The
One Life and the One Gun:
Memory, Mechanism, and
Destruction in William Gibson's "Agrippa"
and William Wordsworth's "Tintern
Abbey"
19th
Century & Beyond British Cultural
Studies Working Group, UC Berkeley, Nov.
18,2003, Alan Liu
Introduction
This page contains notes
and materials for the speaker's introduction
to the colloquium, which revolved around
a pre-circulated paper. (Last revised
11/18/03
)
The owner of the memex, let us say,
is interested in the origin and properties
of the bow and arrow. Specifically he
is studying why the short Turkish bow
was apparently superior to the English
long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades.
He has dozens of possibly pertinent
books and articles in his memex. First
he runs through an encyclopedia, finds
an interesting but sketchy article,
leaves it projected. Next, in a history,
he finds another pertinent item, and
ties the two together. Thus he goes,
building a trail of many items. Occasionally
he inserts a comment of his own, either
linking it into the main trail or joining
it by a side trail to a particular item. . . .
Thus he builds a trail of his interest
through the maze of materials available
to him.
And his trails do not fade. . . .
Tapping a few keys projects the head
of the trail. A lever runs through it
at will, stopping at interesting items,
going off on side excursions. It is
an interesting trail, pertinent to the
discussion. So he sets a reproducer
in action, photographs the whole trail
out. . . .
What follows in this introduction
is a "trail" of passages I
have collected interspersed with my
comments that seems "pertinment
to the discussion"--i.e., to the
paper on "The One Life and the
One Gun" you've had a chance to
read.
After following the trail, I will
stand in the clearing it leads to and
look about me at the general topic I
have recently been working on and the
place of this paper in it.
On the Trail of
Creativity
from Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
"The Aeolian Harp"
(1795):
And
that simplest Lute,
Plac'd length-ways in the
clasping casement, hark !
How by the desultory breeze
caress'd,
Like some coy maid half-yielding
to her lover,
It pours such sweet upbraiding,
as must needs
Tempt to repeat the wrong
! And now, its strings
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious
notes
Over delicious surges sink
and rise,
Such a soft floating witchery
of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when
they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from
Faery-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping
flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds
of Paradise,
Nor pause, nor perch, hovering
on untam'd wing !
O ! the one Life within us
and abroad,
Which meets all motion and
becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like
power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and
joyance every where--
Methinks, it should have been
impossible
Not to love all things in
a world so fill'd ;
Where the breeze warbles,
and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her
instrument. . . .
And
what if all of animated nature
Be but organic Harps diversly
fram'd,
That tremble into thought,
as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual
breeze,
At once the Soul of each,
and God of all ?
mechanism
One Life
animation
from William
Wordsworth, "Tintern
Abbey" (1798):
. . .
For I have learned
To look on nature, not as
in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but
hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though
of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And
I have felt
A presence that disturbs me
with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense
sublime
Of something far more deeply
interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light
of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the
living air,
And the blue sky, and in the
mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that
impels
All thinking things, all objects
of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and
the woods,
And mountains; and of all
that we behold
From this green earth; of
all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear,--both what
they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased
to recognise
In nature and the language
of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts,
the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of
my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.
One
Life
Creativity, but "half creativity"/
half "perception"
from Wordsworth,
Prelude (1805, Bk. 2),
Infant Babe episode:
No outcast
he, bewildered and depressed;
Along his infant veins are
interfused
The gravitation adn the filial
bond
Of Nature that connect him
with the world.
Emphatically such a being
lives,
An inmate of this active
universe.
From Nature largely he receives,
nor so
Is satisfied, but largely
gives again:
For feeling has to him imparted
strength,
And--powerful in all sentiments
of grief,
Of exultation, fear and joy--his
mind,
Even as an agent of the one
great mind,
Creates, creator and receiver
both,
Working but in alliance with
the works
Which it beholds.
Creativity,
but "half creativity"/
half "reception"
from Wordsworth,
Prelude (1805, Bk. 1),
Creative Breeze passage:
Nay more,
if I may trust myself, this
hour
Hath brought a gift that consecrates
my joy;
For I, methought, while the
sweet breath of heaven
Was blowing on my body, felt
within
A corresponding mild creative
breeze,
A vital breeze which travelled
gently on
O'er things which it had made,
and is become
A tempest, a redundant energy,
Vexing its own creation.
Creativity,
but "half creativity"/
half "vexation"
from Wordsworth,
Prelude (1805, Bk. 5),
Arab/Quixote episode:
"And
this," said he,
" This other," pointing
to the shell, "this book
Is something of more worth."
"And, at the word,
The stranger," said my
friend continuing,
"Stretched forth the
shell towards me, with command
That I should hold it to my
ear. I did so
And heard that instant in
an unknown tongue,
Which yet I understood, articulate
sounds,
A loud prophetic blast of
harmony,
An ode in passion uttered,
which foretold
Destruction to the children
of the earth
By deluge now at hand.
Creativity
/ destructivity
from Wordsworth,
Prelude (1805, Bk. 6),
Simplon Pass episode:
Imagination!--lifting
up itself
Before the eye and progress
of my song
Like an unfathered vapour,
here that power,
In all the might of its endowments,
came
Athwart me. I was lost as
in a cloud,
Halted without a struggle
to break through,
And now, recovering, to my
soul I say
"I recognise thy glory."
In such strength
Of usurpation, in such visitings
Of awful promise, when the
light of sense
Goes out in flashes that have
shewn to us
The invisible world, doth
greatness make abode,
There harbours whether we
be young or old.
Our destiny, our nature, and
our home,
Is with infinitude--and only
there;
With hope it is, hope that
can never die,
Effort, and expectation, and
desire,
And something evermore about
to be.
The mind beneath such banners
militant
Thinks not of spoils or trophies,
nor of aught
That may attest its prowess,
blest in thoughts
That are their own perfection
and reward--
Strong in itself and in the
access of joy
Which hides it like the overflowing
Nile.
from Wordsworth,
Prelude (1805, Bk. 6),
Simplon Pass episode:
The
mechanism!--lifting
up itself
Before the eye and progress
of my song
Like an unfathered vapour,
here that power,
In all the might of its endowments,
came
Athwart me. I was lost as
in a cloud,
Halted without a struggle
to break through,
And now, recovering, to my
soul I say
"I recognise thy glory."
In such strength
Of usurpation, in such visitings
Of awful promise, when the
light of sense
Goes out in [camera]
flashes that have shewn to
us
The invisible world, doth
greatness make abode,
There harbours whether we
be young or old.
Our destiny, our nature, and
our home,
Is with infinitude--and only
there;
With hope it is, hope that
can never die,
Effort, and expectation, and
desire,
And something evermore about
to be.
The mind beneath such banners
militant
Thinks not of spoils or trophies,
nor of aught
That may attest its prowess,
blest in thoughts
That are their own perfection
and reward--
Strong in itself and in the
access of joy
Which hides it like the overflowing
Nile.
[Appropriated
version]
from William
Gibson, "Agrippa":
The mechanism:
stamped black tin,
Leatherette over cardboard,
bits of boxwood,
A lens
The shutter falls
Forever
Dividing that from this. . . .
just as I myself discovered
one other summer in an attic
trunk,
and beneath that every boy's
best treasure
of tarnished actual ammunition
real little bits of war
but also
the mechanism
itself.
The blued finish of firearms
is a process, controlled,
derived from common
rust, but there
under so rare and uncommon
a patina
that many years untouched
until I took it up
and turning, entranced, down
the unpainted stair,
to the hallway where I swear
I never heard the first shot.
The copper-jacketed slug recovered
from the bathroom's cardboard
cylinder of Morton's Salt
was undeformed
save for the faint bright
marks of lands and grooves
so hot, stilled energy,
it blistered my hand.
The gun lay on the dusty carpet.
Returning in utter awe I took
it so carefully up
That the second shot, equally
unintended,
notched the hardwood bannister
and brought
a strange bright smell of
ancient sap to life
in a beam of dusty sunlight.
Absolutely alone
in awareness of the mechanism.
