Prudence in Hell 003

History, anabasis and the Six of Swords

Caveat: I started writing this one before the weekend, I am finishing it after.

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The thesis I was going to write—before I settled, for oneiric reasons, on the screed concerning trickster—was a history of architecture from the 19th century onwards, tracked in parallel to the development of the history of psychology.

It would have been impossible to finish on time, but I could have have simply continued to write up to the dissertation’s deadline, and still managed to say something worthwhile.

The point of this anecdote, however, is to note that my high-level lens has always been historical. History is my scale, and style, of thinking.

ii

Any historian who isn’t a metaphysician is a nihilist.

iii

What [p]art do historians play in the Greater Scheme? I currently present as an art historian.

Imagine if I told them what I really was.

iv

Today I was advised not to use French on Discord.

v

In reading for a gentlewoman on Friday, I drew the Six of Swords again—the first card that I ever drew in connection to you. It is the only card in this bitterest of suits that expresses possibilities of anabasis: grief, restoration and (perilous) travel (though any worthy journey should be dangerous).

The Suit of Swords was once associated with—of course—le deuxieme état.

It is peopled by terrible personae: The Reaver; The Choice; The Wound; The Effigy; The Traitor; The Boatman; The Thief; The Prisoner; The Nightmare; The Corpse; The Spy; The Berserker; The Widow; The Warlord.

You know, the old familiars.

vi

One should not admire artists in the same way one would not admire animals.

vii

Today Alonso had another lumbar puncture. According to the nurses, he has the most beautiful spine, with exemplary vertebrae. They actively comment amongst themselves what a backbone he has. They come to see it from the furthest reaches of the malignant haematology wing.

They also say he makes them feel at peace. His otherworldliness worries me.

viii

An excess of vertebration is the hidden charm of Ingres’s Grande Odalisque, whom I first met, with Alonso, in Paris. She plays that old mannerist trick of seeming perfect because she is, in fact, extraordinarily deformed. (Or not quite human…).

I wrote this poem about her at the time, which I will share because it is in Spanish:

ix

My best poems are short stories. Even as a poet, I am a narrator—a historian.

x

I am finding a certain pleasure in war (not just as a historian, but also).

xi

Anabasis is, of course, a war course.

xii

[I should probably never use Greek on Discord.]