Mar 2020
THE WISEST OF LINES - HARMONY SQUARED.
( for Brian Ings )
D-503
kisses I-330.
The kiss is
perfect as an integer.
They are holidaying in
"the capital of the 19th Century"
"Paree
Ahm mais...qui!"
"My...My..My!"
We say...seeing them.
"Nous Autres......n'est-ce pas."
"We never thought we'd live
to see the day!"
1-330 says.
D-503 dog ears Orwell's
1984.
Takes her on his knee.
It's like living a poem.
She kisses D-503
on the tip of his nose
which makes him go
cross-eyed.
She mimics him.
Both burst out laughing.
"Now, it's..."
getting back to the discussion
before the kiss
popped up.
I-330
somehow escaping
The Bell Jar.
"It's like Plath put it
so succinctly...distinctly.
"Poetry is a tyrannical
discipline..."
She too a Sylvia...
throwing off her numbered name.
"Don't you agree
Yevgeny?"
"Mmmmm...!" he mmmmms.
"You've got to go
so far, so fast
in such
a small space."
"True...he says "True!"
"...you got to burn away
all the peripherals!"
And so we leave
Sylvia and Yevgeny
to themselves.
( for Brian Ings )
D-503
kisses I-330.
The kiss is
perfect as an integer.
They are holidaying in
"the capital of the 19th Century"
"Paree
Ahm mais...qui!"
"My...My..My!"
We say...seeing them.
"Nous Autres......n'est-ce pas."
"We never thought we'd live
to see the day!"
1-330 says.
D-503 dog ears Orwell's
1984.
Takes her on his knee.
It's like living a poem.
She kisses D-503
on the tip of his nose
which makes him go
cross-eyed.
She mimics him.
Both burst out laughing.
"Now, it's..."
getting back to the discussion
before the kiss
popped up.
I-330
somehow escaping
The Bell Jar.
"It's like Plath put it
so succinctly...distinctly.
"Poetry is a tyrannical
discipline..."
She too a Sylvia...
throwing off her numbered name.
"Don't you agree
Yevgeny?"
"Mmmmm...!" he mmmmms.
"You've got to go
so far, so fast
in such
a small space."
"True...he says "True!"
"...you got to burn away
all the peripherals!"
And so we leave
Sylvia and Yevgeny
to themselves.
***
We (Russian: Мы, translit. My) is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, completed in 1921
Set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-style.
People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society.The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State.
D-503 meets a woman named I-330.
I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal *** visit; all of these are highly illegal according to the laws of One State which disturbs the dystopian society depicted.
D-503 betrays her at the end and is amazed that not even torture could not induce I-330 to denounce her comrades. Despite her refusal, I-330 and those arrested with her have been sentenced to death, "under the Benefactor's Machine" which is a bell jar of all things"
This brought me to a Plath quote I rather liked so I threw that into the equation of the poem and factored in that i-330's real name was Sylvia as well. D-503's real name of course is Yevgeny after of course Zamyatin's first name.
The Russian for We is of course My. Hence the "My...My...My!" refrain.
I wanted to give them an alternative life outside of the novel...seeing them in relaxed circumstances in which they have somehow escaped the story of the book and can write their own lives for themselves. I thought maybe they have an alternative life when not being in character for the book and could perhaps step outside of themselves and just be themselves before yet another someone opens the book and they have to jump back into the words and be....those characters. Thought I'd give 'em a break.
Zam the man once said: "True literature can only exist when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics."
I guess I come under the terms madman and dreamer.
So that Yevgeny can be reading Orwell and Sylvia could be discussing Plath.
'Poetry I feel is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space, that you’ve just got to burn away all the peripherals.'
– Sylvia Plath
We (Russian: Мы, translit. My) is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, completed in 1921
Set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-style.
People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society.The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State.
D-503 meets a woman named I-330.
I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal *** visit; all of these are highly illegal according to the laws of One State which disturbs the dystopian society depicted.
D-503 betrays her at the end and is amazed that not even torture could not induce I-330 to denounce her comrades. Despite her refusal, I-330 and those arrested with her have been sentenced to death, "under the Benefactor's Machine" which is a bell jar of all things"
This brought me to a Plath quote I rather liked so I threw that into the equation of the poem and factored in that i-330's real name was Sylvia as well. D-503's real name of course is Yevgeny after of course Zamyatin's first name.
The Russian for We is of course My. Hence the "My...My...My!" refrain.
I wanted to give them an alternative life outside of the novel...seeing them in relaxed circumstances in which they have somehow escaped the story of the book and can write their own lives for themselves. I thought maybe they have an alternative life when not being in character for the book and could perhaps step outside of themselves and just be themselves before yet another someone opens the book and they have to jump back into the words and be....those characters. Thought I'd give 'em a break.
Zam the man once said: "True literature can only exist when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics."
I guess I come under the terms madman and dreamer.
So that Yevgeny can be reading Orwell and Sylvia could be discussing Plath.
'Poetry I feel is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space, that you’ve just got to burn away all the peripherals.'
– Sylvia Plath
