Winter, Week 4: Frozen Pebbles

​Cynthia Reeves, “Untitled,” 1970s

iv
record lows
earth fills its pockets
with frozen pebbles

cold days, colder nights
who can explain
suffering to a stone?

How simply the feelings flow this afternoon
Over the simplest words:
It is too cold for work, now, in the fields.
—Wallace Stevens

​Casting the First Stone

“In a fascinating interview with Michel Treguer …, [René] Girard elucidates how Jesus deals with the murderous mob, as related in the Gospel of John, that wishes to stone the adulterous woman. Jesus, he suggests, bends down and writes in the dirt to avoid setting off the angry crowd by looking directly in their eyes and thus provoking them. Then, by asking who will throw the first stone, he makes clear how different it is to initiate a violent act than to imitate it. He is challenging the individuals in the mob to self-examination. Christianity, Girard argues, defends victims by taking aim at the ‘automatism’ of violent mimetic desire and contagion. It proclaims truth amid a plethora of lies.”—Daniel J. Mahoney, “Mimetic Musings,” review of René Girard, All Desire Is a Desire for Being,” New Criterion, Sept 2024, 61

Winter of 1915-1916 in Vienna
 
“In the winter of 1915-16, the effects of the war could be felt in everyday life. The time of the enthusiastically singing recruits in Prinzenallee was gone. When small groups of them now trudged past us on our way home from school, they didn’t look at us as cheerful as before. They still sang ‘In the homeland, in the homeland we’ll meet again!’, but home didn’t seem so close to them. They were no longer so certain that they’d be coming back. They sang ‘I had a comrade,’ but as though they themselves were the fallen comrade they sang about.…
     Once, walking along the Schüttel, we came near the railroad bridge that spanned the Danube Canal. A train was standing there, it was stuffed with people. Freight cars were joined to passenger cars; they were all jammed with people staring down at us, mutely, but questioningly. ‘Those are Galician – ‘ Schiebl [his friend] said, holding back the word ‘Jews’ and replacing it with ‘refugees.’ Leopoldstadt was full of Galician Jews who had fled from the Russians. Their black kaftans, their earlocks, and their special hats made them stand out conspicuously. Now they were in Vienna, where could they go? They had to eat too, and things didn’t look so good for food in Vienna.
     I had never seen so many of them penned together in railroad cars. It was a dreadful sight because the train was standing. All the time we kept staring, it never moved from the spot. ‘Like cattle,’ I said, ‘that’s how they’re squeezed together, and there are also cattle cars.’
     ‘Well, there are so many of them,’ said Schiebl, tempering his disgust at them for my sake; he would never have uttered anything that could offend me. But I stood transfixed, and he, standing with me, felt my horror. No one waved at us, no one called, they knew how unwelcome they were and they expected no word of welcome. They were all men and a lot were old and bearded. ‘You know,’ said Schiebl, ‘our soldiers are sent to the war in such freight cars. War is war, my father says.’ Those were the only words of his father’s that he ever quoted to me, and I realized he was doing it to wrench me out of my terror. But it didn’t help, I stared and stared, and nothing happened. I wanted the train to start moving, the most horrible thing of all was that the train still stood on the bridge.”—Elias Canetti, The Tongue Set Free (FSG, 1979), 109-111

“       … the tea steam hangs
Phantom chrysanthemums on long, evaporating stems
In the air of the winter apartment.”
—Gjertrud Schnackenberg, “Kremlin of Smoke, I. The Salon,” in The Lamplit Answer (FSG, 1985), 3

Posted 12 January 2025. Send comments to [email protected]