Der Zuschauer

“Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language, have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words, with little or no meaning, have by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those who hear them, that they are but covers of ignorance, and hindrance of true knowledge.”

John Locke, Epsitle, Essay…7. Pringle, Pattison.

One of the themes in Peter Weiss’ The Aesthetics of Resistance, is the question of why the working class is nowhere present in painting until the 19th century. Otherwise only as seen in the background, sidebar, or foreground but never central in focus. He writes about Menzel, Munch’s Workers Returning from the Factory, also Goya, Gericault, Delacroix. One wishes one could ask Weiss about Bregel and/or Bosch. Perhaps we have forgotten something in reading that demanding novel. There is an englished version of Volume One published by Duke University. We suggest you skip the preface by Fredrich Jameson. We are continuing on in the German.

But what occasioned these remarks was a paragraph we came across in Lessing’s Laocoon: An Essay upon the limits of Painting and Poetry. Suggesting the Greeks are right in demanding with civil law that all imitation in painting should surpass its models in nature and be more beautiful, he then goes on to discuss two bad boys of Greek painting.

“They had such painters, but meted out to them strict justice. Pauson, who confined himself to the beauties of ordinary nature, and whose depraved taste liked to represent the imperfections and deformities of humanity, lived in the most abandoned poverty; and Pyreicus, who painted barber’s rooms, dirty workshops, donkeys, and kitchen herbs with all the diligence of a Dutch painter, as if such things were rare or attractive in nature, acquired the surname of Rhyparographer, the dirt-painter. The rich voluptuaries, indeed, paid for his works their weight in gold as if by this fictitious valuation to atone for their insignificance.”

Laocoon, Chapter Two

Dr. Johnson, in his Rasselas, has Imlac say “To talk in public, to think in solitude, to read and to hear, to inquire, is the business of a scholar.”

Once in a Polish Forest, Once on the Streets of Mumbai

Harry Lime is nasty,
And I’m a lemon tree,
Whatever will happen to Nasty,
Whatever will happen to me?

You can arrest us in Vienna,
You can shoot us at Katyn.
We can die in Anschluss Vienna,
Or we can die in the forests at Katyn.

We’ve never been a squirrel,
We are not wild boars,
But we knew a man named Daniel
Who was mad about the whores.

We never ride camels,
But we smoke quite a bit.
Riding, riding camels,
Makes one want a shit.

We’ve been to hell in a handbag,
The ransom was exchanged,
There are Ivans in the hallway,
And the dogs are after swag.

You can put an Institute of Atheism
In a burnt-out smoking church,
The hashish mullahs nonetheless
Will haggar off your head, leave you in the lurch.

Where the hell is reason?
Where the hell is god?
You can order up the curry,
You can go and see your god.

I’d rather have a camel
Before I go into the smoke;
I’d rather know a camel,
When I go into the smoke.

You can soak the soil of Mumbai
With the last best shit of mine;
You can put it in a handbag
And call my death a sign.

It’s no go the taxi,
It’s no go Mumbai,
It’s no go the praxis,
And it’s no go the Taj.

Half-dead in a handbag
Is dead enough for me,
And if the old, chirpy bag
Is shot instead of me?

It’s no go the taxi,
It’s no go Mumbai.
It’s no go a bit of skirt,
No go green or even blacker chai.

Harry Lime is nasty,
And I’m a lemon tree,
Whatever will happen to Nasty,
Whatever will happen to me?

Stanley Richardson

Copyright 2008, Guam Island Battalions
All rights reserved.