Orgasmic Toast

Critical Introduction

Like the poems "Cosmic Arithmetic", "Matter Level Perspective", and "Purgatory Lilt/Statements by Circumstanced Me""Orgasmic Toast" draws a parallel between religious, scientific, and sexual images. The "warlock" implies a god-like figure who makes man "in rapt clay," in his likeness (with his "mien"). The protagonist is a like a Greek god, sitting above with a "chalice" in hand, but he is also the source of science with the bottom of his uplifted chalice becoming an "omnipulsespun cristaline disc" or the sun. Here the Baroness employs the mathematical components she has also introduced in "Cosmic Arithmetic", which correspond to the two kinds of trinities: the father, the son, and the Holy Ghost and Sex, Potency, and the Holy Ghost. This transition seems to come from the reference to the "sun"--a link which is made in the Sixth version where she plays with "son's orgasm" and "sun's orgasm." In "Orgasmic Toast," she also uses the snake metaphor which she draws in "Sermon on Life's Beggar Truth", "sounds out" in "A Dozen Cocktails Please", and which also appears in a fragment on the verso of a version of "Christ - Don Quixote - St. George". In a letter to Barnes, she explains at length that the snake represents her unwanted desire to commit suicide, a desire she calls "unnatural" versus her "natural" state as "artist." She likens being an "artist" with "life" (being alive) and the snake with the "spectre" of death. With the snake, she draws on themes of inheritance that she has employed in "Ancestry" that are linked to her misgivings about her return to Germany, which she discusses in "Purgatory Lilt/Statements of Circumstanced Me". Ultimately, she believes that Germany stultifies her, giving her a "spiritual cancer of womb" that halts her ability to write, to produce "mind children." In this way, the Baroness ties the institutional factions (religion) and familial ties (her mother, who was given syphyllis by her father) to the "serpentine current" ("A Dozen Cocktails Please") that "pricks" ("Ancestry") her and gives her this cancer. Germany is therefore representative of the social and (necessarily) gendered restrictions that the Baroness believed hindered her success as a "popular writer" (see discussion of "Ancestry").

I AGE HERE! NOT BY MYSELF - BUT BY GERMANY'S CLAMMY SENSELOST SENILE EMBRACE! I AM NOT MYSELF AT PRESENT-! I AM INSANE FROM GERMANY - AS MY MOTERH WS FROM "HOME". SHE TRIED TO ESCAPE - AND DID - IN SOME WAY! THEN RETURNED - FOR HER DEATH! SHOULD THIS BE - MY RETURN? BUT - MY BODY IS UNHARMED - IT SHOULD ONLY BE SUICIDE - DJUNA - DJUNA - THAT SPECTRE - THING NEVER TO BE THOUGHT OF - IN PARALLEL WITH ME -! IS SITTING - HOVERING SOMETIMES HIDDEN - THAN [sic] I FEEL TRIUMPHANT: IT IS GONE - I AM SAFE NOW - I WILL BE SAFER - THIS IS START TO CHANGE - ENTIRE CHANGE WILL COME - SOON - SOON - IT IS CONSTANT COMPANION - HERE! IT IS PLUCKING ON MY NERVE STRINGSCONSTANTLY - LITTLE BY LITTLE MY HEART - NERVE - CONFIDENCE TO PIECES! IT IS UNDIGNIFIED - DISGRACEFUL - AS MUST BE - ACCORDING MY SITUATION! IT IS NOT I - THAT IS I - THAT IS SO - BUT MY PLACEEXISTENCE -! THAT I ALONE NEVER CAN RAISE TO NECESSARY DIGNITY -: ARTIST - LIFE - MOVEMENT - EXCEPT THIS WAY - : TO IMPLORE PEOPLE LIKE YOU - TO SAFE ME - IF POSSIBLE - AND - YOU ARE - THE ONLY ONE BUT ALSO - YOU ARE CAPABLE - AND STRONG IN YOUR CONVICTION - DJUNA - BECAUSE - IT IS SO UNEXPECTED- AND IT IS THERE - THERE THERE IT IS - SOMETIMES AS ONLY ULTIMATE CONCLUSION - THIS STRANGE - TERRIBLE UNNATURAL THING-! FOR ME - UNNATURAL!! IS SPECTRE - IS TERRIFYING! IT DESTROYS MY SENSE - SNARES MY INITIATIVE - MY CONFIDENCE - AS SERPENT EYE VICTIM! MY HEART IS ABODE OF THIS SNAKE - THEY STARE AT EACH OTHER - ALWAYS - EVEN THOUGH THROUGH HOURS - I AM NOT AWARE OF IT - BUT SUBCONSCIOUSLY I AM! I HARBOR IT - I CARRY IT AROUND - DJUNA - LIKE EMBRYO IN WOMB - AND AS SUCH IT GROWS! IT GROWS BY LAW OF NATURAL NECESSITY - THROUGH AIR I AM IN - IF I AM NOT OPERATED! IT WILL SWALLOW ME- IT WILL - AT END! WHEN!? DJUNA - IS THIS - MY CANCER! DJUNA - HAVE I SPIRITUAL CANCER OF WOMB - BECAUSE I AM ARTIST ONLY HAD MIND CHILDREN - AS MY MOTHER PERISHED FROM PHYSICAL DISEASE - IS - SUICIDE - HENCE - MY NATURAL CONCLUSION - OR -INSANITY-? WICH IS IDENTICAL - ONLY: ONE WAITED TOO LONG - THE FIRST IS MORE DECENT. YOU SEE - YOU SEE - THIS VERY TERRIBLE LOGICAL SPECULATION - OCCURRED TO ME JUST NOW - BY WRITING - I CAN ONLY THINK WRITING - (UMD 2.38).