Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Canetti's fantasy

n a book of aphorisms and little essays entitled All the squandered admiration, Elias Canetti sketches a revenge fantasy, or revolution fantasy, that any person who leans in a certain political direction, the direction that is oddly defined by both anarchy and communism, must have had at one point or another. Here's my translation.
It pains me that there will never be an uprising of the beasts against us, the patient beasts, the cow, the sheep, all the livestock which falls into our hands and cannot escape.
I can imagine how the rebellion breaks out in a slaughterhouse and from there overwhelms a whole city. How men, women, children, the aged are all pitilessly tramplled to death; how the beasts overrun the streets and tracks, break down the gates and doors, and in their anger go whelming up to the very highest floors of houses, just as, underground, the subway cars are crushed by thousands of steers running wild, the sheep with suddenly sharp teeth ripping into us. .
I am somewhat relieved when one particular steer puts to miserable flight that hero, the bullfighter, and the whole bloodthirsty arena too. But an insurgency of the lesser, softer victims, the sheep, the cow, would suit me better. I don’t like to think that this will never happen, and that we will never have to tremble before them, before just these beings.”

3 comments:

piety piet said...

2 guys called Brian and Bob reviews margin(al) scribblings by McLuhan in a Canetti book on air weekends, with files uploaded afterwards at ionandbob.blogspot.com - in 08 i listened to more stuff by Bob in a shorter time than anybody previously (now superceded and flushed out by my personal youtube stars).

Bob is a lifelong hobby radiohead good for nothing, mostly toronto at first; claims he got sicked on McLuhan's ass by the elite, traded paranoia for 'nonphysical' (pure whimwoowoo) after a decades long cat and mouse 'i bob duesurf/disserve the subgenii' punwar and projects his ugliest sides on grant prop writing priesthood pawns in the 'Thompson quadrant' (Larouche, McLuhan and Kroker making up the others), wonderfully performed in the mp3 below.

i suspect him of backpolating extensions onto his biography .. perhaps in anticipation of the snake oil he peddles now via open cult pr at achieveradio.com .. if you ever saw the series 'Carnivale' know that he's bro Justin and i am not that little healer at a lifetoll exactly ... nothing sweat equity and cycling leverage on some very heavy high (or deep) slow rail rollers serving a gravity wheel won't rub rawsomely beautiful from the only extreme gradient that deserves, merit and will soon earn you any hype at all (i hope): rock to softest of soil .... but i do hate the guy viscerally .. for loads of reasons .. even while .. or especially cause i have to acknowledge common traits; not least of which is mayan calender kin .. he claims the one Finnegan's Wake was published (some remarks on Joyce made in this file too by the way).


http://halkinnaman.com/ed/audio_rr/bob_brian_24jan2015_2a.mp3
from
http://ionandbob.blogspot.nl/2014/11/bob-dobbs-brian.html

http://ionandbob.blogspot.nl/2014/11/marshall-mcluhan-audios-from-bob-dobbs.html
25 pieces of MM audio from mid 60s - mid 70s

piety piet said...

sub

Roger Gathmann said...

Wow, in this brief comment you include the gem whimwoowoo and backpolating. This is what I call english with a bullet! Thanks, I'll have to look at those audios.

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