Am ezitat foarte mult timp până am reluat citirea trilogiei "Răstignirea trandafirie", mai precis, până a citi ce-a de-a doua carte - Plexus.
Deși l-am îndrăgit din prima carte citită pe Miller, ju știu ce dracu am ezitat atât. Dar cam vreo doi ani nu am citit de el nici o carte. Abia anul acesta, o dată începută și ,,Plexus", am citit și ,,Lume sexului" și ,,Zile liniștite la Clichy".
Plexus îmi pare cea mai densă (zic asta cu foarte mare curaj, așa cum n-am citit încă ce-a de-a treia carte din trilogie - Nexus) din cele trei cărți care alcătuiesc trilogia. Sexus mi-a plăcut enorm, dar Plexus e mai aproape de mine datorită temei pe care o abordează aici și anume: perioada în care Miller începe să scrie, unde încearcă să o facă, să pună în sfârșit în lucru materialul pe care îl trăiește și, totuși, o face încă deplasat și stângaci. Abia peste douăzeci de ani are să scrie și trilogia și alte cărți de mare valoare, dar unele texte i se trag încă din această perioadă.
Un lucru important pe care am avut să-l conștientizez odată citit acest volum e că Henry Valentin Miller e un autor prost de ficțiune, acolo unde încearcă să bage niște visuri, fantezii, situații pur ficționale - ratează; însă de-a lungul cărții un își povestește propriile trăiri și peripeții e absolut genial (și o spun cu toată sinceritatea).
Aș încerca să citez aici, dar mi-ar lua o groază de timp și spațiu, însă sunt sigur că nu vor citi nici măcar 10% din cei care vor vedea postarea.
Aș încerca să descriu idei, filosofii, situații din carte dar nu sunt rumegate destul și, sunt sigur, o să revin să recitesc tot ce am însemnat cu creionul de mai multe ori (dar am însemnat mult).
Acum, cred, e timpul să-mi limpezesc balamucul din creier cu o pauză din lecturi și să mai mănânc & beu ceva bun (apropo, deși Miller a dus foame zdravănă, în carte o să găsiți muuuuultă mâncare; or, numai ducând foame îți vine să vorbești despre mâncare; iar scriitorii care vorbesc despre foamete și nu pomenesc diverse mâncăruri, de mai multe ori, nu sunt decât niște îndopați care ating subiecte ce nu i-a atins (e ca si cum ai zice că ai pipăit sânii profei de română în timp ce doar ai visat-o chiar la lecțiile în care ea îndruga acolo despre crengi și luceferi)).
Copășei!

I feel like any laudatory words on my part would simply do an unforgivable injustice to this man's writing. I keep having to stand back and re-read passages and whole chapters just because of their layering, so subtle on the surface and so complex in their structure, writing that seems to have just been carelessly thrown on the page but is in fact of a destructive force for those who understand it. Or, as is my case, for those who humbly try to...

Miller, Henry. Plexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, Book 2)

I have always found Henry Miller addictive, having first read Tropic of Cancer in 1954, and smuggled it into England as if carrying dynamite. Ever since I’ve been a sucker for anything he wrote. I suppose I admired the man rather than the books themselves. He had done what many of us at some time in our lives have done or, rather, wished to do: given up the rat race. In his case it was choice rather than necessity that drove him into poverty and finding his destiny in writing. Unlike Orwell, whose experiments at living with the poor and downtrodden were exercises in discovering other lifestyles, Miller was less interested in his subjects’ welfare than his take on them. He loved the floating immigrant population of Brooklyn; Poles, Jews, Russians - they were his raw material. He had no Etonian background, no wealthy parents behind him, and no connections in the literary world. He began from scratch, borrowed books on his mother’s library ticket and read anything that took his fancy. ‘No doubt it is important to read the classics,’ he admits, but more valuable ‘to a writer at least, is to read whatever comes to hand.’ He wandered the museums and galleries, and the bars and speakeasies of Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, bumming a crust, listening to life stories, picking up crazy people, and squatting in condemned rat-infested tenements.

Plexus, the palm of his oeuvre says William Gordon, treats the period from his leaving the Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company to his first (bad) marriage, his divorce and his obsession with Mona, an easy girl who believes in his ‘work’ and helps him emotionally and financially. Beginning with erotic bliss (see first volume, Sexus) his relationship with his new wife is ecstatic - until gradually things fall apart. The reader suspects and so does Miller that his wife is a loose woman, living off richer and often disturbed lovers. The bothers Miller not one jot. He loves stories or anecdotes and welcomes all comers!
When I open a volume of Miller such as Plexus a huge grin comes over me. I know what to expect and am never disappointed. The account of his and friend Dr Kronski’s entertaining of the handsome and gullible Alan Cromwell, one of Mona’s beaux is sheer knockabout farce. To start with, Mona never appears to discuss the business proposition with her lover, so the three men drink, Miller listening in the role of Dr Marx, a Jewish surgeon to Kronski telling gruesome stories about animal experiments, one of which was about a rabbit that indvertently died. Afterwards Kronski made it into a stew! Unfortunately he’d forgotten the poison used as a sedative. ‘Cromwell, slightly sobered by the bloody tale, remarked that it was too bad that Kronski hadn’t died, then laughed so heartily over this thought that absentmindedly he swallowed half a glass of neat cognac. Whereupon he had such a fit of coughing that we had to stretch him out on the floor and work over him like a drowned man.’ Dressing and undressing the soused Cromwell and telling the revived guest that while he’s been ‘out’ Mona has phoned, saying she’d gone to Washington to meet him.

Interspersed among Miller’s encounters with riff-raff in the streets, we find long passages of reminiscence and much philosophical rambling on Nietzsche, Lawrence, and Freud, Rank, Alan Watts, Van Gogh, Dostoyevsky and other writers. But wherever his steps take him in search of ‘a five spot’ a drink or anything but office slavery Miller is an entertaining guide.

Continúan las tribulaciones en la parte baja de Manhattan: en Greenwich Village. El cambio de parejas constante, la buena vida se mezcla con la precariedad laboral y afectiva. Los amigos son un pilar de continuidad en el relato, donde lo demás importa poco.

“A whole lifetime lay ahead of me. In a few months I would be thirty-three years of age—and ‘my own master absolute.’ Then and there I made a vow never to work for anyone again. Never again would I take orders. The work of the world was for the other blokes—I would have no part in it. I had talent and I would cultivate it. I would become a writer or I would starve to death.”

“Our grotesque life in the street, as boys, had prepared us for these mysterious encounters. In some unknown way we had undergone the proper initiation. We were, without knowing it, members of that traditional underground which vomits forth at suitable intervals those writers who will later be called Romantics, mystics, visionaries or diabolists. It was for such as us—then mere embryonic beings—that certain ‘outlandish’ passages were written. It is we who keep alive these books which are constantly threatening to fall back into oblivion. We lie in wait, like beasts of prey, for moments of reality which will not only match but confirm and corroborate these literary extravaganzas.”

“The phrase so widely used today—the common man—strikes me as an utterly meaningless one. There is no such animal. If the phrase has any meaning at all, and I think Nostradamus certainly implied as much when he spoke of the Vulgar Advent, it means that all that is abstract and negative, or retrogressive, has now assumed dominion. Whatever the common man is or is not, one thing is certain—he is the very antithesis of Christ or Satan. The term itself seems to imply absence of allegiance, absence of faith, absence of guiding principle—or even instinct. Democracy, a vague, empty word, simply denotes the confusion which the common man has ushered in and in which he flourishes like the weed.”

"ذات مرة ظننت اننى جرحت كما لم يجرح إنسان قط ولأن هذا الشعور انتابنى ،فقد نذرت نفسى لتاليف هذا الكتاب . لكن قبل أن أبدأ فى تأليف الكتاب بفترة طويلة برأ الجرح وبما اننى اقسمت على انجاز مهمتى لذا فقد نكأت الجرح المروع .
بعبارة اخرى ..فلعلى عندما نكأت الجرح، جرحى ،برأت جروح أخرى، جروح أناس آخرين. شئ يموت وشئ يولد"

ولازلنا مع هنرى مع عقله وجنونه وفلسفته وأفكاره وقراءاته يزيد عليها كوابيسه واحلامه وذكريات طفولته ومراهقته وشبابه ومعاناته .
تركه لعمله حتى يتفرغ للكتابه بتشجيع من زوجته مونا التى كانت على استعداد ان تفعل اى شئ ليتفرغ هو لكتاباته ليصبح الكاتب الذى يريد ، كان طوال حياته يخبره أصدقائه انه كاتب وكان يرغب دوما فى الكتابة وكانت دائما راسه مليئه بالافكار التى احيانا لا يستطيع ان يترجمها الى كلمات على الورق .

معاناته المادية وفقره واحتياجه الدائم لكنه كان دوما يجد من يساعده حتى لو كان شخصا غريبا تماما كان يستمع اليه ويعطيه نقودا او يقدم له طعام . عاد فترة ليعيش مع والده ووالدته واخبرهم انه يكتب قصص ومقالات وسيبيعها للمجلات وسيكسب مالا ،
متى ياهنرى ؟
قريبا هذه الامور تأخذ فترة بعد شهور سينشرون اعمالى
وتمر الشهور
اين ياهنرى اعمالك؟
ستنشر.

وسفره مع اصدقائه وعدم امتلاكه اى مال حتى انه كان ياكل اى شئ حتى لو كان عفنا فليس معه اى شئ .
كانت حياه صعبه ومعاناته شديدة
عمل كبائع وفى حانه وبائع الجرائد وبائع موسوعات مع محاولاته المستمرة للكتابة وارساله لكتاباته التى تقابل بالرفض
والاعجاب الدائم الذى يلاقيه من الاخرين

راسى تؤلمنى ..هنرى يتحدث فى كل شئ ،لست سهلا ابدا ياهنرى .

ملاحظة اخيرة وهامة الجزء الاول كان ملئ بالاجزاء الجنسية هذا الجزء بالتأكيد اقل بكثير ، كانه ليس كاتب الجزء الاول صبوات.

فاصل قصير وسأعود للجزء الثالث ، بعض الراحة ياهنرى وسأعود مرة اخرى

Drugi dio trilogije "Ružičasto raspeće".
Za razliku od Sexusa, kojeg je preveo Zlatko Crnković, Plexus je preveo Leonard Spalatin. Ističem ovo jer je izdanje Plexusa, kojeg sam čitao, (Otokar Keršovani 1969) prepuno tipfelera i grešaka, što nije bio slučaj sa Sexusom iako su izdavač i godina identični. Zašto je tomu tako, to ne znam, ali to ide na dušu lektora i prevoditelja...
O djelu:
Veliko iznenađenje, iako je ovo najopsežnija Millerova knjiga u njoj gotovo uopće nema opscenih ili ikakvih opisa seksualnih iskustava. Nisam siguran je li to dobro ili loše. Što se tiče Millerova stila, čini mi se da je malo proširio vokabular, ali sve ostalo zapravo je jednako, samo pristojnije. Moguće da su ga kritičari, izdavači li tko već nagazili zbog previše "prljavštine" pa je jednostavno kapitulirao, a možda je Miller jednostavno mislio da ga neće shvaćati kao ozbiljnog pisca ako ne napiše "pristojnu" knjigu. Ako tko zna zašto ili ima ideju zbog čega je tako naglo promijenio ploču u drugoj knjizi neka mi napiše u komentar! S obzirom da je riječ o istoj priči, dakle Plexus se tematski u potpunosti naslanja na Sexus, samo su se, eto, odjednom, bez navedenog razloga likovi prestali jebavati i opijati, doduše i dalje žderu i žicaju pare na sve strane.
Kako bilo, Plexus ima svojih dobrih dijelova, a zadnja dva poglavlja su bila fantastična, u njima je Miller najbolje filozofirao i pokazao da ima mogućnost popunjavanja fabule izvrsnim esejističkim digresijama, međutim većina knjige zapravo nije imala tu snagu, kako da se izrazim... čitajući Plexus uglavnom nećete obogatiti duh i neće vas ništa prosvijetliti i natjerati na razmišljanje i promišljanje o "velikim temama". Miller je jednostavan, pitak, i bekompromisan, iako je u Sexusu znao pretjerati sa seksom, u Plexusu je otišao u drugu krajnost, što jednostavno ruši logičku koncepciju s početka priče.
Iako ovaj roman možda uopće nije slabiji od Sexusa, poanta je da s Plexusom nismo dobili ništa novog, osim što je proširio vokabular i upristojio se. Zbog toga mu ide zvjezdica manje s nadom da će treći dio - Nexus, donijeti nešto novo i da će fino zaokružiti ovu autobiografsku trilogiju.

هنرى ميللر كاتب بائس سعيد شهوانى فيلسوف انسان يجمع كل المتناقضات يبحث عن معنى فتضيع معه

I'm waiting until I finish the entire trilogy to write my full review. However I do have a few notes to make. There was little to no sex in this book! I know it's all saved for Sexus, but those sex scenes were so well written and so spectacularly erotic that I thought for sure some of that might seep into Plexus but no such luck. What impressed me the most was Miller's vocabulary. So much so that I kept a list of all the words he used that I had never seen before. I planned to look them all up later on in my huge old crumbling dictionary. And here is that list, it's fantastic:

jeremiad, sisyphean, lied, horripilation, somnolence, efflorescence, plangent, ken, asperity, sorties, peregrinations, dithyrambs, colloquies, veridical, prestidigitator, lugubrious, semaphore, prate, cymbalon, bagatelle, mufti, pederasts, anent, sally, purlieus, fettle, jackanapes, palaver, celerity, sagacity, jocosely, cordon, viands, quorum, euchre, velleity, brogans, runneled, cortege, bantam, metempsychosis, limitrophe, steppes, verdure, lilliputian, eclosion, amanuensis, geodetic, quaternary, decan, thaumaturgists, fecund, circumlocutiousness (led me to prolix which I had to look up as well), acephalic, cantharides, crinology*, cacchination*, coterminous, cicerone, cimex (bedbug yuck!), lectularis*, cognomen, pasha, caparisoned, panoplies, verdigris, taboret, ructions, halvah, kirschwasser, strega, russe*, inveigle, arnica, cosmocrator, quoits, prepollent, parlous, anacoluthon, sesquipedalian (actually means one who uses long words LOL), gimcrack, socdolager*, gazabo, couvert, bonhomie, numismatics, celesta, telesme*, alderman, wend, thoracic, ablatives, gerundives, postprandial, palliation, dint, spifflicated, quondam, rambla, souks, encysted, funicular, bobolink, shandygaff, hodcarrier (hod was in the dictionary but not hodcarrier), tyro, chiffonier, auk, foraminifera, plaidoyer*, abstruse, samovar, porphyry, ebullition and percipience.

The starred words are the ones I could not define. I actually looked up each and every one. Miller is a lingustic provocateur. His style continues to spellbind me.

Update: All the starred words I just googled and found all the definitions!!! Oddly satisfying ❤

A rambling, sometimes dense book that has rare moments of insight about the artistic life. Was 600 pages and could have been 300. Not Miller's best, but still an enjoyable read for Miller fans.

Henry Miller is the only artist i am really regret that I'd never meet him. He would be - without a doubt - my favorite friend, and I'd cling to him everywhere just to hear him talk.

On the contrary of Sexus, plexus doesn't contain porn scenes, only a brief undetailed group sex scene. The time the novel covers is the first years after Miller married Mona, he was then a faithful lover and husband.

I'm wondering since i start reading Miller how a character completely imaginable by him will look like, then Claude appear, and thanks god that Miller keep wrote only about himself and real people he known once.

The most remarkable parts in Plexus are

- Dave Olinski the 8 languages man from Tel Aviv trying to sell Miller an insurance policies.
- The first attempts to be a full-time writer after quitting his job.
- Writing Mezzotint and how he tried to start his book.
- Osiecki and his fiancee Louella.
- Playing Dr. Marx with Cromwell.
- The three bears story which he keep inventing its events while telling it to Trix's children.
- Macgregor monologue and dialogue with Hen.
- The two Irish and the blind.

I'll read Nexus then write a review about The Rosy Crucifixion as a complete work.

هنري يظهر للناس نفسه .. بكل سفاله و طيبه، بكل بساطه وعفويه. تحدث ميلر في هذا العمل باجزائة عن نفسه وعن مجتمعه في اهم حقبه من حقب المجتمع الامريكي