29 December 2009

like some magician

"If you want to get rich quickly," Konstanjoglo broke in abruptly and sternly, for he was in a bad humour, "you will never get rich. But if you want to get rich without thinking of how long it will take you, then you'll get rich quickly."
  "So that's how it is," said Chichikov.
  "Yes, sir," said Konstanjoglo abruptly as though he was angry with Chichikov himself. "One must love one's work. Without that you can do nothing. One must love farming—yes, sir! And believe me, it is not at all boring. They've taken it into their heads that life in the country is dull and depressing. Why, I'd die, I'd hang myself from depression, if I had to spend one day in town as they spend it in their stupid clubs, pubs, and theatres. The fools, the stupid idiots, the breed of jackasses! A farmer can't be bored. He has no time to be bored. There's not an inch of emptiness in his life. Its completely full. Think of the diversity of his work and what work! Work that truly exalts the spirit. Say what you like, but in the country man walks hand in hand with nature, with the seasons, he participates and communes with everything that goes on in creation. Have a good look at the annual cycle of works: how even before the coming of spring everything in nature is already on the alert and full of expectancy. The seeds must be got ready, the corn in the barns has to be carefully sorted out, measured, and dried, new rates of taxation have to be fixed. The income and expenditure for the whole year has to be carefully considered and calculated in advance. And as soon as the ice starts breaking up and the high-water level of the rivers has gone down and everything is dry again, the earth begins to be turned over—the spades get busy in the kitchen gardens and the orchards and the ploughs and harrows in the fields: planting and sowing ... Do you understand what it all means? A trifle! It's the next harvest that is being sown! It's the happiness of the entire earth that is being sown! It's the sustenance of millions that is being sown! Summer comes. ... The mowing and haymaking begins. ... Soon harvesting time is upon us; after the rye comes the wheat, then the barley and the oats. The work is in full swing; there is not a moment to be lost; if you had twenty eyes there'd be work for them all. And when all this has been happily accomplished and all the grain has been carted to the threshing floors and stacked, and the winter crops have been sown, and the barns, the threshing barns, and the cow-sheds have been repaired for the winter and the women have completed all their work, and the balance of all that has been drawn up and you can see what has been done, why, it's ... And winter! there's threshing on all the threshing floors and the carting of the threshed grain from the threshing floors to the barns. You go round the flour-mill and the factories, you have a look at the workshops, you pay a visit to the peasants to see what they are doing. For my part, if a carpenter knows how to wield his axe, I'm ready to stand for a couple of hours watching him: his work gives me much pleasure. And when on top of it you realize that this work is being done with some purpose and that everything around you is multiplying and multiplying, bringing in both fruits and profits, why, I can't tell you what one feels at the time! And not because your money's growing—after all, money's not everything—but because it's all the work of your hands; because you see that you are the cause and the creator of it all, and that, like some magician, you are scattering riches and abundance everywhere. Where could you find delight to equal it?" said Konstanjoglo, lifting his face from which the wrinkles had suddenly disappeared. Like an emperor on the day of his solemn coronation, he looked transfigured and it seemed as though rays of light were issuing from his face. "Yes, nowhere in the world will you find anything to equal this delight. It is here, yes, here that man imitates God. God has left the work of creation to himself as one of the highest delights and he asks man also to be a creator of like prosperity all around him. And they call that dull work!"
  Chichikov listened with delight to the sweet sound of his host's words like the singing of a bird of paradise. His mouth watered, his eyes grew moist and shone with sweetness, and he could have listened for ever.
 ... "You can talk as much as you like," said Platonov, who was walking behind them, "but it's boring, all the same."

Gogol, Dead Souls (1969: 238-329)

24 December 2009

Mansion of Many Apartments

I compare human life to a large Mansion of Many Apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being yet shut upon me - The first we step into we call the infant or thoughtless Chamber, in which we remain as long as we do not think - We remain there a long while, and notwithstanding the doors of the second Chamber remain wide open, showing a bright appearance, we care not to hasten to it; but are at length imperceptibly impelled by the awakening of the thinking principle - within us - we no sooner get into the second Chamber, which I shall call the Chamber of Maiden-Thought, than we become intoxicated with the light and the atmosphere, we see nothing but pleasant wonders, and think of delaying there for ever in delight: However among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one's vision into the heart and nature of Man - of convincing ones nerves that the World is full of Misery and Heartbreak, Pain, Sickness and oppression - whereby This Chamber of Maiden Thought become gradually darken'd and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open - but all dark - all leading to dark passages - We see not the ballance of good and evil. We are in a Mist - We are now in that state - We feel the "burden of the Mystery."

John Keats, Letter to J. H. Reynolds, 3 May 1818

20 December 2009

money is the most reliable thing in the world

One day, with the first sunshine and the floods of early spring, the father, taking his son with him, set out in a little cart, drawn by a chestnut piebald nag, of the kind known among horse-dealers as "magpies"; it was driven by a little hunchback, the progenitor of the only serf family owned by Chichikov's father, who performed almost all the duties in the house. They drove with the "magpie" for over a day and a half. They spent a night on the road, crossed a river, had their meals of cold pie and roast mutton, and reached the town only on the morning of the third day. The streets of the town dazzled the boy with their unexpected splendour, making him gape for several minutes. Then the "magpie" plunged with the cart into a big hole at the entrance of a narrow lane running downhill and thick with mud; it took the "magpie" a long time to get out of it; after struggling with all her might to wade through the mud, urged on by the hunchback and by the master himself, she finally succeeded in dragging them out into a little yard standing on the slope of the hill. Two flowering apple-trees grew in front of the little old house, covered with shingle and with one narrow opaque window, and there was a small garden at the back. Here lived a relative of theirs, a wizened old woman who still went to market every morning, drying her stockings on the samovar afterwards. She patted the boy on the cheek and admired his plumpness. There he was to stay and go every day to the town school.
  After spending a night there, his father set off home again next morning. No tears were shed by his father at parting. He was given fifty copecks in copper coins for pocket money and to buy sweets and, was was far more important, this wise admonition: "Mind, Pavlusha, do your lessons. Don't play the fool and get into mischief. Above all, do your best to please your teachers and superiors. If you please your chief, you will be all right and you will get ahead of everyone, even if you turn out to be a bad scholar, and even if God has given you no talent. Do not make friends with your classmates. They will teach you no good. But if you do make friends with them, play with those who are better off and might be useful to you. Don't entertain or treat anyone, but behave in such a way that you may be treated by others and, above all, take care and save your pennies: money is the most reliable thing in the world. A classmate or friend may cheat you and be the first to leave you in the lurch when you're in trouble, but money will never let you down whatever trouble you may be in. With money in your pocket you can do anything and money will see you through everything." Having delivered himself of these precepts, the father parted from his son and dragged himself off home again on his "magpie" and from that day his son never set eyes on him again, but his words and precepts sank deeply into his mind.

Gogol, Dead Souls (1961: 235-236)

18 December 2009

not once but twice

He turned his eyes fully upon her, now a glacial blue; they were impersonal and seemed to gaze beyond her at all women who had dissolved into one, but who might, at any moment again become dissolved into all. This was the gaze Sabina had always encountered in Don Juan, everywhere, it was the gaze she mistrusted. It was the alchemy of desire fixing itself upon the incarnation of all women into Sabina for a moment but as easily by a second process able to alchemize Sabina into many others.
  Her identity as the "unique" Sabina loved by Alan was threatened. Her mistrust of his glance made the blood flow cold within her.
  She examined his face to see if he divined that she was nervous, that every moment of experience brought on this nervousness, almost paralyzing her.
  But instead of a violent gesture he took hold of her finger tips with his smoothly designed hands, as if he were inviting her for an airy waltz, and said, "Your hands are cold."
  He caressed the rest of her arm, kissing the nook between the elbows, the shoulders, and said: "Your body is feverishly hot. Have you had too much sun?"
  To reassure him she said unguardedly: "Stage fright."
  At this he laughed, mockingly, unbelieving, as she had feared he would. (There was only one man who believed she was afraid and at this moment she would have liked to run back to Alan, to run away from this mocking stranger whom she had attempted to deceive by her poise, her expert silences, her inviting eyes. This was too difficult to sustain and she would fail. She was straining, and she was frightened. She did not know how to regain prestige in his eyes, having admitted a weakness which the stranger mockingly disbelieved, and which was not in harmony with her provocative behavior. This mocking laughter she was to hear once more when later he invited her to meet his closest friend, his companion in adventure, his brother Don Juan, as suave, as graceful and confident as himself. They had treated her merrily as one of their own kind, the adventuress, the huntress, the invulnerable woman, and it had offended her!)
  When he saw she did not share his laughter, he became serious, lying at her side, but she was still offended and her heart continued to beat loudly with stage fright.
  "I have to go back," she said, rising and shaking the sand off with vehemence.
  With immediate gallantry he rose, denoting a long habit of submission to women's whims. He rose and dressed himself, swung his leather bag over his shoulder and walked beside her, ironically courteous, impersonal, unaffected.
  After a moment he said: "Would you like to meet me for dinner at the Dragon?"
  "Not for dinner but later, yes. About ten or eleven."
  He again bowed, ironically, and walked with cool eyes beside her. His nonchalance irritated her. He walked with such full assurance that he ultimately always obtained his desire, and she hated this assurance, she envied it.
  When they reached the beach town everyone turned to gaze at them. The Bright Messenger, she thought, from the Black Forest of the fairytales. Breathing deeply, expanding his wide chest, walking very straight, and then this festive smile which made her feel gay and light. She was proud of walking at his side, as if bearing a trophy. As a woman she was proud in her feminine vanity, in her love of conquest, strength and power: she had charmed, won, such a man. She felt heightened in her own eyes, while knowing this sensation was not different from drunkeness, and that it would vanish like the ecstasies of drink, leaving her the next day even more shaky, even weaker at the core, deflated, possessing nothing within herself.
  The core, where she felt a constant unsureness, this structure always near collapse which could so eaisly be shattered by a harsh word, a slight, a criticism, which floundered before obstacles, was haunted by the image of catastrophe, by the same obsessional forebodings which she heard in Ravel's Waltz.
  The waltz leading to catastrophe: swirling in spangled airy skirts, on polished floors, into an abyss, the minor notes simulating lightness, a mock dance, the minor notes always recalling that man's destiny was ruled by ultimate darkness.
  This core of Sabina's was temporarily supported by an artificial beam, the support of vanity's satisfaction when this man so obviously handsome walked by her side, and everyone who saw him envied the woman who had charmed him.
  When they separated he bowed over her hand in a European manner, with mock respect, but his voice was warm when he repeated: "You will come?" When none of his handsomeness, perfection and nonchalance had touched her, this slight hesitation did. Because he was for a moment uncertain, she felt him for a moment as a human being, a little closer to her when not altogether invulnerable.
  She said: "Friends are waiting for me."
  Then a slow to unfold but utterly dazzling smile illumined his face as he stood to his full height and saluted: "Change of the guards at Buckingham Palace!"
  By his tone of irony she knew he did not expect her to be meeting friends but most probably another man, another lover.
  He would not believe that she wanted to return to her room to wash the sand out of her hair, to put oil on over her sunburnt skin, to paint a fresh layer of polish on her nails, to relive every step of their encounter as she lay in the bath, in her habit of wanting to taste the intoxications of experience not once but twice.

Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love (1982: 24-27)

17 December 2009

a lot of hard spaces

Space is all one space and thought is all one thought, but my mind divides its spaces into spaces into spaces and thoughts into thoughts into thoughts. Like a large condominium. Occasionally I think about the one Space and the one Thought, but usually I don't. Usually I think about my condominium.
  The condominium has hot and cold running water, a few Heinz pickles thrown in, some chocolate-covered cherries, and when Woolworth's hot fudge sundae switch goes on, then I know I really have something.
  (This condominium meditates a lot: it's usually closed for the afternoon, evening, and morning.)
  Your mind makes spaces into spaces. It's a lot of hard work. A lot of hard spaces. As you get older you get more spaces, and more compartments. And more things to put in the compartments.
  To be really rich, I believe, is to have one space. One big empty space.
  I really believe in empty spaces, although, as an artist, I make a lot of junk.
  Empty space is never-wasted space.
  Wasted space is any space that has art in it.

Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975: 143)

the full glare

So many of my readers will say, and will blame the author for all sorts of improbabilities, or will call the poor officials 'fools', because man is very lavish in the use of the word 'fool' and is ready to apply it twenty times a day to his neighbour. It is sufficient if out of a dozen sides of his character he has one foolish one for a man to be put down as a fool in spite of his eleven good ones. Readers can find it easy to criticize, looking down from their comfortable corner on the heights from which the whole horizon lies open at everything that is taking place below, where man can only see the object nearest to him. And in the universal chronicle of mankind there are many entire centuries which he could apparently cross out and suppress as unnecessary. Many errors have been made in the world which today, it seems, even a child would not have made. How many crooked, out-of-the-way, narrow, impassable, and devious paths has humanity chosen in the attempt to attain eternal truth, while before it the straight road lay open, like the road leading to a magnificent building destined to become a royal palace. It is wider and more resplendent than all the other paths, lying as it does in the full glare of the sun and lit up by many lights at night, but men have streamed past it in blind darkness. And how many times even when guided by understanding that has descended upon them from heaven, have they still managed to swerve away from it and go astray, have managed in the broad light of day to get into the impassable out-of-the-way places again, have managed again to throw a blinding mist over each other's eyes and, running after will-o'-the-wisps, have manged to reach the brink of the precipice only to ask themselves afterwards with horror: "Where is the way out? Where is the road?" The present generation sees everything clearly, it is amazed at the errors and laughs at the folly of its ancestors, unaware that this chronicle is shot through and through with heavenly fires, that every letter in it cries out aloud to them, that from everywhere, from every direction an accusing finger is pointed at it, at the present generation; but the present generation laughs and proudly and self-confidently enters on a series of fresh errors at which their descendants will laugh again later on.

Gogol, Dead Souls (1961: 220-221)

15 December 2009

extraordinary

Chichikov spread an atmosphere of joy and quite extraordinary gaiety. There was not a face that did not express pleasure or at least a reflection of the general pleasure. So it is with the faces of civil servants when the offices entrusted to their charge are being inpected by the chief of a government department: after their first panic has passed off they see that there is a great deal that has pleased him, and when at last he has graciously condescended to joke, that is to say, to utter a few words with a pleasant smile, the civil servants crowding arround him laugh twice as much in reply; those who have hardly heard what he said laugh with all their might too, and finally a policeman standing at the door an appreciable distance away, who has never laughed in his life and who has a minute earlier been shaking his fist at the people outside, even he, according to the unalterable laws of reflection, shows some kind of smile on his face, though it looks more as though he were about to sneeze after a pinch of strong snuff. Our hero responded to all and each and he felt extraordinarily at his ease; he bowed to right and to left, a little to one side, as was his habit, but without the slightest constraint, so that everyone was enchanted by him. The ladies at once crowded round him in a glittering garland, bring with them whole clouds of every kind of scent; one exuded roses, another brought with her the scent of spring and violets, a third was saturated through and through with mignonette; Chichikov just kept lifting up his nose and sniffing. Their dresses displayed an infinite variety of taste: muslins, satins, chiffons were of the pale fashionable shades for which even a name could not be found (such a degree of refinement has modern taste reached). Bows of ribbon and bunches of flowers fluttered about here and there in most picturesque disorder, though much thought had been given to the creation of this disorder. A light head-dress was supported only by the ears, and seemed to be saying, "Look out, I'm going to take flight and I'm only sorry I can't carry the beautiful creature away with me!" The waists were tightly laced and had the most firm and agreeable shape for the eyes to enjoy (it must be noted that, in general, the ladies of the town of N. were rather plump, but they laced themselves so skilfully and carried themselves so charmingly that it was quite impossible to notice how plump they were). They had thought out and forseen everything with most extraordinary care: necks and shoulders were bared just as much as was necessary and not an inch more; each one of them bared her possessions only as far as she thought them capable of ruining a man; the rest was all hidden away with extraordinary taste: either some light ribbon of a neck-band or a scarf that was lighter than a puff pastry known as 'a kiss', ethereally encircled the neck, or tiny fringed pieces of fine cambric known as 'modesties' were let in from under the dress over the shoulders. These 'modesties' concealed in front and at the back what could not possibly bring about a man's ruin and yet made one suspect that it was there that final disaster lay. The long gloves were not draw up as far as the sleeves, but purposely left bare those alluring parts of the arm above the elbow that in many of the ladies were of an enviable plumpness; some ladies had even split their gloves in the effort to pull them up as far as possible—in short, it was as if everything had been inscribed with the legend: "No, this is not a provincial town! This is a capital city! This is Paris itself!" Only here and there a bonnet of a shape never seen on earth before, or some feather that might have been a peacock's, was thrust out in defiance of all fashion and in accordance with individual taste. But you can't help that, for such is the nature of a provincial town: it is bound to trip up somewhere. Standing before them, Chichikov thought: "Who could be the authoress of the letter?" He thrust out his nose, but a whole row of elbows, cuffs, sleeves, ends of ribbons, perfumed chemisettes, and dresses brushed past his very nose. The galop was at its height: the postmaster's wife, the police captain, a lady with a pale blue feather, a lady with a white feather, the Georgian prince, Chipkhaykhilidzev, an official from Petersburg, an official from Moscow, a Frenchman called Coucou, Perkhunovsky, Berebendovsky, all were whirling madly in the dance.
 "Look at them! The whole provincial administration is in full swing!" said Chichikov to himself, standing back, and as soon as the ladies had resumed their seats, he again started trying to find out whether he could tell from the expression of a face or a look in some eyes who the writer of the letter was; but it was utterly impossible to recognize either from the expression of the face or the look in the eyes who the writer was. Everywhere something could be detected that seemed to be on the point of betraying some secret, something elusively subtle—oh, how subtle! ... "No," Chichikov said to himself, "women are a subject such as ..." Here he dismissed it with a wave of the hand: "What's the use of talking! Just try and describe or put into words everything that is flitting over their faces, all the sublte twists of meaning, all the hints—and you simply won't be able to put it into words. Their eyes alone are such a vast realm that if a man ventured to enter it he'd be as good as done for! You won't drag him out of there by hook or by crook. Just try describing, for instance, their glitter alone: moist, velvety, sugary. Goodness only knows what else you may not find there. Harsh and soft, and quite languishing, or as some say, voluptuous or not voluptuous but a hundred times worse than voluptuous—and it clutches at your heart and plays upon your souls, as though with a violin bow. No, one simply can't find the right words: the 'ever so refined' half of the human species, and that's all there is to it!"

Gogol, Dead Souls (1961: 172-174)

09 December 2009

of raisins and of soap

Before, long ago, in the days of my youth, in the days of my childhood, which have passed away like a dream never to return, I felt happy whenever I happened to drive up for the first time to an unfamiliar place: it mattered not whether it was a little hamlet, a poor little provincial town, or a large villiage, or some suburb, the inquisitive eyes of a child found a great deal of interest there. Every building, everything that bore the mark of some noticeable peculiarity—everything made me pause in amazement. Whether it was a brick government building of an all too familiar architecture with half of its frontage covered with blind windows, standing incongruously all alone among a mass of rough-hewn, timbered one-storied artisan dwellings, or a round regular cupola covered with sheets of galvanized iron, rising above the snowy whitewashed new church, or a market-place, or some provincial dandy who happened to be taking a stroll in the centre of the town—nothing escaped my fresh, alert attention, and thrusting my nose out of my travelling cart, I gazed at the cut of some coat I had never seen before or at the wooden chests of nails, or sulphur whose yellow colour I could discern from a distance, of raisins and of soap, glimpses of which I caught for a moment through the door of some grocer's shop together with jars of dried up Moscow sweets; I stared, too, at some infantry officer, walking by himself, who had been cast into this dull provincial hole from goodness only knows what province, or at a merchant in his close-fitting, pleated Siberian coat, driving past in a trap at a spanking pace, and I was carried away in my thoughts after them, into their poor lives. If some district official happened to pass by, I immediately began to wonder where he was going, whether it was to a party given by a colleague of his, or straight home to sit on the front steps of his house for half an hour till darkness had fallen, and then sit down to an early supper with his mother, his wife, his wife's sister, and the rest of his family, and I tried to imagine what they would be talking about, while a serf-girl with her coin necklace or a serf-boy in his thick tunic brought in a tallow candle in an ancient candlestick after the soup. Whenever I drove up to the village of some landowner, I would gaze curiously at the tall, narrow, wodden belfry, or at the dark, vast, old wooden church. The red roof and the white chimneys of the manor house beckoned invitingly to me from a distance through the green foliage of the trees, and I waited impatiently for the orchards which surrounded it to fall back on either side so that I might get a fullview of its, in those days, alas, far from vulgar exterior; and from its appearance I tried to guess what sort of a man the landowner was, whether he was stout, and whether he had sons or a whole bevy of daughters, six in all, with loud, happy, girlish laughter, and their games, and the youngest sister, of course, the most beautiful of them all, and whether they had black eyes, and whether he was a jovial fellow himself or as gloomy as the last days of September, looking perpetually at the calendar and talking everlastingly about his rye and wheat, a subject so boring to young people.
  Now it is with indifference that I drive up to every unknown village and it is with indifference that I gaze at its vulgar exterior; there is a cold look in my eyes and I feel uncomfortable, and I am amused no more, and what in former years would have awakened a lively interest in my face, laughter, and an uninterrupted flow of words, now slips by me without notice and my motionless lips preserve an apathetic silence. Oh, my youth! Oh, my freshness!

Gogol, Dead Souls (1961: 119-120)