TROPISMES

Tropismes by Nathalie Sarraute has been on the floor near the stove for some months. I read one or two, puzzled, my knowledge of the french language functional but unhelpful. I read in the passing way of the insomniac, uncomprehending and and sometimes content, sometimes irrritated. Then, one evening, I read one or two pieces and recognise something. Clic. Déclic. Myself, namely. The rage—or is it relief?—of Caliban seeing himself in the mirror. 

Nathalie Sarraute writes in a silence broken by the light scratching of her creatures, nameless and close by at all times. People on the side of themselves. To the side. Recounting the little they can say, she can say, as they grow. It only takes a couple of pages. 

Quand il était petit, la nuit il se dressait sur son lit, il appelait. Elles accouraient, allumaient la lumière, elles prenaient dans leurs mains les linges blancs, les serviettes de toilette, les vêtements, et elles les lui montraient. Il n'y avait rien. Les linges entre leurs mains devenaient figés et morts dans la lumière.

Maintenant qu'il était grand, il les faisait encore venir pour regarder partout, chercher en lui, bien voir et prendre entre leurs mains les peurs blotties en lui dans les recoins et les examiner à la lumière.

I AM WHERE I THINK

"I am where I think." Elif Batuman explains.

Literature, in short, looks different depending on where you read it: a subject I found myself discussing one afternoon over lunch, in a garden overlooking Tblisi ...

Elif Batuman is american of turkish origin. She is reading russian literature in 2022 in Ukraine and Georgia. 

Gogol's story 'The Nose', in which a nose detaches from its face and becomes an independent being, takes on a glaring meaning in the context of Putin's Russia. Gogol was from Ukraine but wrote in Russia, in russian. Ukraine is the nose on the face of Russia.

My grandparents came from Ukraine, Moldova and Latvia. I grew up in England. I identify with no country, only the patch that I tend and the books I read and write. I live in Ireland, an island at the western extremity of Europe, at the edge of the known world, which spills off the left-hand side of old maps and feeds my innate detachment. 

I read Elif Batuman's article in the bath. Descartes is upended. Afloat. I think therefore I am, becomes, I am where I think.

We need to find new, "contrapuntal ways of reading", she says, and I think of the many tangoes I have experienced reading a couple of books at a time. 

There is no better place than the bath for taking on new ideas.

You are so comfortable they are immediately ideas you've always known.

The Middle Voice by Han Kang

I read The Middle Voice, a story by Han Kang, mostly in the middle of the night, where the middle voice speaks.  The middle voice is a greek third voice, reflexive, as in the english 'he hanged himself'. 

Perhaps insomnia is a method. Learn and suffer are nearly the same in greek. What I read in the middle of the night I read exclusively. Nothing else is going on. The world is mute and you are humming peacefully.

The woman in Han Kang's story has long episodes of being unable to move her lips, speak, She writes. Or someone writes. Her son calls her Thickly Falling Snow's Sorrow. His name is Sparkling Forest. 

A korean woman learns classical greek in order to take refuge in another language. To learn its economies and poignancy. To test her own speech. 

No, she says, it isn't that simple.

VERTICAL READING

Not long after I started a diary, I changed my handwriting to something less schoolgirl, more monk. It made my life feel more vertical, more intense. The onward flow of days was matched by the downward pull of calligraphy. This was where I lived. For sure. 

Casey Cep in The New Yorker reviewed The Wandering Mind by Jamie Kreiner, a study of monkish attention in mediaeval times. Their efforts look both 'riotously strange, yet ....  annoyingly familiar'. How far do you have to go to concentrate properly? 

Thirty-five years on top of a pillar. Twenty days without sleeping. Sixty years living next to a river and never once looking at it. 

What does it take and what are we looking for? Something worthy of our attention, somewhere to rest.