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PARTISAN REVIEW
jointed attempts to define the "problems" at hand. Equations were
scrawled on the blackboard, linguistic analyses were presented, the
philosophers spoke ingeniously, aggressively, sometimes incompre–
hensibly, but so far as Cecilia could judge the primary terms were
never agreed upon; each speaker wanted to wipe the slate clean and
begin again. One particularly belligerent philosopher made the
point that the habit of "bifurcated" thinking, the "hominine polarity
of ego vis-a-vis non-ego," was responsible for the muddled com–
munication. Which is to say, the custom of thinking in antitheses;
the acquired (and civilization-determined) custom of perceiving the
world in terms of opposites; the curse, as he phrased it, of being
"egoed." Hence civilized man is doomed to make distinctions be–
tween himself and others: mind and body: up and down: hot and
cold: good and evil: mine/ours and yours/theirs: male and fe–
male.... The list went on for some time, including such prob–
lematic opposites as vocalic and consonantal, reticular and homo–
genous , violable and inviolable, but Cecilia drifted into a dream
thinking of "male" and "female" as acquired habits of thinking.
Ac–
quired habits of thinking.
..
?
But why, Cecilia wonders, holding a handkerchief to her bleed–
ing nose-why hurt another person?
Cecilia and Philip, in Mainz, in Germany, are no longer quite
so companionable. In fact they are beginning to have small mis–
understandings, not quite disagreements, like any traveling couple,
like lovers married or unmarried.
Cecilia speaks very little German, which gives her a kind of
school-girl innocence, a perpetual tourist's air of surprise and in–
terest and appreciation. Philip's German is fluent and aggressive, as
if he half expects to be misunderstood; he responds with annoyance
if asked where he is from. Though he had enjoyed himself pre–
viously- especially in Paris and Stockholm- he now seems dis–
tracted, edgy, quick to be offended . The clerk at the Hotel Zur Birke,
for instance, was brusque with him and Cecilia before he realized
who they were and who had made their reservations, whereupon he
turned apologetic, smiling, fawning, begging their apologies. ("The
very essence of the German personality," Philip muttered to Cecilia,
"-either at your throat or at your feet.") His eye for local detail
seems to be focussed upon the blatantly vulgar-American pop
music blaring from a radio in the hotel's breakfast room, "medieval"
souvenirs of stamped tin, graffiti in lurid orange spray-paint on
walls, doors, construction fences (much of it in English: KILL,
