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Posted Jul 15, 2001
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Filename: Doktor Wagner
Posted Jul 15, 2001
The Diabolical Doktor Wagner
Twenty-sixth establishment
Who, on that gray morning of
During the discussion I raised an objection. The satanic old man must have been irritated, but he didn't let it show. On the contrary, he replied as if he wanted to seduce me.
Like Charlus with Jupien, bee and flower. A genius can't bear not being loved; he must immediately seduce the dissenter, make the dissenter love him. He succeeded. I loved him.
But he must not have forgiven me, because that evening of the divorce he dealt me a mortal blow. Unconsciously, instinctively, not thinking, he seduced me, and unconsciously, he punished me. Though it cost him deontologically, he psychoanalyzed me free. The unconscious bites even its handlers.
Story of the Marquis de Lantenac in, "Quatre-vingt treize." The ship of the Vendeeiens is sailing through a storm off the Breton coast. Suddenly a cannon slips its moorings, and as the ship pitches and rolls it begins a mad race from rail to rail, an immense beast smashing larboard and starboard. A cannoneer (alas, the very one whose negligence had left the cannon improperly secured) seizes a chain and with unparalleled courage flings himself at the monster, which nearly crushes him, but he stops it, bolts it fast, leads it back to its stall, saving the ship, the crew, the mission. With sublime liturgy, the fearsome Lantenac musters all the men on deck, praises the cannoneer's heroism, takes an impressive medal from around his own neck and puts it on the man, embraces him, and the crew makes the welkin ring with hurrahs.
Then stern Lantenac, reminding the honored sailor that he was responsible for the danger in the first place, orders him to be shot.
Splendid, just Lantenac, man of virtue, above corruption. And this is what Dr. Wagner did for me: he honored me with his friendship, and executed me with the truth.
and executed me, revealing to me what I desired
revealing to me that the thing that I desired, I feared.
Begin the story in a bar. The need to fall in love.
Some things you can feel coming. You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step: like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus.
Because at that time I felt the need. I had just given up drinking. Relationship between the liver and the heart. A new love is a good reason for going back to drink. Somebody to go to a bar with. Feel good with.
The bar is brief, furtive. It allows you a long, sweet expectation through the day, then you go and hide in the shadows among the leather chairs; at six in the evening there's nobody there, the sordid clientele comes later, with the piano man. Choose a louche American bar empty in the late afternoon. The waiter comes only if you call him three times, and he has the next martini ready.
It has to be a martini. Not whiskey, a martini. The liquid is clear. You raise your glass and you see her over the olive. The difference between looking at your beloved through a dry martini straight up, where the glass is small, thin, and looking at her through a martini on the rocks, through thick glass, and her face broken by the transparent cubism of the ice. The effect doubled if you each press your glass to your forehead, feeling the chill, and lean close until the glasses touch. Forehead to forehead with two glasses in between. You can't do that with martini glasses.
The brief hour of the bar. Afterward, trembling, you await another day. Free of the blackmail of certainty.
He who falls in love in bars doesn't need a woman all his own. He can always find one on loan.
His role. He allowed her great freedom, he was always traveling. His suspect generosity: I could telephone even at midnight. He was there, you weren't. He said you were out. Actually, while I have you on the line, do you have any idea where she is? The only moments of jealousy. But still, in that way I was taking Cecilia from the sax player. To love, or believe you love, as an eternal priest of ancient vengeance.
With Sandra, things were complicated. That time she decided I was too involved. Our life as a couple had become strained. Should we break up? Let's break up, then. No, wait, let's talk it over. No, we can't go on like this. The problem, in a nutshell, was Sandra.
When you hang out in bars, the drama of love isn't the women you find but the women you leave.
Then comes the dinner Dr. Wagner. At the lecture he had just given a heckler a definition of psychoanalysis. La psychanalyse? C'est qu'entre l'homme et la femme...chers amis...ca ne colle pas.
There was discussion: the couple, divorce as a legal fiction. Taken up by my own problems, I participated intensely. We allowed ourselves to be drawn into dialectical exchanges, speaking while Wagner was silent, forgetting there was an oracle in our presence. And it was with a pensive.
and it was with sly expression
and it was with melancholy detachment
and it was as if he entered our conversation playfully, off the subject, he said (I remember his exact words; they are carved on my mind): In professional life not once have I had a patient made neurotic by his own divorce. The cause of the trouble was always the divorce of the Other.
Dr. Wagner always said Other with a capital O. I gave a start, as if bitten by an asp.
the viscount started as if bitten by an asp
a cold sweat beaded his brow
the baron peered at him through the lazy whorls of smoke from his thin Russian cigarette
Are you saying, I asked, that a person has a breakdown not because he is divorced but on account of the divorce, which may or may not happen, of the third party, that is, of the one who created the crisis for the couple of which he is a member?
Wagner looked at me with puzzlement of a layman who encounters a mentally disturbed person for the first time. He asked me what I meant. To tell the truth, whatever I meant, I had expressed it badly. I tried to be more concrete. I took a spoon from the table and put it next to a fork. Here, this is me, Spoon, married to her, Fork. And here is another couple: she's Fruit Knife, married to Steak Knife, alias Mackie Messer. Now I, Spoon, believe I'm suffering because I have to leave Fork and I don't want to; I love Fruit Knife, but it's all right with me if she stays with Steak Knife. Is that it?
Wagner told someone else at the table that he had said nothing of the sort.
What do you mean, you didn't say it? You said that not once had you come across anyone made neurotic by his own divorce, it was always the divorce of the Other.
That may be, I don't remember, Wagner said then, bored.
If you did say it, did you mean what I understood you to mean?
Wagner was silent for a few moments.
While the others waited, not even swallowing, Wagner signaled for his wineglass to be filled. He looked carefully at the liquid against the light and finally spoke.
What you understood was what you wanted to understand.
Then he looked away, said it was hot, hummed an aria, moved a breadstick as if he were conducting an orchestra, yawned, concentrated on a cake with whipped cream, and finally, after another silence, asked to be taken back to his hotel.
The others looked at me as if I had ruined a symposium from which Words of Wisdom might have come.
The truth is that I had heard Truth speak.
I telephoned. You were at home, and with Other. I spent a sleepless night. It was all clear: I couldn't bear your being with him. Sandra had nothing to do with it.
Six dramatic months followed, in which I clung to you, breathed down your neck, trying to undermine your couplehood, telling you I wanted you for myself, convincing you that you hated the Other. You began quarreling with him, and he grew jealous, demanding; he never went out in the evening, and when he was traveling he called twice a day, in the middle of the night, and one night he slapped you. You asked me for money so you could run away. I collected the little I had in the bank. You abandoned the conjugal bed, went off to the mountains with friends, no forwarding address. The Other telephoned me in despair, asked if I knew where you were; I didn't know, but it looked as if I were lying, because you had told him you were leaving him for me.
When you returned, you announced, radiant, that you had written him a letter of farewell. I wondered then what would happen with me and Sandra, but you didn't give me time to worry, you told me you had met this man with a scar on his cheek and a very gypsy apartment. You were going to live with him.
Don't you love me anymore?
Of course I do, you're the only man in my life, but after everything that's happened I need to have this experience, don't be childish, try to understand. After all, I left my husband for you. Let people follow their tempo.
Their tempo? You're telling me you're going off with another man.
You're an intellectual and a leftist. Don't act like a mafioso. I'll see you soon.
I owe everything to Dr. Wagner.
Umberto Eco, 'Foucault's Pendulum,' Milan, 1989
Discuss this Journal entry [4]
Latest reply: Jul 15, 2001
Filename: Doktor Wagner
Posted Jul 15, 2001
The Diabolical Doktor Wagner
Twenty-sixth establishment
Who, on that gray morning of
During the discussion I raised an objection. The satanic old man must have been irritated, but he didn't let it show. On the contrary, he replied as if he wanted to seduce me.
Like Charlus with Jupien, bee and flower. A genius can't bear not being loved; he must immediately seduce the dissenter, make the dissenter love him. He succeeded. I loved him.
But he must not have forgiven me, because that evening of the divorce he dealt me a mortal blow. Unconsciously, instinctively, not thinking, he seduced me, and unconsciously, he punished me. Though it cost him deontologically, he psychoanalyzed me free. The unconscious bites even its handlers.
Story of the Marquis de Lantenac in, "Quatre-vingt treize." The ship of the Vendeeiens is sailing through a storm off the Breton coast. Suddenly a cannon slips its moorings, and as the ship pitches and rolls it begins a mad race from rail to rail, an immense beast smashing larboard and starboard. A cannoneer (alas, the very one whose negligence had left the cannon improperly secured) seizes a chain and with unparalleled courage flings himself at the monster, which nearly crushes him, but he stops it, bolts it fast, leads it back to its stall, saving the ship, the crew, the mission. With sublime liturgy, the fearsome Lantenac musters all the men on deck, praises the cannoneer's heroism, takes an impressive medal from around his own neck and puts it on the man, embraces him, and the crew makes the welkin ring with hurrahs.
Then stern Lantenac, reminding the honored sailor that he was responsible for the danger in the first place, orders him to be shot.
Splendid, just Lantenac, man of virtue, above corruption. And this is what Dr. Wagner did for me: he honored me with his friendship, and executed me with the truth.
and executed me, revealing to me what I desired
revealing to me that the thing that I desired, I feared.
Begin the story in a bar. The need to fall in love.
Some things you can feel coming. You don't fall in love because you fall in love; you fall in love because of the need, desperate, to fall in love. When you feel that need, you have to watch your step: like having drunk a philter, the kind that makes you fall in love with the first thing you meet. It could be a duck-billed platypus.
Because at that time I felt the need. I had just given up drinking. Relationship between the liver and the heart. A new love is a good reason for going back to drink. Somebody to go to a bar with. Feel good with.
The bar is brief, furtive. It allows you a long, sweet expectation through the day, then you go and hide in the shadows among the leather chairs; at six in the evening there's nobody there, the sordid clientele comes later, with the piano man. Choose a louche American bar empty in the late afternoon. The waiter comes only if you call him three times, and he has the next martini ready.
It has to be a martini. Not whiskey, a martini. The liquid is clear. You raise your glass and you see her over the olive. The difference between looking at your beloved through a dry martini straight up, where the glass is small, thin, and looking at her through a martini on the rocks, through thick glass, and her face broken by the transparent cubism of the ice. The effect doubled if you each press your glass to your forehead, feeling the chill, and lean close until the glasses touch. Forehead to forehead with two glasses in between. You can't do that with martini glasses.
The brief hour of the bar. Afterward, trembling, you await another day. Free of the blackmail of certainty.
He who falls in love in bars doesn't need a woman all his own. He can always find one on loan.
His role. He allowed her great freedom, he was always traveling. His suspect generosity: I could telephone even at midnight. He was there, you weren't. He said you were out. Actually, while I have you on the line, do you have any idea where she is? The only moments of jealousy. But still, in that way I was taking Cecilia from the sax player. To love, or believe you love, as an eternal priest of ancient vengeance.
With Sandra, things were complicated. That time she decided I was too involved. Our life as a couple had become strained. Should we break up? Let's break up, then. No, wait, let's talk it over. No, we can't go on like this. The problem, in a nutshell, was Sandra.
When you hang out in bars, the drama of love isn't the women you find but the women you leave.
Then comes the dinner Dr. Wagner. At the lecture he had just given a heckler a definition of psychoanalysis. La psychanalyse? C'est qu'entre l'homme et la femme...chers amis...ca ne colle pas.
There was discussion: the couple, divorce as a legal fiction. Taken up by my own problems, I participated intensely. We allowed ourselves to be drawn into dialectical exchanges, speaking while Wagner was silent, forgetting there was an oracle in our presence. And it was with a pensive.
and it was with sly expression
and it was with melancholy detachment
and it was as if he entered our conversation playfully, off the subject, he said (I remember his exact words; they are carved on my mind): In professional life not once have I had a patient made neurotic by his own divorce. The cause of the trouble was always the divorce of the Other.
Dr. Wagner always said Other with a capital O. I gave a start, as if bitten by an asp.
the viscount started as if bitten by an asp
a cold sweat beaded his brow
the baron peered at him through the lazy whorls of smoke from his thin Russian cigarette
Are you saying, I asked, that a person has a breakdown not because he is divorced but on account of the divorce, which may or may not happen, of the third party, that is, of the one who created the crisis for the couple of which he is a member?
Wagner looked at me with puzzlement of a layman who encounters a mentally disturbed person for the first time. He asked me what I meant. To tell the truth, whatever I meant, I had expressed it badly. I tried to be more concrete. I took a spoon from the table and put it next to a fork. Here, this is me, Spoon, married to her, Fork. And here is another couple: she's Fruit Knife, married to Steak Knife, alias Mackie Messer. Now I, Spoon, believe I'm suffering because I have to leave Fork and I don't want to; I love Fruit Knife, but it's all right with me if she stays with Steak Knife. Is that it?
Wagner told someone else at the table that he had said nothing of the sort.
What do you mean, you didn't say it? You said that not once had you come across anyone made neurotic by his own divorce, it was always the divorce of the Other.
That may be, I don't remember, Wagner said then, bored.
If you did say it, did you mean what I understood you to mean?
Wagner was silent for a few moments.
While the others waited, not even swallowing, Wagner signaled for his wineglass to be filled. He looked carefully at the liquid against the light and finally spoke.
What you understood was what you wanted to understand.
Then he looked away, said it was hot, hummed an aria, moved a breadstick as if he were conducting an orchestra, yawned, concentrated on a cake with whipped cream, and finally, after another silence, asked to be taken back to his hotel.
The others looked at me as if I had ruined a symposium from which Words of Wisdom might have come.
The truth is that I had heard Truth speak.
I telephoned. You were at home, and with Other. I spent a sleepless night. It was all clear: I couldn't bear your being with him. Sandra had nothing to do with it.
Six dramatic months followed, in which I clung to you, breathed down your neck, trying to undermine your couplehood, telling you I wanted you for myself, convincing you that you hated the Other. You began quarreling with him, and he grew jealous, demanding; he never went out in the evening, and when he was traveling he called twice a day, in the middle of the night, and one night he slapped you. You asked me for money so you could run away. I collected the little I had in the bank. You abandoned the conjugal bed, went off to the mountains with friends, no forwarding address. The Other telephoned me in despair, asked if I knew where you were; I didn't know, but it looked as if I were lying, because you had told him you were leaving him for me.
When you returned, you announced, radiant, that you had written him a letter of farewell. I wondered then what would happen with me and Sandra, but you didn't give me time to worry, you told me you had met this man with a scar on his cheek and a very gypsy apartment. You were going to live with him.
Don't you love me anymore?
Of course I do, you're the only man in my life, but after everything that's happened I need to have this experience, don't be childish, try to understand. After all, I left my husband for you. Let people follow their tempo.
Their tempo? You're telling me you're going off with another man.
You're an intellectual and a leftist. Don't act like a mafioso. I'll see you soon.
I owe everything to Dr. Wagner.
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jul 15, 2001
As Darkman Shadow would say, "And they call it guppie love..."
Posted Jun 27, 2001
Waterfall
Nothing can harm me at all
My worries seem so very small
With my waterfall
I can see
My rainbow calling me
Through the misty breeze
Of my waterfall
Some people say
Day-dreamings for all the, huh,
Lazy minded fools
With nothin' else to do
So let them laugh, laugh at me
So just as long as I have you
To see me through
I have nothing to lose
'Long as I have you
Waterfall
Don't ever change your ways
Fall with me for a million days
Oh, my waterfall
Discuss this Journal entry [6]
Latest reply: Jun 27, 2001
As Darkman Shadow would say, "And they call it guppie love..."
Posted Jun 27, 2001
Waterfall
Nothing can harm me at all
My worries seem so very small
With my waterfall
I can see
My rainbow calling me
Through the misty breeze
Of my waterfall
Some people say
Day-dreamings for all the, huh,
Lazy minded fools
With nothin' else to do
So let them laugh, laugh at me
So just as long as I have you
To see me through
I have nothing to lose
'Long as I have you
Waterfall
Don't ever change your ways
Fall with me for a million days
Oh, my waterfall
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jun 27, 2001
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