Warning: This review is long, has excessive amount of quotes, and does not reach much of a conclusion. If you have a short attention span, this may not be for you. However, if you appreciate fine writing, I encourage you to read on. For me, Henry Miller is the finest writer America has produced over the past century. When his name comes up, most readers associate Miller with sex, scandals, pornography. This is mostly due to the press attention given to his two books, The Tropic of Cancer, and The Tropic of Capricorn. There is, however, much more to Miller than these two books. Miller's life work can be broken to three separate categories: Sex, Surrealism, and Philosophy. The works that make up these three categories did not come in a chronological order, even though his latter works are much more philosophical. The shift from sex to philosophy is very noticeable in his Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, where Nexus makes a grand departure from the world of sex and into philosophical realms. Nevertheless, when I say sex, I do not mean obscenity. Miller's writing is dotted with sex, but not sex for sex's value alone; it is sex that is a part of the story, not the other way around. Unlike his other books, Black Spring stands alone, covering a period of Miller's life not often discussed in his other works - his early years. It is also, undoubtedly, his most surreal work. By surreal I mean that not only it touches on the principles of surrealism, but that it is a work riddled with surreal imagery. In Black Spring, this imagery is Miller's greatest asset. The Fourteenth Ward is the opening chapter of Black Spring, an opening chapter into the intimate life of Henry Miller. This is the chapter where he talks about his childhood, his friends, the people and the streets he grew up with. It is a painful place, yet a safe haven. The following is a fine example from this chapter:"And then one day, as if suddenly the flesh came undone and the blood beneath the flesh had coalesced with the air, suddenly the whole world roars again and the very skeleton of the body melts like wax. Such a day it may be when you first encounter Dostoevski. You remember the smell of the tablecloth on which the book rests; you look at the clock and it is only five minutes from eternity; you count the objects on the mantelpiece because the sound of numbers is a totally new sound in your mouth, because everything new and old, or touched and forgotten, is a fire and mesmerism. Now every door of the cage is open and whichever way you walk is a straight line toward infinity, a straight, mad line over which the breakers roar and the great rocs of marble and indigo swoop to lower their fevered eggs. Out of the waves beating phosphorescent step proud and prancing the enameled horses that marched with Alexander, their tight-proud bellies glowing with calcium, their nostrils dipped in laudanum. Now it is all snow and lice, with the great band of Orion slung around the ocean's crotch."Third or Fourth Day of Spring, the second chapter in Black Spring, fluctuates between his childhood home and his current place in Clichy. "The third room was an alcove where I contracted the measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, et cetera: all the lovely diseases of childhood which make time stretch out in everlasting bliss and agony, especially when Providence has provided a window over the bed with bars and ogres to claw at them and sweat as thick as carbuncles, rapid as a river and sprouting, sprouting as if it were always spring and tropics, with thick tenderloin steaks for hands and feet heavier than led or light as snow, feet and hands separated by oceans of time or incalculable latitudes of light, the little knob of the brain hidden away like a grain of sand and the toenails rotting blissfully under the ruins of Athens."Where this chapter opens with the description of his home, it shifts to his obsession with the way humanity destroys itself, the never-ending list of wrongs he sees."I am thinking of that age to come when God is born again, when men will fight and kill for God as now and for a long time to come men are going to fight for food."One could argue that Miller was a pessimist. I disagree. Miller, for the most part, enjoyed life to its fullest. Perhaps he foresaw what was in store around the corner, perhaps he foresaw the destruction WWII brought upon Europe, which I will touch upon later in this review."I am dazzled by the glorious collapse of the world."A Saturday Afternoon, the third chapter, is a wonderful praise to France. Spending the day on his bicycle, Miller joyfully explores everything French, and sings his amorous hymns to the French people, his newly-found countrymen. He finds joy in the simple pleasure of pissing in an open urinal (and he recounts quite a few of them), or visiting a toilet with a book. "No harm, I say, can ever be done a great book by taking it with you to the toilet. Only the little books suffer thereby. Only the little books make ass wipers." It is a chapter about French countryside, toilets, and great literature. Not an easy combination to pull off, but he did. Enough said. The Angel is my Watermark, the fourth chapter in Black Spring. This is a stand-alone piece, which chronicles Miller's attempt at a watercolor painting. Those of you not familiar with Miller may not know this about him, but he was a prolific, and pretty good, watercolor artist. I believe it originally started as a way to make money, but later it was done purely out of joy. In later years, when Miller settled in Big Sur, he used to wrap books in his watercolors and sent the books to his fans and supporters. Since then, some of his watercolors sold for insane amounts of money, and later there was a limited run of hand-signed serigraphs. Being a sucker for Miller, I own one of them - Really, the Blues. The nice thing about the serigraphs, aside from being limited edition and hand signed, is that each one of them is unique in color composition. Back to the story at hand. After waking up and feeling like creating something, Miller is 'attacked' by a muse. He calls it dictation, a process where words and sentences come to him so fast he has a hard time keeping up and writing it down. This lasts for many hours during which he attempts to take a break, goes out, and eats something. But the dictation continues, he writes on the tablecloth, goes home, and it still continues. By the time it is over with, he is tired and worn out. Then, seeing a pamphlet with paintings by inmates in an insane-asylum, he realizes that this whole time he really wanted to create a painting. "I'm very eager to start in. Just the same, I'm at loss for ideas. The dictation has ceased. I have a half mind to copy one of these illustrations. But then I'm a little ashamed of myself—to copy the work of a lunatic is the worst form of plagiarism." And so he begins, with a horse of all things. Not having any picture of a horse, he draws from memory. Here, he shows his playful nature: "To put meat on the hoof is a delicate task, extremely delicate. And to make the legs join the body naturally, not as if they were stuck on with glue. My horse already has five legs: the easiest thing to do is to transform one of them into a phallus erectus. No sooner said than done. And how he is standing just like a terra cotta figure of the sixth century B.C. The tail isn't in yet, but I've left an opening just above the asshole."and in the next paragraph: "During the leg experiments the stomach has become dilapidated. I patch it as best I can—until it looks like a hammock. Let it go at that. If it doesn't look like a horse when I'm through I can always turn it into a hammock."and one paragraph later: "At this point, I admit frankly, I am completely disgusted with my prowess. I have a mind to erase and begin all over again. But I detest the eraser. I would rather convert the horse into a dynamo or a grand piano than erase my work completely."The more he works at it, the worse it becomes. Here he says: "However, when I get into a predicament of this sort I know that I can extricate myself later when it comes time to apply the color. The drawing is simply the excuse for color. The color is the toccata: drawing belongs to the realm of idea."He continues with the drawing, making it more and more elaborate, throwing things in there that have no place in the original idea. A bridge, a man, trees, houses, a mountain..."What's a mountain? It's a pile of dirt which never wears away, at least, not in historical time. A mountain's too easy. I want a volcano I want a reason for my horse to be snorting and prancing. Logic, logic! "Le fou montre un souci constant de logique!" (Les Frances aussi.) Well, I'm not a fou, especially a French fou I can take a few liberties, particularly with the work of an imbecile."Thus he starts on the volcano. "When I'm all through, I have a shirt on my hands. A shirt, precisely!"..."One thing, however, stands out unmistakably, clear and clean, and that is the bridge. It's strange, but if you can draw an arch the rest of the bridge follows naturally. Only an engineer can ruin a bridge."This last line is rather important. It is subtle, but it points to a larger issue Miller seemed to have, and that is the issue with progress, advancement, especially the modern way of things changing fast while destroying old habits, familiar places, picturesque views. This is why I think he loved France and Greece so much, but disliked America. The old world held onto the old, the familiar. The new world kept building and rebuilding. No attachment. Here he inserts an angel above his horse. "It's a sad angel with a fallen stomach, and the wings are supported by umbrella ribs."Inspiration for this is explained here: "Have you ever sat at a railway station and watched people killing time? Do they not sit a little like crestfallen angels—with their broken arches and their fallen stomachs? Those eternal few minutes in which they are condemned to be alone with themselves—does it not put umbrella ribs in their wings?All angels in religious art are false. If you want to see angels you must go to the Grand Central Depot, or to the Gare St. Lazare. Especially the Gare St.Lazare—Salle des Pas Perdus." The piece eventually evolves into something entirely different than Miller's original intention. And so does the story. It is no longer about painting, about horses, or about anything that might be on the canvas (and there were many, many things taking appearance only to be transformed or covered entirely). It is now about Miller, about humanity, about angels. "My whole life seems to be wrapped up in that dirty handkerchief, the Bowery, which I walked through day after day, year in and year out—a dose of smallpox whose scars never disappear. If I had a name then it was Cimex Lectularius. If I had a home it was a slide trombone. If I had a passion, it was to wash myself clean."After ruining the painting, he decides to wash it in a sink, scrub it, and lay it on his desk. Here the story takes a completely different turn and Miller shines in his surreal monologue for three pages. In the end, this is as much about the painting as it is about Miller himself. It is a story of imbalance, of internal struggle; and as such it is beautiful.The Tailor Shop is the fifth chapter, and here we are offered a glimpse into his early adult years. At first, Miller sets the scene: His father's tailor shop, grumpy customers, half-wit brother, and his mother who does not have a clue. He spends a quite a bit of time on his father's customers, often using them not only for background, but also to express his disagreement with advancement. I really liked this simple description: "Of the three brothers I liked Albert the best. He had arrived at that ripe age when the bones become as brittle as glass. His spine had the natural curvature of old age, as though he were preparing to fold up and return to the womb."He was writing Black Spring in France, and his disdain with America was already apparent: "Yes, all the silk-lined duffers I knew well—we had the best families in America on our roster. And what a pus and filth when they opened their dirty traps!"His sentiment about the changes in society, his surroundings, and the world in general are pretty clear here: "As the old 'uns died off they were replaced by young blood. Young blood! That was the war cry all along the Avenue, wherever there were silk-lined suits for sale. A fine bloody crew they were, the young bloods. Gamblers, racetrack touts, stockbrokers, ham actors, prize fighters, etc. Rich one day, poor the next. No honor, no loyalty, no sense of responsibility. A fine bunch of gangrened syphilics they were, most of 'em. Came back from Paris or Monte Carlo with dirty postcards and a string of big blue rocks in their groin. Some of them with balls as big as a lamb's fry."Miller is clearly showing affection for the less fortunate, as he has done in most of his books. While he thrashes the rich and powerful, he embraces the everyday men."The men my father loved were weak and lovable. They went out, each and every one of them, like brilliant stars before the sun. They went out quietly and catastrophically. No shred of them remained—nothing but the memory of their blaze and glory. They flow inside me now like a vast river choked with falling stars. They form the black flowing river which keeps the axis of my world in constant revolution. Out of this black, endless, ever-expanding girdle of nigh springs the continuous morning which is wasted in creation. Each morning the river overflows its banks, leaving the sleeves and buttonholes and all the rinds of a dead universe strewn along the beach where I stand contemplating the ocean of the morning of creation." And his surreal imagery pours forth as the story goes on, once again changing the course from its beginning to the larger issues Miller sees with the world: "It's staggeringly beautiful at this hour when every one seems to be going his own private way. Love and murder, they're still a few hours apart. Love and murder, I feel it coming with the dusk: new babies coming out of the womb, soft, pink flesh to get tangled up in barbed wire and scream all night long and rot like dead bone a thousand miles from nowhere. Crazy virgins with ice-cold jazz in their veins egging men on to erect new buildings and men with dog collars around their necks wading through the muck up to the eyes so that the czar of electricity will rule the waves. What's in the seed scares the living piss out of me: a brand new world is coming out of the egg and no matter how fast I write the old world doesn't die fast enough. I hear the new machine guns and the millions of bones splintered at once; I see dogs running mad and pigeons dropping with letters tied to their ankles." In France, Miller found his peace. He found understanding, and a society that he could embrace. His tormented view of self in America has finally cleared, and he truly enjoyed life. His writing here is much more calm, much more picturesque. In France he found pleasure in observing its people, their habits, their ways. Whereas here he saw himself as an individual, in America he saw himself as part of a machine, a machine he had no desire to be a part of. "Swimming in the crowd, a digit with the rest. Tailored and re-tailored. The lights are twinkling—on and off, on and off. Sometimes it's a rubber tire, sometimes it's a piece of chewing gum. The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we are passing one another without a look of recognition. The lights jigging like electric needles. The atoms going crazy with light and heat. A conflagration going on behind the glass and nothing burns away. Men breaking their backs, men bursting their brains, to invent a machine which a child will manipulate. If I could only find the hypothetical child who's to run this machine I'd put a hammer in its hands and say: Smash it! Smash it!"Jabberwhorl Cronstadt the sixth chapter is a rather eccentric, imagery-rich piece with very surreal settings. Since most of the story itself is comprised of a dialogue, it is impossible to quote a single paragraph without taking it out of context. This piece, nevertheless, is thought-provoking in its own way. Jabberwhorl is an eccentric artist, or perhaps he only serves as a metaphor for one of Miller's alter egos. In the end, he is laid to rest, which could also mean Miller's own departure from one period of his life into another. Part Two Follows:
A Miller’s TaleIf "Tropic of Cancer" was Henry Miller’s debut album, an outspoken work of radical sexual and philosophical self-revelation, then "Black Spring" is a lesser, sophomore work that is a shadow of the debut.Though it is still a worthy effort, it is a lesser work in many ways. It is shorter, it isn’t one continuous work that flows inexorably from beginning to end. It is more or less 10 semi-autobiographical works, each with its own chapter title, much like a collection of essays. Indeed, some of the chapters were individually submitted for publication in magazines.Sexuality is only one subject matter out of many. Paris is only one setting. Miller’s hometown of Brooklyn is equally, if not more, important.There is a greater concern with Henry Miller the person, the individual, rather than Henry Miller, the lover, the fucquer.Ironically, the novel is dedicated to Anais Nin, his lover, who helped fund its publication. Perhaps both were trying to prove to the world that he was a serious writer who could write about more than sex, at least from a masculine point of view.European What NotMiller’s tale commences in Brooklyn. He describes himself as a patriot of the Fourteenth Ward, now known as Williamsburg. His father was for a period a tailor in the vicinity of Fifth Avenue and 30th Street, Manhattan (near the former Hotel Wolcott).His family came from Germany ("Hurrah for the German Fifth!"). He describes "the freaks who made up the living family tree". He identifies not only with his family background, but its German and European origins. In both "Tropic of Cancer" and "Black Spring", he refers to Goethe."I am a man of the old world, a seed that was transplanted by the wind, a seed which failed to blossom in the mushroom oasis of America. I belong on the heavy tree of the past. My allegiance, physical and spiritual, is with the men of Europe, those who were once Franks, Gauls, Vikings, Huns, Tatars, what not."Miller derives his ambition from European roots:"Once I thought there were marvelous things in store for me...I was part of the great tree, part of the past, with crest and lineage, with pride, pride...Always merry and bright!"In the StreetMiller prides himself on the toughness he learned in the streets of Brooklyn. The street is where you find truth. The street is authentic and real:"What is not in the street is false, derived, that is to say, literature."It’s the sensibility of the street that he brings to his fiction, that and the street-wise cynicism of the street-walker. He doesn’t imagine himself writing from a gentleman’s study, but from a poverty-stricken artist’s garret.Once in the street, you are part of the world, and you could be anywhere.A Walk, A Dream, A ReverieMiller claims, "I am not a traveler, not an adventurer," but he is a walker, and his walking takes him first from childhood to youth and then to adulthood, but eventually to Paris, all the time seeking out something, himself.He sees youth as whole and undivided. "There was no sharp separation between joy and sorrow: they fused into one, as our waking life fuses with dream and sleep." Then comes "the great fragmentation of maturity. The great change": "...All things, as we walk, splitting with us into a myriad iridescent fragments…We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets – we remember only. Like a monomaniac we relive the drama of youth."Miller explored these Proustian concerns in "Tropic of Cancer" as well. Here, he adds:"One passes imperceptibly from one scene, one age, one life to another. Suddenly, walking down a street, be it real or be it a dream, one realises for the first time that the years have flown, that all this has passed forever and will live on only in memory; and then the memory turns inward with a strange, clutching brilliance and one goes over these scenes and incidents perpetually, in dream and reverie, while walking a street, while lying with a woman, while reading a book, while talking to a stranger..."Miller wants to reinstate his wholeness (though not necessarily his wholesomeness), and he will wander everywhere, walk anywhere in his quest for wholeness.In Search of His RootsIf you’ll permit me to descend into the Australian vernacular, Miller didn’t just return to Europe in pursuit of sexual conquests, he was seeking an alternative to the industrial and materialistic life he found in America:"Things happened to me in my search for a way out. Up till now I had been working away in a blind tunnel, burrowing in the bowels of the earth for light and water. I could not believe, being a man of the American continent, that there was a place on earth where a man could be himself."Europe was to be that place, well, at least Paris.I assume that Berlin and Vienna were less appealing in the early Thirties, because of the contemporaneous ascent of Nazism, though Miller imagines Germany in the following terms in a dream:"Everything is sordid, shoddy, thin as pasteboard. A Coney Island of the mind...Everything is sliding and crumbling, everything glitters, totters, teeters, titters."Paris gives Miller the freedom to think and to write, notwithstanding his abject poverty, having resolved not to get a job:"Here I am in the womb of time and nothing will jolt me out of my stillness. One more wanderer who has found the flame of his restlessness. Here I sit in the open street composing my song."Despite his romanticisation of Europe, he realises that it, too, is changing:"The map of Europe is changing before our eyes; nobody knows where the new continent begins or ends...I am here in the midst of a great change. I have forgotten my own language and yet I do not speak the new language."The Great Wall of ChinaMiller hopes that a new world will emerge from these changes and his own explorations.He describes this brave new world as "China", not necessarily the nation "China", but a metaphorical place, like the “East” that Hermann Hesse adverts to.The metaphor seems to derive from his sense of a wall:"In Paris, out of Paris, leaving Paris or coming back to Paris, it's always Paris and Paris is France and France is China. All that which is incomprehensible to me runs like a great wall over the hills and valleys through which I wander. Within this great wall I can live out my Chinese life in peace and security..."By force of circumstance. I became a Chinaman - a Chinaman in my own country! I took to the opium of dream in order to face the hideousness of a life in which I had no part. As quietly and naturally as a twig falling into the Mississippi I dropped out of the stream of American life."The Song of LoveMiller sings his song while the world around him is collapsing:"I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots... "I am dazzled by the glorious collapse of the world!"Ironically, it’s within this context of destruction that he will learn to write:"The climate for my body and soul is here where there is quickness and corruption. I am proud not to belong to this century."In essence, what he wishes to write about is not the world around him, not its history, not its politics, not its ideological future:"Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world…but tonight I would like to think of one man, a lone individual, a man without a name or country, a man whom I respect because he has absolutely nothing in common with you - MYSELF. Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am."As does Walt Whitman, "I celebrate myself, and sing myself".Miller refers to a God, though it’s arguable that it’s not the God of Christianity:"It is no sacred heart that inspires me, no Christ I am thinking of. Something better than a Christ, something bigger than a heart, something beyond God Almighty I think of - MYSELF. I am a man. That seems to me sufficient."So above all else it is himself with whom Miller is in love, and he is both the subject and the object of his Song of Love.This Animal, This Man is Some BodyMiller’s song is his book:"For me the book is the man and my book is the man I am…I am a man without a past and without a future. I am - that is all."Miller is content to "be". In the language of Erich Fromm, he doesn’t need to "have", to acquire and horde materialistic possessions.At the heart of what Miller’s Man is, is the body:"In the honeycomb I am, in the warm belly of the Sphinx. The sky and the earth they tremble with the live, pleasant weight of humanity. At the very core is the body. Beyond is doubt, despair, disillusionment. The body is the fundament, the imperishable."Of course, in the mind of a male, the body takes his own shape:"I am a man of God and a man of the Devil. To each his due. Nothing eternal, nothing absolute. Before me always the image of the body, our triune god of penis and testicles."Womanhood must be described in the same terms, if for no other reason than authenticity:"I want a world where the vagina is represented by a crude, honest slit, a world that has feeling for bone and contour, for raw primary colours, a world that has fear and respect for its animal origins."Who’s This Man?One last comment about the man before we talk about sex. This is the essence of Miller as he sees himself:"Because of Uranus which crosses my longitudinal I am inordinately fond of qunt, hot chitterlings, and water bottles...I am volatile, quixotic, unreliable, independent, and evanescent. Also quarrelsome...in short, I am an idle fellow who pisses his time away. I have absolutely nothing to show for my labors except my genius..."An Inordinate FondnessThere is much more about Miller’s inordinate fondness in "Tropic of Cancer" than there is in "Black Spring".However, there are two scenes that are examples of what Kate Millett criticizes in "Sexual Politics".In my review of "Tropic of Cancer", I mentioned his "sexual exuberance".On page 96, Miller’s protagonist goes to the home of a recent widow with whose beauty he is infatuated.They are sitting next to each other on the couch, when, after some formalities and sobbing…"I finally bent over and without saying a word I raised her dress and slipped it into her...she was a pushover...I thought to myself what a sap you’ve been to wait for so long."On page 123, on a train during rush hour, he is "pressed up against a woman so tight I can feel the hair on her twat. So tightly glued together my knuckles are making a dent in her groin."Millett refers to the pushover comment in terms of Miller’s and men’s belief that "such opportunities are missed only for the lack of enterprise or through adherence to false ideals."Men are supposed to have absolute licence, and women are supposed to be perpetually available for sex. In other words, all women are supposed to be as available as whores, except that they should expect no payment or consideration.Millett makes no comment on the second scene. However, it contains within it a more explicit threat of sexual violence.The protagonist alights at the same stop as the woman, then follows her up to street level, until he decides that she is not interested in sex and he ends his pursuit.Later that night, he considers that he "ought to go back to the subway, grab a Jane and rape her in the street".To the extent that this scene captures what goes on in the mind of a stranger, it is a caution to all women.While Millett is highly critical of some of Miller’s sexual descriptions, she does preface her comments as follows:"Miller is a compendium of American sexual neuroses, and his value lies not in freeing us from such afflictions, but in having had the honesty to express and dramatise them…What Miller did articulate was the disgust, the contempt, the hostility, the violence, and the sense of filth with which our culture, or more specifically, its masculine sensibility, surrounds sexuality. And women too; for somehow it is women upon whom this onerous burden of sexuality falls."While Millett wrote these words in 1969 and I think there is much of literary merit in Miller’s writing, I don’t think Millett’s views should be dismissed, even though it’s over forty years later."Tropic of Cancer"My review of the first volume in the trilogy, "Tropic of Cancer", is here:http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
What do You think about Black Spring (1994)?
This one sucked me in the way Miller's books always do. It's hard to wrap your brain around what he's doing, but once you dive in and let go of what you think a novel ought to be, you just can't get enough.I do get tired of the racial and ethnic slurs, but I guess that's part of his honesty. Still, some of it's pretty shocking by today's standards. And after a while, it's just annoying; we get it, man.There's a great Web site, millerwalks.com, that is an excellent guide to Miller's years in Paris. It shows you where to go in Paris to see the places he lived, hung out in, and wrote about. Seeing pictures of the cafes and apartments really helps flesh things out. Plus it shows just how meticulous he was about putting in real details of his life.
—Greg
What is not in the street is false, derived, that is to say, literatureUnited States doesn't exist for me, except as idea, or history, or literatureTo be born in the street means to wander all your life, to be freeOne passes imperceptibly from one scene, one age, one life to anotherAll things melt into music and sorrowWe walk against a united world, asserting our dividednessThe plasm of the dream is the pain of separationThe dream lives on after the body is buriedEverything new and old, or touched and forgotten, is a fire and mesmerismI am thinking of that age to come when God is born again, when men will fight and kill for GodMy own death [is] a step in advance of me alwaysIf I become unintelligible I would be understood immediatelyBlack death came with the return of CrusadersSyphilis came with the return of ColumbusReality will come too!There was never any time when I was living one lifeWhenever I was, whatever I was engaged in, I was leading multiple livesI, a complete corporate entity, a universe bringing countless centuries to a conclusion[Riding bicycle.] This is better than reading VergilI am a man on a machine and the machine is in controlEvery Middle Age is good, whether in man or historyHappiness, relative or absolute, is out of the questionMelville, Rimbaud, Gauguin, Jack London, Henry James, D. H. Lawrence thousands of themNone of them found happinessRimbaud found cancer. Gauguin found syphilis. Lawrence found the white plagueWhat fascinated the men of the eighteenth century was the vision of the endThey had enoughThey wanted to retrace their steps, climb back into the womb againAll my good reading, you might say, was done in the toiletI am in the hands of unseen powersI put the typewriter away and I commence to record what is being dictated to meIs there anything more pretentious than the "Mona Lisa" Everything that has form has invisible substanceMichelangelo sought it all his life-in marble, in verse, in love, in architecture, in crime, in GodThe world of real and counterfeit is behind usOut of the tangible we invented the intangibleI have never been able to draw a balanceI am always minus somethingIn the living equation the sign for myself is infinityTo get nowhere you must traverse every known universeYou must be everywhere in order to be nowhereTo go mad you must have a terrific accumulation of sanitiesAll the beautiful diseases of boredom and riches[God is] an infinite sphere, the center of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere - St. AugustineIf you're great you can stay that way and people will believe in youBut if you're only partly great, or just a nobody, then what happens to you is lostMy whole life is stretching out in an unbroken morningI write from scratch each day. Each day a new world is created, separate and complete It's staggeringly beautiful at this hour when every one seems to be going his own private wayLove and murder, they're still a few hours apartLove and murder, I feel it coming with the duskThe world is made of new parts every afternoonEverybody's on the watch. Things are happening all aboutThe stain of waiting for something to happen is deliriousLife is already unbearable because there is no lifeThat's the way it was in the pastThat's the way it will be in the futureThe present?There's no such thing as the presentThere's a word called Time, but nobody is able to define itThere's a past and there's a future, and Time runs through it like an electric currentThe present is an imaginary condition, a dream state an oxymoron
—Farhan Khalid
Henry in fine spirits, Black Spring is a collection of works seeded together and wrapped up in Miller's later years, the final novel in the Tropics series. Very close in some parts to Lawrence Durrell's The Black Book, which I am to think influenced Miller, as there are some aspects that are too glucose for Henry's regular style. I just let Millers timeless rants flood me, not worrying too much if my mind wandered, I'd always return back to some part which managed to pull me in deep within the bowels of Henry's mirth at a downcast and sodden world, a world which for all its diseases is eternally Spring. Some great moments including Henry's observations on French urinals and the art of peeing, the poet Jabberwhorl Cronstadt seeing everything and literally including the kitchen sink as poetry, erections whilst listening to Wagner, but as usual I find some of Henry's self reflecting rants as tiresome as my own. Henry Miller has a habit of really pushing the point of who he is under certain phases of mood and perspective, and he labors the point, but Henry gets so caught up in all this, he has to and wants to do it, I imagine less for the sake of the reader but more for the sake of himself.
—Rupert Owen
