Literature – Of Glass & Paper

On the second paradox of Zeno

Zeno_Arrow_Paradox

The people Marcel loves are people in motion. Like Albertine – always speeding off somewhere on a bike, on a train, in a car, on a horse or flown out of the window; like Marcel’s mother, perpetually on her way up the stairs to kiss him good night; like his grand mother, striding up and down the garden every evening for her constitutional even when it’s pouring rain; or like his friend Robert de Saint-Loup, whom we first glimpse scampering along the top of the banquette in a restaurant to fetch a coat for Marcel, who sits huddled and shivering at the table. Marcel is the still centre of all this kinetic activity, he is like the flying arrow in Zeno’s second paradox, which is shot from the bow but never arrives at its target because it does not move. Why does Zeno’s arrow not move? Because (this is Aristotle’s explanation) the motion of the arrow would be a series of instants, and at each instant the arrow fills that entire space of that instant, and this (Zeno would say) is a description of stillness. So if you add all the instants of stillness together you still get still. No one would deny that Proust’s novel streams with time, and with arrows shooting in all directions. But you could also think of the whole novel in your mind as one big stopped instant, since it takes Marcel the entire three thousand pages of the story to get around to the point of beginning to write it. On the last page he shoots his arrow but he does Zeno one better, he shoots it backwards, since you have just finished reading the novel he is proposing to write. It gives me a bit of a headache to think about Zeno and his paradoxes for very long, although I enjoy his deadpan delivery. Here is a shot of Zeno-antidote from that devoted Proust scholar, the filmmaker Chris Marker (Sans Soleil): “That is how history advances, plugging its memory as one plugs one’s ears… [but] a moment stopped would burn like a flame of film blocked before the furnace of the projector.”

Image source: The arrow

Sans Soleil

Anne Carson

Shitty first drafts

“Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.”

Peedeel's Blog

Shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits…

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Between absence and presence

A reading of Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami

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This is Mr Murakami’s latest work, published in Japan in 2017, and translated by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen (I guess: a tour de force). First of all, I must say that, in my view, this is Mr Murakami’s most accomplished work thus far, a fascinating, troubling and at time challenging novel. To be sure, long haul readers will find there a familiar atmosphere, but also the unknown. I will not spoil anything, but mention some ideas and metaphors.

There is a young artist, a portrait painter, and his beautiful, estranged wife. There is a, now dead, beloved little sister. There is a lone timber house, high up in the mountains, which belongs to a famous old painter. There is an owl in the attic. Across the valley, there is a big, strange house, with a stranger owner.

The young artist teaches drawing at a local school. He lives on his own, in the timber house, with the owl in the attic, visits the attic, walks in the woods. Behind a little shrine he discovers a pit, the pit in the woods. There is the start of the quest, with a surprising painting, and a bell.

There is Vienna, at the time of the Anschluss, there is the war in China, but this is the past, with deep consequences for the present. The old painter is famous for his classical formal Japanese paintings, but this one painting…

The novel oscillates between dream and an even more unfathomable reality. There is a lovely, pubescent young girl, her beautiful aunt, and two portraits, or is it three?

Once started this, as with all of Mr Murakami’s work, the book becomes desperately addictive: one dreads the prospect of finishing the book.

Yet the quest has to be completed, through sacrifice and ordeal.

I must add a warning: if readers wish to cross the river, between absence and presence, they must pay the ferryman. So, have your penguin ready!

That’s about the size of it.

Image: der Zeichner (the young draughtsman) by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin (Gemäldegalerie, Berlin)

Remains #writephoto

Remains

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He had come to the city, perhaps even unaware, only to write the story. It was about love, of course, or rather loves, lost, found again, unreconciled. That was two years back. The story, like a forgotten symphonie, was now left, unfinished, unpolished, and even, dare we say, unloved.

Something, someone, was missing, he feared he may know what. Somewhere in the unfathomable memories that submerged him, was a woman, the woman. And she, the sombre beauty of his dream, the one he had wanted to write for, was unwilling to belong, to fit in, to submit to his will.

Without her, what remains was a ghost, an empty shell, the faint shadow of what could have been, of what he so wanted to be.

So it was that he had to reignite the fire, and seduce her, again.

Au Luxembourg #5Words

Weekly Writing Prompt #96

She appears lost in thoughts,

Perhaps about the poor poet,

He who immortalised her…

We do not know where

She now lies, in peace.

Here, the card says “Laure”,

But he knew her as Laura,

So that there is a doubt,

As to whether she was the one

Who inspired him.

Here, in a press of children, of tourists,

She dreams among the queens,

And the senators,

Until her fall…

Photo: statue de Laure de Sade, dite de Noves, par Auguste Ottin, Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris (Honoré Dupuis)

Lush #DailyPrompt #amwriting

There is plenty. Of everything: history, people, murders, treacheries, wars, horror and beauty. The world is a lush stage for the writer: a space where subjects abound, where heroes, villains, creators, liars, assassins wear the most amazing camouflages. Over all this, the dream machines reign supreme. The last man on Mars, the destruction of the Moon, deeper still under the oceans. The Space Station, the Ark… No adventure is impossible, for this is not only the society of spectacle, the entire planet is acting, as if Earth knew what is expected of her.

Of course it can go wrong, even, very wrong. The big meteorite may well materialise (do you remember the Death Star, emerging from Hyperspace?), and then what? Assassins do roam the streets, the Devil never gives up…

Do we lack inspiration? Surely not, if anything is missing it is our (collective) inability to make sense of it, and turn all this into great literature…

Photo: The Saturnian moon Mimas, photographed by the Cassini probe in 2005. The large crater in the upper right (Herschel) gives it a resemblance to the Death Star.

Source: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06258

Copyright: This file is in the public domain in the United States because it was solely created by NASA. NASA copyright policy states that “NASA material is not protected by copyright unless noted“. (See Template:PD-USGov, NASA copyright policy page or JPL Image Use Policy.)

The Prompt

Ten (steps) #DailyPrompt #WritersWednesday

The prompt

“Ten steps, you said, and, well, I’d like to know…”

“It is simple, also we are in 2017 remember,” she replied with her irresistible smile, “The hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution – remember Petrograd? But also 1517, five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation: Wittenberg, brother Martin, the revolt of the peasants, Münster, Q! So, here you are, the ten steps:

Remember always which year you are in
Look at the cages, have this picture above your desk, remember them!
Every year take a trip to Wittenberg, or Münster, or wherever an event of importance took place that has inspired great works…
Reread “The Ten Days That Shook the World”, “Q” and other classics: food for thoughts.
Bert from the Well be your model: the calm hero.
Never rush on mere enthusiasm: there has to be a reason!
Reread the “Tractatus”, Wittgenstein is good for the soul.
Walk.
Respect her, I mean, me!
Gym, three times a week!

There you are, I told you: simple!”

Photo: the church of Saint Lamberti in Münster, with the original cages where the tortured corpses of the Täufer were exhibited (1536)

Pillage #DailyPrompt #WritersWednesday

So much to see, so little time…

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History walks along the quiet streets, ghosts hide in the corridors of museums: our steps resonate in the night, so much to explore… The story ripens, enriched by the findings, tombs of soldiers, standing knights in corners of baroque churches, damsels hidden in wooden scarves and dark mantels. Renaissance painters, medieval crosses, Japanese swords, enough material for many books.

Will there be time to pillage so much wealth?

Culture #DailyPost

Write a new post in response to today’s one-word prompt.

It’s all that we have learnt, and forgotten. It’s all that we remember, suddenly, as we walk through the woods, and see the castle, across the lake, which reminds us of beauty and the beast, of treasure island, of snow-white and her friends the dwarves… It’s all that may reappear, in our dreams, in the soft ripples of desires and memories. It may even be about a lost ring?

We follow the lane, our steps made silent by the thick cover of dead leaves. We cannot be sure who lived here, did they write symphonies, or wrote novels? Or did they study the dark heart of time? Were they wizards, or evil magicians? Did they come from the underworld, or from an island, far away, across an immense ocean? Are they still alive?

Behind those trees, we see the old school, the coal fire burning, the ancient wooden floor. It is what will remain when we are ready to embark, on our last voyage…

From the mist #WritersWednesday

They emerge from the mist, slowly, their shapes and faces only taking colours once the first sun rays appear: they look hesitant, perhaps a little shy. They are not alone, small nebulae surround them: their memories, their secrets, their hopes, often encrypted, not yet readable. They don’t speak, they appear to listen, to sounds we cannot hear, to melodies long forgotten, or voices of others, far away.

Sometime, one of them comes into clearer focus, surprised, but determined to find her way. It is then our turn to listen, attentive to the moves and gestures of the newcomer. It is as if she wishes to communicate with us, a few words at a time, often names. Eventually we know her name, and, later, that of people who matter to her. It is then the start of a journey of discovery. Where does she come from? When was she born, and where? Who were her parents? Who was her first love? Or, if there was no mercy, when did she die?

If she’s dead, already, then she may be coming, from that distant past, on behalf of someone else, her living self, or an old lover, or a child she lost, somewhere. She may be here to denounce some falsehood, some slander she was victim of, some lies people told about her life. She wants justice.

When she starts talking, we are surprised, how young she sounds, how present she is, and we want to hear more, of her life, of her story.

If we are lucky, she will tell us enough, about her life, her loves, her world, for us to write about her, to make her live again.

Photo: Christian Daniel Rauch, Danaide mit aufgelöstem Haar (Danaid with dishevelled hair), 1842-1846 – Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin