templates

....further question on templates and their denseness: what is it about an earlier writer that provides resources for future writers? It must be something to do with the texture or physiology of  the template supplied; the pre-modern imagination has a physiological aspect; inner life is represented in this aspect. Nabokov, translating Lermontov, refers to code sentences which do this job: lips go pale, arms are seized, ground is stamped etc. Above all people physiologically change eg change colour: 'a dull colour spread over his face'. This is particularly true of Conrad; in the Nigger of Narcissus, following a storm, the mariners seem thinner or starved. In Outpost of Progress the physiognomy of the two Europeans alters. These code sentences leave us free to work out or infer what is going on without having every psychic move exhaustively listed for us. The same freedom allows Munoz to visually develop into drawings the Outpost of Progress. The code sentences work for the artist as well. Same conclusion!  Is it probable that Will Self will act as a resource in the same way for writers or artists a hundred years from now?

gaslight

What does it mean to read a text in different ways?  Will Self said recently that his work can be read differently much as can Conrad's. How does a text come to be capable of this?  Consider the example of Benjamin's use of gaslight: developing his theory of modernity he draws on R. L. Stevenson's depiction of gaslight in Victorian Edinburgh; R.L.S, he says writes the epitaph of gaslight after which it is electric light that illuminates the life of the gloomy city dweller. R.L.S. did not intend a use of this kind but what he says has to resonate deeply enough for Benjamin to exploit; the earlier intellectual resource has to be sufficient as in the form of a template. Consider further, Munoz who made a series of drawings on the theme of Conrad's Outpost of progress. Are these examples simply 'variations on a theme by...'?  Perhaps there needs to be an equality of imagination between the former and the later. A reader in the far future will need to weigh Heart of Darkness with Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes.A final thought: does Achebe's charge that Conrad is a racist apply equally to Munoz?

more on Sancho

Dostoevsky says Quixote comes to yearn for realism. Are not the Knight and his squire more worldly than this suggests? For example the adventure of the braying where Q abandons S in face of overwhelming odds; 'I have retreated not fled' says Q; S is unimpressed: Dostoevsky's reading is that faced with the collapse of one fantasy then Quixote (and everyone) invents a further to save the first. The two travellers have a discussion about the adventure and have no problems with realism and fantasy; pragmatism occurs. Maybe this is a turning point for S. Dostoevsky makes too literalist a reading. See blog 6 and how to answer 'what song the sirens sang'.

Sancho Panza

Sancho: assistant, student or angel? On this occasion the assistant is not of Kafka's creation but a huge figure in European literature. Kafka's figures exist against a background of distorted time and space; eg Tony Perkins in Welles' film of The Trial (too big for the room), K in front of the Priest in cathedral (so close he has to bend his head far back to even see him), the doorbell in The Fratricide (unimaginably loud) and the journey to The Next Village ( even a life time is not enough time).
As time is distorted the self is not experienced in a continuum but in fragments or with great difficulty like seeing or hearing yourself on record or in photos. Huge effort is required for this act of recognition or memory, albeit of self. So students stay awake, never sleep. Nature Theatre actors similarly concentrate on being (acting) who they already are. Best not to press on, like Quixote toward the next goal. Instead, like Sancho, get rid of the burden.

angels

Are angels assistants? Angels appear at the end of Amerika; they are extras who act as angels so are really actors but on this occasion have stuck-on-wings and stand on boxes which are hidden by their long robes; they play trumpets but not in harmony. For WB they have precursors: the trapeze artist's manager and the guardian who 'steps away lightly' while escorting the fratricidist . Neither of these have the qualities of assistants; they convey no cryptic messages; they lack names like Arthur and Jeremiah; they don't complete frenzied, repeated actions (eg furious reading) like students. They are 'saved' like the other Nature Theatre actors, playing their own previous lives as roles; acting as angels is a further role-to celebrate the Theatre.
Assistants have no personal qualities being like expressionless waiters; students are restless souls; angels have the quality of doleful witnesses or escorts with or without wings; the fratricide's escort might have had wings; the Nature Theatre angels might have been real.

students

In Kafka are students assistants? Not quite. Assistants stand around like waiters, are unreflective and often act as messengers: eg the comic types who follow K around in The Castle giggling and poking each other. They are assistants to K but know nothing of surveying so cannot assist him. They and students share one thing which is a single expressive Kafka-activity (eg fasting, waiting, studying). Consider the student in Amerika; he doesen't study, ie reflect and understand; it doesen't get him anywhere yet he has to do it, forever, ' for the sake of consistency'. The physiognomy of studying is an anguished, trance-like activity involving frantic consultations, pressing papers to his face and desperate note taking; no sleep and endless coffee. Assistants lack this driven quality but according to Benjamin, unlike students, have the prospect of redemption. Redemption is tied to the lack of reflection. Students are higher up the intellectual hierarchy to assistants but the act of studying is automatic. Foolishness offers the chance of being saved. Foolishness entails forgetting, an aspect denied to students. Yet it is an odd form of forgetting; the Oklahoma actors in Amerika are saved but not through some special insight. Oblivion is the key; the actors act out a forgotten version of their earlier selves of which they are, at best, dimly aware; the briefest of glimpses of this earliest version is all that can be expected. Students are stuck in the the perpetual present, cannot move on like Gracchus, always awake, compulsively reading without purpose, yearning for oblivion.

Waiters

Walser has the most to say about waiters (the activity of waiting not the job). Talking about masters and workers he notes that bosses routinely keep us waiting as it is he/she, the boss, who answers all requests. But Walser offers hope for waiters; after all we are free to think about other things while waiting; but he notes that creative waiting can be a problem for the boss (2 creative waiters are Rokesmith or Jeeves); passive waiting is preferred. Walser's waiting differs to Kafka's: the assistants have to wait; they seem to have no existence before they deliver their message and are condemned to wait, forever, for the next request; certainly no opportunity to reflect-while-waiting exists as it does for Walser. Hence Benjamin defines Kafka's assistants as unfinished and belonging to an in-between world; paradoxically the inability to reflect offers them a form of hope. There is a family of Kafka activities which includes fasting, waiting, passing messages and studying. These activities are related to Gombrowicz's idea of the 'face' ie the grimace'; even if assistants cannot reflect they can use their faces: they can grimace.

canine knowledge

What is the connection between Kafka's animals and his assistants? They are not the same. Assistants do lots of things but reflect little; they are more figures like waiters who hover in the background- America is full of waiters. WB calls the assistants 'unfinished'. By contrast the animals reflect at length; certainly both Kafka's Ape and Dog do so in different ways. But there is a relationship between animals and assistants. First, it does not seem quite right to locate the creatures in a remote non human zone even though they are often, in the main, solipsists; they have no roles like messengers or go betweens. The Dog has an epistemological mission: to define dog knowledge. The scope of the inquiry is limited; in the same way that Kantian thought categories are spatio-temporal, the Dog's are alimentary; instead of 'how is experience possible?' the question is 'how is food possible?'
The Dog comes up with a couple of ideas but is dimly troubled less by getting the wrong answer than by having only one topic: food. This is the predicament of the 'unfinished' like the the builders and workers of the Great Wall of China. No one can remember why it was built. Try to understand why but only up to certain point; then avoid further meditation. The animals, assistants and Chinese do not just have bad memories; it is their job to be unfinished.