A Lecture in Contemporary English Literatures University of Silesia Marcin Sarnek

A Lecture in Contemporary English Literatures • University of Silesia • Marcin Sarnek • marcin.sarnek@us.edu.pl • http://prac.us.edu.pl/~marcin.sarnek • Office hours: • WED. 1030-1300 • FRI. after the lecture, by appointment only • room 3.54

Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 …a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she’d opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. There’d seemed no limit to what the printed circuit could have told her (if she had tried to find out); so in her first minute of San Narciso, a revelation also trembled just past the threshold of her understanding…. she and the Chevy seemed parked at the centre of an odd, religious instant. As if, on some other frequency, or out of the eye of some whirlwind rotating too slow for her heated skin even to feel the centrifugal coolness of, words were being spoken…

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I've tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice. Robert Frost, 1920

pity this busy monster, manunkind, not. Progress is a comfortable disease: your victim (death and life safely beyond) plays with the bigness of his littleness electrons deify one razorblade into a mountainrange; lenses extend unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish returns on its unself. A world of made is not a world of born - pity poor flesh and trees, poor stars and stones,but never this fine specimen of hypermagical ultraomnipotence. We doctors know a hopeless case if - listen: there's a hell of a good universe next door; let's go E.E.Cummings, 1944

Angel Beams of the dawn at the angel with a calm, silent sea with a hundred times we write, with a chance we can open up a steady rhythm in his face silent room desolate beach, Scattering remains of love.

...I ...I recall the passion exploding hourly at my lips like an angel's bed to the rest.

Dark I am the dark. on the night The past of love gone stale.

Imagine Now And Sing Imagine now and sing, creating myths forming jewels from the falling snow.

The Saxophone Player The saxophone player lives alone, blows lives alone, blows a swinging door splendid silence prophetic poses splendid silence prophetic poses of a prayer and the walls.

All of Art His canvas is all of art. There's room for a peace, room for the heart's full and rain. room for a little bit of the sea; room for it fast in a time to be room for many things in command. for it becomes a peace, And so to behold.

Soul (A haiku ) You broke my soul the juice of eternity, the spirit of my lips

I Think I'll Crash I think I'll crash. Just for myself with God peace on a curious sound for myself in my heart? And life is weeping From a bleeding heart of boughs bending such paths of them, of boughs bending such paths of breeze knows we've been there

Ray Kurzweil's Cybernetic Poet (RKCP)

AARON • created by Harold Cohen • London's Tate Modern Galley • Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum • San Francisco Museum of Modern Art • Brooklyn Museum • all have purchased and diplayed art by AARON

A Lecture in Contemporary English Literatures University of Silesia Marcin Sarnek