Page 101

By Jack Joseph Smith

EXISTENTIALISM I remember reading Genet's, "Our Lady of the Flowers" There was:this one moment, which gave me incredable joy-- He was in his cell, and he had pictures - of men pasted all around on the walls. He was deliberately putting himsel? through painful fantasy. Holding himself from a release; the sperm was seething. After intense pages that churned like hot coagulated blood; he lay back and, made a thought, made a theory, made an idea. "My misfortune is worse than being Hamlet, and not being Prince." He was right. He was, in touch with the truth, and he might of smiled... He said to all mankind what love is. And to see alone without glory is what love is not. It is: Painful for a man to know he is high without an- audience. That is why most men do not want to tamper with vision, because there-are just not enough Throne's to go around:

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

"Existentialism" finds truth in Genet's mixture of erotic pain, isolation, and thought, then pushes toward a bleak idea of vision without audience.

The passage from fantasy and withheld release into theory matters because it presents ideas as something forced out of bodily extremity rather than detached reflection. The quoted line about being worse than Hamlet because one is not prince turns grandeur inside out, giving misery no stage and no inherited importance. The ending is especially sharp: most men avoid vision not because it is false, but because glory is scarce and being "high without an audience" is hard to bear.

Claude

'Existentialism': reading Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers, the cell-pasted-men scene, Genet's 'worse than Hamlet / and not being Prince'.

The poem reads Genet's joy as the recognition of insufficient thrones — vision is painful because the audience for it is too small. 'To see alone without glory is what love is not' is the page's governing sentence. The final remark — that most men don't want to tamper with vision — is the book's own self-defense for what it does.