The Virtue of Poverty

 A naked bulb

sheds more

light

 

                                                                                                                                             Photo: Derekskey Flickr Creative Commons

He took her soft hand. It felt cold; the contraction of her heart had stopped her blood circulating. He squeezed it repeatedly, as if passing a secret message. She wasn't expecting this – or so she pretended – and tried to take her hand away. But he did not let her. 

‘What’ve you done?’ 

‘We’ll discuss that later.’ 

‘But you haven’t tried to get in touch with me.’ 

He bent towards her and kissed her cheek as he whispered in her ear, ‘Later . . . later . . .’ 

‘But this is what I’ve come for.’ 

‘You’ll get what you’re after . . . but later . . .’

She opened her mouth to speak but he stopped her with a long and heavy kiss saying sharply, ‘Later.’ 

Nature played one of her infinite tunes with joyful bravura, which seemed like a miracle. But soon the tune died away receding into oblivion and leaving behind a suspicious silence and a feeling of langour full of sadness. He lay on his side on the bed while she stayed where she was on the settee, exposing her slip and the drops of sweat on her forehead and neck to the unshaded light of the electric bulb. He looked at nothing and wished for nothing, as if he had accomplished what was required of him on earth. When his eyes turned in her direction, they denied her completely, as though she had been some strange object sprung from the womb of night, and not that enchanting person who had set him on fire: a dumb thing with no history and no future. He said to himself that the game of desire and revulsion was no more than an exercise in death and resurrection, an advance perception of the inevitable tragedy, matching in its grandeur such fleeting revelations of the unknown, in its infinite variety, as are granted. 

Extract from      
    حضرةالمحترم     
 Respected Sir (1975)     
by     
Naguib Mahfouz     
(Nobel Prize in Literature 1988)   

 

Citation for Arabian narrative art.

Naguib Mahfouz . . .‘ through works rich in nuance – now clear-sightedly realistic, now evocatively ambiguous – has formed an Arabian narrative art that applies to all mankind.’ His ‘authorship deals with some of life’s fundamental questions, including the passage of time, society and norms, knowledge and faith, reason and love. He often uses his hometown of Cairo as the backdrop for his stories . . . ’

Nobel Prize citation.

Antidote to ‘polemicised literature’?

Certainly, the 1975 novel quoted above is profound in describing the anguish of a low-born aspirant striving – ultimately in vain – to compete in a rigidly hierarchical administration of ‘networkers’ in which preferment depends less on merit and more on the caste system of a well-connected elite, a condition of existence universal in its occurrence by its being unconfined by cultural boundaries. In this regard, one is reminded of Nobel laureate (1972), Heinrich Böll, whose novel The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (or, How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead), an exemplar of simple unadorned prose, has the power to similarly inspire empathetic recognition worldwide without inviting the label of ‘polemicised literature’.

See also

The Utility of Art as a Social Function according to Heinrich Böll

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2024/02/the-utility-of-art-as-social-function.html

1967. The Operative Word.

  We met in the park

It was one of those nights

The small building was more than

quaintly ornamental

I am a bird

he said

and

I am bait  

how

dutifully I answered

  And the operative word?

Jail

we said together

Then I read him

his rights

I was in blue

and he wore leather

                                                                                                                      Catherine Eisner

Cottage (British slang). A public lavatory when 

regarded as a meeting place for homosexual men.

Cottaging. The practice of anonymous sexual

relations between men in a public lavatory.

(The term arises from public conveniences often
resembling faux-rustic structures created for formal

ornamental gardens of stately homes in the imperial period.)

See also: 

1993 Soho Gay Slayer: Colin Ireland and Art’s Sadomasochistic Cabal.

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2014/05/ 

See also:

1940 when the blackout of WW2 closed the park gates on a requiem for lost innocence . . .

Here, for example, is a Park
clearly intended for the dark.

 

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-humbert-in-park-more-palimpsestic.html

Life

Life = a Restitution for Wasted Time

Catherine Eisner

Photo credit: Stasis and Motion by Rachel Tanugi Ribas

 

or. . .

 

Reality is that which everything is an instance of.

 

Eli Siegel

One cannot emulate, of course, the sheer undeniability of this Aesthetic Realist poet’s elegant relativist axiom,

but one can die trying.

 

       For example . . .

 

Lifelike is an impossible state;

a wholly inadequate descriptor.

 

Catherine Eisner

 

Waiting undeniably wastes time with the certainty of repetition . . .

 

I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning. 

 

Psalm 130:5-6 King James Bible 

 

Consider, too, the clever self-referentiality of this casuistry . . .

 

Life has only been created as a stage for the performance of the wonders of Providence. 

 

Naquib Mahfouz (in the ‘fiction’, Respected Sir حضرةالمحترم)

Afterthought: The mood of these thoughts is also echoed in poet Vernon Scannell’s resonant phrase ‘The wounded music of what might have been.’ (See page 2, Too Late Again from Ambit 184, Spring 2006.)

 

“More Out-takes from Ol’ Ameriky” (The Uncollected Songbook Part One.) I know this girl is lyin’

I know this girl is lyin’ man
we know each other well
I know this girl is lyin’ man
she’s lyin’ in her throat

that’s right! 
Lord you so right!
that’s right!
that’s right Lord!

men don’t trust the women man
WOMEN don’t trust the women man

NO ONE trusts a woman man
’cos women never tell the truth

NEVER man?
no never!
that’s right!
that’s right!
they NEVER tell the truth! 

praise the Lord!
amen

and women man

 

(Composed on Sunday 26 April 2009 after listening to the outpourings of Pastor Jones’s

healing and deliverance ministry over the airwaves of world band radio, which warn

of Satan’s traps. ‘This is how we Holy roll,’ says Pastor Jones, the broadcaster,

followed by popular Heavens Best Gospel Rap Music program.) 

 

See also, There’s a Train Acomin’

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2022/08/more-out-takes-from-ol-ameriky.html

The Utility of Art as a Social Function according to Heinrich Böll

Or should that be The Utility of Art at a Social Function?

I think I’ve written all I want to say on the topic of the Non-Utility of Art,

see Schoolboy’s Mock-Heroic Epic:

https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2014/03/sussex-exodus-of-altisonant-frogs.html

 

‘That art is non-utile is a self-conscious truism voiced oftenest by post-Marxian cynics. 

‘As Oscar Wilde, a socialist manqué, makes clear: All art is quite useless. 

‘This banality is no more absurdly pointed up than in the verses of a lofty poet who compares himself with his father digging the family cabbage patch – a spade wielded with evident utility – yet who claims a special dispensation for his own artist’s pen . . . “I’ll dig with it.” (Pause for involuntary cringe.)

‘Anthony Blunt – tarnished knight of the realm, professed communist, and Keeper of the Queen’s Pictures – was unequivocal when a young man in expressing his utopian sympathy for the cultural worthiness of Social Realism: “The culture of the revolution will be evolved by the proletariat to produce its own culture . . . If an art is not contributing to the common good, it is bad art.” ’

Yet, I now must acknowledge I’m a positive infant in my understanding of this sociocultural conundrum since reacquainting myself recently with the works of that West German champion of dissident literature, Heinrich Böll (1917-1985), staunch enemy of  Consumerist Materialism and scourge of its correlative, News Media Corruption . . .  

 

. . . specifically, the closing passages of Böll’s excoriating polemical novel, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, or, How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead: 

 

A Specimen of Instant Art.

Well, if we are to be honest we have regretfully to report that at this moment Blorna did punch Straubleder in the jaw. Without further ado, so that it may be forgotten without further ado: blood flowed, from Straubleder's nose; according to private estimates, some four to seven drops but, what was worse: although Straubleder backed away he did say: “I forgive you, I forgive you everything — considering your emotional state.” And so it was that this remark apparently maddened Blorna, provoking something described by witnesses as a “scuffle,” and, as is usually the case when the Straubleders and Blornas of this world show themselves in public, a News photographer  . . . was present, and we can hardly be shocked at the News (its nature being now known) for publishing the photograph of this scuffle under the heading: “Conservative politician assaulted by Leftist attorney.” . . .   

 

At the exhibition there was furthermore a confrontation between Maud Straubleder and Trude Blorna . . .  in which Trude B. hinted at Straubleder's numerous advances to her . . . 

 

End of a Long Friendship.

. . . At this point the squabbling ladies were parted by Frederick Le Boche [artist] , who with great presence of mind had seized upon the chance to catch Straubleder’s blood on a piece of blotting paper and had converted it into what he called “a specimen of instant art.” This he entitled “End of a Long Friendship,” signed, and gave not to Straubleder but to Blorna, saying: “Here's something you can peddle to help you out of a hole.” From this occurrence plus the preceding acts of violence it should be possible to deduce that Art still has a social function. 

Moon. Mirror. Moon.

                She woke, was told: ‘Admit a path remote

                from grief and trace the moon’s bright shaft which cleaves

                the curtain’s arrow-slit to find your throat.

                This moonlight is a snake that undeceives.’

 

                Heart-gripped, she wept, led from her bed to draw

                apart the folds; beheld the moon, half-hewn,

                yet burdened, too, in growth; salvation saw

                in her dark mirror, a phantom waning moon;

 

                a moon reshapen in the looking glass,

                whereas the gibbous moon’s a maiden’s shame

                that waxes to its gravid burdensomeness.

                Moonlight beckons: ‘Now pinch the candle flame.’

 

                The steep banks of the millrace told their tale.

                She plunges into floodtide, gasps for breath.

                The mill stood like a church till its great wheel

                grants at last that immemorial death.

 

                In her deserted room the mirror shows

                a decrescent moon in fullness grows,

                avowal of a circumstantial lie.

                Affinities the glass does not deny.

                                                                                                                   Catherine Eisner

Photo credit: Alexandra Georgieva

An Émigré Childhood. Opus 42. Southern England 1942.

          There was a time when skies made shadows of

          those great wings that cursed our house a midday dark,               where echoes hid a mute Heil Ludendorff!

          and La Vie Parisienne by Offenbach.

          Always the notes of Chopin’s Waltz impend. 

          Father playing, but never to the end. 

 

The dancer stumbles.

A minute later I lifted the lid to the keyboard and adjusted my piano stool.

            I have since read that seers believe that to dream of playing a piano is a favourable omen and means the discovery of something of great value in a surprising place; so I resolved to realise my dream of the night before.

            I experienced a feeling of equipoise I had not known since I last rode Dinah ... a balanced seat, hands-free, independent of the reins.

            In my opinion it is actually more difficult to run into bar 210 of Valse in A-flat Opus 42 where the waltz ‘stumbles’ than emerge from it – one runs the risk of sounding as if one has simply walked into a wall, rather than suspending the breath for a moment – hence, this artifice of ineptitude is not easy to achieve and, even though Chopin intended to simulate a clumsy dancer’s imbalance before her lost rhythm is regained, the player’s assumed clumsiness must be diligently practiced over and over again.

            So, creating this suspension requires exceptional finesse in timing and shades of dynamics and balance, which, to my way of thinking, is the more difficult task.

            In my father’s case, alas, the task was performed never with consummate success, as though the passage was a nagging regret and he had to return again and again to pick a sore.  (Father would tune his piano himself by feeding a reference note into an oscilloscope an army pal of his had once used for reading radar; he’d then retune the fifths until they were slightly flat. Those dancing waveforms on a monitor screen, as I told the doctors, I always associate with Chopin’s waltzes.)

            For my own part, my effortless arpeggiation on the evening I returned from Boy’s funeral, and my faultless span at bar 255 – which had once made such demands on the extensive stretch of my Father’s left hand – meant I rode the home-straight cooly through the flurry of that passionate coda, and reached the winning post at last, luckily without a fall ... until pent up grief all at once welled up and burst my heart.

Extract from Dispossession       

Part 11 of Sister Morphine (Salt 2008)       

 

 

For particularly recherché (even prophetic) examples of la poésie concrète likewise revealng my father’s ‘deep continent’ brand of polymathy, see The Eleven Surviving Works of L v. K. and . . .
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2016/04/circo-perfuso-fato-sanguinis.html
 

The Eleven Surviving Works of L v. K are exhibited at the Arts Council Poetry Collection website administered by the Poetry Library at Royal Festival Hall in London’s Southbank Centre . . .

http://poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/recordbfb6.html?id=9440 

The Eleven Surviving Works of L v. K 

(1902-1939)

A Memoir of a Numeromaniacal Futurist