GENESIS REJUVENATED by Carlo Suarès : Part 2

Part 2 : GENESIS REJUVENATED by Carlo Suarès - this episode continues reading from where we left off in our previous, Part 1, episode. We begin with Chapter 2 / Bubbzy - reading the following pages in sequence : Blue Waters, Evening, The Lights, The New Adolescent, The Kiss of Peace, Joy, The Song of The Created, The First Voice, The Second Voice, The Third Voice, The Fourth Voice, The Fifth Voice, Life, The Call. 

Before the Page, in successive episodes, will continue with the reading of Genesis Rejuvenated until listeners hear it all : a total of four (4) episodes. 

La Nouvelle Création : Au Sans Pareil, Paris 1929

Genesis Rejuvenated : The Menard Press, London 1973

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Before we come to the page, before the first word is ever written down, or read, or listened to, there is a longing to connect. My name is Charlie Merhoff, your host here at Before the Page, a podcast featuring poetry, parable, fiction, and non words to echo our longing. Welcome to episode forty of Before the Page. We are going to continue with our reading of A Genesis Rejuvenated by Carlos Suarez, originally written in French, published in limited edition in Paris in 1929 under the title La Nouvelle Creation, translated into English by Eduard Roditi, eventually published by the Menard Press, London 1973. If you have yet to listen, episode 39 provides more of the details surrounding some of the events that brought this cosmic masterpiece into being. We also read Suarez's Introduction to the 1973 English edition as well as the translator's notes. And we finished reading Chapter 1. Today, for episode 40, we begin with Chapter 2 of Genesis Rejuvenated by Carlo Suarez. Chapter 2 Bubsy Blue Waters Beneath the calm waters, the blue waters of love are the link between the world and myself. The cosmic blue, the deep indigo, buries itself in my heart. Within me and around me, a powerful and rich sound re-echoes, a direct appeal to the heart from the heart of the universe that is blue. And in this divine heart, divinely blue, in this blue that is the heart of the universe, I become love, love of the universe, purified in turn by love alone. Just as the light of the sun also becomes pure white only because it first pierces boundless blue spaces, and just as summer skies shine blue, so I too, by purification alone, become love. Evening. I then met BLZBubsy on an evening that was heavily burdened with all the dust of a heavy day, an evening of craving for rest, when discouraged enthusiasms fell on one's shoulders with all the weight of a tombstone. Around me the vast city snorted, shrieked and stirred up its spites in a nightmare. Pale faces, calloused hands, exhausted bodies, all reduced to dust, fell back quite bloodless in the streets, violated, emptied, and vomited again by their joyless toil. And Bubsy came towards me, tall, bent, his brow furrowed, but still of no definite age, an old battered felt hat, a long and filthy raincoat, and his thin pointed beard, a vestige of a heroic past, all gave him a slovenly, medieval and familiar appearance. He limped slightly, perhaps as a reminder of the days when he could still display a cloven hoof. His eyes, however, were laughing, for Bubsy was wildly happy and, coming thus after his tragic past greatness, his joy now assumed the value of a fulfillment. On his face, still ravaged and stormy, one could note, as after an inhuman tempest, the serene reappearance of new youth, but one could also detect on his deeply graven features the pitilessly carved tracings of the most agonizing path that the spirit has ever assigned itself as a sacrifice to itself, to bear within itself, even in its most abysmal depths, the memory of its own life. The evening, meanwhile, descended on us in a drizzle, gently weeping its tears of ashes onto the city with the deceptive torpor of an anguished and enshrouding gloaming which is not yet there, though its horizontal shadows must soon extinguish the lights that yet crown the peaks of the tallest buildings. Soon the solar play of light and shadow would be followed by night. Then night too would again be followed by shadows and reflections, inescapable rhythm and alteration, play of life and death ever revolving on its own access. Bubsy is before me, grey against a grey background. The lights One light, two lights, ten a thousand lights let loose in wild freedom. Mad lights, many colored lights, swift lights, sparkling lights, shimmering splendor lights that flee like arrows, whirling lights, spiraling lights, onslaught of lights, shouts of lights, invincible tide of lights of discordant lights, and they shriek and shriek out their passions and their throbbing lives. Lights of men, light or heavy famished, or magnetic, unbelievable movement of animated lights, convulsive lights, implacable strife within me, on me everywhere around, no more sky, no more earth, nor houses full of shadows, nor refuge, nor peace, but surging waves, furrowing machinery, powerful metallic rows of teeth driven to their utmost debouch, of rockets, ejaculated, spitting mad night, night of arrival. And here, out of the mad unleashed tempest of men of shrieking, conquering men, conquerors of the earth and the sky and of the waters spread out everywhere, no color is lacking, and the call, the call of I am is there, and the colours respond and come and fight and place side by side all desires, all passions, all defeats, all conquests. The terrible shock is fulfillment. The new adolescent The new adolescent is before me, gold against a backdrop of white. Satan vanquished, glorious archangel, beautiful, radiant archangel, purified, brought to earth, yet conqueror. Golden dust of passions, iridescent ashes of accumulated remorse, and of dead strife and dead memories now resurrected. Dead life which lives again, which does not choose but overflows and does not hesitate and creates, out of vast chaos creating limpid light. Accumulation of desires that clash and are broken in fragments and again ground. Hungry, looking pale light of breadless days, red and blue and yellow lights, all and all lights, and now there are no more all are there, all the sufferings and regrets are there, and the hour has come when the cup is full. Suddenly everything is white, one spark was still lacking, only one, still one small suffering. Then everything is done. All at once everything is limpid with a smooth and shadowless light that is supremely blinding with its perfect in existence, light of lights unconquered by shadows and reflections, the light that is all. And here Abeelzebub and Beelzebubzi and Satan and all his thousand names and his thousand appearances and the terrors and the hells and the damnations and the chastisements, and all those who considered themselves damned, all those especially who bore that burden which is too heavy for God. And now in this light they are all melted together healed and appeased in this light of the last revolt. And the new adolescent is no longer before me. He has gone out into the world. He is the world within and without and everywhere, and his vast infinite eyes, his deep eyes, his eyes blue with love pierce with the blue of their love, the iridescent light, the light of lights, the white light of the last drop of suffering. The kiss of peace. And thus came about the contact the kiss of peace, which the world granted to God and the end of God's remorse, his remorse for having created the world. And this was the end of hell, for hell was God's remorse, his remorse for having created the world, and the new adolescent awoke, and his eyes brought to me all the love of his heart, his eyes of sky which are blue, and his eyes of sea which are blue now brought me the heart of the world, and the heart of the world came into my own heart, his love, the reconciliation, and the distant echo of the remembrance of God's remorse, which was no more, became within my heart of love the remorse of not having been God. Resurrection, Easter of Joy, this distant echo, my joy, my joy of being He, my excruciating and ineffable joy of the body that cannot cope with this joy, leaping forward motionless towards this joy. Joy and the great city, tortured by its night and begetting from its night, is within me in my heart on a white page where its lights are sketched, the songs of its many colored lights, which are sketched there, then fade away in the light regained in their redemption, the redemption of desires which fade into the ultimate desire. The city is within me. The song of the created From the ninth hour of that night, which was the last night until its twelfth hour, the last hour of night, which was day, there came strife and falls and regrets and ecstasies, and the bodies which the will crushes, and the vertigo of the will that spins and falls. Slowly the sparkling dust was washing away one by one the shadows of all desires which were being transmuted into an incandescent loftiness. The eternal adolescent, golden haired, with hair like beams of light, with eyes of sky and of ocean, sang and none knew who he was in this dawn of midnight. Every module within me a different being, a new being which sang in each one of these songs was his life, an image like a drawing penned on my heart, a white page. And the page remained untouched and clear, and the fleeting shadows never penetrated it, and when that which had been created died, there remained nothing in its heart, nothing of that which had once been its song, but only love. For the song of those created is the song of hunger, a whole piercing light, tracks of feet imprinted in the light, and which the blue of love sweeps away. The first voice The floating, rippling voice penetrated and rose, and became two when it reached the octave, and then so many voices and a thousand and a thousand and sang Why should I not sing of hell, of hell, of hell, which I have carried so long of hell and of my weary shoulders, and of remorse? And it is all very fine and large to have so huge a hell, to have been in so huge a hell this remorse, since every hell is the foundation stone of a universe, and therefore God's universe must be very vast, since it has such vast foundations. And the universe within me is a point without foundations or rooftop, and neither good nor evil is any longer its foundation or indeed its summit. In the beginning of the very beginning of the beginning, it was frightful, and this remains a great mystery for hell was the seventh day of Genesis. Life's remorse for having wished to cease, and the remorse of the day before the first when God had been forced to begin again. And because of this mystery no one has ever yet said what God did on the eighth, the ninth, or the tenth day, and on all those that followed and on those that followed those that followed. Alas, the eighth day was again a Monday, and because God had forgotten because of God's remorse, he was forced to begin all over again, and the ninth day was again a Tuesday, and when the week had passed on Sunday, God forgot his remorse again in absolution, and on Monday began again and again and always began. And this is why because God tried to absolve himself of his sin of creation, and because of his remorse which was born of creation God had always, ever since the birth of timeless time, had innumerable numberless things still to be done. For otherwise would he not have done everything in the first week, in the first week already everything and already done everything and before this first week would he not have done nothing at all, done anything at all, never done anything. The second voice and the second voice rose. Remembering this, I come I who have known hell and vain absolution and implacable remorse, and I tremble with the great fear that is past, and here are my brothers all those who passed on the burden, the flame, the ghastly flame of unquenchable remorse, my unappeased brothers, my brothers in revolt, and who have rejected and vomited all absolution, who rejected the absolution of priests and of masters and of crowds and of cowards and of moral codes and of judges and their codes and their books and of books of revelations and of the whole world and of God the liar, and who rejected all peace which was not joy liberated and the end of slavery, and who were thus throughout the ages the rock of the living, painfully who were the cry of God the mother who dared thus to rest after the pangs of giving birth. The third voice and the third voice sang, I live these memories again. You vibrate with too fragile an ether. The throbbings of the last judgment penetrate the soul, and within me rise the faces of all the dead faces of the past, and their torments which hurt, and their desires which bruise, and their passions which tear the heart. And here comes a lovely, supple, clinging form which snatches me brutally from the intoxication of the infinite, life and death, two agonies, two crosses. Oh that agony which precedes life, cruel, cruel destruction of all that I love. O that agony which precedes death, destroying all that I am. The tawny storm of my bleeding heart moans, its vast whirling carries me off, too great, too strong for me, scarlet shattering of my passions, and I tremble. I caress gently these hideous shapes. I want them, I love them, fever pity, pity, torture me, break me again my mad desires. The lightning flashes, and golden splashes of your crashes sparkle in my heart, and a hard and Implacable dust of diamonds The fourth voice and the fourth voice sang Anger, trembling of anger, imprisoned spirit, ceaseless rhythm, free yourselves from me, deliver yourselves from me, from struggles and from spasms, rhythm of routine and passions alternating of docility and ecstasy. The hand turns on the clock of my soul and points toward the sky, towards the blue, and then falls, falls slowly into a memory, and the memory grows cold and freezes and snows with tears and dust and ashes, which say that they live, then brutal release, swift, unforeseen and black, unforeseen, oh misery, as if to be no longer in heaven were not a sudden fall that flattens one on the ground. Strange alternating rhythm, swift and slow, slow sadness and swift joy, slow fall and instantaneous rebound, long suffering so long and gray suffering and dwindling stagnation and extinction which does not see the dying illusion, memory that is nothing, that chews the cud, unable to create, tasteless, colorless, senseless and always waiting for news, which waits for news in order to copy, in order to copy studiously and patiently and say look I create. But immediately after this click of release, a crazy balloon in the sky, and from this bouncing I have my greatest pleasure. The spirit within me only finds when he is on the ground and surrounded by fragments. Then I sharpen and sing and resound and give forth that tone which is mine alone. And if others are greater and more bright, I know at least that my light is my own. Then I consider myself all the more noble for having been hurled forth and live because I knew now to die. For as I died, I remembered the fifth voice and then the fifth voice now sang thus of emptiness Estasy, useless and dank ecstasy, foul fever of insistent desire. You hammer out your depressing calls within my brain as it slowly grows empty. Multiplying your treacherous pressure, in your hundred arms you grasp my body, and your suffocating breath puts to sleep my rotting body, as of all its blood it grows empty. My soul crushed flat in the vice like grip of its obsession which knows no pity, frozen, cheerless, listless, void of all passion, wanders aimless around this earth that grows empty. And my genius, which once headlong left me like a rocket to conquer space with all its stars, falls zigzagging a broken drunkard in the blind darkness of a sky that grows empty. Life Roused by these tones in which one was struck by the sorrow of memories, where dwelt the strife and the fall, and all regrets and bodies which grind the will. The supreme adolescent with locks of sunbeams and eyes of blue sky and blue ocean arose and it was midnight, and he said peace, peace and joy to those who had been the created and divine joy. Remorse has conquered and survived and is triumphant and God is liberated. To those who were so long the creatures created by delirium and oblivion, peace and joy in the living eternal being. To those who did not fear life, peace and joy, to those who braved the wild storms and tawny tempests, to those who have never known an absolution, to those who have borne the great rebellion, peace and joy. I mean to those who have borne the rebellion against God the Creator, for there is only one life, and no creator, and no created, and no death, and nothing but one life, only one. And the great rebellion was the return, the return to life after the Sabbath of pardon, thus granted and of regretfulness, and of senseless forgetfulness, mad forgetfulness, for life is life and can never rest nor pardon, nor condemn, nor pronounce, sentence, nor justify, nor be good, nor evil, nor anything, nor nothing but only life and never death, repose, absolution, or such other things. And life knows not what tomorrow it will do for life is joy and free free free. And those who never have known the fear of life have never known the fear of themselves and have neglected confessions of sins and badly damned themselves and have thereby lived. But those who feared life for themselves and slept soundly in confession of their sins, and thereby died a little, and again slept and again died, but now much more, and fell in great flocks by the wayside along the roads that are bordered with ditches, and slept fully in their seven sins, all committed and forgiven. To these now bring perplexity. No peace except in joy, burn their crops, flood, kill, cut their throats, rob, thrash and thrash again and thrash. Out, out, cowards, traitors against life and against me and against all leap and fall and fall, and we thrash you, out, out, impure untouchables, polluted with your wars, your runes, your murders, your famines, your pierced eyes, your fears, are all these things hell? No, no, for I am life and I call Ah How they become corpses, such heavy corpses. Shall we call it vain? The call and the eternal adolescent arose and called, and his call was eternal and so vast that it was all. This call, this call of all that lives, and it rent the bowels of the sky, and he called and wept the tears of all that lives, and called and sighed the sighs of all that lives, and called and loved the love of all that lives, and called as conqueror. And that concludes today's episode of Before the Page with our reading of Genesis Rejuvenated by Carlos Suarez. In order to bring listeners the entire audio of Genesis Rejuvenated, our next two episodes, episode 41 and episode 42, will continue on with our reading of Genesis Rejuvenated. So stay with us. Follow along, tell your friends and loved ones, tell your enemies, tell the world that you have been listening to Genesis Rejuvenated by Carlo Giuseppe Suarez on the BeforeThePage podcast. And remember, for some reason, if you wish, or whatever reason, if you wish to reach out to BeforeThePage, that is easy enough. Just go to before the page at gmail.com. Spelled just how it sounds before the page at gmail.com. Until the next, be well and be blessed. Goodbye.