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It is Joyce with a difference. The difference being greater opacity,
less erudition, reduced power of perception--Si la sol fa mi re do.
Aside from that simple, rather stupid derivation, forced to a ridiculous
extreme. No excuse for this sort of thing. Amounts to a total occlusion
of intelligence. Substitution of something else. What? Well, nonsense.
Since you drive me to it.
Take the improvisations: What the French reader would say is: _Oui, ça;
j'ai déjà vu ça; ça c'est de Rimbaud._ Finis.
Representative American verse will be that which will appear new to the
French . . . . prose the same.
Infertile Joyce laments the failure of his sterile pen. Siegfried Wagner
runs to his Mama crying: Mutti, Mutti, listen, I have just composed a
beautiful Cantata on a theme I discovered in one of father's operas.
In other words it comes after Joyce, therefore it is no good, of no use
but a secondary local usefulness like the Madison Square Garden tower
copied from Seville--It is of no absolute good. It is not NEW. It is not
an invention.
Invention, I want to buy you some clothes. Now what would you really
like to have? Let us pretend we have no intelligence whatever, that we
have read ALL there is to read and that Rimbaud has taught us nothing,
that Joyce has passed in a cloud, that, in short, we find nothing to do
but begin with Macaulay or King James, that all writing is forbidden us
save that which we recognise to be inadequate. NOW show your
originality, _mon ami_. NOW let me see what you can do with your vaunted
pen.
Nothing could be easier.
My invention this time, my dear, is that literature is a pure matter of
words. The moon making a false star of the weather vane on the steeple
makes also a word. You do not know the fine hairs on a hickory leaf? Try
one in the woods some time. You will grasp at once what I mean.
But Joyce. He is misjudged, misunderstood. His vaunted invention is a
fragile fog. His method escapes him. He has not the slightest notion
what he is about. He is a priest, a roysterer of the spirit. He is an
epicurean of romance. His true genius flickers and fails: there's the
peak, there in the trees--For God's sake can't you see it! Not that tree
but the mass of rocks, that reddish mass of rocks, granite, with the sun
on it between that oak and the maple.--That is not an oak. Hell take it
what's the use of arguing with a botanist.
But I will not have my toothpicks made of anything but maple. Mr. Joyce
will you see to it that my toothpicks are not made of anything but
maple? Irish maple. Damn it, it's for Ireland. Pick your teeth, God
knows you need to. The trouble with writing of the old style is that the
teeth don't fit. They were made for Irishmen--as a class.
Tell me now, of what in your opinion does Mr. Joyce's art consist, since
you have gone so far as to criticise the teeth he makes?--Why, my dear,
his art consists of words.
What then is his failure, O God.--His failure is when he mistakes his
art to be something else.
What then does he mistake his art to be, Rosinante?--He mistakes it to
be several things in more or less certain rotation from botany--Oh well
it's a kind of botany you know--from botany to--to--litany. Do you know
his poetry?
But you must not mistake his real, if hidden, service. He has in some
measure liberated words, freed them for their proper uses. He has to a
great measure destroyed what is known as "literature." For me as an
American it is his only important service.
It would be a pity if the French failed to discover him for a decade or
so. Now wouldn't it? Think how literature would suffer. Yes think--think
how LITERATURE would suffer.
At that the car jumped forward like a live thing. Up the steep board
incline into the garage it leaped--as well as a thing on four wheels
could leap--But with great dexterity he threw out the clutch with a
slight pressure of his left foot, just as the fore end of the car was
about to careen against a mass of old window screens at the garage end.
Then pressing with his right foot and grasping the hand-brake he brought
the machine to a halt--just in time--though it was no trick to him, he
having done it so often for the past ten years.
It seemed glad to be at home in its own little house, the trusty
mechanism. The lights continued to flare intimately against the wooden
wall as much as to say: Here I am back again. The engine sighed and
stopped at the twist of the key governing the electric switch. Out went
the lights with another twist of the wrist. The owner groped his way to
the little door at the back and emerged into the moonlight, into the
fog, leaving his idle car behind him to its own thoughts. There it must
remain all night, requiring no food, no water to drink, nothing while
he, being a man, must live. His wife was at the window holding the shade
aside.
And what is good poetry made of
And what is good poetry made of
Of rats and snails and puppy-dog's tails
And that is what good poetry is made of
And what is bad poetry made of
And what is bad poetry made of
Of sugar and spice and everything nice
That is what bad poetry is made of
_A Rebours_: Huysman puts it. My dear let us free ourselves from this
enslavement. We do not know how thoroughly we are bound. It must be a
new definition, it must cut us off from the rest. It is in a different
line. Good morning Boss said the old colored man working on the railroad
and started to sing: Jesus, Jesus I love you. It was Sunday, he was
working on the railroad on Sunday and had to put up some barrier. It is
an end to art temporarily. That upstart Luther. My God don't talk to me
of Luther, never changed his bed clothes for a year. Well, my dear, IT'S
COMING just the same. To hell with art. To hell with literature. The old
renaissance priests guarded art in their cloisters for three hundred
years or more. Sunk their teeth in it. The ONE solid thing. Don't blame
me if it went down with them. DOWN, you understand. Fist through the
middle of the rose window. You are horror struck. One word: Bing! One
accurate word and a shower of colored glass following it. Is it MY
fault? Ask the French if that is literature.
Do you mean to say that art--O ha, ha. Do you mean to say that
art--O ha, ha. Well spit it out. Do you mean to say that art is
SERIOUS?--Yes. Do you mean to say that art does any WORK?--Yes.
Do you mean--? Revolution. Russia. Kropotkin. Farm, Factory and
Field.--CRRRRRRASH.--Down comes the world. There you are gentlemen,
I am an artist.
What then would you say of the usual interpretation of the word
"literature"?--Permanence. A great army with its tail in antiquity.
Cliche of the soul: beauty.
But can you have literature without beauty? It all depends on what you
mean by beauty.
There is beauty in the bellow of the BLAST, etc. from all previous
significance.--To me beauty is purity. To me it is discovery, a race on
the ground.
And for this you are willing to smash--
Yes, everything.--To go down into hell.--Well let's look.