Papyri

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2011-11-08T08:19:00.002+13:00

[Coptic Papyri]

Contents:

Papyri: Love-poems & fragments
from Sappho & elsewhere (2007)

Ovid in Otherworld (2006)

The Puppet Oresteia (2008)
- Chorus 1 - Cursed with prophecy
- Chorus 2 - I ran through the wood
- Chorus 3 - Little girl lost
- Chorus 4 - Joy lives with those
- Chorus 5 - Cursed with second sight
- Chorus 6 - See how Apollo
- Chorus 7 - The labour pains
- Chorus 8 - There she goes
- Chorus 9 - Drops of holy water
- Chorus 10 - Noise is like flame

The Britney Suite (2003)
- COVER
- TITLE-PAGE
- COPYRIGHT
- DEDICATION
- CONTENTS
- QUOTATION (Britney Spears)
- [Paul Celan:] SCHNEEPART / SNOWPART
- QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
- QUOTATION (Cut Above)
- [Wendy Nu:] keith partridge y yo
- QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
- [Paul Celan:] ERZFLITTER / ORESPARK
- QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
- Who is Wendy Nu?
- QUOTATION (ISBN)
- Nouvelle vague
- QUOTATION (Britney Spears)
- [Paul Celan:] KALK-KROKUS / CHALK-CROCUS
- QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
- Letter to the author
- [Wendy Nu:] mr darling writes to penthouse forum
- QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
- [Paul Celan:] DAS GEDUNKELTE / DARK
- QUOTATION (Paul Celan)
- QUOTATION (John Felstiner)
- QUOTATION (Nine Days)
- It’s always too late ...
- QUOTATION (Britney Spears)
- [Paul Celan:] BEIDHÄNDIGE / BOTH-HANDED
- QUOTATION (Paul Celan)

31 Days (2009)
- François Villon, “Ballade à s’amie”
- Heinrich von Kleist, from Die Marquise von O
- Jorge Luis Borges, “El puñal”
- Victor Hugo, from Les Misérables
- Karl Kraus, from Aphorismen
- Garcilaso de la Vega, “Soneto XXXVII”
- Guillaume Apollinaire, from L'Hérésiarque & Cie
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Gefunden”
- Benito Pérez Galdós, from Fortunata y Jacinta
- Pierre de Marivaux, from Le Legs
- Arthur Schopenhauer, from Aphorismen
- José Lezama Lima, “Retrato de Don Francisco de Quevedo”
- François-René de Chateaubriand, from Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe
- Rainer Maria Rilke, from Duino Elegies 1
- Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, from El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
- Arthur Rimbaud, “Ô saisons ô châteaux”
- Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué, from Undine
- D. F. Sarmiento, from Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie en Las Pampas Argentinas
- Voltaire, from Abrégé de l'Histoire Universelle depuis Charlemagne jusques à Charlequint
- Heinrich Heine, “Orpheisch”
- Augusto Roa Bastos, from "La Excavacion”
- Gérard de Nerval, “El Desdichado”
- Franz Kafka, from "Josefine, die Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse"
- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, from Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz
- Georges Perec, from La Disparition
- Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm, from “Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich”
- Leopoldo Lugones, “Historia de mi muerte”
- Vincent Voiture, “Pour vos beaux yeux et vostre beau visage”
- Theodor Fontane, from Vor dem Sturm
- Octavio Paz, from “La verdad contra el Compromiso”
- Jackson Wills, “Jackson's Assignment”

Case Studies (2001)

Flying Blind (2009)

Theme & Variations (2010)

Celanie (2011)

[Bruegel the Elder: The Tower of Babel (1525)]

Celanie (2011)

2010-05-16T08:21:00.011+12:00

[Paul Celan & Gisèle Celan-Lestrange:
Correspondance, vol. I (2001)]

Celanie:

Translations from Paul Celan

by Jack Ross

[Paul Celan & Gisèle Celan-Lestrange:
Correspondance, vol. II (2001)]

Key:

l.1 = Title / or First Line
l.2 = [Date of composition]
l.3 = [Letter number] / + page reference in:

Celan, Paul, & Gisèle Celan-Lestrange. Correspondance (1951-1970), avec un choix de letters de Paul Celan à son fils Eric. I – Lettres. Ed. Bertrand Badiou & Eric Celan. La Librairie du XXIe siècle. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2001. [C1]

Celan, Paul, & Gisèle Celan-Lestrange. Correspondance (1951-1970), avec un choix de letters de Paul Celan à son fils Eric. II – Commentaires et Illustrations. Ed. Bertrand Badiou & Eric Celan. La Librairie du XXIe siècle. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2001. [C2]

l.4 = (composition details):

PC: Fr = French by Paul Celan [4/89]
PC: lit. trans = Literal translation by Paul Celan [29/89]
PC: n = Explanatory notes by Paul Celan [30/89]
PC: var = Variant versions [4/89]
PC: vocab = Vocabulary notes by Paul Celan [17/89]

l.5 = page reference & (original publication details) in:

Celan, Paul. Die Gedichte: Kommentierte Gesamtausgabe in einem Band. Ed. Barbara Weidemann. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003. [BW]
Von Schwelle zu Schwelle (1955) [VS]
Sprachgitter (1959) [SG]
Die Niemandsrose (1963) [DN]
Atemwende (1967) [AW]
Fadensonnen (1968) [FS]
Eingedunkelt (1968) [ED]
Lichtzwang (1970) [LZ]
Schneepart (1971) [SP]
Zeitgehöft (1976) [ZG]
Die Gedichte aus dem Nachlass (1997) [AN]

Paul Celan – Die Goll-Affäre. Dokumente zu eine „Infamie“, zusammengestellt, herausgegeben und kommentiert von Barbara Weidemann. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2000. [GA]

•

[Correspondance, vol. I]

Maïa, mon amour, je voudrais savoir te dire …
[7/1/52]
[5] / C1, 16
(PC: Fr)
-

Nicht immer
[1952]
[22] / C1, 38-39
(PC: vocab)
-

Ich hörte sagen, es sei
[automne 1952]
[23] / C1, 39-40
(PC: vocab)
BW, 63 (VS)

Déjà, je suis un peu rentré
[30/3/54]
[37] / C1, 55
(PC: Fr)
-

INSELHIN
[22/6/54]
[42] / C1, 60-61
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 88 (VS)

Plage du Toulinget
[automne 1954]
[43] / C1, 61-62
(PC: lit. trans / vocab)
BW, 69 ["Bretonischer Strand"] (VS)

Leicht willst du sein und ein Schwimmer
[20/11/54]
[44] / C1, 62-63
(PC: vocab)
BW, 447-48 [“Auf der Klippe”] (VS)

So rag ich, steinern
[7/4/55]
[58] / C1, 73-74
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 95 [“Heute und Morgen”] (SG)

MATIÈRE DE BRETAGNE
[13/8/57]
[83] / C1, 92-94
(PC: vocab)
BW, 102 (SG)

Das Wort vom Zur-Tiefe-Gehn
[5/3/59]
[106] / C1, 106
(PC: n)

Das Wort vom Zur-Tiefe-Gehn
[21/11/65]
[302] / C1, 320-21
(PC: n / var)
BW, 125 (DN)

Le temps s’acharne contre ceux qui osent …
[6/1/60]
[114] / C2, 130
(PC: Fr)
-

Und schwer.
[15/12/60]
[130] / C1, 126-27
(PC: n)
BW, 458 (AN)

Ein Gauner- und Ganovenweise, im Februar 1961
gesungen von Paul Celan
[2/61]
[133] / C1, 130-31
( - )
BW, 135-36 (DN)

Die hellen
[5/11/61]
[138] / C1, 133-35
( - )
BW, 147 (DN)

Eine Stunde hinter
[21/10/62]
[153] / C1, 154
( - )

Eine Handstunde hinter
[19/3/63]
[175] / C1, 172-73
(PC: var)
BW, 465 (AN)

Dies ist der Augenblick, da
[3/11/62]
[158] / C1, 159
( - )
BW, 473 (AN)

Mit allen Gedanken ging ich
[24/10/63]
[176] / C1, 174-75
(PC: n)
BW, 130 (DN)

Das Stundenglas, tief
[4/6/64]
[184] / C1, 181-82
(PC: var )
BW, 188 (AW)

Die ihn bestohlen hatten
[January 1965]
[212] / 223-28
( - )
GA, no. 288

Und unser Sohn Eric
[6/5/65]
[221] / C1, 233-34
(PC: n)
-

Ein Dröhnen: es ist
[7/5/65]
[222] / C1, 235
(PC: n)
BW, 206 (AW)

Erinnerung an D.
[10/5/65]
[231] / C1, 241-43
( - )
BW, 207 [“Lichtenbergs zwölf”] (AW)

Give the Word
[14/5/65]
[236] / C1, 246-48
( - )
BW, 208 (AW)

Irrenäpfe, vergammelte
[9/5/65]
[236] / C1, 248
( - )
BW, 207 (AW)

DUNSTBÄNDER-, SPRUCHBÄNDER-AUFSTAND
[4/8/65]
[253] / C1, 274-76
(PC: vocab)
BW, 212 (AW)

RUH AUS IN DEINEN WUNDEN
[18/8/65]
[264] / C1, 289-91
(PC: vocab)
BW, 213 (AW)

Komm o Sonne!
[7/9/65]
[275] / C1, 303
( - )
-

Gezinkt der Zufall, und zreweht die Zeichen
[24/9/65]
[282] / C1, 308-9
( - )
BW, 222 (FS)

Die Unze Wahrheit tief im Wahn
[25/10/65]
[296] / C1, 316-17
( - )
BW, 227 (FS)

In den Geräuschen, wie unser Anfang
[26/10/65]
[300] / C1, 319
(PC: n / vocab)
BW, 228 (FS)

Um dein Gesicht die Tiefen
[25/2-2/3/66]
[359] / C1, 376-77
( - )
BW, 486 (AN)

Flüssiges Gold, in den Erdwunden erkennbar
[28/2/66]
[359] / C1, 377-78
( - )
BW, 486 (AN)

ANGEFOCHTENER Stein
[17/3/66]
[373] / C1, 390-91
( - )
BW, 267 (ED)

Die Atemlosigkeiten des Denkens
[20/3/66]
[376] / C1, 393-94
(PC: n)
BW, 486 (AN)

KANTIGE, schief-
[21/3/66]
[379] / C1, 396-97
(PC: n / vocab)
BW, 487 (AN)

Unterhöhlt
[26/3/66]
[382] / C1, 400-1
(PC: n)
BW, 487 (AN)

Vor Scham, vor Verzweiflung
[26/3/66]
[383] / C1, 401-2
( - )
BW, 488 (AN)

ÜBER DIE KÖPFE
[28/3/66]
[386] / C1, 403-4
(PC: n)
BW, 266 (ED)

WIRFST du den beschrifteten
[28/3/66]
[386] / C1, 404
(PC: n)
BW, 266 (ED)

Der Ungebändigte, dreimal
[29/3/66]
[388] / C1, 406-7
(PC: n)
BW, 265 (ED) [“Deutlich”]

NACH DEM LICHTVERZICHT
[30/3/66]
[389] / C1, 408
(PC: n)
BW, 265 (ED)

Einbruch des Ungeschiedenen
[31/3/66]
[391] / C1, 409-10
(PC: n)
BW, 268 (ED)

Das Narbenwahre, verhakt
[26/3/66]
[396-97] / C1, 414-16
(PC: n / vocab)
BW, 488 (AN)

Bedenkenlos
[4/4/66]
[398-99] / C1, 416-18
(PC: n / vocab)
BW, 265 (ED)

Das Seil, zwischen zwei hoch-
[6/4/66]
[401] / C1, 420-21
(PC: n / vocab)

Das Seil, zwischen zwei
[17/4/66]
[408] / C1, 429-30
( - )
BW, 489 (AN)

Mit dem rotierenden
[7/4/66]
[402] / C1, 422-23
( - )
BW, 489 (AN)

Vom Hochseil herab-
[7/4/66]
[403] / C1, 423-24
(PC: n / vocab)
BW, 266 (ED)

... Oder es kommt
[8/4/66]
[404] / C1, 425
(PC: lit. trans / n)
BW, 490 (AN)

Notgesang der Gedanken
[9/4/66]
[405] / C1, 425-27
(PC: n / vocab)
BW, 490 (AN)

Mit uns
[16/4/66]
[409] / C1, 430-31
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 268 (ED)

Wildnisse, den Tagen um uns einverwoben
[22/4/66]
[412] / C1, 435
(PC: n)
BW, 492 (AN)

Schreib dich nicht
[23/4/66]
[415] / C1, 438
(PC: n)
BW, 493 (AN)

Weihgüsse, zur Nacht
[27/4/66]
[421] / C1, 442-43
(PC: n / vocab)
BW, 493 (AN)

Die Zerstörungen? – Nein, weniger
[1/5/66]
[424] / C1, 446-47
(PC: n)
BW, 494 (AN)

Herbeigewehte mit dem voll
[2/5/66]
[428] / C1, 450-51
(PC: n)
BW, 494 (AN)

Lindenblättige Ohnmacht, der
[2/5/66]
[429] / C1, 451-52
(PC: lit. trans / n)
BW, 494 (AN)

Schlafbrocken, Keile
[13/6/66]
[455] / C1, 478-79
(PC: n)
BW, 231 (FS)

DIE RAUCHSCHWALBE STAND IM ZENITH, DIE PFEIL-
[24/5/67]
[508] / C1, 529-30
(PC: n)
BW, 258 (FS)

BEI BRÂNCUŞI, ZU ZWEIT
[4/8/67]
[540] / C1, 554-55
( - )
BW, 280 (LZ)

TRECKSCHUTENZEIT
[3/12/67]
[595] / C1, 603-4
(PC: n)
BW, 304 (LZ)

LILA LUFT mit gelben Fensterflecken
[23/12/67]
[595] / C1, 604
(PC: vocab)
BW, 316 (SP)

BRUNNENGRÄBER im Wind
[25/12/67]
[595] / C1, 605
( - )
BW, 316 (SP)

DAS ANGEBROCHENE JAHR
[2/1/68]
[595] / C1, 606
(PC: vocab)
BW, 317 (SP)

UNLESBARKEIT dieser
[5/1/68]
[595] / C1, 606-7
( - )
BW, 317 (SP)

WAS NÄHT
[10/1/68]
[597] / C1, 608-11
(PC: n)
BW, 317 (SP)

Schwarzmaut

[i] HÖRRESTE, SEHRESTE im
[9/6/67]
[599] / C1, 612-13
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 275 (LZ)

[ii] IHN RITT DIE NACHT, er war zu sich gekommen
[9-10-11/6-10/9/67]
[599] / C1, 613-14
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 275 (LZ)

[iii] MUSCHELHAUFEN: mit
[14/6/67]
[599] / C1, 614-15
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 275-76 (LZ)

[iv] MIT DER ASCHENKELLE GESCHÖPFT
[15/6/67]
[599] / C1, 615-17
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 276-77 (LZ)

[v] MIT MIKROLITHEN GESPICKTE
[16/6/67]
[599] / C1, 617-18
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 277 (LZ)

[vi] IN DIE NACHT GEGANGEN, helferisch
[20/6/67]
[599] / C1, 618
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 277 (LZ)

[vii] WIR LAGEN schon tief in der Macchia, als du
[24/6/67]
[599] / C1, 618-19
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 277 (LZ)

[viii] TRETMINEN auf deinen linken
[27-28/6/67]
[599] / C1, 619
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 278 (LZ)

[ix] WER SCHLUG SICH ZU DIR?
[1/7/67]
[599] / C1, 619-20
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 278 (LZ)

[x] ABGLANZBELADEN, bei den
[5/7/67]
[599] / C1, 620-21
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 278 (LZ)

[xi] FREIGEGEBEN auch dieser
[8/7/67]
[599] / C1, 621-22
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 278-79 (LZ)

[xii] BAKEN-
[8/7/67]
[599] / C1, 622
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 279 (LZ)

[xiii] AUS VERLORNEM Gegossene du
[17/7/67]
[599] / C1, 622-23
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 279 (LZ)

[xiv] WAS UNS ZUSAMMENWARF
[17/7/67]
[599] / C1, 623
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 279 (LZ)

Wanderstaude, du fängst dir
[25/2/69]
[639] / C1, 658
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 349 (ZG)

Gehässige Monde
[21/3/69]
[642] / C1, 660-61
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 349 (ZG)

Im Zeithub
[29/3/69]
[643] / C1, 661-62
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 549 (AN)

Kew Gardens
[6/4/69]
[648] / C1, 667-68
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 549 (AN)

Gold, das den nubischen
[12/4/69]
[649] / C1, 668-69
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 350 (ZG)

Welt
[21/4/69]
[651] / C1, 670-71
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 549-50 (AN)

Von der sinkenden Walstirn
[4-5/5/69]
[653] / C1, 673-74
(PC: lit. trans / var)
BW, 350 (ZG)

Über dich hinaus
[9/5/69]
[654] / C1, 675
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 351 (ZG)

Es wird etwas sein, später
[13/12/69]
[670] / C1, 687-88
(PC: lit. trans)
BW, 363-64 (ZG)

Poser la clé de la chambre de
bonne sur le bureau!
[24/6/67]
[676] / C1, 692
(PC: Fr)
-

[Correspondance, vol. II]

•

For further bibliographical information,
visit Collecting Paul Celan (3/9/11).

•

Theme & Variations (2010)

2010-05-14T08:04:00.006+12:00

Douglas Adams: Babel-Fish
[The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1981)]

Poetry off the Page

Guest Lecture
(Tuesday, 18 May, 2010)

Opinions on Translation:

Poetry is what gets left out in translation.
– Robert Frost

What is translation? On a platter
A poet’s pale and glaring head,
A parrot’s speech, a monkey’s chatter,
And profanation of the dead.
– Vladimir Nabokov

el original es infiel a la traducción
[the original is unfaithful to the translation]
– Jorge Luis Borges

Translation is so far removed from being the sterile equation of two dead languages that of all literary forms it is the one charged with the special mission of watching over the maturing process of the original language and the birth pangs of its own.
– Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin’s view of the translator [is] one who elicits, who conjures up by virtue of unplanned echo a language nearer to the primal unity of speech than is either the original text or the tongue into which he is translating … this is why, says Benjamin, ‘the question of the translatability of certain works would remain open even if they were untranslatable for man’.
– George Steiner

•

[Fresco in Herculaneum]

The Masks of Catullus:
Methods of Translation

Odi et amo, quare id faciam, fortasse requiris.
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
– Catullus (c.84-54 BC): Elegy LXXXV

word-for-word crib:

Ōdī ět ămō, quārē ĭd făcĭăm, fŏrtăssě rěquīrĭs.
I detest and I love. Why that I may do, perhaps you ask.
Nĕscĭō sěd fĭěrī sěntĭŏ ět ěxcrŭcĭŏr.
I do not know, but to become I sense and I am tortured.

rhyming couplets:

I hate and love; would’st thou the reason know?
I know not, but I burn, and feel it so.
– Richard Lovelace (1618-1657)

I hate and love – ask why – I can’t explain;
I feel ’tis so, and feel it racking pain.
– Charles Lamb (1775-1834)

literal version:

I hate and love. Why? You may ask but
It beats me. I feel it done to me, and ache.
– Ezra Pound (1885-1972)

aural transcription:

O th’hate I move love. Quarry it fact I am, for that’s so re queries.
Nescience, say th’ fiery scent I owe whets crookeder.
– Louis Zukofsky (1904-1978)

•

[Reading in the Ruins]

There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Certain numbers were the same way and certain dates and these with the names of the places were all you could say and have them mean anything. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the numbers of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the dates.

- Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms (1929)

The Exercise:

You will be given a copy of a poem in a foreign language.
The text will be accompanied by a literal translation.
I want you to write me your own poem using these two components.
It can be a translation (as free, or literal, as you like) of the text you were given.
Or it can be more obviously your own poem (though it should incorporate some ideas, words, lines or concepts from the original you were given).
Type the text of your poem into an email and post it to me to be put up on this blog.

•

Authors:

Paul Celan

René Char

Octavio Paz

Salvatore Quasimodo

Rainer Maria Rilke

César Vallejo

[Marten Van Valckenborch I (1534-1612):
The Building of the Tower of Babel]

I think ...

2010-05-13T10:25:00.006+12:00

[Noah's Ark]

German:

Ich denk …

Ich denk: Dies währt nicht lang,
ein Ding ist, es heißt Bang,
und weh tut Hand um Hand –
Ja und?

Ich denk: Sieh zu, man stirbt,
der Saft, der in dir wirkt,
auch ihm gilt dies: Verdirb –
ja und?

Ich denk: Im Garten Eden
ist alles wieder eben,
die Gleichung neu gegeben –
ja und?

- trans. Paul Celan (1920-1970)

Literal translation:

Ich denk …
I think ...

Ich denk: Dies währt nicht lang,
I think: this does not last long,
ein Ding ist, es heißt Bang,
there is only one thing, which is called fear [anguish],
und weh tut Hand um Hand –
and hand gives pain to hand –
Ja und?
and so?

Ich denk: Sieh zu, man stirbt,
I think: take care, people die,
der Saft, der in dir wirkt,
the juice, which works in you,
auch ihm gilt dies: Verdirb –
also holds for him: ruin –
ja und?
and so?

Ich denk: Im Garten Eden
I think: in the Garden of Eden
ist alles wieder eben,
everything is equal again,
die Gleichung neu gegeben –
the equation newly given –
ja und?
and then?

[Paul Celan]

•

Versions:

Ich denk …

I think: it does not proceed long,
The thing is, it means Timidly,
And painfully the hand operates around you
And?

He believed me: do they die, it looks like,
the juice of the fruits, is his work
examined that
takes?

I think that if Edemski Garden
Always good back
Gliechung like new –
And you?

- بولا البحر الأسد

[Emily Dickinson]

I reason ...

I reason, Earth is short –
And Anguish – absolute –
And many hurt,
But, what of that?

I reason, we could die –
The best Vitality
Cannot excel Decay,
But, what of that?

I reason, that in Heaven –
Somehow, it will be even –
Some new Equation, given –
But, what of that?

- Emily Dickinson

[The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas H. Johnson, (London: Faber, 1982) p.142. No. 301 (c. 1862)]

Last Dawn

2010-05-12T09:28:00.021+12:00

[Siege of Teruel (1938)]

Spanish:

Alba última

Tendida en los confines
Tus cabellos se pierden en el bosque,
Tus pies tocan los míos.
Dormida eres más grande que la noche
Pero tu sueño cabe en este cuarto.
¡Cuanto somos qué poco somos tánto!
Afuera pasa un taxi
Con su carga de espectros.

El río que se va
Siempre
Está de regreso.

¿Mañana será otro día?

- Octavio Paz (1914-1998)

Literal translation:

Alba última
Last dawn

Tendida en los confines
Stretched out within the confines
Tus cabellos se pierden en el bosque,
Your hair is lost in the forest,
Tus pies tocan los míos.
Your feet touch mine.
Dormida eres más grande que la noche
Asleep you are greater than the night
Pero tu sueño cabe en este cuarto.
But your dream fits into this room.
¡Cuanto somos qué poco somos tánto!
How much [many] we are to be so little [few]!
Afuera pasa un taxi
Outside a taxi passes
Con su carga de espectros.
With its cargo of ghosts.
El río que se va
The river which flows away
Siempre
Forever
Está de regreso.
Is on its way back.

¿Mañana será otro día?
Will tomorrow be another day?

[Octavio Paz]

•

Versions:

1.

Lie on the beach
your hair is lost in the woods,
your feet touching mine.
Dormida're
Bigger than the night
but your dream fit in the room.
The how little we have so much!
Outdoor
Passes a taxi with its mass spectrum.
The river that is always going back.

Tomorrow is another day?

2.

Most Houaerba

The edge is
Your hair is lost forest
I am for your feet.
Sleeping're night
However, the dream was to meet in this room.
Small, we are!
Outside, passing taxi
Range.

River
Always
Returned.

Tomorrow a new day?

3.

ყველაზე Houaerba

პირას არის
თქვენი თმის დაკარგულია ტყის
მე შეეხება თქვენს ფეხზე.
Sleeping're ღამეს
თუმცა, ოცნება შეხვდეს ამ ოთახში.
მცირე, ჩვენ ვართ!
გარეთ, ჩაბარების ტაქსის
ასორტიმენტს.

მდინარე
ყოველთვის
დაბრუნდა.

ხვალ ახალი დღე?

- Kristen, Chloe & Zarah

Pyrenees

2010-05-11T10:03:00.013+12:00

[The Pyrenees]

French:

Pyrénées

Montagne des grands abusés,
Au sommet de vos tours fiévreuses
Faiblit la dernière clarté.

Rien que la vide et l’avalanche,
La détresse et le regret!

Tous ces troubadours mal-aimés
Ont vu blanchir dans un été
Leur doux royaume pessimiste.

Ah! la neige est inexorable
Qui aime qu’on souffre à ses pieds,
Qui veut que l’on meure glacé
Quand on a vécu dans les sables.

- René Char (1907-1988)

Literal translation:

Pyrénées
Pyrenees

Montagne des grands abusés,
Mountain of the deluded great,
Au sommet de vos tours fiévreuses
at the summit of your feverish towers
Faiblit la dernière clarté.
The last light is dying.

Rien que la vide et l’avalanche,
Nothing but emptiness and the avalanche,
La détresse et le regret!
Distress and regret!

Tous ces troubadours mal-aimés
All those ill-loved troubadours
Ont vu blanchir dans un été
saw whiten in one summer
Leur doux royaume pessimiste.
Their sweet pesimistic realm.

Ah! la neige est inexorable
Ah! The snow is inexorable
Qui aime qu’on souffre à ses pieds,
Which likes one to suffer at its feet,
Qui veut que l’on meure glacé
Which wants one to die frozen
Quand on a vécu dans les sables.
When one has lived in the sands.

[René Char]

•

Versions:

1.

Last clear the Pyrénées mountain
which in regard to travelling
where you are enthusiastic,
freezes dying thing someone

What place sky and avalanche,
desperation and sorrow!
As for state that those [torabadouru]
[pessimistic kingdom you looked]
at even été of leykanei sweetly.

Well! As for the snow
who suffers with the desired
as for him that foot likes there is no pardon.
just is used is large you dig under.
are bad entirely
when you have lived in the sand

2.

Last clear the Pyrénées mountain
which in regard to travelling where
you are enthusiastic, just is used
is large you dig under.

What place sky and avalanche,
desperation and sorrow!
As for state that those [torabadouru] are
bad entirely [pessimistic kingdom you looked] at
even été of leykanei sweetly.

Well! As for the snow when you have lived
in the sand, as for him, freezes dying thing
someone who suffers with the desired
that foot likes there is no pardon.

3.

Pyrenees

The abused Mountain of the great ones,
To the cimeira of your febris returns
weakens the last clarity.

Nothing that the emptiness and the avalanche,
the affliction and the lamentation!
All troubadours badly Saw
to branquear in a summer its soft pessimistic kingdom.

Ah! the snow is inexorable
Who likes that it suffers its feet to it,
That wants it is died frozen
When was lived in sands.

- Joe Snacks, Edmund Duckett & Jimmy Knuckle Dragger

Sonnets to Orpheus

2010-05-03T13:00:00.010+12:00

[Jean Delville (1867-1953):
Orpheus]

German:

Sonette an Orpheus – I, ix

Nur wer die Leier schon hob
auch unter Schatten,
darf das unendliche Lob
ahnend erstatten.

Nur wer mit Toten vom Mohn
aß, von dem ihren,
wird nicht den leisesten Ton
wieder verlieren.

Mag auch die Spieglung im Teich
oft uns erschwimmen:
Wisse das Bild.

Erst in dem Doppelbereich
werden die Stimmen
ewig und mild.

- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Literal translation:

Sonette an Orpheus
Sonnets to Orpheus

Nur wer die Leier schon hob
Only [he] who the Lyre already raised
auch unter Schatten,
even among shades,
darf das unendliche Lob
may the infinite Praise,
ahnend erstatten.
when sensed, render.

Nur wer mit Toten vom Mohn
Only [he] who with the dead of poppies
aß, von dem ihren,
ate, those which were theirs,
wird nicht den leisesten Ton
will not the softest note
wieder verlieren.
again lose.

Mag auch die Spieglung im Teich
Though even the reflection in the pond may
oft uns erschwimmen:
often dissolve before us:
Wisse das Bild.
Know the image.

Erst in dem Doppelbereich
Only in the dual realm
werden die Stimmen
will the voices
ewig und mild.
be eternal and gentle

[Rainer Maria Rilke]

•

Versions:

1.

This is it

Only that the already main heads lyra also under the curtain, l'? the inexperienced praise can solidify you suspect. Who with deaths of partial poppy have eaten, the sound, that maintains sound they will only lose not other time. Also our reflection in groupement it can erschwimmen often: The table knows. Only in t o double spectrum the votes are changed eternally also lissement.

2.

But that one
that also raised
already the Leier under shades,
l' infinite compliment
can suspect to reimburse.

But what with deaths
of the Poppies it ate,
whose its,
it will not lose of new,
of new, to the clay.
Calmest reflection in the lake wants,
we equally frequently swim:
L' image knows.

This n' it is that in the sector
it duplicates
that the voices become
perpetual

and sweet.

- Laura, Nakita, Ben M., Maddy

Old Winter

2010-04-22T10:53:00.024+12:00

[Sicily (1943)]

Italian:

Antico inverno

Desiderio delle tue mani chiari
nella penombra della fiamma:
sapevano di rovere e di rose;
di morte. Antico inverno.

Cercavano il miglio gli uccelli
ed erano sùbito di neve;
così le parole:
un po’ di sole, una raggiera d’angelo,
e poi la nebbia; e gli alberi,
e noi fatti d’aria al mattino.

- Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968)

Literal translation:

Antico inverno
Old winter

Desiderio delle tue mani chiari
Desire for your clear hands
nella penombra della fiamma:
in the half-light of the flame:
sapevano di rovere e di rose;
They smelt of oak and of roses;
di morte. Antico inverno.
Of death. Old winter.

Cercavano il miglio gli uccelli
The birds looked for millet
ed erano sùbito di neve;
and were suddenly of snow;
così le parole:
the same with words:
un po’ di sole, una raggiera d’angelo,
a little sun, an angelic halo,
e poi la nebbia; e gli alberi,
and then the fog; and the trees,
e noi fatti d’aria al mattino.
and us made of air in the morning.

[Salvatore Quasimodo]

•

Versions:

Ancient Winter

desire of your hands of clarity
in the penumbra of the flame:
they knew revere also of roses;
dead women. Ancient winter.
Birds tried mile
and they were rapid snow;
by such means of the word:
few of the sun, the halo of angel,
and after this fog; and shafts,
and we made from air of morning.

Old Winter

will clear your hands
in the shadow of the flame:
knew oak and roses;
death. Ancient winter.

The birds tried
and suddenly the snow;
if the words:
one a little sunshine, my angel,
then the fog and trees,
and we did the morning air.

Old Winter

Clear mission
shadow with fire
I know, and we have to yo;
death. Old cold.

Wamenjaribu birds
and suddenly everything was in the snow;
If any of these words:
when Sunshine, Angel
fog, trees
and we took a morning off

- Anna & Ben D.

Trilce

2010-01-02T08:57:00.009+13:00

[Machu Picchu]

Spanish:

Trilce – XV

En el rincón aquel, donde dormimos juntos
tantas noches, ahora me he sentado
a caminar. La cuja de los novios difuntos
fue sacada, o talvéz qué habrá pasado.

Has venido temprano a otros asuntos
y ya no estás. Es el rincón
Donde a tu lado, leí una noche,
entre tus tiernos puntos
un cuento de Daudet. Es el rincón
amado. No lo equivoces.

Me he puesto a recordar los días
de verano idos, tu entrar y salir,
poca y harta y pálida por os cuartos.

En esta noche pluviosa,
ya lejos de ambos dos, salto de pronto …
Son dos puertas abriéndose cerrándose,
dos puertas que al viento van y vienen
sombra a sombra

- César Vallejo (1892-1938)

Literal translation:

Trilce
Trilce

En el rincón aquel, donde dormimos juntos
In that corner, where we slept joined
tantas noches, ahora me he sentado
so many nights, now I have sat down
a caminar. La cuja de los novios difuntos
to walk. The bedstead of the dead lovers
fue sacada, o talvéz qué habrá pasado.
was taken away, or perhaps what will have happened

Has venido temprano a otros asuntos
You’ve come early on other business
y ya no estás. Es el rincón
and already you’ve gone. It is the corner
Donde a tu lado, leí una noche,
where at your side, I read one night
entre tus tiernos puntos
between your tender points
un cuento de Daudet. Es el rincón
a story of Daudet’s. It is the corner
amado. No lo equivoces.
loved. Don’t mistake it.

Me he puesto a recordar los días
I have got down to remembering the days
de verano idos, tu entrar y salir,
gone-by of summer, your entrance and exit,
poca y harta y pálida por os cuartos.
few and fed-up and pale through the rooms.

En esta noche pluviosa,
In this rainy night
ya lejos de ambos dos, salto de pronto …
already far from both of us, I start up suddenly …
Son dos puertas abriéndose cerrándose,
There are two doors opening and shutting themselves
dos puertas que al viento van y vienen
two doors which come and go in the wind
sombra a sombra
shadow to shadow

[César Vallejo]

•

Versions:

1.

Trilce – XV

Horn, while we sleep together
Other victims were sent to fans, or may not happen.
Dead Lovers Holiday
adopted, or it can be.

Emprano you on other things and you do not know.
Where you sat up late reading point in your story
ernments Daudet. This is a favorite corner. Not in order.
I remember those days

Summer Street, come and go,
Others with less fatigue, and you have a chance.

OK, the rain and the two quickly split ... errándose
has two doors, two doors, coming and going of
the shadow of the shadow of the wind

2.

Trilce – XV

corner to the UN, about the length of sleep
Many nits and is now Sat
Walk. The rest of the dead lovers
Then Adopted, or perhaps He Who could succeed

You come to a beginning of other questions
No longer. This is the angle
On my part is that red One night
Among the items on auction
The story of Daudet. This angle is
I like. Nothing wrong.

Remember that some dies
Summer gold were sold
A bright little weary and His rooms...

On this rainy night
One of the two Countries and break soon ...
Open rates are a close
2 ports, which come and go in the vent
Shadow shadow.

- Bronwyn, Sabrina & Jon

Flying Blind (2009)

2009-11-27T07:49:00.023+13:00

[Scroll of the Book of Esther (Seville)]

[Floating Cinemas]

Here's the text of the talk I gave at the Flying Blind symposium on Thursday 3rd December:

Scroll, Codex, Hypertext ...

The only way I can think of to try to understand a paradigm shift when you're in the middle of one is to look for previous examples.

It's important to remember that earlier technologies have a tendency to leave fossilised remnants of themselves preserved inside the new one. Take the shift from scroll to book in late antiquity, for instance. Scrolls are hard to store and very limited in length. The book-divisions in Homeric epics, for instance, tell us how many scrolls it took to write out each poem: 24.

Hollywood movies have accustomed us to see them as continuous strips of print, unrolled vertically like a teleprompter. In fact they were generally read horizontally, with a series of columns unfolding across the exposed area. It was no great stretch to transfer this idea of columns of writing into the idea of separate pages in a book. Sewing or gluing pages into a book (or a codex, to use the technical term) is, however, extremely labour-intensive, and there was therefore a long period of overlap when the two co-existed.

[Nag Hammadi Codex (c.390)]

We talk about internet pages, and we speak of scrolling down them. In other words, our ways of thinking about writing in the new medium are still imagined in terms of the technologies familiar to us. We still prefer reading down rather than across - the idea of linking computer screens to make a larger display area should probably be seen as more analogous to fold-out pages in an illustrated book than to any real re-imagination of the medium.

Page design and layout, fonts, chapters and titles, these all come with us as we attempt to transfer our means of expression into the electronic media. At present, in fact, given the tendency of electronic storage systems to decay or become obsolete within a few decades (or even a few years) - also given our lessened attention spans in front of a screen - the technology of the internet actually has more analogies with that of the scroll than that of the book.

Cross-referencing and footnoting is definitely easier on webpages, though. The idea of hypertext, of point and click, while still clearly a development of the concept of indexing, will undoubtedly revolutionise our ways of thinking about information-transfer over time.

I guess the easiest way to talk about my own thinking and responses to the challenges of this new medium is to refer to the experiments I've made to date in how to construct literary texts - and, especially, narratives - in a way that makes some use of its innovations.

My first novel, Nights with Giordano Bruno (Wellington: Bumper Books, 2000), is a meditation on the physical possibilities of the book, or rather, the idea of a single page within a book. It consists of a number of discontinuous texts, scattered throughout according to a set of numerical formulae. No one page follows on from the page before, but each of the various stories can be followed reasonably easily if you care to search for the next page in the sequence. Alternatively, you can read it straight through as a kind of textual mosaic.

When I decided to try and transfer my book to the internet in 2007, I was forced to regard the pages as individual computer pages, hyperlinked to a table of contents which enabled them to be regrouped into their constituent stories. The ease with which this could be accomplished online, though, negated some of the resistance to rearrangement characteristic of the book. My Bruno website, then, while it physically copies the book's text and internal arrangements, could not be said to do the same for the initial reasoning behind that arrangement.

My next novel, The Imaginary Museum of Atlantis (Auckland: Titus Books, 2006), again tried to play with the physical form of a book in what I then saw as innovative ways. Again I used the idea of the individual page, but this time I arranged the text as two separate but intersecting sequences, an alphabetical encyclopedia of Atlantean lore running one way, and a series of automatic writings running in the other direction. Each spread, then, contains two pages different ways up. The reader is forced to decide which way to go when reading it (though, again, it can also be read as a series of mosaics rather than sequentially).

The website I designed for the book attempted to echo this arrangement by arranging the pages on two separate blogs, each hyperlinked and cross-referenced to the other. The physical book already contained a series of putative hyperlinks in the form of footnotes, but of course I was now able to make these "real" hyperlinks, and to join them up in the pre-designed sequences I'd originally had in mind. The book, then, while still primary, has been in some ways re-imagined in its new incarnation. They complement each other, rather than simply echoing each other's form.

The third novel in what I'd now taken to calling my trilogy (the R.E.M. - or "Random Excess Memory" - trilogy), EMO (Auckland: Titus Books, 2008), was based around the idea of crossing the page. Before the advent of cheap, acid-based paper in the mid to late nineteenth century, it was quite common for people writing letters to write vertically down the page, and then turn it round and write the other way, horizontally. Correspondents became quite adept at deciphering such texts, and I wondered if it would be possible to do something analogous on the pages of a book. Could one have, in fact, a literal subtext to the master narrative marching down the page?

The interesting thing to me about this experiment is that it was dictated by my decision to try and compose an internet novel, rather than the other way round. The electronic version of the text preceded its physical manifestation. I wrote a series of texts in the form of separate blogs (I'm addicted to blogs - as you may have noticed - for their cheapness, their easy accessibility, but also, somewhat paradoxically, for their technical limitations. They focus one's mind on the simple problems of textual transmission in a way that a more flexible platform might not). I then hyperlinked my fictional texts to other, "underlying" texts in the hopes of setting up a kind of double-focus in the reader's mind.

My latest experiment has, however, moved away from simply presenting chapters of fictional prose as online pages. Instead I've decided to try and tell a story through pre-existing textual paradigms, specifically online course outlines and lecture notes, a kind of information I've spent a good deal of time working on as part of my job (here's an example: the website for my stage three course in Travel Writing).

I therefore wrote and compiled two fictional course-outlines, Banned Books & Crisis Diaries: each complete with reading lists, lecture schedules, and assignment outlines. The novella I ended up writing (due out from Titus Books next year as part of a larger volume of short fiction) masqueraded as a folder of notes compiled by the teacher of these two courses.

It's titled, accordingly, Coursebook found in a Warzone, and is set in a slightly future version of right here. The putative author of the texts in this folder may have been killed by a sniper, or he may simply have lost his briefcase while crossing the war-torn city (I imagine it a little like 80s Beirut or 90s Sarajevo ... or perhaps modern Baghdad). In any case, the story comes to an abrupt stop. That's one of the reasons that it's subtitled "A Whodunit." There are numerous hints throughout at the author's guilt - or at any rate complicity - in certain crimes. Unusually for the detective genre, though, the crime may be harder to identify here than the culprit.

I think the advantage of this new twist on the internet-as-writing-medium is that it makes use of the kinds of texts which already exist online. Readers of my novella can easily consult the course outlines online, but that won't necessarily help them in understanding the nature of the story. Just as Samuel Richardson in the eighteenth century first wrote a set of letters as an educational primer to polite discourse, then, captivated by the possibilities of the form, composed the world's first epistolary novel, I think it's more interesting to adapt aspects of one's writing to the dictates of the new medium than simply to use it as a mirror of the old.

[Giordano Bruno (Campo dei Fiori, Rome)]

Case Studies (2001)

2009-10-09T09:57:00.001+13:00

[brief 20 - aesthetics,
ed. John Geraets (Auckland: The Writers Group, 2001)]

Tell me where is fancy bred
Or in the heart or in the head?
– Shakespeare

The Cliché

Truth in the Cliché?

The Psychic

Truth in the Psychic?

The Road of Excess

The Palace of Wisdom

Memento

- First published in brief 20 (June, 2001): 23-29.

Case Studies (1):

2009-10-08T07:58:00.001+13:00

The Cliché

1954:

William Forrester published Avalon Landing, his first novel, while still in his early twenties (his only other recorded publication is a piece about baseball, “A Season of Faith’s Perfection,” New Yorker, 1960). Since then, and since the deaths of his brother, mother and father in swift succession, he has been living in seclusion in a small apartment in the Bronx, linked to the outside world by a pair of binoculars and regular weekly deliveries from his long-suffering publishers.

For, while other writers set out to write “the great twentieth-century novel” (a variant on the Great American Novel?), Forrester succeeded. The book is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning literary phenomenon, still in print after fifty years, and permanently on loan from all the public libraries in New York.

At any rate, that’s the central premise of Gus van Sant’s film Finding Forrester, in which Sean Connery enjoys himself rather too thoroughly playing the crusty old genius. (A Scottish birthplace had to be hastily cobbled up to explain the accent, even though Forrester is clearly intended to be as American as apple pie. The film abounds with ritual invocations of baseball, Yankee stadium, and other American pop-cult icons).

It’s an somewhat improbable tale, based mainly, one would conjecture, on the post-Catcher in the Rye career of J. D. Salinger (seen previously in the Kevin Costner vehicle Field of Dreams).[1] I suppose what interests me about it is the way it offers a fully-fledged “Writer” stereotype for our examination.

Americans have always had a fascination with the writer-recluse. Emily Dickinson, Thomas Pynchon … even H. P. Lovecraft. If they’re not bona fide recluses, they’re eccentric in other ways: repressed (Henry James, Marianne Moore); alcoholic (Faulkner, Berryman, Carver); hospitalised (Robert Lowell, Ted Roethke); suicidal (Hemingway, Plath, Sexton), or just downright dangerous (Fascist Pound, Junky Burroughs …).

Why does Forrester never go out? Why does he never publish anything? Agoraphobia would seem an obvious diagnosis when we see him swaying dizzily in the doorway of his apartment – but a visit to home plate with his new buddy Jamal soon cures that. It turns out to be because, after he published his book, people talked about it too much, and in too intrusive a way: “I decided I’d never do that again.”

Yep, just like poor Keats, it was those goddamned critics who scared him off, and who’ve made him shut himself away from the world, filling filing-cabinets with unpublished stories.

1. Based, in its turn, on W. P. Kinsella's 1982 novel Shoeless Joe, which names Salinger explicitly, rather than just hinting that the "writer" Costner goes out to find might be him.

[Gus Van Sant, dir.: Finding Forrester (2000)]

Case Studies (2):

2009-10-07T08:37:00.001+13:00

Truth in the Cliché?

2001:

I spent all my 20s desperate to have others think of me as a regular guy who wrote a bit of poetry. Now I am happy to take advantage of the freedom my perceived eccentricity affords me. I can tell people where to go down the phone, in language not customary for council employees. I can wander out of the office at any given moment, for a pint or an hour’s window-shopping. Why? Because I am a poet. Mad.

– Conor O’Callaghan,
Poet-in-Residence of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown.

I picked up a paperback in Whitcoulls the other day entitled The Poet. On the front cover it said: “He kills without rhyme or reason” (or words to that effect: I know they’d managed to get the notions of scribbling and killing in there somehow). There was also an atmospheric grey illustration of a mysterious death-dealing car driving somewhere to deliver.

Bring it on! At least people respect serial killers a bit. Try telling one of them to piss off and get a proper job!

Whenever I need to seem slightly more normal, like in a workshop or a book club, all I have to do is let them know that I have kids of my own. The facial expressions change visibly. They obviously reckon that if someone trusts me to mind two small children from time to time, then I can’t be a total psychopath …

continues the laureate of Dún Laoghaire. Don’t be too sure, Conor. The curious thing is that these clichés (writerly wisdom tempered by extreme eccentricity and irresponsibility) seem to me to hold a grain of truth. The image is certainly a persistent one. Check out the TV listings:

11.10: Film Boom (1968) Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Noel Coward. Tells the story of Sissy Gofarth, a reclusive millionaire writer, whose days consist of dictating her autobiography and begging for injections.[1]

That cast list sounds like the kind of thing which would be rejected as ludicrously improbable in fiction, but one can’t help getting a bit of a thrill at the plot summary: “dictating her autobiography and begging for injections.” Now, that’s the life of the mind! Puts Kathy Acker’s “SUCK ME SUCK ME SUCK ME sex is sweet” to shame …

1. Unfortunately that write-up was the best thing about the film, which turned out to be somewhat tedious and contrived.

[Michael Connelly: The Poet (1996)]

Case Studies (3):

2009-10-06T08:46:00.000+13:00

The Psychic

1964:

One morning when she was seven, lying in bed waiting to be called by her mother, Rosemary Brown felt a presence. Turning about, she found herself facing a man with long hair, dressed in unfamiliar period clothing. Although she was frightened, his first words were reassuring. He told her that she had a special destiny … Then he disappeared. She forgot about this visitation for some time until, one day when she was studying, she turned a page in her high school textbook and found herself staring in amazement at a photograph of the man she had seen in her bedroom. The name under the photograph identified him as Franz Liszt, composer and pianist. … More years passed. She married, then was widowed. Once again she was confronted by the apparition of Liszt, who now explained that she was to write music, and that he would help her.

– Hazel M. Denning, PhD, True Hauntings: Spirits with a Purpose (St Paul, Minn: Llewellyn Pub., 1996): 122.

Since then, Rosemary Brown has written a series of musical compositions, allegedly from the dictation of Liszt, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Debussy, Rachmaninov, Schubert, Stravinsky, and various others. Opinions differ on the merit of these pieces. British composer Richard Rodney Bennett has said: “A lot of people can improvise, but you couldn’t fake music like this without years of training. I couldn’t have faked some of the Beethoven myself.” Concert pianist Hephzibah Menuhin confirms that “Each piece is distinctly in the composer’s style.” Leonard Bernstein is also said to have been “highly impressed” by the music Rosemary showed him.

Unfortunately, none of them can be claimed to be as good as the works produced during their authors’ lifetimes, which throws some doubt on the notion of “dictation.” What is indisputable is that they are far beyond the mediocre training and abilities of Rosemary Brown, whose entire musical education consisted of a few piano lessons in her youth. What’s more, the speed with which she writes them down – often complete orchestral scores, with multiple parts – is faster than most composers could possibly manage.

Where do they come from, then? Certainly not from Rosemary’s conscious mind. Perhaps from beyond the veil; perhaps (as Rosalind Heywood, author of The Sixth Sense, suggests) she is “the kind of sensitive whom frustration, often artistic, drives to the automatic production of material beyond their conscious capacity.”[1]

1. You can find out more about Rosemary (1916-2001) from her wikipedia entry here. As that article puts it, somewhat guardedly: "The opinions of musical critics were varied on the merit of Rosemary's transcriptions."

[Franz Liszt (1811-1886)]

Case Studies (4):

2009-10-05T08:08:00.001+13:00

Truth in the Psychic?

1973:

Pablo Picasso produced several drawings in both pen-and-ink and colour three months after his death. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Picasso-style drawings were transmitted through British psychic Matthew Manning, who had been trying to ‘get through’ to Picasso. While concentrating on this he had found his hand being controlled – apparently by the spirit of Picasso, or whatever signed itself “Picasso” on the drawing.

– Lynn Picknett, “A Gallery of Psychic Art.”
Life After Death (London: Orbis, 1984): 144.

Drawings are quicker and easier to judge than musical compositions. Anyone who glances through Matthew Manning’s portfolio of paintings and drawings in the style of Beardsley, Dürer, Klee, Toulouse Lautrec and Leonardo da Vinci will be struck by their remarkable resemblance to those artist’s styles. An air of crude pastiche might seem equally marked in most of them.

It is insufficient, however, simply to call them fakes. Matthew produces them with such uncanny speed, and with so little preparation (no preliminary sketching, no measurement of the paper), that they exceed the drafting abilities of most artists.
Is this the same thing as what is generally called “inspiration” – the divine afflatus – a visit from the Muse? Clearly not. These works purport to be by dead artists. They are communicated through someone of limited artistic talent, who does not claim them as his own work. Their quality is both impressive and disappointing. Impressive if we see them as compositions by frustrated housewife Rosemary Brown or troubled teenager Matthew Manning; disappointing if we compare them to the real work of Beethoven, Toulouse Lautrec et al.

The mind has hidden depths. Neurologists tell us that literally everything that happens to us is recorded there (like Madame Blavatsky’s Akashic Records, repositories of all the knowledge in the world – or, for that matter, Jung’s collective unconscious). The tiniest percentage of this is available to the conscious mind, but we know that much more can be recovered under hypnosis.

Few artists would claim complete control of their creative processes. If you know what you’re going to say next, if it all comes from your conscious mind, then it’s rhetoric, not art. You must, in some sense, be able to stand back and watch yourself at work, to feel surprised by what comes out next.

It doesn’t really matter which model you adopt to explain this process. Blake, like Manning and Brown, would see it as dictation from a higher sphere. Others have postulated a superior, transcendent self somehow resident within us. I feel that there’s a kind of statute of limitations preventing too close enquiry into these mysteries. One thing’s for certain. Ursula Le Guin put it best: “The counsel of the dead is not profitable to the living.”[1]

1. Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore. 1973 (Harmondsworth: Puffin Books, 1975): 85.

[Matthew Manning: Automatic Drawing (after Dürer)]

Case Studies (5):

2009-10-04T08:47:00.003+13:00

The Road of Excess

1999:

I’d give up my sight just to see you
I’d beg I would borrow and steal
I’d cut off my hands just to touch you
I’d tear out my heart so you’d know how I feel

– Amanda Marshall, “If I Didn’t Have You”
(Tuesday’s Child)

Something in these absurd song-lyrics approaches sublimity. Imagine being pawed at by Amanda’s bloody stumps, as she stares blindly in your approximate direction! Imagine sending her out on the street to beg for you, a second Lavinia (you know … Titus Andronicus), Philomel with a tongue! I like it.

It’s not that they fulfil some obscure fetish of mine. It’s the excess of the whole thing that appeals to me. I mean, suffering grotesquely to win more affection from the beloved object is a cliché older than Catullus (older than The Epic of Gilgamesh, probably), but the sheer circumstantial detail of Amanda’s version takes it over into the world of the freak-show. Horror-show, very horror-show, as Anthony Burgess’s droogs would say.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think it’s good because it’s camp. I don’t think it’s good because it’s well-written (“If it were better-written, it would not be so good,” as someone once remarked of the witches’ song in Macbeth[1]). I don’t think it’s good because it’s honest (though it might well be). I think it’s good because it surprises you into inhabiting a dead metaphor for a moment. The violence implicit in it speaks to the violence inside us all (“He kills without rhyme or reason …”)

Hannibal Lecter ends up cutting off a hand for his petite amie Clarice in the Ridley Scott movie Hannibal (sorry if I’ve just ruined the plot for anyone). That’s just silly. I probably would have started laughing at some stage if I’d been Amanda Marshall, trying to sing those words (I’d cut off my hands just to manage a feel” – something like that). I do admire the courage of her absurdity, though. It’s the same courage which emboldens Kathy Acker to repeat the same paragraph over and over again, without even the leaven of obscene expletives.

“Well-written prose” – sounds like an oath, doesn’t it?

“Well -made play.”

Stick Terence Rattigan[2]’s head on a pole!

“Kill the pig, drink its blood!”

Simon’s sharpening a stake at both ends …[3]

1. "Old actors believe the witches' song in Macbeth to possess the uncanny power of casting evil spells. Many actors, especially in England, avoid Matthew Locke's music for the play, quoting numerous stories of ill-fates befallen to those who have played, sung, or hummed it within the theatre walls." The Lytton Players (Stevenage).

2. Sir Terrence Rattigan (1911-1977): author of French without Tears (1936), The Winslow Boy (1946), The Browning Version (1948) and a host of other stunningly successful and well-made plays.

3. William Golding, Lord of the Flies (1954).

[Missing Amanda Marshall (2008)]

Case Studies (6):

2009-10-03T11:19:00.002+13:00

The Palace of Wisdom

1857:

Dans ton île, ô Vénus! je n’ai trouvé debout
Qu’un gibet symbolique où pendait mon image ...
– Ah! Seigneur! donnez-moi la force et le courage
De contempler mon cœur et mon corps sans dégoût !

– Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal (1857)

In your island, Venus, I found nothing upright
save one symbolic gibbet with my image
on it: – God, give me the strength and courage
to see my heart and body in the light,

without disgust ...

Alistair Paterson says of me (or, at any rate, of “Jack Ross”): “Neither his MA thesis, The Novels of John Masefield, nor his doctoral thesis … immediately suggests the kind of writer he is” [Poetry NZ 22 (2001): 10]. This bit of my MA thesis (U. of Auckland, 1986) does, though, I suspect – these lines translated from Baudelaire’s “Voyage to Cythera.”

Michael Onslow-Osborne, in his stimulating article “Pre-millennial Tinnitus: Noise-bytes 1999-2000” [brief 18 (2000): 79-90] appears to end up with white noise as the basis of his poetics: “The world is an outrage, the pertinent answer is noise to block it out.” No disrespect to Michael, but that doesn’t sound very sexy to me. It reminds me a bit of that Ken Russell movie Altered States. You remember, the one where William Hurt keeps on climbing into a deprivation tank and reverting to an apeman. He would have ended up as primordial matter if it hadn’t been for the love of a good woman (Blair Brown).

I want to contemplate my heart and my body without disgust. That’s not an especially easy thing to do. Am I extra disgusting? Worse than the rest of you? It’s hard to say. Asking the question at all implies:
a strong suspicion the answer may be “yes;”
an even stronger desire to be assured otherwise.

Is that the beginning and end of my aesthetics? I guess there might be a little more than that. A few scraps of mystical theology, a need to persuade myself that life – my life, your life, any life – can be redeemed somehow, or at any rate palliated if only one takes a passionate enough interest in the detail (“Crush it in your palm like a flower; inhale its fragrance,” as Nabokov advises in his Lectures on Literature).[1]

1. The actual reference is as follows:
Let me submit the following practical suggestion. Literature, real literature, must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain - the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed - then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavour will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.
- Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Russian Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, 1982 (London: Picador, 1983) p. 105.

[Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867)]

Case Studies (7):

2009-10-02T09:39:00.007+13:00

Memento

1949:

The more days move off into distance
scattering themselves, the more they return
to hearts of the poets. …

Memini: I remember; memento: “Object serving as reminder or warning, or kept as memorial of person or event” (Concise Oxford Dictionary); meminens: mindful. I’ve never been especially anxious to fry my brain with booze or drugs. Not because I think it’s naughty, let alone unreasonable – just because memory is what I am.

Buchenwald is there
that mild-mannered beech wood
with its accursed ovens: Stalingrad
and Minsk with its marshes and rotten snow. …

“Kids lose everything unless there’s someone there to look out for them,” says River Phoenix in Stand by Me. Part of our job is just that: not to forget, to insist on being the skeleton at the feast, stalking alone through the Masque of the Red Death.

Poets do not forget. Oh hordes of the lowly,
the conquered, those forgiven out of pity!
All things may pass, but the dead do not
sell themselves. …

Dignity is not the same thing as pomposity. “Shame on you … Shame,” says Howard towards the end of Raymond Carver’s story “A Small, Good Thing.” I cried when I first read that. It was his second try at it. The first, “The Bath,” ended in a far more deadpan way. It took him a long time to achieve that intensity.[1]

I sing
the people, also their grief
muffled by sound of the sea, the mothers’
crystal-clear mourning: I sing the life of my country.

– Salvatore Quasimodo, “Il mio paese è l’Italia”
trans. Kendrick Smithyman

Well, it’s worth a try, isn’t it? Even if no-one seems to be listening most of the time. Even if they are, but in a really crass way. Just the chance of it makes the game worth the candle. Doesn’t it?

1. Interestingly, since I first wrote this in 2001, I've discovered that this isn't the case. "The Bath" is in fact a drastically reduced version of "A Small, Good Thing" constructed by Gordon Lish, Raymond Carver's long-time friend and editor, during the production process of his second collection What We talk About When We Talk About Love (1981). The information now available in the Library of America edition of Carver's Collected Stories, edited by William L. Stull & Maureen P. Carroll (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2009), makes it apparent just how much Carver resented and resisted this curtailment of his original story.

[Raymond Carver: Collected Stories (2009)]

31 Days (2009)

2009-05-02T09:04:00.008+12:00

[Metropolis: The Tower of Babel (1927)]

“[J. G. ] Ballard's influence was seminal and it was profound.
We were soon publishing his first ‘concentrated novels’ …"
- Michael Moorcock, ed. New Worlds: An Anthology
(London: Flamingo, 1983): 18.

31 Texts:

François Villon, “Ballade à s’amie”
Heinrich von Kleist, from Die Marquise von O
Jorge Luis Borges, “El puñal”
Victor Hugo, from Les Misérables
Karl Kraus, from Aphorismen
Garcilaso de la Vega, “Soneto XXXVII”
Guillaume Apollinaire, from L'Hérésiarque & Cie
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Gefunden”
Benito Pérez Galdós, from Fortunata y Jacinta
Pierre de Marivaux, from Le Legs
Arthur Schopenhauer, from Aphorismen
José Lezama Lima, “Retrato de Don Francisco de Quevedo”
François-René de Chateaubriand, from Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe
Rainer Maria Rilke, from Duino Elegies 1
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, from El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha
Arthur Rimbaud, “Ô saisons ô châteaux”
Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué, from Undine
D. F. Sarmiento, from Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie en Las Pampas Argentinas
Voltaire, from Abrégé de l'Histoire Universelle depuis Charlemagne jusques à Charlequint
Heinrich Heine, “Orpheisch”
Augusto Roa Bastos, from "La Excavacion”
Gérard de Nerval, “El Desdichado”
Franz Kafka, from "Josefine, die Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse"
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, from Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz
Georges Perec, from La Disparition
Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm, from “Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich”
Leopoldo Lugones, “Historia de mi muerte”
Vincent Voiture, “Pour vos beaux yeux et vostre beau visage”
Theodor Fontane, from Vor dem Sturm
Octavio Paz, from “La verdad contra el Compromiso”
Jackson Wills, “Jackson's Assignment”

"Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens"
[Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain]
– Friedrich von Schiller

[Bruegel the Elder: The Tower of Babel (1525)]

31 Days (30)

2009-04-30T08:54:00.000+12:00

Octavio Paz
(1914-1998)

from “La Verdad contra el Compromiso”
Prólogo al libro
Tristeza de la verdad: André Gide regresa de Rusia
de Alberto Ruy-Sánchez

El ensayo es un género difícil. Por esto, sin duda, en todos los tiempos escasean los buenos ensayistas. En uno de sus extremos colinda con el tratado; en el otro, con el aforismo, la sentencia y la máxima. Además, exige cualidades contrarias: debe ser breve pero no lacónico, ligero y no superficial, hondo sin pesadez, apasionado sin patetismo, completo sin ser exhaustivo, a un tiempo leve y penetrante, risueño sin mover un músculo de la cara, melancólico sin lágrimas y, en fin, debe convencer sin argumentar y, sin decirlo todo, decir lo que hay que decir... Esto fue lo que se me ocurrió después de leer este notable ensayo de Alberto Ruy Sánchez. Su libro pertenece simultáneamente a la historia moderna, a la literatura y a la más viva actualidad: la conversación de André Gide al comunismo, sus años de creyente devoto, sus dudas y su final, valerosa apostasía. Con este libro Ruy Sánchez se ha revelado como uno de nuestros mejores ensayistas. Su escritura es nerviosa y ágil, su inteligencia aguda sin ser cruel, su ánimo compasivo sin condescendencia ni complicidad. El asunto de su ensayo requería todo esto: el episodio de Gide es uno de los capítulos más impresionantes de la historia, casi siempre lamentable, de las relaciones entre los intelectuales del siglo XX y el comunismo. Fue una admirable lección de moral que, como es sabido, muy pocos se atrevieron a imitar.

The essay is a difficult genre. That's why, undoubtedly, in every era, there’s a lack of good essayists. At one end, it’s akin to the treatise; at the other, with the aphorism, the judgment and the maxim. Also, it demands contradictory qualities: it must be brief but not laconic, light and not superficial, deep without heaviness, excited without pathos, complete without being exhaustive, at the same time light and penetrating, smiling without moving a muscle of the face, melancholy without tears and, in end, it must convince without arguing and, without saying everything, say what it is necessary to say... This was what occurred to me after reading this notable essay of Alberto Ruy Sánchez. His book belongs simultaneously to modern history, to literature and to the most vivid actuality: the conversion of André Gide to communism, his years as a devout believer, his doubts and his final, courageous apostasy. With this book Ruy Sánchez has been revealed as one of our best essayists. His writing is nervous and agile, his intelligence sharp without being cruel, his compassionate spirit without condescension or complicity. The material of his essay needed all this: the Gide episode is one of the most impressive chapters of the history, almost always lamentable, of the relations between the intellectuals of the XXth century and communism. It was an admirable moral lesson that, as everyone knows, very few dared to imitate.

31 Days (29)

2009-04-29T08:29:00.000+12:00

Theodor Fontane
(1819-1898)

from Vor dem Sturm
Achtundzwanzigstes Kapitel:
Aus Renatens Tagebuch

Auf einer schmalen Landzunge zwischen zwei märkischen Seen liegt das adlige Stift Lindow. Es sind alte Klostergebäude: Kirche, Refektorium, alles in Trümmern, und um die Trümmer her ein stiller Park, der als Begräbnisplatz dient, oder ein Begräbnisplatz, der schon wieder Park geworden ist. Blumenbeete, Grabsteine, Fliederbüsche und dazu Kinder aus der Stadt, die zwischen den Grabsteinen spielen.

Und auf einem dieser Grabsteine stand ich und sah in die niedersteigende Sonne, die dicht vor mir das Kloster und die stillen Seeflächen vergoldete. Wie schön! Es war ein Blick in Licht und Frieden.

Im Scheiden erst las ich den Namen, der auf dem Steine stand:

Renate von Vitzewitz.

On a narrow tongue of land between two lakes of the Brandenburg Marches there lies the aristocratic estate of Lindow. These are old cloister buildings: Church, refectory, everything in ruins, and around the ruins a quiet park which serves as a burial place, or a burial place which has become a park again. Flowerbeds, gravestones, lilac bushes and in addition the children from the town who play between the gravestones.

And I stood on one of these gravestones and watched the descending sun which gilded the cloister and the quiet lake surfaces close before me. How beautiful! It was a glimpse of light and peace.

In the remains I could read only the name which stood on the stone:

Renate von Vitzewitz.

31 Days (28)

2009-04-28T08:03:00.000+12:00

Vincent Voiture
(1597-1648)

Pour vos beaux yeux et vostre beau visage

Pour vos beaux yeux et vostre beau visage,
Et la douceur de ce divin langage
Dont vous tenez tout le monde enchanté,
Cloris, on doit souffrir vostre fierté,
Et prés de vous avoir moins de courage.

Il est donc vray, que je ne fus pas sage,
De ne pouvoir endurer un outrage,
Moy que l'Amour tient si bien arresté
Pour vos beaux yeux.

A tout souffrir desormais je m'engage,
Et dans les fers d'un eternel servage,
Et les rigueurs de vostre cruauté,
Je chanteray vostre extrême beauté,
Et je ferois mille fois davantage
Pour vos beaux yeux.

For your lovely eyes and pretty face

For your lovely eyes and pretty face,
And the softness of this divine language
With which you hold everybody enchanted,
Cloris, one must endure your pride,
And near you have less boldness.

It is therefore true, that I was not wise,
Not to be able to endure an insult,
Me whom Love holds so well in charge
with your lovely eyes.

To suffer everything I nevertheless agreed,
And in the irons of an eternal bondage,
And rigours of your cruelty,
I will sing your extreme beauty,
And I will do one thousand times more
For your lovely eyes.

31 Days (27)

2009-04-27T08:39:00.000+12:00

Leopoldo Lugones
(1874-1938)

Historia de Mi Muerte

Soñé la muerte y era muy sencillo;
una hebra de seda me envolvía,
y a cada beso tuyo,
con una vuelta menos me ceñía
y cada beso tuyo
era un día;
y el tiempo que mediaba entre dos besos
una noche. La muerte era muy sencilla.
Y poco a poco fue desenvolviéndose
la hebra fatal. Ya no la retenía
sino por solo un cabo entre los dedos...
Cuando de pronto te pusiste fría
y ya no me besaste...
y solté el cabo, y se me fue la vida.

The Story of My Death

I dreamed of death and it was very simple;
a thread of silk was wrapping around me,
and to every kiss of yours,
I gave back less in return
and every kiss of yours
was one day;
and the time that elapsed between two kisses
one night. Death was very simple.
And little by little unrolled
the fatal thread. Already I was not holding
more than one end between my fingers...
When suddenly you became cold
and you stopped kissing me...
and I released the end, and life fled from me.

31 Days (26)

2009-04-26T08:31:00.004+12:00

Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm
(1785-1863 / 1786-1859)

from “Der Froschkönig oder der eiserne Heinrich“

Dann schliefen sie ein, und am andern Morgen, als die Sonne sie aufweckte, kam ein Wagen herangefahren, mit acht weißen Pferden bespannt, die hatten weiße Straußfedern auf dem Kopf und gingen in goldenen Ketten, und hinten stand der Diener des jungen Königs, das war der treue Heinrich. Der treue Heinrich hatte sich so betrübt, als sein Herr war in einen Frosch verwandelt worden, daß er drei eiserne Bande hatte um sein Herz legen lassen, damit es ihm nicht vor Weh und Traurigkeit zerspränge. Der Wagen aber sollte den jungen König in sein Reich abholen; der treue Heinrich hob beide hinein, stellte sich wieder hinten auf und war voller Freude über die Erlösung. Und als sie ein Stück Wegs gefahren waren, hörte der Königssohn, daß es hinter ihm krachte, als wäre etwas zerbrochen. Da drehte er sich um und rief:

»Heinrich, der Wagen bricht.«
»Nein, Herr, der Wagen nicht,
es ist ein Band von meinem Herzen,
das da lag in großen Schmerzen,
als Ihr in dem Brunnen saßt,
als Ihr eine Fretsche (Frosch) wast (wart).«

Noch einmal und noch einmal krachte es auf dem Weg, und der Königssohn meinte immer, der Wagen bräche, und es waren doch nur die Bande, die vom Herzen des treuen Heinrich absprangen, weil sein Herr erlöst und glücklich war.

from “The Frog-king, or Iron Henry“

Then they fell asleep, and next morning, as the sun woke them, a horse-drawn carriage came driving up, drawn by eight white horses, with white ostrich feathers on their heads and golden harnesses, and behind them stood the servant of the young king, the loyal Henry. The loyal Henry had become so sad, when his master was transformed into a frog, that he had to place three iron bands around his heart, so that it would not shatter from woe and misery. Now, however, the carriage was come to fetch the young king to his kingdom; loyal Henry lifted them both in, stood up behind again and was full of joy at their redemption. And when they had gone part of the way, the king's son heard a crack behind him as if something had broken. So he turned round and cried:

"Henry, the carriage is breaking."
"No, Lord, it's not the carriage,
it's one of the bands around my heart,
which suffered such great pain,
when you lay in the well,
when you were turned into a frog."

Again and yet again there came a crack as they went on their way, and each time the king's son thought that the carriage was breaking, yet nevertheless these were only the bands springing off the heart of loyal Henry because his Lord had been released and was now happy.

31 Days (25)

2009-04-25T09:28:00.003+12:00

Georges Perec
(1936-1982)

from La Disparition

Trois cardinaux, un rabbin, un amiral franc-maçon, un trio d'insignifiants politicards soumis au bon plaisir d'un trust anglo-saxon, ont fait savoir à la population par radio, puis par placards, qu'on risquait la mort par inanition. On crut d'abord à un faux bruit. Il s'agissait, disait-on, d'intoxication. Mais l'opinion suivit. Chacun s'arma d'un fort gourdin. "Nous voulons du pain ", criait la population, conspuant patrons, nantis, pouvoirs publics. Ça complotait, ça conspirait partout. Un flic n'osait plus sortir la nuit.

A Mâcon, on attaqua un local administratif. A Rocamadour, on pilla un stock : on y trouva du thon, du lait, du chocolat par kilos, du maïs par quintaux, mais tout avait l'air pourri. A Nancy, on guillotina sur un rond-point vingt-six magistrats d'un coup, puis on brûla un journal du soir qu'on accusait d'avoir pris parti pour l'administration. Partout on prit d'assaut docks, hangars ou magasins.

Plus tard, on s'attaqua aux Nords-Africains, aux Noirs, aux juifs. On fit un pogrom à Drancy, à Livry-Gargan, à Saint-Paul, à Villacoublay, à Clignancourt. Puis on massacra d'obscurs trouffions, par plaisir. On cracha sur un sacristain qui, sur un trottoir, donnait l'absolution à un commandant C.R.S. qu'un loustic avait raccourci d'un adroit coup d'yatagan.

On tuait son frangin pour un saucisson, son cousin pour un bâtard, son voisin pour un croûton, un quidam pour un quignon.

Dans la nuit du lundi au mardi 6 avril, on compta vingt-cinq assauts au plastic. L'aviation bombarda la Tour d'Orly. L'Nhambra brûlait, l'Institut fumait, l'Hôpital Saint-Louis flambait.

Three cardinals, a rabbi, an masonic admiral, a trio of insignificant politicos subject to the arbitrary will of an Anglo-Saxon cartel, informed the population by radio, then by billboards, that they risked death by starvation. They ended up believing in this false rumour. It was, people said, like an intoxication. But public opinion followed. They all armed themselves with strong bludgeons. "We want bread," shouted the population, jeering at bosses, the wealthy, the authorities. They plotted, they conspired everywhere. A police officer did not dare to go out any more at night.

In Mâcon, they attacked an administrative office. In Rocamadour, they ransacked a stockpile: they found tuna, milk, kilos of chocolate, quintals of corn, but everything seemed rotten. In Nancy, they guillotined twenty-six magistrates on a roundabout just like that, then they burned an evening newspaper which they accused of having taken the side of the administration. Everywhere they took by assault warehouses, sheds or stores.

Later, they attacked North-Africans, the Blacks, Jews. They had a pogrom in Drancy, in Livry-Gargan, in Saint-Paul, in Villacoublay, in Clignancourt. Then they slaughtered obscure bystanders, for pleasure. They spat on a sexton who, on a sidewalk, gave absolution to a Commander C.R.S that a chap had shortened with one artful blow from a bullwhip.

They killed their brothers for a sausage, their cousins for a loaf, their neighbours for a crust, anyone for a bite.

At night from Monday till Tuesday, April 6th, they counted twenty-five attacks with gelignite. Aviators bombed the Tower of Orly. The Alhambra burned, the Institute smoked, the Saint-Louis hospital flamed.

31 Days (24)

2009-04-24T08:36:00.004+12:00

Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana
[Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz]
(c. 1651-1695)

from Respuesta a Sor Filotea de la Cruz

Una vez lo consiguieron una prelada muy santa y muy cándida que creyó que el estudio era cosa de Inquisición y me mandó que no estudiase. Yo la obedecí (unos tres meses que duró el poder ella mandar) en cuanto a no tomar libro, que en cuanto a no estudiar absolutamente, como no cae debajo de mi potestad, no lo pude hacer, porque aunque no estudiaba en los libros, estudiaba en todas las cosas que Dios crió, sirviéndome ellas de letras, y de libro toda esta máquina universal. Nada veía sin refleja; nada oía sin consideración, aun en las cosas más menudas y materiales; porque como no hay criatura, por baja que sea, en que no se conozca el me fecit Deus, no hay alguna que no pasme el entendimiento, si se considera como se debe. Así yo, vuelvo a decir, las miraba y admiraba todas; de tal manera que de las mismas personas con quienes hablaba, y de lo que me decían, me estaban resaltando mil consideraciones: ¿De dónde emanaría aquella variedad de genios e ingenios, siendo todos de una especie? ¿Cuáles serían los temperamentos y ocultas cualidades que lo ocasionaban? Si veía una figura, estaba combinando la proporción de sus líneas y mediándola con el entendimiento y reduciéndola a otras diferentes. Paseábame algunas veces en el testero de un dormitorio nuestro (que es una pieza muy capaz) y estaba observando que siendo las líneas de sus dos lados paralelas y su techo a nivel, la vista fingía que sus líneas se inclinaban una a otra y que su techo estaba más bajo en lo distante que en lo próximo: de donde infería que las líneas visuales corren rectas, pero no paralelas, sino que van a formar una figura piramidal. Y discurría si sería ésta la razón que obligó a los antiguos a dudar si el mundo era esférico o no. Porque, aunque lo parece, podía ser engaño de la vista, demostrando concavidades donde pudiera no haberlas.

Once they obtained for me a very holy and very candid priest who believed that study was a thing reserved for the Inquisition and ordered to me not to study. I obeyed him (for the approximately three months that his power to be in charge lasted ) as far as not picking up a book; however, as for not studying absolutely, since it does not fall down under my power, I could not do it, because although not studying in books, by studying all the things that God has created, making use of lettering, and seeing as a book all this universal machinery. I could see nothing without reflecting on it; hear nothing without consideration, even the most small and material things; because since there is no creature, however lowly, which is not aware that God made it, so there is nothing which does not amaze the understanding, if he considers to whom it owes its being. In this way I, I say again, looked at and admired all of them; in such a way that from the same persons with whom I was speaking, and from what they were saying to me, a thousand considerations were being highlighted: Wherefrom could there come such a variety of spirits and wits, since we are all of one species? What are the temperaments and secret qualities which cause it? If I saw a figure, I found myself combining the proportion of its lines according to my understanding and transforming it into various others. I walked sometimes through the alcove of a bedroom of ours (which is a very large room) and found myself observing that although the parallel lines of its two sides and its roof are all on one level, sight feigns that its lines were inclining each to the other one and that its roof was lower in the distance than in the foreground: wherefrom I inferred that the lines of vision run straight, but not parallel to each other, since they end up forming a pyramidal figure. And I wondered if this was the reason that caused the ancient ones to doubt if the world was spherical or not. Because, although it seems to be so, it could be a trick of the sight, displaying concavities where they could not be.

31 Days (23)

2009-04-23T08:43:00.004+12:00

Franz Kafka
(1883-1922)

from Josefine, die Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse

Unsere Sängerin heißt Josefine. Wer sie nicht gehört hat, kennt nicht die Macht des Gesanges. Es gibt niemanden, den ihr Gesang nicht fortreißt, was umso höher zu bewerten ist, als unser Geschlecht im ganzen Musik nicht liebt. Stiller Frieden ist uns die liebste Musik; unser Leben ist schwer, wir können uns, auch wenn wir einmal alle Tagessorgen abzuschütteln versucht haben, nicht mehr zu solchen, unserem sonstigen Leben so fernen Dingen erheben, wie es die Musik ist. Doch beklagen wir es nicht sehr; nicht einmal so weit kommen wir; eine gewisse praktische Schlauheit, die wir freilich auch äußerst dringend brauchen, halten wir für unsern größten Vorzug, und mit dem Lächeln dieser Schlauheit pflegen wir uns über alles hinwegzutrösten, auch wenn wir einmal – was aber nicht geschieht – das Verlangen nach dem Glück haben sollten, das von der Musik vielleicht ausgeht. Nur Josefine macht eine Ausnahme; sie liebt die Musik und weiß sie auch zu vermitteln; sie ist die einzige; mit ihrem Hingang wird die Musik – wer weiß wie lange – aus unserem Leben verschwinden.

Our singer is called Josefine. Whoever has not heard her, cannot know the power of her song. There is nobody whom her song cannot tear away from what our people value more than the whole of music. Quiet peace is for us the dearest music; our life is heavy, even if we wish to escape from everyday worries, so attached are we to them, that we can be no more raised to such distant things as the music is to us. However, we do not deplore it very much; we don't even go that far; we have a certain practical cleverness which we need, admittedly, extremely urgently for our biggest advantage, and with the smile of this cleverness we look around at everything distrustfully, even if we could once – which does not happen, however – have felt desire for the grace which perhaps comes out from music. Only Josefine is an exception; she loves music and also knows how to provide it; she is the only one; at her death music – who knows for how long – will disappear from our life.

31 Days (22)

2009-04-22T08:17:00.004+12:00

Gérard de Nerval
(1808-1855)

from Odelettes

El Desdichado

Je suis le Ténébreux, – le Veuf, – l'Inconsolé,
Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la Tour abolie :
Ma seule Étoile est morte, – et mon luth constellé
Porte le Soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

Dans la nuit du Tombeau, Toi qui m'as consolé,
Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d'Italie,
La fleur qui plaisait tant à mon coeur désolé,
Et la treille où le Pampre à la Rose s'allie.

Suis-je Amour ou Phoebus ?... Lusignan ou Biron ?
Mon front est rouge encor du baiser de la Reine ;
J'ai rêvé dans la Grotte où nage la Sirène...

Et j'ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l'Achéron :
Modulant tour à tour sur la lyre d'Orphée
Les soupirs de la Sainte et les cris de la Fée.

The Poor Devil

I am the Melancholic, – the Widower, – the Disconsolate,
The Prince of Aquitaine in the abolished Tower:
My only Star is dead, – and my spotted lute
Carries the black Sun of Melancholia.

In the night of the Tomb, You who have consoled me so,
Return me Pausilippus and the sea of Italy,
The flower which pleased my desolate heart so much,
And the trellis where the Vine forms an alliance with the Rose.

Am I Love or Phoebus?... Lusignan or Biron?
My forehead is still red from the Queen’s kiss;
I have dreamed in the Grotto where the Siren swims ...

And I have twice crossed Acheron as a conqueror:
Modulating, in turn, on the lyre of Orpheus
The sighs of the Saint and the cries of the Fairy.

31 Days (21)

2009-04-21T07:56:00.003+12:00

Augusto Roa Bastos
(1917-2005)

from La Excavacion

El primer desprendimiento de tierra se produjo a unos tres metros, a sus espaldas. No le pareció al principio nada alarmante. Sería solamente una veta blanda del terreno de arriba. Las tinieblas apenas se pusieron un poco más densas en el angosto agujero por el que únicamente arrastrándose sobre el vientre un hombre podía avanzar o retroceder. No podía detenerse ahora. Siguió avanzando con el plato de hojalata que le servía de perforador. La creciente humedad que iba impregnando la tosca dura lo alentaba. La barranca ya no estaría lejos; a lo sumo, unos cuatro o cinco metros, lo que representaba unos veinticinco días más de trabajo hasta el boquete liberador sobre el río.

Alternándose en turnos seguidos de cuatro horas, seis presos hacían avanzar la excavación veinte centímetros diariamente. Hubieran podido avanzar más rápido, pero la capacidad de trabajo estaba limitada por la posibilidad de desalojar la tierra en el tacho de desperdicios sin que fuera notada. Se habían abstenido de orinar en la lata que entraba y salía dos veces al día. Lo hacían en los rincones de la celda húmeda y agrietada, con lo que si bien aumentaban el hedor siniestro de la reclusión, ganaban también unos cuantos centímetros más de "bodega" para el contrabando de la tierra excavada.

La guerra civil había concluido seis meses atrás. La perforación del túnel duraba cuatro. Entre tanto, habían fallecido, por diversas causas, no del todo apacibles, diecisiete de los ochenta y nueve presos políticos que se hallaban amontonados en esa inhóspita celda, antro, retrete, ergástula pestilente, donde en tiempos de calma no habían entrado nunca más de ocho o diez presos comunes.

De los diecisiete presos que habían tenido la estúpida ocurrencia de morirse, a nueve se habían llevado distintas enfermedades contraídas antes o después de la prisión; a cuatro, los apremios urgentes de la cámara de torturas; a dos, la rauda ventosa de la tisis galopante. Otros dos se habían suicidado abriéndose las venas, uno con la púa de la hebilla del cinto; el otro, con el plato, cuyo borde afiló en la pared, y que ahora servía de herramienta para la apertura del túnel.

The first landslide took place approximately three meters behind his back. It did not seem at all alarming to him at first. It could be just a soft seam of the area above. The darkness just became a little denser in the narrow hole through which one could advance or retreat by crawling on one's belly. He could not stop now. He kept on going forward with the tin plate which served him as a shovel. The increasing moisture that as pouring from him encouraged him forward. The barrier could not be far now; at most, approximately four or five meters, which represented approximately twenty-five days more work up to the liberating hole on the river.

Alternating in turns every four hours, six prisoners were advancing the excavation twenty centimeters every day. They could have gone forward more rapidly, but their working capacity was limited by the possibility of concealing the dirt in their garbage containers without it being noticed. They had abstained from urinating in the canister that was going in and coming out twice a day. They did it in the corners of the humid and raw cell, by which means, although it increased the sinister stench of the prison, they could gain a few more centimeters of "wine cellar" for the contraband of the excavated dirt.

The civil war had concluded six months before. The digging of the tunnel had lasted four. Meanwhile, for diverse causes, not really very pleasant, seventeen of eighty nine political prisoners who were gathered in this inhospitable cell, cavern, toilet, pestilential pit, where in calmer times never had any more than eight or ten common prisoners had been enclosed, had died.

Of the seventeen prisoners who had had the bad luck to die, nine had been carried off by different illnesses contracted before or after their imprisonment; four, by the urgent pressures of the torture chamber; two, by the swift cupping glass of galloping consumption. Another two had committed suicide by opening their own veins, one with the spike of the buckle of the belt; another, with a plate, whose rim had been sharpened in the wall, the one which now was serving as a tool for the excavation of the tunnel.

31 Days (20)

2009-04-20T08:47:00.003+12:00

Heinrich Heine
(1797-1856)

from Aus der Matratzengruft

Orpheisch

Es gab den Dolch in deine Hand
Ein böser Dämon in der bösen Stunde –
Ich weiß nicht, wie der Dämon hieß –
Ich weiß nur, daß vergiftet war die Wunde.

In stillen Nächten denk ich oft,
Du solltest mal dem Schattenreich entsteigen
Und lösen alle Rätsel mir
Und mich von deiner Unschuld überzeugen.

Ich harre dein – o komme bald!
Und kommst du nicht, so steig ich selbst zur Hölle,
Daß ich alldort vor Satanas
Und allen Teufeln dich zur Rede stelle.

Ich komme, und wie Orpheus einst
Trotz ich der Unterwelt mit ihren Schrecken –
Ich finde dich, und wolltest du
Im tiefsten Höllenpfuhle dich verstecken.

Hinunter jetzt ins Land der Qual,
Wo Händeringen nur und Zähneklappen –
Ich reiße dir die Larve ab,
Der angeprahlten Großmut Purpurlappen –

Jetzt weiß ich, was ich wissen wollt,
Und gern, mein Mörder, will ich dir verzeihen;
Doch hindern kann ich nicht, daß jetzt
Schmachvoll die Teufel dir ins Antlitz speien.

Orpheus-like

There was a dagger in your hand
A bad demon at the bad hour –
I do not know what the demon was called –
I know only that the wound was poisoned.

On quiet nights I often think,
You should emerge sometimes from the Shadow-realm
And solve all riddles for me
And persuade me of your innocence.

I await you – O come soon!
And if you do not come, I’ll sink myself to hell,
So that I there in front of Satan
And all the devils can put you to the question.

I come, and like Orpheus once
Cross I the underworld with her horrors –
I find you, though you wanted
In the deepest infernal pool to hide yourself.

Down now in the land of torture,
Where only hands are wrung and teeth gnashed –
I tear the larva off of you,
The pompous proud magenta cloth –

Now I know what I wanted to know,
And with pleasure, my murderer, I want to forgive you;
However, now I cannot hinder, that
Ignominiously the devils in your face should vomit.

31 Days (19)

2009-04-19T08:52:00.004+12:00

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
(1694-1778)

from Abrégé de l'Histoire Universelle depuis Charlemagne jusques à Charlequint

Plusieurs esprits infatigables ayant débrouillé autant qu'on le peut, le chaos de l'Antiquité, et quelques Génies éloquents ayant écrit l'Histoire Universelle jusqu'à Charlemagne, j'ai regretté qu'ils n'aient pas fourni une carrière plus longue. J'ai voulu pour m'instruire de ce qu'ils ne disent pas, mettre sous mes yeux un précis de l'Histoire, laquelle nous intéresse, à mesure qu'elle devient plus moderne.

Ma principale idée est de connaître autant que je pourrai, les mœurs des Peuples, et d'étudier l'Esprit humain. Je regarderai l'ordre des Successions des Rois et la Chronologie comme mes guides, mais non comme le but de mon travail. Ce travail serait bien ingrat, si je me bornais à vouloir apprendre seulement en quelle année un Prince indigne d'être connu, succéda à un Prince barbare.

Il semble en lisant les Histoires, que la Terre n'ait été faite que pour quelques Souverains, et pour ceux qui ont servi leurs passions; tout le reste est négligé. Les Historiens, semblables en cela aux Rois, sacrifient le Genre-Humain à un seul homme. N'y a-t-il donc eu sur la Terre que des Princes; et faut-il que presque tous les Inventeurs des Arts soient inconnus, tandis qu'on a des suites chronologiques de tant d'hommes qui n'ont fait aucun bien ou qui ont fait beaucoup de mal? Autant il faut connaître les grandes actions des Souverains qui ont changé la face de la Terre, et surtout de ceux qui ont rendu leurs Peuples meilleurs et plus heureux; autant on doit ignorer le vulgaire des Rois, qui ne servirait qu'à charger la mémoire.

Several tireless minds having disentangled as much as they can the chaos of Antiquity, and some eloquent Geniuses having written Universal Histories until Charlemagne, I regretted that they have not provided a longer compass. I wanted to instruct myself in what they do not say, to put a summary of History under my eyes, which interests us, insofar as it becomes more modern.

My main idea is to know as much as I can about the morals of the People, and to study the human Mind. I shall look at the order of the Successions of the Kings and the Chronology like my guides, but not as the purpose of my work. This work would be very ungrateful, if I contented myself with wanting to learn only in which year one Prince unworthy to be known, succeeded to another barbaric Prince.

It seems sometimes, when one is reading History, that the Earth was made only for certain Sovereigns, and for those who served their desires; all the rest is neglected. The Historians, similar in this to the Kings, sacrifice the human species to a single man. Have there then been only Princes on the Earth; and is it necessary that almost all the creators of the Arts are unknown, while we have chronological lists of so many men who did no good or who did a lot of evil? So much it is necessary to know the great actions of those Sovereigns who changed the face of the Earth, and especially those who made their People happier and better; so much should one ignore the common crowd of Kings, who serve only to weigh down the memory.

31 Days (18)

2009-04-18T08:55:00.003+12:00

Domingo Faustino Sarmiento
(1811-1888)

from Facundo: Civilización y Barbarie en Las Pampas Argentinas
Introducción

¡Sombra terrible de Facundo, voy a evocarte, para que sacudiendo el ensangrentado polvo que cubre tus cenizas, te levantes a explicarnos la vida secreta y las convulsiones internas que desgarran las entrañas de un noble pueblo! Tú posees el secreto: ¡revélanoslo! Diez años aún después de tu trágica muerte, el hombre de las ciudades y el gaucho de los llanos argentinos, al tomar diversos senderos en el desierto, decían: "¡No, no ha muerto! ¡Vive aún! ¡El vendrá!" ¡Cierto! Facundo no ha muerto; está vivo en las tradiciones populares, en la política y revoluciones argentinas; en Rosas, su heredero, su complemento: su alma ha pasado a este otro molde, más acabado, más perfecto; y lo que en él era sólo instinto, iniciación, tendencia, convirtióse en Rosas en sistema, efecto y fin; la naturaleza campestre, colonial y bárbara, cambióse en esta metamorfosis en arte, en sistema y en política regular capaz de presentarse a la faz del mundo como el modo de ser de un pueblo encarnado en un hombre que ha aspirado a tomar los aires de un genio que domina los acontecimientos, los hombres y las cosas. Facundo, provinciano, bárbaro, valiente, audaz, fue reemplazado por Rosas, hijo de la culta Buenos Aires, sin serlo él; por Rosas, falso, corazón helado, espíritu calculador, que hace el mal sin pasión, y organiza lentamente el despotismo con toda la inteligencia de un Maquiavelo. Tirano sin rival hoy en la tierra, ¿por qué sus enemigos quieren disputarle el título de Grande que le prodigan sus cortesanos? Sí; grande y muy grande es para gloria y vergüenza de su patria; porque si ha encontrado millares de seres degradados que se unzan a su carro para arrastrarlo por encima de cadáveres, también se hallan a millares las almas generosas que en quince años de lid sangrienta no han desesperado de vencer al monstruo que nos propone el enigma de la organización política de la República. Un día vendrá, al fin, que lo resuelvan; y la Esfinge Argentina, mitad mujer por lo cobarde, mitad tigre por lo sanguinario, morirá a sus plantas, dando a la Tebas del Plata el rango elevado que le toca entre las naciones del Nuevo Mundo.

Terrible shade of Facundo, let's evoke you, so that shaking off the gory dust that covers your ashes, you can arise to explain to us the secret life and the internal convulsions that tear the entrails of a noble people! You possess the secret: reveal it to us! Ten years after your tragic death, on having taken diverse footpaths in the desert, the man of the cities and the gaucho of the Argentine plains were still saying: "No, he has not died! He’s still alive! He will return!” True! Facundo has not died; he is alive in the popular traditions, in politics and Argentine revolutions; in Rosas, his heir, his complement: his soul has gone on into this other mould, more finished, more perfect; and what in him was only an instinct, initiation, tendency, has turned in Rosas into a system, the effect and the end; the rural, colonial and barbarian nature, has transformed itself by this metamorphosis into art, in system and in regular politics capable of presenting itself to the face of the world as the way of life of a people personified in a man who aspires to put on the airs of a genius who dominates events, men and objects. Facundo, provincial, barbarian, brave, bold, has been replaced by Rosas, son of educated Buenos Aires, without being himself; for Rosas, false, frozen heart, calculating spirit, who harms without passion, organizes despotism slowly with all the intelligence of a Machiavel. Tyrant without rival today on the earth: why do his enemies want to dispute the title of Great that his courtiers lavish? Yes; great and very great he is, to the glory and shame of his homeland; because if it has discovered thousands of degraded beings that bow before his carriage in order to drag it over corpses, it has also produced in thousands the generous souls who in fifteen years of bloody fight have not lost hope of winning over the monster that proposes to us the enigma of the political organization of the Republic. One day will come, at last, a solution to it; and the Sphinx Argentina, half woman for cowardice, half tiger for bloodthirstiness, will die at its roots, giving to the Thebes of la Plata the high status that awaits him between the nations of the New World.

31 Days (17)

2009-04-17T08:25:00.004+12:00

Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte Fouqué
(1777-1843)

from Undine

Es mögen nun wohl schon viele hundert Jahre her sein, da gab es einmal einen alten guten Fischer, der saß eines schönen Abends vor der Tür und flickte seine Netze. Er wohnte aber in einer überaus anmutigen Gegend. Der grüne Boden, worauf seine Hütte gebaut war, streckte sich weit in einen großen Landsee hinaus, und es schien ebensowohl, die Erdzunge habe sich aus Liebe zu der bläulich klaren, wunderhellen Flut in diese hineingedrängt, als auch, das Wasser habe mit verliebten Armen nach der schönen Aue gegriffen, nach ihren hochschwankenden Gräsern und Blumen und nach dem erquicklichen Schatten ihrer Bäume. Eins ging bei dem andern zu Gaste, und eben deshalb war jegliches so schön. Von Menschen freilich war an dieser hübschen Stelle wenig oder gar nichts anzutreffen, den Fischer und seine Hausleute ausgenommen. Denn hinter der Erdzunge lag ein sehr wilder Wald, den die mehrsten Leute wegen seiner Finsternis und Unwegsamkeit, wie auch wegen der wundersamen Kreaturen und Gaukeleien, die man darin antreffen sollte, allzusehr scheueten, um sich ohne Not hineinzubegeben. Der alte fromme Fischer jedoch durchschnitt ihn ohne Anfechtung zu vielen Malen, wenn er die köstlichen Fische, die er auf seiner schönen Landzunge fing, nach einer großen Stadt trug, welche nicht sehr weit hinter dem großen Walde lag. Es ward ihm wohl mehrenteils deswegen so leicht, durch den Forst zu ziehn, weil er fast keine andre als fromme Gedanken hegte und noch außerdem jedesmal, wenn er die verrufenen Schatten betrat, ein geistliches Lied aus heller Kehle und aufrichtigem Herzen anzustimmen gewohnt war.

Now it may already probably be many hundred years ago, that there was once an old good fisherman, who sat of a beautiful evening before the door and mended his nets. Moreover, he lived in an exceedingly graceful area. The green ground on which his hut was built stretched far back into a big landlocked lake, and it even seemed at times as if the spit of earth was reaching out because of its love for the clear blue flood, just as the water was striving to put its loving arms around the nice meadow, because of its desire for the glittering grass and flowers and for the comforting shade of its trees. One went with the other as a companion, and each was just as nice as the other. Admittedly, there were very few or no people at all to be found at this pretty place, excluding the fisherman and the inhabitants of his house. This was because behind the spit of earth there lay a very wild wood which people found it difficult to make their way through, because of its darkness and impenetrability, as well as because of the wondrous creatures and tricks, which were rumoured to live in it, which inspired them to make their way around it instead. Nevertheless, the old devout fisherman had made his way through it without challenge on numerous occasions, carrying the delightful fish which he caught on his nice spit of land to the big town which lay not too far behind the big wood. It as probably easier for him to make his way through the forest, though, because he entertained virtually no thoughts which were other than devout and what's more, in addition, every time when he entered the threatening shades he would start to sing an ecclesiastical song from his bright throat and frank heart.

31 Days (16)

2009-04-16T09:53:00.001+12:00

Arthur Rimbaud
(1854-91)

from Derniers Vers
Eros, Moral, Christentum

Ô saisons, ô châteaux

Ô saisons ô châteaux,
Quelle âme est sans défauts ?

Ô saisons, ô châteaux,

J'ai fait la magique étude
Du Bonheur, que nul n'élude.

Ô vive lui, chaque fois
Que chante son coq gaulois.

Mais ! je n'aurai plus d'envie,
Il s'est chargé de ma vie.

Ce Charme ! il prit âme et corps.
Et dispersa tous efforts.

Que comprendre à ma parole ?
Il fait qu'elle fuie et vole !

Ô saisons, ô châteaux !

Et, si le malheur m'entraîne,
Sa disgrâce m'est certaine.

Il faut que son dédain, las !
Me livre au plus prompt trépas !

– Ô Saisons, ô Châteaux !

O seasons, O castles

O seasons, O castles,
What soul is without defects?

O seasons, O castles,

I made the magic study
Of that Happiness, which cannot be escaped.

Long may it live, every time
That its French cockerel sings.

However! I don’t want it any more,
It took over my life.

That Charm! it took soul and shape.
And it dispersed all my efforts.

What to understand in my words?
It makes them run away and fly!

O seasons, O castles!

And, if misfortune draws me away,
Its disfavour to me is certain.

It is necessary that her contempt, weary!
Deliver me to the most prompt demise!

– O seasons, O castles!

31 Days (15)

2009-04-15T09:25:00.003+12:00

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
(1547-1616)

from El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha

En resolución, él se enfrascó tanto en su lectura, que se le pasaban las noches leyendo de claro en claro, y los días de turbio en turbio; y así, del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le secó el celebro, de manera que vino a perder el juicio. Llenósele la fantasía de todo aquello que leía en los libros, así de encantamentos como de pendencias, batallas, desafíos, heridas, requiebros, amores, tormentas y disparates imposibles; y asentósele de tal modo en la imaginación que era verdad toda aquella máquina de aquellas sonadas soñadas invenciones que leía, que para él no había otra historia más cierta en el mundo. Decía él que el Cid Ruy Díaz había sido muy buen caballero, pero que no tenía que ver con el Caballero de la Ardiente Espada, que de sólo un revés había partido por medio dos fieros y descomunales gigantes. Mejor estaba con Bernardo del Carpio, porque en Roncesvalles había muerto a Roldán el encantado, valiéndose de la industria de Hércules, cuando ahogó a Anteo, el hijo de la Tierra, entre los brazos. Decía mucho bien del gigante Morgante, porque, con ser de aquella generación gigantea, que todos son soberbios y descomedidos, él solo era afable y bien criado. Pero, sobre todos, estaba bien con Reinaldos de Montalbán, y más cuando le veía salir de su castillo y robar cuantos topaba, y cuando en allende robó aquel ídolo de Mahoma que era todo de oro, según dice su historia. Diera él, por dar una mano de coces al traidor de Galalón, al ama que tenía, y aun a su sobrina de añadidura.

As a result, he became so absorbed in his reading, that he spent the nights reading from dusk till dawn, and the days reading till dark; and in this way, from too little sleep and too much reading, his mind dried up, so that he came to lose his judgment. Filling himself up with the fantasy of all that that he was reading in the books, as much of enchantments as of their consequences, battles, challenges, wounds, flirtatious remarks, loves, thunderstorms and impossible nonsense; and he mixed it all up in his imagination in such a way that he believed to be true all that machinery of famous dreamed inventions that he was reading, so that for him there was no another more true history in the world. He said that the Cid Ruy Díaz had been a very good gentleman, but that he could not compare with the Knight of the Ardent Sword, who with only a knife had cut in half two fierce and extraordinary giants. It was better for Bernardo del Carpio, because at Roncesvalles he had killed Roldán the enchanter, employing the strength of Hercules, when he drowned Anteus, the son of the Earth, between his arms. He said a lot of good of the giant Morgante, because, in spite of being of that generation of giants, who are all haughty and impolite, he alone was affable and of good breeding. But, especially, it was well with Reinaldos de Montalbán, above all when he sallied forth from his castle and robbed everyone who was passing, and when in retreat e stole that idol of Mahomet made entirely of gold, as it says in his history. It was he who gave, after giving a brace of kicks to the traitor Galalón, to his mistress some more, and even some to his niece in addition.

31 Days (14)

2009-04-14T08:30:00.003+12:00

Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875-1926)

from The Duino Elegies
Die erste Duineser Elegie

Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel
Ordnungen? und gesetzt selbst, es nähme
einer mich plötzlich ans Herz: ich verginge von seinem
stärkeren Dasein. Denn das Schöne ist nichts
als des Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir noch grade ertragen,
und wir bewundern es so, weil es gelassen verschmäht,
uns zu zerstören. Ein jeder Engel ist schrecklich.
Und so verhalt ich mich denn und verschlucke den Lockruf
dunkelen Schluchzens. Ach, wen vermögen
wir denn zu brauchen? Engel nicht, Menschen nicht,
und die findigen Tiere merken es schon,
daß wir nicht sehr verläßlich zu Haus sind
in der gedeuteten Welt. Es bleibt uns vielleicht
irgend ein Baum an dem Abhang, daß wir ihn täglich
wiedersähen; es bleibt uns die Straße von gestern
und das verzogene Treusein einer Gewohnheit,
der es bei uns gefiel, und so blieb sie und ging nicht.
O und die Nacht, die Nacht, wenn der Wind voller Weltraum
uns am Angesicht zehrt –, wem bliebe sie nicht, die ersehnte,
sanft enttäuschende, welche dem einzelnen Herzen
mühsam bevorsteht. Ist sie den Liebenden leichter?
Ach, sie verdecken sich nur mit einander ihr Los.
Weißt du's noch nicht? Wirf aus den Armen die Leere
zu den Räumen hinzu, die wir atmen; vielleicht daß die Vögel
die erweiterte Luft fühlen mit innigerm Flug.

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them suddenly
pressed me against his heart, I would perish
in the embrace of his stronger existence.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
And so I force myself, swallow and hold back
the surging call of my dark sobbing.
Oh, to whom can we turn for help? Not angels, not humans;
and even the knowing animals are aware that we feel
little secure and at home in our interpreted world.
There remains perhaps some tree on a hillside
daily for us to see; yesterday's street remains for us
stayed, moved in with us and showed no signs of leaving.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind
full of cosmic space invades our frightened faces.
Whom would it not remain for – that longed-after,
gently disenchanting night, painfully there for the
solitary heart to achieve? Is it easier for lovers?
Don't you know yet ? Fling out of your arms the
emptiness into the spaces we breath –perhaps the birds
will feel the expanded air in their more fervent flight.

[Translated by Albert Ernest Flemming]

31 Days (13)

2009-04-13T08:41:00.003+12:00

François-René de Chateaubriand
(1768-1848)

from Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe
Préface Testamentaire

J'ai exploré les mers de l'Ancien et du Nouveau-Monde, et foulé le sol des quatre parties de la terre. Après avoir campé sous la hutte de l'Iroquois et sous la tente de l'Arabe, dans les wigwuams des Hurons, dans les débris d'Athènes, de Jérusalem, de Memphis, de Carthage, de Grenade, chez le Grec, le Turc et le Maure, parmi les forêts et les ruines; après avoir revêtu la casaque de peau d'ours du sauvage et le cafetan de soie du mameluck, après avoir subi la pauvreté, la faim, la soif et l'exil, je me suis assis, ministre et ambassadeur, brodé d'or, bariolé d'insignes et de rubans, à la table des rois, aux fêtes des princes et des princesses, pour retomber dans l'indigence et essayer de la prison.

J'ai été en relation avec une foule de personnages célèbres dans les armes, l'Église, la politique, la magistrature, les sciences et les arts. Je possède des matériaux immenses, plus de quatre mille lettres particulières, les correspondances diplomatiques de mes différentes ambassades, celles de mon passage au ministère des Affaires étrangères, entre lesquelles se trouvent des pièces à moi particulières, uniques et inconnues. J'ai porté le mousquet du soldat, le bâton du voyageur, le bourdon du pèlerin: navigateur, mes destinées ont eu l'inconstance de ma voile; alcyon, j'ai fait mon nid sur les flots.

Je me suis mêlé de paix et de guerre; j'ai signé des traités, des protocoles, et publié chemin faisant de nombreux ouvrages. J'ai été initié à des secrets de partis, de cour et d'état; j'ai vu de près les plus rares malheurs, les plus hautes fortunes, les plus grandes renommées. J'ai assisté à des sièges, à des congrès, à des conclaves, à la réédification et à la démolition des trônes. J'ai fait de l'histoire, et je pouvais l'écrire. Et ma vie solitaire, rêveuse, poétique, marchait au travers de ce monde de réalités, de catastrophes, de tumulte, de bruit, avec les fils de mes songes, Chactas, René, Eudore, Aben-Hamet, avec les filles de mes chimères, Atala, Amélie, Blanca, Velléda, Cymodocée. En dedans et à côté de mon siècle, j'exerçais peut-être sur lui, sans le vouloir et sans le chercher, une triple influence religieuse, politique et littéraire.

I have explored the seas of the Old and the New World, and traversed the soil of the four corners of the earth. Having camped in Iroquois huts and Arab tents, in Huron wigwams, in the remains of Athens, Jerusalem, Memphis, Carthage, Granada, among the Greeks, the Turks and the Moors, among forests and ruins; having dressed in bearskin robes among the savages and the silken caftans among the Mamelukes, been subjected to poverty, to hunger, to thirst and to banishment, I have sat myself down, minister and ambassador, embroidered with gold, festooned with insignia and ribbons, at the tables of kings, the parties of princes and princesses, to fall once more into destitution and try out yet another prison.

I have been connected with a horde of famous figures in the armed forces, the Church, politics, the law, the sciences and the arts. I have huge materials, more than four thousand individual letters, diplomatic correspondence from my various embassies, those from my career in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among which are pieces particular to myself, unique and unknown. I have carried the musket of the soldier, the staff of the traveller, the badge of the pilgrim: navigator, my destiny has been at the mercy of my sails; swallow, I made my nest among the billows.

I have mixed myself in peace and war; I have signed treaties, protocols, and published numerous works on the way. I have been initiated into the secrets of parties, the court and the state; I have seen up close the rarest misfortunes, the highest destinies, the greatest reputations. I have witnessed sieges, congresses, conclaves, the rebuilding and the destruction of thrones. I have made history, and I have been able to write it. And my solitary, dreamy, poetic life, walked side by side with this world of realities, disasters, disorder, noise, with the threads of my dreams, Chactas, René, Eudore, Aben-Hamet, with the girls of my chimeras, Atala, Amélie, Blanca, Velléda, Cymodocée. From within and to one side of my century, I have exercised on it (perhaps), by accident and without my searching for it, a triple influence: religious, political and literary.

31 Days (12)

2009-04-12T08:55:00.002+12:00

José Lezama Lima
(1912-1976)

Retrato de Don Francisco de Quevedo

Sin dientes, pero con dientes
como sierra y a la noche no cierra
el negro terciopelo que lo entierra
entre el clavel y el clavón crujiente.
Bailados sueños y las jácaras molientes
sacan el vozarrón Santiago de la tierra.
Noctámbulo tizón traza en vuelo ardientes
elipses en Nápoles donde el agua yerra.
Muérdago en semilla hinchado por la brisa
risota en el infierno, el tiburón quemado
escamas sueltas, tonsura yerto.
En el fin de los fines ¿qué es esto?
Roto maíz entuerto en el faisán barniza
y en la horca se salva encaramado.

Portrait of Don Francisco de Quevedo

Without teeth, but with teeth
as it saws and does not close at night
the black velvet that buries it
between the carnation and the creaking shoulderblade.
Dancing dreams and the softening jacarandas
extract the echoing Santiago from the ground.
Active at night ember plans in flight ardent
ellipses in Naples where the water congeals.
Mistletoe in seed inflated by the breeze
resounds in hell, the burnt shark
free scales, shears stiffly.
In the end of ends: what is this?
Broken corn wrong in the pheasant varnishes
and in the gallows it is saved raised.

31 Days (11)

2009-04-11T09:15:00.001+12:00

Arthur Schopenhauer
(1788-1860)

from Aphorismen
Grundeinteilung

Aristoteles hat die Güter des menschlichen Lebens in drei Klassen geteilt – die äußeren, die der Seele und die des Leibes. Hievon nun nichts, als die Dreizahl beibehaltend, sage ich, daß was den Unterschied im Lose der Sterblichen begründet, sich auf drei Grundbestimmungen zurückführen läßt. Sie sind:

Was Einer ist: also die Persönlichkeit, im weitesten Sinne. Sonach ist hierunter Gesundheit, Kraft, Schönheit, Temperament, moralischer Charakter, Intelligenz und Ausbildung derselben begriffen.

Was Einer hat: also Eigentum und Besitz in jeglichem Sinne.

Was Einer vorstellt: unter diesem Ausdruck wird bekanntlich verstanden, was er in der Vorstellung Anderer ist, also eigentlich wie er von ihnen vorgestellt wird. Es besteht demnach in ihrer Meinung von ihm, und zerfällt in Ehre, Rang und Ruhm.

Aristotle has divided the good things of human life into three classes – those that are external, those that are to do with the soul and those to do with the body. I shall say nothing, for now, about this threefold division, but rather that what makes a difference in the lot of mortals can be brought back to three basic rules. They are:

What one is: or rather, to personality, in the largest sense. As long as we include under this same heading health, strength, beauty, temperament, moral character, intelligence and education.

What one has: thus, property and possessions (however defined).

How one looks: by this expression is to be understood, what he regards himself to be in the opinion of others, thus, actually, how he is regarded by them. He exists therefore through their opinion of him, and remains uncomforted by honour, rank and fame.

31 Days (10)

2009-04-10T08:51:00.003+12:00

Pierre de Marivaux
(1688– 1763)

from Le Legs

LE MARQUIS.
Bon! des graces! A quoi me serviroient-elles? N'a-t-il pas plu a votre coeur de me trouver haissable?

LA COMTESSE.
Que vous etes impatientant avec votre haine! Eh! quelles preuves avez-vous de la mienne? Vous n'en avez que de ma patience a ecouter la bizarrerie des discours que vous me tenez toujours. Vous ai-je jamais dit un mot de ce que vous m'avez fait dire, ni que vous me fachiez, ni que je vous hais, ni que je vous raille? Toutes visions que vous prenez, je ne sais comment, dans votre tete, et que vous vous figurez venir de moi; visions que vous grossissez, que vous multipliez a chaque fois que vous me repondez ou que vous croyez me repondre: car vous etes d'une maladresse! Ce n'est non plus a moi a qui vous repondez qu'a qui ne vous parla jamais; et cependant monsieur se plaint.

LE MARQUIS.
C'est que monsieur est un extravagant.

LA COMTESSE.
C'est, du moins, le plus insupportable homme que je connoisse. Oui, vous pouvez etre persuade qu'il n'y a rien de si original que vos conversations avec moi, de si incroyable.

from The Legacy

THE MARQUIS.
Fine! Manners! How do they serve me? Does it not please your heart to find me detestable?

THE COUNTESS.
How irritating you are with your hate! Ah! what proof have you of mine? You have only my patience in listening to the strange speeches which you insist on making to me. Have I ever said to you a word of what you have made me say, either that you anger me, nor that I hate you, nor that I make fun of you? All of these are visions which you hold, I do not know how, in your head, and you only imagine to come from me; visions which you magnify, which you multiply each time you reply to me or each time you believe that I reply to you: for you exhibit so much awkwardness! It is n o more to me that you are replying than to she who has never spoken to you; and neverthless Sir complains.

THE MARQUIS.
It is because Sir is extravagant.

THE COUNTESS.
He is, at least, the most unbearable man with whom I am acquainted. Yes, you can be persuaded that there is nothing so original as your dialogues with me, or so unconvincing.

31 Days (9)

2009-04-09T07:31:00.004+12:00

Benito Pérez Galdós
(1843-1920)

from Fortunata y Jacinta

Las noticias más remotas que tengo de la persona que lleva este nombre me las ha dado Jacinto María Villalonga, y alcanzan al tiempo en que este amigo mío y el otro y el de más allá, Zalamero, Joaquinito Pez, Alejandro Miquis, iban a las aulas de la Universidad. No cursaban todos el mismo año, y aunque se reunían en la cátedra de Camús, separábanse en la de Derecho Romano: el chico de Santa Cruz era discípulo de Novar, y Villalonga de Coronado. Ni tenían todos el mismo grado de aplicación: Zalamero, juicioso y circunspecto como pocos, era de los que se ponen en la primera fila de bancos, mirando con faz complacida al profesor mientras explica, y haciendo con la cabeza discretas señales de asentimiento a todo lo que dice. Por el contrario, Santa Cruz y Villalonga se ponían siempre en la grada más alta, envueltos en sus capas y más parecidos a conspiradores que a estudiantes. Allí pasaban el rato charlando por lo bajo, leyendo novelas, dibujando caricaturas o soplándose recíprocamente la lección cuando el catedrático les preguntaba. Juanito Santa Cruz y Miquis llevaron un día una sartén (no sé si a la clase de Novar o a la de Uribe, que explicaba Metafísica) y frieron un par de huevos. Otras muchas tonterías de este jaez cuenta Villalonga, las cuales no copio por no alargar este relato. Todos ellos, a excepción de Miquis que se murió en el 64 soñando con la gloria de Schiller, metieron infernal bulla en el célebre alboroto de la noche de San Daniel. Hasta el formalito Zalamero se descompuso en aquella ruidosa ocasión, dando pitidos y chillando como un salvaje, con lo cual se ganó dos bofetadas de un guardia veterano, sin más consecuencias. Pero Villalonga y Santa Cruz lo pasaron peor, porque el primero recibió un sablazo en el hombro que le tuvo derrengado por espacio de dos meses largos, y el segundo fue cogido junto a la esquina del Teatro Real y llevado a la prevención en una cuerda de presos, compuesta de varios estudiantes decentes y algunos pilluelos de muy mal pelaje. A la sombra me lo tuvieron veinte y tantas horas, y aún durara más su cautiverio, si de él no le sacara el día 11 su papá, sujeto respetabilísimo y muy bien relacionado.

The most distant reports I have of the person who goes by the name of Jacinto Maria Villalonga he gave me himself, and they date from the time when a friend of mine and another one and one from even further back, Zalamero, Joaquinito Pez, and Alejandro Miquis, were attending classes at the University. They were not all in the same year, and although they met in the cathedral of Camús, they were separated by that of Roman Law: the boy of Santa Cruz was a disciple of Novar, and Villalonga of Coronado. They did not even all have the same degree of keenness: Zalamero, judicious and circumspect as few are, was one of those who place themselves in the first row of seats, looking up with a complacent face at the teacher as he explains things, and making discreet nods of assent to everything he says. On the other hand, Santa Cruz and Villalonga always stationed themselves in the top tier, wrapped in their capes and looking more like conspirators than students. There they passed the time chatting in an undertone, reading novels, drawing caricatures or undertaking the reading in turns when the professor asked them. One day Juanito Santa Cruz and Miquis brought a frying pan (I do not know if it was to Novar’s class or to Uribe’s, who was expounding Metaphysics) and fried a pair of eggs. Villalonga recounts many other jests of this nature, which I do not repeat here so as not to lengthen this history. All of them, with the exception of Miquis who died in ’64 dreaming of the glory of Schiller, put an infernal amount of energy into the famous demonstration of the night of San Daniel. According to the formalist Zalamero, all that noisy occasion consisted of for him was a few whistles and savage screams, which earned him two slaps from a veteran guard, without much more in the way of consequences. However Villalonga and Santa Cruz had a worse time of it, because the first one received a sabre wound in the shoulder that laid him out for the space of two long months, and the second one was marched along to the corner of the Royal Theatre and taken to the cells roped up in a line of prisoners, consisting of several decent students and some guttersnipes of very bad character. They kept him in the dark (he told me) for twenty hours or more, and his captivity would have lasted a lot longer, if he had not been extracted on the 11th by his papa, a most respectable and very well-connected citizen.

31 Days (8)

2009-04-08T11:21:00.002+12:00

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832)

Gefunden

Ich ging im Walde
So für mich hin,
Und nichts zu suchen,
Das war mein Sinn.

Im Schatten sah ich
Ein Blümchen stehn,
Wie Sterne leuchtend
Wie Äuglein schön.

Ich wollt es brechen,
Da sagt' es fein:
Soll ich zum Welken,
Gebrochen sein?

Ich grubs mit allen
Den Würzeln aus,
Zum Garten trug ichs
Am hübschen Haus.

Und pflanzt es wieder
Am stillen Ort;
Nun zweigt es immer
Und blüht so fort.

Found

I was walking in the woods
Just on a whim of mine,
And seeking nothing,
That was my intention.

In the shade I saw
A little flower standing
Like stars glittering
Like beautiful little eyes.

I wanted to pick it
When it said delicately:
Should I just to wilt
Be picked?

I dug it out with all
Its little roots.
To the garden I carried it
By the lovely house.

And replanted it
In this quiet spot;
Now it keeps branching out
And blossoms ever forth.

[Translation: Hyde Flippo]

31 Days (7)

2009-04-07T08:03:00.002+12:00

Guillaume Apollinaire
(1880-1918)

from L'Hérésiarque & Cie

Le Passant de Prague

Laquedem riait; nous payâmes et partîmes. Il me dit:

- J'ai été fort content de cette fille et je suis rarement satisfait. Je ne me souviens de pareilles jouissances qu'à Forli, en 1267, où j'eus une pucelle. Je fus heureux aussi à Sienne, je ne sais plus en quelle année du XIVe siècle, auprès d'une fornarine mariée, dont les cheveux avaient la couleur des pains dorés. En 1542, à Hambourg, je fus si épris, que j'allai dans une église, pieds nus, supplier Dieu vainement de me pardonner et de me permettre de m'arrêter. Ce jour-là, pendant le sermon, je fus reconnu et accosté par l'étudiant Paulus von Eitzen, qui devint évêque de Schleswig. Il raconta son aventure à son compagnon Chrysostôme Dædalus, qui l'imprima en 1564.

- Vous vivez! dis-je.

- Oui! je vis une vie quasi divine, pareil à un Wotan, jamais triste. Mais, je le sens, il faut que je parte. J'en ai assez de Prague! Vous tombez de sommeil. Allez dormir. Adieu!

Je pris sa longue main sèche:

- Adieu, Juif Errant, voyageur heureux et sans but! Votre optimisme n'est pas médiocre, et qu'ils sont fous ceux qui vous représentent comme un aventurier hâve et hanté de remords.

- Des remords? Pourquoi? Gardez la paix de l'âme et soyez méchant. Les bons vous en sauront gré. Le Christ! je l'ai bafoué. Il m'a fait surhumain. Adieu!...

The Passenger for Prague

Laquedem laughed; we paid and left. He said to me:

– I was very much happy with this girl and I am seldom satisfied. I remember the same pleasure only in Forli, in 1267, when I had a virgin. I was happy also in Sienne, I do not know any more in which year of the XIVth century, with a married bakeress, hair of which had the colour of gold breads. In 1542, in Hamburg, I was so in love, that I went to a church with bare feet to beg God in vain to excuse me and to allow me to stop. That day, during the sermon, I was recognised and accosted by the student Paulus von Eitzen, who became bishop of Schleswig. He told his adventure to his companion Chrysostôme Dædalus, who printed it in 1564.

– You live! I say.

– Yes! I live a quasi divine life, similar to Wotan, never sad. But, I feel it, it is necessary that I leave. I have had enough of Prague! You’re falling asleep. Go to sleep. Goodbye!

I took the long dry hand:

– Goodbye, Wandering Jew, happy traveller without a destination! Your optimism is not mediocre, and they are mad who represent you as a haggard adventurer haunted by remorse.

– By remorse? Why? Keep peace in your soul and be a bit wicked. Good people will be grateful to you for it. Christ! I derided him. He made me superhuman. Goodbye! ...

31 Days (6)

2009-04-06T07:52:00.002+12:00

Garcilaso de la Vega
(1501-1536)

Soneto XXXVII

A la entrada de un valle, en un desierto,
do nadie atravesaba, ni se vía,
vi que con extrañeza un can hacía
extremos de dolor con desconcierto;
agora suelta el llanto al cielo abierto,
ora va rastreando por la vía;
camina, vuelve, para, y todavía
quedaba desmayado como muerto.
Y fue que se apartó de su presencia
su amo, y no le hallaba; y esto siente;
mirad hasta do llega el mal de ausencia.
Movióme a compasión ver su accidente;
díjele, lastimado: «Ten paciencia,
que yo alcanzo razón, y estoy ausente».

Sonnet XXXVII

At the entry of a valley, in a desert,
which nobody was crossing, nor coming from,
I saw that with surprise a dog was showing
extremes of sorrow with uncertainty;
now it releases its cries to the open sky,
now it goes rushing towards the path;
it walks, returns, stops, and still
it remained as dismayed as a dead person.
And the fact was that it was parted from the presence
Of its owner, and it was not finding him; and it feels it;
look to what extent reaches the evil of absence.
It moved me to compassion to see his misfortune;
I said to him, the crying one: "Have patience,
since I have reason, and yet I too am absent."

31 Days (5)

2009-04-05T08:30:00.001+12:00

Karl Kraus
(1874-1936)

from Aphorismen
Eros, Moral, Christentum

Die wahre Beziehung der Geschlechter ist es, wenn der Mann bekennt: Ich habe keinen andern Gedankten als dich und darum immer neue!

Ist eine Frau im Zimmer, ehe einer eintritt, der sie sieht? Gibt es das Weib an sich?
Nichts ist unergründlicher als die Oberflächlichkeit eines Weibes.

Den Inhalt einer Frau erfaßt man bald. Aber bis man zur Oberfläche vordringt!

Die Frau braucht in Freud und Leid, außen und innen, in jeder Lage, den Spiegel.

Der "Verführer", der sich rühmt, Frauen in die Geheimnisse der Liebe einzuweihen: Der Fremde, der auf dem Bahnhof ankommt und sich erbötig macht, dem Fremdenführer die Schönheiten der Stadt zu zeigen.

Sie behandeln eine Frau wie einen Labetrunk. Daß die Frauen Durst haben, wollen sie nicht gelten lassen.

Eine je stärkere Persönlichkeit die Frau ist, um so leichter trägt sie die Bürde ihrer Erlebnisse. Hochmut kommt nach dem Fall.

Die geniale Fähigkeit des Weibes, zu vergessen, ist etwas anderes als das Talent der Dame, sich nicht erinnern zu können.

Daß Titania auch einen Esel herzen kann, wollen die Oberone nie verstehen, weil sie dank einer geringern Geschlechtlichkeit nicht imstande wären, eine Eselin zu herzen. Dafür werden sie in der Liebe selbst zu Eseln.

True respect between the sexes is this: when the man knows: I have no other thought than you and therefore always new ones!

Is there a woman in the room, before one enters and sees her? Is there such a thing as a female as such?

Nothing is more unfathomable than the superficiality of a woman.

One soon grasps the contents of a woman. But then one penetrates to the surface!

The woman needs in joy and grief, outside and inside, in every position, the mirror.

The "seducer" who boasts to himself of initiating women into the secrets of love: The stranger who comes to the railway station and makes himself ridiculous, by showing to the tourist guide the beauties of the town.

They treat a woman like a hot posset. The fact that the woman herself is thirsty, they do not want to acknowledge.

A stronger personality a woman is, the more lightly she carries the burden of her experiences. Pride comes after the fall.

The genial willingness of a woman to forget, is something different from the talent of the lady to be able to make herself not to be remembered.

The fact that Titania can also embrace a donkey, Oberons never wish to understand, because they would not in turn be able thanks to pride of their sex to hug an female ass. Hence in love they become donkeys themselves.

31 Days (4)

2009-04-04T09:56:00.004+13:00

Victor Hugo
(1802-1885)

from Les Misérables
Bk VIII, chapter 5

Un dernier mot sur Fantine.

Nous avons tous une mère, la terre. On rendit Fantine à cette mère.

Le curé crut bien faire, et fit bien peut-être, en réservant, sur ce que Jean Valjean avait laissé, le plus d'argent possible aux pauvres. Après tout, de qui s'agissait-il? d'un forçat et d'une fille publique. C'est pourquoi il simplifia l'enterrement de Fantine, et le réduisit à ce strict nécessaire qu'on appelle la fosse commune.

Fantine fut donc enterrée dans ce coin gratis du cimetière qui est à tous et à personne, et où l'on perd les pauvres. Heureusement Dieu sait où retrouver l'âme. On coucha Fantine dans les ténèbres parmi les premiers os venus; elle subit la promiscuité des cendres. Elle fut jetée à la fosse publique. Sa tombe ressembla à son lit.

A last word on Fantine.

We all have a mother, the earth. They returned Fantine to this mother.

The priest definitely believed he was doing well, and perhaps did do well, by reserving, from what Jean Valjean had left, the largest possible amount of silver for the poor people. After all, who was it from? of a convict and a public girl. That's why he simplified the funeral of Fantine, and reduced it to these strict essentials which they call the communal grave.

Fantine was therefore buried in the free corner of the graveyard which belongs to all and to anybody, and where they mislay the poor. Happily God knows where to find the soul. They put Fantine to bed in blackness among the first come bones; she submitted to the promiscuity of ashes. She was thrown into the public pit. Her tomb resembled her bed.

31 Days (3)

2009-04-03T08:55:00.003+13:00

Jorge Luis Borges
(1899-1986)

El puñal

En un cajón hay un puñal.

Fue forjado en Toledo, a fines del siglo pasado; Luis Melián Lafinur se lo dio a mi padre, que lo trajo del Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego lo tuvo alguna vez en la mano.
Quienes lo ven tienen que jugar un rato con él; se advierte que hace mucho que lo buscaban; la mano se apresura a apretar la empuñadura que la espera; la hoja obediente y poderosa juega con precisión en la vaina.

Otra cosa quiere el puñal.

Es más que una estructura hecha de metales; los hombres lo pensaron y lo formaron para un fin muy preciso; es, de algún modo eterno, el puñal que anoche mató un hombre en Tacuarembó y los puñales que mataron a César. Quiere matar, quiere derramar brusca sangre.

En un cajón del escritorio, entre borradores y cartas, interminablemente sueña el puñal con su sencillo sueño de tigre, y la mano se anima cuando lo rige porque el metal se anima, el metal que presiente en cada contacto al homicida para quien lo crearon los hombres.

A veces me da lástima. Tanta dureza, tanta fe, tan apacible o inocente soberbia, y los años pasan, inútiles.

The Dagger

In a drawer there is a dagger.

It was forged in Toledo, at the end of last century; Luis Melián Lafinur gave it to my father, who brought it from Uruguay; Evaristo Carriego once held it in his hand.
Those who see it have to play with it a little bit; it warns them that for a long time they have been looking for it; the hand hurries to press the handle that awaits it; the obedient and powerful blade moves precisely in the sheath.

The dagger wants something else.

It is more than a structure made out of metal; people thought it up and formed it for a very precise end; it is, somehow eternally, the dirk that yesterday evening killed a man in Tacuarembó and the daggers that killed Caesar. It wants to kill, wants to spill sudden blood.

In a drawer of the desk, between drafts and letters, endlessly the dagger dreams with of his simple tiger-sleep, and the hand cheers up when it governs it because the metal cheers up, the metal that anticipates in every contact the killer for whom the men created it.

Sometimes I feel sorry for it. So many hardness, so much faith, so much pleasant or innocent pride, and the years pass, useless.

31 Days (2)

2009-04-02T10:07:00.005+13:00

Heinrich von Kleist
(1777-1811)

from Die Marquise von O

In M..., einer bedeutenden Stadt im oberen Italien, ließ die verwitwete Marquise von O..., eine Dame von vortrefflichem Ruf, und Mutter von mehreren wohlerzogenen Kindern, durch die Zeitungen bekannt machen: daß sie, ohne ihr Wissen, in andre Umstände gekommen sei, daß der Vater zu dem Kinde, das sie gebären würde, sich melden solle; und daß sie, aus Familienrücksichten, entschlossen wäre, ihn zu heiraten. Die Dame, die einen so sonderbaren, den Spott der Welt reizenden Schritt, beim Drang unabänderlicher Umstände, mit solcher Sicherheit tat, war die Tochter des Herrn von G..., Kommandanten der Zitadelle bei M... Sie hatte, vor ungefähr drei Jahren, ihren Gemahl, den Marquis von O..., dem sie auf das innigste und zärtlichste zugetan war, auf einer Reise verloren, die er, in Geschäften der Familie, nach Paris gemacht hatte. Auf Frau von G...s, ihrer würdigen Mutter, Wunsch, hatte sie, nach seinem Tode, den Landsitz verlassen, den sie bisher bei V... bewohnt hatte, und war, mit ihren beiden Kindern, in das Kommandantenhaus, zu ihrem Vater, zurückgekehrt. Hier hatte sie die nächsten Jahre mit Kunst, Lektüre, mit Erziehung, und ihrer Eltern Pflege beschäftigt, in der größten Eingezogenheit zugebracht: bis der ... Krieg plötzlich die Gegend umher mit den Truppen fast aller Mächte und auch mit russischen erfüllte. Der Obrist von G..., welcher den Platz zu verteidigen Order hatte, forderte seine Gemahlin und seine Tochter auf, sich auf das Landgut, entweder der letzteren, oder seines Sohnes, das bei V... lag, zurückzuziehen. Doch ehe sich die Abschätzung noch, hier der Bedrängnisse, denen man in der Festung, dort der Greuel, denen man auf dem platten Lande ausgesetzt sein konnte, auf der Waage der weiblichen Überlegung entschieden hatte: war die Zitadelle von den russischen Truppen schon berennt, und aufgefordert, sich zu ergeben. Der Obrist erklärte gegen seine Familie, daß er sich nunmehr verhalten würde, als ob sie nicht vorhanden wäre; und antwortete mit Kugeln und Granaten. Der Feind, seinerseits, bombardierte die Zitadelle. Er steckte die Magazine in Brand, eroberte ein Außenwerk, und als der Kommandant, nach einer nochmaligen Aufforderung, mit der Übergabe zauderte, so ordnete er einen nächtlichen Überfall an, und eroberte die Festung mit Sturm.

In M..., a notable town in upper Italy, the widowed Marquise von O..., a lady of excellent breeding, and mother of several well-bred children, had the newspapers announce the fact that she, without her knowledge, had come to this circumstance, that the father to the child which she was about to bear should announce himself; and the fact that she, from family considerations, was resolved to marry him. The lady who took such an odd yet wonderful step, to the mockery of the world, under the urging of unalterable circumstances with such confidence, was the daughter of Mr. von G..., commander of the stronghold of M... She had, about three years ago, lost her spouse, the Marquis of O... whom she was fond of in a most tender and most affectionate way, on a journey which he, had made to Paris on family business. According to the wishes of Mrs. von G...s, her worthy mother, she had left, after his death, the country estate which she had inhabited up to now near V..., and had, with both her children, to the commander's house, her father’s, returned. Here she had occupied the next years with art, reading, with education, and the care of her elderly parents, spending them in the biggest contentment: Until ... suddenly War filled the area around with the troops of almost all sides and also with Russians. General G... who had orders to defend the town, requested his spouse and his daughter to withdraw to the estate, either the latter, or his son’s which lay near V.... However, before to itself the evaluation, on the one hand of the distress to which one could be subjected in the fortress, there the horror to which one could be put out on the flat land, could be weighed on the scales of female consideration: the stronghold was already overrun by Russian troops and requested to surrender. The General explained to his family that he could no longer pretend that they did not exist; and answered with balls and shells. The enemy, on his part, bombed the stronghold. He set on fire the magazines, conquered an outside work, and when the commander, after a repeated request, hesitated about the handing over, he arranged a night raid, and conquered the fortress by storm.

31 Days (1)

2009-04-01T12:50:00.004+13:00

François Villon
(1431– ?)

from Le Testament

Ballade à s'amie

Fausse beauté qui tant me coûte cher,
Rude en effet, hypocrite douleur,
Amour dure plus que fer à mâcher,
Nommer que puis, de ma défaçon seur,
Cherme félon, la mort d'un pauvre cœur,
Orgueil mussé qui gens met au mourir,
Yeux sans pitié, ne veut Droit de Rigueur,
Sans empirer, un pauvre secourir ?

Mieux m'eût valu avoir été sercher
Ailleurs secours, c'eût été mon honneur ;
Rien ne m'eût su hors de ce fait hâcher :
Trotter m'en faut en fuite et déshonneur.
Haro, haro, le grand et le mineur !
Et qu'est-ce ci ? Mourrai sans coup férir ?
Ou Pitié veut, selon cette teneur,
Sans empirer, un pauvre secourir ?

Un temps viendra qui fera dessécher,
Jaunir, flétrir votre épanie fleur ;
Je m'en risse, se tant pusse mâcher,
Las ! mais nenni, ce seroit donc foleur :
Vieil je serai, vous laide, sans couleur ;
Or buvez fort, tant que ru peut courir ;
Ne donnez pas à tous cette douleur,
Sans empirer, un pauvre secourir.

Prince (amoureux), des amants le graigneur,
Votre mal gré ne voudroie encourir,
Mais tout franc cœur doit, par Notre Seigneur,
Sans empirer, un pauvre secourir.

Ballade to his mistress

False beauty which has cost me so dearly,
Hard in effect, hypocritical pain,
Love harder than iron to be chewed,
Name that then, sure of my unmaking,
Perfidious charm, the death of a poor heart,
Tricky arrogance which puts people to death,
Pitiless eyes , doesn’t the Right of Combat,
Without getting worse, to help a poor man?

It would have been better for me to saerch
For help elsewhere, it would’ve been my honour;
Nothing would’ve been able to prise me from this fact:
I need to trot off in flight and disgrace.
Haro, haro, the big and the small!
And what’s here? Shall I die without a blow?
Or does Pity want, according to this tenor,
Without getting worse, a poor man to help?

A time will come which will make dry out,
Turn yellow, discolour your vanished flower;
I should laugh at it, if I can bit off that much,
Weary! but no, that would still be folly:
Old I shall be, you ugly, colourless;
So drink deep, as long as rue can run;
Do not give up everything to this pain,
Without getting worse, a poor man to help.

Prince (lover), of lovers the harvester,
Your wrong liking I would not like to incur,
But any frank heart owes, by Our Lord,
Without getting worse, a poor man to help