A.
Joanna Neborsky, from Illustrated Three-Line Novels: Félix Fénéon.
B.
Einstein on the Beach at the Metropolitan Opera, 1976
I was listening to a recording of Einstein on the Beach on my way to/from class today (really just Knee 5 on repeat) and remembered that it’s going to be restaged next year at BAM by Glass and Wilson. If Wilson really wanted to make my life complete, he’d revive his version of Hamletmachine, a play with virtually no stage directions and characters like “Hamletperformer”:
I am not Hamlet. I have no more role to play. My words have nothing more to say to me. My thoughts drain the images of their blood. My drama does not take place anymore. By people who aren’t interested in my drama, for people whom it doesn’t concern. I’m not interested any more either. I’m not playing any more.
I saw Tom McCarthy give a reading/Q&A at McNally Jackson a few months ago, before I read C, and he brought up a bunch of semi-obscure things I like, including Müller, which led me to believe that I’d like his book. I didn’t like his book. After I finished C, I decided to read Remainder, figuring that I should give him another chance—after all, Hamletmachine. I didn’t like that one either.
C.
Heidelberg Totentanz, c. 1460s
“Searching online I find a recent ruling: Rabbis have decreed that the name of God, as it appears on the computer, is not sacred and can be deleted at will. This is because the screen has no permanence but is constantly refreshed, light beaming at its surface approximately sixty times per second. The Name, then, is merely a projection, and exists only in light, which is everlasting.” - Joshua Cohen, The Font of the Hand.
This essay is excellent and when I re-read it more closely today, it reminded me of three things:
1. My extended family is currently embroiled in an intergenerational/interdenominational email battle over an upcoming family reunion. The main issue at hand is, at least for the moment, whether or not we should be having a party on Shabbat and for some reason my long-dead great-great-grandfather Velvel keeps getting dragged into it. The best response thus far: “Jewish guilt doesn’t work as well over email.”
2. I was looking for an old essay earlier today and came across a set of translations and notes from a (mandatory, as I recall) class I took in college on the history of English:
Hie (pers.pron.3rd.pl-NOM) þæt (that) gelæston (carried-out) swa (thus/so)
& sona (immediately) þone (the-ACC) cyning (king-ACC) gefliemdon (put-to-flight) mid (with) his (pers.pron.3rd.sg-GEN) folce. (people-DAT)
Þa (then) aweston (destroyed) hie (pers.pron3rd.pl-NOM) ealle (all-ACC) ægypte (Egypt-ACC) buton (except) þæm (the-DAT) fenlondum (fen-lands-DAT)
& þa (when) hie (pers.pron.3rd.pl-NOM) hamweard (homeward) wendon (turned) be (by) westan (west-DAT) þære (the-GEN) ie (river-GEN) Eufrate (Euphrates-GEN)
ealle (all-ACC) Asiam (Asia-ACC) hie (pers.pron.3rd.pl-NOM) genieddon (compelled)
þæt (that) hie (pers.pron.3rd.pl-NOM) him (pers.pron.3rd.pl-DAT) gafol (tribute-ACC) guldon (yielded)
& þær (there) wæron (were) [fiftene (fifteen-ACC) gear (years-ACC)] þæt (that-ACC) lond (land-ACC) herigende & westende (plundering and ravaging)
I have only the vaguest sense of what any of this actually means, though it’s nice to know that I must have understood it at one point (after all: it’s in my handwriting.)
3. I have a midterm on late-Gothic printed books on Tuesday.
