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PARTISAN REVIEW
tieth century. In the commentary to that poem I use the expression
"Do you want white peacocks?-I will give you white peacocks,"
from literature of that time in a so-called decadent style. A serious
problem is raised here, and it is that we are always prisoners of style.
I mentioned before that we create form, but form changes because
the human world changes .
If
we look at the movies from 1919 we see
that the women then were very different from the women today–
even their bodies were different, because of fashion, style, and
dresses. Those young ladies whom I describe were subject to the
style of their epoch. The same goes for the various styles in painting
and poetry. Our problem is that we do not see our style; we do not
realize it. A hundred years from now , our dresses , our fashions , and
our ways of thinking will be looked upon and maybe considered
somewhat funny. In this prose fragment that I wrote there is a
nostalgia, a longing, to communicate with human beings, with those
ladies who had died long ago, without the intermediary of form and
style.
RB:
In that commentary you write about secrets and mysteries and a
search for the Real . What is the Real in a nutshell?
eM:
Searching for the Real is the same as searching for God .
RB:
In that same piece you say : "Her flesh which has turned to dust
is as desirable to me as it was to that other man . ... "Do you in fact
accept that?
eM:
As I mentioned, that poem is an attempt to reconstruct the era
around 1900. I was not alive then but I imagined walking in the
street in Paris identifying myself with that man and that woman who
are no longer alive. Philosophically, and in a certain mood of
meditation, we can identify with other men. When Proust wrote
about the past , all his loves and jealousies were transformed into art ,
into form. Art is distance and detachment. But in real life we are not
detached; we are victims of our passions; we cannot identify with
other men; we are jealous of them and are rather ready to kick them.
RB:
In your poem "Esse" from your book
The Separate Notebook
you
are in the Metro in Paris looking dumbfounded at the face of a girl.
You say: "To have . It is not even a desire . Like a butterfly, a fish,
the stem of a plant, only more mysterious." The girl leaves the train
and you are" . . . left behind with the immensity of existing things."
Was there a sense of frustration that led you to write that poem and a
sense of relief after you wrote it?
eM:
Undoubtedly a sense of frustration before I wrote it, but no
feeling of relief after that.
