Zbigniew Herbert's Mr. Cogito

First week back at school. Though I'm an early riser in general, 5 a.m. + the stress of working with the mathematically challenged will slowly (rapidly) take its toll.

Surprisingly, perhaps, my creative juices tend to flow more when I'm in school. Guess it's all the stimuli. Had some vision (some truth) alight yesterday in the middle of class: something I was trying to get the kids to do made me think. Art and Truth (or simply art and truth).

Maybe I'll start chipping away at the poem inside the rock this weekend. Maybe it'll emerge.

*

I loved all of Herbert's Cogito poems from the get-go.

Mr. Cogito's Soul
In the past
we know from history
she would go out from the body
when the heart stopped

with the last breath
she went quietly away
to the blue meadows of heaven

   Mr. Cogito's soul
   acts differently

   during his life she leaves his body
   without a word of farewell

   for months for years she lives
   on different continents
   beyond the frontiers
   of Mr. Cogito

   it is hard to locate her address
   she sends no news of herself
   avoids contacts
   doesn't write letters

   no one knows when she will return
   perhaps she has left forever

Mr. Cogito struggles to overcome
the base feeling of jealousy

He thinks well of his soul
thinks of her with tenderness

undoubtedly she must live also
in the bodies of others

certainly there are too few souls
for all humanity

Mr. Cogito accepts his fate
he has no other way out

he even attempts to say—my own soul mine
he thinks of his soul affectionately

he thinks of his soul with tenderness
therefore when she appears
unexpectedly
he doesn't welcome her with the words
—it's good you've come back

he only looks at her from an angle
as she sits before the mirror
combing her hair
tangled and grey


Translated by John and Bogdana Carpenter

Comments

Post a Comment

POPULAR POSTS

Kafka and Rilke

Kafka remarking (in a letter) on Rilke's words re Kafka's work: Incidentally, back in Prague I remembered Rilke's words. After some extremely kind remarks about "The Stoker," he went on to say that neither Metamorphosis nor "In the Penal Colony" had achieved the same effect. This observation may not be easy to understand, but it is discerning. The footnote on this passage reads (in part): Rilke and Kafka probably never met personally. Kafka may have heard of Rilke's opinion about his works through Eugen Mondt. Since "In the Penal Colony" was not printed at the time, Rilke, who then lived in Munich, must have seen the manuscript which had arrived in Munich on September 30 and discussed it with Eugen Mondt....   Rilke followed Kafka's work with great interest; in a letter to Kurt Wolff of February 17, 1922, he says, "Please put me down especially for anything that appears by Franz Kafka. I am, I might assure you, not his ...
Read more

TÜBINGEN, JANUARY by Paul Celan

T Ü BINGEN, JANUARY Eyes talked in- to blindness. Their  -- "a riddle, what is pure- ly arisen" --, their memory of floating H ö lderlintowers, gull- enswirled. Visits of drowned joiners to these plunging words: Came, if there came a man, came a man to the world, today, with the patriarchs' light-beard: he could, if he spoke of this time, he could only babble and babble, ever- ever- moremore. ("Pallaksch. Pallaksch.")* * Pallaksch A word that H ö lderlin, spending his last years in the home of a T ü bingen carpenter, was given to uttering in his dementia; it could signify Yes or No. [Poem Translated by John Felstiner; the explanation of Pallaksch is also from his "Notes" in Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan ]  
Read more

Edinburgh: St. Cuthbert's: Thomas De Quincey's Grave

Image
We were in the Ibis just off the Royal Mile. I had walked halfway around the castle on the first night and I knew basically where St. Cuthbert's was. I woke early, checked the "big board" (a magical electronic map in the hotel) in terms of details, and was off. Of course, once there, it took me a little while to find De Quincey (I even Googled to get a look at his stone and adjacent stones -- this helped immensely). Luckily it was a pretty small graveyard. Pics: "on the way to" and "within" the churchyard/graveyard of St. Cuthbert's, Edinburgh. *                                    
Read more

The Parlograph

Image
Felice worked for the Carl Lindstrom Company. From Kafka's Letters to Felice : Here, by the way, is a rather nice idea: a Parlograph goes to the telephone in Berlin, while a gramophone does likewise in Prague, and these two carry on a little conversation with each other. *** Carl Lindström A.G. was a global record company founded in 1893 and based in Berlin , Germany . Founded by Carl Lindström (1869–1932), a Swedish inventor living in Berlin , it originally produced phonographs or gramophones with the brand names "Parlograph" and "Parlophon" and eventually began producing records as well. It became the holding company for Odeon Records , Parlophone Records (originally "Parlophon"), Beka Records and Okeh Records . Lindström sold the company to Max Straus (Odeon co-founder), but Lindström remained with the company as an engineer and inventor. World War I caused the company to cut back its holdings closing the United Kingdom branch of O...
Read more