tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post6506932202553467716..comments2024-03-28T08:37:58.136+01:00Comments on Limited, Inc.: side show act, interruptedRoger Gathmannhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-84869145705119519692007-04-01T07:05:00.000+02:002007-04-01T07:05:00.000+02:00what a freakshow, here...what a freakshow, here...Matt Christiehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03336678358977647388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-3803142168100450582007-03-29T22:33:00.000+02:002007-03-29T22:33:00.000+02:00forgot this one.....AQ 453 = THE DANCE OF THE SEVE...forgot this one.....<BR/><BR/>AQ 453 = THE DANCE OF THE SEVEN VEILS.northangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02124226438327229521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-15655795762407459632007-03-29T21:27:00.000+02:002007-03-29T21:27:00.000+02:00btw, that's from Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract.btw, that's from Paula Abdul's <EM>Opposites Attract</EM>.northangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02124226438327229521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-65800668329598307892007-03-29T20:37:00.000+02:002007-03-29T20:37:00.000+02:00Two steps forward, two steps back? I was bred up d...Two steps forward, two steps back? <BR/>I was bred up during the disco era, and learned that you take a side step to slide, spin on your heel to make it real, and come back, jack, to the spot where you're on top. None of this hokey pokey shit for yours truly!Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-21731069017172202792007-03-29T20:25:00.000+02:002007-03-29T20:25:00.000+02:00AQ 453 = A CERTAIN MISTAKEN RHYTHM = 2 STEPS FORWA...AQ 453 = A CERTAIN MISTAKEN RHYTHM = 2 STEPS FORWARD, 2 STEPS BACK = INTO THE CENTRE OF THE MAZE = LIBERAL ANTI-WAR COON HUNT = TRANSFORMATION PROBLEM...<BR/><BR/><BR/>hmmm. i think you're doing fine. throw water on yourself. snap out of it! {slap}northangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02124226438327229521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-52520095862629716962007-03-29T20:20:00.000+02:002007-03-29T20:20:00.000+02:00mistaken rhythm?mistaken rhythm?northangerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02124226438327229521noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-39642039723891926992007-03-29T19:38:00.000+02:002007-03-29T19:38:00.000+02:00Amie, have fun on your trip!Hmm, your comments giv...Amie, have fun on your trip!<BR/>Hmm, your comments give me material that I should probably use for another post. Oddly, I'm sort of running into a brick wall on this fait divers topic. I wrote a post yesterday on it, and I wanted to move into the media, the Troppman murders, the sinister atmosphere at the end of the Second Empire, etc. But the post didn't work, somehow. It died. I might try to put the corpse of the poor thing up, but I think it might have died because of exactly what we are talking about - a certain lack of rhythm, a certain mistaken rhythm. There is a politics of tone, and Mallarme is a good starting point for talking about it - as it is hardly ever talked about. <BR/>And now I'm rambling too much!<BR/>Bon voyage.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-58988329739575942832007-03-29T19:04:00.000+02:002007-03-29T19:04:00.000+02:00LI, sorry about my prior rambling comment. I reall...LI, sorry about my prior rambling comment. I really should try to be more precise, but am tripping over myself in preparing for a trip.<BR/>I love your comment about the mobility of SM's work, something one can scarcely say of Wagner. I think there are some pretty high stakes at play in SM's - and CB before him - confrontation with Wagner. (Curiously, it all begins with a letter! from CB to RW.)<BR/>you're right of course about how SM reverses the order of anaphora, all these very precise re-versions, in-versions, to try and get to a precise "point" where rhythm - and repetition - is stopped, suspended, such that the irrepeatable flashes for an instant.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-43844599353966917842007-03-29T16:57:00.000+02:002007-03-29T16:57:00.000+02:00ps- I wish you'd explain a little more about explo...ps- I wish you'd explain a little more about explosion-interruption, inhuman force - and rhythm. When I said that Mallarme inverts the order of anaphora - the referencing bits in language that usually depend on some precedent noun or phrase - I know he does this because there is another order he is working with - which is, I think, rhythm. Is this right?Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-12279949894318994002007-03-29T16:52:00.000+02:002007-03-29T16:52:00.000+02:00Amie, that is some comment!I think the reference t...Amie, that is some comment!<BR/>I think the reference to Wagner is interesting. After all, Mallarme himself was always working on the supreme work - it guided his life since he imagined it, out there in the sticks, in the late 1860s. I've been reading his bio - when the Franco-Prussian war broke out, he was planning to take up his friend Catulle Mendes offer of half of his house in Paris. Mendes, at the time, was actually interviewing Wagner, and had to leave Germany - fleeing, as a matter of fact, to Avignon, where Mallarme and his wife were living. <BR/>I'm running on about these biographical details because Mallarme's great work was highly mobile, in a sense - he was carrying it with him - whereas Wagner's was, while technically modern, anachronistically feudal, requiring the patronage we all know he depended on. <BR/><BR/>I'm sorry, I'm not responding to you so much as sort of moving into place the elements for a possible response. Since, of course, you are right: the fait divers, the fait di-vers, and the total work of art form a little dialectical set that impinge on the side show act interrupted. (Oh, the imprecision of trying to be precise - the translator's worst curse).Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-41350753659357492222007-03-29T07:57:00.000+02:002007-03-29T07:57:00.000+02:00LI, you're quite right that dates matter, and in m...LI, you're quite right that dates matter, and in more than one way, and more than once, I wager. <BR/>For one thing, some of Mallarmé's texts are customarily grouped as 'vers de circonstance', and they are generally referred to as his <BR/>"frivolous" stuff. wouldn't deny the frivolity, but what if all his poems - if not all poems! - are vers de circonstance, and this of course relates to the question of the fait-divers.<BR/>My previous comment was pretty much off the cuff - didn't have my well thumbed OC at hand - so didn't remember the exact date of your translated text, just that several of the texts in Divagations were published during the 90s in La Revue Blanche under FF, and also in an English rag devoted to literature and politics, 'The National Observer', where SM wrote a text on the Panama Canal Company collapse, subsequent "trial" and "scandal". The text is titled L'Or. <BR/><BR/>I was also thinking that for the publication of Divagations in 1897, SM arranged the texts such that Grands Faits Divers, what he calls poèmes critiques, is the 'culmination' of the 'book'... <BR/><BR/>But I'm digressing, delaying responding to your question!<BR/><BR/>LI, yup, the essential in the poem is exactly the 'suspended instant' of the speech of the bear, and the sussuration of the gas. You put them in terms of the imaginary and the material, but I wonder if with SM one could not articulate them as mimesis and techne? (you know, a bear that speaks, etc.! the question of the buffoon and the sage yet again!)<BR/><BR/>The amazing thing with SM is that he does not only try to interrupt - explode - the fait divers, and the economie politique which it is tied with, (you know his famous "line" about there being but aesthetics and political economy) but that he also finds it absolutely necessary of doing the same to aesthetics, and the latter as best exemplified by Wagner and his 'total work of art'. Not to get into the analysis by SM of Wagner in Divagations, but I do think they touch on something of your question, as it is a matter of the cult(ure) of heroes, kings, etc., of addressing the question of models to imitate where there are no longer any models!<BR/>Neither the rule of political economy nor the rule of myth. What the fuck else is there!?<BR/>SM's contesting Wagner - and the fait divers - is precisely about rhythm. Wagner ( i.e. art ) and the fait divers saturate everything, inundate, overwhelm, there is no longer any gap, any space to move think breathe. <BR/>Re your question of the movement of the crowd, to put it super simplistically, with art (music, spectacle) one is carried away in a communal effusion, but it is the task of 'poetry' to interrupt this movement, to punctuate it, with the theatre of a 'page' which is nothing but punctuation! ( SM writes somewhere of wanting to write a page that would be nothing but punctuation marks!) <BR/>SM knew about negativity and the void as did Mr. Hegel as the moving force of 'history', but he also sensed it as a suspension, as among others did Beckett:<BR/>Encore une seconde. Rien qu'une. Le temps de aspirer ce vide. Connaître ce bonheur.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-48449722831876493962007-03-29T00:32:00.000+02:002007-03-29T00:32:00.000+02:00oops, I meant 3 years after the commune. So after ...oops, I meant 3 years after the commune. So after the second empire.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-613669506558862592007-03-28T21:54:00.000+02:002007-03-28T21:54:00.000+02:00Amie, ah, you have me pegged! Now, here is a quest...Amie, ah, you have me pegged! Now, here is a question for you in return. I like the idea of an exploded immanence. But - as I was going to say in a post that I decided not to put up - the immanence of the fait divers is of a violence such that the crowd around it can either crush forward or move back -crushing forward in that contagious desire to revenge the wounded socius, and move back to avoid the violence. We know this urban rhythm. So is Mallarme, by seeking other act of violence, making a gesture to, in a sense, destroy this predictable movement of the crowd, or to give it another direction, or to annul the danger he sees in it? I don't want to fix too political a tag on him! But dates are interesting, still. This was written before the commune, I believe, in 1874, although divagations came out in the anarchist 90s. In the poem, everything depends upon one suspended instant in which the only sounds are imaginary (the speech of the bear) and material (the sussuration of the gas). The bear's speech is the hardest part of this thing to translate and I haven't quite got it right yet. Actually, Mallarme's french really does have to be translated into the English of the late Henry James to sound at all like Mallarme.<BR/><BR/>ps - and of course, here we have another of the infinitely labile couplings of the sage and the buffoon, except that the sage is a buffoon and the buffoon is a bear.Roger Gathmannhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11257400843748041639noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077210.post-6488898632689700972007-03-28T21:04:00.000+02:002007-03-28T21:04:00.000+02:00LI,I do have to hand it to you, and not just becau...LI,<BR/>I do have to hand it to you, and not just because you're crazy enough to try and translate SM! Being quite crazy myself, I have an inkling about what you are upto with this jumpcut from Barthes to SM re the fait divers.<BR/>I bet you know that these articles by SM first appeared in La Revue Blanche run by Félix Fénéon , and know what the latter was allegedly accused of...<BR/>So I'll translate just one line from SM, "there is no explosion but a book..."<BR/>Isn't the question for SM that of 'exploding' the immanance of the fait divers, or as SM might say, fait dit-vers?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com