MDMD(11): Ear

[Dave Monroe]

   "All this while, the Ear reposes in its
Pickling-Jar of Swedish lead Crystal, as if being
withheld from Time's Appetite for some Destiny obscure
to all.  Presently 'tis noted by Mason,-- he hopes, an
effect of the light,-- that somehow, the Ear has been
a-glow,-- for a while, too,-- withal, it seems, as he
watches, to come to attention, to gain muscular Tone,
to grow indeed quite firm, and, in its saline Bath, it
is erect." (M&D, Ch. 17, p. 178)

   "'Ear?'
   "'Oh?  What would you call her?  Nose?'" (ibid.)

>From Jacques Derrida, "The Question of Style," The New
Nietzsche, ed. David B. Allison (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1985 [New York: Dell, 1977]), pp. 176-89 ...

"... finally, to let some sort of exchange arise
between style and woman in  Nietzsche--for all this,
we must turn to The Gay Science ([Sec.] 60): 'Women,
and all their action at a distance.  Do I still have
ears?  Am I all ears and nothing else?'  All of
Nietzsche's questions, those on woman in particular,
are coiled up in the labyrinth of an ear; and just a
bit further on in The Gay Science ('Women who master
the masters,' ([Sec.] 70), a drapery or hanging, a
curtain, is raised ('upon possibilities in which we do
not believe') ...." (p. 177)

And see as well here, of course ...

Derrida, Jacques.  Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/
   Eperons: Les styles de Nietzsche. Trans. Barbara
   Harlow. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1979.

But using the anthologized text (vs. one with French
and English texts on facing pages) spared me a
pagination problem, so ...

But to continue ...

"'Now whisper Ear your Wish, your fondest Wish,-- join
all those Sailors and Whores and Company Writers
without number who've found their way down here,
who've cried their own desires into the Great
Insatiable.  Upon my Solicitor's Advice, I must also
remind you at this Point, that Ear only listens to
wishes,-- she doesn't grant 'em.'
   "Mason can scarcely look into the blue-green
Radiance surrounding the Ear,-- in this crowded
darkness, even the pale luminescence stuns...and just
as well, too, for the Organ has now definitely risen
up out of its Pickle, and without question is offering
itself, half-cur'd and subterranean cold, to Mason's
approaching Mouth.  I have survived the Royal Baby,
Mason tells himself,-- this can be done.  The
flirtatious Ear stands like a shell-fish,-- vibrating,
waiting.
   "His fondest Wish?" (M&D, Ch. 17, p. 179)

"Till now, he has never properly understood the phrase
Calling into a Void,-- having imagin'd it said by
Wives of Husbands, or Teachers of Students.  Here,
however, in the form of this priapick Ear, is the
Void, and the very anti-Oracle-- revealing nothing, as
it absorbs everything."  (M&D, Ch. 17, p. 179)

"'Well,-- this is going to seem uncoah', but as near
as I can calculate, at exactly the instant you spoke
into theis Object, I heard, as out of a
speaking-trumpet, your message.[...]  Of course I
didn't recognize it as you, Mason,-- so darken'd with
echo and so forth was that Voice...?'" (M&D, Ch. 17,
p. 180)

The Ear as both receiver and transmitter, a
"speaking-trumpet" a la that of an Edison phonograph
which both records and plays back sound ...

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edcyldr.html

And here see, e.g., ...

Kittler, Friedrich.  Gramophone Film Typewriter.
   Trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz.
   Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1999.

But from Jacques Derrida, "Otobiographies: The
Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper
Name," trans. Avital Roneell, in Thee Ear of the
Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation, ed.
Christie McDonald (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988 [New
York: Schocken, 1985]), pp. 1-38 ...

"... the dead man and the living feminine, and so on"
(p. 16)

   "The ear is uncanny.  Uncanny is what it is; double
is what it can become; large or small is what it can
make or let happen ..." (p. 33)

   "You must pay heed to the fact that the omphalos
that Nietzsche compels you to envision resembles both
an ear and a mouth.  It has the invaginated folds and
the involuted orificiality of both.  Its center
preserves itself at the bottom of an invisible,
restless cavity that is sensitive to all waves which,
whether they are emitted or received, are always
transmitted by this trajectory of obscure
circumvolutions." (p. 36)

   "Abstraction itself: the ear can close itself off
and contact can be suspended because the omphalos of a
disjointed body ties it to a dissociated segment of
the father." (ibid.)

And see as well Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake
Zarathustra, Ch. XLII, "On Redemption" ...

"... for there are human beings who lack everything,
except one thing of which they have too much--human
beings who are nothing but a big eye or a big mouth or
a big belly or anything at all that is big.  Inverse
cripples I call them.
   "And when I came out of my solitide and crossed
over this bridge for the first time I did not trust my
eyes and looked and looked again, and said atlast, 'An
ear!  An ear as big as a man!' ...."

As cited in part in Derrida, "Otobiogrpahies," p. 3,
but see, e.g. ...

http://www.underthesun.cc/Classics/Nietzsche/Zarathustra/Zarathustra43.html

Note, by the way, that the feminine Ear
(severed--castrated?--nonetheless from the male
Jenkins) becomes nonetheless not merely "erect," but
"Priapick."  Like Gottfried's womblike but nonetheless
erectile Imipolex G shroud in Gravity's Rainbow?  And
note as well ...

   "Mason is chagrin'd to find set in a low Wall a
tiny Portico and Gate, no more than three feet high,
with a Sign one must stoop to read,-- 'Ear of Robt
Jenkin, Esq., Within.'  Clearly there must be some
other entry, tho' Mason can find none, not even by
repeated Jumps to see what lies over the Wall,-- to
appearnace, a Garden gone to weeds.  Reluctantly at
last he takes to his elbows and knees, to investigate
the diminutive Doorway at close hand,-- the Door,
after a light Push, swinging open without a Squeak. 
Mason peers in.  What Illumination there is revelas a
sort of Ramp-way leading downward, with just enough
height to crawl." (M&D, Ch. 17, p. 176)

"At last, having agin'd a slightly roomier sort of
Foyer, hewn, it seems, from the Volcanick Rock of the
Island, he is startl'd by a Voice, quite near.'"
(ibid.)

   "'Dear no, that's not how 'tis done, I must come
along, to operate the Show.'
   "'Excuse me,-- Show...?'" (M&D, Ch. 17, pp. 176-7)

   "Having squirm'd past the last obstacle, Mason
finds himself presently at Ground Level in the
neglected Garden he glimps'd earlier.  The Walls are
amrkedly higher in here than he remembers them from
the Street,-- whose ev'ry audible Nuance now comes
clear to him, near and far, all of equal Loudness,
from e'vry part of the Town,-- but invisible ..."
(M&D, Ch. 17, p. 180)

The entire adventure is a sort of journey to the
center of one's skull, replete with mental theater,
via the ear ...

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