The Elucidations (as spaces between words)
motto 1: Rage, rage against the dying of the light (1) motto 2: question: „what is behind computer ?” answer: „dead empty mass”. (2)
Edmond Jabes says: the writer can express himself only in the future tense (by this he expresses anticipation for salvage from the approaching word).The future (speed measurable by light).In two hours, a light beam from the rising sun will stroke the southern Tödi ridge, the highest peak of the Glarus Alps and slip over the plunged in darkness Biferten glacier. Having returned a bit of the dispersed light to the ice crystals on the peak, it will move on unstopped and faster than these words last, it will puncture the window and hit the wall in a small, azure building in the suburbs of Forch, outside of Zurich. The distance between the peak and the window overlaps almost exactly with the border between Schwyz and Glarus cantons. Intense, yellow light will seep into blue gleam fulfilling the room, and beaming from the computer screen. Spots of blue and yellow light will bounce off from one another, projecting flickering reflexes onto the bed and onto the still body of a man. He will seem asleep, but stillness of the body gives away the inertia, lasting already long enough to realize its reason, which is much deeper and stronger than sleep or rest. Future tense is justified here, since it’s a beginning of a script and therefore the director – the screenwriter carries on writing, quoting after William S. Burroughs: The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls. Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception of death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that’s where Ren came in.The blue house is the premises of Dignitasclinic, responsible for conducting euthanasia. The man, whose name in Beniamin, has been brought into the clinic eight days ago. Entering the room, one might get an impression that the man lying down, is looking. His eyelids half-closed, do not cover the pupils and irises of the eyes completely; they keep moving, seemingly wandering after the gleams of light reflected by the screens of snow-covered hillsides, and by the sun rising above them. Yet the place and the state he is in, definitely contradict this impression. The man’s body has been completely paralyzed for years and the progressive, terminal illness has attacked also his eyes, covering them with darkness.In the contrast to the immobilized body, Beniamin’s brain functions unusually efficiently, his morbid hyperactivity induced by serotonin inhibitors easing the pain, and chronic insomnia resemble the Borgesian garden with branching off paths which lead simultaneously in different directions of space and time.Cut – fade out – change of tense.Now he’s taking the path leading towards childhood. A memory appears, of a flickering image projected by a magic lantern onto the doors in an enormous, long corridor. The image represents the earthquake in Lisbon (1755). He hears his father’s voice, breaking with agitation. He was never to find out the true source of this agitation. On 31st of October, 1931 the Berliner Rundfunk radio station broadcasted one of the eight plays for children written and read by Walter Benjamin. On that day The earthquake in Lisbon had been transmitted. Never, in any conversation with his son, had he mentioned this memory and their apodictic and critical natures have very quickly and permanently torn up any bonds and filled their relations with silence and lack of affection. Suspicions that his name had anything to do with Walter, gained certainty when after his father’s death, in one of the drawers he came across a reproduction of a painting by Paul Klee representing an angel. The authentic one Walter Benjamin carried everywhere with him, until his suicide in Portbou. The reproduction was folded, and the abrasion over the fold line indicated multiple straightening. Inside, between the two folded sides, there was a letter from Gershom Sholem addressed to his father. The camera reveals part of the letter, from which clearly arises the linkage of name and concealed friendship. Retrospective: a child staring at white corridor doors, on which an image of burning Lisbon will shortly appear, and is convinced that this didn’t really happen, as if projected before, from the same lantern, the Grimm brothers’ fairy tales were truer. The fugitive, neon glare of this statement is now illuminating the place of the final scene. An artificially generated, off camera voice is heard: a speech synthesizer facilitated him to meet all the legal procedures. A dilemma remains, which nearly always concerns paralyzed people – how to take the poison. That requires an assistant. A helper, who will push the syringe piston with his own hand or administer the glass. With one’s hand. Charon’s hand squeezing the paddle… An employee of the Dignitas clinic appears on the screen, the face is intentionally blurred, trembling pixels. He talks about dr Kevorkian’s modernized machine. It’s a computer associated with a syringe. The monitor displays the text: Question 1: Are you aware that once you move to the last screen and press the “enter” button, you will receive a lethal dose of medicines? Question 2: Did you understand for certain that once you press the “enter” button on the next screen, you will die? Question 3: In 15 seconds you will be injected a lethal dose of medicine… Press “enter” to continue. Every each of heretofore spoken words, the speech synthesizer has turned into text which enabled Beniamin to communicate with the world. Now, as in the reversed interpretation of the Torah, he would have to turn the word into the light to part from his life. He sees a decoration reconstructing the forbidden room with green curtains, into which a two-and-a-half-year-old Mircea Eliade rushed in, and who had later written: he had an impression that he was inside a huge green grape. Never again did he manage to reopen the door to this room. He is thinking about the light. He is thinking about the uncanny similarity of chlorophyll and hemoglobin particles. He is thinking about a transfusion from green chlorophyll. He is thinking about the Biferten glacier, shining at night with a green, pulsating light as a frozen strip of polar lights or liquid phosphorus. He is thinking about the desk on which he has left an open book: Jonathan Crary Techniques of the Observer. Open on the page with an engraving by Johann Evangelista Purknije from 1823, depicting a so-called Nachbilder. Those were images generated by the eye retina, related to afterimages, blind spot and patterns generated through intensive “gazing”. He is thinking about his father’s watch, useless now, which hands coated with phosphorus, pushed continuously by the self-winding mechanism, are glowing now in one of the drawers, besides the Klee’s angel. He is thinking about words important to Eliade: “coincidentia oppositorum”. In the order described by these words, reside (of which the man is not yet aware):1) on the nightstand, by Beniamin’s bed, there is the Bible in which the word “light”, both in Aramean and the contemporary versions, appears 187 times 2) in Hebrew the word light is “or” 3) phosphorus (gr) means “bearing the light”, phosphorus is a macronutrient indispensable for any cell to function 4) in the year 1824 Goethe writes a letter to prince Sternberg , in which he introduces Purkinje as an exceptionally original mind; thanks to his and professor of Anatomy and Physiology – Karl Rudolphi’s intercession, Purkinje obtains the professor title 5) in the same year 1824 the Tödi peak is reached for the first time 6) in Czech the word death (smrt) is, unlike in German: der Tod, feminine 7) in the ancient, pre-Christian rituals called „todaustragen”, the word Tod used to be changed to feminine: Todi 8) Johann Ewangelista Purkinje, a Czech scholar and the author of „The Pathology of Eye”, conducted experiments examining a phenomenon which accompanies a sudden blinding, and which by today’s neuropsychologists is referred to as „cross activation”.The approaching night blows out the gleams of light. The man is dreaming a dream in which he’s standing at night on a balcony near Teotihuacan. Under the balcony, a young Mexican is juggling human skulls. They fly out silently from the dusk, approaching the balcony edge and then they sink back, towards the juggler’s invisible hands. Cut. Morning. A nurse will enter the room. To her surprise, she’ll hear a regular and even breath and she will see the eyelids closed. Dr Kevorkian’s maxim, heretofore displayed on the screen, is now being replaced by something undoubtedly said by Beniamin falling asleep: Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.And you, my father, there on that sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. (3)
Przypisy: (1) i (3) Dylan Thomas, „Nie Wchodź Łagodnie do Tej Dobrej Nocy” (2) Wiliam S. Burroughs, „The Western Lands”April 2016
