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Wednesday, October 17th, 2007
Here are some different editions of Novalis' Hymns to the Night: The first sentence: Before all the wondrous shows of the widespread space around him, what living, sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light, with its colors, its rays and undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of the wakening Day? is in praise of the light and the Day when I am expecting to find praise of Night. The opposition between the two will make up the body of this poem. I dig the sound of the poem and am intending to spend some time in the coming days thinking about its meaning, anyway if I can do so without having it sound too much like I'm writing an essay for my freshman English class. Otherwise I will just focus on the sounds. Update: In comments, Gary posts his own translation of the poem. Update: For the sake of completeness, another translation, this one by Henry Morley. (At the very end of the page.) Dick Higgins also has done a translation, but it is not accessible online.
posted evening of October 17th, 2007: 10 responses
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I really enjoyed chapter 26 ("The Mandelsloh") of The Blue Flower this afternoon -- I will try to communicate what I liked about it. This chapter had in common with the passage LanguageHat quoted, a keenly accurate eye for the domestic details of the characters' lives, combined with an eloquent tongue to bring these details to life -- a common thread through Fitzgerald's writing. Friederike's question "What is wrong with particulars? Someone has to look after them", has the sound of the author's voice about it. Writing this post brings up an uncertainty of mine about the writing I do here -- I have mentioned it before and have no resolution to bring now, but I will repeat myself. I am not writing criticism, largely because I don't know how to -- I have not read very much criticism, certainly not of the written word, and I just wouldn't have a clue how to put it together. I think what I am writing, or trying to write, is appreciations of my reading (and listening, and watching); and hoping I can do that without coming off as a buffoon.
posted evening of October 17th, 2007: Respond
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Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
Hm, no, no Novalis among my dusty German books. Leave us Google.
Note: just starting to look at the Logopœic translation of Hymns to the Night. And wow! What living, sentient thing loves not the all-joyous light -- with its colors, its rays and undulations, its gentle omnipresence in the form of the wakening Day? This is amazing, wonderful! It is going to take a long time to understand though.
posted evening of October 16th, 2007: Respond
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"Words are given us to understand each other, even if not completely," Fritz went on in great excitement. "And to write poetry." "Yes, that's so, Justen, but you mustn't ask too much of language. Language refers only to itself, it is not the key to anything higher. Language speaks, because speaking is its pleasure and it can do nothing else." "In that case, it might as well be nonsense," objected Karoline. "Why not? Nonsense is only another language."
Now I want to read some of Novalis' writing and see how (if) the sentiment Fitzgerald has him expressing here is played out in his poetry. I'm pretty sure I have a book of his work upstairs with the other remnants of my ill-remembered days spent studying German literature. The sentence, "Nonsense is only another language," seems interesting to me. On one hand it is obviously incorrect -- I think a root characteristic of language is, that it can "make sense", whereas clearly nonsense does not "make sense", not if it is doing its job properly. Meaningful nonsense is not nonsense in any fully realized sense of the word. (grin.) But, but, it is good fun to babble incoherently, recording the words and then poring over them trying to divine the meaning.
Michael Hofman uses this same phrase as the title for his NY Times review of The Blue Flower.
posted morning of October 16th, 2007: Respond
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Monday, October 15th, 2007
Beginning on page 207, Wendy Steiner's Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in 20th-Century Art features some discussion of the philosophy of being in The Blue Flower.
posted afternoon of October 15th, 2007: Respond
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Sunday, October 14th, 2007
We can sing beneath his window, "We know what is wrong with your system....There is no place in it, no place for love." I seem to have a poor memory for schools of thought. Like right now I am reading The Blue Flower, about the life of German Romantic poet Novalis; and I find that I can summon up only a very hazy memory of the history of German Romanticism, which I know I studied in two classes in college; and furthermore that I don't even really know what kind of thinking "Romanticism" is. (I think it must be similar to "Idealism" which I have a little bit of a handle on, but I'm not sure how they differ.*) I remember when I was 18, that my sort-of-mentor Jim Higgs told me I was a romantic thinker, and that I read some Romantics to try and grasp what he was telling me about myself. But if I ever was successful in that it has escaped me in the meantime. So probably I should school myself a bit in the meanings of terms, as I approach this book. The book seems like a lot of fun. I am liking the descriptions of Friedrich's family and school life, and nodding and smiling with recognition at certain passages -- notably the youthful Fritz's insistence that "the body is not flesh, but the same stuff as the soul," and later his statement to Schlegel that "the golden age would return, and that there was nothing evil in the world."
*Interestingly Novalis is the top hit that comes back from a Wiki search for "Romantic idealism"...
posted evening of October 14th, 2007: 3 responses
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Thursday, October 11th, 2007
Doris Lessing has won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. I've only read her The Golden Notebook (if memory serves), though I have some of her other books on my shelf. Christine recommends me to read the Children of Violence series.
posted afternoon of October 11th, 2007: Respond
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Tuesday, October 9th, 2007
OMG! Comet in Moominland is being produced in NYC! And Ellen is trying to get us tickets! Got my fingers crossed, that would be too much fun. ...And rats, it is sold out. Oh well, some other time I guess. (Kind of a nuisance for the Times to review the play at the end of its run rather than near the beginning...)
posted morning of October 9th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, October 6th, 2007
Bill just told me about the Grey Lodge Occult Review which looks like a fun site. The first thing I noticed is, their current issue has a downloadable edition of Luigi Serafini's Codex Seraphinianus. Cool!
 Update: You can also read the book at scribd.
posted morning of October 6th, 2007: Respond
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Saturday, September 29th, 2007
I have read nearly to the end of the first section of Other Colors, titled "Living and Worrying". A couple of interrelated things: I think this section title is very apt; the essays seem to me to show Orhan in the world but not part of it, worrying about what is going on around him. I referred to some of the essays below as "impressionistic gems"; and while I don't understand everything that is communicated by calling something "impressionistic", I am going to tentatively say that it describes this book well. Where I am going with this is, roughly, that I'm not getting a good sense of Pamuk as a character, though I am certainly getting a wealth of insights about his surroundings. (Note: the prose is so fluid and comfortable, it is frequently impossible to distinguish my own insights from Pamuk's.) At first I found this a little surprising, since characterization is such a core strength of his story-telling; but thinking about it further, probably not such a strange thing, that such a wonderful story-teller would be shy about opening up his own psyche. The "Earthquake" essay (and I'm presuming the next one, which is called "Earthquake Angst in Istanbul") is amazing in its evocation of the chaotic scene following the earthquake. Pamuk is a master of description and in these few pages gives me a sense of being there, being able to see the fallen buildings and debris. Something that really struck me (after a lifetime of reading opinion pieces about how poor planning contributes to damage and loss of life in eartchquakes, hurricanes etc.) is how Pamuk mentions in passing or just alludes to the substandard construction of apartment buildings on the islands south of Istanbul, the corruption that allowed contractors to evade construction codes, and lets the reader fill in the blanks. Update: I noticed the Times review came out today. A very positive review although it seemed to focus a little more on Pamuk's life and work than on this book itself. Like maybe the reviewer did not know just what to make of the book? I was surprised they waited this long to review it.
posted afternoon of September 29th, 2007: Respond
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