Sunday, October 9, 2011

Dree-ee-ee-ee-eam dream dream dream

Manifesto of Surrealism: The mere word "freedom" is the only one that still excites me. I deem it capable of indefinitely sustaining the old human fanaticism. It doubtless satisfies my only legitimate aspiration. Among all the many misfortunes to which we are heir, it is only fair to admit that we are allowed the greatest degree of freedom of thought. It is up to us not to misue it. To reduce the imagination to a state of slavery- even though it would mean the elimination of what is commonly called happiness- is to betray all sense of absolute justice within oneself. Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be, and this is enough to remove to some slight degree the terrible injunction...

Andre Breton

13 comments:

Perezoso said...

What thinks the RCC of Breton's hero Freud, jh? Not much. Or of his other heroes.


Yr not helping out Christ, who upholds Justice--(not quite the same as the judaic law). More like...his adversary. Hell exists, vato.

jh said...

had a conversation with god today
he said freud is completely forgiven

hell is where there is no love

doodle dee doodle dee dum diddy dum

relax pal
life is a gas
if you let it

and then the anvil hits

jh

Perezoso said...

Love ,eh. Amoray

What sort of love was Sigmundus into...or his student, Lacan? Wasn't exactly...agape was it. More like stalinist style---Kulaks were in siberia, or mort. But their children are like with Beria, and soviet freudians! (a bit later, a similar situation in France with Doktor Lacan). I am in principle opposed to red baiting ala Kirby Olson but you don't seem to know much about 20th history.

Sigmundus Fraud's....in there, where the fevers grow.

jh said...

admitted
i am lost in the middle ages
lost in the little light of the dark ages
the age seems more primitive than either of those times

the 20th century
when chaos and stupidity and presumption strutted around as royalty
reason as proctology

the only thing i know about the 20th century is the music of glenn gould and andres segovia
other than that
i'm blind
and wish to remain so

jh

jmcgill said...

ok segovia
but i would add my hero
karl rahner
he made a pretty decent contribution
to the 20th century
and all those who contributed
to vatican II i think
that was amazing
maybe not all catholics
are happy with vatican II
but i think it opened up
the riches of the catholic vision
of christian faith to people like me

i'd like to watch
a documentary about vatican II

john & i just watched
a documentary about george harrison
he was a pretty neat 20th C. guy
i respect his approach to life

jh said...

ok bob dylan
he influenced me a lot
ok niel young
ok leonard cohen
ok hans urs von balthasar
ok rahner
me too big rahner fan
ok karol woytila
i'm a big woytila fan
ok elizabeth ancombe
ok thomas merton
ok emmy lou harris
ok ralph vaugh williams
ok ok ok ok
yes and more
wittegenstein but more importantly edith stein
and OK rilke influenced me a lot
and the beatles yes
and blind lemon jefferson
and blind willy mctell
and blind rev gary davis
and ok utah philips
and OK gram parsons
lightning hopkins
merle haggard
and right now norman blake
gee i guess i've been influenced by quite a few people in the past century
and my father
can't forget my father

i guess i did live in the 20th century


then there's sally mcgill
and eleutherius winance
and john mcgill
and dave cofell
and well i guess
the 20th century wwas sort of exciting
i mean the music got louder that's for sure

but the french social theorists
leave me bereft

most of secular atheist european thought
i don't tolerate well

i am a big fan of e m cioran
and paul celan

but other than that
i remain in complete ignorance
i don't know what went on in the 20th century

cultural entropy i think therefore i dissipate

jh

sally said...

nice litany

and by the way
in case you couldn't tell
from the rahner reference
that was me sally
(not jmcgill)
in that last comment

i just solved a minor mystery here
out on our balcony
grinding acorns into flour
and every few minutes
a loud male voice shouts out
in anguish
or in triumph

what is this
i'm wondering
is someone being tortured
in our neighborhood?
has someone just hit their thumb
with a hammer in the midst
of some home improvement
project?

o now i get it

it's football

back to my acorns


Hola P

J said...

Does the RCC approve of all that..fiddling, jhito? No se pienso. The old dispensation. JP II didn't. But it's a free country.

re the lit. laundry list--Rilke--yea. Wittgenstein .. a bit. Thomas Pynchon. A bit of Flan. O-Cs dark comic visions (ie, pre- NASCAR south). Faulkner.

Dylan...eh. He had a few numbers but overrated as with the rest. Swampflowers of capitalism. Pynchon hints as much somewhere (tho' IMHO Gravity's Rainbow verges on madness...COL49's ...authentic).

I would disagree with Perezoso in regard to Freud. He may have had some outlandish speculations on the unconscious, but a text such as "Civilization and its Discontents" was not just psychobabble, but empirical and rather profound and raw--EL Lobo hombre. Breton may have had flaws, but did object to the stalinists.

Hola S.

jh said...

both pagannini and liszt were good catholics

J said...
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J said...
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J said...

What would a St..Augustine think of Breton & Co? Or any number of authentic religious figures think. St.Aug.wants...truth, Justice, righteousness ..Logos. The Minotaur , or story thereof probably did not count in his speculations.

jh said...

one so attuned to the predicament of human strangeness
one so ready to write the first human psychology the first open personal confession for mass consumption
augustine would look bemusedly at all the antics of our age and maybe sigh
saying
i told you so

truth costs a lot

jh