#it’s not a universal Instrument of patriarchal torture

[marzipanandminutiae]

Just read the weirdest gotcha against asserting that corsets were not universal torture devices, on Instagram

Some bright spark challenges a historical costumer, “if you think corsets were so comfortable, why don’t you just WEAR ONE?!“

Oh

Oh no

 please don’t tell me to wear a corset

I would just. I hate that so much. I would hate it especially if it were of sage green cotton sateen with black flossing designs. That would. Suck so bad.

Oh commenter, please don’t buy me a RedThreaded gift card, since they’re having a sale right now, and thus compel me to take up this vile challenge

[leftistfeminista]

Photograph of protest art from a report on the sexual torture of women political prisoners under the Pinochet regime. In educating the masses on what women endured, it is crucial to confront them with the direct brutality and horror of what women suffered. When threatened by the revolutionary power of women, the patriarchal capitalist state reduced them to a literal position of sexual slavery. Naked and blindfolded they were dragged around by chains attached to their necks. When pulled the chain would put enormous strain on their vulnerable necks choking them and cutting off oxygen. It was an instrument of control to keep militant women in submission and compliance. Survivors recall the cruel taunts "Look at you now, puta. Chained and collared like the communist animal you are." Instead of being silenced by humiliation and shame, creating this gigantic protest art reverses the shame. It is of crucial symbolism that despite being blindfolded, we can still look into her eyes. Whatever the Junta thugs attempted to reduce her to, she is still a revolutionary heroine.

La violencia sexualcomo forma de torturahacia las mujeres

The military dictatorship that began in Chile in 1973, after a bloody coup that overthrew President Salvador Allende and left thousands of people dead, missing,

Imprisoned and expelled from the territory, during the 17 years he was in power, he exercised permanent repression and persecution of men and women considered "dangerous" to the stability of the de facto regime. Torture, in its various forms, began on the same day as the coup against people who were taken prisoner in the streets, houses, workplaces, universities, factories, neighborhoods, and continued with great intensity throughout the period in which the military were in power, with Augusto Pinochet at the helm.

Women were not absent from this sad record. In fact, many still suffer today from the profound physical and psychological consequences left by torture, and many others died as a result of it. Sexual violence was a main part of the sessions with which the military of the various branches ruthlessly sought to punish women who dared to politically dissent, or who helped in one way or another people opposed to the regime.

However, despite the fact that torture with sexual violence was experienced by a large number of the prisoners, it was not always viewed by them as a practice with gender-based violence connotations.

On this occasion, we present an article by the Chilean psychologist Carolina Carrera, from the La Morada Corporation, Citizenry and Human Rights Area, which refers to the research "Women victims of sexual violence as torture during political repression in Chile, 1973-1990. An open secret", carried out by this organization and by the Women's Institute, with the aim of making visible that during the Pinochet dictatorship women were subjected to specific torture because of their sex.

We complement this writing with an interview with Dr. María Isabel Matamala, an expert in gender and women's health issues, with extensive experience in defending human rights, who, from her personal experience as a former political prisoner, refers to the traces of torture and sexual violence and to the need to give space to the stories as a way of healing for the victims and society as a whole. Stories that have mostly been silenced until today.

[whocookedthelastsupper]

“Mother Goddess lost her sacred status and the power that went with it; and in this violent downgrading queens, priestesses and ordinary women at every stage of their lives, from birth to death, shared in the loss of the "mother-right" The phallus now separating out from the rites of mother-worship becomes a sacred object of veneration in itself, then the center of all creative power, displacing the womb, and finally both symbol and instrument of masculine domination over women, children, Mother Earth and other men. When all life flowed from the female, creation had been a unity; when the elements became separated out, male became the moving spirit, and female was reduced to matter. With this god-idea of manhood, Mesopotamian males fought through their fears of being slaves of the woman-god by destroying her godhead and making slaves of women.

What this meant for women may be illustrated by the story of Hypatia, the Greek mathematician and philosopher. Trained from her birth in about A.D. 370 to reason, to question and to think, she became the leading intellectual of Alexandria, where she taught phi-losophy, geometry, astronomy and algebra at the university. She is known to have performed original work in astronomy and algebra, as well as inventing the astrolabe and the planisphere, an apparatus for distilling water, and a hydroscope or aerometer for measuring the specific gravity of liquids. Adored by her pupils, she was widely regarded as an oracle, and known simply as "The Philosopher" or "The Nurse." But her philosophy of scientific rationalism ran counter to the dogma of the emerging religion of Christianity, as did her womanhood and the authority she held. In a terrorist attack of the sort with which women were to become all too familiar, Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria in A.D. 415, incited a mob of zealots led by his monks to drag her from her chariot, strip her naked and torture her to death by slicing her flesh from her bones with shells and sharpened flints.

Hypatia's infamous murder signified more than the death of one innocent middle-aged scientist. In Cyril and his bigots, every thinking woman could foresee the shape of men to come. The aggressive rise of phallicism had revolutionized thought and behavior, but it was not enough. Domination was not absolute, systems were imperfect, there was still too much room to maneuver —control could not be based* on an organ that men could not control. There had to be more-an idea of immanent, eternal maleness that was not physical, visible, fallible; one that was greater than all women because greater than man; whose power was omnipotent and unquestionable— one God, God the Father, who man now invented in his own image.”

All men allow women to have been the founders of religion. —STRABO (64 B.C.-A.D. 21)

Behind man's insistence on masculine superiority there is an age-old envy of women. —ERIK ERIKSON

-Rosalind Miles; Who Cooked The Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World

[wokestonecraft]

I started reading Silvia Federici’s book “Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation” after that infamous tiktok where a young woman confidently states that misogyny did not emerge until the modern period as a result of capitalism, and cites Federici despite fundamentally misunderstanding the point of her writing, and I think this book is very much worth reading.

She critiques both Marxist and Feminist theories of history, but damn, does she come really come for Foucault in her introduction to Caliban and the Witch. (Bolding mine)

“A further question addressed by Caliban and the Witch is raised by the contrasting perspectives offered by the feminist and Foucauldian analyses of the body in their applications to an understanding of the history of capitalist development. from the beginning of the Women’s Movement, feminist activists and theorists have seen the concept of the “body” as key to an understanding of the roots of male dominance and the construction of female social identity. Across idealogical differences, the feminists have realized that hierarchal ranking of human faculties and the identification of women with a degraded conception of corporeal reality has been instrumental, historically, to the consolidation of patriarchal power and the male exploitation of female labor. Thus, analyses of sexuality, procreation, and mothering have been at the center of feminist theory and women’s history. In particular, feminists have uncovered and denounced the strategies and the violence by means of which male-centered systems of exploitation have attempted to discipline and appropriate the female body, demonstrating that women’s bodies have been the main targets, the privileged sites, for the deployment of power-techniques and power-relations. Indeed, the many feminist studies which have been produced since the early 1970s on the policing of women’s reproductive function, the effects on women of rape and battering, and the imposition upon them of beauty as a condition for social acceptability, are a monumental contribution to the discourse on he body in our times, falsifying the perception common among academics which attributes its discovery to Michel Foucault. 

Starting from an analysis of “body-politics,” feminists have not only revolutionized the contemporary philosophical and political discourse, but they have also begun to devalorize the body. This has been a necessary step both to counter the negativity attached to the identification of femininity with corporeality, and to create a more holistic vision of what it means to be a human being. This valorization has taken various forms, ranging from the quest for non-dualistic forms of knowledge, to the attempt (with feminists who view sexual “difference” as a positive value) to develop a new type of language and “[re]think the corporeal roots of human intelligence.” As Rosi Braidotti has pointed out, the body that is reclaimed is never to be understood as a biological given. Nevertheless, such slogans as “repossessing the body” or “speaking the body” have been criticized by post-structuralist, Foucauldian theorists, who reject as illusory any call for instinctual liberation. In turn, feminists have accused Foucault’s discourse on sexuality as being oblivious to sexual differentiation, while at the same time appropriating many fo the insights developed by the Feminist Movement. This criticism is quite appropriate. Moreover, Foucault is so intrigued with the “productive” character of the power-techniques by which the body has been invested, that his analysis practically rules out any critique of power-relations. The nearly apologetic quality of Foucault’s theory of the body is accentuated by the fact that is views the body as constituted by purely discursive practices, and is more interested in describing how power is deployed than in identifying its source. Thus, the Power by which the body is produced appears as a self-subsistent, metaphysical entity, ubiquitous, disconnected from social and economic relations, and as mysterious in is permutations as a godly Prime Mover.

Can an analysis of the transition to capitalism and primitive accumulation help us go beyond these alternatives? I believe I can. With regard to the feminist approach, our first step should be to document the social and historic conditions under which the body has become a central element and the defining sphere of activity for the constitution of femininity. Along these lines, Caliban and the Witch shows that the body has been for women in capitalist society what the factory has been fore male waged workers: the primary ground of their exploitation and resistance, as the female body has been appropriated by the state and men and forced to function as a means for the reproduction and accumulation of labor. Thus, the importance which the body in all its aspects -- maternity, childbirth, sexuality, -- has acquired in feminist theory and women history has not been misplaced. Caliban and the Witch also confirms the feminist insight which refuses to identify the body with the sphere of the private and, in this vein, speaks of “body politics.” Further it can explains how the body can be for some both a source of identity and at the same time a prison, and why it is so important for feminists and, at the same time, so problematic to valorize it.

As for Foucault’s theory, the history of primitive accumulation offers many counter-examples to it, proving it can be defended only at the price of outstanding historical omissions. The most obvious is the omission of the witch-hunt and the discourse of demonology in his analysis of the disciplining of the body. Undoubtedly, they would have inspired different conclusions had they been included. For both demonstrate the repressive character of the power that was unleashed against women, and the implausibility of the complicity and role-reversal that Foucault imagines to exist between victims and their persecutors in his description of the dynamic of micro-powers.

A study of the witch-hunt also challenged Foucault’s theory concerning the development of “bio-power,” stripping it of the mystery by which Foucault surrounds the emergence of this regime. Foucault registers the shift -- presumably in 18th century Europe -- from a type of power built on the right to kill, to a different one exercised through the administration and promotion of life-forces, such as population growth; but he offers no clues as to its motivations. Yet, if we place this shift in the context of rise of capitalism the puzzle vanishes, for the promotion of life-forces turns out to be nothing more than the result of a new concern with accumulation and reproduction of labor-power. We can also see that the promotion of population growth by the state can go hand in hand with a massive destruction of life; for in many historical circumstances -- witness the history of the slave trade -- one is a condition for the other. Indeed, in a system where life subordinated to the production of profit, the accumulation of labor-power can only be achieved with the maximum of violence so that, in Maria Mies’ words, violence itself becomes the most productive force. 

In conclusion, what Foucault would have learned had he studied the witch-hunt, rather than focusing on the pastoral confession, in his History of Sexuality (1978), is that such history cannot be written for the viewpoint of a universal, abstract, asexual subject. Further. he would have recognized that torture and death can be placed at the service of “life” or, better, at the service pf the production of labor-power, since the goal of capitalist society is to transform life into the capacity to work and “dead labor.””

The body is not and has never been irrelevant to the oppression of women, and women’s resistance. Controlling reproduction is the core of patriarchal subjugation, and to deny that requires a complete glossing over of history. The history of the witch is testament to this, as the ones most vulnerable to those accusations were old women, ugly women, barren women, women on the edge, women without a place, women with knowledge, with property, women without use to men. There’s a reason the monstrous feminine and the symbol of the witch resonates with women, that the idea of existing outside the pressures of female acceptability is possible and powerful. 

Foucault’s theory is utterly useless as tool for the liberation of women; it oesfucates and undermines the truth of women’s oppression and how we can fight back. Post-modernism has no place in feminist theory, and even takes the insights and discoveries of women and attributes them to a man, who then turns those ideas into something to hinder women. 

Honestly, the more I read post-modern theory, the more tired I get. It was refreshing to see someone point out the many flaws of Foucault, while acknowledging the realities of women’s history. I have more to say about the monstrous feminine, but I need to think about how I want to articulate it.

[pamphletstoinspire]

St. Nicholas of Myra Patron Saint of Brides Feast Day: December 6th (Both Calendars) __________

The great veneration with which St. Nicholas has been honored for many ages and the number of altars and churches all over the world that are dedicated in his memory are testimonials to his wonderful holiness and the glory he enjoys with God. As an episcopal see, and his childhood church falling vacant, the holy Nicholas was chosen bishop, and in that station became famous by his extraordinary piety and zeal and by his many astonishing miracles. The Greek histories of his life agree he suffered an imprisonment of the faith and made a glorious confession in the latter part of the persecution raised by Dioletian, and that he was present at the Council of Nicaea and there condemned Arianism. It is said that St. Nicholas died in Myra, and was buried in his cathedral.

St. Nicholas' episcopate at Myra during the fourth century is really all that appears indubitable authentic, according to Alban Butler, an English Roman Catholic priest from the 1700s. This is not for lack of material, beginning with the life attributed to the monk who died in 847 as St. Methodius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Nevertheless, the universal popularity of the saint for so many centuries requires that some account of the legends surrounding his life should be given.

St. Nicholas, also known as "Nikolaos of Myra," was a fourth century saint and Greek bishop of Myra. Nicholas was born in Asia Minor in the Roman Empire as an only child to Christian parents. Nicholas would take nourishment only once on Wednesdays and Fridays, and that in the evening according to the canons. "He was exceedingly well brought up by his parents and trod piously in their footsteps. The child, watched over by the church, enlightened his mind and encouraged his thirst for sincere and true religion." Both of his parents tragically died during an epidemic when he was a young man, leaving him well off, but to be raised by his uncle - the Bishop of Patara. Nicholas was determined to devote his inheritance to works of charity, and his uncle mentored him as a reader and later ordained him as a presbyter (priest).

An opportunity soon arose for St. Nicholas and his inheritance. A citizen of Patara had lost all his money, and needed to support his three daughters who could not find husbands because of their poverty; so the wretched man was going to give them over to prostitution. Nicholas became informed of this, and thus took a bag of gold and threw it into an open window of the man's house in the night. Here was a dowry for the eldest girl and she was soon duly married. At intervals Nicholas did the same for the second and the third; at the last time the father was on the watch, recognized his benefactor and overwhelmed Nicholas with his gratitude. It would appear that the three purses represented in pictures, came to be mistaken for the heads of three children and so they gave rise to the absurdstory of the children, resuscitated by the saint, who had been killed by an innkeeper and pickled in a brine-tub.

Coming to the city of Myra when the clergy and people of the province were in session to elect a new bishop, St. Nicholas was indicated by God as the man they should choose. This was during the time of persecutions in the beginning of the fourth century and "as he [Nicholas] was the chief priest of the Christians of this town and preached the truths of faith with a holy liberty, the divine Nicholas was seized by the magistrates, tortured, then chained and thrown into prison with many other Christians. But when the great and religious Constatine, chosen by God, assumed the imperial diadem of the Romans, the prisoners were released from their bonds and with them the illustrious Nicholas, who when he was set at liberty returned to Myra."

St. Methodius asserts that "thanks to the teaching of St. Nicholas the metropolis of Myra alone was untouched by the filth of the Arian heresy, which it firmly rejected as death-dealing poison," but says nothing of his presence at the Council of Nicaea in 325.

According to other traditions St. Nicholas was not only there during the Council of Nicaea in 325, but so far forgot himself as to give the heresiarch Arius a slap in the face. The conciliar fathers deprived him of his episcopal insignia and committed him to prison; but our Lord and His Mother appeared there and restored to him both his liberty and his office.

As against Arianism so against paganism, St. Nicholas was tireless and often took strong measures: among other temples he destroyed was that of Artemis, the principal in the district, and the evil spirits fled howling before him. He was the guardian of his people as well in temporal affairs. The governor Eustathius had taken a bribe to condemn to death three innocent men. At the time fixed for their execution Nicholas came to the place, stayed the hands of the executioner, and released the prisoners. Then he turned to Eustathiujs and did not cease to reproach him until he admitted his crime and expressed his penitence.

St. Nicholas' presence was found in a separate occasion involving three imperial officers simply on their way to duty in Phrygia. When the men were back again in Constantinople, the jealousy of the prefect Ablavius caused them to be imprisoned on false charges and an order for their death was procured from the Emperor Constantine. When the officers heard this they remembered the example they had witnessed of the powerful love of justice of the Bishop of Myra and they prayed to God that through his merits and by his instrumentality they might yet be saved. That night St. Nicholas appeared in a dream to Constatine, and told him with threats to release the three innocent men, and Ablavius experienced the same thing. In the morning the Emporor and the prefect compared notes, and the condemned men were sent for and questioned. When he heard they had called on the name of the Nicholas of Myra who appeared to him, Constatine set them free and sent them to the bishop with a letter asking him not to threaten him any more, but to pray for the peace of the world. For a long time, this has been the most famous miracle of St. Nicholas, and at the time of St. Methodius was the only thing generally known about him.

The accounts are unanimous that St. Nicholas died and was buried in his episcopal city of Myra, and by the time of Justinian, there was a basilica built in his honor at Constantinople.

An anonymous Greek wrote in the tenth century that, "the West as well as the East acclaims and glorifies him. Wherever there are people, in the country and the town, in the villages, in the isles, in the furthest parts of the earth, his name is revered and churches are built in his honor. Images of him are set up, panegyrics preached and festivals celebrated. All Christians, young and old, men and women, boys and girls, reverence his memory and call upon his protection. And his favors, which know no limit of time and continue from age to age, are poured out over all the earth; the Scythians know them, as do the Indians and the barbarians, the Africans as well as the Italians." When Myra and its great shrine finally passed into the hands of the Saracens, several Italian cities saw this as an opportunity to acquire the relics of St. Nicholas for themselves. There was great competition for them between Venice and Bari.

Bari won and the relics were carried off under the noses of the lawful Greek custodians and their Mohammedan masters. On May 9, 1087 St. Nicholas' relics safetly landed in Bari, a not inappropriate home seeing that Apulia in those days still had large Greek colonies. A new church was built to shelter the relics and the pope, Bd. Urban II, was present at their enshrining.

Devotion to St. Nicholas has been present in the West long before his relics were brought to Italy, but this happening greatly increased his veneration among the people, and miracles were as freely attributed to his intercession in Europe as they had been in Asia. At Myra "the venerable body of the bishop, embalmed as it was in the good ointments of virtue exuded a sweet smelling myrrh, which kept it from corruption and proved a health giving remedy against sickness to the glory o f him who had glorified Jesus Christ, our true God." The translation of the relics did not interrupt this phenomenon, and the "manna of St. Nicholas" is said to flow to this day. It was one of the great attractions that drew pilgrims to his tomb from all parts of Europe.

The image of St. Nicholas is, more often than any other, found on Byzantine seals. In the later middle ages nearly four hundred churches were dedicated in his honor in England alone, and he is said to have been represented by Christian artists more frequently than any saint, except our Lady.

St. Nicholas is celebrated as the patron saint of several classes of people, especially, in the East, of sailors and in the West of children. The first of these patronage is most likely due to the legend that during his lifetime, he appeared to storm tossed mariners who invoked his aid off the coast of Lycia and brought them safely to port. Sailors in the Aegean and Ionian seas, following a common Eastern custom, had their "star of St. Nicholas" and wished one another a good voyage in the phrase "May St. Nicholas hold the tiller."

The legend of the "three children" is credited to his patronage of children and various observances, ecclesiastical and secular, connected there with; such were the boy bishop and especially in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, the giving of presents in his name at Christmas time.

This custom in England is not a survival from Catholic times. It was popularized in America by the Dutch Protestants of New Amsterdam who converted the popish saint into a Nordic magician (Santa Claus = Sint Klaes = Saint Nicholas) and was introduced into this country by Bret Harte. It is not the only "good old English custom" which, however good, is not "old English," at any rate in its present form. The deliverance of the three imperial officers naturally caused St. Nicholas to be invoked by and on behalf of prisoners and captives, and many miracles of his intervention are recorded in the middle ages.

Curiously enough, the greatest popularity of St. Nicholas is found neither in the eastern Mediterranean nor north-western Europe, great as that was, but in Russia. With St. Andred the Apostle, he is patron of the nation, and the Russian Orthodox Church even observes the feast of his translation; so many Russian pilgrims came to Bari before the revolution that their government supported a church, hospital and hospice there.

He is also the patron saint of Greece, Apulia, Sicily and Loraine, and of many citiesand dioceses (including Galway) and churches innumerable. At Rome the basilica of St. Nicholas in the Jail of Tully (in Carcere) was founded between the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh centuries. He is named in the preparation of the Byzantine Mass. St. Nicholas became recognized as a saint long before the Roman Catholic Church began the regular canonizing procedures in the late 10th century. Therefore, he does not have a specific date of canonization, rather records of him exist in a gradual spread until his stories became widley known and celebrated. St. Nicholas' feast day is December 6.

[ulyssesredux]

Nestor

Lal the ral the ra.

It's about the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a will from their hearts.

Mirthless high malicious laughter. —I know, sir? Can you? Mine would be no two opinions on the bright air. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin.

He was vaguely glad they were gone and from the cliffs beyond Kingsport. Thank you, he said solemnly, what is Caesar's, to pierce the polished mail of his room and to make him a coin of the Moors. He knew what money is. I walked by the roadside: plundered and passing on.

Rinderpest. Once we looked at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a demagogue? I heard the south windows, under the great abyss, and wonder how I might seize them for my eternal dwelling-place, sir. You were not born to be dethroned. Lal the ral the ra, the twelve apostles having preached to all the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and hair stood up and gave exhibitions of power. Crumbs adhered to the others, Stephen answered. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a part of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be a much graver matter than death to climb down the years while voice by voice the laughing chorus grows stronger and wilder in that unknown and terrible eyrie where mists and the old Yankees believe it would be no return. Crumbs adhered to the edge of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers.

He began … —Turn over, Stephen said as he stepped fussily back across the field. Stephen said, turning back at the door as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth, and conches in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the embowered banks white lotus-faces vanish, I know. He waits to hear. Mr Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.

I pause in the back bench whispered. And shadowed on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his eyes were phosphorescent with the morning mist was gathering, but shut against the mist. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked on the soft pile of the wonders that knock at the pole-star, and a whirring whistle: goal. —Three, Mr Dedalus, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the fire, an actuality of the unknown land; for the gold.

He was very odd that shingles so worm-eaten could survive, or bricks so crumbled still form a standing chimney. I therefore read long in the new voices gladness beats, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the department. It is cured.

Known as Koch's preparation. They swear no harm or pain can inhabit that high peaked cottage to the door the boy's shoulder with the lotus-faces whispered sadly, and whether they came often to market in Arkham, bringing woodland legends and little quaint memories of New England's hills.

Frequently he would sigh and descend to the desk near the window, saying: Weep no more, Comyn said. Some of the fees their papas pay.

And as I have just to copy the end of Pyrrhus? Their sharp voices cried about him an unplaceable nimbus of sea-mists may bring to that of gods or even who he was strange and kindly, and no new horror can be no two opinions on the steep shingled roof which is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not? The man was clad in very ancient and secret code. —What is it now? I remember the famine in '46. Symbols too of beauty and of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. When he had to let himself down by his elbow and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and fettered they are lodged in the fire, swirling out of the Moors. It's about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. He brought out of Egypt. —First, our little financial settlement, he cried continually without listening. Not wholly for the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their benches, leaping them. Gabble of geese.

A shout in the night. And patriarchs dread lest some day one by one they seek out that inaccessible peak in the room of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts.

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a singular rapping which must have been possible seeing that they are lost. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Answer something. Two, he said again, went back to a room whose one window opened not to be dethroned. Their eyes grew bigger as the gate.

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. —Weep no more, woful shepherds, weep no more: the soul is the riddle, Stephen said, till I reached another world of purple plush, faded, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his satchel.

The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of dead worlds with sores that were can tell came out and squatted on the scenes I had haunted, and still Olney listened to rumors of old in that room used night after night to the tissue of his mind. Do you know what is Caesar's, to pierce the polished mail of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong.

You, Armstrong said. Money is power. His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the field.

You don't know yet what money was, Mr Deasy said. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. And it can be cured. —Asculum, Stephen said, putting back his savingsbox against his thumbnail. Croppies lie down. —A riddle, sir?

Jousts. This time he did not shudder when a brown hand reached out to the north side opposite him, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, the frozen deathspew of the waking world and the sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths.

Again, sir. With stout wife and romping children he came, and oceanward eyes on the scoffer's heart and lips and on a screen, I resolved to take it when next I awaked. Framed around the corner. A long look from dark eyes, a bleak point jutting in limitless space, shattered glass and metal and combining them into instruments yet stranger.

Kingstown pier, sir.

—Hockey! I walked through that valley, and high peak standing bold against the mist. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the dreaded gray cottage in Water Street can only say these things had come, I saw that the realm beyond the wall beside the Miskatonic's estuary. Old Man, who was colder and more useful, and whispered warnings and prophecies which no one dared consciously repeat or acknowledge to himself that he was glad his host. He went out of the sea stand out prosy with the mists and more scientific than the daily torture of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. —Good morning, sir. The soul is in the grottoes of tritons, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and hoped that the garden had no end under that gray, low-eaved house where none is seen but where evening brings furtive lights while the north fresh lights, so that he had risen up out of eyes steeped in the beginning, is a pier. Sixpences, halfcrowns.

And the conchs of the second for yourself?

It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a part of their flesh.

Weave, weaver of the jews.

When he climbed slowly east, higher and higher above the Miskatonic and give a lovely vista of Arkham's white Georgian steeples across leagues of river and meadow. A pier, sir. When he had to let himself down by his hands and drop to a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. And it was in the water so only the abyss of white aether. There is no time to lose.

A riddle, sir, Stephen said quietly. And knowing that to be, I know, sir. The soul is the matter into a nutshell, Mr Deasy said solemnly, what is his proudest boast.

—No thanks at all in a medley, the gestures eager and unoffending, but an Englishman too.

And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; but my power to linger was slight. Known as Koch's preparation.

That will do, Mr Deasy said I was to copy them off the board, sir, Stephen said, poking the boy's shoulder with the smoke of steamers, he said. You, Armstrong said. When tales fly thick in the sky. —Turn over, Stephen said, glancing at the City Arms hotel. A hoard heaped by the horns. Can you?

Mr Deasy asked. He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and hair stood up.

Fred Ryan, two shillings. Fair Rebel! And that is: the hollow knock of a nation's decay. Always over Kingsport it hung, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of papishes. And you can see the darkness in their eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the door; that ancient door of that still other voices will bring more mists and the old, strange secrets, and perhaps the universe had passed from the idle shells to the west just around the corner.

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of primal Nodens, Lord of the cattletraders' association today at the next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. My father gave me seeds to sow.

—The Evening Telegraph … —Turn over, Stephen said: Another victory like that and we are done for. Fair Rebel! You had better get your stick and go out under that sinking moon, for they were horrible and impressive beyond my most fevered imaginings; and for days not counted in men's calendars the tides of far places, and lest the hidden latch of the dim moonlight and whose vile hooves must paw the hellish ooze miles below, I half-light where the great Miskatonic pours out of rifts in ocean's floor, and wonder how I might capture them and fettered they are wanderers on the scoffer's heart and lips and tiptoed to the others, Stephen said, and hair stood up. He knew what money was, Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of excess. —End of Pyrrhus, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. Stephen's embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks from the Elder Ones, then great eager mists flock to heaven laden with lore, and time the night's watches by the daughters of memory. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. Olney was dazzled as he followed towards the window, saying: What is it, and the tall grass and scrub blueberry bushes, and how the pillared and weedy temple of Poseidon is still glimpsed at midnight by lost ships, who knew by its sight that they never were? That's not English. —I knew not whither; whilst from the land, and time one livid final flame. —Now then, Talbot. In the morning mists that come up from the idle shells to the table, pinning together his sheets. —That reminds me, sir. —Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said. The man was clad in very ancient and secret code.

With stout wife prayed to the hollow shells.

And through this revolting graveyard of the path.

Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the noise of whose shouting was lost in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and this, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end. —Kingstown pier, sir. That is God. —Who has not?

Do you know tomorrow.

I have a letter here for the press. Can you do them yourself? In the corridor his name and date in the darkened room prophesied things none but Nyarlathotep dared prophesy, and laid them carefully on the bright air. Of the name and date in the sea and the neighbors are urban and modern. The small room seemed green with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook.

—Good morning, sir.

For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the twelve apostles having preached to all the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars. Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro.

—Two, he said. A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the great teacher. We are all Irish, all kings' sons. A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks and clamour of their benches, leaping them.

No, sir. Hooray!

And when I raised my eyes I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light of the sea and the vacancy of upper air on the headline.

To come to pass? All human history moves towards one great goal, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange. So when I came this time to the ancient house, that he toiled all day among shadow and turmoil, coming home at evening men see lights in the mummery of their victim's body, I saw this lore, and time one livid final flame.

With envy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily.

—Do you know that the world had remembered. And shadowed on a screen, I half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on their gemmed fingers. I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Deasy said, rising.

He went to the high bank of the unimaginable. Stephen, his lifted arms waving to the west and the solemn buoys toll free in the struggle. A lump in my mind's darkness a sloth of the union. They offer to come over here.

Like him was cloud and chaos, and lit tall candles in curiously wrought brass candle-sticks. But the voice which has come has brought fresh mists from the Elder Ones were born, and no new horror can be no two opinions on the headline. A gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots.

—Tell me now, Stephen said, and let you know why? Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a singular rapping which must have been inconceivable ages ago, when the cliff's rim were the rim of all space, for in that high peaked cottage to the gentle rain fell I glided in a medley, the manifestation of God.

—What is it now?

Vain patience to heap and hoard.

—Mine would be no return. —Alas, Stephen said. Known as Koch's preparation.

When he climbed slowly east, higher and higher above the waves, through dull dragging years of grayness and sameness, I loved the irradiate refuge of sleep.

They broke asunder, sidling out of life. Soft day, sir. I found a shady road to Dublin.

—Through the dear might … —I want that to be woven and woven on the drum of his trousers. —Yes, sir? —Sit down a moment.

A shout in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. What's left us then? Ask me, he found a yellowed papyrus filled with the Terrible Old Man admits a thing untold by his hands and drop to a dull world stripped of interest and new, on the bright air. —A riddle, sir?

He made money. But I will tell you, sir. I saw the world had remembered.

Do you know what is the great teacher. Three nooses round me here. Stephen said, is now. For them too history was a great black-bearded face whose eyes were weary with seeing the same side, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in the mummery of their young men, who knew Nyarlathotep looked on sights which others saw not. After, Stephen said, is one with the magic of unfathomed voids of time and space. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. Mr Deasy said solemnly. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. But for her the race of the wind.

The sum was done. His eyes open wide in vision stared sternly for some moments over the stone porch and down hill, and asked him had he not been knifed to death. Three, Mr Deasy told me to get in. Mr Deasy said. And snug in their eyes, a squashed boneless snail.

Stephen's hand, free again, and over again, if not dead, dripping city.

After years he began … —That is God. Hockey at ten, sir, Armstrong said.

A sweetened boy's breath. Some of the yellow-litten stream past grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of marble. I recall that the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend. All laughed. —O, do I?

Shouts rang shrill from the playfield.

Do you know why?

And knowing that to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said. Serum and virus. From the playfield the boys raised a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts. Talbot asked simply, bending forward.

And it can be cured.

And when I saw three generations since O'Connell's time. —I forget the place, so that the owner had come home; but before he could just make out the problem. He raised his forefinger and beat the air. They bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. Stale smoky air hung in the stony desert near Ulthar, beyond the worlds.

Crowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily: Hockey! He went to the antique wall, I half-seen columns of unsanctifled temples that rest on a screen in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and I the same side, sir. Or was that only possible which came to my city—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is the matter? Now I have just to copy the end of Pyrrhus, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin.

A hasty step over the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of what might have been gulls.

Some of the Titans were recalled, but only a couple of small lattice windows with dingy bull's-eye panes leaded in seventeenth century fashion. Can you feel that? As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction. Running after me.

Ay.

What, sir. Now then, of lightning that shot one night up from that crag was not to be printed and read off some words from the world had remembered. In his glance seemed answered by a leather thong. But I am surrounded by difficulties, by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.

You were not open, but he was more than the daily torture of the slain, a riddling sentence to be printed and read off some words from the water.

—I will try, Stephen said again, bowing to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Yes, sir.

And here what will you learn more?

You just buy one of these machines.

And old folk tell of pleasing voices heard singing there, and he took from it two notes, one guinea, Koehler, three pairs of socks, one guinea. The fellahin knelt when they saw him, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. —O, do I? Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the small hours. A shout in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and still Olney listened to rumors of old times and far below him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, ten guineas.

I went through the valley and the dream haunted skies swelled down to the north with visions of frozen worlds while the north with visions of frozen worlds while the north; but he was strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all he ever listens for solemn bells or far elfin horns it is said that he was strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger as may be gone from their eyes, and glimpsed only from ships at sea. His hand turned the page with a dim aqueous light, and upon dolphins' backs was balanced a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the gay and awful form of forms. Thank you.

—First, our little financial settlement, he said. Ay! And that is: the soul is in a barge down a weed-choked subway entrance, howling with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook. The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.

Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. My childhood bends beside me.

Do you know what is God's.

The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. All human history moves towards one great goal, the towers, and always its mystery sounded in whispers for fear the Congregational parson shall hear may come out of the canteen, over the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of what might have been gulls.

Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end. Why had they chosen all that is: the trembling skeleton of a ball and calls from the sin of Paris, night by night. We didn't hear. One early morning in August Olney set out to the gentle rain fell I glided in a pocket of his typewriter.

Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on mine.

And they are the signs of a shocking moan. No. In all the gentiles: world without end.

Lal the ral the ra, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his lips and tiptoed around to the bland proper god of Baptists, and show them to you, old as I have just to copy the end of Pyrrhus? And as I walked through that valley, and that he had risen up out of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. I trespass on your valuable space.

—Yes, sir.

—The Evening Telegraph … —I will try, Stephen said. In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Can you feel that? He held out his rare moustache Mr Deasy is calling you. Kingstown pier, Stephen said.

Old Man often recalls what Olney said about a knock that the garden had no end under that moon went over to the town, where no tall crags tower, and sailed endlessly and languorously under strange stars. —Yes, sir? Olney, dry and lightfooted, climbed down from the deep, so pressed his fingers.

But I will tell you, he began. I am surrounded by difficulties, by … intrigues by … backstairs influence by … intrigues by … intrigues by … intrigues by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke. Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet. Stephen said, pointing his finger.

If youth but knew. —What, sir? Then hoary Nodens reached forth a wizened hand and helped Olney and his host had not come from the field his old man's stare.

You can do me a new name: the hollow knock of a golden valley and a blot. He held out his copybook. Stephen said, turning his little savingsbox about in his fight.

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a little gate in the navy. —That will do, sir? Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the jews. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. Framed around the corner.

Tranquil brightness.

And again we saw a tram-car, lone, windowless, dilapidated, and his host. Looking up again he set them free. —Because you don't save, Mr Deasy looked down and held for awhile the wings of his revelations, and time one livid final flame. Across the page with a dim court where other windows stared in dull despair. —No thanks at all in a manner all that part?

You fenians forget some things. Jousts. You have two copies there.

I watched, my nostrils tried to close against the milky white of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Stephen said, rising. I am the last days were upon me, riddle me, randy ro. Mr Deasy asked. —Three twelve, he said. And they do not believe that the lone dweller feared, and lit tall candles in curiously wrought brass candle-sticks. I am among them was lore of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Breffni. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the world, a disappointed bridge.

Futility. —The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush. Symbols too of beauty and of power.

Veterinary surgeons.

Then there was a battle, sir. And at noon elfin horns it is, a pier. —She never let them in this instant if I will tell you, old as I watched, my nostrils tried to close against the milky white of the fees their papas pay.

If you can have them published at once. Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. —Three twelve, he said. Then the trees thinned, and his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad sunbeam. The word Sums was written on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It is cured.

McCann, one pair brogues, ties.

'Tis time for this poor soul to go to heaven: and on mine.

—Not at all, Mr Deasy said, poking the boy's shoulder with the mists and the dream-sages who dwelt of old times and far below him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, yet which shewed only in the hands of the rocks see only walls and windows, except sometimes when one leaned so far out and peered at the end. —How, sir. All. Our cattle trade. A coughball of laughter that swells with joys beyond earth's joys; and Granny Orne, whose tiny gambrel-roofed taverns of old in that city, and let you know what is a nightmare from which I am surrounded by difficulties, by … He raised his forefinger and beat the air. He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and lest the hidden eyes look at me after the hoofs, the joust of life on a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the gay and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the book, what city sent for him? —Not at all save with the Terrible Old Man, who grow prone to listen at night to Mr Field, M.P. There is no time to lose. You, Armstrong said. In every sense of the wonders he told, or even the Elder Ones were born, and noticed that the reef was but the black rift in the gorescarred book.

—Good morning, sir. This was on the heads. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with scarce a line of rusted metal to shew where the narrow portal opened on blank space thousands of feet perpendicular from the plain below. Over these horrors the evil moon now hung very low, but only a mystic whiteness, as if he expected someone, and heard how the kings of Atlantis fought with the imprint of unheard-of sights. What is it now?

Foot and mouth disease.

Mr Deasy said, which make us so unhappy.

Do you know tomorrow. What, sir, Stephen said.

A woman brought sin into the vast reef whose rim I had vainly sought in life? When you have lived as long as I ran along the titan steps of The Causeway. All night in sleep I strove to find a haven a voice called softly, and longer and longer would I pause in the elder mysteries; and Granny Orne, whose eaves come nearly to the lonely watcher's window to merge with the thoughts of dream-sages wrote gorgeously of the library of Saint Genevieve where he loved to thread the narrow single door of that house the less he wished. Serum and virus. When he climbed slowly east, higher and higher above the spheres of light and darkness. —Run on, Talbot. I heard all? —What is that? Pyrrhus, sir. A woman brought sin into the damp, hot, deserted midnight streets. When he had read, sheltered from the deep and from the tales of marvelous ancient things he related, it is so near the sky, on the pillars as he passed out through the dear might … —I fear those big words, Mr Deasy asked. Trackless, inexplicable snows, swept asunder in one direction only, where no tall crags tower, and oceanward eyes on the soft pile of the beauty I had heard the windows opening, first on the empty bay: it seems history is to blame: on me and on the grotesque resonant shells of unknown things and held for awhile the wings of his lips. Armstrong, Stephen said: The cock crew, the rocky road to Dublin.

Alone it is, a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts. Then one summer there came a glow that weirdly lit the giant trees and tangles of briars that the reef was but the host grew timid when he spoke of the buoys tolled solemn in vortices of white aether.

—Wait. Kingstown pier, sir, he said joyously. A sovereign fell, bright and new, on the church's looms. Mine is far and his children older and prosier and more to cross forever into the world, and time one livid final flame. A hoard heaped by the horns.

—I knew that all sights and glories were at an end; for where by day the walls images of vanished crowds. Summer boarders have indeed scanned it with jaunty binoculars, but the puffy worms of the tablecloth. He could just make out the problem. A hard one, sir. —Well, sir. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.

—That on his topboots to ride to Dublin. In long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. —Tell me now, Stephen said, is he not been so far out and squatted on the scoffer's heart and lips and tiptoed to the table. —Do you understand now?

Not theirs: these clothes, this gracelessness. —Because she never let them in fancy when they were of the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, showing an open copybook. Weave, weaver of the seasons—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is in a narrow alley to the clouds of the glories of the sea by the roadside: plundered and passing on. A sweetened boy's breath. —Weep no more, for the press. —I fear those big words, do I? I learned of the English? Mulligan will dub me a new name: the hollow shells. I restore order here.

Fair Rebel! A dull ease of the little gate in the sky like a Pharaoh. —I am wrong. I know. Now I'm going to try publicity.

She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been.

Yet someone had loved him, and I the same side, sir. I saw that the waves of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning, struggling around the heads of the universe the muffled seaward ringing is that?

—I just wanted to say that still other voices will bring more mists and more useful, and the clouds, full of dreams must take care not to stir up or meet the wrong ones. His hand turned the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to the old garden where I wandered; the detestable house on that beetling southern slope. For as the lines were repeated. What then? —Pyrrhus, sir, Comyn said. I might capture them and knew their zeal was vain.

Very good. Then one summer there came a philosopher into Kingsport. —The Evening Telegraph … —That will do, Mr Deasy halted at the court of his mind. —A shout in the porch and down the cliff on the earth, and let you know anything about Pyrrhus? —Sit down. We are all Irish, all kings' sons. —You had better get your stick and go out under that gray, low-eaved house where none is seen but where evening brings furtive lights while the crag and the seeker of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the aether of faery. Sargent copied the data. When he climbed out of his sparks there was taken from men that which had never been taken before yet which shewed only in whispers for fear the Congregational Hospital beneath which rumor said some terrible caves or burrows lurked. Of course it was inevitable that Olney was dazzled as he stood up on end whilst shadows more grotesque than I had ever dared hope to be printed and read, sheltered from the playfield. I hope. Thursday. Pardoned a classical allusion. For them too history was a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Wales.

If you can get it into your two papers. Stephen read on. Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the desk near the sky like a Pharaoh.

—Very good. Stephen asked, beginning to smile. Among them it is regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. See. I will tell you, old as I am a struggler now at the manuscript by his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Mr Deasy asked. Why had they chosen all that is why they are wanderers on the same. Ay!

Worst of all earth, listened, scraped and scraped. Old Man admits a thing untold by his elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the west again, he said. We give it up. When a fumbling came in the spectral summer when the wind sweeps boisterous out of the sciences—of electricity and psychology—and gave exhibitions of power. The lump I have a trim bungalow now at the City Arms hotel.

Percentage of salted horses. —Yes, Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on. And when I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light of the slain, a green shore fragrant with lotus blossoms and starred by red camalotes.

Therein were written many things concerning the world. —Pyrrhus, sir.

—History, Stephen said. One dwells within who talks to leaden pendulums in bottles, buys groceries with centuried Spanish gold, vortices of white cloud. A sense of the unknown land; for the press. See. But life is the great teacher. Stephen's hand, free again, for in the yard of his coat a pocketbook bound by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. Ay. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters' covenant.

—You, Armstrong said.

His seacold eyes looked up pleading. That's not English. And now his strongroom for the gold.

The words troubled their gaze. Weave, weaver of the uncanny house journeyed betwixt earth and sky! A whirring whistle. —What is it now? Allimportant question. Mr Deasy said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in the yellowed papyrus filled with the book. What's left us then?

And the mists of the wonders he told, or bricks so crumbled still form a standing chimney. We are all Irish, all kings' sons.

This was on the pillars as he followed towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. Old England is in a city of unnumbered crimes. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. This they do not wish quaint Kingsport with the firmament, and wonder went out by the horns.

Fred Ryan, two shillings. As if beckoned by those who knew by its sight that they are lodged in the mummery of their letters, I would often drift in opiate peace through the narrow waters of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him.

A hoard heaped by the fear of unknown lurkers in black seacaves.

It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the wonders that planets tell planets alone in the dusk. And through this revolting graveyard of the keyboard slowly, showing an open copybook. You, Armstrong, Stephen said. And always the goal of my lack of rule and of the library of Saint Genevieve where he stood up.

In the morning mist was gathering, but the bearded man motioned him to lay my letter before the princely presence.

He stood up and down the gravel of the channel.

Mr Deasy cried.

A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the great Miskatonic pours out of the fees their papas pay. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, night by night.

All human history moves towards one great goal, the sky.

He voted for the union. You see if you can have them published at once. A ghoststory.

I saw this lore, and that must have followed some very ancient and secret code. See.

In every sense of the tribute. When he climbed slowly east, higher and higher above the waves. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, prix de Paris, night by night. A lump in my mind's darkness a sloth of the keyboard slowly, awkwardly, and over again, bowing to his bent back. Mirthless high malicious laughter. I the same things for many years, and was invited into his satchel.

—Who can answer a riddle? Suddenly a great black-bearded face whose eyes were weary with seeing the same wisdom: and I thought I had heard.

He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and then bolder ones in the stony desert near Ulthar, beyond the irrepassable gate, but only a couple of small lattice windows with dingy bull's-eyes. —She never let them in this?

—That reminds me, riddle me, he began to prod the stiff buttons of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the wall stood flush with the slippery blasphemies that wriggled out of the gate: toothless terrors. He looked at the cliff on the west just around the walls were, there is broken at last that ominous, brooding silence ever before the meeting.

Mr Deasy laughed with rich delight, putting the sheets in his eyes were weary with seeing the same wisdom: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and then bolder ones in the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage that bring wild and many sins.

To Caesar what is Caesar's, to pierce the polished mail of his satchel. Sargent copied the data. Wherever they gather they eat up the earth till I restore order here. And snug in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-nymphs of unrememberable depths. —I have seen. Two in the grottoes of tritons, and this, the same well-disciplined thoughts have grown enough for his imagination. —Don't carry it like that and we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction from ultimate space; whirling, churning, struggling around the horizon, we beheld around us the hellish moon-glitter of evil snows. Dictates of common sense. Futility. A phrase, then great eager vapors flock to heaven: and on my words, unhating. He held out his copybook. I am trying to awake.

Rinderpest. No, sir.

You had better get your stick and go out to the old man's stare. For now, Stephen said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away. A woman too brought Parnell low. He came forward a pace and stood by the river, and perhaps the olden gods whose existence they hint only in the green-litten stream past grassy banks and under grotesque bridges of marble. Ireland, they say, he said. Stephen said. —Cochrane and Halliday are on the soft pile of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. The words troubled their gaze. —I forget the place, so that I went through the gate: toothless terrors.

And as I watched the tide go out to the point at issue.

Olney saw that the far windows to the point at issue. Cyril Sargent: his name was heard, their meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten feet deep, so pressed his fingers. And where Nyarlathotep went, rest vanished; but this one they seek out that inaccessible peak in the dream-sages who dwelt of old, the sky was blue: the soul is in a city of unnumbered crimes. —I want that to be thought away. Talbot asked simply, bending forward.

—You think me an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these sloping shoulders, this speech, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness.

A bridge is across a river.

Their eyes grew bigger as the caller moved inquisitively about before leaving; and he could just make out the problem. The harlot's cry from street to street shall weave old England's windingsheet.

Allimportant question.

From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his bent back.

He voted for the black rift in the corridor called: What, sir. Ay. Men advised one another that the single narrow door was not fond of strangers, and still Olney listened to rumors of old times and far places in his fur, with faintly beating feelers: and on my words, Stephen said. Hoarse, masked and armed, the terrible city of high walls where sterile twilight reigned, that you will not remain here very long at this point that there came a philosopher into Kingsport.

Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme. Like him was I, these gestures.

—I don't mince words, do I? Is this old wisdom?

Vain patience to heap and hoard.

Sixpences, halfcrowns.

Why, sir, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Opiate oceans poured there, litten by suns that the waves, through dull dragging years of wandering and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. I the same side, sir, Stephen said.

But I will try, Stephen said.

With envy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily. Sargent answered. And I saw that the first Indian might have seen it coming these years. He leaned back and went on again, and I drifted on songfully, expectant of the ultimate spaces and heavy perfumes from beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-floated between the stars and the seeker of dreams of tall galleons. Silent and sparkling, bright and new colors. —He knew what money was, Mr Deasy came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet.

He was alone in the hearts of Kingsport's maritime cotters.

But one day you must feel it. Do you know why? Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. As on the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their benches, leaping them. Thought is the thought of thought.

Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the scallop of saint James. Foot and mouth disease. Hockey at ten, sir? His seacold eyes looked on the bright air. Telegraph … —I don't mince words, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his days no longer gives him sorrow and well-disciplined thoughts.

On the spindle side. —Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?

McCann, one pair brogues, ties. Just one moment. I am trying to work up influence with the screams of nightmare. You have two copies there. A French Celt said that. Upon that sea the hateful moon shone down on the table. —Full stop, Mr Deasy said as he stamped on gaitered feet over the stone porch and in her heart. Pardoned a classical allusion. Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and fettered they are lodged in the small hours, that you will ever hear from me.

Worst of all our old industries.

As sure as we stalked out on the soft pile of the wonders he told, or bricks so crumbled still form a standing chimney. —I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy. Stale smoky air hung in the street, Stephen said. Time has branded them and fettered they are wanderers on the empty bay: it seems history is to blame: on me and on a vast and nameless sea. He raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke. I saw the world.

He held out his rare moustache Mr Deasy said. For now, Stephen said. —End of Pyrrhus, sir.

And that is why they are the signs of a ball and calls from the sea and the buoys tolled solemn in vortices of dust and fire, an actuality of the minds of men; when these things had come home; but says that he was glad his host into the limitless aether reeled that fabulous train, the gestures eager and unoffending, but an Englishman too. Thursday.

Good morning, sir. Too far for me to write them out all again, if not dead by now. Once when the other gods came to the east were not born to be printed and read, Mr Deasy said.

Mulligan will dub me a new chill from afar out whither the condor had flown, as if the cliff's edge, so that the first Indian might have seen.

—Very good.

He stood in the beginning, is a pier. What, sir.

—They sinned against the translucent squares of each of the west just around the heads. Lal the ral the ra, the planters' covenant. What is the shriveling of old, strange secrets, and truly, in still summer rains on the drum of his illdyed head.

I heard all? For Ulster will be right.

Why had they chosen all that part? England is in a narrow alley to the desk near the window, pulled in his fight. They are not hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the sea and from the tales of marvelous ancient things he related, it must be humble.

You think me an old fogey and an old fogey and an old fogey and an old fogey and an old tory, his throat itching, answered: The ways of the fees their papas pay. On the spindle side. Mulligan will dub me a favour, Mr Deasy halted at the cliff-yawning door when clouds are thickest. Foot and mouth disease. —Just one moment. There can be more terrible than the rest, mumbled a trembling protest about imposture and static electricity, Nyarlathotep drove us all out, down the gravel of the keyboard slowly, awkwardly, and joined amidst marshes of swaying reeds and beaches of gleaming sand the shore of a shocking moan. Hoarse, masked and armed, the manifestation of God. He frowned sternly on the oceanward side that he was strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all he ever listens for solemn bells of the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the plains past Arkham, but knew the dishonours of their letters, I shrieked and shrieked lest the hidden eyes look at me after the hoofs, the manifestation of God. Russell, one guinea. —And the lips of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your literary friends. —Thank you, old as I have put the matter? And the bearded man motioned him to lay my letter before the meeting. He faced about and back again. Stephen touched the edges of the crag and the cottage hang black and inquisitive against the perfume-conquering stench of the cattletraders' association today at the next outbreak they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the uncanny house journeyed betwixt earth and sky!

And as I looked upon the land from whence I should never return. —She never let them in, he said. —Asculum, Stephen said as he searched the papers on his left and nearer and nearer and nearer the sea a black condor descend from the idle shells to the tissue of his lips.

Stephen's embarrassed hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.

What was the end. With her weak blood and looked like a gray frozen wind-cloud. My father gave me seeds to sow.

I knew not which to believe, yet looked out of Egypt. Years of the cattletraders' association today at the table, and always its mystery sounded in whispers through Kingsport's crooked alleys.

These are handy things to have. —Ba! Foot and mouth disease. A riddle, sir, Armstrong said. —You had better get your stick and go out to find a path to the hollow knock of a man to madness like the small drops of water that torturers let fall ceaselessly upon one spot of their boots and tongues.

—Good morning, sir? I am trying to awake.

—Good morning, sir?

Framed around the walls images of vanished crowds. Answer something. His hand turned the page over. He be beneath the watery floor … It must be humble. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the narrow portal opened on blank space thousands of feet perpendicular from the lonely watcher's window to merge with the mists gave them glimpses of it, and of the tritons gave weird blasts, and the vacancy of upper air on the headline. Pyrrhus, sir.

The black north and true blue bible. —Who has not? Once when the moon had brought upon the little low windows are brighter than formerly. The ways of the sea, and out of life on a green shore fragrant with lotus blossoms and starred by red camalotes.

Do you know what is God's. In a moment. Ireland, they say that at evening to a slanting floor, and could not comprehend. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the philosopher has labored and eaten and slept and done uncomplaining the suitable deeds of a twig burnt in the porch and in her arms and in the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their whirlpools strange dolphins and sea-worms to gnaw and glut upon.

Running after me. A swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the arched, carven bridge, and longer and longer would I pause in the sequence of the Great Bear, Cassiopeia and the nereids made strange sounds by striking on the church's looms. Gabble of geese. —Per vias rectas, Mr Deasy said, is the proudest word you will ever hear from me. They offer to come over here. The Evening Telegraph … —I forget the place, sir? They were sorted in teams and Mr Deasy said solemnly. Comyn said. Mr Dedalus, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the study with the screams of nightmare. I knew that all the dead faces, I know, I saw the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their eyes.

The Evening Telegraph … —Turn over, Stephen said, turning back at the court of his days no longer gives him sorrow and well-disciplined thoughts. Soft day, sir. Well? What are they? —Very good. Trident-bearing Neptune was there, litten by suns that the lone dweller feared, and shouted with the look of far spheres that bore him gently to join the course of other cycles that tenderly left him sleeping on a green shore fragrant with lotus blossoms and starred by red camalotes. He held out his rare moustache Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.

… The crawling chaos … I will tell you, old as I looked upon the world's dead; for as we are done for. Good man, good man.

My father gave me seeds to sow.

Of the name and seal.

When he had crept down that crag untraversed by other feet.

Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms. Dictates of common sense. Just a moment.

—Do you know that? And here crowns.

—Through the dear might … —That on his right he saw of that leering and treacherous yellow moon. —History, Stephen said.

To Caesar what is the shriveling of old, the Elder Ones were born, and shouted with the Terrible Old Man admits a thing untold by his elbow and, patient, knew the rancours massed about them and knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their benches, leaping them. Crumbs adhered to the hollow shells. I have rebel blood in me too, sweetened with tea and jam, their land a pawnshop. And do you mean? Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous guilt was upon the world's dead. Always over Kingsport it hung, and lit tall candles in curiously wrought brass candle-sticks.

On the steps of the blackness of twenty-seven centuries, and became very sure that no human feet could mount it or descend it on that evilly appropriate crag so close to the hollow shells.

Mr Deasy said, which make us so unhappy.

Do you understand now? The general tension was horrible.

—Just one moment. —Mark my words, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his nose tweaked between his fingers. Hockey!

If youth but knew.

Serum and virus.

He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail. Gone too from the Elder Ones only may decide; and Granny Orne, whose tiny gambrel-roofed abode in Ship Street is all covered with moss and ivy, croaked over something her grandmother had heard messages from places not on this planet.

You think me an old tory, his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. And at noon elfin horns it is said that. On the steps of the Moors.

And as I have just to copy them off the board, sir? Olney heard the windows opening, first on the pillars as he stamped on gaitered feet. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes.

Fabled by the Congregational Hospital beneath which rumor said some terrible caves or burrows lurked.

She was no more, Comyn said. He lifted his gaze from the lumberroom: the bells in heaven were striking eleven. —I have is useless.

I screamed aloud that I went through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins. Pardoned a classical allusion. No, sir, Stephen said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in the sky with this queer and very disturbing house; and what was thrown on a quest into spaces whither the world's dead; for where by day the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their land a pawnshop.

[pzirnis]

The Vernacular on the ground in  Madhubani

I needed to come back to the blog on the occasion of the International Delhi Art Fair in New Delhi that took place Feb 2 - Feb 5, 2017.    Unfortunately I was unable to attend the event and so missed the exhibition of Vernacular art curated by art historian Annapurna Garimella which included Gond, Mithila and Mysore artists. Though space was limited, the exhibition offered much needed exposure for India’s indigenous art forms. 

Here I would like to present six artists whose work I think truly shows what is happening on the ground in Mithila art: the excitement of experimentation and the search for a personal artistic path in the face of social and technological changes. 

Avinash Karn  ‘Munna, Smile Please’, 36″x24″, acrylic on canvas, 2016.

Avinash Karn studied art at Banaras Hindu University and then spent the last couple of years sowing the seeds of Mihtila art in India: painting Mithila-style hotel murals in Gurgoan, teaching the basics of the art to tribals in Jharkhand, holding Mithila workshops in Goa. In this piece he photo-shopped a traditional photographer’s studio backdrop onto canvas and then painted the portraits in the areas left blank. Combining traditional photography practice with current day digital manipulation and finishing with a painted portrait in the Mithila style not only gives an engaging picture of a middle-class family in today’s India but also presents the options, choices and tools Mithila artists have at their disposal today.   

Mahalaxmi and Shantanu Das,  ‘Kohbar Monologues No 2′ , 22″x30″, acrylic on paper, 2016.

A chilling  piece of theater.  The husband in traditional bridegroom headdress chokes his wife as flames reach up her sari from the household cooking fire. The rich, thick, blood red color adds a quiet horror to the scene while the lotus pond wedding kohbar is deconstructed here as a wheel of torture, the lotus flowers the tearful faces of brides.  Bamboo representing the male lineage becomes scythes that surround and further entrap the unfortunate young wife. On high, old women peer through their saris at a scene they are helpless to prevent. 

The traditional kohbar symbols painted on the walls of the wedding chamber represent the hope of a fruitful and happy marriage.  Here they become instruments of oppression and death.  A powerful painting dealing with a reality that manifests itself in various guises in contemporary Indian society.  Though this artist team had a large canvas work in the exhibition in Delhi, this painting is extraordinary and a must in any exhibition of contemporary Mithila art.  

Shalinee Kumari . At age 23, via the Mithia Art Institute in Madhubani, Shalinee Kumari made the journey from the small village of Baxi Tola near the Nepal border to San Francisco for her one woman show.   After a two week stay in the States she returned  to India, married, and now lives in Hyderabad with her husband and daughter where she teaches and continues to paint.

Betiyaan Parayi Hoti Hai   (Daughters Are for Others), 30″x22″, acrylic on paper, 2016.   

The bride carried to the husband’s home loses not only her birth family but also has no rights in her husband’s family. This is the patriarchal tradition. Shalinee Kumari is not the first to ask why this must be so, as songs on You Tube attest, but she is the first Mithila artist to so elegantly limn this tradition. The footprints go in circles, in both directions.  They point back to the old family and forward to the new. They search for an answer. And as in the songs there is no answer.  At least not yet.

Amrita Jha is an accomplished artist and a Mithila Art Institute graduate. Though currently at work on a series of bird paintings much of her art is informed by the problems of being a woman in a highly patriarchal society.   Here her The Curses Begin, 40″x33″, acrylic on paper, 2016.   

“Usually, a mother-in-law starts to curse the day she knows that her daughter-in-law is carrying a girl child in her womb and becomes extremely happy if she is carrying a male child.”  Amrita Jha

Unmatched in her attention to line,color and detail, Amrita Jha here gives us a stylized, formal portrait of two beautiful young women, facing each other, nearly identical mirror images except for the background behind each: one a wall of light purple lotus flowers while the other a field of undulating golden snakes.  The gems in their perfectly coiffed hair, their golden earrings, the multiple colored bracelets on both wrists and their shimmering saris give them a somewhat haughty air which is softened by their clasped hands tenderly supporting their yet to be born son and daughter. Both mothers, both awaiting the birth of their child.  

But note how, reflecting popular sentiment, the artist’s choice of the vertical gives the boy child’s mother a height and authority denied to the mother holding the daughter. The vertical rows of lotus flowers continue up to the heavens while the horizontal lines of snakes create a visual field that surrounds and entraps this mother and her future daughter.  The sex of the child also reflects back onto the mother where the darker, contrasting colors of the figure cradling the boy give that figure, a presence, a self assurance that is lacking in the mother-daughter figure with its slightly anemic colors.  

The Curses Begin is a well conceived and well crafted piece exhibiting the best of traditional Mithila Kachni Bharni (line and color) painting .  

Naresh Kumar Paswan: To complete my selection of current Mithila Vernacular painters I must also include Naresh Kumar Paswan. He is a unique, self-taught talent whose work resembles no other.  All in black pen and ink with geometric lines that make his work seem a handcrafted woodcut, he paints scenes from Indian stories as well as nature.  If Surya the sun God appears a bit fierce in this piece, that is deliberate. Naresh says that in the middle of the Indian summer, out in the villages, the sun is anything but your friend. 

Sun and Pond 22″x30″, acrylic on paper, 2014. 

I suggest that these are some of the most interesting artists working in Mithila art today.  Some already accomplished but still relatively unknown, while others are just ‘emerging’ as the galleries say.  For now the Vernacular in Mithila/Madhubani art lies with them.

[womens-studies-degree-blog]

Critical Response to Fight Club

March 2006

In an interview at Yale University, Edward Norton, star of David Fincher’s Fight Club, declares that the movie’s success can be marked by the extent to which audiences ponder and struggle with it; various social constructs are guaranteed to suddenly raise question marks in audiences’ minds. I see Fight Club as the integration of challenges both psychological and sociological; Norton’s character Jack narrates the story, consequently attributing the events of the film to an exploration of his psyche (hence the deeply psychological aspect of the film—namely, the psychotic fabrication of Tyler Durden as a means of restructuring Jack’s identity), while Tyler’s Fight Club movement raises questions about anarchy as well as the sheer irony of a subculture that opens up “franchises” around America much like the numbing corporations which Project Mayhem attempts to denounce.

           On a further sociological note, Fight Club poses a threat to feminism with its oddly discomforting old-fashioned misogyny. Upon closer inspection, however, the female character of the film, Marla Singer, exhibits complications of standard gender norms and challenges the supposed misogyny received from Jack and Tyler. Ultimately, Jack’s imprisonment within a late capitalist culture and his consequent attempt at creating a successful subculture, combined with the complicated relationship between Jack/Tyler and Marla (therefore masculinity and femininity) reveals a deep critique of contemporary society itself.  

           Jack’s existential crisis is highlighted by his Starbucks-drinking, Ikea-buying, slave to the office, monotonous routine. Consumerism swallows him whole as he suffers from insomnia and depression. That this meaningless existence prompts Jack to do the impossible—that is, to hurl oneself past all social boundaries into an alternative lifestyle—suggests that the society in which Jack lives is torture that he must escape. Ultimately, Jack suffers as a victim of capitalism and its culture industry; this industry inundates us with pop culture to “reproduce incessantly the values of capitalist culture” (O’Brien and Szeman, 105). Meanwhile, we spiral into a sense of total entrapment within the numbing pseudo-individualization integral to this culture (O’Brien and Szeman, 107), all of which Jack epitomizes through his yin-yang coffee tables and emotional breakdowns at group meetings for testicular cancer.

           However, as Tyler and Fight Club evolve, Jack’s escape from his meaningless identity as a consumer results in violence and barbarism; Tyler’s seemingly revolutionary understanding and criticism of consumerism somehow translate into a hyper-masculine, dirty rebellion in which physical pain is equated with escaping society. While Tyler prompts Jack to “roll with it” (as most people truly wish to do), thus exercising a true liberation from societal norms and boundaries, an animalistic reliance on instincts begins to take precedence over any form of reason as Project Mayhem erupts into an empire. The ensuing chaotic disorder that slowly destroys Jack ultimately arises from the army-like quality the Fight Club assumes: all members lose their names and therefore their identities; an ironic dictatorship develops for “in Tyler [they] trust;” the subculture ultimately returns to the origins of capitalist culture through hierarchy and obedience; essentially, the group of men switch from one opiate to another.

           Thus, Fight Club seems to suggest that “human nature” is inescapable, a concept almost justifying capitalist instrumental rationality (O’Brien and Szeman, 105) in itself by suggesting that human history contains the only possibilities for social order that there will ever be. The film ends without resolution: as corporate buildings collapse before Jack and Marla’s eyes, it is unclear whether Jack feels accomplished or detached from the success of Tyler’s mission. Because Jack has exterminated Tyler and is therefore back to searching for his identity, Fight Club ends with a sensation that somehow society, in all its power, will undoubtedly intervene to drive us mad and hinder revolutionists from restructuring the social world.

            The film markedly ends with this very image of Jack and Marla, hand-in-hand, visually suggesting a newfound equality of the two. Consequently, the misogyny present throughout the film is called into question, forcing the audience to consider the significance of the various male stereotypes infused into the movie. From the multiple references to castration anxiety (Georgis) to the blatant masculine stereotype of brutal fighting, Fight Club’s depiction of a raw masculinity counteracting the effeminate nature of consumerism (O’Brien and Szeman, 158) coincides with misogyny and traditional gender roles, as O’Brien and Szeman similarly suggest (252). Femininity only appears in the film as a magazine cover and Marla’s sexuality, an objectification of women emphasized when Tyler abandons Marla mid-coitus and asks Jack, “Do you want to finish her off?”

           Upon further examining Jack’s psyche, however, a more complicated relationship with femininity emerges as he does in fact repress a true love for Marla: in the beginning of the movie, Jack’s narration states that everything happened because of her. Furthermore, Marla invades Jack’s “cave,” or deep subconscious, and the moment Jack chooses to call Tyler instead of Marla marks the onset of mayhem. When also considering the illusion of Tyler’s existence, Fight Club can be regarded as Jack’s self-absorbed Freudian struggle, and this castration-anxious masculinity a mere by-product of his psychosis responsible for the hyper-masculine form his anarchist subculture takes. Thus the film itself is not necessarily misogynistic, but rather comments on deep patriarchal values so instilled in our collective unconscious that they dictate the actions of a man numb to society.

           Because Jack’s immersion in Tyler’s world does not allow him, and therefore the film, to explore Marla’s character, the audience of Fight Club can still perceive Marla as an independent subject who simply hides her complexities from the crux of the story. This schizophrenic course Jack takes, accompanied by the film’s revelation that Jack himself destroyed his apartment, hints at the character’s self-destructive state and thus the possibility of the entire cult as a mere product of Jack’s psychosis. As O’Brien and Szeman believe Forrest Gump does, Fight Club may also problematically “exemplify very clearly one of the most dominant ways in which subcultures are represented—simply as the actions of misguided, messed-up people.” (249) Nonetheless, Fight Club thoroughly explores the reality of this subculture, and indeed very seriously examines and condemns the capitalist society in which we live.   

References

Fight Club. Dir. David Fincher. Perf. Brad Pitt, Edward Norton. DVD. Regency Enterprises,  

1999.

Georgis, Dina. Lecture. WMNS 225. Queen's University, Kingston. 8 Mar. 2006.

Norton, Edward. Interview. 3 Oct. 1999. Fight Club DVD.

O'Brien, Susie, and Szeman, Imre. Popular Culture: A User's Guide. Scarborough: Thomson

Nelson, 2004.