Digitalis Kitsch Blog

Foz do Lizandro (1)

2012-02-09T00:32:00.000-12:00

Extraits du Journal de Delacroix

2012-02-08T07:19:00.001-12:00

Delacroix, Fleurs

[...] Ce qu'il y a de plus réel pour moi, ce sont les illusions que je crée avec ma peinture. Le reste est un sable mouvant. (...)

Au moment où j’écris, j’ai commence de sentir vingt chosesque je ne reconnais plus quand elles sont exprimées. Ma pensée m’échappe. Laparesse de mon esprit ou plutôt sa faiblesse me trahit plutôt que la lenteur dema plume ou que l’insuffisance de la langue. C’est un supplice de sentir etd’imaginer beaucoup, tandis que la mémoire laisse évaporer au fur et à mesure.Que je voudrais être poète ! tout me serait inspiration. Chercher à lutter contrema mémoire rebelle, ne serait-ce pas un moyen de faire de la poésie?

Delacroix, Journal

Musée Delacroix

Musée Delacroix

Angorá

2012-02-03T11:52:00.001-12:00

Na colina do teu ombro,
com repetido assombro,
reclino a cabeça -
que desliza com jeito -
até ao prado do teu peito,
onde um gato angorá -
num novelo se dará.
Em renovado enlace,
afaga-me a face,
enleia-se nos meus dedos,
afugenta os meus medos.

Surrealist Texts by Surrealist Women: Olga Orozco

2012-01-30T23:39:00.000-12:00

***

Entre perro y lobo

Me clausuran en mí.
Me dividen en dos.
Me engendran cada día en la paciencia
y en un negro organismo que ruge como el mar.
Me recortan después con las tijeras de la pesadilla
y caigo en este mundo con media sangre vuelta a cada lado:
una cara labrada desde el fondo por los colmillos de la furia a solas,
y otra que se disuelve entre la niebla de las grandes manadas.
No consigo saber quién es el amo aquí.
Cambio bajo mi piel de perro a lobo.
Yo decreto la peste y atravieso con mis flancos en llamas
las planicies del porvenir y del pasado;
yo me tiendo a roer los huesecitos de tantos sueños
muertos entre celestes pastizales.
Mi reino está en mi sombra y va conmigo dondequiera que vaya,
o se desploma en ruinas con las puertas abiertas a la
invasión del enemigo.
Cada noche desgarro a dentelladas todo lazo ceñido al corazón,
y cada amanecer me encuentra con mi jaula de obediencia en el lomo.
Si devoro a mi dios uso su rostro debajo de mi máscara,
y sin embargo sólo bebo en el abrevadero de los hombres
un aterciopelado veneno de piedad que raspa en las entrañas.
He labrado el torneo en las dos tramas de la tapicería:
he ganado mi cetro de bestia en la intemperie,
y he otorgado también jirones de mansedumbre por trofeo.
Pero ¿quién vence en mí?
¿Quién defiende de mi bastión solitario en el desierto, la sábana del sueño?
¿Y quién roe mis labios, despacito y a oscuras, desde mis propios dientes?

Olga Orozco

Twilight (Beetween dog and wolf)

They fold me up into myself
They divide me in two
Every day they create me in patience
and a black organism that roars like the sea.
Afterward, they cut me again with nightmare scissors
and I fall into this world half my blood flowing on either side:

a face carved from the bottom up
by the fangs of fury itself
and another that dissolves in the mists of the great wolfpacks.
I can't decide who is the master here.
Under my skin I change from dog to wolf.
I decree the plague and flanks aflame
I straddle the plains of past and future;
I lean forward to nibble at the little bones of so many dead dreams between
celestial pastures.
My kingdom is in my shadow and goes with me wherever I go,
or crashes over the ruins, doors open to enemy invasion.
Each night I rip to shreds all the knots lashed to my heart,
and each dawn I find myself on a hill within my cage of obedience.
If I devour my god I wear his face under my mask,
and nonetheless, I drink only from the peoples trough
velvety poison of piety that stings the guts.
I worked the tournament into the warp and woof of the tapestry:
Exposed to the elements, I have won my fool scepter,
and I also awarded banners of gentleness as prizes.
But who conquers me?
Who defeats my remote outpost in the desert, the sheet of sleep?
And who gnaws at my lips slowly, in the dark, from between my own teeth?

Translated by Natalie Kenvin, in Penelope Rosemont, op.cit. p.266

Lucian Freud, Double portrait (1985-86)

Impressões

2012-01-25T04:13:00.001-12:00

***

Ao ritmo da maré -
a rodar -
vinda do sul.
Depois da névoa,
no paul, sob a ponte
miragem rósea - flamingos
fonte de encanto -
a flanar no rio.
Sempre me espanto:
a perna pendente
por um fio.

Ao ritmo da maré
a caminhar -
num destes domingos -
sob o olhar do sol:
azul - delírio dos elementos:
água, fogo e ar -
Na falésia,
espreitam palmeiras -
a bambolear -
fragmentos de um oásis.

Ao ritmo da maré
a flutuar -
enleada no halo
das palavras e dos beijos
lançados à luz lenta da lua.

Il faut tenir un journal ...

2012-01-25T02:49:00.000-12:00

Le mieux serait d'écrire les évenements au jour le jour. Tenir un journal pour y voir clair. Les nuances, les petits faits, même s'ils n'ont l'air de rien [...]
Sartre, La Nausée, (Paris, Gallimard, 1966), p. 13

Pigeons corners [Hommage à Tareco]

2012-01-25T00:00:00.001-12:00

J’ai volé l’oiseau jaune
Qui vit dans le sexe du diable
Il m’apprendra comment séduire
Les hommes, les cerfs, les anges aux ailes doubles,
Il ôtera ma soif, mes vêtements, mes illusions,
Il dormira,
Mais moi, mon sommeil court sur les toits
Murmurant, gesticulant, faisant l’amour violemment,
Avec des chats.

I've stolen the yellow bird
Living in the devil's sex.
It will teach me how to seduce
Men, deer, angels with double wings.
It will take away my thirst, my clothing, my illusions
It will sleep
But my sleep runs across roofs
Murmuring, gesturing, violently making love
With cats.

Joyce Mansour

"Sunset Boulevard"

2012-01-25T00:00:00.000-12:00

Sad Song

Too many screamers
Wearing a mask
Too many dreamers
Looking for the ones that last

Too many eyes
Looking for hope
Too many tears
Looking for a way to cope

It's no joke
It's just a sad song
That pulls you along
yeah
It's just a sad song
And it won't take long

Too many thoughts
Breaking your stride
Too many jekylls
Feeling like a Mr. Hyde

Too many clouds
Darken your day
Too many rain drops
Falling on your thunder bay
Everyday
Yeah

It's just a sad song
That pulls you along
yeah
It's just a sad song
And you're getting it on

It's just a sad song
That pulls you along
It's just a sad song
And it won't take long

Too many heartaches
Waiting to strike
Too many clowns
Saying everything's all right

Too many fires
Scorching your mind
Too many preachers
Saying what you should find
Just see the signs

It's just a sad song
That pulls you along
yeah
It's just a sad song
And it won't take long

It's just a sad song
It pulls you along
It's just a sad song
And it won't take long

It's just a sad song
A sad song
yeah
It's just a sad song
And you're getting it on
It's just a sad song
Sad song
It's just a sad song
And it won't take long

The Cars

Octopus'garden

2012-01-11T01:24:00.000-12:00

I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade
He'd let us in, knows where we've been
In his octopus' garden in the shade

I'd ask my friends to come and see
An octopus' garden with me
I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade.

We would be warm below the storm
In our little hideaway beneath the waves
Resting our head on the sea bed
In an octopus' garden near a cave

We would sing and dance around
because we know we can't be found
I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden in the shade

We would shout and swim about
The coral that lies beneath the waves
(Lies beneath the ocean waves)
Oh what joy for every girl and boy
Knowing they're happy and they're safe
(Happy and they're safe)

We would be so happy you and me
No one there to tell us what to do
I'd like to be under the sea
In an octopus' garden with you.

The Beatles, Abbey Road

Songfacts

Tareco

2012-01-11T01:22:00.000-12:00

Le Chat

I

Dans ma cervelle se promène
Ainsi qu'en son appartement,
Un beau chat, fort, doux et charmant.
Quand il miaule, on l'entend à peine,

Tant son timbre est tendre et discret ;
Mais que sa voix s'apaise ou gronde,
Elle est toujours riche et profonde.
C'est là son charme et son secret.

Cette voix, qui perle et qui filtre
Dans mon fonds le plus ténébreux,
Me remplit comme un vers nombreux
Et me réjouit comme un philtre.

Elle endort les plus cruels maux
Et contient toutes les extases ;
Pour dire les plus longues phrases,
Elle n'a pas besoin de mots.

Non, il n'est pas d'archet qui morde
Sur mon coeur, parfait instrument,
Et fasse plus royalement
Chanter sa plus vibrante corde,

Que ta voix, chat mystérieux,
Chat séraphique, chat étrange,
En qui tout est, comme en un ange,
Aussi subtil qu'harmonieux !

Charles Baudelaire

In Amore Veritas (2)

2012-01-09T03:52:00.000-12:00

No princípio era a aridez.

No tempo oportuno,
todo o sentido
se desvelou:

na onda do olhar,
no pulsar da pele,
na efervescência dos lábios,
no rumor da voz,
na cadência dos gestos,
no ímpeto do sangue,
no expandir-se do corpo,
no compasso da carne,
no voo estonteante,
da solubilidade das almas.

In Amor Veritas (1)

2012-01-06T00:12:00.000-12:00

Desde sempre -
no coração -
te pressenti
lótus azul.

Encontrei-te,
desencontrei-te,
o breu alastrou -
quase te matou.

O sopro da monção
revitalizou
as tuas sementes
milenares,
dotou-te de raízes
perenes.

***

À luz de velas sempre ardentes,
abriste a porta da quarta dimensão.
O fumo dourado de Ontem
desenha o teu perfil,
o teu corpo de fogo.

***

Os teus beijos deixaram
pequenos peixes dourados
na baía dos meus lábios.

Camomile

2012-01-04T11:42:00.000-12:00

...

2012-01-04T11:40:00.000-12:00

Infinito perfeito

2012-01-02T23:00:00.000-12:00

Na insalubridade deste paul,
sob este azul de sol feito -
produto saturado de sul -
aos teus olhos volto.
Antecipo no pensamento,
a preciosidade do momento,
em que me vens trazer
o lótus azul do prazer.

Apropriação reversiva em louvor de uma "noite de Natal"

2011-12-28T23:37:00.002-12:00

Perplexidade

Luminosa era a hora que passava
E breve o sinal que nos fazia.
Mas como um não sei quê nos demorava
A hora que passava ia vazia.

Que aceno levaria a nossa vida
Um pouco mais além? - Hesitantes
Invocadores de céus! Constantes
Amadores de terra estremecida.

Não vamos nem ficamos todavia.
A uma vaga saudade nos prendemos
Entre a pedra do chão e a noite fria
Entretidos a amar o que não temos.

João Maia, in Jorge de Sena, op.cit. p.103

A minha versão seria ;)

Luminosa era a hora que passava
E auspicioso o sinal que nos fazia.
Mas como um sabemos quê nos apressava
A hora que passava ia cheia.

Que aceno levará a nossa vida
Muito mais além? - Firmes
Moradores de céus! Constantes
Amadores da estrela estremecida.

Fomos e ficamos em harmonia.
Ao "tempo do coração" nos prendemos
Entre as mantas da cama e a noite fria
Entretidos a amar tudo quanto ~~temos~~ somos.

Surrealist texts by surrealist women: Eileen Agar

2011-12-25T05:05:00.000-12:00

Eileen Agar, Cerimonial hat for eating bouillabaisse (1936), from

You see the shape of a tree, the way a pebble falls or is formed, and you are astounded to discover that dumb nature makes an effort to speak to you, to give you a signe, to warn you, to symbolize your innermost thoughts. Chance is not a neutral but a distinctly positive force; the surrealists believe that you can get on good terms with chance by adopting a lyrical mode of behavior and a open attitude.

...

My own method is to put myself in a state of receptivity during the day. I sit about sometimes for a quarter or an hour or more, wondering what on eart I am doing, and then suddenly I get an idea for something. Either it is the beginning of a title or just the germ of a visual image. Later on, if I am stuck with a half-finished painting, I might take a snooze and after that comes together quite simply. It may well be that we hunt to much when we are completely on the alert. Too much awareness can be as inhibiting as too little. [...]

Eileen Agar, "Am I a surrealist?" in Penelope Rosemont (ed), op. cit. p.91
Interesting Eileen portraits and photos of her works here

A surrealist woman portrait by a surrealist painter

2011-12-22T02:04:00.002-12:00

René Magritte, Portrait d'Irène Hamoir (1936)

"I want to run but cannot move. Horror congeals me to the paving stones. A large black sun closes down the landscape.”
Irène Hamoir

Surrealist texts by surrealist women: Joyce Mansour (3)

2011-12-21T23:40:00.003-12:00

Tu as jeté mes yeux à la mer
Tu as arraché mes rêves de mes mains
Tu as déchiré mon nombril bleuté
Et dans les algues vertes de mes cheveux flottant
Tu as noyé l'embryon.

You threw my eyes in the sea
You tore my dreams out of my hands
You cut out my bluish belly button
And in the green seaweeds of my floating hair
You drowned the embryo.

Joyce Mansour

Mushrooms

2011-12-20T22:42:00.000-12:00

For sale

2011-12-20T01:27:00.000-12:00

"Claridade"

2011-12-19T02:01:00.000-12:00

Claridade

Um desapego íntimo de tudo

Me sobrepõe ao mundo e ao dia.

Claridade!

No mistério da luz, o olhar mudo

Lentamente se estende e apascenta

De pura nostalgia.

Fico imóvel, sem ver,

Sentido o nada e o ser,

Até que a flor do tempo

Efémera desperta

E ondula dentro de mim.

João Maia, in Jorge de Sena, Líricas Portuguesas, (Lisboa, Ed. 70, 1983), II vol. pp.96-97

Surrealist texts by surrealist women: Mary Low (2)

2011-12-16T02:11:00.000-12:00

The companion

Albrecht Dürer, The large Turf, (1503)

You are my companion.
I know the ripe fruit of your rashness,
your turbulent cascades
and the hazel waters of joy.

I know the strength of your bastions,
and those walls where a breach can be made.
You have twelve Achilles'hells and a triple-edged sword.

You taste green like the freshness of the morning,
or hot and acrid
like aloes in the sun.
You smell like moist moss,
young fur among the pines
or a newly honed sickle dipped in hay.

You walk like haughty Indians
and you speak like harps.
You think along an arrow-line
or down voiceless wells.
You are deep with tangible tenderness,
but hard as malachite.
Your words and your thoughts
shine like polished shields.

You are my companion.

Mary Low, in Penelope Rosemont, op.cit. p.409

Albrecht Dürer, Pine, Collection of the Britsh Museum

Couples d'artistes (3) Dorothea Tanning & Max Ernest

2011-12-16T00:23:00.006-12:00

Dorothea Tanning and Max Ernst, Honolulu Photograph by Kay Bell 1952

Lee Miller, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning

"The photo appeared in the September 14, 1942 issue of LIFE magazine, page 44, and the credit identifies this woman as "Pat Sanchez, daughter of a wealthy Cuban sugar." See comment below, by Pam Johnson Director, The Dorothea Tanning Collection and Archive

Dorothea Tanning, Birthday, oil on canvas

At first was only one Picture, a self-portrait. It was a modest canvas by present day standards. But it filled my New York studio, the apartment’s back room, as if it had always been there. For one thing, it was the room, I had been struck, one day, by a fascinating array of doors ─ hall, kitchen, bathroom, studio ─ crowed together, soliciting my attention with their antic plants, light, shadows, imminent openings and shuttings. From there it was a easy leap to dream of countless doors. Perhaps in a way it was a talisman for the things that were hapening, an interaction of quiet event, line densities wrought in a crystal paperweight of time where nothing was expeted to appear except the finished canvas and, later a few snowflakes, for the season was Christmas1942, and Max was my Christmas present.
It was snowing hard when he rang my doorbell. Choosing pictures for a show to be called "Thirty Women." (...) We moved to the studio, a livelier place in any case in any case, and there on an easel was my self-portrait, not quite finished. He looked, while I tried not to. At last, "What do you call it?" I really haven't a title. "Then you can call it 'Birthday.'" Just like that. He had come to stay. That we were both painters, visionaries, did not strike me at the time as anything but the happiest of coincidences. It was so unbelievable, I told myself, "Yes. If it only lasts three weeks, it is still alright."
Dorothea Tanning, Birthday, (Santa Monica, San Francisco, The Lapis Press, 1986), p.14.

Surrealist texts by surrealist women: Françoise Sullivan

2011-12-16T00:22:00.003-12:00

"Dance is above all a reflex, a spontaneous expression of vividly emotions. In dance humankind has found a means of satisfying his desire for tangency withe the universe."

Françoise Sullivan, in Penelope Rosemont, op.cit., p. 208

In memoriam

2011-12-14T23:06:00.002-12:00

Quod nihil scitur

2011-12-14T11:56:00.000-12:00

Elegia às flores silvestres

2011-12-13T22:41:00.030-12:00

Ao compasso do vento,
dancei o tango de uma ilusão,
tecida com as flores silvestres,
com que me adornaste.

Ao ribombar da trovoada, mergulhei,
nas ondas onde me amaste,
aí capturei os poemas perdidos.

Ao sabor da chuva,
com ambrósia, fiz um brinde.
À luz dos relâmpagos, arderam todas as velas,
como quem festeja uma efeméride -
que nunca logrou celebração.

Surrealist texts by surrealist women: Mary Low

2011-12-13T22:21:00.000-12:00

***

Encounter

Since first we met
I have know
the intimate joy of scissors
sleek cats and nutmeg,
the tears of blind music at night,
and the whisper of fire among cinders.

Since first we met
all stairs and flowers
grow spurs for me
and palm-trees whip me with their hair
in sundry mirrors.
The small hours open their wounds for me
to the sound of flutes
that shake my heart.

Since first we met
I feel like omega.
full of warm silk
endless and groundless.

Mary Low, in Penelope Rosemont, op.cit., p. 411

Mary Low(1912–2007). Political activist, journalist, poet and linguist. Although her parents were Australian, she was born and raised in London. She continued her education in Switzerland and France. She met the Cuban poet and revolutionary Juan Brea in 1933 and joined the Paris Surrealist group shortly afterwards. They also contacted the Surrealist groups in Prague, Bucharest and Brussels.

Their closest friends among the Surrealists were Benjamin Péret,Victor Brauner, Oscar Dominguez, Marcelle Ferry and the Czechs Bohuslav Brouk, Jindrich Heisler and Toyen. In 1936–37 Low and Brea fought on the Republican side in Spain. They were members of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM) and she edited its English-language newspaper, Spanish Revolution, and helped to organize the women’s militia. On their return to England, they brought out Red Spanish Notebook, the first full-length account inEnglish of the Spanish Civil War, and in the following year their joint collection of poems, La Saison des flûtes, was published by the Éditions Surréalistes in Paris. When World War II broke out they went to Cuba, where she remained after Brea’s death in 1941. Péret wrote the preface to their collection of essays, La verdad contemporanea (Contemporary Truth), which came out two years later in Havana. She took part in the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in1959 but left Cuba in 1964 for Australia, where she lived for 10 years before finally taking up residence in the United States. She renewed her links with Surrealism there by collaborating on Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion and What Are You Going To Do About It. She also wrote for the French review Ellébore. Her other titles include Alquimia del Recuerdo (Alchemy of Memory), with illustrations by Wifredo Lam (1946), a historical novel, In Caesar’s Shadow (1975) and Where The Wolf Sings: New Poems and Collages (1994). Her collages, e.g., Mermaid (1994), have been exhibited in recent years in Paris, Chicago, Montreal and Miami, where she died at the age of 94.

Keith Aspley, Historical Dictionary of Surrealism, (Lanham,Toronto, Plymouth,The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2010),p.303

Surrealist texts by surrealist women: Lise Deharme

2011-12-13T22:20:00.003-12:00

Il était une petite fille
en guenilles
qui n avait qu une idée
du fond de son déséspoir
une idée de mourir
dans la Forêt Noire.

C'est fini pour aujoud hui.

Lise Deharme

HUGO Valentine - Lise Deharme. Portraits.

The Little Girl of the Black Forest

Once there was a little girl
Dressed in tatters
Who had only one idea
In the depth of her despair
An idea of dying in the Black Forest

That’s all for tonight

in Penelope Rosemont, op.cit., p.70.

Lise Deharme (1898–1980). Née Lise Anne-Marie Hirtz. The daughter of a famous doctor, she married Pierre Meyer in 1921. Her first book, Images dans le dos du cocher, under the name Lise Hirtz, came out in 1922. She visited the Bureau de recherches surréalistes in 1925 and became known as “The Lady of the Glove” (see Nadja). André Breton undoubtedly found her irresistible and an embodiment of “l’amour fou” that he would extol in the 1930s but she seemed able to keep him at arm’s length. Her second marriage was to the radio pioneer Paul Deharme in 1928 but he died within a few years. Joan Miró illustrated her first book Il était une petite pie (1928). She edited a little review, Le Phare de Neuilly, which helped to promote Surrealism. She herself wrote Surrealist poems, short stories and nursery rhymes. Her Cahier de curieuse personne, a poetic anthology, came out in 1933. Her third husband was Jacques Parsons, whom she married in 1941. In the 1950s she hosted a literary salon; published articles on Gérard de Nerval and Joris-Karl Huysmans in La Tour Saint-Jacques, a magazine that specialized in magic and hermeticism; and wrote one of the four sections of the 1954 volume Farouche à quatre feuilles (together with Breton, Julien Gracq and Jean Tardieu). She brought out over two dozen books, a number of which contained illustrations by famous artists: these include Le Coeur de Pic, with photographs by Claude Cahun (1937), Le Poids d’un oiseau, with illustrations by Leonor Fini (1955) and Oh! Violette ou la Politesse des Végétaux also illustrated by Fini (1969). Paul Éluard wrote the preface to her Cette Année-là (1945). After her death a special issue of Cahiers bleus (no. 19, automne-hiver 1980) was devoted to her. She was more than a mere patroness of the arts: she was one of the leading “Surrealist women”; in 1945 no less a figure than Éluard described her as “the best writer.” Keith Aspley, Historical Dictionary of Surrealism, (Lanham,Toronto, Plymouth,The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2010),p.154

Surrealist texts by surrealist women: Alice Rahon

2011-12-13T22:17:00.000-12:00

Waolgang-paale, Portrait of Alice Rahon

Alice Rahon, Scene de chasse (1942)

Alice Rahon, The Cats, oil and sand

Alice Rahon, Gato Nocturno, oil on canvas

Painter and Magician

In earliest times painting was magical, it was the key to the invisible. In those days the value of a work lay in its powers of conjunration, a power that talent alone could not achieve. Like the shaman, the sibyl, and the wizard, the painter had to make himself humble, so that he could share in the manifestation of spirits and forms. The Rythm of our life today denies the primordial principle of painting: conceiving in contemplation, thew emotional content of the picture cannot be perceived without contemplation.
The invisible speaks to us, and the world it paints takes the form of apparitions; it awakens in each of us that yearning for the marvelous and shows us the way back to it - the way that is the great conquest of childhood, and which is lost to us with the rational concepts of education.
Perhaps we have seen the Emerald City in some farway dream that belongs to the common emotional fund of man. Entering by gate of the Seven Colors, we travel along the Rainbow.

(From the Catalog, Alice Rahon, Willard Gallery, New York, 1951).

Penelope Rosement, op.cit., p.242

Alice Rahon (1904–1987). Born Alice Marie Yvonne Philippot.French poet and painter, the daughter of an academic artist who encouraged her to paint. She adopted her mother’s maiden name after an early divorce. In 1931 she met Wolfgang Paalen and they married three years later. They joined the Surrealist group in Paris in 1935. By 1936 she was better known for her poetry, publishing in that year the collection Sablier couché, illustrated by Pablo Picasso. In 1936 too she traveled to India with Valentine Penrose. Her next book of poems, A même la terre, with illustrations by Yves Tanguy, came out in 1939, just before she and her husband emigrated to Mexico. She helped Paalen organize the International Surrealist Exhibition in Mexico City. It was Paalen who illustrated her poems published nunder the title Noir animal in 1941. In the following year she was a contributor to Dyn, the review he had founded. She resumed her artwork, sometimes using paint that had dried on her husband’s palettes; she painted visionary landscapes, fantastic buildings, primitivelooking people and animals as well as hieroglyphics. Some of these features are found in two works from 1946, Thunderbird and La Nuit enchantée. She was clearly influenced by popular and traditional Mexican art but also explored the theme of Woman, especially the links between history and legend, on the one hand, and contemporary female concerns, on the other, particularly after she and her husbandwere divorced in 1947; at first glance Autoportrait (1951) comes across as childlike in terms of style but on closer inspection it seems to depict the vulnerability of a woman coming to terms with the world. A number of her paintings—for example, Scène de chasse (1942) and The Cats—call to mind primitive cave paintings, whereas Les canaris (1946) is reminiscent of Joan Miró. After she heard of the death of André Breton in 1966, she painted a tribute, Man Crossed by a River.

Keith Aspley, Historical Dictionary of Surrealism, (Lanham,Toronto, Plymouth,The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2010) p.405

"Écoutez la chanson foraine"

2011-12-13T01:52:00.004-12:00

Les Forains

[...]

Écoutez la chanson foraine
Qui parle des amants perdus
Ça sent l'amour et puis la peine
Tur-lu-tu-tu chapeau pointu
Il y'a des artilleurs
Il y'a des bonnes d'enfants
Il y'a des vieux messieurs
Il y'a des gens heureux
Écoutez la chanson foraine
Qui parle des amants perdus
Ça sent l'amour et puis la peine
Tur-lu-tu-tu chapeau pointu

Je te paierai un beau fusil
Pour massacrer tous ces pantins
Qu'on voit à la fête foraine
Et puis j'accrocherai ton coeur
A ce manège de deux sous
Qui moud bien tendrement ma peine

[...]

Léo Ferré

"Cloudbodies"

2011-12-12T22:59:00.003-12:00

[...] Moist breath of the stones _ they breath clouds of soil and blow fat bodies against the nocturnal hall. I forget the blue spell and listen to the talk of cloudbodies. I catch their voices and throw them back and see them as red spots flashing up in the monotonous nigth. [...]

Anneliese Hager, "The Blue Spell" in Penelope Rosemont, op.cit. 268.

Surrealist texts by surrealist women: Joyce Mansour (2)

2011-12-12T10:59:00.039-12:00

***

[...]

In French the explosively unconventional work of Joyce Mansour and Marianne van Hirtum brought something new to surrealism (...) With her deep-sea insolence, mountain-high erotic erotic rage, and bitte, insect-leggy laughter, Joyce Mansour gave the world an atonishing body of poetry such that no woman had ever written.

Penelop Rosemont, op.cit, p. 203.

Joyce Mansour,(1928–1986). Poet and athlete born in Bowden, England, of Egyptian parents, she was educated in Switzerland. In her youth she was a champion high-jumper. She married Robert Habib in 1950 and moved to Paris three years later, the year her first collection of poems, Cris, was published. It received a very favorable review in Médium and she joined the Paris Surrealist group in 1954. Jean-Louis Bédouin has described her impact in the following terms: “Dès lors Joyce Mansour collaborera à toutes les publications surréalistes et apportera à la vie du groupe un élément unique, irremplaçable” (Vingt ans de surréalisme 1939–59, 269) (From then on Joyce Mansour will collaborate on all the Surrealist publications and bring to the group a unique, irreplaceable element). In BIEF, she wickedly parodied women’s magazines of the period. She brought out a new collection of poems, Déchirures, in 1955. Her writings continued to receive the plaudits not only of the group: André Breton himself has described her as one of the three most important French-language Surrealist poets to have emerged since World War II, hailing Les Gisants satisfaits (1958) as both a masterpiece of humour noir and “this century’s Garden of Earthly Delight”; and Alain Bosquet has even claimed that, compared to Mansour, “The Story of O is mere rosewater and Henry Miller a choirboy.” Her work frequently contains elements of sado-masochism and a savage eroticism, as is the case with Rapaces (1960). After the dissolution of the official Surrealist group in 1969, Mansour collaborated on the Bulletin de liaison surréaliste and Arsenal: Surrealist Subversion. Her various collections were illustrated by artists such as Robert Lagarde, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Max Walter Svanberg, Jorge Camacho and Pierre Alechinsky. She died in Paris and after her death an edition of her Poésie et prose was published by Actes Sud in 1991.

Keith Aspley, Historical Dictionary of Surrealism, (Lanham,Toronto, Plymouth,The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2010), pp.316-317

I want to sleep with you side by side
Our hair intertwined
Our sexes joined
With your mouth for a pillow.
I want to sleep with you back to back
With no breath to part us
No words to distract us
No eyes to lie to us
With no clothes on.
To sleep with you breast to breast
Tense and sweating
Shining with a thousand quivers
Consumed by ecstatic mad inertia
Stretched out on your shadow
Hammered by your tongue
To die in a rabbit’s rotting teeth
Happy.

Joyce Mansour, Déchirures (Torn Apart, 1955)

***

Surrealist texts by surrealist women: Anneliese Hager

2011-12-12T10:30:00.002-12:00

Of the poison of Dreams

Anneliese Hager (1946)

I offer you the fog of ideas in the poison cup of dreams. Veil the false stars (of those who know) and immerse your body down to the ground. You will seek in vain the last sin; for the cup sinks, like you, with every stroke of the hour, deeper into the torn mouth of time. Despairingly, you hang your eyes like lights on a walls of, where blossoms of the instant they speak glitering prayers. [...]

Anneliese Hager, in Penelope Rosemont, op.cit. , p. 261

Anneliese Hager, (1904–?). German poet, artist and photographer born in Dresden. She was active on the German art scene in the 1920s, specializing in “splash and drip automatism” but the rise of Nazism obliged her to go underground. After World War II she and her painter husband Karl Otto Götz were involved in the Cobra movement (1948–51). In 1954 she collaborated with Max Holzer and Edgar Jené on Surrealistische Publikationen. Her artwork is typified by Endless Kette (1962) and her poetry was gathered together in Der rote Uhr und andere Dichtungen (The Red Clock and Other Poems), published in Zurich in 1991. The surreal quality of her poem “Nebel” (Mist) is evident from the opening line, “Nebel ist blaue Sprache”(Mist is blue speech).

Keith Aspley, Historical Dictionary of Surrealism, (Lanham,Toronto, Plymouth,The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2010), p.238

Twilight (2)

2011-12-12T06:05:00.000-12:00

[...] I think we must try to look in through the smog in ourselves and ask who or what is this, and what within this we could evolve, live, grow.

(...)

In other to unchain our emotions we must observe all the elements that are used to keep us unslaved, all the false identities that we unconsciously embrace through propaganda, literature, and all the multiple false beliefs that we are fed since birth.

This is the only way to clear psychic territory for reality. Our emotions react mecanically to so much bunk that our own real emotions are practically impossible to decode. [...]

Leonora Carrington, "What is a Woman", op.cit, p. 374

"I'll Be Your Baby Tonight"

2011-12-12T04:01:00.010-12:00

Close your eyes, close your door
You don't have to worry any more
I'll be your baby tonight.

Shut the light, shut the shade
You don't have to be afraid
I'll be your baby tonight.

Well, that mockingbird's gonna sail away
We're gonna forget it
That big, fat moon is gonna shine like a spoon
But we're gonna let it
You won't regret it.

Kick your shoes off, do not fear
Bring that bottle over here
I'll be your baby tonight.

Surrealist Texts by Surrealist Women: Joyce Mansour

2011-12-09T07:04:00.000-12:00

Je veux me montrer nue à tes yeux chantants.
Je veux que tu me voies criant de plaisir.
Que mes membres pliés sous un poids trop lourd
Te poussent à des actes impies.
Que les cheveux lisses de ma tête offerte
S'accrochent à tes ongles courbés de fureur.
Que tu te tiennes debout aveugle et croyant
Regardant de haut mon corps déplumé.

Joyce Mansour, Cris, 1953

Invitez-moi à passer la nuit dans votre bouche
Racontez-moi la jeunesse des rivières
Pressez ma langue contre votre œil de verre
Donnez-moi votre jambe comme nourrice
Et puis dormons frère de mon frère
Car nos baisers meurent plus vite que la nuit

Joyce Mansour, Déchirures, 1955

From my niece with love

2011-12-09T00:01:00.001-12:00

Super aunt jam

Cyclamen

2011-12-07T03:42:00.009-12:00

[...]

O cyclamens craintifs,
Mélancoliques flammes,
En vous veillent les âmes
Des vastes monts pensifs !

Georges Riguet

Frost ...

2011-12-07T03:42:00.000-12:00

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree
Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost (1923)

Twilight

2011-12-06T05:34:00.011-12:00

What is a Woman?

Fifty years ago I was born a female human animal. This, I was told, mean that I was a “Woman.”
But I never knew what they meant.

Fall in love with a man and you will see … I fell (several times), but saw not.
Give birth and you will see … I gave birth and did not know. Who am I?
Am I? Who?
Am I that which I observe or that which observes me?
(…)

Yet, like everybody else I yearn for an identity although this yearning mystifies me always.
If there is a true individual identity I would like to find it, because like truth on discovery it has already gone.
So I try to reduce myself to facts. I am a aging human female, now: soon I will be old and than dead. This is all I know as far as facts are concerned.
These facts are not particularly edifying or original.
However, out of the depths of this humanoid female a nameless apprehension is constantly present of a no I, no me, not it , but Is, limitlessly mysterious, but there _ no doubt at all.
Pre-form, pre-light, pre-darkness, pre-sound, Is.
Then in idle rumination I find pleasure in imaging I am some kind of seed that must split and germinate into something so unlike what I appear to be that I could not imagine in my wildest moments [… ]

Leonora Carrington, “What is a Woman?” in Penelope Rosemont (ed), Surrealist Women, An International Anthology, (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1998), pp.372-373.

***

Yet all the time the sieve is leaking, filtering me out: fantasies diluting facts. Creeping into bed. I push and pull parts of my self around until I am in the position. I think I want. But it´s the moment when the light turned off that counts. It’s dark then. I am quite alone. What am I waiting for? Do I really want to sleep? Hibernate? I roll over eyes shut, as if it mattered. Why shut theme? What is going to happen? Why don’t I just stay up?
All the time rummaging away, dragging my life all out like brocante, or frayed vintage clothing once glorious, but who would know, to look at it now? How can I be sure in the dark about what to throw away? All the time knowing that it won’t make any difference, that my deciding is clumsy and vain. (…)
Meanwhile, minutes fly like pollen. A dry gust from the window cups me like a seed and I take root; far away in some dreamy constellation, until the first gray of four a.m. brings me home. Finally morning, and then afternoon. They are both undeniably seductive: green light strikes through the grape ivy and the euphorbia in the window to prove there is still a green world, the one we have forgotten and will surely find again; and of course , there is the promise. Just that: the promise. By evening the pall has lifted. Everything waits radiant. Life is okay.Dorothea Tanning, Between Lives, (New York, W.W.Norton and Company, 2001), pp. 362-363

Cars

2011-12-06T05:34:00.009-12:00

***

She Has Funny Cars

Every day I try so hard to know your mind

And find out what's inside you

Time goes on and I don't know just who you are

Or how I'm going to find you

You can do whatever you please

The world's waiting to be seized

You can collect all neglect

Or all the self-respect you need, what you need

And I know... and I know... and I know

Your mind's guaranteed

It's all you'll ever need

So what do you want with me?

We live but once

But good things can be found around

In spite of all the sorrow

If you see black

You can't look back

You can't look front

You cannot face tomorrow

Some have it nice

Fat and round, flash, paradise

They're very wise to their disguise

Trying to revolutionize tomorrow

And I know... and I know... and I know

Your mind's guaranteed

It's all you'll ever need

Jeferson Airplaine, Surrealistic Pillow (1967)

She's driving away with the dim lights on
She's making a play and she can't go wrong
She never waits too long
She's winding them down on her clock machine
And she won't give up 'cause she's seventeen
She's a frozen fire
She's my one desire

And I don't want to hold her down
Don't want to break her crown
When she says, let's go
I like the nightlife baby
She says, let's go

She's laughing inside 'cause they can't refuse
She's so beautiful now, she doesn't wear her shoes
She doesn't like to choose
She's got wonderful eyes and a risque mouth
And when I ask her before, she said she's holding out
She's a frozen fire
She's my one desire

And I don't want to hold her down
Don't want to break her crown
When she says, let's go
I like the nightlife baby
She says, let's go

The Cars, Candy O (1979)

Inspiring quote ...

2011-11-30T07:53:00.002-12:00

by Ida Kar:

"I am sure I shall never feel too old to do what I want."

Ida Kar (1908–1974). Pseudonym of Ida Karamanian (or Karamian), Armenian photographer and militant born in Tanbov, Russia. She grew up in Russia, Armenia and Iran before her family moved to Egypt when she was 13. In 1928 she was sent by her parents to study medicine and chemistry in Paris, where she quickly came into contact with Surrealists; she attended the première of Un chien andalou, an experience that sparked an interest in photography. In 1933 she returned to Egypt where, with the aid of her then husband, she opened an experimental photographic studio, Idabel. It was there, later in the 1930s, that she met Georges Henein, Ikbal El Alaily and other members of the Egyptian Surrealist group; she took part in their activities, exhibiting in their Art et Liberté shows in 1942 and 1944. In 1945 she moved with her second husband, the artist and critic Victor Musgrave, to London where she met up with E. L. T Mesens, Paul Nash and other members of the English Surrealist group. By the mid- 1950s her status as a photographer was firmly established, thanks to her portraits (e.g., of Hans Arp, André and Elisa Breton, Man Ray, Mesens and Joan Miró). She exhibited at Musgrave’s Gallery One in 1954 (Forty Artists from Paris and London) and had a very successful one-woman show at the Whitechapel Gallery six years later. Her subjects included artists, writers, composers and museum directors and her work is exemplified by her bromide prints of Alan Davie and Keidrich Rhys. True to her principles, she refused offers of commercial work in advertising and fashion and instead set out to photograph animals and stones after producing 100 portraits of people. Her revolutionary fervor found expression on a soapbox in Hyde Park.

Keith Aspley, Historical Dictionary of Surrealism, (Lanham,Toronto, Plymouth,The Scarecrow Press, Inc, 2010), pp. 278-279

Trois de mes Amours: William Turner, Paul Verlaine & George Brassens

2011-11-29T07:50:00.004-12:00

Josephe Mallord William Turner, Moonlight on Lucerne Lake (1841)

Clair de Lune

Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.

Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune,

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.

Paul Verlaine

Joseph Mallord William Turner, In Venice, A Storm in the Piazzeta (1840)

L'Enterrement de Verlaine

Le revois-tu mon âme, ce Boul' Mich' d'autrefois
Et dont le plus beau jour fut un jour de beau froid :
Dieu : s'ouvrit-il jamais une voie aussi pure
Au convoi d'un grand mort suivi de miniatures ?

Tous les grognards - petits - de Verlaine étaient là,
Toussotant, Frissonnant, Glissant sur le verglas,
Mais qui suivaient ce mort et la désespérance,
Morte enfin, du Premier Rossignol de la France.

Ou plutôt du second (François de Montcorbier,
Voici belle lurette en fut le vrai premier)
N'importe ! Lélian, je vous suivrai toujours !
Premier ? Second ? vous seul. En ce plus froid des jours.

N'importe ! Je suivrai toujours, l'âme enivrée
Ah ! Folle d'une espérance désespérée
Montesquiou-Fezensac et Bibi-la-Purée
Vos deux gardes du corps, - entre tous moi dernier.

Georges Brassens

"Where is the wagon going?"

2011-11-27T23:52:00.009-12:00

Paul Delvaux, Solitude

Paul Delvaux, Le viaducte

Paul Delvaux, Petite gare de Nuit

Paul Delvaux, La Gare Forestier

Where is the wagon going?

The wagon is going to the woods.The woods
belong to the winter blues
How do you find their adress?
You turn the door around.
You read the paens of migrant birds, of
water fishs, of damned and cursed
Puszta beetles.
[...]

Mereth Oppenheim

Paul Delvaux portrait par Marcel Broodthaers

Combien de sourires ;)?

2011-11-25T06:51:00.001-12:00

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mona Lisa (1983)

Salvador Dali, Selfportrait as Mona Lisa (1954)

Marcel Duchamp, "ready made", (1909)

Pourquoi s’apitoyer sur le sort d’un homme qui a perdu l’espérance? Est-ce qu’une perte ne peut pas être un bien, telle que l aperte de l’appendice, par exemple, l’appendice vermiforme ou ilécoecal , et l’espérance, ne serait –elle pas l’appendicite de l’âme c’est à dire une inflammation, une vertu aujourd’hui inutile, nuisible, dangereuse et dont il faut savoir se débarrasser au plus vite en cas de crise?Pan! un coup de bisturi. C’est fait en quelques secondes. Et trois pointes de suture pour retendre le sourire.

Blaise Cendrars

Andy Warhol, Mona Lisa, Serigraph (1963)

Un sourire

Qu'est-ce qui fait craquer les gens
qui fait s'arrêter le temps
qui vous laisse sans argument
vous désarme et vous chavire
qu'est-ce qui fait qu'en un instant
on est tous comme des enfants
qui trouvent en s'émerveillant
des pièces d'or dans leur tirelire

un sourire
un sourire
[...]

Adamo

Surrealist Texts by Surrealist Women

2011-11-14T10:45:00.003-12:00

Passage

In celebration of Benjamin Péret

the lettuce devours its leaves

the night its stars

the insect becomes hopeful

the unfortunate cow

dissolves unnoticed

while the soap eats grass

and grows fat

the avenues forget their names

and are referred to only

as Smith

mud puddles take the initiative

to spring at well-dressed men

and top hats aren´t safe from snowballs

even in the midst summer

(Paris 1966)

***

Penelope Rosemont, Penelope Rosemont (ed), Surrealist Women, An International Anthology ,(University of Texas, Austin, 1998), pp. 320-321

[...] Desire is in reality the instant when the sky wants to lower itself so deeply down the ground that the bodies disintegrate into themselves and when the sound of dripping that is heard is the eyes falling into the surface of the sea that gets a hundred years of memory out of only one second − the sea in which we are drowning, and which gives us birth at the same moment.

Kajsa Bergh, translated from the Swedish by Bruno Jacobs

Penelope Rosemont (ed), Surrealist Women, An International Anthology (University of Texas, Austin, 1998), p. 456

***

Q.E.D.

Prolonged horizontal pleasures;

vertical principles

aligned like forest trees;

a hot tangent of poetry

tending toward madness.

What is radius?

A mere infinity:

impulses without end

pouring off the circumference,

Just as my days

Overflow the margins

and come full circle.

Here I Am:

point center.

Mary Low, Penelope Rosemont (ed), Surrealist Women, An International Anthology (University of Texas, Austin, 1998), pp.209-210

Maruja Mallo (1902-1995) Galician painter

2011-11-06T08:10:00.007-12:00

Maruja Mallo by Tamara De Lempicka

Maruja Mallo, Desnudo en la playa

Maruja Mallo

"Surrealism always existed, like the original on- sea celled creature, like an anthropological secret.
Absent from physical vision, it must be viewed with eyes closed. And I with my pencil ready under the pillow I never use, awken with my brain in my hand." Maruja Mallo in Penelope Rosemont (ed), Surrealist Women, (University of Texas, Austin, 1998), p. 73.

Maruja Mallo, Naturaleza Viva, oil on canvas, (1943)

Nature is what began to attract me: I want to discover a new pattern. This pattern is the intimate architecture of nature and humankind, the living mathematics of the skeleton.

In nature - clairvoyant and mysterious, spontaneous and structured - devoid of anachronistic ghosts, I analyse the structure of minerals and vegetables, the diversity of crystalline and biological forms synthetized in numerical and geometric patterns, in a living universal order.

Maruja Mallo in Penelope Rosemont (ed), Surrealist Women, An International Anthology, (University of Texas, Austin, 1998), p. 73.

... "a revolutionary context is difficult to maintain"...

2011-11-06T08:06:00.002-12:00

Maruja Mallo, Antro De Fosiles (1930)

Maruja Mallo, Basuras

the doors are open. we must pass through.
nothing is necessary but the bones that walk within us.
how they rattle in the bloodleting ...
it is inevitable that the heart of things the meat
is raw and it is blue. these poems retain blood.
life hurts us if we bother to feel, yes, work stinks,
leisure is without hope. the only way out is inward
and forward.
if we do not take it upon ourselves to struggle for
individual and social freedom our silence will damn us.
beauty pain terror hope dispair
these are all the same word
it is important that we remember to feel and this is
not so obvious as it sounds.
in these poem, the I is not exactly me,
the you is not exactly you.
this growing things that strangle all life from luxury
and squeeze the almonds in a bitter embrace
the serpents take them down into the valerian underground
and the serpents feathers rake fortune into furrows.
it is an age where footholds are few and far between,
a revolutionary context is difficult to maintain,
yet we continue to seek and hold tight to the free spirit.
so follow the bones ...

Hilary Booth, Preface I Am Rain, (Adelaide, Free Association, 1984)

Celan: La Poésie como Recherche

2011-10-10T00:09:00.000-12:00

Si la poésie de Celan s'autorise dans le poème individuel une certaine résistence à la compréhension immédiate, c'est dans le cadre d'une convention supérieure avec le lecteur, invité à lire et relire (à «travailler», à être «travaillé» par) la totalité des cycles, à percevoir les articulations, à reconnaîtree dans leurs retours les périphéries sémantiques de certains mots, à initier aux prosodies et aux syntaxes: à se familiariser avec les «négations» celaniennes. «Comprendre» ici est toujours à prendre au sens de capter dans un dialogue avec l'auteur le sens qu'il a donné à sa parole en oubliant pas de lui donner aussi son ombre, c'est à dire de cheminer avec lui, de l'accompagner dans ce qui Kafka nomme «une expédition vers le vrais" (...)
Comprendre c'est donc (...)accepter (...) que la poésie ne soit pas d'expréssion. mais de recherche.[...]

Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, in "Préface", Paul Celan, Choix de Poémes, (Paris,Gallimard, 1998), pp.18-19

Peng-Lai-Shan ...

2011-09-26T21:54:00.001-12:00

La première tasse humecte mes lèvres et mon gosier

La deuxième rompt ma solitude

La troisième fouille mes entrailles mises à nu

et y débusque mille volumes d'étranges idéogrammes

La quatrième suscite une légère sueur

— et tout le noir de ma vie se dissout à travers mes pores

A la cinquième tasse, je suis purifié

La sixième m'expédie au royaume des Immortels

La septième — ah, je ne saurais en absorber davantage !

Je sens seulement un souffle de vent frais gonfler mes manches.

Où est Peng Lai Shan ?

Ah ! Laissez-moi chevaucher cette douce brise et m'envoler loin d'ici !

Lu Tong

Pour Marie Claire

"Todtnauberg"

2011-07-28T00:46:00.001-12:00

Wilhelm Kimmich, (1897-1986)

"Käppelehof in the summer" (1967), oil on canvas.

Insightful approach on Celan´s poem "Todtnauberg" borrow from Paul Celan: Exposing Poetry, an introductory essay:

[...] many Modernists were proto-fascists, yet this doesn't mean difficulty equals Totalitarianism. It means, instead, a 'crossing through danger' is not mere rhetoric. The dangers led Heidegger to his great error.
It troubled Celan that the man he saw as one of the greatest of modern thinkers, so close to his own work, was a Nazi. One cannot even say 'had been a Nazi' because he never said anything that amounted to a renunciation. Late in life, Heidegger became interested in Celan's work. He recognised him as the only living equal of Hölderlin. He attended public readings given by the poet, and in 1967 even invited him to his famous Black Forest retreat at Todtnauberg. Celan accepted. This was a significant move as Celan had developed an intense sensitivity (one might say 'anxiety') toward anti-Semitic tendencies in post-war Europe. When his dedicated publishers re-issued the work of a poet popular in the Nazi years, he left for another, and when German literary authorities exonerated him over plagiarism charges, he regarded it as a humiliation to be even under investigation. Yet here he was meeting a man in his most intimate home, a home in which, it is said, he had once run Nazi indoctrination sessions. Perhaps Celan never knew the full extent of Heidegger's culpability.
Generally, not much is known about Celan's reasons for accepting the invitation, nor what happened during the visit, but very soon after Celan wrote a poem called 'Todtnauberg'. The title reference is explicit; the place name is synonymous with the philosopher. This is the first half:

Arnica, eyebright,
the draft from the well
with the star-crowned die above it,
In
the hut,
the line
- whose name did the book
register before mine? -,
the line inscribed in that book about
a hope, today,
of a thinking man's
coming
word
in the heart,
(trans. Michael Hamburger)

As Pierre Joris points out in his exceptional analysis of the various translations of the poem, 'Todtnauberg' is barely a poem than single sentence divided into eight stanzas. The first of the three above display Celan's extraordinary eye for nature, as noted earlier in "Nocturnally Pouting". Arnica and Eyebright are flowers noted for their healing qualities, so right from the start there is the sense of what the meeting is all about. In the third, the poet signs the visitors book and makes plain his awareness of who might have signed it before - Germans being indoctrinated into Nazi ideology perhaps. He hopes for a word in the heart of the great man. Did the word reveal itself? The remaining five stanzas are:

woodland sward, unlevelled,
orchid and orchid, single,
coarse stuff, later, clear
in passing,
he who drives us, the man,
who listens in,
the half- trodden fascine
walks over the high moors
dampness,
much.

Almost certainly not. The two men walked across woodland each in his isolation: an orchid and an orchid. And the poem remained isolated as far as Heidegger was concerned. He displayed his special copy of the poem proudly to subsequent visitors to the cottage, seemingly unaware of its implications. Perhaps this is enough to indicate the blindness of a man, even one with genius, rooted in his familiar landscape - brought out here in Hamburger's translation of log-paths as 'fascine', a word so close to 'fascist', the etymological origin coming, as Joris says, from the Latin 'fasces' - a bundle of wooden rods - the symbol of fascism.
'Todtnauberg' , therefore, cannot be regarded as a coded accusation, or as a shy expression of bitterness, or sentimental regret, or of pompous self-definition in contrast to a supposed intellectual superior, but rather the very openness Heidegger apparently lacked. As Celan once said: "Poetry does not impose itself, it exposes." The lack of a second 'itself' in this sentence exposes.

On this subject a pertinent article by Pierre Joris, "Celan/Heidegger, Translation at the Mountain of Death"

Georg Eduardo Otto Saal (1817-1870) "Todtmoos" (1861), oil on canvas

Todtnauberg

Arnika, Augentrost, der
Trunk aus dem Brunnen mit dem
Sternwurfel drauf,
in der
Hütte,
die in das Buch
—wessen Namen nahms auf
vor dem meinen?—,
die in dies Buch
geschriebene Zeile von
einer Hoffnung, heute,
auf eines Denkenden
kommendes
Wort
im Herzen,
Waldwasen, uneingeebnet,
Orchis and Orchis, einzeln,
Krudes, später, im Fahren,
deutlich,
der uns fährt, der Mensch,
der's mi anhört,
die halb-
beschrittenen Knüppel-
pfade im Hochmoor,
Feuchtes,
viel.

Wilhelm Kimmich, Last painting (1986), oil on canvas

‘Todtnauberg’
By Scott Horton

Arnica, eyebright, the
drink from the well with the
roll star die on top,
in the
cabin,
written in the book
—whose name did it receive
before my own? — ,
the lines written
in this book about
a hope, today,
for the words
to come
in the heart
of a thinker,
sod of the woods, uneven,
orchis and orchis, separately,
crudity, later, in the process of driving,
clearly,
he who is driving us, the human being,
he who hears it along with us,
the half-
trodden cudgel-
path on the high moor,
moist,
much.
–Paul Celan, “Todtnauberg,” from Lichtzwang (1970) in: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, pp. 255-56 (S.H. transl.)

In this sense I remember Gadamer’s reconceptualization of the hermeneutic circle as an iterative process through which a new understanding of a whole reality is developed by means of exploring the detail of existence. From Gadamer’s perspective the interaction between reader and text, is a constant discourse, and hence interpretation is a collaborative process. Entering into this process is what he calls the fusion of horizons. He sees this process of being one of constant mediation between the past (tradition, culture, experience) and the present horizon (the immediate experience) of the interpreter. As soon as we really open ourselves to a question, the understanding that we have as a result of all our previous experiences or knowledge of the question is immediately superseded by the impact of our exposure to the new experience.

TODTNAUBERG

Arnica, Eyebright, the
Drink from the well with the
star-die on top.

in the
hut,

into the book
─ whose name did it take in
before mine? ─
the line written into
this book about
a hope, today,
for thinker’s
(un-
delayed coming)
word
In the heart,

Woodland turf, undeleveled,
Orchis and Orchis, singly,

crudeness, later, while driving,
clearly,

the one driving us, the man
who hears too,

the half-
trodden log-
paths on high moorland,

dampness,
much.

Translated by John Felstiner
p. 315

TODTNAUBERG

Arnika, centaurée, la
boisson du puits avec, au-dessus,
l’astre-dé

dans le refuge,

écrite dans le livre
(quel nom portait’il
avant le mien?),

écrite dans le livre
la ligne,
aujour’hui, d’une attente:
de qui pense
parole à venir au Coeur,

de la mousse des bois, non aplanie,
orchis et orchis, clairsemé,
de la verdure, plus tard, en voyage,
distinct,
qui nous conduit, l’homme
qui, à cela, tend l’oreille,
les chemins
de rondins à demi
parcourus dans la fange,
de l’humide ,
três.
Jean Daive pp.10-11 in Philipe L-L

Arnika, luminet, cette
gorgée du puits au
cube étoilé plus haut du dé

dans la hutte,
là, dans un livre
─les noms, de qui, relevés
avant le mien?─
là dans un livre,
lignes qui inscrivent
une attente, aujourd’hui,
de qui méditera (à venir, in-
cessamment venir)
un mot
du coeur

humus des bois, jamais aplani,
orchis, orchis,
unique,

chose crue, plus tard, chemin faisant,
claire,

qui nous voitera,
l’homme,
lui-même à son écoute,
à moitié
frayé de layon de rondins
l’à haut dans le marais,

humide,
oui.

Trad. André de Bouchet

A partir da versão inicial do poema, datada de Frankfurt am Main, 02-08-1967 pp.11-12

Artist couples: Josephine Nivison & Edward Hopper _ A Few Scattered Notes & Quotes

2011-07-19T20:20:00.008-12:00

***

Edward Hopper, Reclining Nude, oil on canvas (1924)

Hopper turned forty-one in July; Nivison was just forty. In appearance and personality two people could hardly have been more different. She was not quite five feet one inch tall and weighed about a hundred pounds, while he stood nearly six feet fives inches and was as skinny as ever. Years later Nivison, who was often described as “lively, vivacious,” and “cute,” realled that “no one had ever called him either handsome or distinguished when I married him. It was the long, lean and hungry that got me”. (…)

She was gregarious, outgoing, sociable and talkative, while he was shy, quiet, solitary and introspective. (…)

They soon discovered their shared passion for French (…) Hopper years later reminisced about the happy days when they got together over Verlaine, Verhaeren [Les Heurs claires (1896), Les Heurs d’après-midi (1905), Les Heurs du soir (1911)] etc, etc, etc. An aspect of Verhaeren that parallel the future direction of Hopper’s art was described by Amy Lowell: “Verhaeren is no mere descriptive poet. Neither is he a surface realist. His realism contains the psychologic as well physiologic.”Even the titles with their focus on the qualities of times of day, parallel similar themes and conceptions already emergent in Hopper’s work.

***

Edward Hopper designed and painted a Christmas card for Josephine Nivison and he copied the last stanza of Paul Verlaine, poem, "La Lune Blanche."

La lune blanche

luit dans les bois.

De chaque branche

part une voix

sous la ramée.

O bien aimé[e]....

L'étang reflète,

profond miroir,

la silhouette

du saule noir

où le vent pleure.

Rêvons, c'est l'heure.

Un vaste et tendre

apaisement

semble descendre

du firmament

que l'astre irise.

C'est l'heure exquise!

Paul Verlaine

"French remained the language of romantic imagination for Edward and Jo all their lives, although their travels in search of new subjects would take them over further south and west in the new world and never back to Paris."

Gail Levin, Edward Hopper: An intimate Biography, "First Success:1923-1924," (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1998) pp. 168 and 173.

Gail Levin, THE REDISCOVERY OF JO NIVISON HOPPER

An interesting article on Edward and Josephine:

Man and Muse

French version

From here

Une belle chanson (3)

2011-07-12T20:32:00.002-12:00

J'ai passé l'hiver
En attendant un mot
C'est comme le désert
Sans une goutte d'eau
La barque à l'envers
Posé sur les tréteaux
On voit au travers
Elle sert aux oiseaux

J'ai vu le printemps
Descendre l'horizon
Les bêtes et les gens
Sortir des maisons
Les oiseaux chanter
Sans qu'on sache pourquoi
Et j'étais toujours
Sans nouvelles de toi

Autour des maisons
Un autre été flamboie
Quelques oisillons
S'envolent déjà
Fragiles flocons
Face à l'apesanteur
Dans le bleu profond
Des grandes chaleurs

En haut des pylônes
Les oiseaux voyageurs
Attendent l'automne
Comme des guetteurs
Les fleurs et les hommes
En perdent leurs couleurs
Et toujours personne
Sur le répondeur

Les gens absents
C'est bien ça l'ennuyeux
Ils tournent tout le temps
Là devant nos yeux
On croyait défaire
L'étreinte d'un coup sec
Et puis finalement
On se réveille avec

Juste une question
Est-ce que ça dure toujours
Ces manies qu'ils ont
De tourner autour ?
On parle en dormant
Est-ce que c'est bien normal ?
Les gens absents
Tout leur est égal

J'ai passé l'hiver
...
C'est comme le désert
...
Le coeur à l'envers
...
On voit au travers
...

C'est quoi ces histoires
De fleurs, de saisons
D'oiseaux bizarres
Qui viennent et qui vont ?
Ce sont des détours
C'est pour que tu comprennes
Que je m'accroche
Aux choses qui reviennent

Tübingen, Janner (4) _ "Pallaksch, Pallaksch”_ Silke-Maria Weineck

2011-07-12T08:47:00.005-12:00

Back to one of my obsessions ...

Emil Klein (1886)

Silke- Maria Weineck in the article "Logos and Pallaksch. The Loss of Madness and the Survival of Poetry in Paul Celan’s 'Tubingen, Janner' "[...] traces the movement of de-and remystification in Celan’s poem, Tübingen, Janner, a poem retelling the tales of madness that surround Holderlin," as she declared.

(...)

Celan’s poem is a poem that speaks of Holderlin as well as of his madness; it speaks of the danger of this specific legend, of the veil it draws over Holderlin’s words. It is a meditation both on madness and on a specific gaze on madness, a poem on reading and blindness, and, lastly, not on the power of madness over poetry, but of poetry over madness.

(...) and it closes with mad Holderlin’s sunken word:

“Pallaksch”* - or almost closes, for its last mark is a closing bracket. It is also, with equal force, a poem touching on madness. Its imagery is hallucinatory -swimming towers, visits of drowned carpenters, lightbeards. It is inhabited by voices and figures - by many more voices and shapes than appear on its surface, as the many excellent readings of this poem have shown. It moves from what has been conveniently called “hermetic” imagery towards stuttering, stammering, and babble. It quotes, as I will explain, two mad words, “immerzu” and “pallaksch.” Without doubt, madness is its most clearly drawn frame of reference, but it is not one single madness that is at stake here.

It is not only the title that layers meaning over meaning; a comparable exegesis could probably be given for every single line. There is a multiple memory written into this poem, memories of madnesses of radically different kinds. This condensation of various historical references could itself be read as a mad loss of location, a temporal disorientation, a loss of associative control. On the other hand, multiple evocation is, of course, a poetic prerogative, not mad by itself, and while the ancient association of poetry and madness may be partially grounded precisely in such parallel discursive practices, the multiple disorientations of Celans poem, for me, evoke an imposing poetic control rather than its loss. This poetic control in the face of madness, is, central to the poem. “Immer-, immer-/zuzu.” Towards what does the stammering language move? The next line after “zuzu” is blank (and the blankness of verse-breaks is never accidental in Celan’s poetry, never a mere convention). Towards silence, then? An openness towards nothingness? Not quite, for there is a remainder, even though this remainder of speech is triply qualified: “pallaksch” is not only a non-word, it is also not the poem’s word, but a quote from one who stopped speaking, from after poetry; it is doubled; lastly, the madman’s quoted nonword appears in brackets.

The pallaksch, as it appears in Tiibingen, Janner, repeats the gesture of opening and closing on another level. For while it does not mean anything, by itself, the nonword pallaksch which invades poetry (as madness, perhaps, invaded Holderlin’s poetic life) is also something of a biographical watchword, signalling to Holderlin readers that it is the late, the mad Holderlin who is at stake here, the Holderlin who, as his friend Schwab reported, refused If a human came - and the “if” implicit in the German subjunctive is repeated three times -, if a human came, and if he were of a certain quality, a quality associated with enlightened, prophetic, potentially biblical speech, with the “light beard of the patriarchs” - he would not be able, or allowed, to speak at all, he “might only babble.” Perpetually: “immer-,immer-/zuzu.” Here, the babbling, the lullen, already invades the poem. The “perpetually” of inzmerzu falls apart, into “immer-, immer-” and “zuzu.” A babbled word, a nonword. Also, in the repetition of “zu,” a doubling of closure - for “zu” means “shut” - and, at the same time, a negation of closure - for “zu” also means “towards.” It is this simultaneity of opening and closing that strikes me as most significant in this poem’s advance towards the madness implicit in its last word, pallaksch. The “immerzu” already is a mad word, and, like “pallaksch,” a quotation, although, unlike “pallaksch,” a silent one. It stems from Georg Buchner’s play Woyzeck, and Celan, in his Büchner-Preisrede, refers to “immerzu” as Woyzeck’s “Wahnsinnswort” (“word of madness”).

Woyzeck is haunted by it while he contemplates the murder of his fiancée Marie. Woyzeck’s hallucination itself is, again, a quotation: he overheard it when Marie cheered on her dance partner, “immer zu, immer zu,” - “faster,” “don’t stop,” “go on, go on!” Thus, “immerzu” enters Celan’s poem doubly mutated, as a memory of a memory, an allusion to an allusion, changing from innocuous flirtation to a murderous urge to the perpetuity of a broken language. In drawing Woyzeck’s Wahnsinnswort into the poem, Celan does not only strengthen the poem’s movement towards madness, he also obliquely refers to his famous Preisrede that centres on poetry’s movement towards silence. [...]

Silke-Maria Weineck,"Logos and Pallaksch. The Loss of Madness and the Survival of Poetry in Paul Celan’s 'Tubingen, Janner",Orhis Litterarum 54, (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,1999),262-278.

"LUZ E COR"

2011-07-10T21:51:00.002-12:00

O mar às vezes parece um véu diáfano, outras pó verde. Às vezes é dum azul transparente, outras cobalto. Ou não tem consistência e é céu, ou é confusão e cólera.

De manhã desvanece-se, de tarde sonha. E há dias de nevoeiro em que ele é extraordinário, quando a névoa espessa pouco e pouco se adelgaça, e surge atrás da última cortina vaporosa, todo verde, dum verde que apetece respirar. Diferentes verdes bóiam na água, esbranquiçados, transparentes, escuros, quase negros, misturados com restos de onda que se desfaz e redemoinha até ao longe. E ainda outros azulados, com a cor das podridões. Tudo isto graduado e dependendo do céu, da hora e das marés. Há momentos em que me julgo metido dentro duma esmeralda, e, depois, numa jóia esplêndida, dum azul único que se incendeia. Mas a luz morre, e a luz agonizando exala-se como um perfume. É uma grande flor que desfalece. O doirado não é simplesmente doirado, nem o verde simplesmente verde: possuem uma alma delicada e extática.

Raul Brandão, Os Pescadores, 1923

Beautiful Songs (3)

2011-07-04T05:44:00.000-12:00

Beautiful Songs (2)

2011-06-28T20:51:00.000-12:00

Wing

I was a wing in heaven blue
soared over the ocean
soared over Spain
and I was free
needed nobody
it was beautiful
it was beautiful

I was a pawn
didn't have a move
didn't have nowhere
that I could go
but I was free
I needed nobody
it was beautiful
it was beautiful

and if there's one thing
could do for you
you'd be a wing
in heaven blue

I was a vision
in another eye
and they saw nothing
no future at all
yet I was free
I needed nobody
it was beautiful
it was beautiful

and if there's one thing
could do for you
you'd be a wing
in heaven blue

and if there's one thing
could do for you
you'd be a wing
in heaven blue

and if there's one thing
could do for you
you'd be a wing
in heaven blue

Patty Smith

Beautiful Songs (1)

2011-06-28T10:07:00.001-12:00

Rapture

With photographs
And magnetic tape
We capture
Pretty animals in cages
Pretty flowers in vases
Enraptured

And doesn't the tree
Write great poetry?
Doing itself so well

Do you blame Monet?
His gardens in Giverny
He captured
And lovely Bashô
His plunking ponds and toads
Enraptured

The fate of Kurt Cobain
Junk coursing through his veins
And young Virginia Woolf
Death came and hung her coat

Love of color, sound and words
Is it a blessing or a curse?
Enraptured

Laura Veirs

Une belle chanson (2)

2011-06-27T11:02:00.005-12:00

Je t'offre un verre d'eau glacée
N'y touche pas distraitement
Il est le fruit d'une pensée
Sans ornement

Tous les plaisirs de l'amitié
Combien cette eau me désaltère
Je t'en propose une moitié
La plus légère

Regarde, je suis pur et vide
Comme le verre où tu as bu
Il ne fait pas d'être limpide
Une vertu

Plus d'eau mais la lumière sage
Donne à mon présent tout son prix
Tel un poète aux dieux s'engage
Et reste pris

Je t'offre un verre d'eau glacée
N'y touche pas distraitement
Il est le fruit d'une pensée
Sans ornement

Julos Beaucarne

Summer Twilight

2011-06-23T21:47:00.004-12:00

Color

What is pink? a rose is pink
By a fountain's brink.
What is red? a poppy's red
In its barley bed.
What is blue? the sky is blue
Where the clouds float thro'.
What is white? a swan is white
Sailing in the light.
What is yellow? pears are yellow,
Rich and ripe and mellow.
What is green? the grass is green,
With small flowers between.
What is violet? clouds are violet
In the summer twilight.
What is orange? Why, an orange,
Just an orange

Christina Rossetti

Kitsch ecards from the terrasse

2011-06-23T21:47:00.002-12:00

Osteospermum fruticosum, African daisy

Wildflowers

2011-05-01T07:58:00.003-12:00

Wildflowers

Coleridge carefully wrote down a whole page

of them, all beginning with the letter b.

Guidebooks preserve our knowledge

of their hues and shapes, their breeding.

Many poems have made delicate word-chimes—

like wind-chimes not for wind but for the breath of man—

out of their lovely names.

At the edge of the prairie in a cabin

when thunder comes closer to thump the roof hard

a few of them—in a corner, brittle in a dry jar

where a woman’s thoughtful hand left them to fade—

seem to blow with the announcing winds outside

as the rain begins to fall on all their supple kin

of all colors, under a sky of one color, or none.

THESE ARE THE DAYS WHEN BIRDS COME BACK ... Almost June ...

2011-05-01T00:40:00.016-12:00

...

THESE are the days when birds come back,
A very few, a bird or two,
To take a backward look.

These are the days when skies put on
The old, old sophistries of June,--
A blue and gold mistake.

Oh, fraud that cannot cheat the bee,
Almost thy plausibility
Induces my belief,

Till ranks of seeds their witness bear,
And softly through the altered air
Hurries a timid leaf!

Oh, sacrament of summer days,
Oh, last communion in the haze,
Permit a child to join,

Thy sacred emblems to partake,
Thy consecrated bread to break,
Taste thine immortal wine!

[ Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Indian Summer]

Pomegranate

2011-03-30T06:23:00.007-12:00

Pomegranate

You tell me I am wrong.
Who are you, who is anybody to tell me I am wrong?
I am not wrong.

In Syracuse, rock left bare by the viciousness of Greek
    women.
No doubt you have forgotten the pomegranate-trees in
    flower,
Oh so red, and such a lot of them.

Whereas at Venice
Abhorrent, green, slippery city
Whose Doges were old, and had ancient eyes.
In the dense foliage of the inner garden
Pomegranates like bright green stone,
And barbed, barbed with a crown.
Oh, crown of spiked green metal
Actually growing!

Now in Tuscany,
Pomegranates to warm, your hands at;
And crowns, kingly, generous, tilting crowns
Over the left eyebrow.

And, if you dare, the fissure!

Do you mean to tell me you will see no fissure?
Do you prefer to look on the plain side?

For all that, the setting suns are open.
The end cracks open with the beginning:
Rosy, tender, glittering within the fissure.

Do you mean to tell me there should be no fissure?
No glittering, compact drops of dawn?
Do you mean it is wrong, the gold-filmed skin, integument,
    shown ruptured?

For my part, I prefer my heart to be broken.
It is so lovely, dawn-kaleidoscopic within the crack.

D. H. Lawrence, Birds, Beasts, And Flowers, Poems by D.H. Lawrence, (David R.Godine Publisher, 2007), p.13.

Some interesting articles on D. H. Lawrence:

The Repetitive, Meditative Style of Lawrence's Birds, Beasts, and Flowers
C Comellini , SICILY IN D.H. LAWRENCE'S IMAGERY
Maria Cristina Consiglio, D.H. Lawrence's Sicilian Landscape.
Kenneth Rexroth, Poetry, Regeneration, and D.H. Lawrence

Une belle chanson ...

2011-03-24T10:42:00.111-12:00

***
Les gens qui doutent

J'aime les gens qui doutent
Les gens qui trop écoutent
Leur coeur se balancer
J'aime les gens qui disent
Et qui se contredisent
Et sans se dénoncer

J'aime les gens qui tremblent
Que parfois ils ne semblent
Capables de juger
J'aime les gens qui passent
Moitié dans leurs godasses
Et moitié à côté

J'aime leur petite chanson
Même s'ils passent pour des cons

J'aime ceux qui paniquent
Ceux qui sont pas logiques
Enfin, pas comme il faut,
Ceux qui, avec leurs chaînes,
Pour pas que ça nous gêne
Font un bruit de grelot

Ceux qui n'auront pas honte
De n'être au bout du compte
Que des ratés du coeur
Pour n'avoir pas su dire
"Délivrez-nous du pire
Et gardez le meilleur"

J'aime leur petite chanson
Même s'ils passent pour des cons

J'aime les gens qui n'osent
S'approprier les choses
Encore moins les gens
Ceux qui veulent bien n'être
Qu'une simple fenêtre
Pour les yeux des enfants

Ceux qui sans oriflamme,
Les daltoniens de l'âme,
Ignorent les couleurs
Ceux qui sont assez poires
Pour que jamais l'Histoire
Leur rende les honneurs

J'aime leur petite chanson
Même s'ils passent pour des cons

J'aime les gens qui doutent
Et voudraient qu'on leur foute
La paix de temps en temps
Et qu'on ne les malmène
Jamais quand ils promènent
Leurs automnes au printemps

Qu'on leur dise que l'âme
Fait de plus belles flammes
Que tous ces tristes culs
Et qu'on les remercie
Qu'on leur dise, on leur crie
"Merci d'avoir vécu

Merci pour la tendresse
Et tant pis pour vos fesses
Qui ont fait ce qu'elles ont pu".

Anne Sylvestre

les gens qui doutent - Anne Sylvestre MP3 Download

Vincent Delerm, Jeanne Cheral et Albin de la Simone chantent ... Les gens qui doutent:

Vincent Delerm : Les gens qui doutent Live La Cigale

Almond Blossoms (2)

2011-03-12T10:06:00.011-12:00

No Delicacies

Nothing pleases me anymore.

Should I

dress up a metaphor

with an almond blossom?

crucify syntax

on a light effect?

Who would rack their brains

over such superfluous things--

I have learned an understanding

with the words

that exist

(for the lowest class)

hunger

         disgrace

                   tears
and

                 darkness.

With the uncleansed sob,

with despair

(and one day despair will drive me to despair)

in the face of all this misery

the number of sick, the cost of living,

I will manage.

I don't neglect writing,

I neglect myself.

The others

Lord knows

can use words to get by.

I am not my assistant.

Should I

take thought captive, march it

to an illuminated sentence cell?

feed eye and ear

with the choicest word morsels?

research the libido of a vowel,

calculate the collector's value of our consonants?

With this head crushed by hail,

with writer's cramp in this hand,

under the pressure of three hundred nights,

must I

tear the paper,

wipe away the instigated word-operas,

thereby destroying: I you and he she it

we you?

(Should really. The others should.)

My part, let it be lost.

Ingeborg Bachmann, translated by Margitt Lehbert

Sem acepipes

Já nada me agrada.

Deverei eu

enfeitar uma metáfora

com uma flor de amendoeira?

Crucificar a sintaxe

sobre um efeito de luz?

Quem é que vai quebrar a cabeça

com coisas tão fúteis?

Aprendi a entender as coisas

com as palavras

que existem

(para a classe mais baixa)

Fome

         Vergonha

                      Lágrimas

e

                                 Trevas.

Com o soluço impuro,

com o desespero

(e eu desespero ainda com o desespero)

por tanta miséria

pelo estado do doente, pelo custo da vida,

sobreviverei.

Não descuido a escrita

mas a mim.

Os outros sabem

sabe Deus

o que fazer com as palavras.

Eu não sou o meu médico assistente.

Deverei eu

prender um pensamento,

conduzi-lo à cela iluminada de uma frase?

Alimentar o olhar, o ouvido

com nacos de palavras de primeira qualidade?

Estudar a libido de uma vogal?

Investigar a cotação erótica das nossas consoantes?

Terei eu,

com a cabeça desfeita pelo granizo,

com a cãibra da escrita nesta mão,

sob o peso de trezentas noites,

de rasgar o papel,

varrer as tramas de operas de palavras,

destruindo assim: eu tu e ele ela isso

nós vós?

(Devo. Devem os outros.)

A minha parte - que desapareça!

Tradução de Judite Berkemeyer e de João Barrento, Ingeborg Bachmann, O tempo aprazado, (Lisboa,Assírio & Alvim, 1992).

Keine Delikatessen

Nichts mehr gefällt mir.

Soll ich

eine Metapher ausstaffieren

mit einer Mandelblüte?

die Syntax kreuzigen

auf einen Lichteffekt?

Wer wird sich den Schädel zerbrechen

über so überflüssige Dinge -

Ich habe ein Einsehen gelernt

mit den Worten,

die da sind

(für die unterste Klasse)

Hunger

          Schande

Tränen

und

              Finsternis.

Mit dem ungereinigten Schluchzen,

mit der Verzweiflung

(und ich verzweifle noch vor Verzweiflung)

über das viele Elend,

den Krankenstand, die Lebenskosten,

werde ich auskommen.

Ich vernachlässige nicht die Schrift,

sondern mich.

Die anderen wissen sich

weißgott

mit den Worten zu helfen.

Ich bin nicht mein Assistent.

Soll ich

einen Gedanken gefangennehmen,

abführen in eine erleuchtete Satzzelle?

Aug und Ohr verköstigen

mit Worthappen erster Güte?

erforschen die Libido eines Vokals,

ermitteln die Liebhaberwerte unserer Konsonanten?

Muß ich

mit dem verhagelten Kopf,

mit diesem Schreibkrampf in dieser Hand,

unter dreihundertnächtigem Druck

einreißen das Papier,

wegfegen die angezettelten Wortopern,

vernichtend so: ich du und er sie es

wir ihr?

(Soll doch. Sollen die andern.)

Mein Teil, es soll verloren gehen.

Ingeborg Bachmann (1963)

S.Bento do Mato

2011-02-22T12:42:00.040-12:00

Mon rêve familier

Je fais souvent ce rêve étrange et pénétrant

D'une femme inconnue, et que j'aime, et qui m'aime,

Et qui n'est, chaque fois, ni tout à fait la même

Ni tout à fait une autre, et m'aime et me comprend.

Car elle me comprend, et mon coeur transparent

Pour elle seule, hélas! cesse d'être un problème

Pour elle seule, et les moiteurs de mon front blême,

Elle seule les sait rafraîchir, en pleurant.

Est-elle brune, blonde ou rousse? Je l'ignore.

Son nom? Je me souviens qu'il est doux et sonore,

Comme ceux des aimés que la vie exila.

Son regard est pareil au regard des statues,

Et, pour sa voix, lointaine, et calme, et grave, elle a

L'inflexion des voix chères qui se sont tues.

Paul Verlaine, Paul Verlaine, Poèmes Saturniens, "Melancholia", VI, 1866.

Almond blossoms ...

2011-02-17T12:33:00.040-12:00

***

Compte les amandes

Compte les amandes,
compte ce qui était amer et t’a tenu en éveil,
compte-moi au nombre de tout cela :

je cherchais ton œil quand tu l’as ouvert et que personne
ne te regardait,
j’ai tourné ce fil secret
sur lequel la rosée que tu pensais
a glissé en bas jusqu’aux cruches
que protège une formule qui n’a trouvé le cœur de personne.

C’est là-bas seulement que tu es entré tout entier dans le
nom qui est le tien,
que tu as marché d’un pied sûr vers toi-même,
que les marteaux se sont balancés librement dans le beffroi de ton silence,
que le tout juste Entendu est soudain venu jusqu’à toi,
que le déjà-mort t’a aussi entouré de son bras,
et vous êtes allés trois en un dans le soir.

Rends-moi amer.
Compte-moi au nombre des amandes.

Paul Celan, Choix de Poèmes, traduction Jean-Pierre Lefebvre
(Paris, Editions Gallimard, 1998), p.79.

***

Count the Almonds

Count the almonds,
count what was bitter and kept you awake,
count me in:

I looked for your eye when you opened it, no one was looking at you,
I spun that secret thread
on which the dew you were thinking
slid down to the jugs
guarded by words that to no one's heart found their way.

Only there did you wholly enter the name that is yours,
sure-footed stepped into yourself,
freely the hammers swung in the bell-frame of your silence,
the listened-for reached you,
what is dead put its arm round you also
and the three of you walked through the evening.

Make me bitter.
Count me among the almonds.

Translation: Michael Hamburger

***

Count up the almonds

Count up the almonds,
count what was bitter and kept you waking,
count me in too:

I sought your eye when you looked out and no one saw you,
I spun that secret thread
where the dew you mused on
slid down to pitchers
tended by a word that reached no one's heart.

There you first fully entered the name that is yours,
you stepped toward yourself on steady feet,
the hammers swung free in the belfry of your silence,
things overheard thrust through to you,
what's dead put its arm around you too,
and the three of you walked through the evening.

Render me bitter.
Number me among the almonds.

Translation:John Felstiner

***

Zähle die Mandeln

Zähle die Mandeln,
zähle, was bitter war und dich wachhielt,
zähl mich dazu:

Ich suchte dein Aug, als du’s aufschlugst und niemand dich ansah,
ich spann jenen heimlichen Faden,
an dem der Tau, den du dachtest,
hinunterglitt zu den Krügen,
die ein Spruch, der zu niemandes Herz fand, behütet.

Dort erst tratest du ganz in den Namen, der dein ist,
schrittest du sicheren Fußes zu dir,
schwangen die Hämmer frei im Glockenstuhl deines Schweigens,
stieß das Erlauschte zu dir,
legte das Tote den Arm auch um dich,
und ihr ginget selbdritt durch den Abend.

Mache mich bitter.
Zähle mich zu den Mandeln.

Paul Celan, op.cit. 78

***

An interesting interpretation on Celan's Poetry.

***

The theme of the almond tree has a special importance in Celan’s poetry. Besides its evocative power (e.g. the image of flowering almond trees in spring), it had in fact a complex net of meanings. The first reference is to Josip Mandelstam’s poetry, which had a deep artistic influence on Paul Celan: the Russian poet’s family name has a German origin, and means “almond stem” (and, by extension, “the almond’s lineage”). A more dramatic significance is present as well: in gas-chambers, where Jews like Celan’s parents were exterminated, people were killed through inhalation of Zyklon-B, a lethal gas that was prepared also with almonds. Finally, the shape of almonds reminds us of eyes (reference to sight, vision, expression etc.), and it was commonly used in some Byzantine and Russian icons. Consequently, allusion to almonds implies a whole world of mental connections: the sense of poetry,22 discovered by Celan through Mandelstam; the problem of Jewish identity;23 the drama of “God’s death”, experienced through the tragedy of Shoah (Zyklon-B).

From:Chiara Bertoglio,"Giya Kancheli’s Exil: the spirituality of motifs."

***

Rebecca Steltner, in her original essay, Paul Celans 'Zahle Die Mandeln' , a Critical Commentary (1), refutes the interpretations of the poem, quoted above, arguing that in this poem Celan defines his relationship with the reader. According to Steltner he express his intentions and also explicitly states how he wants to be read.

(1)Rebecca Steltner , Paul Celans "Zahle Die Mandeln", a Critical Commentary,( Grin Verlag, 2007).

For me, in this poem - as it happens in many other Celan's poems - he addresses especially his most "engaged reader":Ingeborg Bachmann ...

Sunny Sunday

2011-02-09T00:06:00.012-12:00

Sunny Sunday

She pulls the shade;
It's just another sunny Sunday
She dodges the light like Blanche DuBois
Bright colors fade away on
such a sunny Sunday;
She waits for the night to fall
Then she points a pistol through the door
And she aims at the streetlight
While the freeway hisses
Dogs bark as the gun falls to the floor
The streetlight's still burning;
She always misses
But the day she hits
That's the day she'll leave
That one little victory, that's all she needs!
She pulls the shade;
It's just another sunny Monday
She waits for the night to fall

Joni Mitchell [© 1994 Crazy Crow Music BMI]

Kitsch Kaleidoscopes

2011-01-29T03:08:00.045-12:00

***

Kaléidoscope

(A Germain Nouveau)

Dans une rue, au coeur d'une ville de rêve
Ce sera comme quand on a déjà vécu :
Un instant à la fois très vague et très aigu...
Ô ce soleil parmi la brume qui se lève !

Ô ce cri sur la mer, cette voix dans les bois !
Ce sera comme quand on ignore des causes ;
Un lent réveil après bien des métempsycoses :
Les choses seront plus les mêmes qu'autrefois

Dans cette rue, au coeur de la ville magique
Où des orgues moudront des gigues dans les soirs,
Où les cafés auront des chats sur les dressoirs
Et que traverseront des bandes de musique.

***

Ce sera si fatal qu'on en croira mourir :
Des larmes ruisselant douces le long des joues,
Des rires sanglotés dans le fracas des roues,
Des invocations à la mort de venir,

Des mots anciens comme un bouquet de fleurs fanées !
Les bruits aigres des bals publics arriveront,
Et des veuves avec du cuivre après leur front,
Paysannes, fendront la foule des traînées

Qui flânent là, causant avec d'affreux moutards
Et des vieux sans sourcils que la dartre enfarine,
Cependant qu'à deux pas, dans des senteurs d'urine,
Quelque fête publique enverra des pétards.

***

Ce sera comme quand on rêve et qu'on s'éveille,
Et que l'on se rendort et que l'on rêve encor
De la même féerie et du même décor,
L'été, dans l'herbe, au bruit moiré d'un vol d'abeille.

Paul Verlaine, Jadis et naguère

***

A piece of cake ...

2011-01-29T00:00:00.006-12:00

"Her picture's in the papers now, And life's a piece of cake." Ogden Nash, The Primrose Path, (John Lane The Bodley Head, London, 1936)

Tübingen, Janner (3) _ "Pallaksch, Pallaksch”_ 3 Perspectives

2011-01-16T09:46:00.028-12:00

In his book Désaccordée comme par de la neige. (et) Tübingen, le 22 mai 1986,André Du Bouchet quotes repeatedly the word "Pallaksch," and emphasize its strangeness.

"Pallaksch, Pallaksch!”: le mot de la langue que l'on ignore". According to Du Bouchet the expression "Pallaksch, Pallaksch” is outside of any tongue at first glance recognizable.

At first reading “Pallaksch, Pallaksch” are neither comprehensible nor in comprehensible. They are inhuman words, words that touch something other than language, that say simultaneously yes and no, that I am and I’m not.

André Du Bouchet,Désaccordée comme par de la neige. (et) Tübingen, le 22 mai 1986, (Le Mercure de France, 1989), pp. 68-69.

On the same suject Frédéric Marteau argues in the second part of his doctoral dissertation:

From Tübingen, Jänner to Huedibluh, Celan poems often emphasized the babbling as poetic practice. In Schneepart, it gives a poem this eloquent title: "The world to babble": Die nachzustotternde Welt . Because this endpoint indicates ruin and is simultaneously the possibility of a reversal. Words fall on page, syntax is broken, and disaggregation seems unending - only, the poem is there, it stands and repeatedly reborn from its ashes - it stands still.

As reported by F.Marteau, Celan always insisted on the necessity of stuttering language, it will be a question of making language to babble . The only possible event, the event of the poem may be in effect only a babbling, as in the poem on Hölderlin.

The word "pallaksch" seems to mean the indeterminacy of the Yes and No; Hölderlin would have used it to say either Yes or No, depending of the context. Underlying Glossolalia (*) therefore maintains this dialectic hesitation which suspends the discourse on its affirmation-negation, where No is not separated from the Yes and where speech may at any time be reversing into its opposite. To babble, is to construct a movement of repetition distorting a word so that it may express otherwise, beyond the evidences of its communication. A word dug grooves which are therefore Cree page for another reading, understanding each other, but in a strangeness maintained such and without insurance. Nothing provides to the babbler the advent of his word. What twists the words followed when it seems to happen to us? Stuttering is not the affirmation of a necessary step to accomplished poetic “non-language”. The poem stutters as seeks a different path. Seeks to say otherwise, strangely. It reverses, himself. The poem fled by edges, limitations and gaps in its material, its silence or its non-language. Splinters, beats: something just working language, something beyond grammar, and which makes flee and shows its limits.

F., Marteau, Le Dess(e)in de l’écriture, une poétique de la lecture Paul Celan et Charles Racine, Paris, Décembre,2006), pp. 339,395-396

(*) Glossolalia is fabricated, meaningless speech.
According to Dr. William T. Samarin, professor of anthropology and linguistics at the University of Toronto, glossolalia consists of strings of meaningless syllables made up of sounds taken from those familiar to the speaker and put together more or less haphazardly .... Glossolalia is language-like because the speaker unconsciously wants it to be language-like. Yet in spite of superficial similarities, glossolalia fundamentally is not language (Nickell, 108).When spoken by schizophrenics, glossolalia are recognized as gibberish.

According to Anne Carson the poet's ability to praise, at all cost, saves us, enlarges us, and teaches us to see beyond to a freedom of Being which is easily lost in the material world.
Her study of poetic and aesthetic thinking with all its fascinating and challenging twists and turns of phrase, its awkward glances at the human, serves a larger purpose—acts, itself, as a metaphor for self-knowledge. As Simonides and Celan respond to the world's absences and losses, Carson interrogates their work and defines the forms, of emptiness, in which they lived and wrote. Fascinated by the "bottomless places for reading" she finds in the literature of negation, excision, emptiness, and denial, "economy" becomes in her hands a multi-layered term which tells us not only about the exchange of money for art; but also suffering for wisdom; and emptiness and negation for assertion and fullness. For her Simonides and Celan "make use of the void in order to think the full."
She wrote about Tübingen, Jänner:

The poem is a praise of Hölderlin’s . It begins with his “riddle” and ends with his Pallaksch. Both for quotations are taken from the world of words that held good for him. “A riddle is the purely originated” com from his Rhine Hymn and Pallaksch Pallaksch is a term he liked to utter in his late years to mean “sometimes yes sometimes no.” He was mad in his later years. You can call Pallaksch nonsense. Yet a few pages ago we read and made sense of Celan’s admonition. “Keep yes and no unsplit.” A word for “Yes and No” out of the collocation of visible and invisibles, out of the absent presence of gods in human rooms, out of alchemy out of memory , out of the rules for the elegiac meter and the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, out of strangeness, hospitality, sleep, prayer and commodity exchange. But to be useful, poetic invention has to measure itself against the words that are given and possible, has to tease itself out of the unknown trough a language mesh where everything ugly, blameworthy, incommensurable or made is filtered out remarkable how Celan brings Hölderlin trough the riddle and all language mesh, “A riddle is the purely originated.” In its context, this sentence begins the fourth strophe of Hölderlin’s Der Rheine and can be ad backward of forward. Origin as riddle. Riddle as origin, like p. 132 the source of the Rhine, pure origine is hard to specify. “Even poetry can scarcely unveil it,” says the poet. I suspect Celan likes the pun that informs Hölderlin’s riddle. His line breaks and word division emphasize the parts of Hölderlin’s German word Reinprungenes, which means “purely originated” but also sounds like “Rhine-originated” and perhaps even suggests “Der Rhein-originated.” Pure source, the river Rhine and the poem “Rhine” come together on a point from which rich sense flows. If language were a commerce, punning. Would be its usury. Aristotle tells us that usury is the most unnatural sort of weath-getting because it allows money to breed money out of itself instead of being spent as it was intend. (Note 16: Politics 1258b) Analogously, punning generates an unnatural supplement of significance from a sound that properly expends itself is one meaning alone.
If meaning were expenditure, this riddle would not be cheap. Many a poet or patriarch has paid with his eyes for the privilege of wasting words. Celan implies Hölderlin’s place in the tradition with a long repetitive conditional sentence (käme… zuzu) that ends in a burst of Hölderlin’s private language. Now a private language is a kind of riddle. It raises the same problem of pure origin: you cannot get behind the back of it. Pallaksch Pallaksch is the own clue. On the other hand, from Hölderlin’s point of view, Pallaksch, Pallaksch may be an utterance that captures the whole of the truth purely originated. Celan allows for this possibility when he cites the phrase in brackets ─ that silent veil he likes to throw around his own riddles.

Anne Carson, Economy of the Unlost: Simonides of Keo with Paul Celan, (Martin Classical Letters, New York, Princeton University Press, 1999), pp.131-132.