Notes from a Room

notesfromaroom — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 16:56:42 +0000

Gabriel Josipovici arrived in Oxford to be interviewed for a place to study English – the most un-English of students, Jewish, twice-displaced, already passionate about the great European writers: “They kept asking me what English novelist I most admired and I kept saying ‘Dostoevsky’, and they kept saying, ‘English novelist, Mr Josipovici’, and I kept saying ‘Dostoevsky’, vaguely aware that something was profoundly wrong but unable, in the heat of the moment, to put my finger on it.”

– Gabriel Josipovici, (via here)

A small room of my own

notesfromaroom — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:54:32 +0000

It is true I have a small room of my own, but that is not a home, only a place of refuge where I can hide my inner turmoil, only to fall all the more headlong into its clutches.

– Kafka, in G. Janouch, Conversations with Kafka (via here)

The sick man

notesfromaroom — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:52:28 +0000

Kafka spent eight months in Zürau, in the Bohemian countryside […] The tuberculosis had declared itself a month before, when he coughed up blood in the night. The sick man didn’t hide a certain sense of relief. Writing to Felix Weltsch, he compared himself to the ‘happy lover’ who exclaims: ‘All the previous times were but illusions, only now do I truly love’. Illness was the final lover, which allowed him to close the old accounts.

– Roberto Calasso, K. (tr. G. Brock)

The task

notesfromaroom — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:49:54 +0000

You are the exercise, the task. No student far and wide.

– Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms (tr. M. Hofmann)

Our final room

notesfromaroom — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:48:49 +0000

Every day we feel a little more at home in our new flat, a little less annoyed at the lack of space and the extra rent, X and I. This is unusual and confuses us. Where will it end? we ask each other. In happiness? Surely not, I say. Definitely not, X tells me. Notice we’ve moved into smaller and smaller rooms over the years. And they’ll keep getting smaller and smaller, he says, until we’re put in our final room, our double tomb.

Kitschy

notesfromaroom — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:47:44 +0000

You’re the one who’s kitschy, aren’t you, X tells me. You’re the one who’s out there faking it, but I’m the one who really feels it, so I’m not the kitschy one, am I? I bear the real brunt of your kitsch, don’t I?

notesfromaroom — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 20:13:21 +0000

Of all things one feels, nothing gives the impression of being at the very heart of truth so much as fits of unaccountable despair; compared to these, everything seems frivolous, debased, lacking in substance and interest.

– Cioran (via here)

The end goes on

notesfromaroom — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:25:09 +0000

It’s the end, we finally agree, as we watch TV on mute in the dark, in our uncle’s room, the blue light flickering around us. It’s been the end from the beginning, those spazzy presenters don’t fool us, those adverts don’t fool us. It’s the end, X tells me, at last you understand, resistance is futile. You were stopped before you began, he says, you just didn’t listen to me. You thought you could still achieve things, you thought there was still hope for you, but now you know, he says. Now I know, I agree, the end is nigh, the end is here, and the end goes on.

Glad

notesfromaroom — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:12:49 +0000

This town’s out of reach, X and I agree, we more or less accepted that when we arrived. But it’s there, it’s definitely there, and we made it there, more or less, and that’s what matters, we agree. There are things to be glad about now and then, we agree, even proud of. Don’t get carried away, he tells me, it’s only a house move.

notesfromaroom — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:28:05 +0000

The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

– Jeremiah 8:20