618
PARTISAN REVIEW
bending over me with a gleaming knife to cu t o ut my heart. In sweat
and terror I would begin LO recite 'my lesson s' in a high , screaming
voice, faster and faster, as I felt the knife searching for my heart. Two
and two is fo ur, fi ve and fi ve is ten, earth, air, fire, wa ter, Mo nday,
T uesday, Wednesday, h ydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen , Meocene, Pl eo–
cene, Eocene, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. Asia, Afri ca,
Europe, Australia, red, blue, yellow, the sorrel, th e persimmon, th e
pawpaw, the catalpa ...
faster and faster .
..
Odin , Wo tan , Parsifa l,
King Alfred, Frederick the Great, th e Hanseati c League, the Balli e o f
Hastings, Thermop ylae, 1492, 1776, 1812, Admiral Farragut, Pi ck–
ell's charge, T he Light Brigade, we are gath ered here LOday, th e Lord
is my shepherd, I shall not, one and indivisibl e, no, 16, no, 27. help !
mu rder! police! - and yelling louder and lo uder and goin g faster and
faster I go completely off my nut and th ere is no more pain , no more
terror, even though they are pi ercing me everywhere with kni ves.
Suddenl y I am absolu tely calm and the body which is lying on the
block, which they are still gouging with glee and ecstasy, feels
nothing becau se I, the own er of it, h ave escaped. I have become a
LOwer of stone whi ch lean s o ver the scene and watches with scientifi c
interest. I have only LO succumb LO the law of gravity and I will fall
on th em and obliterate them. But I will not succumb LO th e law of
gravity because I am LOO fascina ted by the horror of it all. I am so
fascinated, in fact, that I grow more and more windows. And as the
light penetrates the stone interior of my being I can feel th at my
roo ts, whi ch are in the earth , are ali ve and th at I shall one day be abl e
to remove myself at will from thi s trance in which I am fix ed.
Tha t day is still to come. He never removes himself from his fix.
He continually reh earses its stations, which never occurred, except in a
dream, as mankind rehearses Freud 's myth of the Primal Horde, which
also never occurred.
In
a dream of a scene from real life he soaks up
punishment he deserves only by virtue of his uterine connections with
other people, as a character in Dostoevski will develop brain fever over
the sufferings of children and horses. With the punishment, the
apocalyptic smash, comes ineffable wisdom. A slight twist or squirm
transports Henry to that surreal realm in which the p sychological
possesses the actual, in which Henry is at on ce a god and a victim on
the block.
In
terror, in a desp erate attempt a t appeasement, he regurgi–
ta tes h is lesson s, his life and times, but hi s tormentors, his own proxies,
will no t cease: the void swallows everything yet remains empty. So the
god detaches himself from the victim, looks down on the horror with
scientifi c curiosity, a pillar of ston e, a cold steel-blue morning hard-on ,
but rooted to the joint of fascination.
The god tries
to
love the victim, for Henry is a n arciss ist (not a
man who loves himself, ra ther one who works a t it )- "My who le aim
in life is to get nearer to God, tha t is,
to
get nearer
to
myself" -but
