Two Nights of Excess

Following up with last week's post on Michel Onfray, my last visit to the city of New York turned up a little small book by a french author, Alfred de Musset. A renown poet, playwright and novelist of the Romantic period, this little book I stumbled upon was his try at erotic literature, Gamiani, Or Two Nights of Excess. According to the sources I've found on the book, the character of Gamiani is modeled after George Sand, another french writer, this is also said in the introduction of the book.
I found, after reading this little 100 or so page book, that in regards to the sexual aspect, it was comprehensive, covering everything from orgies, sacrilegious or otherwise, sadomasochism, bestiality, voyeurism, etc. No major perversions are neglected in the book. Much of it reminded me of the Marquis de Sade, on referring to him I highly recommend the excellent movie, Quills. This book incorporated much of the libertine spirit with a heightened element of the extreme, all for the sake of la petite mort. What distinguished this book from other erotica is its' lack of phallocentricity. The dominant character and sex is Gamiani, a woman.

On the the novel itself, it centers around two nights, between Gamiani, the Italian seductress, Fanny, the innocent virgin, and M. Alcide, the voyeur. The three meet on a night Gamiani holds a ball, the guests leave, she has lured Fanny into her room and Alcide is watching from a hidden place. No crevice is left untouched in their encounters. These three characters indulge extensively in themselves.
A brief interlude occurs during these two nights, where, the hunger of the characters is momentarily satiated and each partake in recounting their first sexual encounters. These are the moments that struck me the most, since it is in these tales recounted that one is able to see the imbalance created by the preceptors of youth, such as family members, and culture, and the predominant stigmatization of religion in regards to sexuality. Each of the characters have suffered at the hands of these stigmas, This imbalance is revealed in extremes that hinder and warp the natural, biological elements and desires that make up a person. This consequently, brought to mind Michel Onfray and his excellent treatise, Théorie du Corps Amoureux: Pour une Érotique Solaire. Which highlights the importance of letting go of the warped views of sensual relations, hindered mostly by extreme religious notions, hatred towards oneself, as well as by idealized romantic views.
If anything else, besides being an erotic novelette, Alfred de Musset in this book reveals diverse facets of human sexuality, how it is susceptible to dangerous extremes, much along the lines with the Marquis de Sade, although Musset draws a more poetic stroke with his words.
So, in the end, I recommend this book to those looking for interesting erotica. I enjoyed it.

El hombre que inventó Manhattan

I finally finished Ray Loriga's "El hombre que inventó Manhattan"
and let me just say that I loved every word of it. I still stand by what I said in my earlier post, on my first impressions of the book. This is a colorful and deliciously sordid tapestry of stories that combine to give life to a city that is at once famously elusive and enticing. Beyond its' relation to the City of New York, specifically the borough of Manhattan, I find that the entire book transcends its' title and this territory in that in general and concise words it paints for the reader the diversity found in human nature especially bred in a large mass of population coexisting in a tight space. We are all related and connected, man and nature. This was most evident when I found the chapter on the rat Missy, describing it's first adventure into central park, being a young rat. Which connects to the ending entitled, "De Ratones y Hombres", where this same rat is killed by the narrator, before his sons' eyes whom had just named it Missy.  Curiously enough, this immediately brought to mind lines by the scottish poet of the Romantic period in English literature Robert Burns, "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley, An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain, For promis'd joy!" (Lines 39-42). This is from his poem "To a Mouse". There is an interesting correlation between these two different works that I find relevant and important in understanding the core of what Ray Loriga presents in this book. Besides a description of the human condition found in a city as diverse and populated as NYC it is also a testament of man at his most grotesque and real and the harsh reality of human nature.

Now, I have begun and am about 15 pages in in the philosophical book I said in my previous post I was to begin next, Théorie du Corps Amoureux: Pour une érotique solaire by Michel Onfray. So far, I love what the book proposes to discuss and analyze in the opening pages. Briefly and roughly, it proposes individual autonomy and freedom from the bounds of oppressive western cultural traditions retaking and reinstating the Greek philosophers.

Till next post...

The Fire Sermon in The Waste Land

Here is the third part of Eliot's The Waste Land, The Fire Sermon (taken from a sermon preached by Buddha against the things of this world, all figured as consuming fires).

III. The Fire Sermon
The river's tent is broken: the last finger of leaf / Clutch and sink into te wet bank. The wind / Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. / Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.
The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, / Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends
Or other testimony of summer nights. the nymphs are departed. / And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; / Departed, have left no addresses. / By the water of Leman I sat down and wept...
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, / Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud of long.
But at my back in a cold blast I hear / The rattle of te bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. / A rat crept softly through the vegetation / Dragging its slimy  belly on the bank / While I was fishing in the dull canal / On a winter evening round behind the gashouse / Musing upon the king my brother's wreck
And on the king my father's death before him. / White bodies naked on the low damp ground / And bones cast in a little low dry garret. / Rattled by the rat's foot only, year to year. / But at my back from time to time I hear / The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring / Sweeny to Mrs' Porter in the spring. / O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter / And on her daughter / They wash their feet in soda water / Et O ces voix d'enfants, chantant dans la coupole! / Twit twit twit / Jug jug jug jug jug jug
So rudely forc'd / Tereu / Unreal City / Under the brown fog of a winter noon / Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant / Unshaven, with a pocket full of currants / C.i.f. London: documents at sight,
Asked me in demotic French / To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel / Followed by a weeken at the Metropole. / At the violet hour, when the eyes and back / Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits / Like a taxi throbbing waiting, / I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see / At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives
Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, / The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights
Her stove, and lays out food in tins. / Out of the window perolously spread / Her drying combinations touched by the sunn's last rays, / On the divan are piled (at night her bed) / Stockings, slippers, camisoles, and stays. / I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs / Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest- / I too awaited the expected guest. / He, the young man carbuncular, arrives. / A small hourse agen'ts clerk, with one bold stare, / One of the low no whom assurance sits / As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire. / The time is now propitious, as he guesses, / The meal is ended, she is bored and tires,
Endeavours to engage her in caresses / Which still are unreproved, if undesired. / Flushed and decided, he assaults at once; / Exploring hands encounter no defense; / His vanity requires no response, / And makes a welcome of indifference. / (And I Tiresias have foresuffered all / Enacted on this same divan or bed; / I who have sat by Thebes below the wall / And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows on final patronizing kiss, / And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit...
She turns and looks a moment in the glass, / Hardly aware of her departed lover; / Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass: / "Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over." / When lovely woman stoops to folly and / Paces about her room again, alone, / She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone. / "This music crept by me upon the waters" / And along the Strand, up Queen victoria Street. / O City, City, I can sometimes hear / Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, / The pleasant whining of a mandoline / And a clatter and a chatter from within / Where the fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls / Of Magnus Martyr hold / Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold. / The river sweats / Oil and tar / The barges drift / With the turning tide / Red sails / Wide / To leeward, swing on the heavy spar. / The barges wash / Drifting logs / Down Greenwech reach / Past the Isle of Dogs. / Weialala leia / Wallala leialala / Elizabeth and Leicester / Beating ours / The stern was formed  / A gilded shell / Red and gold / The brisk swell / Rippled both shores / Southwest wind / Carried down stream / The peal of bells / White towers / Weialala leia / Wallala leialala  / "Trams and dusty trees. / Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew / Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees / Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe." / "My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart  / Under my feet. After the event / He wept. He promised 'a new start.' / I made no comment. What should I resent?" / "On Margate Sands. / I can connect  / Nothing with nothing. / the broken fingernails of dirty hands. / My people humble people who expect / Nothing." / la la / To Carthage then I came / Burning Burning Burning Burning / O Lord Thou pluckest me out / O Lord Thou pluckest  / Burning

/ = lines breaks in the poem, the same applies for the capitalized words except the names of places. 

T.S. Eliot's Waste Land I. The Burial of the Dead

Hello all who pass by here. This is this weeks' video, or rather, the first part of a five part video series, in which I am reading T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. It is a five part poem and consequently I will be uploading a new part every day this week. I will be adding to the last, fifth part, a video in which I delve into The Waste Land. Here is the first part of the poem to follow along with my reading.

I.The Burial of the Dead
April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain. / Winter Kept us warm, covering / Earth in forgetful snow, feeding / A little life with dried tubers. / Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee [a lake near Munich, Germany] / With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten, [a park in Munich] / And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. / Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt deutsch. [I'm not Russian at all; I come from Lithuania, a true German] / And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke's, My cousin's, he took me out on a sled, / And I was frightened. He said, Marie, Marie, hold on tight. And down we went. / In the mountains, there you feel free. / I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter. / What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow / Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, / You cannot say, or guess, for you know only / A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, / And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, / And the dry stone no sound of water. Only / There is shadow under this red rock, / (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), / And I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; / I will show you fear in a handful of dust. / Frisch weht der Wind [Fresh blows the wind]
Der Heimat zu [To the homeland] / Mein Irisch Kind, [My Irish child]
Wo weilest du? [Where do you wait?] / "You gave me hyacinths first a year ago; / They called me the hyacinth girl." / -Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden, / Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not / Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither / Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, / Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Oed' und leer das Meer. [Desolate and empty is the sea]
Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante, / Had a bad cold, nevertheless / Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe, / With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she, / Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor, / (Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!) / Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks, / the lady os situations. / Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel, / And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card, / Which is blank, is something he carries on his back, / Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find / The Hanged Man. Fear death by water. / I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring. / Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone, / Tell her I bring the horoscope myself: / One must be so careful these days.
Unreal city, / Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, / A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, / I had not thought death had undone so many. / Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. / Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours / With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, "Stetson! / "You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! / "That corpse you planted last year in your garden, / "Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? / "Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? / "Oh keep the Dog far hence, that's friend to men, / "Or with his nails he'll dig it up again!
"You! Hypocrite lectuer!-mon semblable,-mon frère!" [Hypocrite reader!-my likeness,-my brother!]

/= the line breaks in the poem.