by Dionne Brand
Mingus writes Pithecanthropus Erectus, and these notes, in 1956. There are no known translations that I can put my hand on, says the clerk. Hardly anybody reads it in that particular way, as a work of political philosophy. The clerk and the author have been scouring the existing libraries. But since the work departed like light it has not arrived in its future time, the clerk suspects. Someone, some future theorist might explain how we may absorb its philosophy despite our inability to read it in depth now. Maybe a future person will tease out or pull apart its meanings since our current capacities have yet to be developed to hear the full range let alone embrace its full meaning. Maybe we need a translator, the clerk says. I’ve only been able to make out the first two minutes of it like the first two chapters of Capital you are constantly going over. It is ten minutes and thirty-three seconds long, ten and a half volumes of a tome. It’s a lot of work. The clerk is nervous. You aren’t thinking of translating are you? These are arguments with history; these are arguments with reason, with the enlightenment. I just marvel at them and I wish I could do work like that.
Have you listened to Pithecanthropus Erectus? Amazing. Art is the only response to what we have been talking about. The only way not to engage the very kind of toxic imagination or what Cornelius Eady calls the brutal imagination, not to be hampered and weighed down by the toxicity of representation. It is too toxic, where we live, for any other kind of response. Every day you have to go into your house and detoxify, listen to, and translate one minute of Pithecanthropus Erectus.
VERSO 18.1
Varanasi
Pilgrims have come to the golden temple, Kashi Vishwanath, in the old city. I am there nearby and I am struck by their seriousness. They have come to ask for something from Shiva, and they have come to pay respect, and they have flowers and are bathed in powders, their faces painted in various decorations of the devoted. And I admire that kind of devotion, as hopeless as I find it. You’re such a tourist, the clerk says, appalled. But I mean true, their passion is true. And I understand totally that one gives one’s heart and belief to an unknown procedure. I’m sure they’re happy you understand, the clerk dismisses. Because you asked me about Marx. So, pre-Marx, those are the visions everywhere. This god, family, tribe. Post, maybe we can imagine something else. We don’t have to imagine Marx’s idea of the social either.
I hate your example. Why must you go all the way there? I hate the context of your example.
A woman came toward me, glazed in belief. She was incandescent with her faith; it shone on her skin. She pushed me out of the path to the golden temple. She was older, she was one hundred years with devotion. You’re jealous then, the clerk smiles for once. I still feel her pushing my shoulder out of the way.
VERSO 18.2
To each city I have travelled, I have only recorded the right-hand page. Delhi, and its traffic jams. On the way to Agra and all the towns in between, the camels on the highway; the women trailing saris on the backs of motorcycles; there’s a photo of you there in Fatehpur Sikri. In Kochi; the dhobi wallahs up to their knees in water and soap and the brief brown post office resembling the one where I was born with my grandfather accounting for seas. All the right-hand page. I never saw the left. Naturally, says the clerk. What it is to see what everyone else sees before they even arrive. That is easy enough. Not even in Vietnam or Cambodia, though there were times. That time, you sent yourself a postcard from Ho Chi Minh City, remember? You wrote, Hi d, Love always. D. You put three stamps on the envelope, the card was a drawing of three women riding bicycles. I have it, you may be sure. And when you returned home you read your note and it surprised you how raw “Love always” sounded. And you could not enter the rooms at Tuol Sleng, you said the people were still there, even now the hairs on your body rise with alert as when you stood there unable to enter. I’ve filed all of this for what it is worth, what you put down is only on the right-hand page. Just as I’ve kept the thousand people you tried to share a sunrise with at a famous temple and mercifully the sun did not rise since no one would have seen it. No one was interested in seeing the sun rise, you said, they were only interested in taking a photo of the sun rising.
VERSO 18.3
Why did you visit these sites of terror? I went to visit the world. I went to visit the years of solidarity with the world I was in solidarity with. I had read thousands of newspapers, I had followed the arguments, I had chosen sides. I had lived through, like someone on the other side of a telephone line, all the events, all the events had shaped me though they had not happened to me in the same way as they had happened to the speaker on the other end of the telephone. I therefore visited to say to the air and the bodies, to the electrical wires—Here I am, I was on the other end of the telephone during all those years. I expected to find exhaustion, since how we live here is to use up those bodies there, give them a constant pounding and reworking and very often kill them. Instead I saw with relief, one million motorcycles in Ho Chi Minh City with two million young people riding them. That is when I sent the postcard to myself.
VERSO 18.4.1
Blue the clerk has collected from exhaustion: blue maximums, blue wine, blue safety, blue descent, blue crossroads, blue havoc, blue marrow, blue speed, blue shoulder, blue appliance, blue heavy, blue balance, blue nails, blue injector, blue steering, blue mileage, blue handling, blue tremor, blue watches, blue clippers, blue corks, blue apples, blue positions, blue crimes, blue catheter, blue sprinkle, blue expenses, blue opportunities, blue discriminations, blue disciplines, blue suppuration, blue ants, blue proceedings, blue traffic, blue increases, blue hinges, blue request, blue any day, blue version, blue decline, blue draft, blue sleep, blue calling, blue gentile, intended blue, blue search, blue reload, blue virus, blue edge, blue starch, blue protein, blue density, blue fingerprints, blue nibbed, blue climbing, blue ditches, blue quarrel, systolic blue, blue maintenance, blue hold, blue number, blue drama, blue sustenance, blue edge, blue percent, blue indent, blue itself, blue schemes, blue file, blue lagan, blue rain, rind blue, blue turbine, blue visas, blue filled, blue tolls, blue storage, blue help, blue sex, poised blue
VERSO 18.4.2
Violet the clerk has collected: violet hand, violet notes, violet coolness, violet edging, violet halls, violet finger, violet region, violet fuel, violet metre, violet breath, violet written, violet hatreds, violet hammer, violet bed, violet wires, violet arms, violet apples, violet digits, violet washes, violet thyme, violet dialysis, violet records, violet scissors, violet palms, violet onion, violet speed, violet construction, violet fog, violet lane, violet yield, dry violet, half ton violet, cord violet, violet management, violet sleep, written violet, hung violet, violet suspension, violet carburetor, violet labour, violet genocide, violet mud, violet lizards, violet chemical fences, violet chill, violet intended, violet taken, violet ambulances, violet incarceration, violet shoving, violet February, violet field, violet episode, violet rails, violet reply, violet brassiness, violet blind, violet brick, violet cancels, violet spite, violet profession, violet shame, violet limb, violet smoke, violet chest, violet rains, violet jars, violet pays, violet haunch, violet sticks, violet coast, violet vein, violet teeth, violet gorse, violet escarpment, violet hoarfrost, violet museum, violet rues, violet recovery, violet creek, violet carpool, violet requirement, violet plans, violet openings, violet empties, violet asylum, violet criminal, violet angers, violet manuscripts, violet introduction, violet terminals, violet maintenance, violet fame, violet probations, violet hours, violet snares, violet whimper, violet officials, ample violet, violet chained, better violet, same violet, violet xray, violet becomes, hidden violet, violet blunder, violet early, missed violet, violet itself, violet prescription, scabrous violet, violet thumbs, violet belief, violet riot, never violet, violet spur, intended violet, pinned violet, violet respiration, violet staples, day violet, exhausted violet, greyed violet, opening violet, violet gravity, violet help
VERSO 18.4.3
Lemon the clerk has collected: watch
lemon, bay lemon, rare lemon, lemon distance, lemon steps, given lemon, lemon knot, lemon reach, lemon fast, lemon documents, lemon ethic, lemon funerals, lemon hold, taken lemon, lemon elegies, lemon summary, lemon pulley, lemon factors, lemon archives, what lemon, lemon acts, lemon nails, lemon steps, lemon crevasses, written lemon, lemon vanishing, lemon deposit, missing lemon, lemon contents, lemon debris, lemon gains, unassailed lemon, lemon sinew, uncertain lemon
VERSO 19
Poema, poein, related to, the Sanskrit, cinoti, cayati, to assemble to heap up, to construct
I can’t do everything. That is what someone assured me. She said, “You can’t be responsible for remembering everything.” But those are strange things to forget. Like coleus? No, like your fingers. Well of course one forgets one’s fingers. They simply do what they do. I suspect other motives, the clerk stabs.
Poetry can expose the heterogeneous qualities of a life, or of life, in an age in which all efforts both corporate and State, seem to homogenize. I think that poetry has the capacity to blow oxygen on a stiff existence, right? Jesus, the clerk says. I mean, I’m saying that, but if you think of all the mechanisms of communication and all the availability of information, you’re thinking, well, that’s not particularly homogenous or that’s not particularly stiff, or needing of a type of oxygenation. But, not true, the clerk interjects. I think it is stiff, because it is a repetition of the same thing, over and over and over again. All the information about what a life might be, what a life might look like, how a life ought to be lived, what one must want and desire, all those roads are quite flattened out into certain needs and certain tastes and certain wants. And that person, the author says, that human, has now become fairly describable, as someone who is striving not to think too deeply about very much. All information is available, all history is available, all thought is available. Consuming is the obvious answer to life. This availability exists, the clerk says, but it really exists in the brain; it doesn’t exist in the mind. One is rushing over it, or one has a landscape, but it isn’t a lived landscape, all the details aren’t lived. I’m not sure where that was going, the clerk trails off.
A line of poetry does about five things, whereas a line of prose can do five things, but it has a full stop. You seem obsessed by the full stop, the clerk has beckoned with her dry hand, why not just leave it out of the novel. I think the imperative, in a certain sense, for prose to satisfy narratively makes prose unavailable to the generative possibilities that a poem has. You have never been able to articulate this well or convincingly, the clerk insinuates. Each time you attempt it, I end up with this incoherence and this uncertainty. The clerk sighs to a thousand files, they groan with a sweep of her hand. I can think of hundreds of novels that contradict you. A baby was born next door, the clerk continues, as if we are talking about the same subject. I’m thinking about making him my assistant.
It is not that prose can’t do it…I am being careful here because as you say there are many, many works…I have written prose, and I know that it is possible to perform these generative moves, these imaginative…the author incoheres,…all those moves in it, but essentially, you still owe something to the reader, you know, understanding, in ways that in poetry, you don’t owe them at all. It is a negotiation between what is said, what is written, and what is withheld. And you are always balancing this, so, if prose is on the continuum between what is written and what is withheld, it would be, perhaps, somewhere in the middle, and poetry would be three-quarters of the way along that line in terms of the possibilities of its withholding, and the possibilities of its revealing. What was the question again? I can’t remember.
Poetry has that ability to reconstitute language; it uses time. It can make you see the xylem between the then and the after, or the now and the after. It has no obligation to the present. It is time.
VERSO 19.001
A buoy has been placed outside a grap of rock about one and three-quarter miles from shore, in three fathoms of water. Mariners should not go south of this.
The following are the usual rate of freights.
VERSO 19.01
Josephine Turalba has made me a pair of slippers. They are my favourite colour, and gold. They are elegant with violence, as elegant as violence. They are bullet-ridden and elegant. They are bullet-made and elegant. And fine with violence, as violence is the only word I know for elegance. They are perfect and contain all the violence in the world.
VERSO 19.1
Adjectiveless, the clerk thinks, balance, daily, no qualification, ink perhaps, sincerely. Dear. File 65. Attempt 197. The clerk needs a spanner, a vehicle, a bowl of nails, a wire, a cup, a lamp. A lamp? Bring file 267. Attempt 501. Handles.
VERSO 19.2
Alice B. Toklas on Gertrude Stein on Picasso on Gertrude Stein: In these early days…the effect of the african art was purely upon his vision and his forms, his imagination remained purely spanish….She was not at any time interested in african sculpture. She always says that she liked it well enough but that it has nothing to do with europeans, that it lacks naïveté, that it is very ancient, very narrow, very sophisticated but lacks the elegance of the Egyptian sculpture from which it is derived. She says that as an American she likes primitive things to be more savage.
Who on earth is left who did not say an awful thing, the clerk wonders. Who. Who did not disguise it as sophistication, as knowledge, as wit. What jaded poses dismiss all dreadfulness. How the author bears all this is alarming. And that isn’t even the worst. Such memory loss you have. Melanctha. My amnesia is useful. How many micro-abrasions, as they say, do you think I could take?
Rose Johnson was careless and was lazy, but she had been brought up by white folks and she needed decent comfort. Her white training had only made for habits, not for nature. Rose had the simple, promiscuous immorality of the black people. Rose Johnson and Melanctha Herbert like many of the twos with women were a curious pair to be such friends. Melanctha Herbert was a graceful, pale yellow, intelligent, attractive negress. She had not been raised like Rose by white folks but then she had been half made with real white blood.
Each sentence is a razor blade. Toklas says (and still I am honouring the conceit)…And still you are honouring the conceit. Can you call it a conceit anymore, truly? You’re right of course but Alice says that when Gertrude Stein wrote this it was the first definite step away from the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century in literature. Well all that is certainly generous, the clerk laughs. Sometimes the clerk laughs an uncontainable laugh. An unruly, veering laugh. It veers and it cracks and the author hears it like a bone being broken when a car hits it out of the blue. And even so, the author quotes Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein concluded that negroes were not suffering from persecution, they were suffering from nothingness. She always contends that the African is not primitive, he has a very ancient culture and there it remains. Consequently nothing does or can happen.
Didn’t Hegel say that? It’s all I remember of Hegel. The clerk is laughing now like machines cutting gravel in a quarry. See Picasso’s Acrobat and Young Harlequin, 1905. Just to state the obvious, the clerk states the obvious. These effete and childish paintings, their organ-grinding stupidity. Then observe the utter ripping of Picasso’s sensibilities, the shredding of his senses when the African sculptures entered him. Then, Head of a Woman, 1907. Head of a Man,. 1907. The author and the clerk mimic Alice with their hostile pity,…the charming early Italian period to the intensive struggle which was to end in cubism.
Is there an essentialism creeping in here. The tentative author. No, a tiredness with having to recuperate, from essentialism, the conversations going on in the African sculptures so they may go on their way. In a future uninterrupted they break their own mythologies. Will I? The plaintive author. Who knows.
VERSO 20
Mourning cloak seen out the window, it moved from the smoke bush to the late cherry tree to the wisteria and then the grape leaves. A possible roadway, the clerk observes.
Any clerk who in any vessel lying within twenty yards or alongside who makes use of any violent or obscene or profane language with intent to provoke any person, fights, or disturbs the peace shall be guilty of a contravention of these regulations.
VERSO 20.02
I have seen Apollinaire’s things. The twenty-four African sculptures. C’est par une grand audace du goût que l’on est venu a considérer ces idoles nègre comme de véritables œuvres d’art. The Fang, the Kuta, the Baule…C’est par une grand impuissance du goût que l’on n’est pas venu a considérer ces sculptures africains comme de véritables œuvres d’art.
VERSO 20.1
I have nothing to say about God. All of those kinds of philosophies got us to this place. I don’t know where women exist in those religions, they are absent in those visions. They do not exist. Or, they exist as something called “women.” But they certainly don’t exist as something called “human” or sovereign. So, I find religions useless. I don’t want to ever have to defend them. Not much more to be said there. If my friends come to me and say, I have a right to pray, I say of course you do, pray but do not involve me. Do not involve me in your wretchedness. I do not need forgiveness and I do not need salvation and I do not need excuses and I do not need denigration or elevation. And most of all I resent your assignments, and most of all I resent your cowardice and your violence.