Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers Chapter 7 – 8: ‘Go Down, Matthew’ and ‘The Possessed’ p. 132 – 180 and Conclusions/book as a whole

Nora and Matthew play a round-Robin game of “whatsitallabout?” Exhausted by the endless lesbian drama, the doctor performs drunk for the café crowd. In the end, Robin lies down with the dogs.

Matthew & Nora have it all out again- their neuroses & in raging & ranting,having their hearts unburdened- find some semblance of catharsis. Go Down Matthew has the ring of Go Down Moses to it- wonder if Matthew is standing up for all the oppressed & marginalised ones here!
Matthew reveals himself in these lines:

"Look here,' said the doctor. 'Do you know what has made me the greatest liar this side of the moon, telling my stories to people like you, to take the mortal agony out of their guts, and to stop them from rolling about, and drawing up their feet, and screaming, with their eyes staring over their knuckles with misery which they are trying to keep off, saying, "Say something, doctor, for the love of God!" And me talking away like mad. Well that, and nothing else, has made me the liar I am."

Nora finally realises: "I thought I loved her for her sake, and I found it was for my own" & decides "I will do something that she will never be able to forgive, then we can begin again as strangers."

Yet its not she,rather Robin, who does something perhaps unforgivable in the final scene in the church ( what an appropriate place! Recalls Matthew's masturbation in the church scene earlier). Robin had started 'circling' around Nora's house in a dog-like way,it only forshadowed what to many turned out to be a scene out of the blue- a strange scene in a strange place but the writer had prepared the readers for this from the very first appearance of Robin.

But the question is- can they begin again as strangers?

Looks like I'm talking to myself here! A couple of BP members have already read Nightwood (do I have to name them?). They may not remember the details but as this is the concluding week of 'discussions', they could,out of respect for the writer & the book,share their overall impression of Nightwood & give it a respectable send off,no?

Sharing some stuff from my notes to fill up the deafening silence: From the Guardian article 'Creatures of the dark' By Jeanette Winterson.

"Nightwood has neither stereotypes nor caricatures; there is a truth to these damaged hearts that moves us beyond the negative. Humans suffer and, gay or straight, they break themselves into pieces, blur themselves with drink and drugs, choose the wrong lover, crucify themselves on their own longings and, let's not forget, are crucified by a world that fears the stranger - whether in life or in love.

In Nightwood, they are all strangers, and they speak to those of us who are always, or just sometimes, the stranger; or to the ones who open the door to find the stranger standing outside. And yet, there is great dignity in Nora's love for Robin, written without cliche or compromise in the full-blown, archetypal language of romance. We are left in no doubt that this love is worthy of greatness - that it is great. As the doctor, Matthew O'Connor remarks: "Nora will leave that girl some day; but though those two are buried at the opposite ends of the earth, one dog will find them both."

"Grave" would have been a cliche; "dog" is a snapping stroke of genius.

Peculiar, eccentric, particular, shaded against the insistence of too much daylight, Nightwood is a book for introverts, in that we are all introverts in our after-hours secrets and deepest loves. Our world, this one now, wants everything on the outside, displayed and confessed, but really it cannot be so. The private dialogue of reading is an old-fashioned confessional, and better for it. What you admit here, what the book admits to you, is between you both and left there. Nightwood is a place where much can be said - and left unsaid.

There is pain in who we are, and the pain of love - because love itself is an opening and a wound - is a pain no one escapes except by escaping life itself. Nightwood is not an escape-text. It writes into the centre of human anguish, unrelieved, but in its dignity and its defiance, it becomes by strange alchemy its own salve. "Is there such extraordinary need of misery to make beauty?" asks the doctor, but the answer is already written: yes."

I kept thinking of the doctor as being the psychic nurse for the various lesbians-in-crisis. "All the world's a hospital, and you're either a patient or a nurse." His drunken diatribe in the bar is some amazing writing. Several times I thought "I wish Djuna Barnes had written 'Omensetter's Luck'. She could have done the Rev. Jethro Farber right!"

Think abt it! Poor fellow,having to listen to these neurotic women when in reality he deserved the much-needed TLC.
Planning to watch Mephisto tonite.
How abt a thread for movie rec from BP members?
My rec right now is Under the Volcano- yes,the movie version of the book. Albert Finney was dynamite in it!

Fairly late to the party here.....

However, I finished this on a binge and can say that it left me in quite a state. Such a state i have to find old hangouts to express those feelings apparently... Sad in some ways for the Dr. The final drunken monologue is both brilliant and wrenching The final scene with Robin is almost--, no wait, entirely ecstatic, and appropriate it is in a church.

The book makes me think of my own outsider status, not necessarily in terms of sexuailty, but in terms of reality itself.

I have memories of wandering (quite literally) in the night as both a youth and an adult (perhaps inebriated, or just merely looking for shelter) and a lot of the Doctor's philosophizing rings quite true.

There are dualities in aplenty in the text but the Dr. (Barnes?) does his best to show us those dualities are merely one's mirror of the other and vice versa.

The impact of this slim volume, and indeed why it took so long to read might be entirely its emotional heft, its fairly accurate portrait of the universal feelings of failure and loss in merely being able to be with other people in a functional way... causes this one reader in an almost drunken state after binging half the novel in a few hours.

Matthew wrote: "Fairly late to the party here.....

However, I finished this on a binge and can say that it left me in quite a state. Such a state i have to find old hangouts to express those feelings apparently....."

It's been a long while since we read this, but I agree very much with your comments. I remember thinking, "wow! Djuna Barnes is amazing!" she really goes deep...