Rimbaud, Eisenstein, Kurosawa and Michaux all on one page

IJ 232:

'A du nous avons foi au poison.' (We have faith in poison) from Rimbaud's Drunken Morning )

and,

"Eisenstein and Kurosawa and Michaux walk into a bar"

Drunken Morning - Rimbaud

(Illuminations XI: Matinée d’Ivresse)

O my Good! O my Beauty! Atrocious fanfare in which I never falter! Enchanted easel! Hurrah for the unknown work and for the marvellous body, for the first time! It began in the laughter of children, it will finish so. This poison will linger in all our veins even when, the fanfare returning, we are delivered again to the old disharmony. Oh, we now so worthy of such tortures, let us fervently grasp this superhuman promise made to our created bodies and souls: this promise, this madness! Elegance, science, violence! They’ve promised the tree of good and evil will be buried in darkness, the tyrannical virtues will be deported, so we can bring here our love so pure. It began with certain disgusts and it ends – we being unable to seize this eternity all at once – it ends with a riot of perfumes.

      Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins, horror of the faces and objects here, hallowed be you by the memory of this vigil. It began with all boorishness, behold, it ends with angels of fire and ice.

      Little drunken holy vigil! If only on account of the mask you’ve granted us. We endorse you, method! We’ve not forgotten that yesterday you glorified every century of ours. We have faith in poison. We know how to give our whole life every day.

      This is the age of ASSASSINS.

1) Director and film theorist, Sergei Eisenstein, looks like David Lynch's Eraserhead

2) Drunken Angel is one of Kurosawa's early major works.

3) Michaux wrote a book about his experience with the hallucinogen mescaline:

Once the agony of the first hour is over (effect of the encounter with the poison), an agony so great that you wonder if you are not going to faint (as some people do, though rarely) you can let yourself be carried along by a certain current which may seem like happiness. Is that what I thought? I am not sure of the contrary. Yet, in my journal, during all those incredible hours, I find these words written more than fifty times, clumsily, and with difficultly : Intolerable, Unbearable.

Such is the price of this paradise (!)

Brighton Marine


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I didn't see this one on the audio archives page, but it's the one where the first audience question following the reading is about church attendance and the role religion plays in DFW's life and work - a question he mostly dodges.

http://hammer.ucla.edu/watchlisten/watchlisten/show_id/25789

Also see DFW's short essay, Joseph Frank's Dostoevsky:

"What exactly does "faith" mean? As in "religious faith," "faith in God," etc. Isn't it basically crazy to believe in something that there's no proof of? Is there really any difference between what we call faith and some primitive tribe's sacrificing virgins to volcanoes because they believe it'll produce good weather? How can somebody have faith before he's presented with sufficient reason to have faith? Or is somehow needing to have faith a sufficient reason for having faith? But then what kind of need are we talking about?"

Behold!

Lo, The David Foster Wallace Audio Project.

Tributes to DFW

McSweeney's published a number of tributes to David Foster Wallace, some of which are worth reading. Incidentally, while skimming along I noticed one of my Latin professors from undergrad (Alex Tetlak) contributed.

Movie within a movie

Ethan Hawke's Hamlet is a film student in the 2000 film adaptation