Reading Markson Reading

Pg. 180 of David Markson’s copy of Ezra Pound: Among the Poets by Various (Ed. George Bornstein):

On which Markson placed a check next to the following:
“When Eliot died on 4 January 1965, Pound, old, sick, and poor, flew from Italy to attend the memorial service at Westminster Abbey. ‘Who is there now for me to share a joke with?’ he wrote in the Eliot memorial issue of the Sewanee Review.

—

I’ve done a previous post where Markson, in another book, checked the same line from Pound:
“Who is there now for me to share a joke with?”

It seems like such a perfect line for Markson to use in one of his last four novels, in his Notecard Quartet, yet surprisingly it is nowhere to be found in those four books.

Pg. 393 of David Markson’s copy of A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke by Donald Prater:

On which Markson placed two checks in the margin next to a paragraph detailing the mutual admiration between Boris Pasternak and Rainer Maria Rilke and Marina Tsvetayeva.

—

Markson makes one mention of the Pasternak-Rilke relationship, and one mention of the Tsvetayeva-Rilke relationship, in his Notecard Quartet.

On pg. 20 of Reader’s Block there’s this tidbit about Pasternak’s love of Rilke:
“Boris Pasternak so admired Rilke that he carried two letters from him in his wallet for decades.”

     And then on pg. 169 of This Is Not A Novel, a quote from Tsvetayeva to Rilke:
     “The kingdom of heaven, as described to Rilke by Marina Tsvetayeva after a lifetime of deprivation:
     Never again to sweep floors.”

—

Pg. 39 of David Markson’s copy of A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke by Donald Prater:

On which Markson placed a check next to mention of Rilke’s change of name:
“She refused to call him by the precious and feminine-sounding name of René, and used Rainer instead, a ‘plain, fine, German’ name which he adopted at once.”

—

The she in this case being Lou Andreas-Salomé.

Who is mentioned on pg. 89 of Markson’s novel Springer’s Progress, as part of a long list of women throughout the ages.

And with whom René/Rainer had, according to the above scan, a relationship “like brother and sister, but from primeval times before incest became a sacrilege.”

Before he became Rainer, did you know this about the “feminine-sounding” René?

“Rilke was raised as a girl—in girl’s clothing—until he started school at the age of seven.”
According to pg. 8 of Markson’s The Last Novel.

     Markson then immediately follows that fact up with:
     “The Rilke who would later devotedly collect lace.
     And maintain apartments habitually overflowing with roses.”

Yet also, the Rilke who changed his name from René to Rainer.

At the behest of Lou Andreas-Salomé.

—

Pg. 31 of David Markson’s copy of A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke by Donald Prater:

On which Markson left a check mark in the margin next to mention of Rilke’s introduction to the works of Jacobsen:
“To Wassermann also he owed his introduction to the works of Turgenev, and especially the Dane Jens Peter Jacobsen, the ‘lonely poet.’ Jacobsen remained for many years ‘a companion in spirit and a presence in the mind: it sometimes seemed to me an unbearable want that he should no longer be alive.’ In his ‘gentleness and secret lyrical tenderness,’ wrote Stefan Zweig, Jacobsen was the ‘poet of poets’ for a whole generation in Germany around the turn of the century, and the melancholy love-story Niels Lyhne their Werther.”

—

In Reader’s Block on pg. 125, Markson writes:
“Niels Lyhne. Which Joyce, Ibsen, Hesse, Mann, Strindberg, Rilke, Freud, were all profound admirers of. Rilke calling all of Jacobsen’s work as indispensable to him as the Bible.”

     The only other mention of the “lonely poet” I can find in Markson’s tetralogy:
     “Jens Peter Jacobsen died of tuberculosis.”
     From pg. 81 of This Is Not A Novel.

—

Pg. 332 of David Markson’s copy of A Ringing Glass: The Life of Rainer Maria Rilke by Donald Prater:

On which Markson placed a check in the margin next to some lines about Rilke’s appreciation for Valéry from the following paragraph:
“For that, the only gleam of light had come from his encounter, in February, with Paul Valéry’s ‘Cimetière Marin.’ He felt for the work of this poet an enthusiasm paralleled only by his admiration for Rodin, and at once made a translation of the poem, for himself and Merline. Coming in such perfection of form from one who, like himself, had ‘lived long with his poems’ before making them public, the ‘Cimetière marin’—celebration of the rebirth of inspiration and joyous affirmation of life—seemed to offer hope that he too might yet succeed in resolving the conflict between life and work, and learn to subordinate life’s dangers ‘like St. Hieronymous with the lion sleeping beside his desk.’”

—

     Cimetière marin.
     Oft translated to:
     The Graveyard by the Sea.

     The wind is rising! … We must try to live!
     The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave
     Dares to explode out of the rocks in reeking
     Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!
     Break, waves! Break up with your rejoicing surges
     This quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking.

So reads the final stanza of that poem, as translated into English by C. Day Lewis.
So reads its end, its finish.

     “One does not finish a poem, one only abandons it.”
     Is a line that pops up in Markson’s Reader’s Block on pg. 49.
     Unattributed.

“One does not finish a poem, one only abandons it.”
Is a quote from Valéry and perhaps explains why he “lived long with his poems,” according to the above scan.

Yes, Valéry living long with his poems…

In fact, as Markson explains on pg. 59 of This Is Not A Novel:
“For two decades, starting at twenty-five, Paul Valéry did not publish a line.”

True, Valéry was something of a perfectionist.

Which helps make sense of the following (that can be read on pg. 128 of Markson’s Reader’s Block):
“Valéry said he could never write a novel for one insurmountable reason. He would have to include sentences like The Marquise went out at five.”

In an interview with Alexander Laurence, Markson reiterates this Valéry quote, and thoroughly agrees with it (and not only as a justification for not writing, but as one for not reading):
“But I don’t read fiction anymore because it bores me. It’s that line in Paul Valéry that’s quoted in Reader’s Block: He couldn’t write a novel because he couldn’t put down ‘The Marquis went out at five.’ The minute I read ‘Joe went walked across the street to say hello to Charlie’ I’m bored.”

Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages!

—

Pg. 385 of David Markson’s copy of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia:

     On which Paglia, discussing the John Keats poem “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” wrote:
     “The poem’s sexual personae puzzled me for a decade.”
     To which Markson responded:
     “A decade! Not nine years, not eleven?”

—

Oh Markson, and his marginalia. It’s always funny to make note of the things he decided to take issue with.

“The poem’s sexual personae puzzled me for a decade.”

A decade! Not nine years, not eleven?

The poem of which Paglia wrote, “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” is mentioned by Markson in one of his mid-career novels: Springer’s Progress.

     On pg. 66, he uses the Keats poem, and the female figure in the poem, to describe Jessica Cornford, the young girl who is the object of the titular Springer’s affections in his novel:
     “Omophagic, only word for her labia. How’s he even remember, means eating raw flesh? Springer’s havocked.
     ‘My God. La Belle Dame sans Merci. Inquisitors be after you.’
     ‘What did I do?’
     ‘Black Mass. Jessica the depraved prioress.’”

Sexual personae.

Pg. 635 of David Markson’s copy of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia:

     On which Paglia quotes an insult from the show Welcome Back, Kotter, when she writes:
     “Heidi Jon Schmidt told me this sounds like a street insult, like ‘Up your nose with a rubber hose!’”
     To which Markson responded:
     “Huh?
     (Oh, TV)”

—

“Up your nose with a rubber hose!”

Huh?

Markson did not have a computer or use the internet, so if he didn’t know something that he couldn’t look up in a book, he would often call or write his friends.

I imagine him calling someone—maybe one of his kids, or maybe a fellow writer like Rick Moody or Gilbert Sorrentino—and asking, what is the phrase “Up your nose with a rubber hose!” from?

Welcome Back, Kotter, the answer.

Oh, TV.

Pg. 83 of David Markson’s copy of Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations by Harold Rosenberg:

On which Markson placed a check next to Rosenberg writing:
“Mitchell repudiates automatism; ‘I don’t close my eyes and hope for the best,’ she is quotes as saying.”

—

I don’t close my eyes and hope for the best.

Of course, this is a quote from abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, defending her painting style, while repudiating automatism.

     Her only mention in Markson’s Notecard Quartet has her seemingly repudiating something else entirely, another artist with whom she sometimes associated:
     “That tampon painter.
     Joan Mitchell called Helen Frankenthaler.”
     From pg. 132 of The Last Novel.

Pg. 344 of David Markson’s copy of The Classical Tradition: Greek and Roman Influences on Western Literature by Gilbert Highet:

On which Markson placed a line in the margin next to a paragraph on Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that starts with the sentence:
“One of the greatest intellectual and artistic achievements of the baroque age was a study of the conflict between the Roman empire and the forces that destroyed it.”

—

Edward Gibbon’s great intellectual and artistic achievement The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—no surprise—makes a handful of appearances in Markson’s Notecard Quartet…

     “Lo, there is just appeared a truly classic work.
     Wrote Horace Walpole—within one day of the publication of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall.”
     Markson wrote on pg. 40 of The Last Novel.

     Another mention of Walpole in relation to Decline and Fall happened in the previous novel in the tetralogy, Vanishing Point, on pg. 61:
     “Horace Walpole’s cautious suggestion to Gibbon that certain lesser technical portions of the Decline and Fall might be boring.
     After which Gibbon never spoke to him again.”

Also from Vanishing Point (on pg. 176):
“Given pause by the coincidence of the Declaration of Independence having been signed in the same year as the publication of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

     And lastly:
     “Sailing the circumference of Lake Geneva, Byron and Shelley took time to pay homage at the house in Lausanne where Gibbon had written a great deal of The Decline and Fall.”
     From pg. 120 of Markson’s This Is Not A Novel.

Pg. 594 of David Markson’s copy of Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia:

     On which Paglia quotes W. H. Auden as saying:
     “It is not an accident that many homosexuals should show a special preference for sailors, for the sailor on shore is symbolically the innocent god from the sea who is not bound by the law of the land and can therefore do anything without guilt.”
     To which Markson replies:
     “Oh, Jesus. Plus that he’s probably horny….plus that he’s used to homosexuality in a womanless world at sea.”

—-

In a womanless world at sea…

“Just an old queen, Auden spoke of himself as.”
According to Markson’s novel The Last Novel. On pg. 177.

“It is not an accident that many homosexuals should show a special preference for sailors, for the sailor on shore is symbolically the innocent god from the sea who is not bound by the law of the land and can therefore do anything without guilt.”

Speaking of the water v. the land:
Old saying: One never steps into the same river twice.

     Which Markson reports was converted into:
     “One never steps twice into the same Auden.
     Said Randall Jarrell.”
     On pg. 177 of The Last Novel.

One ever step twice into the same sailor?

Can therefore do anything without guilt.