Douglas Mercer
July 4 2024
Each of the eighteen chapters of Ulysses corresponds to a chapter in the Odyssey and Chapter Nine is Scylla and Charybdis, the rock and the whirlpool, where the vortex rules; each chapter is also assigned a part of the human body and Chapter Nine is the human brain; the entire chapter consists of the wits of Dublin sitting in the National Library discussing that brain and autonomic central nervous system of European literature, Hamlet. At one point apropos of very little a character says the following:
“The noblest Roman of them all, A.E., Arval, the Name Ineffable, in heaven hight: K.H."
***
It’s always amusing when one of the greats looks back over his shoulder to see if someone is gaining on him. They say that toward the end of his life Joyce gingerly asked a friend if they had heard anything about this Kafka fellow. Likewise towards the end of his sanity Nietzsche got wind of Soren Kierkegaard and, rightly sensing a rival who had trod the same ground as him decades before, said he might just have to work up a psychological profile on him; he surely could have, but the reverse is true as well, for if anyone was ever mentally quicker than Soren Kierkegaard I for one have never read them.
Kierkegaard was in the anomalous position of having written in a minor European language (Danish) and though his work rivaled Nietzsche (which is saying everything) he was not translated into German (the gold standard) until after the First World War when his mania took off. Had his vast body of work (done between 1838 and 1855) been rendered into German in the 1860s Nietzsche would have had to reckon with it and the intellectual history of Europe would have been forever altered. That is Europe would have been inoculated by Kierkegaard and so Nietzsche's impact attenuated, and this should have been the natural sequence. But as it was by the time Kierkegaard hit it big he was being subsumed under the rubric of existentialism with Kafka, Sartre, and Camus, that is the utter shock of what he wrote had worn off.
***
In 1967 John Lennon purchased a poster of a circus performance and the words from the poster more or less comprised the entire song with only a change or so here and there.
Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite
“Being” is the key word here; being here is a noun not a way of saying “this is for”; the secret identify of Mr. Kite is none other than Soren Kierkegaard, the one who flies (leaps) though the air. Kierkegaard as a Christian is associated with transcendence (no ground).
For the benefit of Mr. Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The “show” is what appears and this show will be one where Mr. Kite will fly through the air. The most famous phrase attributed to Kierkegaard is “leap of faith” which was actually cribbed from Lessing who used the word “ditch” saying that there was no smooth transition from the world of history to eternity but a radical disjuncture when the final transition occurred (ie, there is an abyss or chasm or ditch between reality and eternity which one must jump over). The disjunction is the event which will occur in Las Vegas (see The Celestial City, White Biocentrism, June 22 2022 and April Is The Coolest Month, White Biocentrism, June 1 2024). This song with it carnivalesque hurdy gurdy or fun house mirror music, augurs the moment of chaos or the deus ex machina moment when the god rolls up the carpet of the world, as it were, providing details both literal and figural.
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo Fanques Fair, what a scene!
Over men and horses hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
It will be scene, and an event; horse and fire and this will occur last; excitement and contagious infectiousness surround the event, a kind of fevered panic or even hysterical abandon, laughing gas. The hogshead of real fire represents the terror which will also be implicit in the moment (hogshead etymology: the origin is to be found in the name for a cask or liquid measure appearing in various forms in Germanic Languages in Dutch oxhooft, Danish oxehoved, Old Swedish oxhuvud )
In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!
The celebrated Mr. K.
Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate
The Hendersons will dance and sing
As Mr. Kite flies through the ring, don't be late!
The esoteric knowledge will contend with the world; Mr. K is celebrated and he will perform a “feat” or a prodigy or a trick of fame; he will do it at a religious site and there will be dancing and singing (I only will believe in a god that dances—Nietzsche ; soon we will be song-Holderlin). Mr. Kite will “leap” or fly through the “ring”—and then the salutary advice: don’t’ be late. Lateness in terms of the time of lateness, of last days, that we are in the late time when the last stage of development comes to the fore with the exclamatory warning to be on time (the choice is yours, don’t be late-Nirvana).
Messrs. K and H assure the public
Their production will be second to none
And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!
Mr. H is Martin Heidegger; the production or show will be preeminent; what is produced is what is shown, one produces what one has made, and one shows it to the world in a grand spectacle; and haunting this show is once more the very central symbol of the god: the horse, this time dancing the steady and stately dance of the waltz.
The band begins at ten to six
When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound
And Mr. H will demonstrate
Ten summersets he'll undertake on solid ground
Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all
And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill!
The "band” is the group of the esoteric (our little group has always been and always will be until the end, seamstress for the band) who are always in strife with the world ; ten to six is when the event begins (April 23 2042) and it will happen with tricks in silence; Heidegger demonstrates (the painstaking step by step philosopher, the one who shows) on solid ground : ground (or ur-ground or the absence of the ground in an abyss being among Heidegger’s many obsessions). All of this has been developing or preparing for eons; undertake is a Heideggerian word, like getting underway, undertaking as the attempt or the essay or assay; of course the end will be radiance or splendor of glamour; because tonight the flying ones sit on top of the world. For by nighttime on the day of days everything will be over and the heights (take me higher) will have been achieved.
It will be a night to remember.
They will be standing still.
And so we have another peculiar tableau or diorama as a microcosm of symbols of what will occur to put on our shelf.
***
Notes:
April 23 2042
5:50PM Local Time
Monkey Island
Oklahoma
Kierkegaard's last pamphlet has been translated variously into English as The Instant Or The Moment.
K And H
-
Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10984
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
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Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10984
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
Re: K And H
For the benefit of Mr. Kite
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo Fanques Fair, what a scene!
Over men and horses hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!
To celebrate it Mr. K.
Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate
The Hendersons will dance and sing
As Mr. Kite flies through the ring, don't be late!
Messrs. K and H assure the public
Their production will be second to none
And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!
The band begins at ten to six
When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound
And Mr. H will demonstrate
Ten summersets he'll undertake on solid ground
Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all
And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill!
There will be a show tonight on trampoline
The Hendersons will all be there
Late of Pablo Fanques Fair, what a scene!
Over men and horses hoops and garters
Lastly through a hogshead of real fire!
In this way Mr. K. will challenge the world!
To celebrate it Mr. K.
Performs his feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate
The Hendersons will dance and sing
As Mr. Kite flies through the ring, don't be late!
Messrs. K and H assure the public
Their production will be second to none
And of course Henry The Horse dances the waltz!
The band begins at ten to six
When Mr. K. performs his tricks without a sound
And Mr. H will demonstrate
Ten summersets he'll undertake on solid ground
Having been some days in preparation
A splendid time is guaranteed for all
And tonight Mr. Kite is topping the bill!
-
Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10984
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
Re: K And H
April 30 2042
5:50PM Local Time
Monkey Island
Oklahoma
5:50PM Local Time
Monkey Island
Oklahoma
-
Douglas Mercer
- Posts: 10984
- Joined: Tue Mar 28, 2023 7:29 pm
Re: K And H
Kites were a common enough sight riding the updrafts of the Mont Albano above Vinci. You can seem today if you are lucky. They are unmistakable, the long forked tail, the elegantly cambered wing-span, the soft yet intense russet coloring though which, at the wing ends and tail feathers, the light of a perfect sky glows mysteriously. The bird's silhouette and radically wheeling fight and sharp downward falls are translated into English as the common kind of Kite, though in Italy this child's toy is labelled Eagle (aquilone).
