Without Lifting A Finger

I know Memorial Day is a one time thing, but in my e-world a day can last for multiple human days. We'll see how long this holiday lasts, but more than likely it'll end by your Friday, if not before. Day #2 belongs to Rainer Maria Rilke. I visited his gravesite--in Raron, Switzerland--once in autumn (early 90's) and once in winter (I'm guessing 5 to 7 years ago). Autumn Shots: Grave Rilke's Self-Penned Epitaph: Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern. Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy of being No-one's sleep, under so many lids (translation by Stephen Mitchell) Old Church in Raron (Rilke's stone faces the valley)                                             Rilke's Valley View Winter Shots: Grave Muzot (down...

Memorial Day got me thinking along these lines. Day #1 goes to the memory (and great art) of Paula Modersohn-Becker. I suppose I first learned of her through Rilke (in his "Requiem for a Friend"). I kept "chipping away" at knowledge of her and her art. I've been to her museum in Bremen and her gravesite in Worpswede (see below); have also visited her husband Otto Modersohn's museum in Fischerhude.  

In digging through my photos to find David Cerny's Upside-down Horse I found a few old "art objects" of mine. Long ago, far far away. When I was still single and had nothing else to do. I think I've culled out the "best of."          

My friend Martin told me to go see this. In a rather dingy little mall off of St. Wenceslas Square. It was the last thing I "shot" before leaving Prague and boarding the train to Poland. 

A few words from Milosz on Staff (from Milosz's The History of Polish Literature ): He had the good fortune to have been always accepted, sometimes admiringly, sometimes reluctantly. Since his death in 1957, many scholarly treatises on Staff and his work have appeared, but the assessments of his position in the history of Polish poetry vary. In all probability, Staff will be assigned the place of a model humanist, a perfect craftsman, one of the major influences shaping poetry in Poland, but not himself a major poet, unless we consider the great bulk of his output a necessary preparation for a relatively small number of lyrics which figure in every anthology of Polish poetry. And the only other poem I have of Staff's (also, presumably, translated by Milosz): The Bridge I didn't believe, Standing on the bank of a river Which was wide and swift, That I would cross the bridge Plaited from thin, fragile reeds Fastened with bast. I walked delicately as a butterfly ...

Or madeleine. Coming across the word in another text, I inadvertently "clicked" on it and within a fraction of a second I was at the edge of Leopold Staff's green-covered pond. My only version comes from Milosz's The History of Polish Literature (and, because I find nothing in the text to say otherwise, I assume the translation is by Milosz himself): Duckweed In an old, deserted park I stood at a pond Covered with the thick fur of duckweed. Thinking That the water here had once been transparent And that it ought to be so now. With a dry twig picked up off the ground I began to rake away the green patina And conduct it to the outlet. I was found at this activity By a quiet wise man Whose brow was incised by thought, And he said with a gentle smile Of condescending reproach: "Don't you regret wasting the time? Every moment is a drop of eternity, Life is the twinkling in eternity's eye. There are so many matters of the  utmost imp...

The chain of being/reading goes: Milosz was told (commanded) to read Shestov by Sorana Gurian; Shestov was told (forced) to read Kierkegaard by Husserl (according to Shestov, Kierkegaard was not yet a big deal in the the France of the 1930's); R L Swihart was told (armtwisted) to read Shestov by Milosz. Anyway, certainly Shestov found a kindred reflection in Kierkegaard. To close the week, and the week of the Absurd, I leave a few words from Shestov on Kierkegaard (in "Kierkegaard as a Religious Philosopher," see http://www.angelfire.com/nb/shestov/sar/kierkegaard1.html ):   I concluded the previous section with those words of Kierkegaard's that are never to be forgotten if you wish to penetrate into the essence of his philosophy: "Only terror reaching despair develops a person to his highest." That is why Kierkegaard was so irresistibly drawn by the Book of Job which, in his view, is the most human book of the whole Bible. That is why he a...

I thought I'd shortlist Shestov.  It's been a while since I've read Shestov (thus far I own none of his hard-to-come-by books: give me time , and the little I have read I downloaded from the online Shestov library: http://www.angelfire.com/nb/shestov/index.html ), and much of my understanding of him (meager as it is) is through the filter of Czeslaw Milosz and his essay in To Begin Where I Am . I'll start with a quote from the end of Milosz's essay "Shestov, or the Purity of Despair": To Sorana [she had demanded that Milosz read Shestov] the God of the Scriptures defended by the stern priest Shestov would probably not have meant an afterlife and a palm tree in Heaven. He must have appeared to her as He did to the Russian author, as pure anti-Necessity. The question was not the existence of Heaven and Hell, not even the "existence" of God Himself. Above any notions, but revealed by His voice in the Scriptures, He is able to create...

What I really need is to be clear about what I am to do , not what I must know, except in the way knowledge must precede all action. It is a question of understanding my destiny, of seeing what the Deity really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is truth for me , to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die.

Today's laudatory gesture goes to that crazy Dane: Soren Kierkegaard. If you wade through him I guarantee you'll find some golden nuggets.  Examples: Like a thunderstorm, the genius goes against the wind. It is the path we all take -- over the Bridge of Sighs into eternity. One thought succeeds another; no sooner have I thought it and am about to write it down than there's a new one --hold it, grasp it -- madness -- insanity! I'm also here to praise his longing for Repetition: When this experience had been repeated for several days I became so exasperated, so tired of repetition, that I resolved to make my way home again. My discovery was of no importance, and yet it was a strange one, for I discovered that there is no such thing as repetition, and I had  convinced myself of this by trying in every possible way to get it repeated. 

By chance, I was looking through a few photos from a recent Prague trip (2009) and thought Why not. * Celebratory Photo #1: The Cafe Franz Kafka in Prague (which I ran into on the way to Photo #2). Celebratory Photo #2: The Kafka Statue (inspired by an early Kafka short story, "Description of a Struggle") by Jaroslav Rona (see his "Parable with Skull" also on my blog).  Look behind the statue and you'll see part of the Spanish Synagogue in Prague's Jewish Quarter.   

As I am currently rummaging through my closet of earlier poems (perhaps separating the keepers from the chaff, perhaps doing a little Audenesque retouching, possibly shaping another book), I found this Breyten bit ( Dog Heart , section titled FRANCOIS KRIGE) semi-apropos: I think to myself: Is it just as well he's too weak to destroy his own work. I talk to him about Kafka's instructions to Max Brod. He answers quietly. Maybe he wants to say: Go on, talk--you don't know what you're saying. What is quality? Who but the person confronting his own work will ever know? Is it not ultimately about the dignity of leaving a few marks?

Being a memoir it makes sense that "memory" would pop up a lot.  From one of the many sections called MEMORY : Like starlings, memory devours everything. We live, we move forward as if travelling through a landscape, continually sharpening the eye--on the cusp of passing into oblivion--and immediately, constantly, inexorably the experience topples into the domain of memory. One instantly, constantly, inexorably turns to past tense. I am my own defecation.

Left Sentimental Education (I sometimes jump back and forth between countries) for Breyten Breytenbach's Dog Heart . From Point C to Point B: From Coetzee to Breytenbach. The surprise rain (who would've thought) kept me in the coffee shop reading longer than usual, but I've still only taken a small bite: I got to page 25. Would I have thought "painterly composition" (this is memoir, not his poetry) if I hadn't known already that he was also a painter? Hard to say. From the opening section: BEGINNING, FOR THE READER : To cut a long story short: I am dead.    Do you think I'm joking? Am I not lurking behind these rustling words--perhaps a little thicker around the waist, a little darker in the mind? Am I not the writer sitting in the dappled light of the pepper tree, pursing my lips and closing my eyes to the glare of a yellow fire baking the valley?    My mind fumbles for a buried reference; I'm on the verge of remembering the odour of ancient cl...

Will Frederick get the girl or not? Which girl? Anyway, I'm progressing through Sentimental Education and found this ode to  La Ville-Lumière enticing: But there was only one place in the world where this could be turned to account--Paris; for to his mind, art, science, and love (those three faces of God, as Pellerin would have said) were associated exclusively with the capital.

From Part II: The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire : I sat near them, reading Balzac's story "The Unknown Masterpiece," about Frenhofer, the unsuccessful painter, with whose longing for a perfect and therefore real picture Cezanne identified himself, and discovered that French culture had become the home I had always longed for. Of course this sent me running to read Balzac's story (I have a ton of Balzac on Kindle but have yet to read anything but this story).  A short and ok story which not only Cezanne but apparently Picasso identified with (see http://web.org.uk/picasso/balzac.html ).

   Gordimer has throughout her career held to the belief that the artist has a special calling, a talent that it is death to hide, and that his art tells a truth transcending the truth of history. Though this position has become increasingly old-fashioned, Gordimer has, to her credit, remained tenaciously faithful to it. At the same time, however, she has been concerned to give her work, a social justification, and thus to support her claim to a place inside history, a history which she herself has to some extent been successful in shaping, as, in her fictional oeuvre, she has written the struggle of Africa against Europe upon the consciousness of the West. *** The above excerpt is from Coetzee's essay, "Gordimer and Turgenev."  I squeezed the essay in between classes and found much of the content thought-provoking (e.g., I'll have to reread Turgenev's Fathers and Sons now). I've not read Gordimer, so it's hard to say if this is more "reading...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_syndrome *** Nice idea. Just something that popped into my head. Now the question is: What to do with it?

The Terrorist, He’s Watching By Wislawa Szymborska The bomb in the bar will explode at thirteen twenty. Now it’s just thirteen sixteen. There’s still time for some to go in, and some to come out. The terrorist has already crossed the street. The distance keeps him out of danger, and what a view—just like the movies: A woman in a yellow jacket, she’s going in. A man in dark glasses, he’s coming out. Teenagers in jeans, they’re talking. Thirteen seventeen and four seconds. The short one, he’s lucky, he’s getting on a scooter, but the tall one, he’s going in. Thirteen seventeen and forty seconds. That girl, she’s walking along with a green ribbon in her hair. But then a bus suddenly pulls in front of her. Thirteen eighteen. The girl’s gone. Was she that dumb, did she go in or not, we’ll see when they carry them out. Thirteen nineteen. Somehow no one’s going in. Another guy, fat, bald, is leaving, though. Wait a second, looks like he’s looking for something in hi...