William Gaddis: Agape Agape

Purgatory it’s all purgatory beginning to end, catharsis right from the start. Flutes and kettledrums! Orgiastic music dancing people out of their minds talk about treating anxiety states, talk about avoiding stress about diagnosing madness in these Corybantic rituals out there banging away different tunes till they hit the one that belongs to the god who’s possessing the patient the only one in this pandemonium he responds to, finds which god’s tormenting him and pays him off sounds like the waterfront, sounds like buying indulgences pick your saint intercedes with Mary intercedes with Jesus intercedes with God knows what’s all this guilt, original sin like a plague down the ages one heresy after another mortifying the body wait around long enough and it will do it for you, pushpin or poetry and here comes Mary Baker Eddy to say the whole thing’s a mistake, an egregious pululating error and here’s your sample wet right down to my God, my God, my God! I can’t, see what’s next foretell the future where every prospect pleases and only mine is, is like a long corridor doors opening off it closing off it fresh start go to one door closes when I get to it run to the next one and no! No here’s my mail, soaking wet never even opened it spread it out to dry with the, what’s this. What in God’s name is this doing here, deeds to the properties land surveys title insurance, supposed to be in my safe how did it get here mixed up with my notes books papers what I came here to work on, my whole idea wasn’t it? Get down to work fresh start don’t let other things interfere avoid stress doors closing settle in, spread out like a prison like a tomb where the bed’s the catafalque made by God the bed-maker in the last book of The Republic, talk about avoiding stress. Three kinds of beds God made one of them, if he’d made two a third one would have appeared behind them, the real bed not a particular bed, that’s the carpenter, and then the painter imitating what they’ve made, good enough to fool children or the simple-minded out there waiting to be entertained you see I’ve got to explain all this because I don’t, we don’t know how much time there is and I have to work on the, to finish this work of mine while I, get it all sorted and organized before everything collapses and it’s all swallowed up by lawyers and taxes like everything else because that’s what it’s about the collapse of everything of, of, I can’t even go into it you see that’s what I have to go into before all my ideas are stolen before I get them written down before my work is distorted misunderstood turned into a cartoon and, towel here in this mess somewhere sheet’s cold and wet dry my leg before I start to rust, back of my hand all these little criss-crosses looks like broiled bluefish but, a little music. Music, that’s really where it all starts and ends next time I see a human being I’ll ask for a little music here not just for pleasure no, look for those notes on Nietzsche’s Apollinian measured beauty in this heap somewhere but that’s not what it’s about no, it’s this detachable self or soul being tormented in Hades or this guilt Empedocles gets from Pythagoras’ school of recollection, training your memory to recollect sins and sufferings of your previous life in his terrifying catechism we came here to be punished and we ought to be punished, because good God! You find it wherever you look, the body as a prison and there’s the rabbinical student dying of love for a woman engaged to somebody else so his spirit inhabits her body, slips in when she’s asleep and her body’s unoccupied and the rabbi comes in to exorcise this dybbuk, who may be having a grand time in there. This guilt, guilt, guilt step in it wherever you go in this pile somewhere, what was I looking for, these pages on Tolstoy no I put those under here with some broken, with this training your mind to recollect sins in a previous life to these cases today of recovered memory, same thing isn’t it? Satanism and cannibalism and rape under the guidance of your psychotherapist, abuse and abortions and alien abductions with the help of your church counselor and these vivid fake memories of satanic cults where they practiced cannibalism and the poor woman is told to bring the meat in and they’ll get it analyzed for human protein but I mean where did this Satan come from in the first place? Read them the script the crazier the better when the angel bursts in on this madman banished to a cave in the Aegean, saying with the voice of a trumpet What thou seest, write in a book, and goes on to dictate a scenario breathing fire and earthquake, the stars falling, the sun turning black and the sea turning to blood in that overwhelming vision of total insanity called the Revelation of St. John the Divine nearer to thee, dear God! Nearer to thee, and what do you say of the choral art and of dithyrambic poetry? Invented to give pleasure to the multitude aren’t they? Talk about avoiding stress little cup here somewhere with pills in it, my head is splitting, just stop shivering, if I can just stop shivering, find a pencil here and get back to work if I can just stop shivering, now where was I, where was that. Flutes and kettledrums in the Corybantic and Dionysiac cures for phobias and anxiety breaking down and weeping, hearts beating like like, like the kettledrums dancing out of their minds in their morbid mental no, no it’s getting too close can’t dance can’t even stand up that’s the other can’t, can’t breathe just, just try to, put these back in this pile try to, to avoid stress get my breath and get back to work here’s the voice of the mob the steam calliope getting closer hear it two miles away and the, wait. Wait yes here it is, what I was looking for not even 1910 yet, 1905, 1900 the automatic piano roll changer plays six five-tune rolls, look at it! Almost eight feet high weighs 1500 pounds the Wurlitzer Orchestra piano with mandolin attachment, 38 violin pipes, 36 flute pipes, set of orchestra bells bass and snare drums and a triangle as though Plato had written the prescription for this pandemonium yes, yes his comments on the back here, banishing the imitative arts and the products of the imitative arts and the pantomimic artist who can imitate anything, “He will attempt to represent the roll of thunder, the noise of wind and hail, or the creaking of wheels, and pulleys, and the various sounds of flutes, pipes, trumpets, and all sorts of instruments: he will bark like a dog, bleat like a sheep, or crow like a,” a sheep? Bleat like a lamb what was her name, that first animal cloned from a cell taken from an adult yes banishing the products of the imitative arts before we start to clone people? Not for me says a scientist who invents the techniques, to say how we should use them and goodbye Hiroshima, right here in the paper somewhere, if one of my relatives got cancer I’d clone him says another, use the clone to donate bone marrow to save the life of the, the body as a prison where we came here to be punished and we ought to be punished no we, pantomimics who can imitate anything got to stop here, it’s, it’s madness it’s all madness thank God I’m not living now, get a fresh start in this pile where I put that diagram of this network of computers developing mutations that mimic natural selection and evolution all looked two dimensional so if you looked at them sideways you couldn’t see them at all but that’s, get a fresh start avoid stress get back to the, this pile here yes music haven’t even looked through yet but, good God look. Look at this one! After eight years of constant labour it says here and this is in 1906 yes thank God I’m not living today. A refined musical attraction operated by electricity with nickel-in-the-slot attachment the Wurlitzer Harp look at it! Six feet six about Frankenstein’s mimic’s height, seven hundred fifty dollars with one perforated music roll, the harp is in full view covered by glass offering the opportunity watching the fingers (almost human) pick the strings like those, those tiny felt-tipped wooden fingers almost human, playing the lyre at festivals for pleasure? Remember Meles the harp player? No chance of him performing for the good of his hearers was there? Or even for their pleasure he was so bad, but harp playing was invented for the sake of pleasure wasn’t it? So finally all of it’s banished but the shepherd’s pipe in the country and the lyre and the harp permitted in the city, extra rolls seven fifty and you can put in six nickels at once and get six tunes without getting to your feet again can’t even feel my left one numb from the knee down if, if I can just stop shivering top to bottom the whole thing’s wreckage except the heart, heart and arteries clean as whistles means the damn things will keep the prison going to enjoy every torment left, bad heart could take you out suddenly like Ambrose Bierce said, It beats old age, disease, and falling down the cellar steps find the pencil, I had a pencil get back to work’s the only refuge but where was I? Clones and products of the imitative arts the pantomimics didn’t know whether what they were cloning was good or bad, they wait, get this wet blanket off me here’s a pill, prednisone oxycodone God knows what take it anyway my head’s splitting, falls right into line doesn’t it, collapse of authenticity collapse of religion collapse of values what Huizinga called one of the most important phases in the history of civilization, and Walter Benjamin picks it up in his Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in this heap somewhere, the authentic work of art is based in ritual he says, and wait Mr. Читать дальше