And after this, too . . . ?

The Gaza Soup Kitchen chef Mahmoud Almadhoun killed by a targeted Israeli drone strike, November 30, 2024

"Writing Poetry After the Holocaust Is Barbaric — and Essential"—Menachem Rosensaft, Jewish Telegraphic Agency*

"Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally . . . it becomes part of the ceremony."—Kafka, "Leopards in the Temple"

After Auschwitz, Adorno said,

To write a poem is barbaric.†

I'm not the only one to think him

wrong.

"We need poems, songs and parables. We need a Kafkaesque, morbid language of dreams and nightmares to be able to penetrate the nocturnal universe of Auschwitz and Birkenau, of Treblinka, Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen, of Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor and Terezin, of the Warsaw Ghetto, Transnistria and Babyn Yar."*

So I'll continue. After Gaza.

Barbaric though it be.

"Chef Mahmoud did nothing but save lives. He had no defence of camouflage, not even a rifle. His only weapon was the ladle in his hand – and that weapon saved thousands."‡

* Menachem Rosensaft, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, https://www.jta.org/2021/04/05/ny/writing-poetry-after-the-holocaust-is-barbaric-and-essential.

† Theodor Adorno said in 1949 that writing poetry after Auschwitz was barbaric — “nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch.”

‡ Nahed Elrayes, development manager, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) USA, "Are We Your Perfect Victims Now?" https://aje.io/sfbqlz.

I grew abashed . . .

After Baudelaire’s “L’invitation au Voyage”

“Étpulov te emlac, exul.”—Erialeduab

To love at leisure,

Lust and then depart.

Rejoice in mindless pleasure,

Praise his words today:

Luxe, calme et volupté,

These are the things to treasure,

And without dismay,

Feast the fleeting fair

In counterclockwise measure.

“Theer's nowt so queer as folk[s].”*

Common sense is rare!

 “Abaisit I wolx,

and widdersyns start my hair.Ӡ

Portrait of Charles Baudelaire by Charles Neyt (1864)

*Yorkshire / Lancashire proverbial saying.

†“I grew abashed, my hair standing on end.”—Gavin Douglas, bishop of Dunkeld, Scotland, trans. of Virgil’s Æneid (1513).

December 6, 2024

Home Truths

Hotel Condom Continental, 20 rue Mal Foch, 32100 Condom, France

Dearest Jannie,

Hi! This has got to be the nicest hotel in the Midi-Pyrénées! My room has a fantastic view of Condom Cathedral—Marie-Claire, who is traveling with me, calls it “Le Préservatif."

I saw Dad this afternoon—he's a short ten-minute walk across the place Saint-Pierre. As I feared, the old devil is still in form. He’s got a new girl and runs about like mad for a man of his age—especially considering that he has just been discharged from hospital. She sleeps on the sofa in the living room in his suite—or claims to. She tried to have her bed moved downstairs, she claims, but apparently it can’t be shifted—like the wedding bed Odysseus built into an olive tree that confirmed his identity for Penelope when he came back after all those years away?*

As a matter fact, Dad’s new “squeeze” is a Penny too. She’s Australian. Her underclothes are all over the shower stall—no space for them on the wash line in the courtyard, evidently! She frets, says she wants to get back to her husband, but can’t for some reason . . .

A woman called Paulette supposedly cooks for them. I asked who does the shopping. Penny said Dad virtually lives on oysters and wine plus whatever the local charcuterie  has on offer—pâtes aux truffes, coquilles St. Jacques, and French rubbish like that, no doubt—and says it suits his “mojo.” Nevertheless, I said, couldn’t she  at least clean up the place a bit? She wouldn’t hear of it—she doesn’t do housework. What about Pablo?—couldn’t Pablo mop and take out the trash? Pablo does not work for your Papa, she said.

Pablo sleeps in the kitchen, as far as I can see, and serves drinks. He is not all here, or not all there, or whatever the expression is.

Anyhow, I didn’t raise the chief subject—wanted to, but didn’t have the courage. I’ll do so when I see Dad tomorrow. I can’t say I am hopeful. This Penny has him under her thumb—the impudent slut even says he’s “quite into bondage, you know.” She has been pretty cool to me too. She has a shrewd idea, I suspect, of why I've come.

Did you know, they used to have a museum of contraceptives here?

More later.

Your loving ex-wife,

Dotty

Later

“Dad, can we discuss your living arrangements? Can we talk about the future?”

Dad, seated in his favorite Louis-Philippe rococo revival armchair, crafted perhaps by the character who built the immovable bed upstairs, is mum.

“You must know that Jannie and I worry about you. You have had a whole succession of these sluts, and it is only a matter of time before you have another. You aren’t getting any younger, and drinking champagne at lunch in a house with steep stairs in a village where you are not on good terms with the mairie—frankly, it doesn’t seem practical anymore.”

“I don’t live by myself,” Dad says. “Penny is with me.”

“Okay,  but can you really rely on  her in an emergency? Was Penny any help to you when you had that punch-up with the woman from the service Enfance-Jeunesse over that teenager? If you hadn’t been able to ring up the ambassador, where would you be today?”

“You mean Apache Annie, I suppose. Annie’s not a teenager. She’s over seventy. And Sid Nasty was after her, too, but I was the one she fancied! Still does! Her father was a herpetologist—milked the venom out of snakes, and she’s a chip off the old block, know what I mean!”

“Dad!”

“Where would I be without Penny?” says Dad. “You seem to know the answer, so why ask me? Pushing up daisies. Is that what I am supposed to say?”

“Dad, please be reasonable. Jannie has located places not far from where he lives where you would be well looked after and where he and I believe you would feel at home. Will you allow me to tell you about them”

“By places do you mean institutions?”

“Dad, you can call them what you like, you can sneer, but that doesn’t alter the facts of life. You’ve already had one serious accident, of which you are suffering the consequences. Your condition is not going to get better. On the contrary, it is all too likely to get worse. Have you thought what it will be like to be bedridden? Have you thought what it will be like for Jannie and me, knowing that you are in need of care, yet unable to care for you? Because we can’t come down  here every weekend, can we?

“I know you don’t like institutions, Dad. Nor do I. Nor does Jannie. But there comes a point in our lives when we have to compromise between what we want and what is good for us. Here in the south of France, in this town, with its rather objectionable name, in this luxurious flat with cases of wine stacked up in the hallway, you have no security at all. I know you disagree, but that is the reality. You could get ill and no one would know about it. You could have a fall and lie unconscious or with broken limbs. You could die.

  “The places Jannie and I are proposing are not like institutions from the old days. They are well designed, well supervised, well run. They are expensive because they spare no expense in the interest of their clientele. One pays, and in return one gets first-class care. If it turns out that expense is an issue, Jannie and I will gladly pitch in. You’ll have your own apartment; perhaps you can have a small garden of your own too. You can either take your meals in the restaurant or have them brought to your apartment."

You can’t say No to the ticking of the clock. When it says, "Come,” you must bow your head and come. So learn to say Yes. Don’t frown and dig in your heels. Put behind you your aged armagnac, your Handel operas, your fretful trollops. Come and live at Domaine d'Esperance—yes, it's an institution—where a nice nurse from Guadaloupe will wake you up in the morning with a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a cheery greeting (“Quel beau jour, Monsieur ———!”). Say bravely to senescence, "Yes, yes, okay. Institutionalize me! See if I care!"

P.S. Promise me, Jannie, that when our turn comes we won’t allow ourselves to be seduced like Dad by sex and drink, by oysters and upside-down apple tarts (what do they call them again, tarts tatin?) for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, by art and literature, walks by the sea and in the mountains, good jokes, and all the pretty trees and flowers, into thinking that, yes, maybe, just maybe, old age isn’t really all so very bad after all??

Promise me that!

Yours truly, as ever,

Dotty

Written perhaps ten years ago, this piece turned up in the desk drawer yesterday, so for want of anything worthier . . .

December 5, 2024

*Odyssey 23: 214–23.