Written With a Nictograph Arturo Carrera

8/3/2019 Written With a Nictograph Arturo Carrera

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w r i t t e n w i t h a

n i c t o g r a p h

a r t u r o c a r r e r a



TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

If I wake in the middle of the night and think of something that merits recording, I

just take from under my pil low a small box containing my Nictograph and I write a

few lines without ever having to take my hands out from under the covers. Then I

put the Nictograph back and return to sleep.

Lewis Carroll wrote that, in a year and context unknown to me. Freud would have

approved, for Carroll's little device evokes nothing more than those notebooks

recommended in The Interpretation of Dreams . Utilitarian devices, these are, but

like every tool they lend themselves to every sort of fantasy, every perversion.

Can't we i magine the nictograph as the "wri ting material" of a scene like this one?

Having settled down in some spot most conducive to the mind's concentration upon

itself, order writing material to be brought to you. Let your state of mind be as

passive and receptive as possible.... Write quickly without any previously chosensubject, quickly enough not to dwell on, and not to be tempted to read over, what

you have written.

Breton's surrealist artist, having ordered paper and pen (a little notebook, tocontinue with the present fantasy), would write as if in a trance, in a state between

sleep and arousal (a state of arousal through sleep, as that photograph of Robert

Desnos in Nadja is meant to convey). Writing quickly, reaching for what Foucault

calls the "raw being" of language, writing the night, emptiness and plenitude, a

shattered mirror and an incandescent globe: for all this the nictograph might be

useful.

And if it is, this is because the night has become something other than the night.

It's because the night has become a site of poetry, is "that empty Nothingness,

which contains everything in its undivided simplicity: the wealth of an infinite

number of representations, of images, not one of which comes precisely to mind,

or which moreover are not there insofar as they are really present.... Inphantasmagorical representations it is night on all sides: here suddenly surges up a

blood-spattered head; there, another, white, apparition; and they disappear just as

abruptly. That is the night that one perceives if one looks a man in the eyes; then

one is delving into a night which becomes terrible; it is the night of the world

which then presents itself to us."

That is Hegel, quoted by Bataille: a Romantic Hegel, "fundamentally" Romantic,

wrote Bataille. The night of the world, night on all sides, an empty nothingness

punctuated by nothing less than bloody, severed heads (heads of aristocrats, headsthat reappear, crowning crowns that once crowned them, in Severo Sarduy's Big

Bang): such is the night that might be written here.



A mess of quotes, all this, at once too academic and not rigorous at all. But a mess

of quotes is perhaps fitting for a prologue to this long poem, which is "about"writing the night. After all, years later, some three decades after Escrito con un

nictógrafo first appeared in Buenos Aires, another book about night was published.

And in it we find a refrain: "you said..." "he said..." The refrain leads us back into

a mess of quotes, like this:

You could say a murmur doesn’t capture the light

but the shadows trapped in every poem.

You said: "The astronomers would say: black holes,

Freud: melancholy, Lezama Lima: tokonoma, and Bataille:

petite mort ."

Murmurs like these capture shadows, the ghosts of Lezama and Bataille and therest. I hope something of the ghost of Arturo Carrera's nictograph is captured in

the murmurs of this translation.

--Craig Epplin



THE NIGHT WRITES

(by Severo Sarduy, Sai nt Leonard, 1971)

0. "Contradiction is revealed to be the matrix of all signification." J. Kristeva.

I. In the beginning--à ceci près: there is no beginning--was the white: a slow milkyspiral, knot of snow dwarves, helix of semen. Black swaths, carbonized beaches

striating it, veins of onyx. In the beginning was the page: textured by the night of

the inkwell. Scarce letters: "Use ink as if it were gold."

II. And after--though simultaneously--its scorched flipside: black rectangle-surface, bands torn away. Negatives, the letters of the day shine bright, the absent

ones. Covered with "blue rice"--semen, in Chinese--the emission looks at us.

III. Not black on white, not white on black. There is no medium. There are no

figures. Positive and negative, yin and yang, night and day, evoking and

supporting each other. The painters of the Song dynasty and Franz Kline, here onthis side, have allowed us to see that equilibrium. The winter plum, frost on leaves,

creaky bridge, successive swaths of mist, and beyond, in the fissures of a cliff, the

cabin of the mute inspectors of the void, it all "forms a body," fragile silk

unwinding, cascading over the wall. The authoritarian barriers, made of asphault,

the black signs, quick, pure gestures, writings that dance, the nocturnal trace--impenetrable shadow theater--left by Kline: all on the same plane as the white

cloth that seems to hold i t up.

IV. Not the affirmation (figure, motive, letter) of negation (medium, cloth, page),

not the negation of affirmation, not the negation of negation...

V. Writing in the dark, with his box for making texts, infallible like the machines

of Locus Solus, writing in the dark, illuminated by the faint, ashen light of hiswhite dwarf--the one wi th pigeon's feet- -Arturo Carrera unfolds a black galaxy, the

one centered--a zenith--by midday, i ts reverse: the blinding day of mid night.



And the night is clad in the light of its lamplike the black ink is clad in white paper.

--Cordoban secretary Ben Burd, the Ne phew (d. 1053)



the scribe has disappeared

I poi nt at the empty place

where the dead rejoice

The night penetrating

the organ swollen with i nk, p enetratingand making the same sound

as death penetrating

i attend to its dura tion in the instant

EXORBITANT SILENCE

its feast i n the opaque, in the full , in the flat



attention wears a tar get on its forehead

wears a blac k cape of waking

dormice

The time's arrived when death begins to moltI MOLT MY BODY

I prevail within your death

I ADORN YOUR MOLT

time of attenuation

time of purification

time of rains that never end

The numbness vibratesthe numbness tolerates the night

sprouts flowers in the middle of the night

middle of the page

over the paunch of death

orphanhood wears a target on its forehead



T H E P O E M U N F O L D S

that is your strength

orphanhood is spellboundcommanded, hoisted up to the lifeboat

invaded, sunk by the de ad

i in the PROwSE of your book

on the Vess el of the Deadamong hollow volumes

my cor po/graphyto a nother wa steland

unloa ding letters

H O L L O W bones

The poem unfoldsthat is your strengthThe poem makes c ontact

glides with open arms

over both shores:

that is your strength

You spoke to me of a ruse of la nguage



the poem unfolds

Y O U R D E A D S P R I N G U P

C L O W N S

D A N C E Sinterference of dancespalimpsest of dances

in the darkness

the dar kness polarized, and danceslike the dances of the honeybees

unchanging

/they draw you in

their meticulous movements

to exhaust some place

to unhide another placeto feign an invasion

to inform

/dances /quiet voices

/didacticisms /accumulated spaces

/earthquakes



-- these are my dead

(pointing at the words)

-- these are my dead

GOLDEN TREPHINE

I speak w hile wri tingmake marks in no place

can return no longerto any place

PIRACY WITHOUT TREASURE, WITHOUT MAPS

i breathe to become two, inside my lungs

i penetrate the dark

i rise with the sun to drink

to dri nk cinnabarand paint mysel f in white

to fill grandmother's giant hat

with Kabbalistic si gns



-- Grandmother of the Day. Grandmother of the Dawn

Ancient Secret

Ancient Concealer

They were co nsumed by your songthe ink/the bitten ta blets

your houses of precious stones

my house of boo ks of riches

that's now become your dwelling

of the songs

little boy from Aveyron

little girl from Aveyron

covered in scars

writ ten

ungraspable/sabre/izable

pavilion of the dead

Tomb of mutations

orphanhood/onehood



i 'm disappearing into pieces

i 'm disappearing from the d ark

Dolls of gold and jadeand dolls that smolder

and dolls of bark from trees

hammere d a nd bitten into

covered i n writings

they unveil your home

now the writing dancesnow the automaton stands up

now he begins to walk

around

to rouse the dead girl

Another shut-in Virgen of Iron over the cadaver of the mechanical

night

IN THE GREAT COLD

IN THE WHITE



in the succession of shadow theater

the unceasi ng apparition reigning

adversity / diversity

the sun

that sound that co verscovers / i mpression of you

IMPRESSION OF THE DEAD

the sun large like the foot of a child

filling a body with a likeness

that proliferates unceasing

HOMOSEMANTICS OF DEATH

impossible to hear the song of sameness

impossible to hear the song of difference



Death occupies each o ne

returns them all to the surface

large book, small book, Ta hdolASHEN WHITE / floa ting

in the Dead Sea

WORDS:

infinite succession of waking dormice

WORDS as the figures go on increasingin the Wheel of Years / slowest recognition

EVEN THE FIGURE OF MIDDAY

here the dead are hungry

sign of the great famine



words OMNIPOTENT ATTENUATION

cavities in the smile of the Cheshire cat

doors enclosed with a key

this place listensthis place writes

it changes the wordthe decoy, the plot

this place constructs a trap

HERE FALL YOUR DEAD

--Awaiting you makes the winterthe table, the lamp

silence, violence



--Awaiting you surrounds the day

with questions about your death

ideograms, mantras

Words that look li ke your death

--I make them laugh, sovereigns of the day

-- I write as i f I stole.

I make a shes cold.I speak

-- As the ventriloquist spokelike Er ykles under the windthey spoke: death

dance

the wind

DEATH IS A VENTRILOQUISTTHIS IS AN EXPERIENCE OF VENTRILOQUY

tribes of ve ntriloquists i nvade the page



your s lumber , d ream of fa lcons

Like the fa lconunder your hoodr e p e a t i n g d e a t h

over an osc i l l a t ing r ing

s tays ba lanced th roughout the n igh t

Mot ion less a t middayu nd e r r a i n b o ws b l a c k

he sc ra tches in the ashes o f a PHOENIX book

MILLIONS OF RAINBOWS OF STONE ON FOOT

MILLIONS OF RAINBOWS OF STONE ON FOOT

i awai t my d i sencrus tment

t h e a t e r



imprinting w ords:

the impression of my dead

the slow ness of the living

form invaded by an i mme nse s un

permitted to speak of sl umberorphanhood, co nvenience

permitted to speak of the body

the book/dance floor of the dead

the poem/home of disguises of the dead

the sum of inscrip tions on the te mple d oors

temple of discontinuity

temple of instantaneity

temple of transient brevity

RAINBOW TENSED



golden sleigh

over the boards of language

that sketch / is your inscription

Nothing / to whom do you speak?no questions

Your attention visibly

to encounter the ri nged falcon

visionary-like / ev eryone

-- You said that to wri te is to graft disguises to evade

genders, families, species, variety.

-- You disseminated and d eveloped the less on of your master: to write isto or ganize and not represent reality. Disorder irreality.

REPRESENT IT.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .to your fragments

to your fragments

when you can see

when you can know

when you know how to point



to every fragment a s un will rise

to every word a rai nbow

to the words/carnivorous flowersi distribute my body

Breaking the s tones of bo dies

among the hib ernators

i dance

reading the graphism of motionless dances

NO / they're barometric flowers

constellations of fragments

perfect presences

ideograms of w holeness

the gestures in quicklime of your agony in the rain

INFANCY BOILING:

LIME AND WATER



"the grandson goes to his granddad's house"

/the obscene marionette led by the Bacchants

/the Chinese marionette there in the Two Worlds

/the hydraulic girls of Agdal Chahanchah

in the mummified darkness

/the mechanical girls of the temple of Delphivibrating on pedestals, covered in leaves of gold



/the hibernating boys of Lonhmans

IN A SANCTUARY OF AUTOMATONS

/sought after

/automaton

/.......... . . . . .

/desired in error

/Egyptian androidits legs pronounced

UPROAR IN THE CAGE

won't let the wind pass by

MUSICAL TOTEM

gestures impale himgestures tear him apart

gestures tear out his sex



where's he wandering?

Silence is forced by silent suns

nomad images

sedentary i mages

openments, fusionsdecantments

of forms, of colors

ASH-BLOOD

poured through a sieve

tactile, contact

Violence contracted in the forms

in the colors, in what you lovevery little

much less



EVERYTHING

NAMES ON ALERTTHE DEAD ON ALERTbefore language

before me

scribe giving to the instant

magnetized pencilsseismographs .......... . . . . . . . .

YOUR BODY IS A WORD

wa nts to be wri tten and erased

V o c a b u l a r y

h a s d i s a p p e a r e d .

guided like the brush of the automaton from Droz

i exis t in the numberle ss double

i request in the doubled darkness



PUZZLE

PUTTING ME TOGETHER

GATHERING ME

... . . . . . . .an arm

... . . . . . . .

the hand

.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .the heart swelled up like a balloon

.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

blows up

.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

the center gone as tray seeks another ce nter

the ornamented center goes to another feast

the dance is there at the motionless tip

subinstantaneouslydivided in two

by the musical unity



to where they lead me

to where music listens to me

to where I am on the surface

music is my pl ankton

music moves mespies on me

stri/etches m/e

Music drags you to fruitless safety. It finds a place for you among the dead.

Music makes you an object.

Become an object.

The object of music is to saturate death.

The object of death is to moderate music.



UNTIL WE TOUCH THE EMPTY BOTTOM OF LANGUAGE

TORRENT ARRESTED TO WATCH GO BY

spilling of all

upending everything

The hand that erasesis the same one that plows

that changes that copies

that doesn't innovate

that repeats

that steals



b e l o w a l l t h a t i s t h a t s p e a k s

Your face recedes

i wreak havoc

make the genesis-texts

of a foretold havoc

poem of long-drawn lifelike the marria ge of the Tartar dead children

poem that copies my life

dead / omnimetonymy

And suddenly the desire to seal with stoneswith a rain of stones

with a rain of wa x that seals

broken off from significationsi am fragments

collected by my fragmentsraised, gone, run over

by fra gments



mimetic: the chameleon sitting on stained glass

What's left is the word scratched by your fingernails duri ng a callingthe word like plasterthe word

not the wall

the word

like a weighty animalfull of fissures

with lines from another's skin

Tatooed

baroque temple, minimalON THE WALL

IN THE WORD

on the wall of the nightyour insistence/you called

not to be alone

or w hen you weren't alone

not to be



Us

abandoned to the molt

in the most dangerous night of the molt

In the middle of the wait

i know i d on't belongi know they don't belong

persuaded that they've all been orphaned

instantaneousvibrating tapestry

the instantaneous deadthese naïve monotonous doubles

the tensed page

the pregnant page

the mo untain page

the gong page

to another templeto see the doors inscribed

of another temple



Saved again

adopted by another rhythm

in a minaret made of my bones

and of your bones/looking

at w hat I don't knowa loo king no longer together wi th what it sees

nor wi th what penetrates

nor wi th what pierces

MARIONETTE OF THE DEAD

the page is your pla tform

From the page I was expelled

We don't know w ho speaks...



webs and violences

Gathering of all that falls

after every death

/lines of resurrections: creatures opaque

/alphabets, new alphabets

Proliferation: HEDGEHOG OF GOLD

the body seduces these keys under lock and key

IN THE CLEARING LEAST CLEAR AMONG THE UNCLEAR

to hide is to beat the drum of your coffinof this page

of this book



Subject to instructions from the dark:

a) walk over black sand

with a seis mograph in hand

looking for rattles

b) excise your bladderblow it up

fill it wi th rattlesMAKE A DEATH- RATTLE

for the dead

-- Have to theatricalize the uselessness of it all--says

Rosa, the fortunetel ler.

Afterwards death scatters



its double sleeps in my bed

It changes character

it 's uncovered in the plural

in the s tereographic garden

in the Book of all boo ks

Chained to excesschained the excesses

of e xclusions/of attractions

Arrested in dunes of gold



i le t mysel f/i go

senses intact

all of them

senses that refuse se nse

In a tumultuous decanting

Embra cing the unfolded bodies

with sensualitywith horror

Lost in the catacombs of the page

lingering in form

unhinging in for m



fal ls

instantly

through the pronouns

pain embracedabove all, e mbraced

in the coming and going of the trees

in the coming and going of the rocks

IN THE HOUSES OF GOLD OF THE SONG

IN THE HOUSES OF JADE OF THE SONG

sleeping theredancing there

motionless there



Life without an accent

appetized by silence

sponge of gold

After the puppeteers

of the mystifiersof the fairgoers

by means of/receiving everyone

/fear--folded--with every visage



Tied to a bi tten trunk

tinged with arrows

or is he asleep

Now the body is made of w hite ashthey'r e spinning the one who fans the wordsover the garden uncovered by dances

over your bod y/the book/the page

smell of incense rising from the nic tograph

trembling, the fragmenter of the mechanical night



Increasing, the memory of my hands

A full assemblage overflowed by emptyness

i ca n't anymore

contained moremore

empty/excluded

from all/by all



-- no one knows w ho's writing

-- no one knows who's dancing



-- You'll li terally hear my lactation

you'll literally hear my infancy

my conceit

in the dark

music unknown to you

STUDDED BY THE WORD/

DEATH/THE DEAD/DEAD



in slow and dangerous molt

in slow a nd dangerous mimesis

ESCONCED IN THE TREE FOR BURNING

THE HERMAPRODITE TRANSVESTITE



NOTES

My nictograph has little in common with the apparatus invented by Lewis Carrollfor "writing" insomnia. It only expropriated from it the signifying force of the

name, forcing, through use, that emptying-out of meaning, end and beginning of

language, which is the practice of writing...

...writing the dark, "blindly," in the crevices of a cube-shaped box--that primary

space also seeking the emptying-out of meaning--I piled up fragments,

infinitesimal, plane-like temple-texts that inform--the scribe having disappeared--

that empty place where the words rejoice: preeminence of language over all .

Monotony--of the poem--and découpage: these are the extenuated forms of my

little reports. Reports whose nuclei of meaning would be:

I--: Death, how it hides within language. The recent disappearance of mygrandmother and the ceremony of death's unveiling--verbal, vocal. Her devotion to

dolls and automatons. The shroud-page, mourning.

II--: Closed eyes. The panic provoked in me by vast white surfaces. The "use" of

ink as night and vice versa. Ink as semen. The poem by African Pygmies that I

often reread: the great cold of the night has come, blackness... The periodicblindness in certain animals that's caused by their molt. --Orphanhood is a constant

molt.

III--: Like that Melanesian tribe that with every death supresses various words

from their lexicon, I wanted to suppress, after a rereading, certain fragments. I'vecrossed out (a gesture more indecisive than elimination). My attitude is theatrical:

"dramatico-comical," I know. But someone motivates me: Barthes. When he writes

this: What is it to theatricalize? It is to limit language.



IV--: Finally, like Jean Marie Straub in his Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach,

I've tried continuously to eliminate all intention--the will to express . Which ishow Straub defines découpage . I know quite well--Stravinsky said it about music,

Straud about film--that the poem is incapable of expressing anything.

Monotony, cutting, nonsense: they'd be for the poem a plurality of meanings--and

vice versa-- the search for meaning and the meaning of that unending search.

Explanation amounts to a broken mirror: myriad reflecting surfaces emerge, they

annull The Great Surface.

Darkness breaks the mirror.Death clouds up the mirror.

Let her be.

--Arturo Carrera

Written With a Nictograph Arturo Carrera

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