Opening lines to Auto-da-Fé by Elias Canetti

PART ONE

A HEAD WITHOUT A WORLD

CHAPTER I

THE MORNING WALK

'What are you doing here, my little man?'

'Nothing.'

'Then why are you standing here?'

'Just because.'

'Can you read?'

'Oh, yes.'

'How old are you?'

'Nine and a bit.'

'Which would you prefer, a piece of chocolate or a book?'

'A book.'

'Indeed? Splendid! So that's your reason for standing here?'

'Yes.'

'Why didn't you say so before?'

'Father scolds me.'

'Oh. And who is your father?'

'Franz Metzger.'

'Would you like to travel to a foreign country?'

'Yes. To India. They have tigers there.'

'And where else?'

'To China. They've got a huge wall there.'

'You'd like to scramble over it, wouldn't you?'

'It's much too thick and too high. Nobody can get over it. That's why they built it.'

'What a lot you know! You must have read a great deal already?'

'Yes. I read all the time. Father takes my books away. I'd like to go to a Chinese school. They have forty thousand letters in their alphabet. You couldn't get them all into one book.'

'That's only what you think.'

'I've worked it out.'

'All the same it isn't true. Never mind the books in the window. They're of no value. I've got something much better here. Wait. I'll show you. Do you know what kind of writing that is?'

'Chinese! Chinese!'

'Well, you're a clever little fellow. Had you seen a Chinese book before?'

'No, I guessed it.'

'These two characters stand for Meng Tse, the philosopher Mencius. He was a great man in China. He lived 2250 years ago and his works are still being read. Will you remember that?'

'Yes. I must go to school now.'

'Aha, so you look into the bookshop windows on your way to school? What is your name?'

'Franz Metzger, like my father.'

'And where do you live?'

'Twenty-four Ehrlich Strasse.'

'I live there too. I don't remember you.'

'You always look the other way when anyone passes you on the stairs. I've known you for ages. You're Professor Kien, but you haven't a school. Mother says you aren't a real Professor. But I think you are — you've got a library. Our Marie says, you wouldn't believe your eyes. She's our maid. When I'm grown up I'm going to have a library. With all the books there are, in every language. A Chinese one too, like yours. Now I must run.'

'Who wrote this book? Can you remember?'

'Meng Tse, the philosopher Mencius. Exactly 2250 years ago.'

'Excellent. You shall come and see my library one day. Tell my housekeeper I've given you permission. I can show you pictures from India and China.'

'Oh good! I'll come! Of course I'll come! This afternoon?'

'No, no, little man. I must work this afternoon. In a week at the earliest.'

[Translated from the German under the personal supervision of the author by C. V. Wedgwood]

Don Paterson

"The Alexandrian Library"

iv Small Hour

Your life has a smack of the prequel about it —
a bit underfunded, with you just a trifle
miscast in the role of the younger yourself.
Despite your impressive portfolio of shortcomings
you are not a bad lad, you have come to accept,
on balance, more blessing than blight; though if pressed
you could give the addresses of ten or twelve folk
inclined to feel otherwise, deeply.
Some call you an angel. Some call you a cunt.
They are both on the money: you model yourself
on those various itinerant Johnnies, proclaiming
the Matraiya, the Christ, in the meantime attaining
a kind of provisional, rough-hewn beatitude
before He shows up and comes down on your shagging
and drinking and lapses in personal hygiene.

from Landing Light (p.53)

"The Rat"

A young man wrote a poem about a rat.
It was the best poem ever written about a rat.
To read it was to ask the rat to perch
on the arm of your chair until you turned the page.
So we wrote to him, but heard nothing; we called,
and called again; then finally we sailed
to the island where he kept the only shop
and rapped his door until he opened up.

We took away his poems. Our hands shook
with excitement. We read them on lightboxes,
under great lamps. They were not much good.
So then we offered what advice we could
on his tropes and turns, his metrical comportment,
on the wedding of the word to the event,
and suggested that he might read this or that.
We said Now: write us more poems like The Rat.

All we got was cheek from him. Then silence.
We gave up on him. Him with his green arrogance
and ingratitude and his one lucky strike.
But today I read The Rat again. Its reek
announced it; then I saw its pisshole stare;
line by line it strained into the air.
Then it hissed. For all the craft and clever-clever
you did not write me, fool. Nor will you ever.

from Landing Light (p.34)

"The Light"

When I reached his bed he was already blind.
Thirteen years had gone, and yet my mind
was as dark as on my ordination day.
Now I was shameless. I begged him for the light.
'Is it not taught all is illusory?
And still you did not guess the truth of it?
There is no light, fool. Now have you awoken?'
And he laughed, and then he left us. I was broken.

I went back to my room to pack my things,
my begging-bowl, my robe and cup; the prayer-mat
I would leave. It lay there, frayed and framed
in a square of late sun. And out of pure habit —
no, less, out of nothing, for I was nothing —
I watched myself sit down for one last time.

from Landing Light (p.73)

Versed by Rae Armantrout reviewed

Versed by Rae Armantrout

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


NB: "I don't get it! The Mono-Culture is the hegemony of the vulgar. The cry of "I don't understand it!" almost inevitably qualifies as an authoritative dismissal of any work at hand. Cultural authority has gone into complete reverse: once the most articulate, educated, thoughtful person in the room was the one to listen to; now the biggest vulgarian rules." -- Mark Edmundson, "Notes on the Mono-Culture" (p. 36), (The Massachusetts Review, Vol. L, Nos. 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2009)

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