larvatus prodeo
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
Below are the 30 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Michael Zeleny" journal:[<< Previous 30 entries]
|
05:17 pm
[Link] |
submersible self-esteem
Inspired by his skills as an escape artist, Harry Houdini sought to help deep sea divers unable to extricate themselves from a pressure suit upon finding themselves in trouble. On 1 March 1921, he received U.S. Patent Number 1,370,316 for an new and improved diver’s suit. By comprising two halves with a locking joint in the middle, Houdini’s invention enabled the trapped deep sea diver to slip out of the suit quickly, while submerged. He would then have a chance to escape and reach the surface without assistance. The construction also enabled the diver to don and doff the suit without assistance.
A more intimate application of Houdini’s invention went unappreciated heretofore:
Уже давным-давно замечено,
как некрасив в скафандре Водолаз.
Но несомненно есть на свете Женщина,
что и такому б отдалась.
Быть может, выйдет из воды он прочь,
обвешанный концами водорослей,
и выпадет ему сегодня ночь,
наполненная массой удовольствий.
(Не в этот, так в другой такой же раз).
Та Женщина отказывала многим.
Ей нужен непременно Водолаз.
Резиновый. Стальной. Свинцовоногий.
Вот ты,
хоть не резиновый,
но скользкий.
И отвратителен, особенно нагой.
Но Женщина ждет и Тебя.
Поскольку
Ей нужен именно Такой. |
Well known by folk forever and a day
is the deformity of Diver in his suit.
It’s just as true, and well beyond dispute,
that Woman dreams of him, having his way.
Consider him,
sprung up in fetid spray,
festooned and fringed in glutinous seaweed.
He’s looking forward to a night of sensual play.
(If not this once, just down the road he will succeed.)
The Woman that a myriad wooers mooted,
she needs her Diver, not some substitute.
So rubbery, so steely, so lead-footed.
You there,
if not so rubbery,
yet clammy,
and sickening, seen tumid, pale and nude.
But Woman yearns for You,
craving your whammy,
for only your Kind puts her in the mood. |
| ―Владимир Иосифович Уфлянд, 1959 |
―traduced by MZ, 29 April 2009 |
Vladimir Ufliand, 21 January 1937 – 14 April 2007
Tags: poetry, russian, sex, traducement
|
|
07:40 pm
[Link] |
in memoriam
This picture was taken on 5 July 1913. It shows a newlywed Jewish couple, residents of Uman. The man kept books. The woman played a piano. Their daughters were born in 1923 and 1925. The man succumbed to a cardiac arrest in 1938. The woman carried on.
Uman was occupied by the Wehrmacht on August 1, 1941. On Wednesday, 15 August 1945, Oberlieutnant Erwin Bingel recounted the events of 16 September 1941. He was under orders to set up guards on all railways in the area, and around the Uman airport, which contained the town’s Jews, assembled there on a census roll call posted throughout the region. The shooters of Einsatzgruppe C, led by Otto Rasch, holder of two university doctorates in political economy and philosophy, ordered each successive row of Untermenschen to move forward to a row of tables where they had to undress completely and hand over everything they wore and carried. They were made to stand in line in front of the ditches. The Einsatzkommandos then marched in behind the line and mowed it down with submachine guns and Parabellum pistols. Thereupon, the Jewish men in each successive row were ordered to step out and take shovels with which to heap chloride of lime upon the bodies convulsing in the ditch. At last they returned to the tables and undressed to embark on the same last walk.
On the following day, Oberfeldwebel Renner and another man under Bingel’s command were taken to the Lvov field hospital with “complete nervous breakdowns”. In his postwar deposition, Bingel estimated that 24,000 Jews were killed in his sight on that day. This woman and her mother numbered among them.
Two Formal Elegies
For the Jews in Europe
1
Knowing the dead, and how some are disposed:
Subdued under rubble, water, in sand graves.
In clenched cinders not yielding their abused
Bodies and bonds to those whom war’s chance saves
Without the law: we grasp, roughly, the song.
Arrogant acceptance from which song derives
Is bedded with their blood, makes flourish young
Roots in ashes. The wilderness revives,
Deceives with sweetness harshness. Still beneath
Live skin stone breathes, about which fires but play,
Fierce heart that is the iced brain’s to command
To judgment—studied reflex, contained breath—
Their best of worlds since, on the ordained day,
This world went spinning from Jehovah’s hand.
2
For all that must be gone through, their long death
Documented and safe, we have enough
Witnesses (our world being witness-proof),
The sea flickers, roars, in its wide hearth.
Here, yearly, the pushing midlanders stand
To warm themselves; men brawny with life,
Women who expect life. They relieve
Their thickening bodies, settle on scraped sand.
Is it good to remind them, on a brief screen,
Of what they have witnessed and not seen?
(Deaths of the city that persistently dies…?)
To put up stones ensures some sacrifice,
Sufficient men confer, carry their weight.
(At whose door does the sacrifice stand or start?)
—Geoffrey Hill, 1959
Tags: death, family, germans, jews, poetry, russia
|
|
12:01 am
[Link] |
felicitations
С днём рождения, ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) borkhers!
Tags: birthday, poetry, russian
|
|
12:48 pm
[Link] |
200
Bon bicentenaire et vive Gérard de Nerval !
Tags: birthday, french, poetry
|
|
01:23 am
[Link] |
brando reads the hollow men
( Read more... )
Tags: apocalypse, hams, poetry, tough guys
|
|
05:55 pm
[Link] |
lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate
I canti dell’Inferno della Divina Commedia recitati da Vittorio Gassman: ( Read more... )
Digital Dante has bilingual texts; Danteworlds has lesser multimedia.
Tags: classics, dante, italian, poetry
|
11:15 am
[Link] |
felicitations
С днем рождения, labas!
Tags: birthday, poetry, russian
|
|
12:53 am
[Link] |
felicitations
С днём рождения, aptsvet!
Tags: birthday, poetry, russian
|
|
12:01 am
[Link] |
felicitations
Many happy returns, borkhers!
Tags: birthday, poetry, russian
|
|
01:18 am
[Link] |
ой мама роди меня обратно
Вставьте мне в сердечко звёздочку, звёздочку,
Вместо ушек вставьте ракушки, ракушки,
А заместо глазок — шарики, шарики,
Вместо брючек дайте штаники, штаники,
Положите меня в ясельки, в ясельки,
Чтобы я лежал бы в люлечке, в люлечке
И пускал из носа сопельки, сопельки,
Издая при этом вопельки, вопельки.
А потом постройте радугу, радугу,
Чтоб по ней бежали гномики, гномики
Чтобы в ней бы жили кошечки, кошечки,
И кормите меня с ложечки, с ложечки.
Но вы этого не можете, не можете.
Ну так что ж вы блядь меня не уничтожите?
—Шиш Брянский
Current Location: в пизде
Current Mood:  nostalgic
Current Music: Django Reinhardt et le Quintette du Hot Club de France, J’Attendrai
Tags: bullshit, doggerel, poetry, russian
|
|
01:10 pm
[Link] |
one tough marielito
Orlando Boquete, 52, exonerated of sexual assault by DNA evidence last May 23, after 22 years as a fugitive.
Ne Tibi Supersis
Ne tibi supersis:
don’t outlive yourself,
panic or break a hip
or spit puree at the staff
at the end of gender,
never a happy ender —
yet in the pastel light
of indoors, there is a lady
who has distilled to love
beyond the fall of memory.
She sits holding hands
with an ancient woman
who calls her brother and George
as bees summarize the garden.
— Les Murray, 5 January 2007, TLS
Crossposted to larvatus and expats.
Tags: bullshit, crime, poetry, sex, tough guys
|
|
02:22 pm
[Link] |
the woman poet
Je me suis toujours plu à chercher dans la nature extérieure et visible des exemples et des métaphores qui me servissent à caractériser les jouissances et les impressions d’un ordre spirituel. Je rêve à ce que me faisait éprouver la poésie de Mme Valmore quand je la parcourus avec ces yeux de l’adolescence qui sont, chez les hommes nerveux, à la fois si ardents et si clairvoyants. Cette poésie m’apparaît comme un jardin ; mais ce n’est pas la solennité grandiose de Versailles ; ce n’est pas non plus le pittoresque vaste et théâtral de la savante Italie, qui connaît si bien l’art d’édifier des jardins (aedificat hortos) ; pas même, non, pas même la Vallée des Flûtes ou le Ténare de notre vieux Jean-Paul. C’est un simple jardin anglais, romantique et romanesque. Des massifs de fleurs y représentent les abondantes expressions du sentiment. Des étangs, limpides et immobiles, qui réfléchissent toutes choses s’appuyant à l’envers sur la voûte renversée des cieux, figurent la profonde résignation toute parsemée de souvenirs. Rien ne manque à ce charmant jardin d’un autre âge, ni quelques ruines gothiques se cachant dans un lieu agreste, ni le mausolée inconnu qui, au détour d’une allée, surprend notre âme et lui recommande de penser à l’éternité. Des allées sinueuses et ombragées aboutissent à des horizons subits. Ainsi la pensée du poète, après avoir suivi de capricieux méandres, débouche sur les vastes perspectives du passé ou de l’avenir ; mais ces ciels sont trop vastes pour être généralement purs, et la température du climat trop chaude pour n’y pas amasser des orages. Le promeneur, en contemplant ces étendues voilées de deuil, sent monter à ses yeux les pleurs de l’hystérie, hysterical tears. Les fleurs se penchent vaincues, et les oiseaux ne parlent qu’à voix basse. Après un éclair précurseur, un coup de tonnerre a retenti : c’est l’explosion lyrique ; enfin un déluge inévitable de larmes rend à toutes ces choses, prostrées, souffrantes et découragées, la fraîcheur et la solidité d’une nouvelle jeunesse !
― Charles Baudelaire, Sur mes contemporains : M. Desbordes-Valmore, OC II, pp. 148-149 |
I always took pleasure in seeking in external and visible nature, examples and metaphors that helped me to characterize the pleasures and the impressions of a spiritual order. I dream of that, which the poetry of Mme Valmore made me feel when I traversed it with these eyes of adolescence that are, in nervous men, at once so ardent and so clear-sighted. This poetry presents itself to me as a garden; but it is not the imposing solemnity of Versailles; neither is it the vast and theatrical picturesque of learned Italy, who knows so well the art of edifying gardens (aedificat hortos); not even, not, not even the Valley of the Flutes or Tænarum of good old Jean-Paul. It is a simple English garden, romantic and novelistic. Flowerbeds represent therein the abundant expressions of sentiment. Ponds, limpid and motionless, which reflect all things resting upon the overturned vault of the skies, represent deep resignation all strewn with memories. Nothing is lacking in this charming garden of a past age, neither some Gothic ruins hiding in a rural spot, nor the unknown mausoleum that, at the turning of a pathway, surprises your soul and instructs it to think of eternity. Sinuous and shaded pathways end in sudden horizons. Thus the poet’s thought, having followed capricious meanders, emerges into vast perspectives of the past or the future; but these skies are too vast to be completely unclouded, and the temperature of those climes too warm to forestall the buildup of storms. The stroller, in contemplating these expanses veiled in mourning, feels his eyes well up with the tears of hysteria, hysterical tears. The flowers lean over in defeat, and the birds speak only in low voice. After a precursory flash, a thunderclap resounded: it is the lyric explosion; at last an inevitable flood of tears returns to all these prostrate, suffering, and discouraged things, the freshness and the solidity of a new youth!
― translated by MZ |
Tags: baudelaire, french, poetry, translation
|
|
11:53 pm
[Link] |
required answers
1. Are you a writer of poetry, or principally a reader?
I am an obsessive scribbler of doggerel that punctuates passionate purveyance of prurient pedantry.
2. Did you ever take courses specifically in the writing or study of poetry in college or high school (as opposed to general literature surveys)?
Yes.
3. Do you buy/read poetry magazines or chapbooks? Anthologies of past great poets?
No, sometimes, yes. There are never enough noteworthy poets in any generation to fill an annuary, let alone a more frequent periodical. By contrast, chapbooks afford reasonable protection from saddle sores, whereas anthologies serve to highlight les petits maîtres.
4. Do you attend poetry readings, either as a reader or audience member?
Sometimes.
5. If a writer of poetry, have you ever published your work in hard-copy, such as a magazine or chapbook? Do you publish or post your work on the web?
No, yes.
6. Have you ever written any articles, essays, or analyses of poetry? If so, would you be willing to present them to this community to stimulate discussion?
Yes, some time soon.
7. Why exactly do you like poetry? What does it do to you?
I like poetry that creates a novel and lasting direction of moral insight. It promotes my metabolism. As Samuel Beckett told Walter Lowenfels, all I want to do is sit on my arse and fart and think about Dante. There you have it, a fundamental connection.
8. Who are your favorite poets? If a writer, do these same poets influence your style, or are there others?
Gaius Valerius Catullus, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, Charles Baudelaire, Tristan Corbière, Stéphane Mallarmé, Wallace Stevens, Samuel Beckett, Philip Larkin, Michel Houellebecq. There are many others.
9. What "schools" or styles of poetry appeal to you most? Why?
Symbolism and glossolalia. I like poetry that suffices to explain itself.
10. What distinguishes a good poem? What must be present in a poem to make it "work" or resonate for you?
A good poem must define a novel and lasting direction of moral insight: « donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu ». Vigorous promotion of my metabolism makes it resonate for me.
11. There are some people who fill up notebooks with hundreds of poems, yet could not properly be called poets, and there are others who, no matter how little they write, very clearly deserve the epithet "poet." What makes a poet?
Appreciation of his subservience to philosophy.
12. What sort of topics would you like to see discussed in the about_poetry community?
Analytic and historical criticism and close reading.
Crossposted to larvatus and ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) about_poetry.
Tags: bullshit, poetry, vanity
|
|
03:20 pm
[Link] |
plagiarism or traducement?
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
A Psalm of Life (1839), verses 13-16
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
― Thomas Gray (1716―1771)
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1768), verses 53-56 |
Pour soulever un poids si lourd,
Sisyphe, il faudrait ton courage!
Bien qu’on ait du cœur à l’ouvrage,
L’Art est long et le Temps est court.
Loin des sépultures célèbres,
Vers un cimetière isolé,
Mon cœur, comme un tambour voilé,
Va battant des marches funèbres.
―Maint joyau dort enseveli
Dans les ténèbres et l’oubli,
Bien loin des pioches et des sondes;
Mainte fleur épanche à regret
Son parfum doux comme un secret
Dans les solitudes profondes.
― Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), Le guignon (1852) |
 « Le désir d’originalité[Originalité — Désirer être SOI. Désirer d’être neuf. Mais soi et neuf font… Dix.] est le père de tous les emprunts / de toutes les imitations /. Rien de plus original, rien de plus soi que se nourrir des autres ― Mais il les faut digérer. Le lion est fait de mouton assimilé. » (1916. C, VI, 137)
― Paul Valéry, Cahiers II, Poïétique, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade / nrf Gallimard 1974, pp. 1002―1003; reproduit partiellement dans Tel Quel (1941, 1943), Choses tues (1930) II, Œuvres II, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade / nrf Gallimard 1960, p. 478 “One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest. Chapman borrowed from Seneca; Shakespeare and Webster from Montaigne.”
— T.S. Eliot, “Philip Massinger”, in The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism, Methuen & Co. Ltd, p. 125 ― Contributed to a discussion precipitated by Алексей Цветков (aptsvet)
Tags: poetry, traducement
|
|
03:00 pm
[Link] |
man’s best friends II
― for P.N.
I have held off this response as long as I could. I do not and cannot expect it to serve as a peace missive. But I make every effort to soften the blows that I must dispense. I am hoping to factor out emotions like jealousy or anger. Not that I lack such responses to your bid to inflate your literary stature at my expense. The canonical riposte to this attempt would be to promise and ensure that you would only go down in history as a footnote to me. But I refuse to play our game in the service of vanity. Every time we tangle up in our egos, I stray from my course. It is a vice that I shall no longer tolerate in myself. To risk unsolicited if timely advice, it is also a luxury that you can no longer afford in your life.
It remains that I owe you an answer. I further believe that you owe me contrition. Whether or not you acknowledge and discharge this debt is beyond my control. ( Read more... )
Tags: bullshit, friends, onanism, philosophy, plato, poetry, vanity
|
|
04:10 am
[Link] |
dantean theology
In reference to an ongoing discussion of soteriology, herewith a representative sample of Dantean scholarship grounding his infernal cosmology in Thomistic theology: ( Read more... )
Tags: dante, death, hell, poetry, sin
|
|
11:35 pm
[Link] |
petit mort pour rire
― in memoriam Cosmo of the Magnificent Sunrise
February 26, 1994 ― January 6, 2006
| Petit mort pour rire |
A small death for giggles |
Va vite, léger peigneur de comètes !
Les herbes au vent seront tes cheveux ;
De ton œil béant jailliront les feux
Follets, prisonniers dans les pauvres têtes… |
Take off, agile currier of comets!
These weeds wind-swept will stand in for your fur;
Your gaping orbs will shoot forth will-
o-wisps, locked up inside the noggin of a cur… |
Les fleurs de tombeau qu’on nomme Amourettes
Foisonneront plein ton rire terreux…
Et les myosotis, ces fleurs d’oubliettes… |
The ornaments called lilies of the valley
Will burgeon over your terrestrial woof…
Emboldened mice that trace your hillside grounds… |
Ne fais pas le lourd : cercueils de poètes
Pour les croque-morts sont de simples jeux,
Boîtes à violon qui sonnent le creux…
Ils te croiront mort ― Les bourgeois sont bêtes ―
Va vite, léger peigneur de comètes ! |
Let’s go, friend: the crate that shelters poets,
A worn-out plaything proffered for a proof,
A violin boxed up, its echo thrown aloof…
They think you dead ― mistaken for a goof ―
Take off, agile currier of comets! |
| ― Tristan Corbière |
― traduced by MZ |
Tags: animals, cosmo, death, doggerel, friends, memory, poetry, tough guys
|
|
09:08 pm
[Link] |
the final love
Extending final felicitations of dearly departing 2005 to all my friends and readers.
| Ballade du dernier amour |
Ballad of the Final Love |
Mes souvenirs sont si nombreux
Que ma raison n’y peut suffire.
Pourtant je ne vis que par eux,
Eux seuls me font pleurer et rire.
Le présent est sanglant et noir ;
Dans l’avenir qu’ai-je à poursuivre ?
Calme frais des tombeaux, le soir !...
Je me suis trop hâté de vivre. |
My memories are so profuse,
My reason cannot measure up.
Yet I abide only through them,
Only they make me cry or laugh.
The present is bloodied and dark;
In the future, what's left to inspire?
Peaceful chill of the tomb, at night!...
I have hastened too much in living. |
Amours heureux ou malheureux,
Lourds regrets, satiété pire,
Yeux noirs veloutés, clairs yeux bleus,
Aux regards qu’on ne peut pas dire,
Cheveux noyant le démêloir
Couleur d’or, d’ébène ou de cuivre,
J’ai voulu tout voir, tout avoir.
Je me suis trop hâté de vivre. |
All my loves requited or not,
Regrets encumber, surfeit overwhelms,
Velvety black eyes, limpid blue eyes,
Glancing in ways unfit for telling,
Tresses that submerge the comb
Of gold, of ebony, of copper,
I have sought to see all, to own all.
I have hastened too much in living. |
Je suis las. Plus d’amour. Je veux
Vivre seul, pour moi seul décrire
Jusqu’à l’odeur de tes cheveux,
Jusqu’à l’éclair de ton sourire,
Dire ton royal nonchaloir,
T’évoquer entière en un livre
Pur et vrai comme ton miroir.
Je me suis trop hâté de vivre. |
I am worn. No more love. I want
To live apart, for myself to set forth
Your hair, to equal its fragrance,
Your smile, to equal its radiance,
To capture your regal aplomb,
To recall all of you in a book
Pure and true as your mirror.
I have hastened too much in living.
|
| Envoi |
Envoy |
Ma chanson, vapeur d’encensoir,
Chère envolée, ira te suivre.
En tes bras j’espérais pouvoir
Attendre l’heure qui délivre ;
Tu m’as pris mon tour. Au revoir.
Je me suis trop hâté de vivre. |
My song, fumes of a censer,
Will trail you, my darling flown,
In your arms hopeful I would
Await the hour that delivers;
You have taken my turn. Goodbye.
I have hastened too much in living.
|
| ― Charles Cros (1842-1888), Le Coffret de santal, 1873, in Charles Cros et Tristan Corbière, Œuvres complètes, Paris: Gallimard, 1970, pp. 105-106 |
― translated by MZ |
Tags: cros, love, poetry, translation
|
|
09:24 am
[Link] |
homage to a government
Homage to a Government
Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.
It’s hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it’s been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.
Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it’s a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.
— Philip Larkin Thus Charles Baudelaire paid his homage to the joy of martial obedience in Le peintre de la vie moderne: ( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, french, larkin, poetry, politics, translation
|
|
05:31 am
[Link] |
a coat, a hat and a gun
I lay on my back on a bed in a waterfront hotel and waited for it to get dark. It was a small front room with a hard bed and a mattress slightly thicker than the cotton blanket that covered it. A spring underneath me was broken and stuck into the left side of my back. I lay there and let it prod me. ( Read more... )
Tags: death, diversion, noir, poetry, tough guys, violence
|
|
07:54 pm
[Link] |
let it enfold you
| Let It Enfold You |
пусть тебя охватит |
either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you |
спокойствие или счастье
пусть тебя охватит |
when I was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb, unsophisticated.
I had bad blood, a twisted
mind, a precarious
upbringing. |
когда я был юным
я думал что эти штуки
глупы и безыскусны.
имел едкую кровь,
искорченный разум,
шаткое воспитание. |
I was hard as granite, I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman. |
я был твёрд как гранит,
я смотрел искоса
на солнце.
не доверял никому и
особенно ни одной
из женщин. |
 ( Read more... )
Tags: bukowski, poetry, russian, translation
|
|
12:34 pm
[Link] |
no ptyx
― for Eric Gans
 In 1887, Stéphane Mallarmé published a sonnet composed in the form of an allegory of itself. Its outer parts, the first quatrain and the second tercet, comprised a frame that contained the inner parts, the second quatrain and the first tercet. Their relation represented the way whereby the literal subject matter of the poem, a window reflected in the mirror in a darkened room, contained the nighttime sky. To complicate his task further, the poet chose to alternate in the quatrains the masculine rhymes in ‘ix’ and ‘yx’ that ended with a consonant, with feminine rhymes in ‘ore’ that ended in a silent e, inverting their genders to feminine ‘ixe’ and ‘yxe’ alternated with masculine ‘or’ in the tercets. The French vocabulary is ill suited to supplying rhymes in ‘ix/yx’. In response to this deficiency, Mallarmé invested the word ptyx with a novel meaning. His usage seemed at first a hapax legomenon within French literature, a term thitherto unexpressed in its language. But in ancient and modern Greek, πτύξ stood for a layer, a plate, a fold, or a writing tablet. In particular, it designated a special kind of a fold, such as may be found in a seashell. In fact, Victor Hugo already had drawn his inspiration from this term to employ Ptyx as a proper name in La Légende des siècles. Mallarmé had something very different in mind. His ptyx was not any given being, place, or thing, but a special kind of object. Its very nature inhered in its absence:
Ses purs ongles très haut dédiant leur onyx,
L’Angoisse, ce minuit, soutient, lampadophore,
Maint rêve vespéral brûlé par le Phénix
Que ne recueille pas de cinéraire amphore |
Her pure nails sprung up exalting their onyx,
Anxiety, this midnight, bearing light, sustains,
In twilight many dreams burnt up by the Phoenix
Whose smoky ashes no sepulchral urn contains |
Sur les crédences, au salon vide : nul ptyx
Aboli bibelot d’inanité sonore,
(Car le Maître est allé puiser des pleurs au Styx
Avec ce seul objet dont le Néant s’honore.) |
Atop the sideboards, in the empty room: no ptyx,
That voided toy of vibrant nonsense, left inside,
(Because the Master’s gone to draw the tears from Styx
With that exclusive object wherein Naught takes pride.) |
Mais proche la croisée au nord vacante, un or
Agonise selon peut-être le décor
Des licornes ruant du feu contre une nixe, |
In vacant north seen through the casement frames, a gold
May agonize at times, within the setting, to behold
Fire-breathing unicorns arrayed against a nix, |
Elle, défunte nue en le miroir, encor
Que, dans l’oubli fermé par le cadre, se fixe
De scintillations sitôt le septuor. |
She, lifeless naked mirror image, repetition
Whom in the twinkling framed forgetting, is to fix
Through sparkling timed in septet, composition. |
| ― Stéphane Mallarmé, Œuvres complètes, édition présentée, établie et annotée par Bertrand Marchal, tome I, Gallimard: Bibliothéque de la Pléiade, 1998 (MOC I), pp. 37-38, cf. p. 98 |
― translated by MZ |
 ( Read more... )
Tags: french, mallarmé, poetry, translation
|
|
05:06 pm
[Link] |
whining or withstanding
τὸ μὲν οὖν ταῦτα διισχυρίσασθαι οὕτως ἔχειν ὡς ἐγὼ διελήλυθα, οὐ πρέπει νοῦν ἔχοντι ἀνδρί: ὅτι μέντοι ἢ ταῦτ’ ἐστὶν ἢ τοιαῦτ’ ἄττα περὶ τὰς ψυχὰς ἡμῶν καὶ τὰς οἰκήσεις, ἐπείπερ ἀθάνατόν γε ἡ ψυχὴ φαίνεται οὖσα, τοῦτο καὶ πρέπειν μοι δοκεῖ καὶ ἄξιον κινδυνεῦσαι οἰομένῳ οὕτως ἔχειν―καλὸς γὰρ ὁ κίνδυνος―καὶ χρὴ τὰ τοιαῦτα ὥσπερ ἐπᾴδειν ἑαυτῷ, διὸ δὴ ἔγωγε καὶ πάλαι μηκύνω τὸν μῦθον.
― Plato, Phaedo, 114d |
Now to insist that these things are just as I’ve related them would not be fitting for a man of intelligence; but either this or something like it is true about our souls and their dwellings, given that the soul evidently is immortal, this, I think, is fitting and worth risking, for one who believes that it is so — for a noble risk it is — so one should repeat such things to oneself like a spell; which is just why I’ve so prolonged the tale.
― translated by David Gallop |
 ( Read more... )
Tags: death, larkin, poetry, tough guys, unamuno
|
|
07:58 am
[Link] |
The 40 Year-Old Virgin
Success Story
To fail (transitive and intransitive)
I find to mean be missing, disappoint,
Or not succeed in the attainment of
(As in this case, f. to do what I want);
They trace it from the Latin to deceive ...( Read more... )
Tags: larkin, poetry
|
|
08:55 am
[Link] |
say what?
― for David W. Affeld
“Art must be despised and considered to be completely worthless before anything can be derived from it again, or else it must be applied to everything. It is therefore ridiculous to try for any kind of personal success.”
« Quand j’aurai inspiré le dégoût et l’horreur universels, j’aurai conquis la solitude. »
|
“Once I have inspired universal disgust and horror, I will have conquered solitude.”
― translated by MZ |
« Ma carrière n'avait pas été un échec, commercialement tout du moins : si l’on agresse le monde avec une violence suffisante, il finit par le cracher, son sale fric ; mais jamais, jamais il ne vous redonne la joie. »
|
“My career had not been a failure, at least commercially: if you assail the world with sufficient violence, it ends up spewing its filthy lucre; but never, never does it give you back any joy.”
― translated by MZ |
( Read more... )
Tags: baudelaire, comedy, corbière, doggerel, french, houellebecq, poetry, traducement
|
|
05:26 pm
[Link] |
say not the struggle nought availeth
Few doctrines are announced and articulated as clearly in Plato’s writings, as the thesis that the cosmos hands down certain moral commandments, that it is imbued with an absolute moral authority. Thus Socrates rebuts amoral hedonism advocated by Callicles:And wise men tell us, Callicles, that heaven and earth and gods and men are held together by communion and friendship, by orderliness, temperance, and justice; and that is the reason, my friend, why they call the whole of this world by the name of order (κόσμος), not of disorder (ἀκοσμία) or dissoluteness (ἀκολασία). Now you, as it seems to me, do not give proper attention to this, for all your cleverness, but have failed to observe the great power of geometrical equality amongst both gods and men: you hold that self-advantage is what one ought to practice, because you neglect geometry (γεωμετρίας γὰρ ἀμελεῖς).
— Gorgias, 508a-b translated by W.R.M. Lamb  Therein lies its obstacle to casual understanding. As Plato wrote above his door, let no one devoid of geometry enter here, ἀγεωμέτρητος μηδεὶς εἰσίτω. (Quoted in Elias’ coommentary on Aristotle’s Categories.)( Read more... )
Tags: bullshit, callicles, heraclitus, plato, poetry, socrates, truth, usenet
|
|
04:43 pm
[Link] |
footnotes to larkin
This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
— Philip Larkin
Footnote to Larkin
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
—Philip Larkin
To blame it on your mum and dad
and claim it’s their fault what you do
takes quite a nerve — as though you had
no part to play in what makes you.
This fucked-up childhood myth’s a line
that everyone’s at some time used;
it may explain why you’re a swine,
but not why you should be excused.
— Harry Ricketts
“I imagine he wrote ‘They tuck you up, your mum and dad’ and then rode the wave of a typo.”
— Tom Raworth
Tags: larkin, poetry
|
02:44 am
[Link] |
mr youse needn’t be so spry
mr youse needn’t be so spry
concernin questions arty
each has his tastes but as for i
i likes a certain party
gimme the he-man’s solid bliss
for youse ideas i’ll match youse
a pretty girl who naked is
is worth a million statues
— e.e. cummings
Tags: poetry, sex
|
|
07:58 pm
[Link] |
situation de valéry
Les pages qui suivent sont un commentaire pour la conférence sur Baudelaire lue par Paul Valéry à Monaco le 19 février 1924. Une étude d’importance historique considérable, Situation de Baudelaire touche à toutes grandes questions de la poétique de Valéry autant que de celle de Baudelaire. Bien que le poète fût contraint à simplifier sa pensée par le caractère officiel des circonstances de la présentation de ce texte, on peut y trouver des abondants témoignages de l’étendue et de la profondeur de sa philosophie de la théorie littéraire. D’ailleurs, grâce à son importance critique, ce texte peut être regardé comme contenant les prolégomènes à toute étude baudelairienne. Ces pages sont donc destinées à servir d’une préface à ma propre étude sur Baudelaire. Par conséquent, je remarquerai sur quelques similarités et différences entre les deux poètes.( Read more... )
Tags: meaning, poetry, valéry
|
|
07:34 pm
[Link] |
quietus
― for P.N.
I am tardy with you, because I have sought what I had forgotten, here and there, consigned to the Usenet, of your erstwhile obiter dicta. Herewith a response based on the next to nothing that I found. I shall abide by your request to withhold poetic criticism, not because I agree with your insistence that it is beyond my ken, but out of deference to your bruised sensibilities. In this regard, I also thank you for striking a pose that releases me from burdensome concerns, with a word of advice: in extolling dada, pause to attend to the thing Tristan Tzara named jem’enfoutisme. ( Read more... )
Tags: bullshit, friends, onanism, philosophy, poetry, shakespeare, vanity
|
[<< Previous 30 entries] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
larvatus's journal