Harold Bloom, Emerson, and Salmon Sperm Facials
Two new chronicles I wrote, Anthony Doerr talking about Italo Calvino, and Kanye West's new album.
In this week’s newsletter: two books that changed my life forever by Harold Bloom and Ralph Waldo Emerson, two chronicles I wrote, Anthony Doerr on Italo Calvino, Kanye West’s new album, and more.
Sea Burial: A Chronicle
by Renata Mosci Sanfourche
The sea at Olinda was briny and salty. And I did what I would always do in the future: I put my hands together and plunged into the waves, swallowing a little water as I did: I so wanted to be a part of the sea that I drank from it every day.
— Clarice Lispector
When I die I want a full body sea burial. I’ve pictured my body bandaged with thick black tarp, my neck and my legs wrapped in white tape to hold the plastic together. My loved ones bring the package to a cliff. They hesitate to choose the right angle; head first, feet first, or do they just hold me by my ends and swing me into the air? Flowers would be romantic, but I would prefer if they threw rocks into the water.
I doubt they’ll wrap me in plastic. Navy canvas, even a casket would be more romantic, and I’m told we must travel far into the sea before it’s legal to celebrate a funeral. This need, to have our final resting place be the water... the womb is filled with water, it bursts, we’re born, water flows back into the womb, the body jumps back into the womb, eyes closed, rest. Did you see that?
For now, I have kept myself alive. When I was born we closed an envelope together, but you slashed it open and left it in a pile. You placed it on your desk by the window and the wind blew away the thin, frail letter you wrote. I was helpless without that letter. I touched your skin and you touched mine, I smelled the black beans cooking in the pressure cooker, and I crawled around our apartment to touch the rugs, the walls, the appliances. I did before I could think and I started to see my skin as something other than you, other than me. I liked taking baths, I felt contained and protected.
Paul Valéry said: “Nothing is deeper in man than his skin.” My skin is my boundary, the outside will one day be inside. Time passes. I see my self. I walk out of the kitchen but you bring me back. I open the refrigerator but you tell me no. I won’t know when I’ve shed your skin.
It was too early when you slashed the letter open. Now I don’t know what belongs to me when I touch. When your friend is over and I run around, take off my dress, dance, jump, bring my dolls to the living room and scream, I wish you’d teach me how to feel. I wish you could name the animals on these magnets, show me how to hold hands. I wish you let me jump out of the crib and waited to kiss me after.
You were supposed to be my shields, my second skin, but your egos, your grand desires to assert yourselves, made me disappear. You told me not to smile, and you said my smile was ugly. You repeated, less less, when you thought I was getting out of hand. You told me not to touch, not to go, not to cry, not to talk. Later you told me hell was waiting if I deviated. You told me this about sex: once you start, you don’t stop. It was too close to me, for me. Your egos became my ego.
If only I could dive into the sea and come back out over and over again new. My name means reborn. I hesitate to tell you that here so soon because I haven’t told you what’s a lie and what’s sincere.
You pealed off my skin, chipped at my carapace and invaded me. I heard you when you told me who I am and what I was to be. I abandoned my ego and you told me who you saw: an intense, a wild, a relentless and fun little girl. A toast to your description. I skipped when it was calm, I shouted when you all hummed. I touched nothing.
Remember when you looked at your face in the mirror and were surprised? I look too but I say ‘my skin is there’. I look again, I look with my face inside, and now I see your inscriptions. My friend came over. I jumped, I screamed, I was naked. It really is true, I’ve kept myself alive.
A Visual Library
The Anxiety of Influence
Two works that changed my life.
Harold Bloom’s The Anxiety of Influence: When I feel I’m veering too far away from myself, or when I’m lost, or when I need to get through some sort of stuck thinking phase, when I need to move on, when I’m overwhelmed, or when I need someone to explain to me something about what I’m feeling I go to this book. It’s challenging to apply his theory; I understand it, I feel it, but to do it is hard. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do anything close to what this theory demands, but I’m also at peace with doing nothing, as long as I spent my life trying.
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature: It’s in the public domain but here’s an excerpt:
When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas is broken up by the prevalence of secondary desires, the desire of riches, of pleasure, of power, and of praise, — and duplicity and falsehood take place of simplicity and truth, the power over nature as an interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost; new imagery ceases to be created, and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed, when there is no bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate the understanding or the affections. Note Hundreds of writers may be found in every long-civilized nation, who for a short time believe, and make others believe, that they see and utter truths, who do not of themselves clothe one thought in its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously on the language created by the primary writers of the country, those, namely, who hold primarily on nature.
The Modern Woman
by Renata Mosci Sanfourche
The modern woman quit smoking and now she smokes again. Not outside, but inside her house facing the window that gives out to a horrid scaffolding. I tell the modern woman, “few things give me as much pleasure as smoking on the sofa while watching a movie”. From the way she tightens her eyebrows I can tell the modern woman will smoke tonight, on her daybed and to a movie.
The modern woman has a cat at her vacation home that she visits more often than not. The cat had babies, but they’re wild cats, so she wonders what will be of these kittens. She doesn’t want the kittens to stick around all day, if they reproduce again they’ll be too many kittens to care for.
The modern woman reads Joan Didion.
The modern woman is mad about the way the electricity was wired in her apartment. The generator exploded when she was taking a bath. She’s made phone calls, but no one came to fix it.
The modern woman is scared a bat will land on her hair. When bats sit on your head they don’t let go, you have to cut the strands of hair off to release them. When she was in India she walked down a street lined with old trees. Half way down the street she heard a subtle sound, when she looked up there were as many bats on those trees as leaves. She liked eating naan every day for two weeks.
She orders three glasses of wine.
She grabs a girl’s hand and says let’s have lunch this week. The modern woman can be scary, but she’s not anymore, she’s nice.
The modern woman groans at the girl sitting next to her. The girl puts something near her coat. She grabs her coat and moves it.
The modern woman thinks the waiter is an idiot for running a marathon without any training.
The modern woman does not understand why so many people were texting her when the Notre Dame caught on fire. She lives in France but she personally does not feel any attachment to the church.
She wants another glass of wine.
She was never able to get into Twin Peaks. She tried.
She hates the woman next to her with the jacket, they keep growling at each other.
Currently at Rue de Chabrol
Four articles I read this week:
Salmon sperm facials are the new, hot anti-aging treatment. I heard this on two separate accounts, actually three if we count this article in the Financial Times: HTSI that a friend shared with me.
The way Professor Howley defended Mahmoud Khalil in this speech at Columbia. Also from the upcoming April issue of the New York Review of Books this piece written by Christopher R. Browning: “Trump, Antisemitism & Academy”.
Kanye released a new album Tuesday night on X called Bully, which he dedicates to his son Saint, who in fact stars in the video. Kanye raps in Spanish, he samples a bunch of people including the Supremes and the Carpenters: here’s Variety’s take. Meanwhile, on the same day, the Shade Room leaked a phone call between Kanye and Diddy; at some point Diddy tells him to “chop up them samples”.
Italo Calvino is having a moment. Here’s Anthony Doerr talking about him on Lit Hub, and here’s BBC’s In Our Time podcast by Melvyn Bragg about Calvino. And if you’re really feeling like a podcast, I recommend Bragg on Socrates in Prison.
What my husband is listening to:
What my daughter is into:
Lollipops.
An interview I’m thinking about:
An interview with Harold Bloom on YouTube:
A Poem
Canção do Exílio
by Gonçalves Dias (english translation)
Minha terra tem palmeiras,
Onde canta o Sabiá;
As aves, que aqui gorjeiam,
Não gorjeiam como lá.
Nosso céu tem mais estrelas,
Nossas várzeas têm mais flores,
Nossos bosques têm mais vida,
Nossa vida mais amores.
Em cismar, sozinho, à noite,
Mais prazer encontro eu lá;
Minha terra tem palmeiras,
Onde canta o Sabiá.
Minha terra tem primores,
Que tais não encontro eu cá;
Em cismar — sozinho, à noite —
Mais prazer encontro eu lá;
Minha terra tem palmeiras,
Onde canta o Sabiá.
Não permita Deus que eu morra,
Sem que eu volte para lá;
Sem que desfrute os primores
Que não encontro por cá;
Sem qu’inda aviste as palmeiras,
Onde canta o Sabiá.
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