John Ashbery — from “Added Poignancy”

 

Hence it ends up with a scenario of them all getting paid,

the bums, and walking out into the eternal twilight

with gurus and girlfriends on their arms, one for each fist.

I like that way about it. I’m making believe 

it never happened, that we got this way

merely by having been here forever. Millions of languages

become extinct, and not because there was nothing left to say in them,

but because it was all said too well, with

nary a dewdrop on the moment of glottal expulsion.

But now I’ve got to go put out the signs on the chairs

so folks’ll know when to stop, and where, really, only a poodle

separates us from this life and the next.

It will take us longer to get from here to there.

And the cigar band is ecstatic,

stunning in its mauve and gold obsolescence,

an erratic bloom on sheer night, faintly deleterious …

Derrida : Nietzsche/Freud ( child , play , speculation , without-debt )

“To take the shortest route I will recall, for example, what was said of childhood, of play, and of the without-debt. Of what was said about them on the basis of Nietzsche. How does the so-called child indebt himself, and what is his debt, in a so-called play without-debt? On what without-debt does play speculate in secret? And where is the place of such a secret to be situated, according to what topics?”

“And, once more, I will recall the scene made by Freud in Nietzsche’s memory. He never misses him within the grasping movement of a denegation. The avoidance never avoids the inevitable in whose grasp it already is.”

( “To Speculate – On ‘Freud'”  The Postcard , 263 )

John Ashbery — from “Added Poignancy”

 

He thought if he lived amid leaves

everything would surface again, by which he meant, balance out,

only look what this random memory’s done to him!

He eats no more, neither does he sleep. A permanent bell tone

seems to create his hearing at each moment of his elevator, Obey, We’re

in for it. There are no two ways about it. Wait —

did I say two ways? That’s it! We’ll fix his wagon with too many ways —

so it’ll be lopsided, with no judges to pay, and we can all go home.

Sweetheart? I fancy you now — 

Nietzsche : The will as affect , duality of the concept of the “I”

The will is not just a complex of feeling and thinking; rather it is fundamentally an affect; and specifically the affect of the command. What is called “freedom of the will” is essentially the affect of superiority with respect to something that must obey: “I am free, ‘it’ must obey — this consciousness lies in every will … a person who wills — , commands something inside himself that obeys, or that he believes to obey.We are under the circumstances, both the one who commands and the one who obeys, and as the obedient one we are familiar with the feelings of compulsion, force, pressure, resistance and motion that generally start right after the act of willing. On the other hand, however, we are in the habit of ignoring and deceiving ourselves about this duality by means of the synthetic concept of the “I”.

( Beyond Good and Evil , section 19 )

John Ashbery — from “Added Poignancy”

 

What could I tell you? I couldn’t tell you any other way.

We, meanwhile, have witnessed changes, and now change

floods in from every angle. Stop me if you’ve heard this one,

but if you haven’t, just go about your business. I’ll catch up with you

at the exit. Who are the Blands? The second change was perhaps

nothing more than

the possibility of changes, one by one, side by side, until the whole

canyon was carpeted with them. Nice. Summer, it said,

ever rested my mind. Something occurs everywhere then,

an immediate engagement with the atmosphere

we’d like to have around, but it was big, then, and obvious,

and oh, this is for your pains. No, really. Take it. I insist.

 

Nietzsche : “there are no mental causes”

The “inner world” is full of phantoms … : the will is one of

them. The will no longer moves anything, hence does not

explain anything either — it merely accompanies events;

it can also be absent. The so-called motive: another error.

Merely a surface phenomenon of consciousness some –

thing alongside the deed that is more likely to cover up

the antecedents of the deeds than to represent them. …

What follows from this? There are no mental [geistigen]

causes at all.

( Twilight of the Idols )

John Ashbery — from “Grand Galop”

 

Water

Drops from an air conditioner

On those who pass underneath. It’s one of the sights of our town.

Puaagh. Vomit. Puaaaaagh. More Vomit. One who comes

Walking dog on leash is distant to say how all this

Changes the minute to an hour, the hour

To the times of day, days to months, those easy-to-grasp entities,

And the months to seasons. which are far other. foreign

To our concept of time. Better the months —

They are almost persons — than these abstractions

That sift like marble dust across the unfinished works of the studio

Aging everything into a characterization of itself.

Better the cleanup committee concern itself with

Some item that is now little more than a feature

Of some obsolete style — cornice or spandrel

Out of the dimly remembered whole

Which probably lacks true distinction. But if one may pick it up,

Carry it over there, set it down, 

Then the work is redeemed at the end

Under the smiling expanse of the sky

That plays no favorites but in the same way

Is honor only to those who have sought it. 

Derrida : the non-positional structure of beyond the pleasure principle , stories/scenes made possible through the death drive

“Beyond the Pleasure Principle: I would like to make legible the non-positional structure of Beyond … , its a-thetic functioning in the final judgment, which is as much to say that which exempts it from the quest after a final judgment, that is of any judgment at all.”

“The athesis of Beyond … will come forward. As such, before and beyond any judgement. It will come forward in its (unbound, absolved, if this is possible) relation to the theoretical thesis in general, as well as to the laws of its decidability.”

“It is not fortuitous that the athesis is indefinitely suspended as concerns ‘life death’. It is not fortuitous that it speaks of the enigmatic death drive which appears disappears, appears to disappear, appears in order to disappear in Beyond … I call it enigmatic because it appears disappears while telling many stories and making many scenes, causing or permitting them to be told. Occasionally these are called fables or myths.”

“and in question also is what sets off an entire descendance that is fabulous or mythical.”

( “To Speculate — On ‘Freud'” , The Post Card  262 )

John Ashbery — from “Grand Galop”

 

All things seem mention of themselves

And the names which stem from them branch out to other

    referents.

Hugely, spring exists again. The weigela does its dusty thing

In fire-hammered air. And garbage cans are heaved against 

The railing as the tulips yawn and crack open and fall apart.

The names we stole don’t remove us:

We have moved on a little ahead of them

And nowit is time to wait again.

Only waiting, the waiting: what fills up the time between?

It is another kind of wait, waiting for the wait to be ended.

Nothing takes up its fair share of time,

The wait is built into the things just coming into their own.

Nothing is partially incomplete, but the wait

Invests everything like a climate.

What time of day is it?

Does anything matter?

Yes, for you must wait to see what it is really like,

This event rounding the corner

Which will be unlike anything else and really

Cause no surprise: it’s too ample.

Emerson — “The Over-Soul”

 

“The same Omniscience flows into the intellect and makes what we call genius.”

“The soul is superior to its knowledge, wiser than any of its words.”

“This energy does not descend into individual life on any other condition than entire possession.”

“the soul that ascends to worship the great God is plain and true; has no rose-color, no fine friends, no chivalry, no adventures; does not want admiration; dwells in the hour that is now, in the earnest experience of the common day — by reason of the present moment and the mere trifle having become porous to thought and bibulous of the sea of light.”

“… when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours. Nothing can pass there, or make you one of the circle, but the casting aside your trappings and dealing man to man in naked truth, plain confession, and omniscient affirmation.”

“Souls such as these treat you as gods would, walk as gods in the earth…”

“They must always be a godsend to princes, for they confront them, a king to a king, without ducking or concession, and give a high nature the refreshment and satisfaction of resistance, of plain humanity, of even companionship and of new ideas. They leave them wiser and superior men.”