Siri Hustvedt - The Blazing World

I closed the door as quietly as I could and tiptoed to my room. I’m sure there are scads of artists over the centuries who have kicked, beaten, and mangled their own works in despair and frustration — it was no crime. Looking at her through the door frightened me, though. I told myself I was a queasy oaf — oh-so-sensitive Phinny. The figure wasn’t a person. It was no more than a stuffed doll. It felt no pain. That was all true. The police were not going to come around and make an arrest for metamorph murder. Later, I realized that, despite all that, what scared me had been real. Harry’s rage had been real.

Ethan Lord

1. Artist A generates artwork B. An idea that is part of the body of A becomes a thing that is B. B is not identical to A. B does not even resemble A. What is the relation between A and B?

2. A does not equal B, but B would be impossible without A, therefore B is dependent on A for its existence, while at the same time B is distinct from A. If A vanishes, B does not necessarily disappear. The object B can outlive the body of A.

3. C is the third element. C is the body that observes B. C is not responsible for B and knows that A is B’s creator. When C looks at B, C does not view A. A is not present as a body, but as an idea that is part of the body of C. C can use A as a word to describe B. A has become one of the signs to designate B. A remains A, a body, but A is also a shared verbal tag that belongs to both A and C. B cannot use symbols.

4. What happens when A makes B, but A vanishes as both body and sign from B? Instead of A, D becomes attached to B. C observes B created by A, but the idea of D has replaced A. Has B changed? Yes. B has changed because the idea in the body of C when observing B is now D rather than A. D does not equal A. They are two different bodies, and they are two different symbols. If the bodies of D and A are no longer there, B, the thing that cannot use signs, is not changed. Nevertheless, B’s meaning lives only in the body of C, the third element. Without C, B has no significance in itself. C now understands B through the sign D, all that remains of D after D’s body no longer exists.

5. D is not the generator of B, but this ceases to matter. A is lost. A’s body is gone, and A does not circulate as a collective sign for B. Where is the idea that was in A’s body that created B? Is it in B? Can C observe the idea that was once in the body of A in the object B? Can A’s idea be found somewhere in B, despite the fact that C does not know A was there and believes in D?

6. B’s value is also an idea, an idea that is transformed into a number. After observing the thing, C wants to own B. A number is attached to B, and those numbers are dependent on the name connected to its genesis, which is D. D = $. C buys B because the idea of D enhances C’s idea, not about B or D, but about C. B is now a circulating thing, which also inspires ideas about C and D, but which once was an idea inside the body of A, now burned to a fine powder that was put into a box and buried in the ground.

7. There were many ideas that were part of A’s body when it was alive, but they did not begin with A. They were part of other bodies — too many others to be listed. They were in other living bodies that A knew, and they were in signs that had been inscribed by living bodies that had stopped living generations before A was born: E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. Had A not taken these other ideas into the body that was A, B would not exist. B now circulates as an object known as D’s B. A is underground. A is the sign of ABSENCE.

January 15, 2000

Self-examination results in confabulation.

Confabulation is the falsification of episodic memory in clear consciousness, often in association with amnesia, in other words, paramnesias related as true events.I

But the neurologists are wrong; we all confabulate, brain lesions or not.

I wonder if I am explaining things away now, remembering my life all wrong. I look at Dr. F. I try to remember. I can’t remember. So much has disappeared from the past or appears altered to me now. Remembering is like dreaming unless it was yesterday. Dreams are memories, too, anyway, hallucinatory memories. And the doctor is himself and others at the same time.

When you don’t remember, you repeat.

But in reality I would not know that I possess a true idea if my memory did not enable me to relate what is now evident with what was evident a moment ago, and through the medium of words, correlate my evidence with that of others, so that the Spinozist conception of the self-evident presupposes that of memory and perception.II

That is all there is — perception and memory. But it’s ragged.

Why do you always walk with your head down?

Elsie Feingold said this to me on the telephone.

I didn’t know I walked with my head down.

Why do you always say you’re sorry? I’m sorry this, I’m sorry that. Why do you do that? It’s so annoying. You’re so annoying. That’s why the other kids don’t like you, Harriet. I’m telling you this as your friend.

This happened, words very close to these were spoken. Lung constriction. Pain in vicinity of ribs. I remember I had pulled the telephone into my room and am lying on the floor just inside the door. I say nothing. I listen. A litany of crimes — my clothes, my hair. I use too many big words. I am always answering in class, brown-nosing Harriet. As your friend…

You must be quiet. Your father is reading. I am so quiet and so good. I hardly breathe.

What are you doing in here, Harriet?

I am smelling the books, Mother.

She is laughing, letting out her high chiming sounds. She leans over and kisses me. Does she kiss me? I see myself as small. Observer memory.

Do I remember this or is it because Mother told me? Her laughter was a balm, always, but this may be her story of little Harriet smelling her father’s books, and she laughs when she tells me the story. I was four. I may have stolen the little tale from her and given it an image, a memory that is mine by proxy. I see the study with its big desk, and I smell the pipe. Why did all philosophy professors smoke pipes? An affectation. His students, too, all young men, smoked pipes, every single one of them. The graduate students all grew beards, and they smoked pipes on the seventh floor of Philosophy Hall. The Analyticals. Frege. The logic is out there.III

Felix is standing in the doorway. He is looking through me again, as if I am not there. The note to Felix the Cat from the couple in Berlin is in my pocket. I have carried it with me for a week. Practicing what to say, learning it by heart, so simple.

Before you leave, I say, I would like to return this to you, a note from friends. It was in your blue suit, the one you wore to the opening last week.

I can see the surprise in his face, can see his embarrassment, not shame. He has become negligent, flippant about it all.

He takes the note and slips it into his pocket.

But you know, he says, it has nothing to do with you, my love. It has nothing to do with my love for you.