More Jean Genet
"I live in so closed a universe, the atmosphere of which is thick, a universe seen through my memories of prisons, through my dreams of galleys and through the presence of convicts: murderers, burglars, gangsters, that I do not communicate with the usual world or, when I do perceive it, what I see of it is distorted by the thickness of the wadding in which I move with difficulty. Each object in your world has a meaning different for me from the one it has for you. I refer to everything in my system, in which things have an infernal signification, and even when I read a novel, the facts, without being distorted, lose the meaning which has been given them by the author and which they have for you, and take on another so as to enter smoothly the otherworldly universe in which I live."
- Miracle of the Rose
"Life brings its modifications, and yet the same disturbance (through one that, paradoxically, would spring from the end of a conflict-- for example, when the concentric waves in a pond move away from the point at which the stone fell, when they move farther and farther away and diminish into calm, the water must feel, when this calm is attained, a kind of shudder which is no longer propagated in its matter but in its soul. It knows the plenitude of being water."
"I ruminated for perhaps six second on the words "get used to" and felt a kind of very slight melancholy that can be expressed only by the image of a pile of sand or rubbish. Jean's delicacy was somewhat akin (since it suggests it) to the grave sadness that issues-- along with a very particular odor-- from mortar and broken bricks which, whether hollow or solid, are made of apparently very soft clay. The youngster's face was always ready to crumble, and the words "get used to" have just crumbled it. Amidst the debris of buildings being demolished I sometimes step on ruins whose redness is toned down by the dust, and they are so delicate, discreet, and fragrant with humility that I have the impression I am placing the sole of my shoe on Jean's face."
- Funeral Rites
- Miracle of the Rose
"Life brings its modifications, and yet the same disturbance (through one that, paradoxically, would spring from the end of a conflict-- for example, when the concentric waves in a pond move away from the point at which the stone fell, when they move farther and farther away and diminish into calm, the water must feel, when this calm is attained, a kind of shudder which is no longer propagated in its matter but in its soul. It knows the plenitude of being water."
"I ruminated for perhaps six second on the words "get used to" and felt a kind of very slight melancholy that can be expressed only by the image of a pile of sand or rubbish. Jean's delicacy was somewhat akin (since it suggests it) to the grave sadness that issues-- along with a very particular odor-- from mortar and broken bricks which, whether hollow or solid, are made of apparently very soft clay. The youngster's face was always ready to crumble, and the words "get used to" have just crumbled it. Amidst the debris of buildings being demolished I sometimes step on ruins whose redness is toned down by the dust, and they are so delicate, discreet, and fragrant with humility that I have the impression I am placing the sole of my shoe on Jean's face."
- Funeral Rites
posted by M. at 9:30 PM
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