the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt six)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

We have arrived at the Kraftwerk, where the cable-laying Kommando works. Engineer Levi must be here. There he is, only his head is visible above the trench. He waves to me, he is a spirited man, I have never seen his morale low, he never talks about eating.

the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt five)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

… The canto of Ulysses. Who knows how or why it comes into my mind. But we have no time to choose, this hour is already less than an hour. If Jean is intelligent he will understand. He will understand—today I feel capable of so much.

--- Who Dante is. What the Comedy is. What a curiously novel sensation, to try to explain briefly what the Divine Comedy is. How the Inferno is divided up, what its punishments are. Virgil is Reason, Beatrice is Theology.

the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt four)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

When he finished writing, he raised his eyes and looked at me.

Since that day, I have thought about Doctor Pannwitz many times and in many ways. I have asked myself about his inner workings as a man; how he filled his time, outside of the Polymerization Department and his Indo-Germanic conscience. Above all, when I was once more a free man, I wanted to meet him again, not out of a spirit of revenge but merely out of my curiosity about the human soul.

Because that look did not pass between two men; and if I knew how to explain fully the nature of that look, exchanged as if through the glass wall of an aquarium between two being who inhabit different worlds, I would also be able to explain the essence of the great insanity of the Third Reich.

the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt three)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

Null Achtzehn is very young, which is a grave danger. Not only because it’s harder for boys than for men to withstand fatigue and fasting but, even more, because long training in the struggle of each against all is needed to survive here, training that young people rarely have. Null Achtzehn is not even particularly weak, but all avoid working with him. He is indifferent to the point where he doesn’t trouble to avoid labor or blows or to search for food. He carries out every order he is given, and it’s predictable that when they send him to his death he will go with the same total indifference.

He doesn’t even have the rudimentary cunning of a draft horse, which stops pulling just before it reaches exhaustion; he pulls or carries or pushes as long as his strength allows, then gives way suddenly, without a word or warning, without lifting his sad, opaque eyes from the ground. He reminds me of the sled dogs in books by Jack London, who labor until their last breath and die on the track.

But, since the rest of us try by every possible means to avoid excess effort, Null Achtzehn is the one who works more than anybody. Because of this, and because he is a dangerous companion, no one wants to work with him; and since, on the other hand, no one wants to work with me, because I am weak and clumsy, it often happens that we find ourselves paired.

the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt two)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

Only much later, and gradually, a few of us learned something of the funereal science of the numbers of Auschwitz, which epitomize the stages of destruction of European Judaism. To the old hands of the camp, the number told everything: the period of entry into the camp, the convoy one belonged to, and, consequently, the nationality. Everyone will treat with respect the numbers from 30000 to 800000: there are only a few hundred left and they represent the few survivors of the Polish ghettos. You’d better watch out in commercial dealings with a 116000 or a 117000: they now number only about forty, but they represent the Greeks of Salonika, so make sure they don’t trick you. As for the high numbers, there is something essentially comic about them, like the words “freshman” and “conscript” in ordinary life. The typical high number is a corpulent, docile, and stupid fellow: you can make him believe that at the infirmary leather shoes are distributed to all those with delicate feet, and persuade him to run there and leave his bowl of soup “in your custody”; you can sell him a spoon for three rations of bread; you can send him to the most ferocious of the Kapos to ask him (it happened to me!) if it’s true that his is the Kartoffelschalenkommando, the Potato Peeling Unit, and if it’s possible to enroll in it.

the last book I ever read (If This is a Man by Primo Levi, excerpt one)

from If This is a Man by Primo Levi:

With the absurd precision to which we later had to accustom ourselves, the Germans held the roll call. At the end the officer asked “Wieviel Stück?” The corporal saluted smartly and replied that there were six hundred and fifty “pieces,” and all was in order. They then loaded us onto buses and took us to the station at Carpi. Here the train was waiting for us, with our escort for the journey. Here we received the first blows: and the thing was so new and senseless that we felt no pain, in either body or spirit. Only a profound amazement: how can one strike a man without anger?

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt twenty-one)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

His justifications?

As a physicist he had learned that of the 70 years of complete human life at least 2/ 7ths, viz., 20 years passed in sleep. As a philosopher he knew that at the termination of any allotted life only an infinitesimal part of any person’s desires has been realised. As a physiologist he believed in the artificial placation of malignant agencies chiefly operative during somnolence.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt twenty)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Such as never?

What is home without Plumtree’s Potted Meat?

Incomplete.

With it an abode of bliss.

Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants’ quay, Dublin, put up in 4 oz. pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti, M. P., Rotunda Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and anniversaries of deceases. The name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree in a meatpot, registered trade mark. Beware of imitations. Peatmot. Trumplee. Montpat. Plamtroo.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt nineteen)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

In Bernard Kiernan’s licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street: in David Byrne’s licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in O’Connell street lower, outside Graham Lemon’s when a dark man had placed in his hand a throwaway (subsequently thrown away), advertising Elijah, restorer of the church in Zion: in Lincoln place outside the premises of F. W. Sweny and Co (Limited) dispensing chemists, when, when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and successively requested, perused and restituted the copy of the current issue of the Freeman’s Journal and National Press which he had been about to throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded towards the oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 11 Leinster street, with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language of prediction.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt eighteen)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

All the same Bloom (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels, and not singly but in their thousands, and then complete oblivion because it was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely, of course, there was even a shadow of truth in the stories and, even supposing, he thought a return highly inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change his boots and clothes after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted with his movements even before, there was absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the Alice, where art thou order even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart, so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within the bounds of possibility. Naturally then, it would prey on his mind as a born leader of men, which undoubtedly he was, and a commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So-and-So who, though they weren’t even a patch on the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay. And then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back—that haunting sense kind of drew you—to show the understudy in the title rôle how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the Insuppressible or was it United Ireland, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he said Thank you, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid expression notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the cup and the lip—what’s bred in the bone. Still, as regards return, you were a lucky dog if they didn’t set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed. Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against the man in possession and had to produce your credentials, like the claimant in the Tichborne case. Roger Charles Tichborne, Bella was the boat’s name to the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in, as the evidence went to show, and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, Lord Bellew, was it? As he might very easily have picked up the details from some pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description given, introduce himself with, Excuse me, my name is So-and-So or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, Mr Bloom said to the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land first.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt seventeen)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee, or whatever you like to call it, none too politely, adding:

—We can’t change the country. Let us change the subject.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt sixteen)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

PADDY DIGNAM

(Earnestly.) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Menton solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor’s Walk. Now I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry. (He looks round him.) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That buttermilk didn’t agree with me.

(The portly figure of John O’Connell, caretaker, stands forth, holding a bunch of keys tied with crape. Beside him stands Father Coffey, chaplain, toadbellied, wrynecked, in a surplice and bandanna nightcap, holding sleepily a staff of twisted poppies.)

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt fifteen)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Cissy said to excuse her would he mind telling her what was the right time and Gerty could see him taking out his watch, listening to it and looking up and clearing his throat and he said he was very sorry his watch was stopped but he thought it must be after eight because the sun was set. His voice had a cultured ring in it and though he spoke in measured accents, there was a suspicion of a quiver in the mellow tones. Cissy said thanks and came back with her tongue out and said uncle said his waterworks were out of order.

Then they sang the second verse of the Tantum ergo and Canon O’Hanlon got up again and censed the Blessed Sacrament and knelt down and he told Father Conroy that one of the candles was just going to set fire to the flowers and Father Conroy got up and settled it all right and she could see the gentleman winding his watch and listening to the works and she swung her leg more in and out in time. It was getting darker but he could see and he was looking all the time that he was winding the watch or whatever he was doing to it and then he put it back and put his hands back into his pockets. She felt a kind of a sensation rushing all over her and she knew by the feel of her scalp and that irritation against her stays that that thing must be coming on because the last time too was when she clipped her hair on account of the moon. His dark eyes fixed themselves on her again drinking in her every contour, literally worshipping at her shrine. If ever there was undisguised admiration in a man’s passionate gaze it was there plain to be seen on that man’s face. It is for you, Gertrude MacDowell, and you know it.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt fourteen)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

The catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli’s scale, and there is no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our island since the earthquake of 1534, the year of the rebellion of Silken Thomas. The epicentre appears to have been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn’s Quay ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone acres, two roods and one square pole or perch. All the lordly residences in the vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished and that noble edifice itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins beneath which it is to be feared all the occupants have been buried alive. From the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr George Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved initials, coat of arms and house number of the erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered by search parties in remote parts of the island, respectively, the former on the third basaltic ridge of the giant’s causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed south west by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are being hourly received from all parts of the different continents and the sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a special missa pro defunctis shall be celebrated simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every cathedral church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly called away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal of debris, human remains etc has been entrusted to Messrs Michael Meade and Son, 159, Great Brunswick Street, and Messrs T. C. Martin, 77, 78, 79 and 80, North Wall, assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of Cornwall’s light infantry under the general supervision of H. R. H., rear admiral the right honourable sir Hercules Hannibal Habeas Corpus Anderson K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C., K. C. B., M. P., J. P., M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H., M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P. L. G., F. T. C. D., F. R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt thirteen)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

—What is your nation if I may ask, says the citizen.

—Ireland, says Bloom. I was born here. Ireland.

The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt twelve)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

And whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews sitting without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claims of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and final testamentary disposition in re the real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there about the hour of five o’clock to administer the law of the brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Patrick and of the tribe of Hugh and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try and true delivrance make in the issue joined between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and kiss the books. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and they swore by the name of Him who is from everlasting that they would do His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him for he was a malefactor.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt eleven)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

By went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets.

Of sin.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt ten)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Haines opened his newbought book

.—I’m sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds that have lost their balance.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt nine)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Flatter. Rarely. But flatter.

—Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The play’s the thing! Let me parturiate!

He clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt eight)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

In mourning for Sallust, Mulligan says. Whose mother is beastly dead.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt seven)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up. What harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded business men, consumptive girls with little sparrow’s breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all and shook water on top of them: sleep. On Dignam now.

—In paradisum.

Said he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over everybody. Tiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt six)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Martin Cunningham whispered:

—I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom.

—What? Mr Power whispered. How so?

—His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the Queen’s hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare. Anniversary.

—O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself!

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt five)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Evening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then black with daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea pink, then golden, then grey, then black. Still true to life also. Day, then the night.

He tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it. Then he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled back the jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt four)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Quietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it’s not too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive one tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly. Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke by which he won the laughing witch who now. Begins and ends morally. Hand in hand. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of three pounds thirteen and six.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt three)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

His pace slackened. Here. Am I going to Aunt Sara’s or not? My consubstantial father’s voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother Stephen lately? No? Sure he’s not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt Sally? Couldn’t he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us Stephen, how is uncle Si? O weeping God, the things I married into. De boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers. And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less. Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt two)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Sitting at his side Stephen solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field.

the last book I ever read (Ulysses by James Joyce (The Gabler Edition), excerpt one)

from Ulysses by James Joyce:

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

—Introibo ad altare Dei.

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:

—Come up, Kinch. Come up, you fearful jesuit.

the last book I ever read (James Joyce (Penguin Lives) by Edna O'Brien, excerpt fourteen)

from James Joyce (Penguin Lives) by Edna O'Brien:

“I can do anything I like with words,” he once said and yet he was helpless to do that one thing he so desperately wished for: to make Lucia of sound mind. Hearing that a nearby hotel would soon be requisitioned as a maison de santé he went and saw the doctor to secure a place for her. He can hardly have been assured by the doctor at Ivry who had come to believe that the night alerts of the air raids could prove beneficial to highly strung patients. In her violent moments she broke windows, assaulted nurses or other patients but her father still believed that if she were near him there would be deliverance. Without her and without writing he was stranded. A writer, and especially a great writer, feels both more and less about human grief, beign at once celebrant, witness and victim. If the writing ceases, or seems to cease, the mind so occupied with the stringing together of words is fallow. There was nothing he admitted but rage and despair in his heart, the rage of a child and the despair of a broken man. It is not singular to Joyce. Tolstoy in his later years renounced his works and peopled his estate with Rasputin-like zealots who split the family. When Tolstoy left his house and walked through the snow, Sonya, who had borne many children and copied War and Peace by hand three times, followed but was refused admission to the waiting room where he lay dying. Eugene O’Neill came to see his wife Carlotta as his enemy and moreover his mad enemy. Virginia Woolf put stones in her pocket and one morning drowned herself in the River Ouse in Sussex. Charles Dickens became lonely and morose, marshaling his children against his estranged wife Kate.

Joyce did not leave Nora and in fact became more dependent on her as time went on. Stuart Gilbert describes a scene a year or so earlier, Mrs. Joyce packing in order to go to a hotel, Joyce curled up in a chair, dejected, saying that he could not look after himself, that he must have her, and Nora suggesting that he drown himself. Then the old arguments about drink and money, the money spent on the Irish tenor John Sullivan when his son Giorgio could have done with such patronage. In order to let them thrash things out, Gilbert left the apartment but at Joyce’s request phone at six o’clock to be answered by Nora who said, “I’ve given in again.” Joyce loved his family and insisted that they were all that mattered to him but as he got older he became less attached to the things of this world; they were, as with Anna Livia, “becoming loathed to him.” Words had been his mainspring. He told Ole Vinding that while Finnegans Wake had been insuperably difficult it had given him immense pleasure and it had for him a “greater reality than any other.” The fulfillment which the work brought was countered with a devouring emptiness. Camus has written of the actor’s tenor and even more so of the actor’s impotence but the barren writer is even more enfeebled. Because of being able to conjure up worlds, to depict emotions so passionately, to make characters as animate as Anna Karenina or Leopold Bloom, the writer seems invincible but is in fact potentially the most stranded of all. The cliff face is the daily port of call. It is ironic that the righteous André Gide who returned his copy of Ulysses said after Joyce’s death that what he most admired in him, as in Mallarmé and Beethoven and the very rarest of artists, was that the work completes itself with a cliff, the steep face of its genius an enigma to the end.