EEG

by Daša Drndic

  When I moved, I sat on the seashore and gazed into the distance. I didn’t weep like that phony, that mellifluous Coelho, who talks drivel. I opened my backpack, which I had been hauling with me for two and a half decades, and which had reached the end of its road. In the bottom rolled a few old mislaid trivialities, incidentals, trifles, trinkets that rang like little bells, fading away.

  The sea glittered, little silver arrows like acupuncture needles flew through the air and pierced my arms, my chest, my legs, my eyes, and for an instant I saw nothing, no blueness, no infinity. I heard (again) Cioran whispering:

  To an extent I acknowledged my country, which had given me such a significant opportunity for suffering, I loved it because it could not respond to my expectations.

  which was additionally soothing.

  Then Dom Sebastian, King of Portugal, crept up, sat down beside me, put his arm around my shoulder and said:

  Others take my madness away

  with all that took place in it.

  Without madness what is man

  more than the healthy beast,

  corpse adjourned that procreates?

  Then I leapt up and swam.

  I’m an excellent swimmer. Strong and graceful.

  (That day) the soft, seductive and tranquil sea rolled over my back until it had wrapped around me, embraced me, whispering Now you are mine, imprisoned and secure in my depths . . . I am your master. But, with each of my movements, Dom Sebastian became ever quieter; I speeded up the movement of my legs and arms, I breathed steadily, I cut through the water, wounded it, and the sea softened. I swam for hours, that was my last marathon of account-settling, I swam, and alongside me, like a support crew, slid Kierkegaard, multiplied a hundredfold, repeating with me, like a mantra, with each stroke, rhythmically (to that water): My misery is my castle, which is set, like an eagle’s nest, among the clouds on top of the mountain. No one can conquer it. From it I fly down into reality and snatch my prey.

  In EEG, Daša Drndić has incorporated or quoted the words of a number of writers. If there is any writer whose work has not been acknowledged here, we will make due reference in any future edition.

  Lines from E. M. Cioran’s Cahiers 1957–1972 © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1997.

  A line adapted from an interview of Milan Kundera by Philip Roth on November 30, 1980, printed in the New York Times.

  Lines from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.431, translated by C. K. Ogden, published in the United States by Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc. in 1921.

  Excerpt from “On Noise” in Essays by Arthur Schopenhauer, selected and translated by T. Bailey Saunders, published in New York by A. L. Burt Company in 1902.

  Lines from Jean le bleu by Jean Giono © Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, 1995.

  Excerpt from The Sickness Unto Death by Søren Kierkegaard, edited and translated by Edna H. Hong & Howard V. Hong. Published by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1941.

  Excerpt from The Luzhin Defense by Vladimir Nabokov, copyright © 1990 by the Estate of Vladimir Nabokov. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

  Lines adapted from Die Schachnovelle by Stefan Zweig, first published in 1942 in Buenos Aires and in Europe by Gottfried Bermann Fischer in 1943.

  Lines from “Optical Illusion” (1934) in Today I Wrote Nothing by Daniil Kharms, English translation copyright © 2007, 2009 by Matvei Yankelevich. Used by permission of The Overlook Press, an imprint of Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York. All rights reserved.

  Excerpt from “The Interrogation of Friedrich Jeckeln” in a translation in Hitler and the Final Solution by Gerald Fleming, published by University of California Press, Berkeley, 1994.

  Lines from “The Melancholy of Death” by Hermann Broch on the writing of The Death of Virgil. http://sveske.ba/en/content/smrt-melankolika.

  Lines adapted from the essay “Giuseppe” from An Elemental Thing, published by New Directions, New York. Copyright © Eliot Weinberger, 2007. Used by permission of the author.

  Excerpt by Fernando Pessoa, edited by Jerónimo Pizarro, translated by Margaret Jull Costa, from The Book of Disquiet, copyright © 2017 by Margaret Jull Costa, copyright © 2013 by Jerónimo Pizarro. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  Lines on Daniil Kharms by Bash. http://fenomeni.me/koju-je-rijec-zaboravio-danil-harms-tema-harms/.

  Lines adapted from Béla Hamvas on “Lamed.” https://www.docdroid.net/D9FA4fc/lamed-11-2015.pdf. Articles chosen by Ivan L. Ninić.

  Lines from Jerica Ziherl’s preface to a monograph of work by Vlado Kristl. Reproduced by permission.

  Excerpt from Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927–1939 by Georges Bataille. English translation copyright 1985 by the University of Minnesota. Originally published in Georges Bataille’s Œuvres complètes, copyright 1970 by Èditions Gallimard.

  Lines adapted from Witold Gombrowicz’s introduction to his Operetta (1966).

  A line from E. M. Cioran’s “Mon pays” in Transfiguration de la Roumanie, published by Éditions de l’Herne, Paris, in 2009.

  Lines adapted from Obra poetica by Fernando Pessoa, published by Companhia Jose Aguilar, Rio de Janiero, in 1972.

  Thirty-five words from Either/Or: A Fragment of Life by Søren Kierkegaard, edited by Victor Eremita, abridged, translated, and with an introduction and notes by Alastair Hannay (Penguin Classics, 1992). Copyright © Alastair Hannay, 1992.