560
TONY TANNER
DO YOU WANT TO STAY THERE FOREVER? THEN
LISTEN TO THE LAST WORDS OF HASSAN SABBAH.
LISTEN LOOK OR SHIT FOREVER. LISTEN LOOK OR
SHIT FOREVER. WHAT SCARED YOU INTO TIME? INTO
BODY? INTO SHIT? I WILL TELL YOU. THE WORD.
THE-THEE WORD. IN THEE BEGINNING WAS THE
WORD. SCARED YOU ALL INTO SHIT FOREVER. COME
OUT FOREVER. COME OUT OF THE TIME WORD FOR–
EVER. COME OUT OF THE BODY WORD THEE FOREVER:
COME OUT OF THE SHIT WORD THE FOREVER. ALL
OUT OF TIME AND INTO SPACE. FOREVER. THERE IS
NO THING TO FEAR. THERE IS NO THING IN SPACE.
THAT IS ALL ALL ALL HASSAN SABBAH. IF YOU I
CANCEL ALL YOUR WORDS FOREVER. AND THE WORDS
OF HASSAN SABBAH I AS ALSO CANCEL. ACROSS
ALL YOUR SKIES SEE. THE SILENT WRITING OF BRION
GYSIN HASSAN SABBAH. THE WRITING OF SPACE. THE
WRITING OF SILENCE.
Much of Burroughs' subsequent work can be explained by this
letter. He sees the human race as trapped in time and body (or shit–
here used emotively to convey his disgust at the foul matter we are
immersed in). Fear keeps us cowering in these temporal and physical
dimensions; and there are powers at work still taking us over. But
what is the ultimate source of our imprisonment? "The Word."
Particularly all the words that work on us as bodies living in time.
His invitation is-come out of time and the physical world into clean
empty space; come out of the world of words into the world of silence.
To this end, he intends to use words that cancel words, a language
that will destroy language--the writing of silence. Pope's tactic was
to use language with ever more sharpness, precision and embatded
incisiveness. Burroughs goes all the other way. He writes to make us
immune to language altogether. Now before we try to assess the
result of this paradoxical position, we should try to understand why
Burroughs sees "the word" as the great threat (and thus presumably
the most important weapon used by the malign forces working against
the human). And why he who projected a nightmare vision of
"random events in a dying universe" should now turn to the random
use of words as a weapon against death, decay and inertia.
