Hysterical Passage of the Day

[Viva June]

At the risk of causing a meltdown, here is yet another themed quotation thread.

By "hysterical passage" we mean writing that is so over-the-top as to border on the psychotic, possibly even veering into actual insanity.

This is "Assassin" from Harry Crosby's posthumous collection Torchwood (1929):

I exchange eyes with the Mad Queen.
The mirror crashes against my face and bursts into a thousand suns. All over the city flags cracle and bang. Fog horns scream in the harbor. The wind hurricanes through the window. Tornadoes are unmuzzled as I begin to dance the dance of the Kurd Shepherds.
I stamp upon the floor. I whirl like dervishes. Colors revolve dressing and undressing. I lash them with fury stark white with iron black harsh red with blue marble green with bright orange and only gold remains naked. I roar with joy.
Black-footed ferrets disappear into holes.
The sun tattooed on my back begins to spin faster and faster whirring whirring throwing out a glory of sparks. Sparks shoot off into space sparks into shooting stars. Shooting stars collide with comets. Explosions. Naked colors explode into Red Disaster.
I crash out through a window naked wide-spread upon a Heliosaurus. I uproot an obelisk and plunge it into the ink-pot of the Black Sea. I write the word SUN across the dreary palimpsest of the world. I pour the contents of the Red Sea down my throat. I erect catapults and lay seige to the cities of the world. I scatter violent disorder throughout the kingdoms of the world. I stone the people of the world. I stride over mountains. I pick up oceans like tin cards and spin them into oblivion. I kick down walled cities. I hurl giant firebrands against governments. I thrust torches through the eyes of the law.
I annihilate museums. I demolish libraries. I oblivionize skyscrapers.
I become hard as adamant strong as battleindurated with solid fire rigid with hatred.
I bring back the wizards and sorcerers the necromancers the magicians. I practice witchcraft. I set up idols. With a sharp-edged sword I cut through the crowded streets. Comets follw in my wake. Stars make obeisance to me. The moon uncovers her nakedness to me.
I am the harbiger of a New Sun World. I bring the seed of a New Copulation. I proclaim the Mad Queen.
I stamp out vast empires. I crush palaces in my rigid hands. I harden my heart against churches.
I blot out cemetaries. I feed the people with stinging nettles. I resurrect madness. I thrust my naked sword between the ribs of the world. I murder the world!

Crosby was an American heir who, after having been an ambulance driver in France during WWI, married a slightly older beauty queen who had patented the "backless brassiere" in 1916. Soon after the wedding the couple were off to spend the family fortune in the expat la-la-land of post-war Paris. Although Crosby was mainly interested in worshipping the sun and throwing extravagant parties, he and his wife somehow managed to found Black Sun Press, which in addition to Crosby's own collections published the first edition of Hart Crane's The Bridge and rare editions of Joyce, Pound, Eliot and others.

In 1929, while on a visit back in America, Crosby and his lover (one among many) were found dead in a hotel room. The incident was described as a double suicide, but I suppose it may equally well have been murder-suicide.

Edit: Since Crosby's poetry is surprisingly hard to find anywhere, I really should mention this repository of extracts and excerpts from his works.

[Cyril Tourneur]

Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell, Bad Blood


If only I had a link to some point in the history of France!

But instead, nothing.

I am well aware that I have always been of an inferior race. I cannot understand revolt. My race has never risen, except to plunder: to devour like wolves a beast they did not kill.

I remember the history of France, the Eldest Daughter of the Church. I would have gone, a village serf, crusading to the Holy Land; my head is full of roads in the Swabian plains, of the sight of Byzantium, of the ramparts of Jerusalem; the cult of Mary, the pitiful thought of Christ crucified, turns in my head with a thousand profane enchantments. - I sit like a leper among broken pots and nettles, at the foot of a wall eaten away by the sun. - And later, a wandering mercenary, I would have bivouacked under German nighttimes.

Ah! one thing more: I dance the Sabbath in a scarlet clearing, with old women and children.

I don't remember much beyond this land, and Christianity. I will see myself forever in its past. But always alone; without a family; what language, in fact, did I used to speak? I never see myself in the councils of Christ; nor in the councils of the Lords, - Christ's representatives.

What was I in the century past: I only find myself today. The vagabonds, the hazy wars are gone. The inferior race has swept over all - the People, as they put it, Reason; Nation and Science.

Ah, Science! Everything is taken from the past. For the body and the soul, - the last sacrament, - we have Medicine and Philosophy, household remedies and folk songs rearrainged. And royal entertainments, and games that kings forbid! Geography, Cosmography, Mechanics, Chemistry!...

Science, the new nobility! Progress. The world moves!... And why shouldn't it?

We have visions of numbers. We are moving toward the Spirit. What I say is oracular and absolutely right. I understand, and since I cannot express myself except in pagan terms, I would rather keep quiet.

Pagan blood returns! The Spirit is at hand, why does Christ not help me, and grant my soul nobility and freedom. Ah! but the Gospel belongs to the past! The Gospel! The Gospel.

I wait gluttinously for God. I have been of an inferior race for ever and ever.

And now I am on the beaches of Brittany. Let cities light their lamps in the evening. My daytime is done; I am leaving Europe. The air of the sea will burn my lungs; lost climates will turn my skin to leather. To swim, to pulverize grass, to hunt, above all to smoke; to drink strong drinks, as strong as molten ore, - as did those dear ancestors around their fires.

I will come back with limbs of iron, with dark skin, and angry eyes: in this mask, they will think I belong to a strong race. I will have gold: I will be brutal and indolent. Women nurse these ferocious invalids come back from the tropics. I will become involved in politics. Saved.

Now I am accursed, I detest my native land. The best thing is a drunken sleep, stretched out on some strip of shore

[gveranon]

Here are some excerpts from Nietzsche's Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is. Two months after he finished writing this book, Nietzsche had a mental breakdown from which he never recovered.

"All of us know, some even know from experience, which animal has long ears. Well then, I dare assert that I have the smallest ears. This is of no small interest to women -- it seems to me that they may feel I understand them better. -- I am the anti-ass par excellence and thus a world-historical monster -- I am, in Greek, and not only in Greek, the Antichrist."

"I know my fate. One day my name will be associated with the memory of something tremendous -- a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision that was conjured up against everything that had been believed, demanded, hallowed so far. I am no man, I am dynamite....I have a terrible fear that one day I will be pronounced holy: you will guess why I publish this book before; it shall prevent people from doing mischief with me."

"I contradict as has never been contradicted before and am nevertheless the opposite of a No-saying spirit. I am a bringer of glad tidings like no one before me; I know tasks of such elevation that any notion of them has been lacking so far; only beginning with me are there hopes again. For all that, I am necessarily also the man of calamity. For when truth enters into a fight with the lies of millenia, we shall have upheavals, a convulsion of earthquakes, a moving of mountains and valleys, the like of which has never been dreamed of. The concept of politics will have merged entirely with a war of spirits; all power structures of the old society will have been exploded -- all of them are based on lies: there will be wars the like of which have never yet been seen on earth. It is only beginning with me that the earth knows great politics."

"I am by far the most terrible human being that has existed so far; this does not preclude the possibility that I shall be the most beneficial. I know the pleasure in destroying to a degree that accords with my powers to destroy -- in both respects I obey my Dionysian nature which does not know how to separate doing No from saying Yes. I am the first immoralist: that makes me the annihilator par excellence."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (trans. Walter Kaufmann)

[bendk]

That's funny, gveranon, when this thread first appeared Nietzsche's Ecce Homo is the first book that came to my mind. Zarathustra is no slouch either.

[gveranon]

He goes for a walk. Why, he asks himself with a smile, why must it be he who has nothing to do, nothing to strike at, nothing to throw down? He feels the sap and the strength in his body softly complaining. His entire soul thrills for bodily exertion. Between high ancient walls he climbs, down over whose gray stone screes the dark green ivy passionately curls, up to the castle hill. In all the windows up here the evening light is aglow. Up on the edge of the rock face stands a delightful pavilion, he sits here, and lets his soul fly, out and down into the shining holy silent prospect. He would be surprised if he were to feel well now. Read a newspaper? How would that be? Conduct an idiotic political or generally useful debate with some respected official half-wit or other? Yes? He is not unhappy. Secretly he considers happy alone the man who is inconsolable: naturally and powerfully inconsolable. With him the position is one small faint shade worse. He is too sensitive to be unhappy, too haunted by all his irresolute, cautious, mistrusted feelings. He would like to scream aloud, to weep. God in heaven, what is wrong with me, and he rushes down the darkening hill. Night soothes him. Back in his room he sits down, determined to work till frenzy comes, at his writing table. The light of the lamp eliminates his image of his whereabouts, and clears his brain, and he writes now.

-- Robert Walser, "Kleist in Thun" (trans. Christopher Middleton)

[Bleak&Icy]

You will be confined to a lunatic asylum, and you will understand the lunatics. I want you to be put in prison or in a lunatic asylum. Dostoevsky did a spell of hard labor, and therefore you too can be committed somewhere. I know men whose love never falters within them, and therefore they will not allow you to be committed anywhere. You will be free as a bird, for this book will be published in many thousands of copies. I want to sign "Nijinski" for the sake of publicity, but my name is God. I love Nijinski not like Narcissus but like God. I love him. I know his habits. He loves me, for he knows my habits. I am without habits. Nijinski has habits. Nijinski is a man with faults. Nijinski must be obeyed because he speaks with the tongue of god. I am Nijinski. Nijinski is I. I do not want Nijinski to be hurt, and therefore I will protect him. I am afraid for him because he is afraid for himself. I know his power. He is a good man. I am a good god. I do not like bad Nijinski. I do not like a bad God. I am God. Nijinski is God. Nijinski is a good and not an evil man. People have not understood him, and will not understand him if they think. I know that if I were obeyed for several weeks at a stretch, great results would ensue. I know that everyone will want to learn from me, and therefore I hope that my teaching will be understood. Everything I write is a teaching essential to mankind.

-- The Diary of Vaslav Nijinski: Unexpurgated Edition, edited by Joan Anocella, trans. from the Russian by Kyril Fitzlyon

[Viva June]

Some lines from the "poem" written by the mad Russian writer-genius in Mário de Sá-Carneiro's story "Wings":

How the silence creaks... and jingles... in serpentine stripes of stinging gold...
Ephemeral Gold that becomes a flame on the point of corruption...
Apotheosis!
Swans of fire in a sea of Sound breathe out the sea, white on black...
The sea is a tremulous beast...
(And the breast, maddened, vomits.)
The Orient, the Orient!
Far off there are helmets...
Mirages of castles sail away...
Spirals rise up... dizzy volutes spin...
Emblems of glass curl...
And the sea capsizes in sentient light...
(Singular light!
Light is my ecstasy!)
I am transformed, multicoloured, into a lyre...

[Daisy]

From part II of Howl (1956), by Allen Ginsberg

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! . . .
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky! . . .
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! . . .
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

[gveranon]

Here are a few excerpts from a letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo. The letter itself isn't hysterical, but it describes recent mental troubles that were. This actually makes for rather sad reading. Sorry to bum everyone out.

Arles, 3 February 1889

My dear Theo,
I should have preferred to reply at once to your kind letter containing the 100 francs, but since at that precise moment I was very tired and the doctor had given me strict instructions to go out for walks and make no mental exertion, I haven't written to you until today.

As far as work is concerned, this month hasn't been bad on the whole, and as the work takes my mind off things, or rather keeps me in order, I don't deprive myself of it.

--------

When I came out of the hospital with good old Roulin, I fancied there'd been nothing wrong with me, it was only afterwards I felt I'd been ill. Well, that's only to be expected, I have moments when I am twisted with enthusiasm or madness of prophecy, like a Greek oracle on his tripod. I display great presence of mind then in my words, and speak like the Arlesiennes, but in spite of all that, my spirits are very low. Especially when my physical strength returns. But I've already told Rey that at the first sign of a serious symptom I would come back and submit myself to the alienists in Aix, or to himself.

What else except pain and suffering can we expect if we are not well, you and I?

Our ambition has been dashed so low. So let us work very calmly, look after ourselves as best we can, and not exhaust ourselves in futile attempts at mutual generosity. You do your duty and I will do mine, and as far as that's concerned, we've both already paid for it -- and not just in words -- and at the end of the road we may quietly come together again. But when I am in delirium and everything I love so much is in turmoil, then I don't mistake that for reality, and I don't play the false prophet.

Indeed, illness or death holds no terror for me, but happily for us, ambition is not compatible with the callings we follow. There are so many people in all classes of society, from the highest to the lowest, who believe that, anyway.

--------

... I always tell the people here who ask after my health that I shall begin by dying in their midst, and that then my malady will be dead.

This doesn't mean I shall not have long spells of respite, but once you are ill in earnest, you know quite well that you cannot contract the same illness twice, you are well or you are ill, just as you are young or old. Like you, I will do what the doctor tells me as much as I can, and I consider that as part of my work and the duty I have to fulfill.

I must tell you this, that the neighbours, etc., are particularly kind to me, as everyone here is suffering either from fever, or hallucinations, or madness, we understand each other like members of the same family....

But it won't do for us to think that I am completely sane. The people from round here who are ill like me have told me there will always be times when you take leave of your senses.

--------

I am bringing this letter to a close for this evening with a good handshake in my thoughts,

Ever yours, Vincent

[Viva June]

Henri Müller had ideas:

Republic The Free Partly Smashed or No Mistake Step The Summoning Somnambulist. It's an absolute hovvel where no one understands a thing and it at times has nothing to do with us, it's a secret and dreaming people they have baroque and diverse ideas they also tell fortunes they are a sort of sorcerer they're big like tall Englishmen all svelte and lean with imaginary ideas. They're not all crazy but pretty nearly it's still a mistake.

O!!! O!!! O. What a mistake, come into my happiness.
O!!! O. Beautiful Republic The Free Partly Smashed.
O!!! O. Beautiful Republic the No Mistake The Summoning Somnambulists be my loves.

They are like that for an idea it's a fashion of their own and they can't help themselves they don't know what they want they are nevertheless just as fine as we are they follow a politics of levelers. It's like those who could be called a top or robot, they have that precision in the soul it's their own idea, they're our sons for sure it's no mistake.

O!!! O!!! O. What a mistake, come into my happiness.
O!!! O. Beautiful Republic The Free Partly Smashed.
O!!! O. Beautiful Republic the No Mistake The Summoning Somnambulists be my loves.

It's a Beautiful seated Republic their fashions are the sons of their fathers in their souls they have secrets and baroque ideas don't play with them they resort to cold steel. Their war secret is not written they hide it in their spirits it's a new-model precision rifle that no one knows it's a sorcerer's gun of wood, don't be Mistaken.

O!!! O!!! O. What a mistake, come into my happiness.
O!!! O. Beautiful Republic The Free Partly Smashed.
O!!! O. Beautiful Republic the No Mistake The Summoning Somnambulists be my loves.

It's a new generation with powderless smokeless cold steel noiselessly they march over the earth it's their caprice it's a tribute to pay.

This is from In the Realms of the Unreal, an anthology edited by John G. H. Oakes.

Edit: Fixing typos.