Study of the origins of Elayne's fake
quotes.
By G. Lawrence
"Each woman and each
man have a face" T.S. Eliot
* The choice of Eliot's name comes as an attempt to introduce a bleak-but-connected-with-1st-class
culture name. She often needed and used bland statements, truisms pronounced
by famous people.
"The main feature of
a person are the eyes" John Paul II
*An indirect quote from Kosuth. This may be a too far-fetched assumption, but
I think Elayne adapted one of the texts she saw printed on a black chair at
a show by Kabakov and Kosuth in Warsaw, in 1993.
"People move. People
change. There are many people." Craiu Nedelcu, gypsy musician
*Craiu Nedelcu might very well be a one of Elayne's real acquaintances, though
I doubt it. The choice of a gypsy musician for this role is to some degree a "politically sexy" decision. Elayne loved to be loved just like everyone else.
Th. Rosenberg, the priest that used to listen to her confessions had the bizarre
habit to break the secret of the confession on one particular matter. He would
tell anyone that wanted to listen that Elayne is a born diplomat, a person that
will, to some degree, adapt her opinions to the ones of her friends. Maybe he
did not consider this to be a sin.
"I remember quite well
my entrance into the city of Madison. Seeing people on the streets, after my
weeks of reclusion, was a feast. It was better than pork, better than sex, better
than conversation and better than literature. Just watching them on the street." Adolf Arnheim
*Adolf Arnheim is almost certainly a fictive person. I heard the exact same
story told, in first person, by John Cassati, a friend of the author of whose
appointment with the University of Wisconsin in Madison I know with certainty
(I attended his lecture).
"You tell me you have
friends? I have more friends than you have because I have spent my life in a
railway station." Ziggy
*Again, an invented name. The quote comes from a letter written by Elayne's
German lover that always signed her letters with the name of Axolotl. Elayne
herself told me she chose 'Ziggy' because she imagined the quote as coming from
some sort of a picturesque persona, one of the railway station's usual suspects.
"I like their mouths" Bettine Kowalski
*No information available on this. The only possible lead is Bettine Scharfenberger,
who later married Franz Kowalski. She pronounced these words indeed, at the
presentation of her thesis work. She was a dentist.
"Sooner or later you
have to begin to smoke. You couldn't befriend the locals if you didn't." Radu
Dercea
*One of Elayne's life-long friends. He had problems with adaptation. As long
as he lived in Romania, he had to smoke in order to be able to socialize. When
he moved to Poland (probably following Elayne) he had to start drinking to make
friends; this is the probable cause of his death.
"What is all this story
about abstract art, installations with noisy loudspeakers, still lives, and
so on, and so on? I only like portraits. And, of all - here, you see? - The
one I like the most. It's the portrait of my wife." Ivan Tantschenko
*Elayne found these phrases in one of Tantschenko's interviews (it was for some
silly magazine, surprisingly). She clapped her hands in approval and made me
copy it in her book, as a revision. I protested, considering this a plagiary,
but she insisted on it so I had no choice. For truth's sake I include it here
as a quote, with credit to its real author.
"The problem with all
these visitors was not how to photograph them but what to do with the photographs." Karl-Heinz Eimer
*'Visitors' is a sinister euphemism here. Eimer's job was to photograph the
prisoners of war. Many of them lost their lives in the camp. Yet another of
the unexplained friendships of Elayne, Eimer was detested by her entire family
for what he did during the war.
"Take my mother for
instance. She is structurally incapable of talking about "ism's". She will divert
any conversation, I mean _every_ conversation, towards something about someone
she met or we met or she remembers and I should remember or her parents met
and she never met. I must say I prefer her conversation by far to, say, Hegel's
crap." Marek Rakowski
*This is pure invention. The character Elayne is building is a composite of
several persons, mainly Jerzy Panek and Nelutu Ratiu. She chose to attribute
these words to a certain Rakowski, relative of a former Prime Minister of Poland.