Nightwood by Jeanette Winterson, Djuna Barnes, Thomas Stearns Eliot
Tags: Fiction, Literary, General, Psychological, Psychological fiction, Classics, Lesbian, Lesbians, Sex Addicts
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division. The very constitution of twilight is a fabulous reconstruction of fear, fear bottom-out and wrong side up. Every day is thought upon and calculated, but the night is not premeditated. The Bible lies the one way, but the night gown the other. The Night, "Beware of that dark door!"'
'I used to think', Nora said, 'that people just went to sleep, or if they did not go to sleep, that they were themselves, but now,' she lit a cigarette and her hands trembled, 'now I see that the night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep.' '
'Ah!' exclaimed the doctor. 'Let a man lay himself down in the Great Bed and his "identity" is no longer his own, his "trust" is not with him, and his "willingness" is turned over and is of another permission. His distress is wild and anonymous. He sleeps in a Town of Darkness, member of a secret brotherhood. He neither knows himself nor his outriders, he berserks a fearful dimension and dismounts, miraculously, in bed!
'His heart is tumbling in his chest, a dark place! Though some go into the night as a spoon breaks easy water, others go head foremost against a new connivance; their horns make a dry crying, like the wings of the locust, late come to their shedding.
'Have you thought of the night, now, in other times, in foreign countries—in Paris? When the streets were gall high with things you wouldn't have done for a dare's sake, and the way it was then; with the pheasants' necks and the goslings' beaks dangling against the hocks of the gallants, and not a pavement in the place, and everything gutters for miles and miles, and a stench to it that plucked you by the nostrils and you were twenty leagues out! The criers telling the price of wine to such good effect that the dawn saw good clerks full of piss and vinegar, and blood-letting in side streets where some wild princess in a night shift of velvet howled under a leech; not to mention the palaces of Nymphenburg echoing back to Vienna with the night trip of late kings letting water into plush cans and fine woodwork, no,' he said looking at her sharply, 'I can see you have not! You should, for the night has been going on for a long time.'
She said, 'I've never known it before—I thought I did, but it was not knowing at all.'
'Exactly,' said the doctor, 'you thought you knew, and you hadn't even shuffled the cards—now the nights of one period are not the nights of another. Neither are the nights of one city the nights of another. Let us take Paris for an instance, and France for a fact. Ah, Mon Dieu! La nuit effroyable! La nuit, qui est une immense plaine, et le cœur qui est une petite extrémité! Ah, good Mother mine, Notre Dame-de-bonne-Garde! Intercede for me now, while yet I explain what I'm coming to! French nights are those which all nations seek the world over—and have you noticed that? Ask doctor Mighty O'Connor; the reason the doctor knows everything is because he's been everywhere at the wrong time and has now become anonymous.'
'But,' Nora said, 'I never thought of the night as a life at all—I've never lived it—why did she?':"
'I'm telling you of French nights at the moment,' the doctor went on, 'and why we all go into them. The night and the day are two travels, and the French—gut-greedy and fist-tight though they often are—alone leave testimony of the two in the dawn; we tear up the one for the sake of the other, not so the French.
'And why is that, because they think of the two as one continually, and keep it before their mind as the monks who repeat, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me!" Some twelve thousand or more times a twenty-four hours, so that it is finally in the head, good or bad, without saying a word. Bowing down from the waist, the world over they go, that they may revolve about the Great Enigma—as a relative about a cradle—and the Great Enigma can't be thought of unless you turn the head the other way, and come upon thinking with the eye that you
'I used to think', Nora said, 'that people just went to sleep, or if they did not go to sleep, that they were themselves, but now,' she lit a cigarette and her hands trembled, 'now I see that the night does something to a person's identity, even when asleep.' '
'Ah!' exclaimed the doctor. 'Let a man lay himself down in the Great Bed and his "identity" is no longer his own, his "trust" is not with him, and his "willingness" is turned over and is of another permission. His distress is wild and anonymous. He sleeps in a Town of Darkness, member of a secret brotherhood. He neither knows himself nor his outriders, he berserks a fearful dimension and dismounts, miraculously, in bed!
'His heart is tumbling in his chest, a dark place! Though some go into the night as a spoon breaks easy water, others go head foremost against a new connivance; their horns make a dry crying, like the wings of the locust, late come to their shedding.
'Have you thought of the night, now, in other times, in foreign countries—in Paris? When the streets were gall high with things you wouldn't have done for a dare's sake, and the way it was then; with the pheasants' necks and the goslings' beaks dangling against the hocks of the gallants, and not a pavement in the place, and everything gutters for miles and miles, and a stench to it that plucked you by the nostrils and you were twenty leagues out! The criers telling the price of wine to such good effect that the dawn saw good clerks full of piss and vinegar, and blood-letting in side streets where some wild princess in a night shift of velvet howled under a leech; not to mention the palaces of Nymphenburg echoing back to Vienna with the night trip of late kings letting water into plush cans and fine woodwork, no,' he said looking at her sharply, 'I can see you have not! You should, for the night has been going on for a long time.'
She said, 'I've never known it before—I thought I did, but it was not knowing at all.'
'Exactly,' said the doctor, 'you thought you knew, and you hadn't even shuffled the cards—now the nights of one period are not the nights of another. Neither are the nights of one city the nights of another. Let us take Paris for an instance, and France for a fact. Ah, Mon Dieu! La nuit effroyable! La nuit, qui est une immense plaine, et le cœur qui est une petite extrémité! Ah, good Mother mine, Notre Dame-de-bonne-Garde! Intercede for me now, while yet I explain what I'm coming to! French nights are those which all nations seek the world over—and have you noticed that? Ask doctor Mighty O'Connor; the reason the doctor knows everything is because he's been everywhere at the wrong time and has now become anonymous.'
'But,' Nora said, 'I never thought of the night as a life at all—I've never lived it—why did she?':"
'I'm telling you of French nights at the moment,' the doctor went on, 'and why we all go into them. The night and the day are two travels, and the French—gut-greedy and fist-tight though they often are—alone leave testimony of the two in the dawn; we tear up the one for the sake of the other, not so the French.
'And why is that, because they think of the two as one continually, and keep it before their mind as the monks who repeat, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me!" Some twelve thousand or more times a twenty-four hours, so that it is finally in the head, good or bad, without saying a word. Bowing down from the waist, the world over they go, that they may revolve about the Great Enigma—as a relative about a cradle—and the Great Enigma can't be thought of unless you turn the head the other way, and come upon thinking with the eye that you
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