Birds Of America: Willing - Opening

WILLING

How can I live my life without committing an
act with a giant scissors?
-- JORCE CAROL OATES
"An Interior Monologue"

In her last picture, the camera had lingered at the hip, the naked
hip, and even though it wasn't her hip, she acquired a reputation for being willing.

This book is for my sister and for my parents

and for Benjamin

... it is not news that we live in a world

Where beauty is unexplainable

And suddenly ruined

And has its own routines. We are often far

From home in a dark town, and our griefs

Are difficult to translate into a language

Understood by others.

CHARLIE SMITH

"The Meaning Of Birds"

Is it o-ka-lee

Or con-ka-ree, is it really jug jug,

Is it cuckoo for that matter? --

Much less whether a bird's call

Means anything in

Particular, or at all.

AMY CLAMPITT

"Syrinx"

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 89

The construction of British hegemony depended upon the failure of its universalist drive in accommodating native differences. It is this aspect of the hegemony that the Muslim elite in the post-rebellion world attempted to highlight. In this process, then, the elite trade-off the popular interest in order to obtain material advantages from the British. This aspect of the Anglo-Muslim relationship is important for my inquiry. The Muslim elite, as I have suggested earlier, having witnessed the post-rebellion deteriorating conditions of Muslims, must therefore, attempt to negotiate a new contract with the British. This new contract must ensure special political and economic advantages for the Muslims in exchange for their loyalty to their British rulers. This loyalty, of course, must be won by the British through a system of rewards, which makes it imperative on the part of the British to create a hegemonic relationship with the Muslims. Hence, they must write the rebellion out of the immediate history and replace it with a promise of loyalty. Their approach to the British power is, therefore, not a capitulation but a complex web of the politics of survival. The Muslim elite must, therefore, write the rebellion out of their history, or at least push it to the edge, and foreground their loyalty in order for Muslims to be included in the British system of power.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 87

This particularity of the novel must be kept in mind: it is a novel written by a Muslim author with Muslim characters, one of whom decides to become a reformer, for the conditions of the Muslims, we are told, are much worse than their Hindu counterparts. We mus tread this particularity of the novel as an example of Muslim exceptionalism within the realm of British Indian politics. It is also important to note that the text does not generate this exceptionalism. The public imperative within the novel -- the Muslim conditions and Inb-ul-Waqt's need for legitimation -- inscribe this need to help the fellow Muslims in the novel.

Another important aspect of the novel is its comparative value with one of its Bengali Hindu counterparts: Bankimchandra Chatterji's Anadamath. Published in 1882, the reason the latter seems so nationalist a work is because it matches our critical expectations of an anticolonial novel: the novel focuses on the Sanyasi rebellion that followed the famine of 1770 and describes the early nationalism of Bengali Hindus within a Muslim Bengal including the defeat of the East India Company troops. Bankim's novel, however, despite the contrary assertions of Julius Lipner, the translator, successfully introduces the idea of a militant Bengali Hindu subject in conflict with its Muslim counterparts.

Nazeer Ahmed's project, however, is much different: he and his contemporary Muslim elite are attempting to create a space for the Muslims within the British system. His work, therefore, must posit itself in the language of loyalty to the British and in opposition to the Hindus but not necessarily in terms of war, for the project is, precisely, to transform the war-like Muslims into loyal subjects of the Crown. It is this project that in itself should be read as a particular form of Muslim nationalistic literature.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 86

Even more important for my inquiry is this emphasis on the degree of Muslim particularity: the Hindu-Muslim differences did not flare-up at the time of the nationalist movement. Here, in one of the early works of Muslim fiction, the Muslims are already expected to make their case with reference to the Hindus. The Muslim struggle, therefore, is not necessarily against the British, but must be juxtaposed with their stronger and more successful counterparts, the Hindus.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 87

what the first Urdu novel teaches us is that the main concern od the novel -- the most nationalistic of the literary genres -- was the possibility of Muslim upward mobility within the British system of rewards. This breaking-in into the British system of governance, as I pointed out earlier, follows a mundane process.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 71

I deem it important to explain the often-used term naheral poetry. Some people think that it means the kind of poetry associated with nacheries, or the poetry that represent the religious ideas of the nacheries. Some also think that nacheral poetry is the kind of poetry that provides an account of the fall of Muslims or nations. But this is not the case. Nacheral poetry means the kind of poetry that corresponds to natural instincts both in its words and its meaning. Words used in nacheral poetry must be taken from everyday spoken language; it must be realistic and people should be able to relate to it.

Muqaddama-e-Shair-o-Shairi

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 69

Hence, Hali has stressed the need for combining Islamic heritage with the imperatives of modernity for the progress of Indian Muslims in his long poem on the rise and fall of Islam. His final message: the Muslims of India must change with the changing times, but for that to happen, they must not forget their glorious heritage, be conscious about their present state of affairs, and chart out a course for the future. Hali, therefore, articulates the idea of nation and its rehabilitation with a combination of memory -- universal ummah -- the present -- the Muslim qaum of India -- and the future through a more nuanced negotiation of British power.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 27

Sir Sayyid is not claiming that Hinduism is static and ossified in custom as compared to a more dynamic Islam. Rather, he finds Hinduism secure in its practices and, therefore, not troubled by contamination from outside. Islam, on the other hand, is based on textual interpretation as well as an idea of a hereafter, thus more insecure and sensitive to any outside threat. This argument also suggests that while Hindus could still exist in their faith despite Christian propaganda, the Muslims saw the same as a threat due to this perpetual sense of crisis. This aspect of Muslim anxiety about their religious way of life later becomes one of the main tropes in the Muslim freedom movement. What Sir Sayyid inaugurates is the specific idea of the Islamic negotiation of the changing political realities.

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 17

I have written herein an account of events from May of last year to July 1858. On August first I have laid down my pen. I long for orders from the auspicious sovereign concerning three petitions about which I have written in this book -- that is for title, for robe of honour, and for pension. My eyes and my heart look forward to this order from the Empress whose crown is the moon, whose throne is the sky; who is renowned as Jamshid, as splendid as Faridun, as majestic as Kaus, as noble as Sanjar, as exalted as Alexander ... If through the generosity of the Queen of the World, I obtain some benefit, I will not have left this life a failure.

-- Ghalib

Constructing Pakistan - pg. 3

A private archive, retrieved and inserted into the official rendering of history, has been the most potent critical weapon to unravel the departmental claims of colonial administration, but in Dastanbuuy, we must reverse the order, we must declare and prove beyond doubt, instead of suggesting not to read it literally, that it is instead a public document garbed within the language and nomenclature of the private. Thus, immediately after the rebellion, the main struggle for the Muslim elite was not to preserve the Muslim culture in the private, spiritual realm, but to forge a place within the new hegemonic order, and this movement, in my opinion, could on ly be facilitated through, the language of loyalty.

Constructing Pakistan - Introduction

In post-rebellion India, as the British consolidated their control and established a new regime, the post-rebellion Urdu literature underwent an important change by adopting a utilitarian aesthetic and a loyalist emphasis. Hence, post-rebellion writers produced works -- especially poetry -- more pertinent to the changed state of Muslims. It is within this public imperative and language of loyalty to the British Order that the idea of Muslim particularity and exceptionalism is articulated. As the emergent British regime after the rebellion places Muslims either under suspicion, or completely outside its hegemonic project, the post-rebellion Urdu literature, a priori, becomes intricately linked with the idea of Muslim rehabilitation with the New order. This tendency to appease the power is certainly an elite practice but it is normalised in the name of the people. Hence, as will become obvious in the ensuing discussion, post-rebellion Urdu literature adapts to this new political imperative and literary production becomes more public. Since this public emphasis of literature is expressed in a language pertinent to the New Order, the public becomes inextricably linked to the political. It is in this process that the idea of Muslim particularity precedes the nationalistic politics of the Indian National Congress.

Constructing Pakistan - Introduction

The secular nationalist elite, however, developed a particular language of politics. For them, learning the language of the 'enlightenment' was the only way to reach British rationality, and their legitimacy depended upon the degree of fluidity and prestige accorded to them by the colonial system. Only then could they speak of the material advantages of flirting with the so-called infidel power. This development of a political language also involved developing the concept of the 'other' within the language of Muslim politics. Muslims had to be defined as different from their Hindu counterparts, their needs represented as special. The questions of quotas, separate electorates, and eventually a separate country were all based on a Muslim identity articulate in difference from the Hindus and not from the British.

Constructing Pakistan - Introduction

The situation was further complicated because, as early as AD 1803, Shah Abdul Aziz, a leading mujtahid of his time, had already given a fatwa on the state of India:

In this city (Delhi) the Imam-al-Muslimin wields no authority. The real power rest with the Christian officers. There is no check on them; and the promulgation of commands of kufr means that in administration and justice, in matters of law and order, in the trade, finance and collection of revenues -- everywhere the 'kuffar' (infidels) are in power. (Zia-ul-Hassan Faruqi 2-3)

Constructing Pakistan

Introduction

In his inaugural speech, the founder and first head of state of Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah refers to a pre-existing Muslim nation that 'made great sacrifices; to achieve the nation-state of Pakistan. He also sees this transformation of the Muslim nation into a nation-state as a divine gift to the Muslims of India. Thus, according to Jinnah, the creation of Pakistan is the material representation of a divine blessing realised through human will. This realised dream relies heavily on the myth of 'having suffered together', for in defining national identities 'griefs are of more value than triumphs, for they impose duties, and require a common effort.' Yet, Jinnah's inaugural speech is saturated with the silences that make his national claim possible. In most historical accounts of the Indian subcontinent, the nation that Jinnah so gratefully mentions in his inaugural speech did not exist, nor was there any ethno-linguistic or, for that matter, religious imaginary of Pakistan (or a separate Muslim homeland) just thirty years before its birth.

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

First published 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press.

Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro

Printed in Pakistan by

Pixel Graphics, Karachi.

Published by

Ameena Saiyid, Oxford University press

No. 38, Sector 15, Korangi Industrial Area, PO Box 8214

Karachi-74900, Pakistan

India Book List

• Hayat e Javed
• Aab e Hayat
• Ghalib: Dastanbuuy
• Ibn ul Waqt
• Shibli Nomani
  

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Book List

• The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays- Bakhtin
• Medieval Imagination - Le Goff
• Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture - Yuri Lotman
  

Journey Out

[...]
The first wave of night hits the shore,
the second already reaches you.
But if you look hard,
you can still see the tree
which definitely lifts an arm
-- the wind has already knocked one off
-- and you think: how much longer,
how much longer
will the twisted timber withstand the weather?
Of land there's nothing more to be seen.
With your hand you should have dug into the sandbank
or tied yourself to the cliff with a strand of hair.
[...]

Book Cycle for September

1. Twilight in Delhi
2. Early Xian Writers
3. Kleist
4. Ingeborg Bachmann (2010, rest of,)
5. Birds of America
   
6. Muslim Women in India
7. India Wins Freedom
8. Plato the two books: Forum, Republic,
   
9. Genesis : The Bible
10. Histrionics: Three Plays
    

Agape Agape - pg. 51

Out giving readings from the Blithedale Romance to entertain this gaping clutch of pleasure seeking chance persons, this enormous market of the non-literate and half-literate devouring the poets who compose to please the bad taste of their reviewers end up instructing one another, what this glorious democracy in the arts is all about isn't it? Get up there and perform with what Hawthorne called "that damned mob of scribbling women," even Poe with his mechanized genius for forcing order on chaos scorning the public and thirsting for fame, and Melville, good God Melville? Begins Moby Dick wants everybody to read it finishes daring them to, has to borrow money to write it because Harper's won't give him an advance, they publish it and he still owes them a hundred and forty-five dollars and eighty-three cents never forget that figure, "dollars damn me!" he tells Hawthorne, writes that terrible Pierre you can't get thirty pages into hates feeling he must take his readers where they expect to go, talk about elitism about setting yourself apart from the common herd beyond reason above reason on the shelf with the dead white guys ends up in the Custom House at four dollars a day reduced to a non-person, to herd anonymity humiliated castrated eliminated as a threat that's what it's all about that's what I have to explain.

Agape Agape - pg. 49

try to educate them did they buy those "Educator" piano rolls teach them to play with their hands no, went right on discovering their unsuspected talent playing with their feet here's Flaubert yes, "The entire dream of democracy" he says, "is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity." You want the essence of elitism there he was, his idea of art that "the artist must no more appear in his work than God does in nature, that the artist must manage to make posterity believe that he never existed" good God, the rate things change a generation lasts four days what posterity? Everywhere present and nowhere visible leads him right into the embrace of the death of the author whose intention have no connection with the meaning of the text which is indeterminate anyway,

Agape Agape - pg. 37

and, and, get my breath before I lose the, these belly-talkers and detached selves bred and cloned to be reproduced because that's the heart of it, where the individual is lost, the unique is lost, where authenticity is lost not just authenticity but the whole concept of authenticity, that love for the beautiful creation before it's created that that, it was Chesterton wasn't it? That natural merging of created life in this creation in love that transcends it, a celebration of the love that created it they called agape, that lovefeast in the early church, yes. That's what's lost, what you don't find in these products of the imitative arts that are made for reproduction of a grand scale got to find some paper, piece of black paper I've finally got the pencil now, now.

The Broken Pitcher

ADAM: Well said, I say! Good, Mistress Martha Rull.

MRS. MARTHA: Your father's dying words were these: "Martha?

You find our daughter a good man you hear?

But should she turn into a common slut,

Then pay a guilder to the gravedigger,

To turn me on my back again, because,

Upon my soul, the though would spin me over.

The Tragedy of King Lear - Closing

KENT I have a journey sir, shortly to go:
My master calls me; I must not say no.
EDGAR The weight of this sad time we must obey,
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
The oldest hath borne most; we that are young
Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Exeunt with a dead march

The Tragedy of King Lear - V:4.6.75

LEAR I am a very foolish, fond old man.
Fourscore and upward,
Not an hour more nor less; and to deal plainly,
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Methinks I should know you and know this man;
Yet I am doubtful: for I am mainly ignorant
What place this is, and all the skill I have
Remembers not these garments, nor I know not
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.

The Tragedy of King Lear - V:3.4.97

LEAR What hast thou been?
EDGAR A servingman, proud in heart and mind, that curled my hair, wore gloves in my cap, served the lust of my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her. Swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven. One that slept in the contriving of lust and waked to do it. Wine loved I dearly, dice dearly, and in woman outparamoured the Turk. False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wold in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey. Let now the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lender's books, and defy the foul fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind, says suum, mun, nonny. Dauphin, my boy, boy, cessez! let him trot by.

The Tragedy of King Lear - V:3.4.39

LEAR Prithee, go in thyself, seek thine own ease.
This tempest will not give me leave to ponder
On things would hurt me more; but I'll go in.
In, boy, go first. You houseless poverty --
Nay, get thee in; I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.
Exit[Fool}

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your looped and windowed raggedness defend you
From seasons such as these? O I have ta'en
Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp,
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them
And show the heavens more just.

A Handful Of Dust - Closing

Teddy surveyed his charges with pride and affection. It was by means of them that he hoped one day to restore Hetton to the glory that it had enjoyed in the days of his Cousin Tony.

THE END

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 227

A week of blue water that grew clearer and more tranquil daily, of sun that grew warmer, radiating the ship and her passengers, filling them with good humour and ease; blue water that caught the sun in a thousand brilliant points, dazzling the eyes as they searched for porpoises and flying fish; clear blue water in the shallows revealing its bed of silver sand and smooth pebble, fathoms down; soft warn shade on deck under the awnings; the ship moved amid unbroken horizons on a vast blue disc of blue, sparkling with sunlight.

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 222

Next day they were in Atlantic. Ponderous waves rising over murky, opaque depths. Dappled wit foam at the crests, like downland where on the high, exposed places, snow has survived the thaw. Lead-grey and slate in the sun, olive, field-blue and khaki like the uniforms of a battlefield; the sky overhead was neutral and steely with swollen clouds scudding across it, affording rare half hours of sunlight. The masts swung slowly across this sky and the bows heaved and wallowed below the horizon.

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 209

His mind had suddenly become clearer on many points that had puzzled him. A whole Gothic world had come to grief ... there was now no armour, glittering in the forest glades, no embroidered feet on the greensward; the cream and dappled unicorns had fled...

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 201

He was eight years older than Brenda; very occasionally a fugitive, indefinable likeness was detectable between him and Marjorie, but both in character and appearance he was as different from Brenda as it was possible to imagine. He was prematurely, unnaturally stout, and he carried his burden of flesh as though he were not yet used to it; as though it had been buckled on to him that morning for the first time and he were still experimenting for its better adjustment; there was an instability in his gait and in his eyes a furtive look as though he were at any moment liable to ambush and realized that he was unfairly handicapped for flight. This impression, however, was made solely by his physical appearance; it was the deep bed of fat in which his eyes lay, which gave them this look of suspicion; the caution of his movements resulted from the exertion of keeping his balance and not from any embarrassment at his own clumsiness, for it had never occurred to him that he looked at all unusual.

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 200

Lady St. Cloud preserved an atavistic faith in the authority and preternatural good judgment of the Head of the Family; accordingly her first act, on learning from Marjorie of Brenda's wayward behaviour, was to cable for Reggie's return from Tunisia where he was occupied in desecrating some tombs.

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 115

"Ah, here comes tea at last," said Tony. "I hope you allow yourself to eat muffins. So many of our guests nowadays are on a diet. I think muffins one of the few things that make the English winter endurable."

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 75

It had been an autumn of very sparse and meagre romance; only the most obvious people had parted or come together, and Brenda was filling a want long felt by those whose simple, vicarious pleasure it was to discuss the subject in bed over the telephone. For them her circumstances shed peculiar glamour; for five years she had been a legendary, almost ghostly name, the imprisoned princess of fairy story, and now that she had emerged there was more enchantment in the occurrence, then in the mere change of habit of any other circumspect wife. Her very choice of partner gave the affair an appropriate touch of fantasy; Beaver, the joke figure they had all known and despised, suddenly caught up to her among the luminous clouds of deity.

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 42

Shafts of November sunshine streamed down from lancet and oriel, tinctured in green and gold, gules and azure by the emblazoned coats, broken by the leaded devices into countless points and patches of coloured light. Brenda descended the great staircase step by step through alternations of dusk and rainbow. Both hands were occupied, holding to her breast a bag, a small hat, a half finished panel of petit-point embroidery and a vast disordered sheaf of Sunday newspapers, above which only her eyes and forehead appeared as though over a yashmak. Beaver emerged from the shadows below and stood at the foot of the stairs looking up at her.

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 35

Tony invariably wore a dark suit on Sundays and a stiff white collar. He went to church, where he sat in a large pitch pine pew, put in by his great-grandfather at the time of rebuilding the house, furnished with very high crimson hassocks and a fireplace, complete with iron grate and a little poker which his father used to rattle when any point in the sermon attracted his disapproval. Since his father's day a fire had not been laid there; Tony had it in mind to revive the practice next winter. On Christmas Day and Harvest Thanksgiving Tony read the lessons from the back of the brass eagle.

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 19

Outside, it was soft English weather; mist in the hollows and pale sunshine on the hills; the coverts had ceased dripping, for there were no leaves to hold the recent rain, but the undergrowth was wet, dark in the shadows, iridescent where the sun caught it; the lanes were soggy and there was water running in the ditches.

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 16

All over England people were waking up, queasy and despondent. Tony lay for ten minutes very happily planning the renovation of his ceiling. Then he rang the bell.

A Handful Of Dust - pg. 14

It was not altogether amenable to modern ideas of comfort; he had many small improvements in mind, which would be put into effect as soon as the death duties were paid off. But the general aspect and atmosphere of the place; the line of its battlements against the sky; the central clock tower where quarterly chimes disturbed all but the heaviest sleepers; the ecclesiastical gloom of the great hall, its ceiling groined and painted in diapers of red and gold, supported on shafts of polished granite with carved capitals, half-lit by day through lanset windows of armorial stained glass, at night by a vast gasolier of brass and wrought iron, wired now and fitted with twenty electric bulbs; the blasts of hot air that rose suddenly at one's feet, through grills of cast-iron trefoils from the antiquated heating apparatus below, the cavernous chill of the more remote corridors where, economizing in coke, he had had the pipes shut off; the dining hall with its hammer-beam roof and pitch-pine minstrels gallery; the bedrooms with their brass bedsteads, each with a frieze of Gothic text, each named from Malory, Yseult, Elaine, Mordred and Merlin, Gawaine and Bedivere, Lancelot, Perceval, Tristram, Galahad, his own dressing room, Morgan le Fay, and Brenda's Guinevere, where the bed stood on a dais, its walls hung with tapestry, its fireplace like a tomb of the thirteenth century, from whose bay window one could count the spires of six churches -- all these things with which he had grown up were a source of constant delight and exultation to Tony; things of tender memory and proud possession.

Penthesilea - Opening

Scene 1
Enter Odysseues and Diomede from one side, Antilochus from
the other, with attendant soldiers
ANTILOCHUS: Greetings, mighty kings! Tell me how things go
Since
last we met before the walls of Troy?
ODYSSEUS: Badly, Antilochus. You see upon this field

The armies of the Greeks and Amazons

Locked in dread conflict like two rav'ning wolves.

And, by the gods, neither can tell the cause!

If Mars in anger, or our lord Apollo,

Do not restrain them, or the Thunderer

With levin-bolts do not divide the hosts,

They die, in hate inseparable,

The fangs of either deep in other's throat.
(to a soldier)

Bring me a helmet full of water, friend!

(tr: Humphry Trevelyan)

Book Cycle: Beckett

Queueing rest of Beckett post-Wittgenstein, Hume, Locke, Malebranche

"From the many salient references in his texts, it has been always seemed obvious that philosophical tradition in Beckett is to be found along a line connecting Descartes and Ocasionalism with Scopenhauerian and Kantian philosophy.

Heidegger essay: 'The Origin Of The Work Of Art'

http://books.google.com/books?id=0FCUOvPXsWIC&pg=PA31&lpg=PA31&dq=philosophical+basis+of+beckett&source=bl&ots=PaClhWfZFE&sig=ZPPpVZKzZgJlFUqG9Hpd69Ti5cE&hl=en&ei=xzyRTLe8B8OBlAfjs7njAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=philosophical%20basis%20of%20beckett&f=false

Autumn Maneuver

I don't say: ah, yesterday/ With worthless
summer money pocketed, we lie again
on the chaff of scorn, in time's autumn maneuver.
And the escape southward isn't an option for us
as it is for the birds. Across the way, at evening,
trawlers and gondolas pass, and sometimes
a splinter of dream-filled marble pierces me
in the eys, where I am most vulnerable to beauty.


In the papers I read about the cold
and its effects, about fools and dead men,
about refugees, murderers and myriads
of ice floes, but little that comforts me.
Why should it be otherwise? In the face of the beggar
who comes at noon I slam the door, for we live in peacetime
and one can spare oneself such a sight, but not
the joyless dying of leaves in the rain.


Let's take a trip! Let's stroll under cypresses
or even under palms or in the orange groves
to see at reduced rates sunsets
that are beyond compare! Let's forget
the unanswered letters to yesterday!
Time works wonders. But if it arrives inconveniently
with the knocking of guilt: we're not at home.
In the heart's cellar, sleepless, I find myself again
on the chaff of scorn, in time's autumn maneuver.

The Tragedy Of King Lear - V:3.4.25

LEAR Prithee, go in myself, seek thine own ease.

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder

On things would hurt me more; but I'll go in.

In, boy, go first. You houseless poverty --

Nay, get thee in; I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.

Exit[Fool]

Poor naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,

Your looped and windowed raggedness defend you

From seasons such as these? O I have ta'en

Too little care of this. Take physic, pomp

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them

And show the heavens more just.

The Tragedy Of King Lear - V:2.2.37

KENT A knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking, whoreson glass-gazing, superserviceavble, finical rogue; one-trunk-inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd in way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pander, and the son and heir of a mongrel bitch, one whom I will beat into clamorous whining if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.

The Tragedy Of King Lear - V:1.5.26

FOOL If a man's brain were in's heels, were't not in danger of kibes?

The Tragedy Of King Lear - V:1.4.255

LEAR It may be so, my lord.

Hear, Nature, hear, dear goddess, hear:

Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend

To make this creature fruitful.

Into her womb convey sterility,

Dry up in her the organs of increase,

And from her derogate body never spring

A babe to honour her. If she must teem,

Create her child of spleen, that it may live

And be a thwart disnatured torment to her.

Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth,

With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks,

Turn all her mother's pains and benefits

To laughter and contempt, that she may feel

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is

To have a thankless child. Away, away!

The Tragedy Of King Lear - V:1.4.183

LEAR Does anyone know me? This is not Lear:

Does Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?

Either his notion weakens, his discernings

Are lethargized -- Ha! Waking? 'Tis not so!

Who is it that can tell me who I am?

The Tragedy Of King Lear - V:1.4.143

FOOL I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are: they'll have me whipped for speaking true, thou'lt have me whipped for lying, and sometimes I am whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any kind o'thing than a fool, and yet I would not be thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o'both sides and left nothing i'th'middle. Here comes one o'the parings.

The Tragedy Of King Lear - Opening

I.I Enter KENT, GLOUCESTER, and EDMOND

KENT I thought the king had more affected the Duke of Albany than Cornwall.

GLOUCESTER It did always seem so to us: but now in the division of the kingdom, it appears not which of the dukes he values most, for qualities are so weighed that curiosity in neither can make choice of either's moiety.

Cambridge University Press 1992, 2005

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place without

the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 1992

Twelfth printing 2004

Updated edition 2005

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

IN MEMORIAN

PHILIP BROCKBANK, 1922-1989

Edited by

JAY L. HALIO

Emeritus Professor of English, University of Delaware

Seven Against Thebes - Opening

SCENE: Thebes, The Prince of Eteocles confronts a crowd of Thebans.

Eteocles
You citizens of Cadmus, he must speak home
that in the ship's prow watches the event
and guides the rudder, his eye not drooped in sleep.
For if we win success, the God is the cause
but if -- may it not chance so -- there is disaster.
throughout the town, voices by its citizens,
a multitudinous swelling prelude
cries on one names, "Eteocles" with groans"
which Zeus defender keep from the city of Cadmus
even as his name implies.

tr: David Grene

Amphitryon - Opening

ACT I

SCENE 1

It is night. Enter Sosia with a lantern.

SOSIA: Hey! Who's that sneaking by there? Ho! -- If day
Would break, I wouldn't mind; the night is ... What?
I'm friendly, gentlemen! We share one road. ...
You've come across the truest fellow, by
My faith, the sun has ever shone upon --
Or rather I should say right now: the moon. ...
They're either rascals, arrant coward knaves
That haven't got the stomach to attack me,
Each sound is shrieking noise here in these hills.



A comedy after Moliere

Tr: Charles E. Passage

The Persians - Opening

SCENE: In the background the palace of Xerxes at Sousa, in the center
foreground the tomb of Darius

Chorus
Of the Persians gone
To the land of Greece
Here are the trusted:
As protectors of treasure
And of golden thrones
We were chosen by Xerxes--
Emperor and king,
Son of Darius --
In accord with age
Guards of the country.



tr: S. G. Benardete

The Broken Pitcher - Opening

Scene 1

Adam, seated, is bandaging his leg. Link enters.
LINK: Ay, what the devil! What a sight you look!
What happened to you, Adam? What befell?
ADAM: Well, look. All it takes to stumble is a pair
Of feet. The floor itself is flat -- or no?
Still, here I stumbled. For each man bears,
Within himself, his own stumbling block.
LINK: Oh, come now, friend. You say that each man [bears ...?


(Translated by Jon Swan)

1982
The Continuum Publishing Company
575 Lexington Avenue, New York 10022

Introduction 1982 by Walter Hinderer
Foreword 1982 by E. L. Doctrow

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Continuum Publishing Company.

Printed in the United States of America

Agape Agape - pg. 36

Cloned like slaves by the pantomimics who could imitate anything like, yes like the black slaves bred in Virginia when Eli Whitney's cotton gin revolutionized the world markets for American cotton, people making millions, the African slave trade forbidden, illegal, over and done, so breeding slaves to cultivate the cotton turned Virginia into an immense breeding farm says Henry Adams' sharper brother exporting 40, 000 blacks a year to the southern states' plantations where the market set the price piece of paper two whole heaps of it but they're all no wait, letter here almost dry from those eye test doctors about clearing up this bleary vision with the predni, what in the, prednisone?

Agape Agape - pg. 29

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 memories, same thing isn't it?

Agape Agape - pg. 23

Talks about the detachable self that can be withdrawn from the body, some kind of religious community Pythagoras set up with the ideas of lives to come, and these dangerous demons with lives and energies of their own according to Homer was it?

Agape Agape - pg. 15

"The biggest thrill in music is playing it yourself. It's your own participation that rouses your emotions most," whole thing breaks your heart, here's another. "Retains its artistic 'feel' indefinitely," goes back to the turn of the century before the player piano, when it was still the piano player, big thing you wheeled up to the piano same punched roll it played on the keys with wooden fingers, tiny felt-tipped wooden fingers playing Scarlatti, Bach, Haydn "and old Handel. Unhappy Schubert speaks to them in the sweet tones of Rosamunde. Beethoven, master of masters, thrills alike" right on to Chopin bemoaning the fate of Poland and breathing "the fiery valor of his countrymen in Polonaise" and here's Debussy and Grieg giving testimonials. "Many of the artists will never play again, but their phantom hands will live forever" there that's what it's about, no more wooden fingers byt phantom hands. "What stands between you and the music of the masters?"

Agape Agape - pg. 14

To reach the enormous markets of non-musical and half-musical and to conquer the growing prejudice of the truly musical" what are we going to do, educate this pleasure seeking rabble? There's Plato again agreeing that the excellence of music is measured by pleasure, but for this going out there playing You're a Dog-gone Daisy girl with its feet? Good God no, for them Plato rhymes with tomato, it can't be the pleasure of chance persons, he says, it's got to be music that delights the best educated of you get your poets composing to please the bad taste of their judges and finally the audience instructing each opther and that's what this glorious democracy's all about isn't it?

Book Cycle

1. Twilight in Delhi
2. Aeschylus
3. Parade's End
4. Muslim Women in India
5. India Wins Freedom
6. Pickwick Papers
7. Plato the two books: Forum, Republic,
   
8. Horace
9. Genesis : The Bible
10. King Lear
    

Agape Agape - pg. 7

Waiting to be entertained because that's where it satrted and that's where it ends up, avoiding pain and seeking pleasure play the piano with your feet, play cards, play pool play pushpin here it is, here's Huizinga talking about music and play he quotes Plato yes, here, "That which has neither utility nor truth nor likeness nor yet, in its effects, is harmful, can best be judged by the criterion of the charm that is in it, and by the pleasure it affords. Such pleasure, entailing as it does no appreciable good or ill, is play,"

Living

Then clocks in that town all over town struck three and bells

in churches there ringing started rushing sound of bells like wings

tearing under roof of sky, so these bells rang. But women stood,

reached up children drooping to sky, sharp boned, these women

wailed and their noise rose and ate the noise of bells ringing.

A Handful Of Dust - Opening

CHAPTER ONE

DU COTE DE CHEZ BEAVER

"WAS anyone hurt?"

"No one I am thankful to say," said Mrs. Beaver, "except two housemaids who lost their heads and jumped through a glass roof into the paved court. There were in no danger.

... 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.

The Waste Land

COPYRIGHT 1934, BY EVELYN WAUGH

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THE RIGHT

TO REPRODUCE THIS BOOK OR PORTIONS

THEREOF IN ANY FORM

Republished June 1944

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA