Eric Mottram at his "darnedest" best when his patience erupts after long putting up with "pain" from others...

Translation of Eric Mottram's 1922 Section 1 in Earth Raids 1976 by T Wignesan

for David Attoe

Notre devise pourrait être: 'que nous nous ne soyons pas envoûtés'
Wittgenstein in Zettel

laissez pendre…la graisse….sans cou
où la tête flotte sur les épaules
un joyau……sacré liaison contre
la chair nouvelle
nom…………………………nom
appelez le nom……….la marque du nom
l'impression de l'ange
emmène la loi………………emporte le soleil
nom de la lune…………….le mangé la cuillère le nom
nom de merde……………..baignoire lit pot (le pot du lit)
le mal le bien………………le silence à plat sur votre dos
le nom joyau s'appuie sur le muscle
n'importe quel bébé doux

il arrive en volant du plaisir
übersichtlich*…….l'habilité d'un aigle haut à l'intérieur
s'intègre……..l'oeil la touchée et la tête lignes
un champ de passage facile
l'un vers l'autre ange au pays cartographié
ainsi le joyau règle les rêves
décline……………tombe
donnant de noms aux animaux
donnant de noms aux poupées………..le sobriquet
le vieux Nick


* EM notes in "Resources": Wittgenstein's 'descriptive word for an arrangement of factual material for easy passage from one part to another'.

LETTER from Eric Mottram:

May 23, 1966: " Dear Wignesan,

All right, I know I am a poor letter man but really I have [been] so occupied with travelling around and lecturing lately. [...5 lines suppressed here] By the way, speaking of the Enemy, you could do me a favour: could you collect that damn Burroughs (My note: by "article" EM refers to the first part of the Burroughs book: Algebra of Need, published by Calder) article from Peace News for me? I still haven't heard a single bloody word from that 'f-----g' McGrath: when I get back, that man is going to suffer if it's the last thing I do. He's not worth the full word……The interview I did from New York was with the editor of the Realist, Paul Krassner - a fine satirical man who puts the wind up every fool within earshot. I admire him completely. Do you know the magazine? You used to be able to get it at Better Books, but now I gather all is changed and no terrible beauty born with it. Except that Miles fellow who had the gall to say in the East Village Other that London had no regular poetry readings last year which paid the poets - the bastard never turned up to a single one of the things Bill Butler and I put on at ICA.... So much for his oh so touted interest in literature, the sod. My next Negro piece will be very different to the last: I want really to examine the business of anti-semitism among Negros, and to look into the blackness business - each number of the Liberator kills my reason. Incidentally, or rather not so, Leroi Jones was finally thrown out of the Black Arts and escaped to a hiding place in Newark - by his own people - and he still does TV shows and radio ones attacking the whiteys, the Jews ( I happen to know that he regularly gets money from and cashes his checks with a Jewish friend), and intelligence. A curious trio, don't you agree? (There is no paperback Shadow and Act yet: if there is one, you will have it, I promise). (Anything you want otherwise?) As for me, I lecture in universities where I am listened to as I am not in England, let alone London: I could have any number of excellent and richly paid jobs for the asking; my reputation gets better, my work therefore improves because my inferiority feelings diminish with encouragement; I have friends such as I rarely have found in England - people really I can move with; and the thought of coming back to the humiliations of London fills me with apprehension. Recently, I was in Michigan, in Kent (Ohio), and Bridgeport (Connecticut) - and spent a long weekend on Shelter Island, an idyllic place in the arms of Long Island at the Atlantic end. I saw Plisetskaya dancing with the Bolshoi and felt the radiance that comes of charismatic womanhood and total skill. Now I have to leave my flat because the owner is returning from his travels, so I shall be staying eith [with] Ted Wilentz and his wife until the destiny boat in September but I shall not be there much. I go to Buffalo to do a graduate course on June 25 - unti[l] August 5 - and somehow I have to make Harvard and San Francisco as well. It looks like that boat will be the haven it was last September. I can't rest up, and there it is. But I'm reading a lot and sort of blossoming.
[... A whole para: 5 lines left out]
Yours ever, Eric. "

[From New York University. Letter addressed to 156, Gloucester Place, London N.W.1, but re-directed twice to: 47, Broadhurst Gardens, N.W.6 and 7, Buckland Crescent, N.W.3]

© T. Wignesan - Paris, 2017