PROPERTIUS: If you read from end to end of the Greek Anthology, you won’t find a love poem where the character of individuality of the woman who’s loved matters.
(Goddamn sluts: if only the cunts were unattached; I like them but they’re all crazy. They’ve got emotions. I like the one I slept with last night. She moans hard when I stick my cock in her. Does she have any idea what I think? I know I’m a macho pig why the hell shouldn’t I be why should I be something I’m not I care about Writing. Their emotions and hysterics are all second-class existents.)
My woman is the black hole of vulnerability and takes everything from me and Not Human. She can take me wherever she wants me. I have to care for someone.
Women, I’ll use everything I can get: I’ll trample on your passions needs even if they cause you to die, I’ll be as elephant-like as I can, and so the ugly is left as ugly and consciousness’ unavoidable anguish is as it is in me. I am wide enough to let be.
My writing will cure you of your suffering. Give me five bucks, I come even cheaper I’m cheap, I’ll tell you how to win the love of a person who doesn’t love you. I’ll tell you how to endure your rending when the girl you love spits in your face and fucks another man right in front of you.
AUGUSTUS (through the lips of his literary counselor Maecenas): You’re not a poet, slime, because all your poems are about is emotion. A man who pays attention to emotions isn’t a real man. We have the world to take care of: we have to make sure people have more than necessary access to food; we have to watch the greedy hawks who get into power and rape.
We are the teachers. If we teach these champagne emotions are worth noticing, we’re destroying the social bonds people need to live.
PROPERTIUS: If my writing is going against social bonds, that’s who I am. Shove your Empire and shove society.
MAECENAS: You’re only dealing with your little obsession.
PROPERTIUS: You too, Maecenas, one day, are going to have to realize you’re not rational and then in your desperation, ignorant, you’ll turn to my words
Propertius runs away because he doesn’t like making his privacy public. Public is an image a rigidity, and only as such is fun. He points to a mass of art-world figures, from his shadows, as they’re entering a salon resplendent with gilding and illuminations, on in which they’re instantly being welcomed by the most beautiful Roman bodies.
One of them has just revealed original talent and with this first portrait of his shows himself the equal of his teacher. A sculptor’s chatting with one of those clever satirists who refuse to recognize merit and think they’re smarter than anyone else. The people talk either about how they earn money or who’s becoming more famous. All are grasping for good reason in these desperate times. Since the only ideas are for sale, none are mentioned. A few women appear to maintain the surface that sex is still possible. Eyes never see the mouths the faces are talking to.
Well you can say I write stories about sex and violence, with sex and violence, and therefore my writing isn’t worth considering because it uses content much less lots of content and all the middle-ranged people who are moralists say I’m a disgusting violent sadist, Well I tell you this:
“Prickly race, who know nothing except how to eat out your own hearts with envy, you can’t eat cunt, writing isn’t a viable phenomenon anymore. Everything has been said. These lines aren’t my writing: Philetas’ DEMETER far outweighs his long old woman, and of the two it’s his little pieces of shit I applaud. May the crane-who-delights-in-the-Pygmies’-blood’s flight from Egypt to Thrace be so long, like me in your arms, endless endless grayness, may the death shots the Massagetae’re directing against a Mede be so far: what is here: desire violence will never stop. Go die off, oh destructive race of the Evil Eye, or learn to judge poetic skill by art: art is the elaboratings of violence. Don’t look to me to want to do anything about the world: I’m out of it.”
“But if there hadn’t been between you two the dark streets, the risks, and the old man you had just abandoned, in short had there been no danger, would you have hurried so eagerly?”