Notebook (Clark Coolidge, Jean Frémon, Ezra Pound, &c.)

Remy de Gourmont, 1858-1915

A bollocks’d up morning, with delays and seeings off. Cold, and sullen with clouds. A solid blanket. Clark Coolidge, out of “White” (Big Sky #3): “as if it / at all / in // out of a / counterbalanced / seal . . .” Or, later: “finicks . . .” In The Botanical Garden, Jean Frémon siphons “swich licour” off Remy de Gourmont’s The Natural Philosophy of Love, wry and regular interspersals. Here:

      I note that well-designed genital organs are hardly met save in two great branchings where the intelligence is the most developed: mammifera and arthropods. Would there be a correlation between complete copulation and cerebral development?

      The birds which have a penis, or an erectile and retractible tubercle which serves as such, are the ostrich, the cassowary, the duck, the swan, the goose, the bustard, the mandou and certain neighboring species; their hens have a clitoral organ.

      With the ostrich, it’s a true prong, five or six inches in length, cut by a groove which serves as a conduit for the seminal liquor. The swan and the duck are equally well endowed with an erectile tubercle suited for copulation. That explains, along with the myth of Leda, the libidinous reputation of the duck, and his exploits in the barnyard.*

Frémon is combining (and reversing the order of) two disjoint paragraphs. In Ezra Pound’s version:

      If one considers no longer the mode of copulation but the apparatus itself, with the male part, penis, and the female part, vagina, one sees clearly that these extremely particular organs are hardly found well designed save in two great branchings where the intelligence is most developed: mammifera and the arthropodes. There might be, perhaps, a certain correlation between complete and profound copulation and the development of the brain.*

And:

      The birds which have a penis or an erectile and retractile tubercle which serves, are the ostrich, the cassowary, the duck, the swan, the goose, the bustard, the mandou and certain neighbouring species; their hens have a clitoridian organ. The ostrich has a true prong, five or six inches in length, cut by a groove which serves as conduit for the seminal liquor; it is enormous in erection and tongue-shaped. The ostrich hen has a clitoris and coition occurs exactly as among mammals. The swan and duck are also very well provided with an erectile tubercle suited for copulation, and this explains at once the story of Leda, the libidinous reputation of the duck, and his exploits in the barn-yards, veritable abbeys of Thélème.**

—

Accepting what arrives. Exempting nothing. A way of throwing the pointer—or the morning—back at itself, futilely white. Coolidge again:

                              woman
                              than
                              woman


I wish I don’t know it will I turn I mean
                              on believe rust
                              of as if it
                              in all


                              still
                              or gorge
                              a through
                              some


                yet there about only
                              is note
                              are note

Making sparser the notational plumage. “Such as haue neede of a fine and attenuating nourishment.” Do what thou wilt. My counterbalance. My starveling. My botch. . . .

* “There might be, perhaps, a certain correlation between complete and profound copulation and the development of the brain.” Being the line—“Il y aurait peut-être une certaine corrélation entre la copulation complète et profonde et le développement cérébral”—that Pound uses for epigraph to the “Translator’s Postscript” he appends to de Gourmont’s work. Wherein Pound rather sillily proposes—only “somewhat” metaphorically (“I offer an idea rather than an argument”)—that “it is more than likely that the brain itself, is, in origin and development, only a sort of great clot of genital fluid held in suspense or reserve; at first over the cervical ganglion, or, earlier or in other species, held in several clots over the scattered chief nerve centres; and augmenting in varying speeds and quantities into medulla oblongata, cerebellum and cerebrum.” Which, according to Pound, “would explain the enormous content of the brain as a maker or presenter of images”: “the power of the spermatozoid is precisely the power of exteriorizing a form . . .”

** Life in the “abbeys of Thélème,” according to Rabelais (out of Gargantua, translated by Sir Thomas Urquhart):

. . . They roſe out of their beds, when they thought good: they did eat, drink, labour, ſleep, when they had a minde to it, and were diſpoſed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to conſtrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for ſo had Gargantua eſtabliſhed it. In all their rule, and ſtricteſt tie of their order, there was but this one clauſe to be obſerved,

Do what thou wilt.

Becauſe men that are free, well-borne, well-bred, and converſant in honeſt companies, have naturally an inſtinct and ſpurre that prompteth them unto vertuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Thoſe ſame men, when by baſe ſubjection and conſtraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aſide from that noble diſpoſition, by which they formerly were inclined to vertue, to ſhake off and break that bond of ſervitude, wherein they are ſo tyrannouſly inſlaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden, and to deſire what is denied us.
      By this liberty they entered into a very laudable emulation, to do all of them what they ſaw did pleaſe one; if any of the gallants or Ladies ſhould ſay, Let us drink, they would all drink: if any one of them ſaid, Let us play, they all played; if one ſaid, Let us go a walking into the fields, they went all: if it were to go a hawking or a hunting, the Ladies mounted upon dainty well-paced nags, ſeated in a ſtately palfrey ſaddle, carried on their lovely fiſts, miniardly begloved every one of them, either a Sparhawk, or a Laneret, or a Marlin, and the young gallants carried the other kinds of Hawkes . . .