French Lessons #272

"La lutte avec l'ombre est la seule lutte réelle." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #272

The only time I found myself at all interested
in the concept of a time machine
was when I first heard that baldness in a man
was traceable to his maternal grandfather.

(Billy Collins, The Snag)

French Lessons #271

"Ils [Kafka, Beckett, Bacon] ont donné à la vie un nouveau pouvoir de rire extrêmement direct." (Deleuze)

French Lessons #270

"Sommeil, désir, art : lieux d'étreinte et de résonance, lieux de lutte." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #271

"I'm an Oakland boy and I'll always be an Oakland boy, but if being close to you means traveling into the festering hellhole that is New York, then to the festering hellhole I shall go." (Jason Shiga, Empire State)

Quotes 2017 #270

"They were silent now, watching the darting flight of the birds into the trees. Behind them they could hear the clatter of a sewing machine: Riley's mother was sewing for the white folks. It was quiet, and as the woman worked, her voice rose above the whirring machine in song." (Ralph Ellison)

French Lessons #269

"S'il y a là une géométrie, c'est une géométrie très différente de celle de l'Egypte ou de la Grèce, c'est une géométrie opératoire du trait et de l'accident." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #269

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.

(Wallace Stevens)

「週刊朝日」１０月６日号

「週刊朝日」１０月６日号に服部文祥『息子と狩猟に』（新潮社）の書評を書きました。どっかで読んでね。サバイバル登山家、初の小説。期待を裏切らないおもしろさです。それはそれとして、山に行きたい秋。

French Lessons #268

"'Je me suis cherché moi-même', a dit Héraclite. Et voilà que la brûlante synthèse héraclitéenne est racontée dans un livre [Aurore], sous la forme d'une rhapsodie." (Giorgio Colli)

Quotes 2017 #268

"Lyotard mocks our desire to say it all, to know it all, warning us against any neat tidying up and closing down of thought; his energy derives from an opening up to the mode of uncertainty which carries many different names: Dérive, 1968, Les Immatériaux, childhood." (Kiff Bamford)

French Lessons #267

"Ce qui est peint, c'est la sensation. Beauté de ces Figures mêlées. Elles ne sont pas confondues, mais rendues indiscernables par l'extrême présision des lignes qui acquièrent une sorte d'autonomie par rapport aux corps : comme dans un DIAGRAMME dont les lignes n'uniraient que des sensations." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #267

"I decided to lop him off if it meant a smother party. (This is a rural English custom designed to eliminate aged and bedfast dependents. A family so afflicted throws a 'smother party' where the guests pile mattresses on the old liability, climb up on top of the mattresses and lush themselves out.)" (Burroughs, Naked Lunch)

Did this custom really exist? This is so disgusting.

French Lessons #266

"La formule de Bacon, ce serait figurativement pessimiste, mais figuralement optimiste." (Deleuze)

French Lessons #265

"On peut croire que Bacon rencontre Artaud sur beaucoup de points : la Figure, c'est précisément le corps sans organes (défaire l'organisme au profit du corps, le visage au profit de la tête)..." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #266

Nothing like death stepped, nothing like death paused,
Nothing like death has such hair, arms so raised.
Why are your feet bare? Was not death to come?
Why is he not here? What summer have you broken from?

(Larkin)

Quotes 2017 #265

When I was a child, I thought
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.

(Larkin)

「妃」１９号

田中庸介さん発行の詩誌「妃」１９号完成。ぼくは１６０行弱の「重力、樹木」を寄稿しました。これまで以上に充実、みなさんの作品を楽しみつつ読んでいます。

で、季村敏夫さんがぼくの詩集『数と夕方』の書評を書いてくださいました。９月２１日発売予定だったんだけど、じつはまだできてません！　ゲラのコピーで書いていただき、恐縮。でもとてもうれしく拝見しました。

「管さん、神戸の垂水という海辺にぼくは住んでいます。民謡のない街ですが、川があり漁港があり、水源の山影から風がおくられます。河口には散乱した塵や 芥が尖った時間をさらし、漂着します。ぼくらはみつめられるものとして漂着物と出会いますが、みつめかえすことで、「詩の仕事」を新たに見出そうとおもっ ています。」（季村さんからの引用）

ありがとうございました！ぜひまたどこかでお目にかかれますように。

Quotes 2017 #264

Now you become my boredom and my failure,
Another way of suffering, a risk,
A heavier-than-air hypostasis.

(Larkin)

Quotes 2017 #263

And the waves sing because they are moving.
And the waves sing above a cemetery of waters.

(Philip Larkin)

French Lessons #264

"Bacon suggère que, au-delà du cri, il y a le sourire, auquel il n'a pas pu accéder, dit-il. Bacon est certainement modeste ; en fait il a peint des sourires qui sont parmi les plus beaux de la peinture. Et qui ont la plus étrange fonction, celle d'assurer l'évanouissement du corps." (Deleuze)

French Lessons #263

"Tout le corps s'échappe par la bouche qui crie." (Deleuze)

French Lessons #262

"Vous aimeriez pouvoir dans un portrait faire de l'apparence un Sahara, le faire si ressemblant bien qu'il semble contenir les distances du Sahara." (Francis Bacon cité par Deleuze)

French Lessons #261

"La tête-viande, c'est un devenir-animal de l'homme. Et dans ce devenir, tout le corps tend à s'échapper, et la Figure tend à rejoindre la structure matérielle." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #262

"The artist John James Audubon described one flock [of passenger pigeons] he saw in 1813. 'The air was literally filled with pigeons,' he wrote. 'The light of noon day was obscured as by an eclipse, the dung fell in spots, not unlike melting flakes of snow.'" (Jim Robbins, The Wonder of Birds)

Quotes 2017 #261

"Dial describes to me three types of walking. He holds up the first finger to further explain. 'You and I and bears are PLANTIGRADE. In other words, we plant our heels and toes and walk off our toes.' He holds up a second finger. 'Your cat and dog are DIGITIGRADES. They walk on their digits. Lastly a horse, wildebeest, or goat walks on its toenails. It's called UNGULIGRADE,' he adds, raising a third finger. 'Birds,' he concludeds, with admiration, 'do all of those things.'" (Jim Robbins, The Wonder of Birds)

French Lessons #260

Nous avons essayé de faire de la ritournelle l'un de nos concepts principaux, en rapport avec le territoire et la Terre, la petite et la grande ritournelles." (Deleuze)

Yesterday began the exhibition Songlines at the National Museum of Australia. "Seven Sisters" myth is all over Australia. Each tribal myth in this sense is an actual map and a "petite ritournelle." All together they form a "grande ritournelle," the Earth.

Quotes 2017 #260

"They fade. Now the one. Now twain. Now both. Fade back. Now the one. Now the twain. Now both. Fade? No. Sudden go. Sudden back. Now the one. Now the twain. Now both." (Beckett)

French Lessons #259

"Les percepts ne sont pas des perceptions, ce sont des paquets de sensations et de relations qui survivent à celui qui les éprouvent. Les affects ne sont pas des sentiments, ce sont des devenirs qui débordent celui qui passe par eux (il devient autre). " (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #259

"Far more nectar is available to birds in Australia than on other continents---enough to fight over, and harsh cries assert possession. Australia's eucalypts and paperbarks (Melaleuca) are the only bird-pollinated trees on earth to form vast forests, and wattlebirds and lorikeets are important pollinators of their flowers." (Tim Low, WHERE SONG BEGAN)

French Lessons #258

"C'est que le concept, je crois, comporte deux autres dimensions, celles du percept et de l'affect. C'est cela qui m'intéresse, et non les images." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #258

i dreamt i was a bird (Richard Brautigan)

I
dreamt
I was a bird
sitting
in an apple tree.

The sun
was out
and my feathers
were warm.

I was
resting
between courting
sessions
when some kids
snipped me off
with a BB gun.

French Lessons #257

"La philosophie a une fonction qui reste parfaitement actuelle, créer des concepts. Personne ne peut le faire à sa place." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #257

"On. Stare on. Say on. Somehow on. Anyhow on. Till dim gone. At long last gone. All at long last gone. For bad and all. For poor best worse and all." (Beckett)

French Lessons #256

"Nous n'avons pas collaboré, nous avons fait un livre puis un autre, non pas au sens d'une unité, mais un article indéfini." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #256

"Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All least." (Beckett)

French Lessons #255

"Le concept, c'est ce qui empêche la pensée d'être une simple opinion, un avis, une discussion, un bavardage. Tout concept est un paradoxe, forcément." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #255

"If the voice is not speaking to him it must be speaking to another. So with what reason remains he reasons. To another of that other. Or of him. Or of another still. To another of that other or of him of another still." (Beckett)

In Canberra

I am now in Canberra, staying at ANU's guest house. Later this week I'll be participating in these events! If you are in the area (or in Australia anyway) please do plan to attend. This will make history.

http://japaninstitute.anu.edu.au/events/international-symposium-poetry-and-translation-women-politics-displacement

French Lessons #254

"Un Sahara, une peau de rhinocéros, tel est le diagramme tout d'un coup tendu. C'est comme une CATASTROPHE survenue sur la toile, dans les données figuratives et probabilitaires." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #254

"There is of course the eye. Filling the whole field. The hood slowly down. Or up if down to begin. The globe. All pupil. Staring up. Hooded. Bared. Hooded again. Bared again." (Beckett, "Company")

Quotes #253

"Apart from the voice and the faint sound of his breath there is no sound. None at least that he can hear. This he can tell by the faint sound of his breath." (Beckett, "Company")

French Lessons #253

"Et tout tendait vers la grande identité Spinoza-Nietzsche." (Deleuze)

French Lessons #252

"J'entends par CRITIQUE l'exercise même de la théorie, au sens non d'une doctrine, mais d'une recherche infinie de l'historicité et de la spécificité. La critique est donc essentiellement PHILOLOGUE, au sens de Socrate." (Henri Meschonnic)

Quotes 2017 #252

"And what are my fears? What large cows! When I see them coming, shall I run and lie face down in the gutter? Are they really cows? Can I stand in a field of tall grass and see nothing for miles and miles? On the other hand, the sky, which is big and blue as always, has its limits. This afternoon the wind is loud as in a hurricane." (Jamaica Kincaid)

French Lessons #251

"ll est certain que la musique traverse profondément nos corps, et nous met une oreille dans le ventre, dans les poumons, etc. Elle s'y connaît en onde et nervosité. Mais justement elle entraîne notre corps, et les corps, dans un autre élément. Elle débarrasse les corps de leur inertie, de la matérialité de leur présence. Elle DÉSINCARNE les corps." (Deleuze)

French Lessons #250

"Le temps n'est plus dans le chromatisme des corps, il est passé dans une éternité monochromatique." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #251

"Those voices pull in two directions, back through the political and cultural traumas of Ireland, and out towards the urgencies and experience of the world beyond it. At school I studied the Gaelic literature of Ireland as well as the literature of England, and since then I have maintained a notion of myself as Irish in a province that insists that it is British. Lately I realized that these complex pieties and dilemmas were implicit in the very terrain where I was born." (Seamus Heaney)

Quotes 2017 #250

"I would begin with the Greek word, omphalos, meaning the navel, and hence the stone that marked the centre of the world, and repeat it, omphalos, omphalos, omphalos, until its blunt and falling music becomes the music of somebody pumping water at the pump outside our back door." (Seamus Heaney)

French Lessons #249

"Le sophiste n'est pas l'être (ou le non-être) de la contradiction, mais celui qui porte toutes choses à l'état de simulacre, et les porte toutes dans cet état." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #249

"The birth of philosophy required an ENCOUNTER between the Greek milieu and the plane of immanence of thought." (D & G)

French Lessons #248

"Le connaissant n'est pas, il n'est pas saisissable." (Sartre)

Quotes 2017 #248

"Concepts are not waiting for us ready-made, like heavenly bodies. There is no heaven for concepts. They must be invented, fabricated, or rather created and would be nothing without their creator's signature." (Deleuze & Guattari)

French Lessons #247

"Tout est question de ligne, il n'y a pas de différence considérable entre la peinture, la musique et l'écriture." (Deleuze)

So this must be the starting point for Tim Ingold's Lines.

Quotes 2017 #247

She touches the clouds, where she goes
In the circle of her traverse of the sea.

(Stevens)

French Lessons #246

"L'homme ne devient animal que si l'animal, de son côté, devient son, couleur, ou ligne. C'est un bloc de devenir toujours asymétrique." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #246

Look in the terrible mirror of the sky.
See how the absent moon waits in a glade
Of your dark self, and how the wings of stars,
Upward, from unimagined coverts, fly.

(Wallace Stevens, who else!)

French Lessons #245

"La tortue est sage, dit un texte ancien--c'est-à-dire douée de pouvoirs magico-religieux--car elle porte des dessins sur son dos." (J. Garnet cité par Derrida)

Quotes 2017 #245

"Beyond the heronry, if it were cloudy as yesterday, the seagreen and the mintgreen of the morass grass, the moonstone blue of the river surface absorbing the muted light, the celadon blue of the Japan Sea laced with the breaker waves in oxidized silver, and the liquid jade green sky with fat cream poured in--all those colors would be fused and mirror on one's cornea behind the cool veil of the early autumn." (Kyoko Yoshida)

French Lessons #244

"Contrairement à une peinture misérabiliste qui peint des bouts d'organes, Bacon n'a pas cessé de peindre des corps sans organes, le fait intensif du corps." (Deleuze)

Quotes 2017 #244

"You repeat some of his early mispronunciations of words: hangaburger for hamburger, human bean for human being, chuthers for each other--as in THEY KISSED THEIR CHUTHERS--and the perfectly logical but demented MOMMY'S AMI, following a reference by your mother to the city of Miami." (Paul Auster)