« Si je préfère les chats aux chiens, c’est parce qu’il n’y a pas de chat policier. » — Jean Cocteau
• “If I prefer cats to dogs, it’s because there are no police cats.”
Category Archives: Literature
Viler Smiler
Less is more. It’s a principle for good writing, not an unalterable law. And one of the best expositions of the principle was given by A.E. Housman in his lecture “The Name and Nature of Poetry” (1933):
Dryden’s translation [of The Canterbury Tales] shows Dryden in the maturity of his power and accomplishment, and much of it can be honestly and soberly admired. Nor was he insensible to all the peculiar excellence of Chaucer: he had the wit to keep unchanged such lines as ‘Up rose the sun and up rose Emily’ or ‘The slayer of himself yet saw I there’; he understood that neither he nor anyone else could better them. But much too often in a like case he would try to improve, because he thought that he could. He believed, as he says himself, that he was ‘turning some of the Canterbury Tales into our language, as it is now refined’; ‘the words’ he says again ‘are given up as a post not to be defended in our poet, because he wanted the modern art of fortifying’; ‘in some places’ he tells us ‘I have added somewhat of my own where I thought my author was deficient, and had not given his thoughts their true lustre, for want of words in the beginning of our language’.
Let us look at the consequences. Chaucer’s vivid and memorable line
The smiler with the knife under the cloke
becomes these three:
Next stood Hypocrisy, with holy leer,
Soft smiling and demurely looking down,
But hid the dagger underneath the gown.
Again:
Alas, quod he, that day that I was bore.
So Chaucer, for want of words in the beginning of our language. Dryden comes to his assistance and gives his thoughts their true lustre thus:
Cursed be the day when first I did appear;
Let it be blotted from the calendar,
Lest it pollute the month and poison all the year.
Or yet again:
The queen anon for very womanhead
Gan for to weep, and so did Emily
And all the ladies in the company.
If Homer or Dante had the same thing to say, would he wish to say it otherwise? But to Dryden Chaucer wanted the modern art of fortifying, which he thus applies:
He said; dumb sorrow seized the standers-by.
The queen, above the rest, by nature good
(The pattern formed of perfect womanhood)
For tender pity wept: when she began
Through the bright quire the infectious virtue ran.
All dropped their tears, even the contended maid.
• “The Name and Nature of Poetry” (1933) by A.E. Housman — more of “less is more”
A Pox on Poetry
From The Ultimate Christmas Cracker (2019), compiled by John Julius Norwich:
How beautiful, I have often thought, would be the names of many of our vilest diseases, were it not for their disagreeable associations. My old friend Jenny Fraser sent me this admirable illustration of the fact by J.C. Squire:
So forth then rode Sir Erysipelas
From good Lord Goitre’s castle, with the steed
Loose on the rein: and as he rode he mused
On Knights and Ladies dead: Sir Scrofula,
Sciatica, he of Glanders, and his friend,
Stout Sir Colitis out of Aquitaine,
And Impetigo, proudest of them all,
Who lived and died for blind Queen Cholera’s sake:
Anthrax, who dwelt in the enchanted wood
With those princesses three, tall, pale and dumb,
And beautiful, whose names were Music’s self,
Anaemia, Influenza, Eczema.
And then once more the incredible dream came back,
How long ago upon the fabulous Shores
Of far Lumbago, all of a summer’s Day,
He and the maid Neuralgia, they twain,
Lay in a flower-crowned mead, and garlands wove,
Of gout and yellow hydrocephaly,
Dim palsies, and pyrrhoea, and the sweet
Myopia, bluer than the summer Sky:
Agues, both white and red, pied common cold,
Cirrhosis and that wan, faint flower
The shepherds call dyspepsia. — Gone, all gone:
There came a Knight: he cried ‘Neuralgia!’
And never a voice to answer. Only rang
O’er cliff and battlement and desolate mere
‘Neuralgia!’ in the echoes’ mockery.
Elsewhere Other-Accessible…
• J.C. Squire at Wikipedia
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
• nosopoetic (obsolete rare) Producing or causing disease. ← noso- comb. form + ‑poetic comb. form, after Hellenistic Greek νοσοποιός causing illness; compare ancient Greek νοσοποιεῖν to cause illness. — Oxford English Dictionary
Drain Brain
Eh bien, avant-hier 17 mars 1838, cet homme est mort. Des médecins sont venus, et ont embaumé le cadavre. Pour cela, à la manière des Égyptiens, ils ont retiré les entrailles du ventre et le cerveau du crâne. La chose faite, après avoir transformé le prince de Talleyrand en momie et cloué cette momie dans une bière tapissée de satin blanc, ils se sont retirés, laissant sur une table la cervelle, cette cervelle qui avait pensé tant de choses, inspiré tant d’hommes, construit tant d’édifices, conduit deux révolutions, trompé vingt rois, contenu le monde.
Les médecins partis, un valet est entré, il a vu ce qu’ils avaient laissé : Tiens ! ils ont oublié cela. Qu’en faire ? Il s’est souvenu qu’il y avait un égout dans la rue, il y est allé, et a jeté ce cerveau dans cet égout. — Victor Hugo, Choses vues: Talleyrand, 1838
And so, the day before yesterday, March 17, 1838, this man died. Doctors came and embalmed the corpse. They did this like the Egyptians, removing the entrails from the stomach and the brain from the skull. When they were done, having transformed Prince Talleyrand into a mummy and nailing this mummy in a bier lined with white satin, they withdrew, leaving the brain on a table, this brain that had thought so many things, inspired so many men, built so many buildings, led two revolutions, deceived twenty kings, had contained the world.
With the doctors gone, a valet came in and saw what they had left: Hey! they forgot that. What shall I do with it? He remembered that there was a sewer in the street, so he went out and threw the brain into the sewer. — Victor Hugo, Things Seen, 1838
Pro’ with the Flow
• From Parallinear: 16 European Poets in Prose Translation (Symban Press 1977)
Jorisz Prokata, born Nembutå, Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1901; died Paris, 1943 […]
’Ndra ven ožedigō tranvu
Istahe zesfusna vo kōb
G’va: svas moe’, oxoaz, hežbu
Vem mižurt qocrsiūjy aplouxōb
Veń ġucij doīv.
L’gefq tsiži, xveby, qa indreza:
Kipidi, aūcu mdvo, lkåd’vud
Utcuzu, veń gomfōj’t vgeza
Vqežefq keflozu ven užud
Odzub’za lkåtū sxoīv.
It’s raining and I walk by the river
Watching gulls on the opposite bank.
Then: two ducks, mergansers, I think,
And I take off my glasses to wipe them
And take a closer look.
It’s now I see what the rain has done:
The small drops, pearl-patterns, constellating
The lenses, and so beautiful beneath the dull sky
That I cannot touch them and walk on
My panes full of stars.
Translator’s notes
[…] The paronomasia in the final line rests on the ambiguity of the contracted odzub’za, which could mean either odzubaza, “my pains, my sufferings” or odzupeza, “my lookers, my specs” (otsupa, “look, observe”), with sandhi of p to b before z.
Translation © Caroline Dawkins 1956
RanDOOM Numbers
In my story “The Web of Nemilloth”, I wrote about a wizard, Vmirr-Psumm, who sought to escape the web of necessity spun over all matter in the universe by the spider-goddess Nemilloth. Vmirr-Psumm knew the legend of a fore-wizard, Tšenn-Gilë, who had sought the same escape and had cast a giant spell to tear the entire planet of Pmimmb from Nemilloth’s web. Alas, the legend ran, Tšenn-Gilë had made an error in his working and Pmimmb had exploded, broadcasting fragments of itself throughout the universe in the form of a seemingly worthless black mineral called sorraim.
The spider-goddess Nemilloth binds the Universe in Her web (AI-rtist’s impression)
Pieces of sorraim were found on Vmirr-Psumm’s own planet and he reasoned that, were the legend true, he could lift Nemilloth’s web from his own brain by carving and throwing a die of the mineral, wherein the virtue of Tšenn-Gilë’s spell still lingered. A die of any ordinary material would be within the web and therefore bound by necessity, generating only pseudo-random numbers in its throws. But a die of sorraim, being outside the web, would generate veri-random numbers that would alter the working of his brain, inspire thoughts unbound by Nemilloth, and grant him true freedom from Her tyranny.
Unfortunately for Vmirr-Psumm, he did not realize that “he who loosens the web of Nemilloth in rebellion grants matter itself leave to rebel.” A fragment of sorraim was small enough to remain outside the web and survive, but anything larger, from a planet to a human brain, would be destroyed. And that is why, absorbing the veri-random throws of the sorraim die, Vmirr-Psumm’s brain exploded with the power of an atom bomb at the end of the story, “succumbing, on its vastly smaller scale, to the same forces that had torn apart the planet of Pmimmb.”
Reflections on ranDOOM
Thinking about “The Web of Nemilloth” again at the end of 2024, I’ve realized that it raises some interesting questions. If a truly random sequence of numbers could cause a brain to explode, how long would the sequence have to be? I conjecture that a single number, and single throw of Vmirr-Psumm’s deadly die, would suffice, because it would be truly random in a way no number generated in any normal way could be. After all, if the brain of the die-thrower didn’t explode after one throw, why should it explode after two or three or any other finite number of throws? If the true randomness of the sequence is not established after one throw, then (one might reason) it could be established only after infinite throws. But Vmirr-Psumm did not throw the die infinitely often. Therefore, I conjecture, he must have rolled it only once, seen but one uppermost face of his dodecahedral die of sorraim, and die-d on that instant, as his brain absorbed the first veri-random number and exploded.
But why should sorraim need to be carved into a die to be deadly? If the mineral were truly outside the web of Nemilloth, then would not merely seeing or touching sorraim introduce unnecessitated sense-data into the brain of the beholder or betoucher and provoke an explosion? And why would the influence of the sorraim need to be on a conscious brain? If it’s insentient matter itself that rebels when outside the web, then ordinary matter influenced by sorraim would explode. And that explosion itself would be unnecessitated and thereby provoke further explosion in all the ordinary matter that it influenced.
And the influence of such an explosion would propagate at the speed of light, because the photons it created would be unnecessitated and therefore explosive in their influence. One could conclude, then, that the fore-wizard’s spell would have destroyed not only the planet of Pmimmb whereon it was worked but, in time, the entire universe, as the photons bearing the news of the initial explosion sped outward and triggered further explosions in all the ordinary matter they effected in some way. Vmirr-Psumm could never have found his sorraim and carved his die, because photons from Pmimmb would have reached his planet far before fragments of sorraim ever did. And it seems illogical or arbitrary to suppose that sorraim could exist anyway. Would not all matter be destroyed – turn into electro-magnetic radiation – if outside the web or if influenced by unnecessitated fundamental particles?
Psychopaths and Stoics
Still, let’s suppose that my story doesn’t succumb to this explosive logic, that sorraim could exist and be carved into a die, and that a single truly random number could cause a brain to explode. What a method of assassination or murder that would be! But it would be like the head of Medusa: you would have to emulate Perseus and avoid beholding your own weapon. If sorraim really existed and you could carve a die from it, you’d have to set up an automatic mechanism to roll that die, record the number first generated, then transmit that number to your target in some way. But to use such a weapon you’d have to have a psychopathic indifference to collateral damage: when your target’s brain absorbed the single veri-random number and exploded, this would destroy any city that your target happened to be present in at the time. But suppose you were indeed a psychopath and wanted to destroy a city or a nation or a continent or the entire world. Then you’d simply arrange for your single truly random number to be seen by the requisite number of people.
A final thought: I have a recollection that the Stoics believed necessity rules the universe and true randomness is therefore impossible, because it would trigger destruction in the necessitated material order of the universe. But I can’t remember where (or if) I read this and am pretty sure I read it only after I’d written “The Web of Nemilloth”.
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
• “The Web of Nemilloth” appears in the CAS-inspired collection Tales of Silence and Sortilege, re-published by Incunabula Books in 2023.
The Will to Flower
At death you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It’s only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
Of being here. — “The Old Fools” (1973) by Philip Larkin
Look with Luther
Denn in der wahren Natur der Dinge ist, wenn wir recht bedenken, jeder grüne Baum viel herrlicher, als wenn er aus Gold und Silber wäre. — Martin Luther
• “For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider, every green tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver.”
Post-Performative Post-Scriptum
I’ve tried to find where — and indeed if — Luther originally wrote this but can’t find anything but “Inspirational Quotes” pages. And some of those attribute it to Martin Luther King. It doesn’t sound like MLK to me and the German doesn’t look translated from English. It’s a good quote whoever first said it and whatever language it was first said in.
Regal Eagle
The Eagle
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
• Alfred Lord Tennyson
Mavericks in a Metropolis of Millions…
Trump has won again.
I can’t believe I’ve just written those words.
I don’t wanna believe I’ve just written those words.
But I hafta.
’Coz they’re true.
Toxically, traumatizingly, tear-tappingly true.
So how’m I gonna respond to the toxic truth of tyrannical Trump’s triumph?
Welp… how better than by publishing some fiercely unbowed words of anti-fascist resistance from one of the core counter-cultural components at one of the world’s leading anti-racist publishing houses?
Yes indeedy, this Papyrocentric Performativizer is positively pulsating with pride and passion to present an exclusive antifa extract from arguably the best interview in Titans of Transgression: Incendiary Interviews with Eleven Ultra-Icons of Über-Extremity (TransVisceral Books 2024), which has just seen its third edition.
Please raise your revolutionary fists for Jay Guinness, Artistic Director and Ipsissimic Aesthetician at Manchester-locused Savoy Books, long hailed as England’s most transgressive publishing company…
Readers’ Advisory: Interview extract contains strong language and uncompromising counter-cultural contrarianism. Proceed at your own risk.
[…]
Miriam Stimbers: Manchester was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2017 [editor’s note: Miriam is referring to the murder of twenty-two people by the homophobic and misogynist Islamist suicide-bomber Salman Abedi at the Manchester Arena].
Jay Guinness: It was, yes. Sadly it was.
Miriam Stimbers: How did you react at Savoy?
Jay Guinness: We in the Savoy community were badly affected. Clearly, we’ve engaged fictionally, artistically, aesthetically with issues around fascism, hatred, intolerance throughout our professional lives, but to have those issues strike on your own doorstep, as it were, strike for real, well, it’s something you could never be prepared for.
Miriam Stimbers: So you think what he did was fascism?
Jay Guinness: I think it was echt fascism, fascism pur sang. Pun not intended. Let’s not beat about the bush. It was fascism.
Miriam Stimbers: Much has been made of the fact that the terrorist––
Jay Guinness: I don’t think “terrorist” is the mot juste. Not at all. For me, he’s just a criminal with a diseased mind. And I don’t mean that as a compliment!
Steve Bell of The Guardian excoriates the Manchester Arena Bomber
Miriam Stimbers: Okay. Much has been made of the fact that the criminal was born and brought up in Manchester. Have you any thoughts on that?
Jay Guinness: You’re right, much has been made of it. But for me and my colleagues at Savoy what he did merely underlined the fact that Manchester is a state of mind far more than it is a physical and temporal Sitz im Leben. It’s about a locus of values, not about geography. I mean, I was born in Huddersfield myself, but I felt that I was Mancunian from the moment I first hung my hat here, because I subscribe to Mancunian values. People who were born here but don’t subscribe to those values aren’t part of the city. Not for me, not for the Savoy community, not ever. I think Dave [Britton] put it best when we were processing the news of what he’d done. Dave’s words have stayed with me: “He’s not a fucking Manc, he’s a fucking cunt. The fucker should be fucking strung up.”
Miriam Stimbers: Metaphorically speaking?
Jay Guinness: No, not metaphorically. Literally. We in the Savoy community are a pretty progressive bunch. We’re not instinctive supporters of the death penalty, to put it mildly. But if you took a vote at Savoy in terms of whether people who do things like that should be hanged, it would be a unanimous yes. No dissenters.
Miriam Stimbers: I’m taken aback. It seems a little extreme. A lot extreme, to be honest.
Jay Guinness: The Savoy community might be progressive, but we’re not bleeding-heart liberals. As Dave said, the fucker should be fucking strung up.
Miriam Stimbers: But what could you hope to achieve by it?
Jay Guinness: Well, for one thing it would be a deterrent to others. Just as importantly, it would ensure he doesn’t do it again.
Miriam Stimbers: But he won’t be doing it again. How could he?
Jay Guinness: Very easily. And he will do it again. We in the Savoy community are confident of that. Leopards don’t change their spots.
Miriam Stimbers: But how could he do it again? He’s dead.
Jay Guinness: I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. Who’s dead?
Miriam Stimbers: Salman Abedi, of course. The suicide-bomber at the Manchester Arena. Who else?
Much More Mucking Maverick Than You, Monkeyfunker!
Jay Guinness: Oh no, no, no, you’ve got entirely the wrong end of the stick. I wasn’t talking about that poor British-Muslim boy. He was quite possibly the biggest victim in that unfortunate business at the Arena.
Miriam Stimbers: Then who were you talking about?
Jay Guinness: That despicable creature Morrissey, of course. Those comments of his about immigration and Salman’s background were utterly unforgivable. Utterly. But no more than one would expect. As Dave went on to say: “That fucking crypto-fascist cunt’s just a fucking attention-seeker, always fucking has been, always fucking will be. String the fucker up!”
Miriam Stimbers: And you really think there’d be a majority at Savoy in favour of executing Morrissey?
Jay Guinness: I don’t think it, I know it. But it wouldn’t just be a majority, it would a unanimous vote, nem. con. What has Morrissey ever done but bring Manchester into disrepute with his dire music, his shitty fashion sense and his toxic racist agenda? As Michael Moorcock once said: “Fascism never sleeps and nor must the anti-fascist community.” In terms of saying it all, it does. Definitively.
[…]
Interview extract © Jay Guinness, Dr Miriam Stimbers, TransVisceral Books 2024
• Jay Guinness is a Huddersfield-born artist and aesthetician, and the subject of Dr Joan Jay Jefferson’s incisive and exhaustive biography Art-Bandit: Interrogating the Outlaw Aesthetics of Über-Maverick Gay Atelierista Jay Guinness (University of Salford Press 2012). See reviews of Art-Bandit at: Pink News, The Guardian, London Review of Books, Quietus, and Huffington Post. Visit Jay’s website for news of his latest projects.
• Miriam Stimbers is a Glasgow-born psychoanalyst, literary scholar and cultural commentatrix whose most recent book is the updated edition of Morbidly Miriam: The Mephitic Memoirs of Miriam B. Stimbers (TransVisceral Books 2023). See a review of Morbidly Miriam at Papyrocentric Performativity. Visit Miriam’s website for news of her latest projects.
Previously pre-posted on Papyrocentric Performativity…
• Il Nano e il Necrofilo… – an earlier exclusive extract from Titans of Transgression…
• The Hurt Shocker – an even earlier exclusive extract from Titans of Transgression…
Overlord In Terms of Core Issues Around Maximal Engagement with Key Notions of the Über-Feral 