auto-starvation. And that
was only to start with: in Zanzibar a monstrous shark would
swallow Ivan, his third; in Milan his fourth, Odilon, Luchino
Visconti's right-hand man at La Scala, had a particularly bony
portion of turbot catch in his throat; and in Honolulu his fifth,
Urbain, was a victim of hirudination, slain by a gigantic worm
sucking his blood, totally draining him, so that as many as 20
transfusions would fail to bring him back. So Conson has a soli-
tary surviving son, Yvon; but his liking for Yvon is gradually
diminishing, as Yvon, living so far away, now hardly visits his
poor old dad.
Conson ransacks Anton Vowl's flat from top to bottom; calls on
that Samaritan living two doors down who informs him about
Cochin ablating Vowl's sinus; and asks anybody who might assist
him in tracking down his companion.
Vowl's flat is in a most unpromising sort of building, wholly
4 4
without "standing": walls in a whitish stucco; filthy, poor-quality
cotton rugs losing tufts of dank hair on an almost daily basis; a
narrow drawing room; an untidy living room with a mouldy sofa
josding a cupboard that has a rancid oniony stink about it and
a trio of horribly kitschy prints stuck on to its shaky doors with
a Band-Aid; a bow window of milky-murky glass giving off a
dark and turbid glow, a pallid photocopy of sunlight; a monkish
cot to doss down on with torn pillows and a quilt full of scummy
stains; and a dingy lavatory-cum-washroom with a jug, a pot, a
bowl, a razor and a washcloth hanging all in rags, off which
a tiny stowaway of an animal, a moth but just possibly a rat, had
got fat.
Cautiously lifting down, from a flagrandy DIY-built rack, a
stack of dusty old books with grubby bindings and torn stitchings
and a lot of rambling, criss-crossing annotations and marginalia,
Amaury is drawn to 5 or 6 works that Vowl was obviously study-
ing with a particular goal in mind: Gombrich's Art and Illusion,
Witold Gombrowicz's Cosmos , Monica Wittig's L'Opoponax,
Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus , Noam Chomsky, Roman
Jakobson and, finally, Louis Aragon's Blanc ou I'Oubli.
Now Conson starts rummaging about a bulky cardboard box
and finds a host of manuscripts proving to his satisfaction that
his companion was thirsty for instruction, for Vowl, who was
always an anal, finicky sort of chap, hadn't thrown out anything
dating from his schooldays. Studying it rapdy, practically word
by word, Amaury could thus follow from its halting origins all
of what you might call Anton's curriculum studiorum.
First, composition:
Ld ou nous virions jadis, il n'y avait ni autos, ni taxis, ni
autobus; nous allions parfois, mon cousin m'accompagnait,
voir Linda qui habit ait dans un canton voisin. Mais, n'ay ant
pas d'auto, il nous fallait courir tout au long du parcours;
sinon nous arrivions trop tard: Linda avait disparu.
4 5
Unjour vint pourtant ou Linda partitpour toujours. Nous
aurions du la bannir a jamais; mais voild, nous Vaimions.
Nous aimions tant son parfum, son air rayonnant, son blou-
son, son pantalon brun trop long; nous aimions tout.
Mais voild, tout finit: trois ans plus tard, Linda mourut;
nous I'avons appris par basard, un soir, au cours d'un lunch.
Now philosophy:
Kant, analysing a priori intuition, had for an instant a
nagging doubt about his Cogito ("I think, thus L am") and
its validity, knowing that it would fail to account for a situ-
ation in which God, musing on His own primacy in that
Trinity on which Christianity was built, might boast (but to
whom?) of constituting a holistic, all-including "I". "And
so," said Kant, "Spinoza thought to accomplish a mutation
that would abolish all godhood? Judaising Baruch? Bandag-
ing 'Natural suturing it (or, should I say, saturating it),
closing up its gaps, by a Siv with aspirations to Infinity!"
Thus, a Platonician by anticipation, but fallaciously so, Kant
saw Spinoza as part of a long tradition of castrating cosmolo-
gists.
was only to start with: in Zanzibar a monstrous shark would
swallow Ivan, his third; in Milan his fourth, Odilon, Luchino
Visconti's right-hand man at La Scala, had a particularly bony
portion of turbot catch in his throat; and in Honolulu his fifth,
Urbain, was a victim of hirudination, slain by a gigantic worm
sucking his blood, totally draining him, so that as many as 20
transfusions would fail to bring him back. So Conson has a soli-
tary surviving son, Yvon; but his liking for Yvon is gradually
diminishing, as Yvon, living so far away, now hardly visits his
poor old dad.
Conson ransacks Anton Vowl's flat from top to bottom; calls on
that Samaritan living two doors down who informs him about
Cochin ablating Vowl's sinus; and asks anybody who might assist
him in tracking down his companion.
Vowl's flat is in a most unpromising sort of building, wholly
4 4
without "standing": walls in a whitish stucco; filthy, poor-quality
cotton rugs losing tufts of dank hair on an almost daily basis; a
narrow drawing room; an untidy living room with a mouldy sofa
josding a cupboard that has a rancid oniony stink about it and
a trio of horribly kitschy prints stuck on to its shaky doors with
a Band-Aid; a bow window of milky-murky glass giving off a
dark and turbid glow, a pallid photocopy of sunlight; a monkish
cot to doss down on with torn pillows and a quilt full of scummy
stains; and a dingy lavatory-cum-washroom with a jug, a pot, a
bowl, a razor and a washcloth hanging all in rags, off which
a tiny stowaway of an animal, a moth but just possibly a rat, had
got fat.
Cautiously lifting down, from a flagrandy DIY-built rack, a
stack of dusty old books with grubby bindings and torn stitchings
and a lot of rambling, criss-crossing annotations and marginalia,
Amaury is drawn to 5 or 6 works that Vowl was obviously study-
ing with a particular goal in mind: Gombrich's Art and Illusion,
Witold Gombrowicz's Cosmos , Monica Wittig's L'Opoponax,
Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus , Noam Chomsky, Roman
Jakobson and, finally, Louis Aragon's Blanc ou I'Oubli.
Now Conson starts rummaging about a bulky cardboard box
and finds a host of manuscripts proving to his satisfaction that
his companion was thirsty for instruction, for Vowl, who was
always an anal, finicky sort of chap, hadn't thrown out anything
dating from his schooldays. Studying it rapdy, practically word
by word, Amaury could thus follow from its halting origins all
of what you might call Anton's curriculum studiorum.
First, composition:
Ld ou nous virions jadis, il n'y avait ni autos, ni taxis, ni
autobus; nous allions parfois, mon cousin m'accompagnait,
voir Linda qui habit ait dans un canton voisin. Mais, n'ay ant
pas d'auto, il nous fallait courir tout au long du parcours;
sinon nous arrivions trop tard: Linda avait disparu.
4 5
Unjour vint pourtant ou Linda partitpour toujours. Nous
aurions du la bannir a jamais; mais voild, nous Vaimions.
Nous aimions tant son parfum, son air rayonnant, son blou-
son, son pantalon brun trop long; nous aimions tout.
Mais voild, tout finit: trois ans plus tard, Linda mourut;
nous I'avons appris par basard, un soir, au cours d'un lunch.
Now philosophy:
Kant, analysing a priori intuition, had for an instant a
nagging doubt about his Cogito ("I think, thus L am") and
its validity, knowing that it would fail to account for a situ-
ation in which God, musing on His own primacy in that
Trinity on which Christianity was built, might boast (but to
whom?) of constituting a holistic, all-including "I". "And
so," said Kant, "Spinoza thought to accomplish a mutation
that would abolish all godhood? Judaising Baruch? Bandag-
ing 'Natural suturing it (or, should I say, saturating it),
closing up its gaps, by a Siv with aspirations to Infinity!"
Thus, a Platonician by anticipation, but fallaciously so, Kant
saw Spinoza as part of a long tradition of castrating cosmolo-
gists.
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