Du Côté de Chez Swann – Day 32

Mon corps, trop engourdi pour remuer, cherchait, d’après la forme de sa fatigue, à repérer la position de ses membres pour en induire la direction du mur, la place des meubles, pour reconstruire et pour nommer la demeure où il se trouvait.

My body, too numb to move, is looking, according to the form of its fatigue, to locate the position of its members for inferring the direction of the wall, the place of the furniture, to reconstruct and to name the house where it was found.

Du Côté de Chez Swann – Day 31

Toujours est-il que, quand je me réveillais ainsi, mon esprit s’agitant pour chercher, sans y réussir, à savoir où j’étais, tout tournait autour de moi dans l’obscurité, les choses, les pays, les années.

Still it is, when I wake up so, my spirit restlessly searches, without success, to know where I was, everything turns around me in the dark, things, places, years.

Original boredom and solving our financial crisis

While I have not posted on Either / Or the experience of volume 1 for a second go round is better than I expected.  The problem is that it is a ‘popular’ work and so also a dated work.  Can you imagine reading Zizek’s works over 100 years from now trying to piece together the pop-culture illusions?  Either / Or is not that extreme though I am certainly feeling its distance.  One of the pieces is volume 1 begins with a reflection on boredom as the root of evil.  And because of this seeks to eliminate its evil presence.  He takes finance as an example.  Imagine trying to improve the economy by practicing economics!?  How utterly boring and therefore sinful.

The history of this [evil] can be traced from the very beginning of the world.  The gods were bored, and so they created man.  Adam was bored because he was alone, and so Eve was created.  Thus boredom entered the world, and increased in proportion to the increase of population.  Adam was bored alone; then Adam and Eve were bored togethre; then Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were bored en famille; then the population of the world increased, and the peoples were bored en masse.  To divert themselves they conceived the idea of constructing a tower high enough to reach the heavens.  This idea is itself as boring as the tower was high, and constitutes a terrible proof of how boredom gained the upper hand.  The nations were scattered over the earth, just as people now travel abroad, but they continued to be bored.  Consider the consequences of this boredom.  Humanity fell from its lofty height, first because of Eve, and then from the Tower of Babel.  What was it, on the other hand, that delayed the fall of Rome, was it not bread and circuses?  And is anything to be done now?  Is anyone concerned about planning some means of diversion?  Quite the contrary, the impending ruin is being accelerated.  It is proposed to improve the financial condition of the state by practicing economy.  What could be more tiresome?  Instead of increasing the national debt, it is proposed to pay it off.  As I understand the political situation, it would be an easy matter for Denmark to negotiate a loan of fifteen million dollars.  Why not consider this plan?  Every once in a while we hear of a man who is a genius, and therefore neglects to pay his debts – why should not a nation do the same, if we were all agreed?  Let us then borrow fifteen millions, and let us the proceeds, not to pay debts, but for public entertainment.  Let us celebrate the millennium in a riot of merriment.  Let us place boxes everywhere, not, as at present, for the deposit of money, but for the free distribution of money.  Everything would become gratis; theaters gratis, women of easy virtue gratis, one would drive to the park gratis, be buried gratis, one’s eulogy would be gratis; I say gratis, for when one always has money at hand, everything is in a certain sense free.  No one should be permitted to own any property.  Only in my own case would there be an exception.  I reserve to myself securities in the Bank of London to the value of one hundred dollars a day, partly because I cannot do with less, partly because the idea is mine, and finally because I may not be able to hit upon a new idea when the fifteen millions are gone.

Du Côté de Chez Swann – Day 29

Mais il suffisait que, dans mon lit même, mon sommeil fût profond et détendît entièrement mon esprit; alors celui-ci lâchait le plan du lieu où je m’étais endormi, et quand je m’éveillais au milieu de la nuit, comme j’ignorais où je me trouvais, je ne savais même pas au premier instant qui j’étais; j’avais seulement dans sa simplicité première, le sentiment de l’existence comme il peut frémir au fond d’un animal: j’étais plus dénué que l’homme des cavernes; mais alors le souvenir–non encore du lieu où j’étais, mais de quelques-uns de ceux que j’avais habités et où j’aurais pu être–venait à moi comme un secours d’en haut pour me tirer du néant d’où je n’aurais pu sortir tout seul; je passais en une seconde par-dessus des siècles de civilisation, et l’image confusément entrevue de lampes à pétrole, puis de chemises à col rabattu, recomposaient peu à peu les traits originaux de mon moi.

But it was enough that, in my own bed, my sleep was deep and completely relaxing to my spirit; that it lost sense of place where I fell asleep, and when I woke up in the middle of the night, I did not know where I was, I did not even know at first who I was; I had only my first simplicity, the sense of existence as it might quiver in the substance of an animal: I was more lacking than the cave man; but then the memory  (not of where I was, but of some of those places where I had been or where I could be) came to me as a relief from the height of nothingness where I could not have got it alone; I passed in one second over-top centuries of civilizations, and the image dimly met with kerosene lamps, then a collared shirt folded, recomposing little by little the original traits of myself.