W=E=L=C=O=M=E: 02

I read this book by Matvei Yankelevich & it's called "Boris by the Sea" & it's a mighty good book.

There's something funny, exploratory, straightforward & yet puzzling about this book that ends in despair. I like all of these things. Mostly.

Plus, there's the whole philosophy element, which makes my mouth water. There's some nice Berkeley Idealism augmented by modal semantics in passages like this:

"The world was reflected inside him, somewhere inside his skull. And it hurt something awful. [...] Even the wallpaper groans and cracks from the pain. If you don't look at the world then your headache will go away, thought Boris. And everything vanished in the room. All the things died and the dead do not complain. They are no longer in pain"(8).

In fact, the first half of the collection almost feels like A History of Western Philosophy. We move from Cartesian Doubting ("Boris dreamt of men who disattached their thoughts from the government of their own organisms. These men could, if they happened to notice their own body, consider it to be somebody else's body and open it up to see what was inside"(5)) to Berkeleyian Idealism ("Whenever Boris was alone in his room he wasn't"(7)) to Kantian transcendetalism ("There is a limit to everything everywhere"(11)) all the way up to Badiou's idea of love ("When there's someone else under the blanket, / in the dark, then you know who you are / in relation to that someone who lies beside you"(21)).

The book even starts with water, which, you know, is also the beginning of philosophy. Go Thales!

But, admittedly, there's also something cutesy tautological or pun-ladden at times that rubs the student of philosophy in me in all the wrong places. And it rubs hard with small cactuses made of hornets. This get me all riled up: "The white foam was white"(31) as does this: "It took a while to get going. But once he got going, he was pretty much gone"(12).

These 'moves' feel disingenuous, even if I think I understand what Yankelevich is trying to do with them. (My interpretation being that he's trying to expose language and how we use it; that by saying the "white foam is white," we're invited to think more about the statement "white foam" in a more critical manner). Sure, we can say that poetry is poetry & philosophy is philosophy & philosophy is a load of crap & this might just be a 'move' that's making the rounds at the poetry cocktail party & all of this would probably be true. But my first reaction would be to say that these lines don't bring anything to the table, they're all fluff in a collection that was so close to no fluff, & then my second reaction would be to scream 'No' really long & slow like in action movies. But then I try to calm down and say there's another way of looking at this, one where we'd say that this sort of watercolor tautology exposes the humanity of Boris, of all those Borises, of the author & by extension of us.

Hey look, a cute puppy!

So what's this "Boris By the Sea" all about?

Not really. It's more like this:

Boris tries to know the world & himself, & loses Woman in the process. Saddened, Boris (& the Author), then seek refuge in theater, realizing "that without a role a person is as good as dead"(21). The role Boris tries on is Author of Experimental Fiction (Boris tries to write a poem without syllables (45)), which leads to other frustrations (i.e. what to write about (31)) & the original question: 'Who Am I?' Boris then wonders 'what words have to do with everything.' Boris feels pretty lonely & dejected, & doesn't seem to have figured out the big answers to the big questions, so he decides to burn it all, even thought Boris' struggle to understand persists.

This is a bit reductionist, but I figure it might help frame some of the other ideas we see in "Boris By the Sea," like the wonderful absurdity that is Man. For instance, in the first poem, Boris is thirsty & so he waters his plants. He then waters the sand & the sea, & he's still thirsty. He does everything but do the thing he wants to achieve & while this seems frustratingly stupid & irrational, the point seems to be, well, hey, that's life! that's what we do!

(It may even be that Yankelevich is highlighting this Absurdity to then say the whole attempt to understand the world is absurd, which might be fine & good, but then one has to wonder, why Yankelevich bothers to rehearse this whole problematic at all, why not just latch onto other problems & interests? Because he's trying to be absurd? Sort of an impasse, right?)

Yankelevich also ganders at the questions of Self, Life, Love & Creation, all of which are big words & ones which most people shy away from. & that's what's so brilliant about "Boris By the Sea:" in using simple syntax & language, Yankelevich talks about these big words with a (feigned) childlike simplicity, which then allows the reader to think about these problems in a new, interesting way. It's like he's the child telling the Emperor that his new clothes don't exist.

This is good. & in a way, necessary. I know that people are sick of Big Words, but I still kinda like them, we're still on speaking terms. I like the way Yankelevich approaches these Big Words very much, & I love some of the poems, especially "The Crossing."

I also appreciate how Yankelevich exposes the problem of inner/outer world

when he frames the question: 'is it the things that make us or do we make the things?' (see 48 for one answer) in a number of scenarios. The problem is, however, that Yankelevich seems to understand both sides of the argument without being able to arbitrate. Yankelevich/his Author figure/Boris all admit in the final poem that they don't know:

"Boris had an idea. Then he sat down and wept. It is hard to say what it was that Boris had been thinking about before he stopped thinking about it. He closed the window"(62).

Which is heartbreaking. But also, sadly, a little disappointing. It's like a rehearsal of everything we sorta, kinda already knew and stuff, but without the gumption to attack the problems with its own answer.

Positions are dangerous. Most of the time, positions are taken by knuckleheads like O'Reilly. But still, there's a position taken by O'Reilly & for me that's something (no matter how much I disagree with him). Excuse me for being naive or idealistic but I thought learning & education was all about being able to form an opinion to be able to then attack these Fox News people or at least to be able to ignore them & concentrate on the really important things, a la DFW's "This is Water" or Zen Buddhism (excuse the name dropping, because that's not what this is about. It's about knowing what to do (or as my Dad tautologically likes to say, "you've got to do what you've got to do"), it's about not being paralyzed by information). I thought education was about trying to make a better life for yourself.

???

"Boris by the Sea" is a beautiful representation of an attempt to understand the world, with all the resulting letdowns, & although I would have wished that Yankelevich wouldn't have taken the Cam'ron position, that Yankelevich would have taken the next step & said 'Aha, yes, but the world could be like this!' (which I know sounds lame in this reduced state, but this should be thought of as stock and not the soup), I know I can't blame him for this disappointment (& I hope that whoever reads this doesn't think I'm coming down on him, I can sympathize with him) BUT it makes me worried about the state of letters in this day & age.

I wonder if maybe we should all take the Badiou position or the Rorty position & say DAMN IT ALL! rather than rehearsing the failures of the past. (Which, ironically, has already gotten the avant-garde in plenty of trouble before.)

Where does this leave us?

"Boris by the Sea" is a well-crafted, beautiful book of poems that certainly made me think a whole ton (& what more can anyone really wish for than a book plague its reader for more than 2 months?) & that's a good thing. I'm glad this book exists!