"Disch, Thomas M. - Camp Concentration" - читать интересную книгу автора (Disch Thomas M)

The bedsprings are quiet tonight, but ever and again, between the Mafia's snores, Danny or Peter heaves a sigh.


May 18
An hour this evening with young Rigor Mortis. The epithet may be unjust, since R.M. is the nearest thing to a friend that I've found here. He is, for all his orthodoxies, serious-minded, a man of goodwill, and our talks are, I hope, more than exercises in rhetoric. For my own part, I know that I feel, beyond my evangelistic urge to bring him round, an almost desperate desire to understand him, for it is R.M. and his like who perpetuate this incredible war, who believe, with a sincerity I cannot call into doubt, that in doing so they perform a moral action. Or am I to accept the thesis of our neo-Millsians (neo-Machiavellians, rather), who maintain that the electorate is simply practiced upon, the groundlings of this world drama, that their secret masters in the Olympus of Washington mold their opinions as easily as they (admittedly) control the press.
I might even wish that were so. If persuasion were so easy a task, perhaps the few voices of righteousness might hope to have some effect. But it is a fact that not I nor anyone I've known on the Committee for a Unilateral Peace has ever convinced anyone of the folly and immorality of this war who was not at heart already of like mind, who needed no convincing but only our reassurances.
Perhaps Andrea is right; perhaps I should leave the war to the politicians and the propagandists--the experts, as they are called. (Just so, Eichmann was noted as an "expert" on the Jewish problem. After all, he spoke Yiddish!) Abandon controversy that I may consecrate my talents exclusively to the Muses.
And my soul, then, to the Devil?
No, though opposition is a hopeless task, acquiescence would be worse. Consider Youngerman's case: _He_ acquiesced, he left well enough alone, he muzzled conscience. Did irony sustain him? Or the Muses? When you rise to deliver a commencement address and half the audience walks out, where is your lofty indifference then, O poet? And his last book-- so bad, so bad!
But Youngerman at least knew the meaning of his silence. When I speak to R.M. the language itself seems to alter. I grasp at meanings and they ifit away, like minnows in a mountain stream. Or, a better metaphor, it is like one of those secret doors that one used to see in horror movies. It appears to be part of the bookcase, but when the hidden spring is released it turns around and its reverse side is a rough stone face. Must try and develop that image.
The last word on R.M.: We do not, and I fear we cannot, understand each other. I sometimes wonder if the reason isn't simply that he's very stupid.


May 19
The Muse descends--characteristically assuming the mortal guise of an attack of diarrhea, abetted by headache. Auden observes somewhere (in the "Letter to Lord Byron"?) how often a poet's finer flights are due/rumpty-tumpty-tumpty to the flu.
Though a small paradox, it should go without saying that I have not felt so well in months. In honor of the occasion, I will transcribe my little poem (the slightest of lyrics, but Lord! how long it has been since the last one):


The Silkworm Song

How can I possibly
Be ready to enter
That cedarwood box
Isn't it obvious
It isn't time
I'm in my prime
The dew is scarcely dry
Behind my ears
Words cannot describe
My tears
And the singing
Listen to it
The very stones are dumb
With ecstasy
How can I possibly
Go down

In that darkness
Leaving my soul behind
Listen to the singing
Butterflies
And broken pots
Come into the box
No no I may not
Stop the spinning
Of butterifies and broken pots
O stop


[_Here the handwritten portion of Louis Sacchetti's journal ends. All the following passages were typed on a different size and stock of paper. Ed._]