†††

III.1. Chuang-tse on the Academy vs. the Cafés. While sitting on the banks of the Hsien & Lan River, Chuang-tse was approached by two representatives of the Prince of Ch'u, who offered him a position at court. Chuang-tse watched the water flowing by as if he had not heard. Finally, he remarked, "I am told that the Prince has a sacred tortoise, over two thousand years old, which is kept in a box, wrapped in silk and brocade." "That is true," the officials replied. "If the tortoise had been given a choice," Chuang-tse continued, "which do you think he would have liked better--to have been alive in the mud, or dead within the palace?" "To have been alive in the mud, of course," the man answered. "I too prefer the mud," said Chuang-tse. "Good-bye."

Der Übermensch. --He is already with us. He blows his nose in aluminum foil and scoffs at our idle café chatter.

--Thom Smit, Maxims for Morons

III.2. Diogenes on the Academy vs. the Cafés. --Here follows a text in Greek-- ... -- [This bit about the--several words quoted in Greek--makes me think of my friend Abraham in Vera Cruz, who wrote me the following of a neurosis that descended upon him in the course of his studies in that disreputable town: "...I began to be belabored by the most ridiculous delusions. I felt the city was collapsing around me, and that only my own personal mystical studies could hold it together. I would study at the café by the cathedral where we had our last talk. The world I was beginning to glimpse through my studies was under siege by the criminal element in Vera Cruz: they were on to me. One waiter there, particularly deferential, would smile at me with his silver teeth. I was not to write certain things. The structure of my soul was becoming one with the structure of the crime that infested Vera Cruz and simultaneously with the structure of a nascent mystical insight. It was at this point that I met Celestina at the apartment of Señor Rojas. The world glimpsed by me was under attack by the criminals: they sought to shatter it before I could learn more. Eventually the only way I could hold it together was if I kissed Celestina's neck the right number of times on certain days, and if I drank the right number of coffees on certain days. But as my peril increased, the numerology became confusing, leading to excess. And the waiter's smile grew more and more sinister, as he became ever more deferential, mocking me behind his dirty silver teeth. The criminals' sexual intentions concerning me were clear. I didn't dare tell Celestina everything, but her neck was beginning to chap from my hundreds of kisses, and her eyes perused me more and more suspiciously, full of dread. I would go to the café in the morning and in the course of the day would order the precise number of coffees needed to hold my body of mystical knowledge together. But the number--what was the right number? I recognized the importance of threes and multiples thereof, four however being somehow uncanny, suggesting a sort of balanced femininity that was clearly threatening. Particularly threatening in that if I didn't go on and drink the fifth coffee, the balance inherent in the four would invade my being and upset the balance of the knowledge I had with such difficulty acquired. This was just what the criminal element and the waiter wanted, so that I noticed the waiter always hesitated to bring me the fifth coffee, sometimes having recourse to another waiter, and I would drink it ostentatiously. But often it felt that I didn't quite drink it correctly, my swallows and movements didn't have the correct rhythmical sense, and so I had to drink a sixth coffee, a multiple of three you know, which was doubtless rather dangerous, being precisely two (or a couple: perhaps Celestina and myself) times three--and I didn't want to bring her into it--and so I ordered and drank the seventh coffee, but seven is a number with terrible power, the kabbalists and everyone has known it, and so the eighth, TWO ROUNDED FOURS, then the ninth, three threes, the tenth, a number so safe that there must be something wrong with it, something hidden, then the eleventh coffee, two people standing but not touching, I then drank the twelfth, one plus two equals three, thirteenth, oh!, the fourteenth coffee, my birthday--January 14, 1956, the fifteenth coffee, and so on...." The sequel to poor Abraham's tale is far too horrible to recount here, reminiscent, as it is, of Poe's Berenice.] --Here follows a second text in Greek-- Puzzle for Sam Slote.

CULTURE AND SOVIET SOCIETY:

A MINI-SERIES

"EN-LIGHT-EN-MENT: FAILED WESTERN WEIGHT-LOSS TECHNIQUE."

--telegram from anonymous "Coup" leader

[Lukyanov?] to Barbara Bush

III.3.1. Culture and Soviet Society Before the "Coup":

"WE HERE AT THE EUROPEAN WAY LIBERAL

REVIEW..."

It has come to our attention that the Soviet Bolshoi Encyclopedia has neither an article on Freud in it nor an article on the unconscious. We bring this up only because it is one of the more glaring omissions, not because it is in any sense the only omission. Why do the Soviet encyclopedists shy away from the good Dr. Freud? The most obvious answer that comes to mind is that the unconscious is by definition beyond state control, and that the Soviets would not want to acknowledge the existence of anything beyond state control. But we are being unfair. An exile friend of ours insists that there was indeed an article in the Soviet encyclopedia on Freud. After reading it, however, the Soviet editorial board decided to shred the article and use the shreds to make the binding of volume "F". Our exile friend comments: "They see this as their way of doing service to Freud's idea of the unconscious, sort of keeping it in its place as an absolute Other, as an unassimilable base of the more 'conscious' material within the volume." †

And it must be true! We find that the state of the collective Soviet psyche is to be seen in their very bindings. Grab hold of any volume of any Soviet encyclopedia, and you will find that the bindings are so poorly made that when you shake the book the pages go flying off in all directions. †

Boris, our exile friend, writes from Basel: "This loss of pages is doubtless what causes the heaps of unsifted papers and piles of neglected documents that clutter the basements and clog the air vents of any reputable Soviet library. And the clogged air vents are themselves responsible for the oppressive heat of Soviet reading rooms in summer and in the warmer republics. One Soviet author insists that this musty heat makes reading an erotic experience, as it should be, particularly if one is reading socialist-realist summaries of ancient works describing Roman orgies or Saturnalia."--quoted from The European Way Liberal Review, Jan. 33, 19--

III.3.2. Culture and Soviet Society During the "Coup":

--SHOCK TROPES, or TANK BALLET

You just can't find good coup leaders these days.

--Meg at the Café

Throughout the morning tanks and armored personnel carriers lumbered to critical crossroads of the city, four of them spinning wildly in a circle outside the Bolshoi Theater in a roaring display of force that left passers-by crying "Shame!"--as quoted from the NYT, August 20, 1991

III.3.3. Culture and Soviet Society after the "Coup":

--Yeltsin

Yeltsin shows up drunk at the police station, mysteriously soaking wet, carrying a ragged bouquet of flowers. This giving him a more "human image." †

Yeltsin chooses economic plan for his platform without reading economic plan. Just sounds good. †

Yeltsin signs peace accords with California New Age Superpower. †

Yeltsin seen selling Whoppers from the nave of St. Basil's. Gives proceeds to safe-sex efforts of Ukrainian nationalists. †

Yeltsin, theorist of the carnivalesque, does ads for Honda Spree with Lou Reed. Russian folk music and bread and salt. †

Yeltsin condemns hardline theoreticians and favors speedy popular theoretics as seen in Western video. †

Yeltsin donates his scrotum to "popular" high school dissecting classes. Question of how he can donate one to each school. Still offers to do so on popular evening news show Vremya. "Whatever it takes for the people!" heard to declare heroically, waving gold-colored Western credit card like a little razor. --Findings not yet in.

III.6. Those who cannot look death in the face will spend the whole of their lives looking him in the ass.

III.7. On the 12 of September, I began working full-time at the café, finally getting my hands on the espresso machines, steaming the fresh, cold milk, scooping the powdered coffee out of its bucket to make pot after pot all day and into the night. My cleanly clipped nails go home holding a thin line of coffee dust to the tip of each finger. My hands are getting callused from the hot water and the hot metal of the machines. At eight or so free cups a day, I am finally drinking a bit too much. †

Five days after starting work, I dreamt that Lenin's body had been stolen from its mausoleum and was being hidden in the café basement, still in its glass case but stood upright against the wall. Why all the Russian dreams lately? I'd come downstairs to get something, in a fearful rush, and one of the greying men down there who were steaming milk put his finger to his lips to indicate Shhh! then knowingly brought my attention to what was behind the boxes of coffee machines he was moving. There, against the wall, was Vladimir Ilyich in his glass case. The upright position had forced his body forward so that his head was against the glass. He didn't wink, but his forehead didn't crumble either, and as the man moved the boxes back to their positions covering the great revolutionary, some of the other men looked to me with pride and solidarity, as if they were saying: "How bout that, kid? Eh? And you thought we were just down here steaming milk!"

III.9. If I want to imagine a fictive nation, I can give it an invented name, treat it declaratively as a novelistic object, create a new Garabagne, so as to compromise no real country by my love (though it is then that love itself that I compromise by the signs of literature). I can also--though in no way claiming to represent or to analyze reality itself (these being the major gestures of writing even here in Madison)--isolate somewhere in the world (faraway ) a certain number of features (a term employed in linguistics), and out of these features deliberately form a system. It is this system which I shall call: Medieval Europe, or, say, Russia.

III.10. Around the day in eighty "wlds." The world has lost its or. The world as an army of metaphors, etc. Read the etc., which we can't. Either the world is dead, or its or is dead. We no longer have the either/or. So the world is dead. Around the day in eighty "wds." Eight wds. Six.

III.11. Clearly Chuang-tze did not really dream he was a butterfly. He made it up. Poiesis, the Greek word for poetry, is also the Greek word for making. Are philosophers poets? Or vice versa? An old question of great importance. †

But it is true that after reading Chuang-tze I was led to have a similar dream. I dreamt I was an earthworm, driven out of the ground by a heavy rain. And like many such earthworms in our paved "world," I was forced to squirm across a wet, oil-slicked street, hearing the Apocalyptic roar of cars as they flew over me like gods, aware that I may be destroyed at any time. †

And since I woke up I have never been sure that I wasn't just such a stranded earthworm dreaming I was a Western writer.

III.12. The world--it is really a massive auto accident.

When I was younger, nuclear weapons made me fear the end of the world. Now I just laugh. †

We get our kicks listening to the last shards of glass tinkle to a slow-motion halt on the cement.

III.14.

Oh, Golden Years!

I grew up in a neo-colonial pseudo-mansion on a huge landfill hill. The farmer kids in the valley called it the White House. And indeed, it looked quite a bit like the White House. More so even than the White House itself! --A visitor from a distant land, you approach the front door with the brass eagle knocker, noticing that the paint is peeling from the post-Ionic columns. --"Huh?" --Grasping a piece, you realize it is latex paint. --Grinning a bit nauseously, you start to peel it off in strips, longer and longer strips, revealing the grey metal underneath. --You rap on the columns, and find they are made of hollow aluminum siding. --"Rat tat tat," rings the land you suddenly find yourself in. "Rat tat."

i.

Oh, the fond memories of my youth! Idyllic age! Sylvan youth!

I used to shoot chipmunks with my pellet gun. Robins, squirrels, and gophers. Once even a golfer. [1]

I was a regular St. Julien Hospitalier.

ii.

Oh, innocence! Oh, our pure and shining brows!

We were twelve. I showed her mine. She showed me hers. Finally I tried to put a jujubee in it. She demurred.

iii.

Oh, natural piety! Oh, wet wordsworthian years!

I sat in front of the television watching the Flintstones, Leave it to Beaver, I Dream of Genie, Gilligan's Island, The Flying Nun.

And my sustenance for these daily entertainments? I would drink Half-and-Half straight from the carton while sticking Nestle's chocolate morsels into the globs of peanutbutter I ate off a silver spoon. Over and over and over. By Saturday--"cleaning day"--the floor was littered with Half-and-Half cartons, empty peanutbutter jars, dropped kisses,--all for the cleaning lady, sweet-tooth Gwendolyn.

iv.

Yes, reader--my youth, like yours, finally exploded into the acne of American Teenage Shamefaced Idiocy.

Oh! Oh, youth! Sylvan years! Etc., etc.

Note 1: I am suddenly forced to remark that the typical golfer as I knew him was himself little more than an oversized gopher. The resemblances are various: they both have puffy cheeks, they both squeek when excited, they both tend to sport spotted coats, and they both spend their time seeking out little holes in big grassy spaces, the gophers more radically trying to insert their whole selves in these holes, the golfers just their little white balls. --Such great and undeniable similarities clearly somewhat justify my bagging of these larger beasts. I say somewhat because they are, after all, so much larger than gophers, so much slower, so much more stupid on the uptake, and their teeth are usually more crooked and more poorly cleaned. It is thus not exactly noble to hunt them, being such easy prey, and being rather worthless for mounting in any case. Who, after all, would want the head of one of these beasts gracing the wall of his study? --The flesh, I am told, can be quite toothsome with the right wine, but recent legislation makes it illegal to dine on golfers--trying to establish, no doubt, that they are some sort of endangered species, and thus being an attempt by the bourgeoisie to give these overgrown pets at least an ounce of prestige.

III.16. A file containing seminar notes (Helleslicht's 1991 seminar on de Man) and a brief mock Romantic epistolary novella is re-edited by a software systems error. The text is entirely reset as a little icon appears Rousseau An Aman Said on the screen of a little black Sick Sue Forty Rorty bomb of silent film vintage with the words "Sorry: a systems error has occurred." The Fork out following is an unmodified from the file Foucault Hay gal "A" gel Hegel Own head. a l n eft a l n acn efe a l n eff a ce n eft a l n eft a l n eft a c n eft a l n eft a l n eft al n eft a c n eft al n eft al n eft a l n eft al n eft a l n efe a l n efn a l n eft a l n scep e sc eas tec tec l thusly et ter iKlara a ce o eee n ef acn eff a c e n eff a ce n e fao a l n eft a l n tt fa l n eft a l n nt ace o nn ace one ace o nt ace o no ace o ap edited. --B.B. --Sigmund Freud a l n efl al n elThe Anaximander fragment. ace nef fa ce non eft al n eft al n nnMallarme was an extremely careful reader of Hegel. ace n tilmagination is another name for death. ace neff a ce nnnrWe're not empowered to judge between art and truth. ace n eff ace n o Wherever you want to put the subject--under erasure, under the table--wherever. io wherever the hell you want. ace ort of November 9, 1989 (This is Not One of the Poems) et l n thlt ntp lne fla lne far aln efa cac eol nef ace osrsaoacafioirtc fac eoe eft ace oef eta ceo efe ace oef eac eoe fea ceo efe ace oen Helmut ace o podauitint reaciiaeidintc f ace oef fac eoe ffa cen neH.: "...the unifying, harmonious--whatever." ace nef fac en enTactics. Dactyls. ace nef ace nrnAesthetics is one of those thumb-sized bananas you get in Morocco. ace nef eac eoe fea ceo cfI don't know how to tell you this. I won't be able to make it home for Christmas. I am going to Paris with another student who's working on reception theory. It is purely academic. I miss you so much. ace oef eac eo irhacaeitaetc f ace oef eac eoe fea ceo efa ceo efe ace oef ace oef eac eo aKlara ace oef ace nef eac en naNietzsche's Superman forgets the anyhow. Or does he? ace nef eac en riThe "anyhow" as the foundational trope of Comp Lit--the mise-en-abime. ace oln efa lnn nef acn efa ln frraoaeitt rsaoacafioirtc f ace oef ace oef eac eoe fta l n arB.: I apologize for all the lacunae, but that's what de Man says you're not going to escape anyhow. ace nef eac eoe fla ceo efe ace op Helmut ace o hoiadirast rcavaotc f ace one fta lne fta lne fta lne fea ceo eee nef tal nef eac eoe fla lne fla lnn efa c n deI have been worried about you. Your letters seem to be from someone else. I hope the university environment has not changed the Helmut I knew. ace o odI'm sorry about the poetic excesses in my previous letter. Would like to hear from you. ace oef eac eoe fac eoe fea ceo efl ace oef ace oef eac eoee Helmut ace o hoiadirast rcavaotc fna ceo efa cen efe ace n roWhy are there beings rather than nothing? Why does her neck look so ace nef eac ene fea cen efe ace ntt fac ene fla lnp

III.18. Galeano: "The doctor is Ernesto Guevara, known as Che, who apart from his nickname has retained certain Argentine customs, like maté and irony. American pilgrim, he joined Fidel's forces in Mexico, where he settled after the fall of Guatemala to earn a living as a photographer at one peso per photo, and as a peddler of little engravings of the Virgin of Guadelupe." †

In Che, we have some of the elements of the kind of revolutionary we sadly need today. He or she must be a doctor capable of irony who lives through the peddling of sacred engravings.

PROSE POEMS IN THE TINY TRADITION OF MAX JACOB

III.19.

EVERYTHING THERE WAS A PARODY. . .

Everything there was a parody of the way it was in the grand old capitals. The prima donna had only to step on stage for the audience to burst into irreverent chatter about the weather. Ladies tossed their lace camisoles from the balconies, or threw curling irons if they disapproved. Most of the vendors could be had for a reasonable fee. You could tell the ones who were kept by the huge fruit baskets they wore on their heads. One evening, a row broke out just below our box. My date goosed one of the ushers to alert him, and soon I found myself in the street, without a pfennig to my name.

III.20.

TRUE GRIT

The one thing I hate is a man who tries to put out his cigar on your leg.

You were a hussar in the Crimean War, an Egyptian jeweler under [ ], and a bandit from the real Sherwood Forest. I was Marie Antoinette, the Earl of Rochester, and an actor in Pericles' Athens.

In the Middle Ages we jousted for a jade necklace.

There ain't room in this town for the two of us.

III.21.

BEFORE THE RECITAL

A severed ear lying silently on the coffee table.

"If you don't know whose it is, don't touch it!" my mother whispers.

III.22.

THE TOWN WITH THE LITTLE CANDLES

Even though you've got miles of shoreline to go before you reach the town lit by the little candles, you stop to gaze out at the dark sea. The sound of the waves lapping on the sand almost makes you want to sit down and cry; to forget the little town, to forget Maria and the child. But your brother will be there and there will be music and piñatas. And besides, you are the Mayor, and you are expected to give a speech.

When the dream dissipates there is only the crying of gulls, and two thugs standing over you with a shotgun to your head. What to do next?

III.23.

THE DELUSIONARY SPIRITUAL LONGINGS OF

KATHRYNE THIESENHEUSEN, TENURE-TRACK

MEDIEVALIST

Next time around she wanted to be born into a world without typos. For years now she had reproached God bitterly for not using a spellcheck in the Creation. And the question of Backups!

III.24.

95 THESES CONTRA SHEHEREZADE

73. Those Arab flying carpets are sheer superstition. How could one go fast without being blown off the back?

III.25.

OH, HOW LOVELY!

All across America overweight middle-aged women go back and forth between each others' houses and say: "Oh, how lovely! Where did you get it?"

Their daughters roll their eyes up into their heads and say: "Like, give me a break!"

The fathers, one and all reclined before their televisions, scratch their testicles indifferently, reaching over their bellies which bloat up their untucked white dress-shirts like the wind filled the white sails of their far-distant ancestors. These ancestors were known as The Last Men.

It is only an occasional pet parrot that has the audacity to utter this fated name, distorting it "Brast Wren" just to be safe.

So that, finally, only the poets truly remember.

III.26.

TERROR IN THE ELEUSIAN FIELDS

"When you get to the Eleusian Fields, Parker..."

"Who, me?" he said.

"Yes. When you get to the Eleusian Fields there is a little patch to the left I would like you to mow so that it is even with the rest of the fields."

"Have you flipped your nut?"

"Just do it, Parker. It is this little patch that is ruining my dreams."

III.27.

IN THE GARDEN

Eve was a plump redhead with pale skin and bright green eyes. She had the thick cheekbones of a Norwegian. She stood on a well-lighted stage with painted tropical plants all around. There was a granite fountain in the corner representing a waterfall. In one bite she devoured half of the golden delicious apple, winking into the camera as she did. The cameramen were astonished: though Eve hadn't put on her makeup yet, there were already lipstick smears on the apple's other half.

III.28.

DR. SURRÉALISME

"The musings of the Doctor are never to be questioned at," said Mishi, the Doctor's shriveled brown servant. "We always follow exactly what the Doctor says, be it anything: frankincense, myrrh, a little spin in the red jalopy--anything!"

I noticed a red parrot in the vestibule, deformed and fighting for its life against dozens of horrible cockroach-like creatures.

"Oftentimes the patient dies," said Mishi, "but the Doctor never promised success to the patient--at least not success from the patient's point of view. The Doctor promises results!"

I