[D-G] Deleuze and Naturalism in GENET - THe Thief's Journal

[Sylvie Ruelle]

Cinema 1 note

Regarding Naturalism and Jean Genet (servility)
from THE THIEF'S JOURNAL

"Thus i offered my tenderness to the convicts; I wanted to call them by 
charming names, to designate their crimes with, for modesty's sake, the 
subtlest metaphor (beneath which veil I would not have been unaware of 
the murderer's rich muscularity, of the violence of his sexual organ)."

"The end of the penal colony prevents us from attaining with our living 
minds the mythical underground regions."

"I am aware that there is often a semblance of the burlesque in the 
colony or the prison.  On the bulky, resonant base of their wooden 
shoes, the frame of the condemned man is always somewhat shaky.  In 
front of a wheelbarrow, it suddenly breaks up stupidly.  In the 
presence of a guard they bow their heads and hold in their hands the 
big straw sun bonnet - which the younger ones decorate (I should prefer 
it so) with a stolen rose granted by the guard - or a brown homespun 
beret.  They strike poses of wretched humility.  If they are beaten, 
something within them would nevertheless stiffen: the coward, the 
sneak, cowardice, sneakiness are  - when kept in a state of the 
hardest, purest, cowardice and sneakiness - hardened by a "dousing", as 
soft iron is hardened by dousing.  They persist in servility, despite 
everything.  Though I not neglect the deformed and misshapen, it is the 
handsomest criminals whom my tenderness adorns."

Ms. Sylvie Ruelle
http://home.earthlink.net/~sylvieruelle
rw_artette_lc at yahoo.com