Subject: Declining Evening Sun, or 'Only the Lonely'
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 1998 19:36:22 PST


Exploring the state or status of the individual in solitude: neither 
master nor slave -- nor even a "master deprived of his mastery and cast 
adrift in the world" (Michael Richardson, introduction to Georges 
Bataille, THE ABSENCE OF MYTH: Verso 1994, p. 20).  The individual in 
solitude experiences an excess of personality, which at first strikes 
the head and heart -- strikes 'home', that is -- as some sort of 
'decay'.  Truly, one only possesses a personality, an identity, in 
relation to other beings in the world; without interaction, one 
stagnates, and repeats movements that are not "inherent" by any means, 
but are rather LEARNED via interaction with a world in continual flux: 
becoming.  

But are not the most original 'voices' (in the realm of literary 
expression, at least) those of the recluses, the hermits, the idlers in 
a tabernacle of Thought?  For "The Marvelous is at the root of the mind" 
(Artaud, SELECTED WRITINGS, p. 103), and the mind only comes into its 
own, communicates purely with itself, in compete and utter solitude.  
Shut out from a world of competing voices, from a world of would-be 
'interpreters' [and why not check out Geoffrey Hartman's essay, 'The 
Interpeter'? ... now where did I put that book?  I can't even recall the 
title ...] who can only misread individual expression, while at the same 
time making it their own, appropriating it, the individual in solitude 
hears his own voice as an affirmation of the existence of a being beyond 
himself: a being who never acts but always observes action -- an 
identity operating from somewhere without, an identity which, if 
captured by an attempt to make it manifest, will only withdraw, and 
inscribe madness on the walls of its tunnel.

"... I fell into a trap, so strong has my hatred remained -- not only of 
the intelligence and reason but of the 'mind' ..." (Bataille, THE 
ABSENCE OF MYTH, p. 46).  A hatred brought about by the realization that 
all the products of the mind can never be experienced on their own 
ground, in their own RIGHT, but can only be 'adequated' through a 
movement of familiarization in an equally individual realm -- a realm 
that is equal only in action, but clearly inferior in its self-deluding 
insistence on "the suffering which makes the suffering become joyful" 
(ibid., p. 48).  Severance from the world of beings is a pain that is 
only temporary: if the individual is weak, he will succumb to the pain, 
and return to oppression and dependence; if the individual is strong, he 
will (re-)emerge in a "white and incongruous void" waiting to be filled 
by the transgressive outbursts of a truly autonomous being.  


Edward Moore

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