248
ISE BALAsz-RAK6CZY
a shred of green brocade, and up, near the second molding, a bit of
"Chinese" paper. The princess is in her summer house. Fu dogs and
young maidens attend her. She looks at herself in a hand mirror and or–
naments her hair. (Why does this image sadden me?) Outside, a lotus
pool reflects the sky. Deer browse among the peonies.
Compare this to the gardens of Fragonard: lovers leaping over walls,
stealing kisses, walking dappled avenues of limes. In a grove, Venus chas–
tises her little boy; a swarthy gallant fondles a young girl's rosy breast.
The narcissism in that bit of chinoiserie is evident: a lonely self con–
templates her specular companion. That's why I feel so sad. I'm not
distracted by the conventions of gallant love or by the gilded boiseries. A
lover
breaks
into an enclosed garden; the girl, absorbed in reverie, is no
longer alone. It's an image of the Annunciation as Clairon might have
played it: "La Vierge Surpris par l'Amour." I am the Virgin, of course.
But that swain of the Annunciation - who is he?
I'm too old. This garden will be my tomb.
5. I haven't made a mark here since the end of last year, and now it's
after Easter. The word " tomb" still rumbles in my mind. Christ's tomb:
the stone rolled back, the uncomprehending Marys. These are the days
when He walks among us and we don't recognize His face . Piranesi's
"Pyramid of Cestius" hangs above my desk - a stone monument sprout–
ing leaves. I imagine myself a Ptolemaic prince inside it. We're at the
edge of two worlds here: Greece and Egypt, mystery and reason. The
patient stretches out and I squat behind him, the ever-watchful baboon.
These walls will always hold me. My dogs: the white Athenian
beauty, the handsome Nubian one. And here's my ship with its great eye.
See: The oars really move; the articulated oarsmen really row. In the
dawn we sail for Memphis, the "Life of Two Lands."
Psychoanalysis can't be written the way other things can. They're
wrong who model their work on the
Proceedings
of
the Royal Society,
as
if
Franklin and Buffon were the progenitors of this field. They should look
to Schehcrazade or Poe: people whose lives depended on telling tales.
Tales, not novels. How I detest that pretense to reality! The reverse is
true: what seems most lifelike is most artificial, and what seems most
fabulous is exactly how things are.
Katje used to read to me ftom the
Thousand and One Nights
in the
measured words of the Abbe Galland. I shall never forget that magic in–
vocation:
Sire,
il
y
avait autrefois un marchand .
..
In declaiming these words, like the spell of Ali Baba, a door opened
