Quote 4
Yesterday's committee,
Sticks, but a broken drum,
Midnight in the City,
Flutes in a vacuum,
Shut lips, sleeping faces,
Every stopped machine,
The dumb and littered places
Where crowds have been:…
All silences rejoice,
Weep (loudly or low),
Speak—but with the voice
Of whom, I do not know.
Absence, say, of Susan's,
Absence of Egeria's
Arms and respective bosoms,
Lips and, ah, posteriors,
Slowly form a presence;
Whose? and, I ask, of what
So absurd an essence,
That something, which is not,
Nevertheless should populate
Empty night more solidly
Than that with which we copulate,
Why should it seem so squalidly? (12.56)
It is fitting that Helmholtz's first poem has to do with solitude. This is what John likes about Shakespeare, after all—that reading it is a process of self-examination and discovery.
Quote 5
"And yet," said Helmholtz when, having recovered breath enough to apologize, he had mollified the Savage into listening to his explanations, "I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases. But fathers and mothers!" He shook his head. "You can't expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And who's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her?" (The Savage winced; but Helmholtz, who was staring pensively at the floor, saw nothing.) "No." he concluded, with a sigh, "it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?" He was silent; then, shaking his head, "I don't know," he said at last, "I don't know." (12.75)
In this passage, it seems as though Helmholtz's position is an impossible one. He wants to write about something passionate, but all the big issues (sex, lust, jealousy, family, love) are inaccessible to him. He suspects there's something else to write about—some other passion that he could understand—when in fact his society has engineered him to find all passions smutty or ridiculous.
Quote 6
"But they're… they're told by an idiot."
[…]
"…he's right," said Helmholtz gloomily. "Because it is idiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say…" (16.32-4)
Helmholtz is still focused on the content of his writing. His maxims, the feelies—all his work is essentially "told by an idiot" because it doesn't address anything real. At the same time, Helmholtz still is not capable of understanding real passion. How, then, does he expect to write anything different?