"Party 1-8" from Sexual Equilibrium of Money by MID [Mita Dimitrijević] Translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Steven Teref and Maja Teref

The 1st Party

One can and dare do with money (+) what one dare not, cannot do sexually (–). With goods, the “thing-in-itself” (+), the seen and unseen, one can evaluate a relationship; a calculation (–) by itself is not the end all and be all to assigning value . . . . . . We have a duty to lie, nothing is just . . . . . . . . . . .
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i
“Thing-in-itself” (German: “Ding an sich”), a concept introduced by German philosopher Immanuel Kant, referring
to an object as it is independent of observation. It is closely related to Kant’s concept of noumenon, or the object of
inquiry, as opposed to phenomenon, its manifestations.

. . . STEAL FREELY!

THE KEY ! . . THE KEY ! ! ! ! ! . . .

The 2nd Party

. . . . . Inalienable?
—Nothing is not just . . . . the ultimate, but also the central concept; that is, when it seems
limited to a one-sided idea, nothing simultaneously generates the embryo of the twofold idea
from the seen and the unseen. This again shows that nothing is the central concept of all
concepts; it proves that nothing is an integral concept, circulus vitiosus, the central question of
Death and life,—Death, which is positive, active (+), and life, which is neither (–), cancel each
other out as they hurtle toward one another from the seen and the unseen. Nothing is therefore
one-sidedly two-fold and simultaneously a two-sidedly hermaphroditic concept; it is as a result
four-fold (to note an eight-fold) . . . . central concept of two categorical oppositions and two
elementary impulses which propel and yet cancel each other without separating the seen and
the unseen.

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The 3rd Party

Make no mistake about the meaning of nothing: it is both love and the calculus, the seen
and the unseen: a fluid (+) conventional and unconventional (–) currency of poles and sex.
Nothing isn’t free; its shares, due to its passivity, are latent, . . . Nothing can’t be seen, nothing
can’t be heard, nothing can’t be felt; not everything can be understood . . . . The basic principle of
nothing, or nihilation, which is the transformation into nothing, annihilation, therefore nothing,
— would be both understood and not understood, just like nihilism, from what can be seen and
unseen, in a one-sided, twofold way . . . . Nothing is therefore the Center and the vortex of time
and space of the seen and the unseen: . . . . Even Arius of Alexandria preached that the first
perfect creation was dead matter (+), a “thing-in-itself:” a WORD created from NOTHING: an
eternal, self-important, UNCREATED divinity (–).ii

ACCORDING TO WHICH, THAT WHICH IS VISIBLE
IS INVISIBLE IF OBSERVED FROM THE HEAD

The 4th Party

The material fluidity of nothing . . . . .
It can be safely established that a single METRIC is needed to measure value, and value
is the measure of all measures; this metric must be a constant in its division and multiplication
values, uncompromising in meaning, definitive, a single Standard to measure all measures in all
of time and space from the seen and the unseen, so that it can used for precise calculations of
the following: all fluctuations of all relative values .( . . goods . . ). from the seen and the unseen,
the dead (+) resurrected ( . . by being calculated . . ), and the cost of the deadened living (–):
strength, property, skill, knowledge . . . . . . . . . Nothing must be factored into the Standard, even
though nothing cannot be known . . . . To know “the price of everything but the value of
nothing” (Wilde). . . . . Therefore, goods can be used to calculate relationships, but the
calculation can’t measure the value.iii

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The 5th Party

To cancel a real (+) question, . . . .
. . . . The RESPONSIBILITY for WAR . . . . . . .
. . . . ( . . . . The aromatic musk of Western Civilization, its love . . . . : “You think the desire for a
more righteous justice and wiser traditions felled Ithuriel to the earth? — Ambition, affinity for
intrigue, love of true honor, and wealth made heavenly peace unbearable for her and she
burned with the desire to mix in with the restless tribe of humans” . . . . ) — to cancel the great
(+) positive question . . . . requires asking the same question from the opposite yet abstract (–)
position which made the question FLARE UP originally; and then to distinguish between the
poles of the seen and the unseen . . . . One again encounters the central question, the castration
of a stallion, the nothing, because the opposite poles in the question cancel each other without
separating the seen and the unseen . . . . Nothing is incessantly considered for its stylized, active
(+), positive properties, which are constantly NEGLECTED and confirmed by its one-sidedly
twofold denying positivism: nothing: the most unreal of all unreal questions, and
simultaneously, the most real of all unreal questions, seen and unseen . . . . . . “Since the figure
was too polite to put on the pajamas and underwear of the young d’Esparvier — it was
impossible for Mrs. Des Obelle not to notice, in the bright light, that her suspicions were
founded (+) and that angels (–) do indeed possess human eyesight. Curious as to whether that
vision was imaginary or real, she asked the son of light if angels were like monkeys ( . . . .
Leningrad deduction: . . . descendant theory . . . ) who, to make love to women, need only
money” . . . . . According to the one-sided twofold theory about the minimum amount, nothing
would be the smallest amount of the maximum, which would be the most negative positivity
(+); but: according to the two-sided hermaphroditic altruistic quadruple problem of causality,
nothing is the largest sum of the negative, THE MOST POSITIVE NEGATIVITY (–).
Wings are therefore the currency of NOTHING (+) . . . . . .
A CONVENTIONAL METRIC and
an Unconventional (–) SEXUAL FIXATION, both of which, within nothing, cancel each other
without separating the seen and the unseen.iv

The 6th Party

If nothing isn’t necessary, then breathing isn’t necessary; breathing is also one-sidedly
twofold: Inhalation and exhalation, which are an elementary and natural way of receiving and
giving, which are manifested through the one-sidedly twofold invocation of nothing through the
dynamics of words: . . “Just that, . . that isn’t nothing?!” . . . . in it, within this dynamic, “you may
admire philosophers who approach a solution to, a dissolution of, and a resolution to the
Absolute, and the determination of the indeterminate and the definition of infinity” . . . . . . — It
has been said that the first pole, the stronger (+) pole, the active pole, the Death pole, the
conventional, positive pole, is found in nothing through the negative, weaker pole, so that, like a
grinning debtor, it covers up the trace of nothing, and in a one-sidedly twofold way, rejects its
own positivity; — while the other pole, the negative or passive (–) one, which is ON NO
ACCOUNT A TRAGIC ONE, actively yet mystically points to the RAW SUM of nothing . . . . . (
. . . Compte rendu . . . . . . . In invention of gallium . . . . ) . . . . . . . . . The currency (+) question, no
matter how miniaturized or aggrandized, cannot be resolved independently of the sexual
question, or vice versa, because the currency question is inextricably entwined with nothing, and
because, along with the sexual question, it represents a quadruple . . (from a one-sidedly
twofold literary . . . . perspective) . . issue of balanced relativity of living and dying. “DER
BEIDEN GRUNDTYPEN DES PHILOSOPHIERENS” From the most important (+) and the most
conventional perspective, that which has the most currency is that which cannot be had, cannot
seen, yet can be kept silent about the hymen (nothing). From a faunal . . brutally calculated,
sexual, . . perspective, therein lies the intrigue of money [NB: “money” is upside down], the
price . . . . , the secret of a monetary, fluid (+) perspective . . . . . . . of being (Of the Dance of
Death, a positive Dance) toward dying . . (–), which is the unconventional . . phenomenon of life
. . . . . . . . Voronoff . . Einstein . . Steinach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “Go to it. It runs from
you; run from It, It’s following you” . . . . . From the seen and unseen, therefore, currency-wise
(+) . . . . . . “The validity of all contracts based on money are on shaky ground” . . . just like the
sexual (–) question, which is the twofold hermaphroditic question of nothing: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . Currency is a conventional (+) metric, and the question of sexual difference (the
balance); yet an unconventional, sexual (–) fixation is the question of the currency total (sum);
and both of these, the metric and the fixation, cancel each other in nothing but without
separating the seen and the unseen.

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The 7th Party

Nothing is consistently treated as a phenomenon, the central question of everything . . . .
.: “Mr. Mišle, I know nothing and I acutely suffer from it!” . . . . . . “Doctors knew nothing before
and they will know nothing after.” . . . . . . “And so it goes, to own everything as if nothing
happened!” . . . . . . “In him nothing betrayed a prophet or magician!” . . . . . . . . “You can’t trust
the government nor its representatives.” . . . . . . . . . . . . “You aren’t allowed to speak or write
about nothing!”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Both freemasonry and communism (together) are a one-sided twofold emphasis of
nothing in bold relief . . . a transformation into nothing . . . the annihilation of . . . (sexual
difference, the monetary sum: THE KEY BALANCE) . , the dual sameness of the opposites of
hermaphroditic instincts, a one-sided twofold . . . . . . transparent . . . ACCUMULATION of all
opposites at once . . . . . . in EVERYTHING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Even “Pythagoras of Samos proved that everything is a number!” . . . . . . . . Nothing
shouldn’t slip one’s mind, even when nothing is not acknowledged . . . that’s all . . . . ! Oh!v

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IF THIS PARTY, THE 8TH ONE, WERE TO BE EATEN, TO BE
SAVORED SLOWLY, AND THEN TO REACH THE BOWELS, WHICH
IS WHAT IT’S MEANT TO DO, IT WOULD CAUSE SUCH A
FORCEFUL EXPLOSION THAT IT WOULD MAKE JUDGMENT DAY
SEEM LIKE A REAL COMEDY. THEREFORE, IN STRICT
CONFIDENCE, THIS COMMODITY IS RECOMMENDED FOR THE
STRONG . . . . POSITIVE POLE . . . WHEN ITS CHARGE IS . . . . BLASÉ.

The 8th Party

Nothing is not easy to ISOLATE LEXICOGRAPHICALLY . . . That would mean
switching established properties of the poles: THE BEING OF DEATH and THE DYING OF
LIFE, whose properties in nothing cancel each other without separating the seen and the unseen.
One is . . . an active (+) pole, stylistically, conventionally attracted to nothing, and therefore not
SEPARATED . . . . . . .
YOU WRITE NOTHING, BUT READ IT AS: . . . . EVERYTHING ! ! ! ! . . . .
. . . . “Bastard . . . bastard! . . . From the negative therefore comes nothing . . . And without
nothing you cannot positively charge god (–) who is himself a negative charge! . . . . . .
. . . By not thinking about nothing and not analyzing nothing, everything is annihilated:
. . . . . The smallest and the largest, The hottest and the coldest, simultaneously, the seen
and the unseen . . Clearly, nothing is a “thing-in-itself,” “an und fuer sich,” . . noumenal . . . . an
ethereal, WORD . . . AN OPERATIVE VALUE . . . .
“Go to It, It runs from you: you run from It” . . . . (spectral analysis . . . Biblically related
operation . . . . Czaric sonnets) . . .
. . . “Such a point of view is called transcendental realism which, unlike empiricism,
comprises a naïve and natural (dogmatic) realism” . . . . . . .
Words, therefore cannot be understood as money (which is a two-sided, hermaphroditic
bill (–) of receiving and giving, a Standard, the system of measurement calculating fluctuating
(+) values), but only as a relative one-sided twofold value, a “thing-in-itself”: a COMMODITY
from the seen and the unseen . . . Commodities do not contain anything serious, only comical ( .

. . “that’s nothing . . .”) . . . It is in their nature to seriously peddle DEATH (+) the “thing-in-
itself,” the one-sidedly twofold of the seen and the unseen: through miraculous stories,

advertisements, in nothing, from the seen and the unseen, they become . . . are becoming . . . the
most comical), the most ethereal, the most attractive . . . the most invisible . . . ( . love . . ) which
causes the money gaffe: the problem (–) in life: dying . . . . .
. . . So this is how the positive (+) value of nothing hides like a “thing-in-itself” from the
seen and the unseen, a unique word . . . with an ethereal value . . . so that with the WORD,
nothing, as an inoperative value, DEATH can be traded as a commodity to “create-in-itself”
from the seen and the unseen . . . ( . . . the commercialization of Diplomacy . . . . .
. . . . . . Therefore, in nothing, a dead deity becomes DIVINE . . . . . . . Sciences . . . Religions
. . . Arts . . . a debatable Truth (+), which is operative from the seen and the unseen . . . through a
peripeteia, shifts to the inoperative (–) irrefutable . . . . yet still positive (+) RIGHT . . . , but the
living (–) deity in it, in nothing, becomes a SPECTER . . . Voltaire . . . Dante . . . Nietzsche . . .
Dostoyevsky . . . . . “Bastard . . . , bastard!” . . . “My friend . . . , I’m often sad . . . that I’m so
mad!” Rostand . . . . .
vi

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vi “An und fuer sich,” (Ger.), “in and of itself.” Czaric Sonnets, a collection of poems by Miloš Vidaković (1891–1915),
one of the Young Bosnia leaders, posthumously published in Sarajevo in 1918. Voltaire (1694–1778), a French
enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), an Italian poet, writer and philosopher.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), a German philosopher and philologist. Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881), a Russian
novelist, philosopher, and journalist. Edmond Rostand (1868–1918), a French poet and dramatist.

Author and Translator Bios

Author’s Bio:

MID was the pseudonym of a Mita Dimitrijević, of whom little is known. He was a major yet elusive figure affiliated with Zenithism, a 1920s Yugoslav avant-garde movement that embraced cross-genre writing as a central tenet of its poetics. He published two books, Seksualni ekilibr novca (The Sexual Equilibrium of Money, 1925) and Metafizika ničega (The Metaphysics of Nothing, 1926), and two short prose pieces, both titled “Form Devours Spirit,” and then he seemingly disappeared. He did exist because several witnesses, including Risto Ratković (a contributor to the 1920s Yugoslav avant-garde magazine Zenit) and Djordje Kostić (a member of the Belgrade surrealists), confirmed they met MID and read his two books. In addition, the Serbian poet Dragutin Kostić dedicated his poem, “Umesto ludila” (“Instead of Lunacy”) to “Jack the Ripper of all lies and a universal Zarathustra, my dear friend MID–Mita Dimitrijević, a poet and philosopher.” MID’s work is in the public domain.

Translators Bio:

Steven Teref’s translations include Ana Ristović’s Directions for Use, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Best Translated Book Award, and the National Translation Award, and Novica Tadić’s Assembly. His translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Asymptote, Vestiges, and elsewhere. Steven is a co-editor with Aleksandar Bošković of Zenithism (1921–1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology, forthcoming from Academic Studies Press in 2022.

Maja Teref’s translations include Ana Ristović’s Directions for Use, shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Best Translated Book Award, and the National Translation Award and Novica Tadić’s Assembly. Her translations have appeared in The New Yorker, Brooklyn Rail, Asymptote, and elsewhere. Her translations of the Yugoslav avant-garde writers Branko Ve Poljanski and MID are forthcoming in Zenithism (1921–1927): A Yugoslav Avant-Garde Anthology (Academic Studies Press, 2022). Maja is a past president of Illinois Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (IL TESOL BE). She teaches English at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools.

Author and Translator Bios

Author’s Bio:

Translators Bio:

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