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Sunday, September 12th, 2010
Let's look at the next bit of Altazor's prologue. So far there have been two brief, pointed soliloquies, by God and by Altazor; the next to speak will be the Virgin. I am dying to know whether the Spanish word "aureola" is a pun for "aureola/halo" -- as an English speaker reading the Virgin saying "look at my aureola" has a different meaning from "look at my halo"... [...argh, never mind, this was based on a confusion on my part between "aureola" and "areola".]
I take my parachute; running off the edge of my star I launch myself into the atmosphere of the final sigh.
I circle endlessly above the cliffs of dream, I circle among the clouds of death.
I meet the Virgin, seated on a rose; she says to me:
"Look at my hands: they are transparent, like electric bulbs. Do you see the filaments where the blood of my pure light is running?
"Look at my halo. Cracks run through it, proving my antiquity.
"I am the Virgin, the Virgin with no taint of human ink, the only one who is not only halfway there; I am the captain of the other eleven thousand, who have been to tell the truth overmuch restored.
"I speak a language which fills the heart, according to the law of clouds in communion.
"I am always saying goodbye, and I remain.
"Love me, my child, for I adore your poetry. I will teach you aerial prowess.
"I need, so strongly do I need your tenderness; kiss my locks, I have washed them this morning in the clouds of the dawn. I want to lie down and sleep, on my mattress, the intermittent mist.
"My glances are a wire on the horizon, where the swallows can rest.
"Love me."
I knelt in that circular space. The Virgin rose up and seated herself on my parachute.
I slept; I recited my most beautiful poems.
The flames of my poetry dried out the Virgin's hair; she thanked me and then slipped away, seated on her soft rose.
"The flames of my poetry"! -- remember, true song is arson. I am not able to make much sense of the third paragraph of the Virgin's speech -- who are the other 11,000? Who has been restoring them? What is everyone else only halfway? [Jorge López supplies some good ideas toward an answer in comments.]
Spanish below the fold.
 Miramos la próxima porción del prefacio de Altazor. Hasta ahora hay dos breves y intencionados soliloquios, uno de Dios y uno de Altazor mismo. La próxima oradora será la Virgen. Quiero saber si la «aureola» es un juego de palabras -- en inglés «aureola» remita al pezón, asà la orden de la Virgen, «mira mi aureola»...
Tomo mi paracaÃdas, y del borde de mi estrella en marcha, me lanzo a la atmósfera del último suspiro.
Ruedo interminablemente sobre las rocas de los sueños, ruedo entra las nubes de la muerte.
Encuentro a la Virgen sentada en una rosa, y me dice:
«Mira mis manos: son trasparentes como las bombillas eléctricas. ¿Ves los filamentos de donde corre la sangre de mi luz intacta?
»Mira mi aureola. Tiene algunas saltaduras, lo que prueba mi ancianidad.
»Soy la Virgen, la Virgen sin mancha de tinta humana, la única que no lo sea a medias, y soy la capitana de las otras once mil que estaban en verdad demasiado restauradas.
»Hablo una lengua que llena los corazones según la ley de las nubes comunicantes.
»Digo siempre adiós, y me quedo.
»Amame, hijo mÃo, pues adoro tu poesÃa y te enseñaré proezas aéreas.
»Tengo tanta necesidad de ternura, besa mis cabellos, los he lavado esta mañana en las nubes del alba y ahora quiero dormirme sobre el colchón de la neblina intermitente.
»Mis miradas son un alambre en el horizonte para el descanso de las golondrinas.
»Amame.»
Me puse de rodillas en el espacio circular y la Virgen se elevó y vino a sentarse en mi paracaÃdas.
Me dormà y recité entonces mis más hermosos poemas.
Las llamas de mi poesÃa secaron los cabellos de la Virgen, que me dijo gracias y se alejó, sentada sobre su rosa blanda. «Las llamas de mi poesÃa»! -- Recuerda, los verdaderos poemas son incendios. No puede buen entender el tercero párrafo del discurso de la Virgen: ¿quién son las otras once mil? ¿Qué significa aquà «restauradas»? ¿Qué son todos otras «a medias»?
↻...done
posted morning of September 12th, 2010: 4 responses
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Saturday, September 11th, 2010
So a few weeks ago I had an idea for the beginning of a story... I've been working on it for a little while and am still not totally sure where it's going; if any of you would like to take a look at it and tell me your thoughts about it, I'd be glad to have your feedback on where to go with it. I'm not sure what it means that I am revising and reworking this piece more heavily than I have worked with any other writing I've done that I can think of, besides maybe the review of Death with Interruptions; this is already the third or fourth revision of the story's beginning. The story is going to be called "Silent Rain" -- I'm trying to capture the psychological/linguistic conditions and sensations created by absence and by the perception of absence. Comments welcome.
posted morning of September 11th, 2010: 3 responses
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Jorge López has been posting a lot of beautiful photography lately. Take a look at his latest: "I'm writing you this card..."
posted morning of September 11th, 2010: Respond
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Friday, September 10th, 2010
There’s a thin line between what you are and what you aren't.
I'm afraid of loving you, and you're afraid I can't.
I’m falling now, I’m falling.
I’m falling now, I'm falling.
Take it away. Robyn Hitchcock, "I'm Falling"
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Nearly every line of Altazor that I have read so far is just screaming for me to quote it -- I am going to go ahead and lay out some blocks of quotation; my idea here is to be doing a parallel translation of the poem (based loosely on Eliot Weinberger's) and (in the other direction, at the same time) of my own writing. Here is a section that immediately follows the speech by God that I quoted in the previous post -- a second great soliloquy, this time by Altazor (and/or by the author, there is a great deal of confusion between his voice and his character's): | |
Con casi cada uno de los lÃneas que yo acabo de leer del poema Altazor, sentÃa el deseo de citarlo, repetirlo, traducirlo. Adelante, voy poner unos palabras citadas; tengo aquà la idea de traducir simultaneamente el poema (siguiendo vagamente la traducción de Eliot Weinberger) y mi propia escritura. Con esto, una pasaje que sigue directo el discurso de Dios citado en mi post anterior: es un segundo grande soliloquio, por Altazor mismo (o quizás por el autor, hay una gran confusión entre los dos).
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↷read the rest...
posted evening of September 10th, 2010: 7 responses
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Thursday, September 9th, 2010
Currently pretty involved with two books, both of which I can't figure out quite where to start writing about... I'm having a lot of immediate reactions to what I'm reading but nothing developing into a good blog post. Gunfighter Nation: the myth of the frontier in 20th-Century America is a really eloquent historical analysis by Richard Slotkin, whose Regeneration through Violence I was reading previously and not writing much about either. A lot of fascinating, chilling quotations from Theodore Roosevelt and Buffalo Bill and so forth, a sort of self-styled macho elite. Altazor: o el viaje en paracaídas is a book-length poem about falling into space. Much that I'm not sure what to make of, plus some belly laughs and fun imagery. I got interested in this poem when I saw it mentioned in the movie Dictadura. I'm reading Eliot Weinberger's parallel translation, and finding it very helpful (but am going to massage slightly below). You can read the Spanish online at the Universidad de Chile's Vicente Huidobro page. Check out this speech by God, from the preface*:
Then I heard the voice of the Creator, who is nameless, who is a simple hollow in space, lonely, umbilical. "I made a great noise and this noise was the ocean and the waves of the ocean. "This noise will be stuck to the waves of the ocean forever, and the waves of the ocean will be stuck to it forever, like stamps onto postcards. "Afterwards, I braided a great cord of luminous rays to stitch each day to the next: the days, with their dawns either authentic or synthetic, but undeniable. "Afterwards, I etched geography on the land, lines onto the hand. "Then I drank a little cognac -- for purposes of hydrography. "And I created the mouth and the lips of the mouth, to imprison ambiguous smiles; and the teeth of the mouth to keep watch on the absurdities that enter our mouths. "I created the tongue of the mouth, the tongue which man tore from her proper role, making her learn to speak... She, she, the gorgeous bather, torn forever from her proper role, aquatic, purely sensual." Huidobro is a very interesting cat, I'm tempted to call this work surrealistic though I don't rightly know how closely he worked with that school... The wikipædia article indicates that his school was Creationism, but also that he was the sole member of that movement. Picasso drew his portrait and Arp shot a great photo of him. There is a great reading of the first Canto up at Google videos, with subtitles.
 * (Which I would put in the same class of greatness as the preface to Also Sprach Zarathustra)
posted evening of September 9th, 2010: 2 responses
➳ More posts about Regeneration through violence
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Wednesday, September 8th, 2010
At Pink Tentacle, a plethora of Japanese posters from the 1800's with public health themes. Above is a sign from the 1860's by Utagawa Yoshimori, showing what foods can safely be eaten by a measles patient. (Thanks for the link, SEK.)
 (And cool, I just found out that the genre of woodcut printing of which these are examples is called ukiyo-e, which translates as "Pictures of the Floating World".)
posted evening of September 8th, 2010: Respond
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Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
 Coming the last week of September, a movie of Howl -- the trailer looks very promising. And available right now, a graphic novel of the poem, by Eric Drooker -- Drooker worked on an animated sequence for the film, and had previously collaborated with Ginsberg on the book Illuminated Poems.
posted evening of September 7th, 2010: Respond
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Monday, September 6th, 2010
John and I have our first track playing on the radio! Tune in to Henry Musikar's always-great music rotation at KCUF and you will (every so often) hear our cover of Gillian Welch's "Revelator." Here is the track if you don't want to wait:
posted afternoon of September 6th, 2010: Respond
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Sunday, September 5th, 2010
53 years ago, on September 5th, 1957, Jack Kerouac published On the Road -- by the time I came along to get my bit of inspiration from it, the book had become a key piece of history and of national consciousness already; imagine what a thing it must have been in 1957! Here is Jack on the Steve Allen Show in 1959, answering some questions, speaking about Dean, reading the final paragraph of his book:
posted afternoon of September 5th, 2010: 2 responses
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 Armaments in Alexandria
posted morning of September 5th, 2010: Respond
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