Notes to Literature

Thomas Bernhard's Frost (1963) and the Apocalyptic

Check out NL's latest Blog Post for some readings on the Apocalyptic, featuring Northrop Frye and Thomas Bernhard's first novel, Frost (1963).

www.notestoliterature.com/blog

"Suddenly, I was sitting in this landscape, in a meadow. The odd thing was that the people were the same colours as the landscape. I was the color of the meadow, then that of the sky, then the color of a tree, and finally I was the color of the mountains. And I was always all of the colours. My laughter caused a great commotion in the landscape. I don’t know why. This pretty irregular landscape, you know, it was as animated as any I’ve ever seen. A landscape of people. Because the people took on the colours of the landscape as I did myself, the only way of recognising them was by their voices, and it was only by my voice that they knew me."

JANE AWAKE

The opals hiding your lids
as you sleep, as you ride ponies
mysteriously, spring to bloom
like the blue flowers of autumn

each nine o'clock. And curls
tumble languorously towards
the yawning rubber band, tan,
your hand pressing all that

riotous black sleep into
the quiet form of daylight
and its sunny disregard for
the luminous volutions, oh!

and the budding waltzes
we swoop through in nights.
Before dawn you roar with
your eyes shut, unsmiling,

your volcanic flesh hides
everything from the watchman,
and the tendrils of dreams
strangle policemen running by

too slowly to escape you,
the racing vertiginous waves
of your murmuring need. But
he is day's guardian saint

that policeman, and leaning
from your open window you ask
him what dress to wear and how
to comb your hair modestly,

for that is now your mode.
Only by chance tripping on stairs
do you repeat the dance, and
then, in the perfect variety of

subdued, impeccably disguised,
white black pink blue saffron
and golden ambiance, do we find
the nightly savage, in a trance.

——— Frank O'Hara

-- Martin McDonagh, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" (1996)

After today’s massacre in north Gaza, it’s worth reflecting on the long history of aspirations among Israeli statesmen for the expulsion, displacement and compulsory transfer of Palestinians. This is David Ben-Gurion, first prime minister of Israel, speaking in 1937:

"The compulsory transfer of the Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples … We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is more than a state, government and sovereignty—this is national consolidation in a free homeland."

Elsewhere, the same year, Ben-Gurion wrote, “With compulsory transfer we would have a vast area for settlement… I support compulsory transfer. I don’t see anything immoral in it.”