MS-HRC-SB-5-9-2

[p. 24v]

[1732] [p. 25r] worse for wear. [1733] It's agreed I who It's a Agreed, agreed, I who am on my way, words bellying my sails, am also that unthinkable ancestor of whom nothing can be said. [1734] But perhaps I shall speak of him one day, and of that impenetrable age when I was he, the day when they have fallen fallen silent, convinced at last that I shall never be born, having failed to be conceived. [1735] Yes, perhaps I shall speak of him, for an instant, like the echo that mocks, before being restored to him, they the one they couldn't part me from. [1736] And indeed they are weakening already, I feel it it's perceptible. [1737] But it's a feint, to have me rejoice for nothing, after their fashion, and accept their terms, for the sake of peace at any price. [1738] But I can do nothing, that's what they seem to forget at each instant. [1739] I can't rejoice and I can't grieve, it's in vain they've explained they have explained to me how it's done, I never understood. [1740] And what terms? [1741] I don't know what ^{it is} they want. [1742] I say what it is, but I don't know what it is. [1743] I emit sounds, better and better it seems to me. [1744] If that's not enough for them, I can't help it. [1745] If I speak of a head, referring to me, it's because I hear it being spoken of. [1746] But why keep on saying the same thing. [1747] They hope it will change things things will change some one day, it's natural. [1748] That some ^one day on the windpipe, my windpipe, or some other section of the passage, a nice little abscess will form, with an idea inside, point of departure of a general infection. [1749] Which would enable me to jubilate like a normal person, knowing why. [1750] And I'd soon be a network work of fistulae, bubbling with the blessed pus of reason. [1751] Ah if I was in flesh and blood, as they profess are kind enough to believe, I wouldn't say no, there might be something in their little idea ___ [1752] They say I suffer, like true thinking flesh, but I feel nothing. [1753] Mahood I felt a little, now & then, but what good did that do them? [1754] No, they would be better advised to try something else. [1755] I felt the pillory collar, the flies, the sawdust under my stumps, the tarpaulin on my skull, when they mentioned them to me. [1756] But what kind of life is that, which vanishes when the subject is changed? But may t can that be called a life, which vanishes when the subject is changed? [1757] I don't see why not. [1758] But they must have decreed it can't. [1759] They are too hard to please, they expect too much. [1760] They want me to have a pain in the neck, irrefutable proof of animation, while listening to talk of the sky. heavens. [1761] They want me to have a mind where I know I have a pain in the neck, that the flies are devouring me and ^that the heavens helpless to can do nothing to help. [1762] Let them scourge me without ceasing and forever, more and more lustily (to compensate for the habit forming element),

[p. 25v]
DOODLE 49

[1762] [p. 26r] in the end I'd begin to look as if I knew the meaning of life. [1763] They might even take a breather from time to time, without my ceasing to howl. [1764] For they would have warned me, before they started, You must howl, do you hear, otherwise it proves nothing. [1765] And worn out at last, or feeble with old age, and my cries having ceased for want of nourishment, they could pronounce me dead, with every appearance of veracity. [1766] And I would not have moved And without ever having had to move I should have earned my rest and heard them, striking softly together their weary dry old hands, as if to dislodge the dust shake off the dust, He'll never move again. [1767] That would be too easy. [1768] We must have the heavens and God knows what else, lights, luminaries, three mon three monthly hope and the joys of consolation. [1769] But let us close this parenthesis and open with a, with a light heart, open the next. [1770] The noise. [1771] How long did I remain a pure ear? [1772] Answer, up to the moment when it couldn't go on any longer, being too good to last, compared wi to what follows. [1773] These millions of diver different sounds, always the same, recurring without pause, are all we one needs for a head to sprout, a bud to begin with, then finally enormous, ori originally a silencer, then an extinguisher when the eye joins in, and worse than the evil, its storehouse. [1774] But here it is wise to no dwelling on this thin ice. [1775] xxx The mechanism matters little, provided I succeed in saying, before becoming deaf, It's a voice, and it speaks to me. [1776] In enquiring, boldly, if it is not mine. [1777] In deciding, it doesn't matter how, that I have none. [1778] In blowing ^darkly hot and cold, boiling and frozen, with little change of sensation. [1779] It's a starting-point, he's off, they don't see me, but they hear me, panting, rivetted, they don't know I'm rivetted. [1780] He knows they are words, he is not sure they are not his, that's how it begins, with such a start no one ever looked back, one day he'll make them his, when he thinks he is alone, far from all men, beyond range of every out of range of every voice, and come to the light of day they tell him of. [1781] Yes, I know they are words, there was a time I didn't, as I still don't know if they are mine. [1782] They Their hopes therefore hopes are therefore justified. [1783] In their shoes I should ^I'd be content with my knowing what I know, I w I'd demand no more of me than to know that what I hear is not the innocent and necessary sound of dumb things in their need to endure, but the terrified babble of the condemned to silence.

[p. 26v]
DOODLE 50

[1784] [p. 27r] I would have pity, give myself quittance, not harry me into appearing my own destroyer. [1785] But they are severe, greedy, no less, perhaps more so now, than when I was acting Mahood. [1786] Instead of piping down! [1787] It's true I have not yet uttered spoken yet. [1788] In at one ear and incontinent out through the mouth, or the other ear, that's possible too. [1789] No sense in multiplying the occasions of error. [1790] Two holes and me in the middle, slightly obstructed. [1791] Or me alone a single one, open like entrance and exit, where the words teem and jostle like ants, hasty, indifferent, bringing nothing & taking nothing away, too ixxx leaving no trace. [1792] I shall not say I again, never again, it's too absurd. [1793] I shall put in its place, whenever I hear it, the third person, if I remember. [1794] Anything to please them. [1795] That It will make no difference. [1796] Where I am there is no one but me, who am not. [1797] So much for that. [1798] Words, he says he knows they are words. [1799] But can he know, who has never heard anything else? [1800] There's reasoning. [1801] But these lights that go out hissing? [1802] True. [1803] Not to mention other things, many other things, to which abundance of matter has unfortunately prohibited the least allusion up to now. [1804] Let For example to begin with the breathing of the party concerned. [1805] There he is now, breath with breath in his nostrils, it only remains for him to suffocate. [1806] The chest rises and falls, the wear and tear is ^are in full swing, the rot spreads downwards, soon he'll have legs, the possibility of crawling. [1807] More lies, he doesn't breathe yet, he'll never breath. [1808] Then what is this faint noise, as of air stealthily stirred, recalling that the breath of life, to those it corrodes? [1809] It's a bad example. [1810] But these lights that go out hissing? [1811] It's more likely a mighty laugh a great blaze of laughter, at the sight of his terror and distress. [1812] To see him flooded with light, then suddenly plunged back in darkness, must strike them as irresistibly funny. [1813] But they've been there so long now, on every side, that it they could have made a hole, in the wall, a little hole, to glue their eyes too, one turn about. [1814] And these lights are perhaps those they shine upon him, from time to time, in order to ob xxx the progress observe the progress he is making. [1815] But this question of lights deserves to a chapter to itself, it is so intriguing deserves to be treated separately, it is so intriguing, and at length, in tranquillity ^composedly, and so it will be, at the first opportunity, when time is not so short, and mind xxx the mind more composed. [1816] Twenty-third resolution. Resolution number twenty-three. [1817] And the conclusion to be drawn?

[p. 27v]
DOODLE 51

[1818] [p. 28r] That the only noise that Worm has had is that of mouths, words, belches, laughs, ^xxxs, suckings, bubblings and splutterings? [1819] Correct. [1820] Not forgetting xxx the groaning of the air beneath the burden. [1821] He's learning, that's the main thing. [1822] When later on on earth later on the storms rage, drowning momentarily the free expression of opinion, he'll know what's happening, that the end of the world hasn't come. [1823] No, in the place where he is he cannot learn, the head can't work cannot work, he knows no more than on the first day, he merely hears, and suffers, incomprehending, that must be possible. [1824] A head has grown out of his ear, the better to xxx ^enrage him, that must be it. [1825] The head is there, glued to ^{stuck on} the ear, and nothing in it other but rage, that's all that matters, for the moment time being. [1826] It's a transformer in which noise is turned, without the help of reason, to rage and terror. [1827] That's all that is required, for the moment. [1828] The circumvolutionisation will be seen to later, when he's brought to the surface. [1829] Why ^then the human voice, [1830] rather than a hyena's howls or the clanging of a hammer? [1831] Answer, so that the shock may not be too great, later on, when he sees the writhing of contortions of real lips. [1832] They have an answer to everything, they are among themselves. [1833] And then they like talking, they know there is no worse torment, for one not in the know. [1834] They are numerous, all around, holding hands perhaps, an endless chain, links, talking turn about. [1835] They wheel, in jerks, xx so that their words come always from the same direction. [1836] But often they all speak together ^{at once}, they all say simultaneously the same thing precisely, but so perfectly together that one wo it one would take it for a single voice, a single voice, if one did not know that God alone can be everywhere, at the same mo time. [1837] One, but not Worm, who says nothing, knows nothing, yet. [1838] Similarly turn about they benefit by the peep-hole, those who care to. [1839] While one ta speaks another looks, he w the one no doubt whose turn it is to speak next and whose remarks eventually ^possibly will not necessarily ^{of necessity} be without xxx unrelated to what he may possibly have seen, this dependent this depending on whether what he has seen has aroused his interest to the extent of appearing worthy of mention, even indirectly. [1840] But what hope has sustained them, all the time they have been thus employed? [1841] For it is difficult not to suppose them so animate sustained by some hope or another. [1842] And what is the nature of the change they are on the look out for, glueing glueing one eye to the hole and closing the other? [1843] They have no pedagogic purpose in

[p. 28v]
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[1843] [p. 29r] view, that's definite. [1844] There is no question of teaching him anything whatsoever, for the moment. imparting to him any instruction of any kind, for the moment. [1845] This catechist's tongue, honeyed and perfidious, is the only one they know. [1846] Let him move, let him try and move, away from this lacerating noise, that's all they ask, for the moment. [1847] Wherever he goes, being in the No matter where he goes, being at the centre, he will go towards them. [1848] So he is at the centre, there at last is a clue of the highest interest, it little matters to what. [1849] They look, to see if he has moved stirred. [1850] He is nothing but a shapeless heap, without a face capable of reflecting the its history of a torment, but the disposition xxx disposition of which, its greater or lesser degree of crouch or huddleness, is no doubt expressive, for specialists, and enables them to assess the chances of its suddenly making a bound, or dragging its coils imp dragging its coils imperceptibly away, as if stricken to death. [1851] Somewhere in the heap an eye, w a wild equine eye, always open, they must have an eye, they see him possessed of an eye. [1852] No matter where he goes he will go towards them, towards their song of triumph, when they know he has moved, or towards their silence, when they know he has moved, to make him thing think he did well to move, or towards the voice that will grow softer, as if receding, to make him think he is moving ^{drawing away} from them, but not yet far enough, whereas he is drawing nearer, nearer and nearer. [1853] No, he can't think anything, can't judge of anything, but the kind of flesh he's xxx of is good enough, will try and go where peace seems to be, will fall ^{drop drop} and lie when it suffers no more, or suffers less, or can't go on. [1854] Then the voice will begin again, faint at first, then louder and louder, coming from the direction quarter they want him to retreat from, to make him think he's pursued and struggle on, towards them. [1855] In this way they'll bring him to the wall, xxx and xxx and even to the precise point of its circuit where they have made other holes through which to pass their arms and seize him. [1856] How physical that all is. [1857] And then, incapable of going any further, because of the obstacle, and incapable of going any further in any case, and not needing to go any further for the moment, because of the great silence that has fallen, he will drop, assuming he had risen, but even a reptile can drop, after a long flight, the expression may be used, without impropriety. [1858] He will drop, it will be his first corner, his first experience of the vertical support, vertical