So (posthumously or otherwise), it all ended the same way:

OUR PHOTO REPORTER MANAGES TO SHOOT THE WORLD-FAMOUS CELEBRITY

(if possible in exotic company)

—while leaving the—

—while vacationing in—

—while recovering in—

—on location at—

—at his desk—

—at the annual—

—laid out under—

(under floral tributes, today no more luxurious even for Nobel laureates than those under which my friend Schwab finally came to rest).

JACOB G. BRODNY

literary agent

B

Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo.

—OVID

Whatever we see could be other than it is.

Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is.

—LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

The “I” is not an obstacle in being with people. The “I” is that which they desire.

—WITOLD GOMBROWICZ Diary, volume one

All kinds of things drop down the air shaft outside my window: refuse—

withered linden leaves wafting down off the roof (God knows from where)—

bones of smoked fish—

spit-out peels of the sunflower seeds that the monkey-eyed Algerians chew—

sometimes, in the evening hours: cottony October fog—

and cigarette butts, condoms, sanitary napkins, hairpins—

but no light: not a single unfiltered mote of sunlight.

Only once have I seen the shaft fill with something which in its complete transparency seemed to shine from within, like pure, ethereal gas; namely, yesterday: the morning after the night in which I had been with the girl at the Madeleine.

I had slept for a couple of hours and, in effortless renunciation, eluded the magic image-weaving of some dream (rising smoothly and imperceptibly and bringing with me not a single shredded tangle, like the surfacing merman with watercress on his fish-mouthed skull)—

(Incidentally, I recall dreaming that I had to lead my foster mother Aunt Selma along the narrow ledge of a building wall—I no longer know where to. Anyway, it was high and dangerous, and suddenly a stone crumbled under her foot; she tried to cling to me, but I wrenched loose, she plunged down, and I grabbed hold of the smooth wall, closing my eyes and waiting to hear the dull thud of her body on the sidewalk below. But nothing came, and when I peered down, I saw her: her legs had either dug into the ground or were totally crushed, for she sat in the billowing skirts of a bright summer frock as though in a flower cup, waving happily up to me . . .)

For the first time in years, I felt myself awakening with no perceptible malaise—and I instantly knew that I was in Paris and under what circumstances and where (in which mangy hotel room) and to what sublime joys and torments with my papers I would have to open my eyes. So I did not open them right away. I lay there, enjoying my precarious peace—

enjoyed ME: yes indeed: me SELF-brimming SELF-towered (the vertical Anglo-Saxon I)

MAN-ANIMAL SELF

and as such, heartrendingly split in two: physical SELF and abstract SELF.