by Eliot · Cluster: Terror and Horror · Madness
Abstract
Prose-poem of a man engulfed by a woman’s laughter; the grotesque, anxiety, fragmentation and an uneasy fascination/revulsion toward female sexuality.
Connections
Motifs: Madness (2) Themes & Concepts: Grotesque, Lust Sexual Desire, Alienation Forms & Genres: Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
Hysteria
As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with a talent for squad-drill. I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles. An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty green iron table, saying: ‘If the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden…’ I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful subtlety to this end.
Conversation Galante
I observe: ‘Our sentimental friend the moon!
Or possibly (fantastic, I confess)
It may be Prester John’s balloon
Or an old battered lantern hung aloft
To light poor travellers to their distress.’
She then: ‘How you digress!’
And I then: ‘Someone frames upon the keys
That exquisite nocturne, with which we explain
The night and moonshine; music which we seize
To body forth our own vacuity.’
She then: ‘Does this refer to me?’
‘Oh no, it is I who am inane.
‘You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!
With your air indifferent and imperious
At a stroke our mad poetics to confute —’
And — ‘Are we then so serious?’