Sonata
It was just a short while ago that I finished 2666 by Roberto Bolano, and it is by far the biggest reminder of how Herman Melville approached Moby Dick, though it is set rather in a desert of unfathomable boredom, as the quote by Charles Baudelaire indicates at the beginning. It is not boredom in that idle fashion, that boredom of expectation or listlessness, but the boredom that is rather the mask of frustration, of being forever parched on shore, looking out at the ocean but never diving towards bottom, never encountering the vastness of what actually is. It was in the last part of the novel, The Part About Archimboldi, that this became apparent, in the way that Hans Reiter to which the pseudonym "Archimboldi" becomes the veil between critic and reality in his elusive writings, in the way that Reiter dives into every body of water he can find, trusting only in a text about plants of the coastal region and that sense of unfathomable depths, becoming more and more certain that on shore the world of semblance, of many minor works is clear.
Minor works of literature there can only be, even Moby Dick, that novel so keen to escape semblance, to recognize that there is no way for the ocean to be striated, to be understood, as Ishmael floats on a coffin that would have been buried on the surface of the Atlantic. There is no masterpiece other than Christ, another part says, when Archimboldi begins to rent a typewriter from a writer who has given up for that very reason. The minor works are thieves, making off into a desert of boredom, fulfilling the illusion of completeness and seeming to frame the masterpiece of Christ, of everything as having hidden depths, vast unexplorable regions that are never complete, ever needing more and more life to extend them and make life meaningful by destroying semblance, by abandoning totality. This Hans Reiter, whose least well-known novel Bifurcaria, Bifurcata, a work wholly surrounding the world of ocean plants, seaweeds, delves further and further into the world of literature and finally casts his typewriter into a chasm, off of the verge, only to re-enter into a world of crimes, of even deepening terror and unknowns as the novel closes, so much like Ishmael afloat on this coffin that might have been buried, decorated with the symbols of his crew member that deter death, cryptic symbols that describe meaning but only manage to produce many meanings, the many unfoldings of possibilities now that Ishmael is faced with the unknown intentions of the Atlantic.
It is in 2666, with it's disapperance of semblance, its resolutions that never surface, that the world disappears once more into obscurity, but not the abyss. The world disappearing into itself, as life seems only to generate more and more meanings. Less and less do we encounter the masterpiece, and more and more the minor works, and- as C.S. Lewis writes- it is in this reduction of the greatness of infinities, the importance of value and meaning in individuals that we dissolve into believing that in violence there is something meaningful, in an increasing act of desecration, in that surfeit of minor works that fragments and begins to pit all of reality against one another in an attempt to find the work that is most meaningful, when there are in fact only multiples, relationships, this Deleuzian world of immanence and how we only enter into death to find life, in its ineluctable search of clearness, free movement, the absence of power, the search to never be complete.
The works of Faulkner andMcCarthy create a world of desolation to find value but there is no completion here. Life is only atomised even further, turned into metaphor, when it is life and relationship, and understanding of the infinitesimal difference of people and the fundamental similarities. The abolition of totalities is the destruction of power, and it is power and gilded edges that Christ so warned against. Even theism creates a world of hierarchies, of difference and iconography that only manages to make the world of immanence even more concrete and thus insubstantial. That invocation of rounded edges, of the possibility of a masterpiece that closes walls around itself rather than allowing some sort of diffusive entrance, a way in which many cultures and languages can find a similar voice, the voice of human value and change. In so many ways Marcel Proust's novel of incompletes, of fading memories and insights into the efficacy of feelings rather than facts is reminiscent of Bolano's novel here. In Search of Lost Time recalls a sonata that always seems to change and when complete seems to matter less. In is in the recurring phrases that always seem to never finish and when they do it is like a search has been given up, life life has cornered itself and submitted to an order of categories, rather than that fleeting world that speaks a language of love, of rhythm. Even this search for lost time is not what it seems; it is rather a search to be outside of time, to enter into memories as though they are realities, which they are, and to feel always that not a moment has passed and not a moment has gone, and everything of value lies outside of power, outside of capture and containment.
Minor works of literature there can only be, even Moby Dick, that novel so keen to escape semblance, to recognize that there is no way for the ocean to be striated, to be understood, as Ishmael floats on a coffin that would have been buried on the surface of the Atlantic. There is no masterpiece other than Christ, another part says, when Archimboldi begins to rent a typewriter from a writer who has given up for that very reason. The minor works are thieves, making off into a desert of boredom, fulfilling the illusion of completeness and seeming to frame the masterpiece of Christ, of everything as having hidden depths, vast unexplorable regions that are never complete, ever needing more and more life to extend them and make life meaningful by destroying semblance, by abandoning totality. This Hans Reiter, whose least well-known novel Bifurcaria, Bifurcata, a work wholly surrounding the world of ocean plants, seaweeds, delves further and further into the world of literature and finally casts his typewriter into a chasm, off of the verge, only to re-enter into a world of crimes, of even deepening terror and unknowns as the novel closes, so much like Ishmael afloat on this coffin that might have been buried, decorated with the symbols of his crew member that deter death, cryptic symbols that describe meaning but only manage to produce many meanings, the many unfoldings of possibilities now that Ishmael is faced with the unknown intentions of the Atlantic.
It is in 2666, with it's disapperance of semblance, its resolutions that never surface, that the world disappears once more into obscurity, but not the abyss. The world disappearing into itself, as life seems only to generate more and more meanings. Less and less do we encounter the masterpiece, and more and more the minor works, and- as C.S. Lewis writes- it is in this reduction of the greatness of infinities, the importance of value and meaning in individuals that we dissolve into believing that in violence there is something meaningful, in an increasing act of desecration, in that surfeit of minor works that fragments and begins to pit all of reality against one another in an attempt to find the work that is most meaningful, when there are in fact only multiples, relationships, this Deleuzian world of immanence and how we only enter into death to find life, in its ineluctable search of clearness, free movement, the absence of power, the search to never be complete.
The works of Faulkner andMcCarthy create a world of desolation to find value but there is no completion here. Life is only atomised even further, turned into metaphor, when it is life and relationship, and understanding of the infinitesimal difference of people and the fundamental similarities. The abolition of totalities is the destruction of power, and it is power and gilded edges that Christ so warned against. Even theism creates a world of hierarchies, of difference and iconography that only manages to make the world of immanence even more concrete and thus insubstantial. That invocation of rounded edges, of the possibility of a masterpiece that closes walls around itself rather than allowing some sort of diffusive entrance, a way in which many cultures and languages can find a similar voice, the voice of human value and change. In so many ways Marcel Proust's novel of incompletes, of fading memories and insights into the efficacy of feelings rather than facts is reminiscent of Bolano's novel here. In Search of Lost Time recalls a sonata that always seems to change and when complete seems to matter less. In is in the recurring phrases that always seem to never finish and when they do it is like a search has been given up, life life has cornered itself and submitted to an order of categories, rather than that fleeting world that speaks a language of love, of rhythm. Even this search for lost time is not what it seems; it is rather a search to be outside of time, to enter into memories as though they are realities, which they are, and to feel always that not a moment has passed and not a moment has gone, and everything of value lies outside of power, outside of capture and containment.
This is like water. With clarity, woven with currents difficult to articulate. Yet done.
ReplyDeleteSome thoughts; in response.
Major works require both schism and freedom. They occur in an unusual matrix of time, one that few have the innate strength to enter; which is not to judge, but to acknowledge. As it seems entering is not by choice. In fact it seems the opposite of will. And yes, outside of “power or gilded edges”. They do not emerge as one travels down paths well traveled, through earnings and losses, through family and reputation. Minor works are breaths. They are gasps at air so badly needed. They know their limitations, but their makers cannot leave the paths of the known, there is too much momentum behind them. So much so, it is often inescapable, and takes one from moment to momentless, and then quietly, to the loss of voice. There only is compassion for the need of oxygen at lower depths, even if it occurs in shallow water. The gasps have a rhythm. Like 7 hz; the frequency at which the body will spasm, whether it wants to or not, ( or so the physicist said). But violence, becomes a light to create meaning, only for those who have not experienced it first-hand. As once you have entered into that tumbling relation, of unbridled aggression, of the will of one entering into, to destroy crashing against the will of another to survive, to breathe, you see it offers nothing but the opening of space; of the darkest space without words, without understanding, without being. As it is there that what is body, becomes master and universe. And it is a world within its own time. Separate and frozen. Until breath comes back. But maybe those who witness violence from a distance, sense a similarity to what they feel as “capture and containment”, that they cannot fully understand, and so look at the caricature of violence, to help them circumscribe with the faintest line.
E.R.