Naked, or dressed in nudity
those extensions, beyond my fingers, toes and nails (orteil/articulas)
my sympathy would be an insult.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
62: A Model Kit
p.34
where people squeezed together sleep in rooms with tired furniture,
with dark curtains and a breathing in of dust and beer, [...]
I will lose you again on the street car or on the train,
I'll run in my shorts
among crowded people sleeping in the compartments
where a violet light
blinds
the dusty cloth, the curtains that hide my city.
p.57 (the silent attention of Madame Germaine with a duster on Wednesdays and Saturdays)
My profession condemned me to hotels, which wasn't too pleasant when I thought about my apartment in Paris, set up over fifteen years of preference, a bachelor's manias, tendencies of the left hand or the five senses, records and bottles in their proper, obedient places, the silent attention of Madame Germaine with a duster on Wednesdays and Saturdays, life without financial problems, the Luxembourg beneath the windows...
p.60 (sad smell of time)
A friend of bars and custom-houses, of refueling stops early in the morning and beds where memories wouldn't be mixed with the sad smell of time
p.114 (tunnel, spoons nail, posters)
There were few people on the Metro platform, people like gray blotches on the benches along the concave wall with tiles and advertising posters. Hélène walked to the end of the platform where the stairway permitted - but it was prohibited - entry into the tunnel; shrugging her shoulders, vaguely passing the back of her hands across her eyes, she went back to the illuminated part of the platform. That's how, almost without seeing them, you start to look at the enormous posters one after the other, the ones that violate distraction and seek their path in your memory - first a soup, then some eyeglasses, then a make of television, gigantic photographs where every tooth of the child who likes Knorr soups has the size of a matchbox and the fingernails on the man watching television like spoons (to drink the soup in the neighbouring poster, for example), but the only thing completely attracts me is the left eye of the girl who loves Babybel cheese, an eye like the entrance to a tunnel, a series of concentric galleries and, in the middle, the cone of the tunnel which disappears into the depth like that other tunnel where I would have to have entered by going down the forbidden stairs, and which starts to vibrate, to moan, to fill with lights and squeals until the doors of the train open and I get in and sit on the bench reserved for invalids or old people or pregnant women, across from the seats where undefinable pygmies with microscopic teeth and imperceptible nails travel along with the fixed and mistrustful expression of Parisians tied to salaries of hunger and bitterness that are mass produced like Knorr soups. For four or five stations there is a kind of absurd desire for madness, for a stubbornness in fixing the illusion, which might have been enough to suggest it, to take a mental step forward, to throw oneself into the tunnel on the poster so that it would become reality, the real stairway of life, and those people in the car reduced to a ridiculous size would become a mere mouthful for the girl who loves Babybel cheese, a slap of the hand for the giant watching television. Now, at the edge of the forbidden tunnel stairs, something like an abominable caress, a demand... Shrugging your shoulders, rejecting temptations one more time; you remain, Hélène, the bitter harvest of that afternoon remains; the day isn't over yet, you'll have to get off at Saint-Michel station, the people get their normal size back, the posters are exaggerated, a naked man is small, fragile, no one has nails like spoons, eyes like tunnels. No game will make you forget: your soul is a cold machine, a lucid register. You'll never forget anything in a whirlwind that sweeps away the large and the small to fling you into another present; even when you walk through the city you're yourself, inevitably. You'll soon methodically forget, with a before and an after; don't be in such a hurry, the day isn't over yet. Come on, here we are.
p.171 -2 (lost dog, streetcar, amusement park)
... in order to get to the Calle Veinticuatro de Noviembre I would have to take one of the countless street cars that paraded by like a ride in an amusement park, passing without stopping, their sides of peeling ocher, their trolleys full of sparks, an intermittent ringing of meaningless bells which could be heard at all moments and as if because of a whim, with people with hollow and tired faces in the windows, all of them looking down, a little as if they were looking for a lost dog among the bricks of the red pavement.
where people squeezed together sleep in rooms with tired furniture,
with dark curtains and a breathing in of dust and beer, [...]
I will lose you again on the street car or on the train,
I'll run in my shorts
among crowded people sleeping in the compartments
where a violet light
blinds
the dusty cloth, the curtains that hide my city.
p.57 (the silent attention of Madame Germaine with a duster on Wednesdays and Saturdays)
My profession condemned me to hotels, which wasn't too pleasant when I thought about my apartment in Paris, set up over fifteen years of preference, a bachelor's manias, tendencies of the left hand or the five senses, records and bottles in their proper, obedient places, the silent attention of Madame Germaine with a duster on Wednesdays and Saturdays, life without financial problems, the Luxembourg beneath the windows...
p.60 (sad smell of time)
A friend of bars and custom-houses, of refueling stops early in the morning and beds where memories wouldn't be mixed with the sad smell of time
p.114 (tunnel, spoons nail, posters)
There were few people on the Metro platform, people like gray blotches on the benches along the concave wall with tiles and advertising posters. Hélène walked to the end of the platform where the stairway permitted - but it was prohibited - entry into the tunnel; shrugging her shoulders, vaguely passing the back of her hands across her eyes, she went back to the illuminated part of the platform. That's how, almost without seeing them, you start to look at the enormous posters one after the other, the ones that violate distraction and seek their path in your memory - first a soup, then some eyeglasses, then a make of television, gigantic photographs where every tooth of the child who likes Knorr soups has the size of a matchbox and the fingernails on the man watching television like spoons (to drink the soup in the neighbouring poster, for example), but the only thing completely attracts me is the left eye of the girl who loves Babybel cheese, an eye like the entrance to a tunnel, a series of concentric galleries and, in the middle, the cone of the tunnel which disappears into the depth like that other tunnel where I would have to have entered by going down the forbidden stairs, and which starts to vibrate, to moan, to fill with lights and squeals until the doors of the train open and I get in and sit on the bench reserved for invalids or old people or pregnant women, across from the seats where undefinable pygmies with microscopic teeth and imperceptible nails travel along with the fixed and mistrustful expression of Parisians tied to salaries of hunger and bitterness that are mass produced like Knorr soups. For four or five stations there is a kind of absurd desire for madness, for a stubbornness in fixing the illusion, which might have been enough to suggest it, to take a mental step forward, to throw oneself into the tunnel on the poster so that it would become reality, the real stairway of life, and those people in the car reduced to a ridiculous size would become a mere mouthful for the girl who loves Babybel cheese, a slap of the hand for the giant watching television. Now, at the edge of the forbidden tunnel stairs, something like an abominable caress, a demand... Shrugging your shoulders, rejecting temptations one more time; you remain, Hélène, the bitter harvest of that afternoon remains; the day isn't over yet, you'll have to get off at Saint-Michel station, the people get their normal size back, the posters are exaggerated, a naked man is small, fragile, no one has nails like spoons, eyes like tunnels. No game will make you forget: your soul is a cold machine, a lucid register. You'll never forget anything in a whirlwind that sweeps away the large and the small to fling you into another present; even when you walk through the city you're yourself, inevitably. You'll soon methodically forget, with a before and an after; don't be in such a hurry, the day isn't over yet. Come on, here we are.
p.171 -2 (lost dog, streetcar, amusement park)
... in order to get to the Calle Veinticuatro de Noviembre I would have to take one of the countless street cars that paraded by like a ride in an amusement park, passing without stopping, their sides of peeling ocher, their trolleys full of sparks, an intermittent ringing of meaningless bells which could be heard at all moments and as if because of a whim, with people with hollow and tired faces in the windows, all of them looking down, a little as if they were looking for a lost dog among the bricks of the red pavement.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Interview: Balibar and Macherey - James H. Kavanagh and Thomas E. Lewis (Diacrtitics Vol 12, 1982, pp. 26-52)
pp.50-1 (Literary production)
MACHEREY:It is not a science of literature all by itself. From the outset, we refused to respond to the question: "What is literature?"
BALIBAR: But in a certain sense, we could not avoid at some moment acting as if we were giving such a response.
MACHEREY: No. On this point, I think we remained consistent. And all those who were working against us in similar fields at the time, they all raised again the question 'What is literature?,"and proposed their answers. Look at Sollers.
KAVANACH: Do you prefer the question: How can we construct a science of the literary text?
MACHEREY: Yes, but that is not at all the same question. And it is not a science of the literary text as such, as an isolated and autonomous phenomenon.
LEWIS: How would you characterize the productive analysis of literary texts?
MACHEREY: But what does one do when one speaks of literaryt exts? Are texts literary in themselves, by their own intrinsic characteristics, which distinguish them from non-literary texts? I think one must say that a text is literary because it is recognized as such, at a certain moment, under certain conditions. It may not have been so recognized before, and it may not be after. I did a lot of work on Jules Verne, at a time when no one spoke of him; now he has become an author, and everyone does his or her book on Jules Verne. He has been returned to "French Literature"; he is explained in class. But when I worked on him, he was not even a minor author; this was not "Literature."
KAVANAGH: Are texts ideological in themselves? Are there certain intrinsic characteristics that define them as ideological? MACHEREY:Ideology is present in texts as a material from which they are constructed. In this sense, it is something internal.
BALIBAR: It's ideology that is not being defined clearly. You are playing with two meanings. There is a spontaneous, idealist aspect of the term ideology, which appears again for political reasons at this moment- a period of defense of the rights of man against "systems of ideology," meaning the world of ideas more or less directly and consciously tied to politics. This sense of the term implies at once, in a contradictory fashion, something profoundly illusory and weak, and something extremely dangerous and powerful, because it holds men and women in an oppressive society. The meaning of the term ideology that we have tried to use from Marx, in the way Althusser began to specify it, was, from the beginning, totally different from this.
MACHEREY:It is not a science of literature all by itself. From the outset, we refused to respond to the question: "What is literature?"
BALIBAR: But in a certain sense, we could not avoid at some moment acting as if we were giving such a response.
MACHEREY: No. On this point, I think we remained consistent. And all those who were working against us in similar fields at the time, they all raised again the question 'What is literature?,"and proposed their answers. Look at Sollers.
KAVANACH: Do you prefer the question: How can we construct a science of the literary text?
MACHEREY: Yes, but that is not at all the same question. And it is not a science of the literary text as such, as an isolated and autonomous phenomenon.
LEWIS: How would you characterize the productive analysis of literary texts?
MACHEREY: But what does one do when one speaks of literaryt exts? Are texts literary in themselves, by their own intrinsic characteristics, which distinguish them from non-literary texts? I think one must say that a text is literary because it is recognized as such, at a certain moment, under certain conditions. It may not have been so recognized before, and it may not be after. I did a lot of work on Jules Verne, at a time when no one spoke of him; now he has become an author, and everyone does his or her book on Jules Verne. He has been returned to "French Literature"; he is explained in class. But when I worked on him, he was not even a minor author; this was not "Literature."
KAVANAGH: Are texts ideological in themselves? Are there certain intrinsic characteristics that define them as ideological? MACHEREY:Ideology is present in texts as a material from which they are constructed. In this sense, it is something internal.
BALIBAR: It's ideology that is not being defined clearly. You are playing with two meanings. There is a spontaneous, idealist aspect of the term ideology, which appears again for political reasons at this moment- a period of defense of the rights of man against "systems of ideology," meaning the world of ideas more or less directly and consciously tied to politics. This sense of the term implies at once, in a contradictory fashion, something profoundly illusory and weak, and something extremely dangerous and powerful, because it holds men and women in an oppressive society. The meaning of the term ideology that we have tried to use from Marx, in the way Althusser began to specify it, was, from the beginning, totally different from this.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Bricklayers (Dialectic of Consciousness/ Hegel in Mexico p. 59)
"Nevertheless, what happened to them in the passage from one job to the other has an extraordinary meaning. The "world of men" placed them socially as "anthropological laborers," in a situation where they were "on the verge of realizing a true human form of labor, "on the verge of converting themselves into real human beings and not only because of the fact - which they will have commented upon with mocking joy - of having served for some days for this "crazy guy" who contracted them for a strange and incomprehensible activity, and paid them, to boot, with an unusual generosity. They were "on the verge," yes, but this "on the verge" stayed there, suspended, without resolving itself, like a fantasmatic emanation above the anthropological work that disappeared, in the same way that the vagrant flames of fuegos fatuos float over the graves of a cemetery. However, such being "on the verge" repeats itself and remains in the labor of bricklaying to which they returned, because in a certain sense and in a new but essential form, they continuet o be "anthropologists"on their job as house builders."
Robert Linhart 'L'Etabli (The Assembly Line)
"Nothing is lost, nothing is forgotten in the indefinitely mixed memory of the working class. Other strikes, other committees, other acts will find inspiration in past strikes- as well as in ours, the trace of which I will later discover, mixed up with so many others. . . ,"
HEGEL IN MEXICO / BOSTEELS - Dialectic of Consciousness/ Revueltas
'Our individual has written a letter, he has "worked" on it, but he ignores the fact that this whole vast set of activities (writing, sealing the letter, buying stamps and attaching them, introduc-ing the letter in the dropoff box) is inserted in a mass of human work that is common, general, total, constant, active, past, present, and historical in the most plastic sense of the word, this invisible matter in which the lines of communication are drawn and draw themselves, from the time when one of them discovered himself in "the others" and succeeded in inventing and emitting the first "signs of identity," a first scream, a first smoke signal, a first letter. The postal system reveals nothing to our individual, even though it allows him at least to be this hu-man being in whom he does not yet perceive himself, but in whom he no doubt will one day come to perceive himself no sooner than he assumes consciousness of it.'
HEGEL IN MEXICO / BOSTEELS p.47
"When philosophy paints its grey in grey, one form of life has become old, and by means of grey it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known," Hegel writes in the Preface to his Philosophy of Right: "The owl of Minerva, takes its flight only when the shades of night are gathering.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Translation
Translation from one language into another... is like looking at Flemish tapestries on the wrong side; for though the figures are visible, they are full of threads that make them indistinct, and they do not show with the smoothness and brightness of the right side; [but] a man may employ himself in ways worse and less profitable to himself. - Cervantes, Don Quixote
'Grammar and Boxing' Introduction to Mad Toy, Aynesworth, p.13
I have tried overall to respect the "hasty writing" on which he prided himself. "Grammar is like boxing," he wrote in one of his newspaper columns. You can follow the "grammar" of punches you've been taught by a teacher of the European style, but to make a great fight, you have to throw punches from every angle. Similarly, "the people who, like ours, are under going continuous changes, draw upon words from all angles, words that set teachers' teeth on edge."
Roberto Arlt, Mad Toy, Duke University Press, 2002, p.60
Through the balcony window that faced the street, I could see a chocolate-coloured store sign made of glazed iron. The drizzle slid slowly across its convex surface. In the distance, a chimney flanked by two tanks belched out great gauzy strips of smoke into space stitched by needles of rain.
'The Bus is a Vacuum Cleaner' - Critique of a Spectacular Life Vol. II (Recto:1989), p.137
The Bus is a Vacuum Cleaner
[…] It was around the same time that he saw her again at the opposite bus stop. Through the windowpane, between the inverted letters repeating the name of the restaurant, and advertising part of its menu, he managed to notice her amongst those waiting for the only bus that passes this street. He looked at the clock hanging on the greasy wall of pale turquoise, thinly veiled by the steam from whatever that was cooking in the large metal pot. The inconspicuous movement of the seemingly reliable clock hands never betrays the fact that the Boss tuned it fifteen minutes slower.
When he looked back, the view was blocked by the bus coloured red and white. As this huge vehicle moved away, like an iron curtain unveiling a scene, but not without leaving a trail of black smoke, those who gathered around the bus stop, a moment ago, were all gone.
Perhaps, it was the stark contrast of the bus stop suddenly devoid of human presence. On this particular day, this mundane scene was almost another picture for him. For how it has occurred to him that the bus is a vacuum cleaner sucking those people scattered around the shelter like the dust he had to wipe off the windowpane.
[…] It was around the same time that he saw her again at the opposite bus stop. Through the windowpane, between the inverted letters repeating the name of the restaurant, and advertising part of its menu, he managed to notice her amongst those waiting for the only bus that passes this street. He looked at the clock hanging on the greasy wall of pale turquoise, thinly veiled by the steam from whatever that was cooking in the large metal pot. The inconspicuous movement of the seemingly reliable clock hands never betrays the fact that the Boss tuned it fifteen minutes slower.
When he looked back, the view was blocked by the bus coloured red and white. As this huge vehicle moved away, like an iron curtain unveiling a scene, but not without leaving a trail of black smoke, those who gathered around the bus stop, a moment ago, were all gone.
Perhaps, it was the stark contrast of the bus stop suddenly devoid of human presence. On this particular day, this mundane scene was almost another picture for him. For how it has occurred to him that the bus is a vacuum cleaner sucking those people scattered around the shelter like the dust he had to wipe off the windowpane.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Lenin and Philosophy
After all, this French academic philosophy, profoundly religious, spiritualist and reactionary one hundred and fifty years ago, then in the best of cases conservative, finally belatedly liberal and 'personalist', this philosophy which magnificently ignored Hegel, Marx and Freud, this academic philosophy which only seriously began to read Kant, then Hegel and Husserl, and even to discover the existence of Frege and Russell a few decades ago, and sometimes less, why should it have concerned itself with this Bolshevik, revolutionary, and politician, Lenin?
Besides the overwhelming class pressures on its strictly philosophical traditions, besides the condemnation by its most 'liberal' spirits of 'Lenin's unthinkable pre-critical philosophical thought', the French philosophy which we have inherited has lived in the conviction that it can have nothing philosophical to learn either from a politician or from politics. To give just one example, it was only a little while ago that a few French academic philosophers first turned to the study of the great theoreticians of political philosophy, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Grotius, Locke and even Rousseau, 'our' Rousseau. Only thirty years earlier, these authors were abandoned to literary critics and jurists as left-overs.
But French academic philosophy was not mistaken in its radical refusal to learn anything from politicians and politics, and therefore from Lenin. Everything which touches
page 30
on politics may be fatal to philosophy, for philosophy lives on politics.
Of course, it cannot be said that, if academic philosophy has ever read him, Lenin did not more than repay it in kind, 'leaving it the change'! Listen to him in Materialism and Empirio-criticism, invoking Dietzgen, the German proletarian who Marx and Engels said had discovered 'dialectical materialism ' 'all by himself', as an auto-didact, because he was a proletarian militant:
'Graduated flunkeys ', who with their talk of 'ideal blessings ' stultify the people by their tortuous 'idealism ' -- that is J. Dietzgen's opinion of the professors of philosophy. 'Just as the antipodes of the good God is the devil, so the professorial priest had his opposite pole in the materialist .' The materialist theory of knowledge is 'a universal weapon against religious belief ', and not only against the 'notorious, formal and common religion of the priests, but also against the most refined, elevated professorial religion of muddled idealists '. Dietzgen was ready to prefer 'religious honesty ' to the 'half-heartedness ' of free-thinking professors, for 'there a system prevails ', there we find integral people, people who do not separate theory from practice. For the Herr Professors 'philosophy is not a science, but a means of defence against Social-Democracy '. 'Those who call themselves philosophers -- professors and university lecturers -- are, despite their apparent free-thinking, more or less immersed in superstition and mysticism . . . and in relation to Social-Democracy constitute a single . . . reactionary mass .' 'Now, in order to follow the true path, without being led astray by an the religious and philosophical gibberish, it is necessary to study the falsest of all false paths (der Holzweg der Holzwege ), philosophy ' (Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Collected Works, Moscow, 1962, Vol. 14, pp. 340-41).[3]
Ruthless though it is, this text also manages to distinguish between 'free-thinkers' and 'integral people', even when they are religious, who have a 'system' which is not just speculative but inscribed in their practice. It is also lucid:
page 31
it is no accident that it ends with an astonishing phrase of Dietzgen's, which Lenin quotes: we need to follow a true path; but in order to follow a true path it is necessary to study philosophy, which is 'the falsest of all
false paths ' (der Holzweg-der Holzwege). Which means, to speak plainly, that there can be no true path (sc. in the sciences, but above all in politics) without a study, and, eventually a theory of philosophy as a false path.
In the last resort, and more important than all the reasons I have just evoked, this is undoubtedly why Lenin is intolerable to academic philosophy, and, to avoid hurting anyone, to the vast majority of philosophers, if not to all philosophers, whether academic or otherwise. He is, or has been on one occasion or another, philosophically intolerable to everyone (and obviously I also mean myself). Intolerable, basically, because despite all they may say about the pre-critical character of his philosophy and the summary aspect of some of his categories, philosophers feel and know that this is not the real question. They feel and know that Lenin is profoundly indifferent to their objections. He is indifferent first, because he foresaw them long ago. Lenin said himself: I am not a philosopher, I am badly prepared in this domain (Letter to Gorky, 7 February 1908). Lenin said: I know that my formulations and definitions are vague, unpolished; I know that philosophers are going to accuse my materialism of being 'metaphysical'. But he adds: that is not the question. Not only do I not 'philosophize' with their philosophy, I do not 'philosophize' like them at all. Their way of 'philosophizing' is to expend fortunes of intelligence and subtlety for no other purpose than to ruminate in philosophy. Whereas I treat philosophy differently, I practise it, as Marx intended, in obedience to what it is. That is why I believe I am a 'dialectical materialist'.
Besides the overwhelming class pressures on its strictly philosophical traditions, besides the condemnation by its most 'liberal' spirits of 'Lenin's unthinkable pre-critical philosophical thought', the French philosophy which we have inherited has lived in the conviction that it can have nothing philosophical to learn either from a politician or from politics. To give just one example, it was only a little while ago that a few French academic philosophers first turned to the study of the great theoreticians of political philosophy, Machiavelli, Spinoza, Hobbes, Grotius, Locke and even Rousseau, 'our' Rousseau. Only thirty years earlier, these authors were abandoned to literary critics and jurists as left-overs.
But French academic philosophy was not mistaken in its radical refusal to learn anything from politicians and politics, and therefore from Lenin. Everything which touches
page 30
on politics may be fatal to philosophy, for philosophy lives on politics.
Of course, it cannot be said that, if academic philosophy has ever read him, Lenin did not more than repay it in kind, 'leaving it the change'! Listen to him in Materialism and Empirio-criticism, invoking Dietzgen, the German proletarian who Marx and Engels said had discovered 'dialectical materialism ' 'all by himself', as an auto-didact, because he was a proletarian militant:
'Graduated flunkeys ', who with their talk of 'ideal blessings ' stultify the people by their tortuous 'idealism ' -- that is J. Dietzgen's opinion of the professors of philosophy. 'Just as the antipodes of the good God is the devil, so the professorial priest had his opposite pole in the materialist .' The materialist theory of knowledge is 'a universal weapon against religious belief ', and not only against the 'notorious, formal and common religion of the priests, but also against the most refined, elevated professorial religion of muddled idealists '. Dietzgen was ready to prefer 'religious honesty ' to the 'half-heartedness ' of free-thinking professors, for 'there a system prevails ', there we find integral people, people who do not separate theory from practice. For the Herr Professors 'philosophy is not a science, but a means of defence against Social-Democracy '. 'Those who call themselves philosophers -- professors and university lecturers -- are, despite their apparent free-thinking, more or less immersed in superstition and mysticism . . . and in relation to Social-Democracy constitute a single . . . reactionary mass .' 'Now, in order to follow the true path, without being led astray by an the religious and philosophical gibberish, it is necessary to study the falsest of all false paths (der Holzweg der Holzwege ), philosophy ' (Materialism and Empirio-criticism, Collected Works, Moscow, 1962, Vol. 14, pp. 340-41).[3]
Ruthless though it is, this text also manages to distinguish between 'free-thinkers' and 'integral people', even when they are religious, who have a 'system' which is not just speculative but inscribed in their practice. It is also lucid:
page 31
it is no accident that it ends with an astonishing phrase of Dietzgen's, which Lenin quotes: we need to follow a true path; but in order to follow a true path it is necessary to study philosophy, which is 'the falsest of all
false paths ' (der Holzweg-der Holzwege). Which means, to speak plainly, that there can be no true path (sc. in the sciences, but above all in politics) without a study, and, eventually a theory of philosophy as a false path.
In the last resort, and more important than all the reasons I have just evoked, this is undoubtedly why Lenin is intolerable to academic philosophy, and, to avoid hurting anyone, to the vast majority of philosophers, if not to all philosophers, whether academic or otherwise. He is, or has been on one occasion or another, philosophically intolerable to everyone (and obviously I also mean myself). Intolerable, basically, because despite all they may say about the pre-critical character of his philosophy and the summary aspect of some of his categories, philosophers feel and know that this is not the real question. They feel and know that Lenin is profoundly indifferent to their objections. He is indifferent first, because he foresaw them long ago. Lenin said himself: I am not a philosopher, I am badly prepared in this domain (Letter to Gorky, 7 February 1908). Lenin said: I know that my formulations and definitions are vague, unpolished; I know that philosophers are going to accuse my materialism of being 'metaphysical'. But he adds: that is not the question. Not only do I not 'philosophize' with their philosophy, I do not 'philosophize' like them at all. Their way of 'philosophizing' is to expend fortunes of intelligence and subtlety for no other purpose than to ruminate in philosophy. Whereas I treat philosophy differently, I practise it, as Marx intended, in obedience to what it is. That is why I believe I am a 'dialectical materialist'.
Aedh Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven - Yeats
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
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