactly what needs to happen in the book at this point.There is a lot of painting in this chapter. Besides Correggio we saw reference to Hans Holbein and to Matthias Grünewald -- Blanche using them as examples of Reformation artists who painted the ugliness of crucified Christ.
posted evening of February 10th, 2009: Respond
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Nice: I am thinking about Sister Bridget's speech on humanistic and divine learning, and I happen on a new blog entry from Saramago:
Let us face facts. Years ago (many years already), the famous German theologian Hans Küng wrote this truth: "religions have never served to bring human beings closer to one another." Truer words have never been spoken. Here is not denied (and it would be absurd to think so) the right that everyone has, to adopt the religion most to his liking, from the most accustomed one to the least heard of, according to its precepts or dogmas (such as they may be), not even called into question the recourse to faith as supreme justification and, by definition (as we know all too well), the most definitive shutting off of reason. It is possible that faith moves mountains, there is no evidence that such a thing has ever occurred, but this proves nothing, given that God has never been disposed to engage his powers in this type of geological operation. What we know is that religions not only do not bring human beings closer, but rather they live, these religions, in a permanent state of mutual emnity, in all the falsely ecumenical harangues which this one or that one finds advantageous for passing, temporary tactical reasons. Things are this way, the world is the world, it is not an indication that anything is going to change. Except for the obvious idea that the planet would be much more peaceful if everybody were an atheist. Clear that, human nature being what it is, we would not be lacking in other motives for every dischord possible and imaginable, but we would be free of this ridiculous, infantile idea that our god is greater than the rest of the gods walking around, that the paradise which we hope for is a five-star hotel. And more, I believe that we could reinvent philosophy.
Anybody know which work of Küng's is being referenced here?
posted evening of February 10th, 2009: Respond
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Textual scholarship meant, first, the recovery of the true text, then the true translation of that text; and true translation turned out to be inseparable from true interpretation, just as true interpretation turned out to be inseparable from true understanding of the cultural and historical matrix from which the text had emerged.
Sister Bridget's speech in the fifth chapter of Elizabeth Costello is interesting and educational; unfortunately I am having a bit of a hard time distinguishing Sister Bridget's public speaking style from her younger sister's, which is making me wonder whether Coetzee really bothered to create a new character, or if he just pulled her on as a prop to make this speech (which Elizabeth would obviously not do). -- In contrast Emmanuel Egudu's speaking style in Chapter 2 was distinctly different from Elizabeth's.The content of the speech on textual scholarship, however, is great -- stuff I did not know (in this degree of specificity) and am very glad to find out about.
posted evening of February 10th, 2009: 2 responses
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Monday, February 9th, 2009
I haven't really made up my mind what to think about the arguments in Elizabeth Costello -- I'm a little sorry nobody seems to believe any of them passionately? It's fun to engage with them playfully, in fun, but hard to treat them as actual advocacy. Well I don't think advocacy is the intent... That said, this is just lovely and seems exactly right to me: The behaviorists who designed [the tests for cognition in animals] claim that we understand only by a process of creating abstract models and then testing those models against reality. What nonsense. We understand by immersing ourselves and our intelligence in complexity. Coetzee's creation Costello is a marvelous speaker when she keeps her focus.
posted evening of February 9th, 2009: Respond
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Elizabeth Costello is a book which I am finding requires access to source material. (I am kind of ignoring the major piece of source material for this book, but trying to track down the incidental pieces...) Below the fold, some source material for chapter 4, "The Poets and the Animals." This interview with Coetzee from the Swedish magazine Djurens Rätt ("Animal Rights"), while not strictly speaking "source material," also seems useful.
↷read the rest...
posted evening of February 9th, 2009: 4 responses
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