I wonder if her tone (by the publication date and sometime thereafter ...when the feeling has sadly evaporated) inflects what I hear as weariness and exhaustion? The longest, extenuated blink, and it is over. Again. Again.
I have my father's Portable Nietzsche, Viking, 1954.
You're Love in the Time of Cholera!
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Like Odysseus in a work of Homer, you demonstrate undying loyalty by
sleeping with as many people as you possibly can. But in your heart you never give
consent! This creates a strange quandary of what love really means to you. On the
one hand, you've loved the same person your whole life, but on the other, your actions
barely speak to this fact. Whatever you do, stick to bottled water. The other stuff
could get you killed.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
You're Infinite Jest!
by David Foster Wallace
While you1 consider yourself2 to be clever,
there are those3 who think you're just full of yourself or, perhaps worse,
playing a joke4 on everyone around you, and yet you are pretty sure that
you really are that brilliant after all, since people would hardly take the time to
get to know you5 if they didn't care very deeply about what you had to
say to them, to wit, about their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their fears, their
drug habits, and of course what videos6 they prefer to watch, since,
after all, your impressive vocabulary and tendency to go on and on7 makes
you seem superior, able to educate them, and really drive a sense of something
ineffable into their measly little skulls while you are not above making a cheap
gag or really going after anyone or anything or telling them about incredible
futures involving tennis, geopolitics, and
1Meaning you personally, not someone like you or your own
personal daddy, for example.
2As well as you can see yourself, which, frankly, may not be that well.
3Though we wouldn't deign to be so peripatetic as to name them here, mind.
4Jokes, though not common in Victorian England, were known to originate
sometime in ancient history, perhaps as early as the time of Babylon, or even before.
It is thought that the history of the joke plays an integral role in the mindset of
the characters depicted here, though you may disagree at this point, in which case I
am facing quite the dilemma in relaying this narrative, no?
5It is rather time consuming, after all.
6Ha!
7and on and on and on...
Take the Book Quiz II
at the Blue Pyramid.
You're The Metamorphosis!
by Franz Kafka
Though you think you're in the midst of a dream, the fact of the
matter is that your life has become a nightmare. The nightmare at first seems
horrific to you, but you are slowly able to adjust to the facts of the matter
and settle down and make do with what you've been given. There are those that
would say you're pointless and absurd, but you're really just trying to
demonstrate that people can (and do) adapt to anything, no matter how absurd
it is. Not that this will really inspire them to change, because they probably
don't understand.
Take the Book Quiz II
at the Blue Pyramid.
9 comments:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16572
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in his Citadelle (English title: Wisdom of the Sands):
[page 19] "Thus men destroy their best possession, the meaning of things: on feast days they pride themselves on standing out against old custom, and betraying their traditions, and toasting their enemy. True, they may feel some qualm as they go about their deeds of sacrilege. So long as there is sacrilege. So long as there still is something against which they revolt. Thus for a while they continue trading on the fact that their foe still breathes, and the ghostly presence of the laws still hampers them enough for them to feel like outlaws. But presently the very ghost dissolves into thin air, and then the rapture of revolt is gone, even the zest of victory forgotten. And now they yawn. On the ruins of the palace they have laid out a public square; but once the pleasure of trampling its stones with upstart arrogance has lost its zest, they begin to wonder what they are doing here, on this noisy fairground. And now, lo and behold, they fall to picturing, dimly as yet, a great house with a thousand doors, with curtains that billow on your shoulders and slumbrous anterooms. Perchance they dream even of a secret room, whose secrecy pervades the whole vast dwelling. Thus, though they know it not, they are pining for my father's palace where every footstep had a meaning."
He was not my father, and it was not originally his book.
You have to understand that year's weariness from being so ambitious, but inexperienced translated into sacrifices to some tutelary deity appreciating the exploration, the appeal to authority, but really did not want a structure with anyone.
I promised myself that I would not create meanings with anyone else, where it was shrugged off; that was the betrayal, not really anything else.
Michael Hofmann's 2011 translation of Peter Stamm's "The Natural Way of Things", from We're Flying, from Other Press:
"Niklaus went outside and read the headlines of the German newspapers on the rack. A moment later, Alice came out of the store, looking upset. She walked off, not turning to look for him. He caught up to her in a few quick strides and asked what the matter was. That little boy is dead, she said, the father ran him over. He was backing up into the road, and didn't see him behind him. They walked silent back to their vacation home. Niklaus put the shopping away. Alice stood leaning against the kitchen table, watching him. What shall we do? she asked, when he had finished. There's nothing we can do, said Niklaus, we don't even know their names. [...]
[...] Look, said Alice, and Niklaus saw the man from Stuttgart coming through the garden carrying a suitcase that seemed to be very heavy. Together they watched him come and go a few more times. Last of all, he carried the damaged tricycle to the car. He could not find room for it, and pulled out some of the already packed things, looked at everything in bewilderment, and packed everything back in. Then he went into the house.
[...]
Niklaus went into the kitchen to put on the coffee. Then he heard Alice calling him. He went to her, and put his arm around her bony shoulders. Now! she breathed, as though something long-awaited was at last happening, and she pointed" (230-232).
https://schabrieres.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/ingeborg-bachmann-sous-lorage-de-roses-1953/
I will put Exercise 87 here.
Thank you, for reminding me.
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AsA4BY25Ql_1lVzO3vOFdrlnzI4J?e=CLjonb
I will put Exercise 90 here.
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AsA4BY25Ql_1mx1h6W8Y91QaAAL7
Exercise 90. Thank you, for reminding me.
Exercise 91.
Post a Comment