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John Cheever (1912-1982) “The Country Husband”. John Cheever, “The Country Husband”. John Cheever, “The Country Husband”. John Cheever, “The Country Husband”. John Cheever, “The Country Husband”. Francis Weed The plane crash The suburbs—Shady Hill Julia Weed The House
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John Cheever (1912-1982) “The Country Husband”
John Cheever, “The Country Husband” • Francis Weed • The plane crash • The suburbs—Shady Hill • Julia Weed • The House • Ann Murchison—the babysitter • The kiss—a “relationship with the world that was mysterious and thrilling” • Mrs. Wrighton’s windows—and angering Shady Hill society • Gertrude, the wandering child; the untrainable Jupiter • Lost—the last paragraph: • Then it is dark; it is a knight where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains.
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) “The Garden of Forking Paths”
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” Once the idealist argument is accepted, I understand that it is possible—even inevitable —to go even further. . . . The Cartesian "I think, therefore I am" is thus invalidated: to say I think is to postulate the I, and is a petito principii. In the eighteenth century, Lichtenberg proposed that in place of I think, we should say, impersonally it thinks, just as one could say it thunders or it flashes (lightning). Jorge Luis Borges, "A New Refutation of Time” The greatest sorcerer [writes Novalis memorably] would be the one who bewitched himself to the point of taking his own phantasmagorias for autonomous apparitions. Would not this be true of us? I believe that it is. We (the undivided divinity that operates within us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it strong, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and secure in time, but we have allowed tenuous, eternal interstices of injustice in its structure so we may know it is false. Jorge Luis Borges, "Avatars of the Tortoise”
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” The first texts of Buddhism relate that the Buddha, under the fig tree, perceived by intuition the infinite concatenations of all the causes and effects of the universe, the past and future incarnations of each being. The last texts, written centuries later, reason that nothing is real and that all knowledge is fictitious and that if there were as many Ganges Rivers as there are grains of sand in the Ganges and again as many Ganges Rivers as grains of sand in those new Ganges Rivers, the number of grains would be smaller than the number of things not known by the Buddha. Jorge Luis Borges, "From Someone to Nobody” Why does it make us uneasy to know that the map is within the map and the thousand and one nights are within the book of A Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disquiet us to know that Don Quixote is a reader of the Quixote, and Hamlet is a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the answer: those inversions suggest that if the characters in a story can be readers or spectators, then we, their readers or spectators, can be fictitious. In 1833 Carlyle observed that universal history is an infinite sacred book that all men write and read and try to understand, and in which they too are written. Jorge Luis Borges, "Partial Enchantments of the Quixote”
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” The odd thing is that the Secret has not been lost long ago; despite the vicissitudes of the world, despite wars and exoduses, it extends, in its tremendous fashion, to all the faithful. One commentator has not hesitated to assert that it is already instinctive. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Sect of the Phoenix"
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” The Cabalists] thought that a work dictated by the Holy Spirit was an absolute text: in other words, a text in which the collaboration of chance was calculable as zero. This portentous premise of a book impenetrable to contingency, of a book which is a mechanism of infinite purposes, moved them to dispute the scriptural words, add up the numerical value of the letters, consider their form, observe the small letters and the capitals, seek acrostics and anagrams, and perform other exegetical rigors which it is not difficult to ridicule. Their excuse is that nothing can be contingent in the work of an infinite mind. Leon Bloy postulates this hieroglyphical character, this character of a divine writing this character of a divine mystery, of an angelic cryptography at all moments and in all beings on earth. Jorge Luis Borges Once the idealist argument is accepted, I understand that it is possible—even inevitable —to go even further. . . . The Cartesian "I think, therefore I am" is thus invalidated: to say I think is to postulate the I, and is a petito principii. In the eighteenth century, Lichtenberg proposed that in place of I think, we should say, impersonally it thinks, just as one could say it thunders or it flashes (lightning). Jorge Luis Borges, "A New Refutation of Time" The greatest sorcerer [writes Novalis memorably] would be the one who bewitched himself to the point of taking his own phantasmagorias for autonomous apparitions. Would not this be true of us? I believe that it is. We (the undivided divinity that operates within us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it strong, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and secure in time, but we have allowed tenuous, eternal interstices of injustice in its structure so we may know it is false. Jorge Luis Borges, "Avatars of the Tortoise" The first texts of Buddhism relate that the Buddha, under the fig tree, perceived by intuition the infinite concatenations of all the causes and effects of the universe, the past and future incarnations of each being. The last texts, written centuries later, reason that nothing is real and that all knowledge is fictitious and that if there were as many Ganges Rivers as there are grains of sand in the Ganges and again as many Ganges Rivers as grains of sand in those new Ganges Rivers, the number of grains would be smaller than the number of things not known by the Buddha. Jorge Luis Borges, "From Someone to Nobody" Why does it make us uneasy to know that the map is within the map and the thousand and one nights are within the book of A Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disquiet us to know that Don Quixote is a reader of the Quixote, and Hamlet is a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the answer: those inversions suggest that if the characters in a story can be readers or spectators, then we, their readers or spectators, can be fictitious. In 1833 Carlyle observed that universal history is an infinite sacred book that all men write and read and try to understand, and in which they too are written. Jorge Luis Borges, "Partial Enchantments of the Quixote" In time, only those things last which have not been in time. Jorge Luis Borges, "Quince Monedas" They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders, wept with love on seeing Ithaca, humble and green. Art is that Ithaca, a green eternity, not wonders. Art is endless, like a river flowing, passing yet remaining, a mirror to the same inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same and yet another, like the river flowing. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Art of Poetry" Around 1930 Paul Valery wrote that the history of literature should not be the history of the authors and the accidents of the careers of their works, but rather the history of the Spirit as the producer or consumer of literature. He added that such a history could be written without the mention of a single writer. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Flower of Coleridge" The greatest sorcerer [writes Novalis memorably] would be the one who bewitched himself to the point of taking his own phantasmagorias for autonomous apparitions. Would not this be true of us? I believe that it is. We (the undivided divinity that operates within us) have dreamed the world. We have dreamed it strong, mysterious, visible, ubiquitous in space and secure in time; but we have allowed tenuous, eternal interstices of injustice in its structure so we may know that it is false. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Partial Enchantments of the Quixote" The odd thing is that the Secret has not been lost long ago; despite the vicissitudes of the world, despite wars and exoduses, it extends, in its tremendous fashion, to all the faithful. One commentator has not hesitated to assert that it is already instinctive. Jorge Luis Borges, "The Sect of the Phoenix"
Jorge Luis Borges, “The Garden of Forking Paths” • Written in 1941 • First translated into English • The first imagining of hypertext • Dr. Tsun • Captain Richard Madden • Viktor Runeber • Dr. Stephen Albert—a sinophile • Ts’ui Pen—creating a novel and a labyrinth
D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) “"The Rocking Horse Winner"
D. H. Lawrence , “"The Rocking Horse Winner" Kafka by David Levine Lawrence by David Levine
D. H. Lawrence, “Snake” Snake A snake came to my water-trough On a hot, hot day, and I in pyjamas for the heat, To drink there. In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree I came down the steps with my pitcher And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me. He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down, over the edge of the stone trough
D. H. Lawrence, "Snake" And rested his throat upon the stone bottom, And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness, He sipped with his straight mouth, Softly drank through his straight gums, into his slack long body, Silently. Someone was before me at my water-trough, And I, like a second comer, waiting. He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do, And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do, And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment, And stooped and drank a little more, Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
D. H. Lawrence, "Snake" The voice of my education said to me He must be killed, For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous. And voices in me said, If you were a man You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off. But must I confess how I liked him, How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet, to drink at my water-trough And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless, Into the burning bowels of this earth? Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him? Was it perversity, that I longed to talk to him? Was it humility, to feel so honoured? I felt so honoured.
D. H. Lawrence, "Snake" And yet those voices: If you were not afraid, you would kill him! And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more That he should seek my hospitality From out the dark door of the secret earth. He drank enough And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken, And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black, Seeming to lick his lips, And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air, And slowly turned his head, And slowly, very slowly, as if thrice adream, Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round And climb again the broken bank of my wall-face.
D. H. Lawrence, "Snake" And as he put his head into that dreadful hole, And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther, A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole, Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after, Overcame me now his back was turned. I looked round, I put down my pitcher, I picked up a clumsy log And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter. I think it did not hit him, But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste. Writhed like lightning, and was gone Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front, At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.
D. H. Lawrence, "Snake" And immediately I regretted it. I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act! I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education. And I thought of the albatross And I wished he would come back, my snake. For he seemed to me again like a king, Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld, Now due to be crowned again. And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords Of life. And I have something to expiate: A pettiness. Taormina, 1923
D. H. Lawrence , “"The Rocking Horse Winner" • The mother • Paul • Uncle Oscar Cresswell • “There must be more money.” • Getting there. • £80,000
