No. 11 - T.S. and me

I might be getting a chance to work on a new critical edition of T.S. Eliot's complete works as a student researcher at the Harry Ransom Center. I'm absolutely ecstatic at the possibility. And for that, here's an Eliot prose-poem:

Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: "If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..." I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.

An interlude

Finals. I'll be mentally prepared to write anything that's not about brides in English drama or Guy Crouchback in a few days, bear with me. For now, here's a picture from pg. 3 of Zak Smith's "Pictures showing what happens on each page of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow":


"A screaming comes across the sky...Above him lift girders...the carriage, which is built on several levels...drunks, old veterans...hustlers...derelicts, exhausted women with more children..."

No. 10 - "The Night Porter" and Charlotte Rampling

Alright, so I've currently been watching films that deal with post-WWII Nazism for my German history course, and have come across a real jewel. Directed by Liliana Cavani, The Night Porter is about the reunion of an SS concentration camp officer and his former victim/lover. It's ridiculously atmospheric, sadistic, erotic, and powerful and strikes me as a more Italian version of Polanski; it's also one of the first films to explore the fetishism of military violence and the third reich (which would eventually give us Ilsa [see: No. 7]). But the film only accomplishes all of this through then young actress Charlotte Rampling, whose performance is beautifully ethereal and haunting. Watch it for yourself, it's out on Criterion.

No. 9 - Camels

There is seriously some logic to this picture. Ten dollars to anyone that can guess it. Christ, I'm getting antsy.

No. 8 - Dockery and Son

For tonight, the poem I just finished a paper on:

Dockery and Son
by Philip Larkin

‘Dockery was junior to you,

Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’

Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do

You keep in touch with—’ Or remember how

Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight

We used to stand before that desk, to give

‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’?

I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.

A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.

Canal and clouds and colleges subside

Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord,

Anyone up today must have been born

In ’43, when I was twenty-one.

If he was younger, did he get this son

At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn

High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms

With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows

How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose

I fell asleep, waking at the fumes

And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed,

And ate an awful pie, and walked along

The platform to its end to see the ranged

Joining and parting lines reflect a strong

Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife,

No house or land still seemed quite natural.

Only a numbness registered the shock

Of finding out how much had gone of life,

How widely from the others. Dockery, now:

Only nineteen, he must have taken stock

Of what he wanted, and been capable

Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how

Convinced he was he should be added to!

Why did he think adding meant increase?

To me it was dilution. Where do these

Innate assumptions come from? Not from what

We think truest, or most want to do:

Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style

Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,

Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got

And how we got it; looked back on, they rear

Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying

For Dockery a son, for me nothing,

Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage.

Life is first boredom, then fear.

Whether or not we use it, it goes,

And leaves what something hidden from us chose,

And age, and then the only end of age.

_______________________________________

Gives you chills, aye? No one does the human lacking like Larkin.

No. 7 - Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS

Ilsa is the Commandant for Special Camp 9, the medical research branch of the SS - you remember, that one branch that was composed completely of female SS soldiers who slept with all of the prisoners then castrated them. No? Me neither. The film was an underground phenomenon in the 70s, and help to kick off a whole wave of Nazisploitation films, the like of which included Gestapo's Last Orgy, Love Camp 7, and SS Experiment Camp. Most of these films are as/if not more extreme than Ilsa, often centering around the concentration camp brothels and medical experiments in sexuality. But I can't imagine a time when Ilsa really would have been horrifying. I mean, it's excessively gory and sexual, and I suppose there are some pretty disturbing images in light of its historical context, but come on. My favorite part is when the SS general has her pee on him in honor of her great medical breakthroughs. Well worth a rental.