[-empyre-] night sea crossing 3 + 4

[simon]

On 22/10/12 17:10, Alan Sondheim wrote: Celan, an inertness or silence 
that's uncanny.

isn't Celan's speaking 'uncanny'? 'uncanny' is not the word. The word 
will have the smell of almonds and bite like teeth.

But that the word can, is uncanny - can as in a meditation of Nietzsche 
be untimely - can do. Even when it just won't do.

As Adorno said it could, no longer. Perhaps it was this episode more 
than any other post war which caused Celan the greatest anguish.

Beckett's characters, as Deleuze points out, continue when they can no 
longer. Beyond exhaustion. Beyond the exhaustion of language. Which, for 
Deleuze, is also beyond the exhaustion of consciousness. Or is that 
attention?

What struck me in the Abramovic movie was how common pain is. A common 
sense. The habitus you refer to, Alan? And then that there is this 
mirror play of fear on the surface which all too readily succumbs to the 
popular depth of a particular pain.

Speaking personally, I remember reading Canetti and nightmares that 
wouldn't leave about being two-dimensional. The fear grew over many 
years into an outright hostility towards representation particularly 
where the depths summoned up by pain were concerned.

I'm too thin, as David Byrne sings.

I regret the interpretation of Celan that reads his poetry into its 
aporias. With Anne Carson, I think of him as a lapidary writer, incising 
at great effort words into warm stone.

Exhausted. She can't go on. She goes on...

Best,

Simon Taylor

www.squarewhiteworld.com