Nightwood

Djuna Barnes

Oh, he cried. A broken heart have you! I have falling arches, flying dandruff, a floating kidney, shattered nerves and a broken heart! But do I scream that an eagle has me by the balls or has dropped his oyster on my heart? Am I going forward screaming that it hurts, that my mind goes back, or holding my guts as if they were a coil of knives? Yet you are screaming and drawing your lip and putting your hand out and turning round and round! Do I wail to the mountains of the trouble I have had in the valley, or to every stone of the way it broke my bones, or of every lie, how it went down into my belly and built a nest to hatch me to my death there? Isn't everyone in the world peculiarly swung and me the craziest of the lot?--so that I come dragging and squealing, like a heifer on the way to slaughter, knowing his cries have only half a rod to go, protesting his death--as his death has only a rod to go to protest his screaming? Do you walk high Heaven without shoes? Are you the only person with a bare foot pressed down on a rake? Oh, you poor blind cow! Keep out of my feathers; you ruffle me the wrong way and flit about, stirring my misery! What end is sweet? Are the ends of the hair sweet when you come to number them?

There is a certain belligerence in a room in which a woman has never set foot; every object seems to be battling its own compression--and there is a metallic odour, as of beaten iron in a smithy.

Felix bending forward, deprecatory and annoyed, went on: I like the prince who was reading a book when the executioner touched him on the shoulder telling him it was time, and he, arising, laid a paper-cutter between the pages to keep his place and closed the book.
Ah, said the doctor, that is not a man living in his moment, that is a man living in his miracle.

Matthew answered.: The excess of his sensibilities may preclude his mind. His sanity is an unknown room: a known room is always smaller than an unknown. If I were you, the doctor continued, I would carry that boy's mind like a bowl picked up in the dark; you do not know what's in it. He feeds on odd remnants that we have not priced; he eats a sleep that is not our sleep. There is more in sickness than the name of that sickness. In the average person is the peculiar that has been scuttled, and in the peculiar the ordinary has been sunk; people always fear what requires watching.

One has, I am now certain, to be a little mad to see into the past or the future, to be a little abridged of life to know life, the obscure life--darkly seen, the condition my son lives in.

So I, Doctor O'Connor, say, creep by, softly, softly, and don't learn anything because it's always learned of another person's body; take action in your heart and be careful whom you love--for a lover who dies, no matter how forgotten, will take somewhat of you to the grave. Be humble like the dust, as God intended, and crawl, and finally you'll crawl to the end of the gutter and not be missed and not much remembered.

Nightwood is a book that requires multiple readings. I have only read it once, so I shall refrain from commentary. If you want a book that insists you read it again, soon, read Nightwood. Beware, though, it is difficult.