My next book will be a volume composed of four stories. The subject, as always, is insignificant and difficult to summarize. For my own use I have several names that convey nothing. For example, the theme of one of the stories bears a title borrowed from Jokai's "Marsz za porte-épée"—I really don't know how to describe the theme before the contents crystallize. The real subject matter, the ultimate raw material that I find in myself without any interference of will, is a certain dynamic state, completely "ineffabilis" and totally incommensurate with poetic means. Even so, it has a very definite atmosphere, indicating a specific kind of content that grows out of it and is layered upon it. The more this intangible nucleus is "ineffabilis" the greater its capacity, the sharper its tropism and the stronger the temptation to inject it into matter in which it could be realized. For example, the first seed of my story "Birds" [inCinnamon Shops] was a certain flickering of the wallpaper, pulsating in a dark field of vision—nothing more. That flickering had however great potential content, enormous possibilities for representation, a quality of ancientness, a demand or claim to express the world itself. The first germ of "Spring" was the image of a stamp album, radiating from the center of vision, winking with unheard-of power of allusion, attacking with a load of content one may conjecture. This state, however poor in content, gives me the feeling of inevitability, a sanction for imagining, certainty of the legality of the entire process. Without this basis, I would be given over to doubt, I would have the feeling it was all a bluff, that what I create is arbitrary and false. At the moment I am drawn to increasingly inexpressible themes. Paradox, the tension between their vagueness and their evanescence and their universal claim, their aspiration to represent "everything" is the most powerful creative stimulus. I don't know when these stories will be ready for print. An inability to take advantage of bits and scraps of time forces me to set aside their completion until vacation.
-- from the Schulz biography Regions of the Great Heresy by Jerzy Ficowski
Thursday, November 1, 2012
crackling with deep electricity
Imagination is the spark and flame of energy propelling a work into pronounced aesthetic and spiritual life. It's a rare literary aptitude. Hardly anything has that dark and wondrous current running through it. So many novels, stories, and poems -- they are so boring and so self-important that your reading brain becomes an entropic mass of congealed literary disappointment.
Bruno Schulz wrote a thing that is almost beyond belief -- The Street of Crocodiles.
As you read it, you enter the infinity of imagination, the realm of aesthetic wonder. This book is one of the marvels of literature.
A large part of me has been shanghaied or absconded into that partly real, partly fantastic Polish town of Drohobych.
Bruno Schulz wrote a thing that is almost beyond belief -- The Street of Crocodiles.
As you read it, you enter the infinity of imagination, the realm of aesthetic wonder. This book is one of the marvels of literature.
A large part of me has been shanghaied or absconded into that partly real, partly fantastic Polish town of Drohobych.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Saturday, October 27, 2012
"Imaginary Conversations" by poet Jen Pezzo
Jen's new book of poems has been released by Poet's Haven Press.
There's a complex sensibility living in these poems: Cheshire smiles, spirit states, and erotic whispers.
As writer Mary Turzillo says: "And exciting collection for romantics and cynics alike."
There's a complex sensibility living in these poems: Cheshire smiles, spirit states, and erotic whispers.
As writer Mary Turzillo says: "And exciting collection for romantics and cynics alike."
Thursday, October 25, 2012
ANNUNCIATION - András Jeles (1984)
Hungarian filmmaker András Jeles made this film. The excerpt above projects a strangeness. I watch it and then ask myself: how is it that we human beings are not perpetually stunned to discover ourselves as minds in time and space, as spiritual substance amid phenomena, as unique experiencers of desire and event?
what a poem can do and mean
How could I not post this poem by Emily Dickinson?
There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.
None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.
There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.
Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.
None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.
When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
I guess 60 changes a guy
I recently experienced my 20 x 3 birthday. And it seems my perspective or attitude on some things is shifting, modifying.
Here's an article about George Steiner:
"George Steiner, Last of the Europeans"
I have these books by Steiner and enjoyed reading them over the years:
Here's an article about George Steiner:
"George Steiner, Last of the Europeans"
I have these books by Steiner and enjoyed reading them over the years:
And this book of essays about Steiner:
So.......what is it that changed with me?
I still admire Steiner's writings. He's an impressive literary and culture critic. My general assessment: Steiner is an advocate for high culture as a kind of divine immanence. Art, music, and literature (especially literature) are bridges between the phenomenal and the possible transcendent. The Holocaust, for him as for me, is a thing of great temporal wounding -- time itself and its speaking through language have been permanently altered, made equivocal and dark. (Those who continue blathering out their postmodern novels and ego-saturated poems are oddly oblivious to how dimensions of being have been distorted by the industrial slaughter of Jews.)
For quite a while, I was sympathetic to Steiner's basic form of sensibility. There's probably a bunch of my essayic ramblings on this blog that echo Steiner's thought. For me, high culture was a weave of meaning that I thought could be discerned in the world. Made life worth living.
But...it's all beginning to go strange on me. Steiner's mandarin intellection, his brilliant observance of literary associations and allusions, his hypnotically elegant writing style -- all these are maybe only apparent and not actual excavations and examples of deep meaning.
How has human life as such been elevated and made more humane by high culture? At this moment, I can't think of an answer. And Steiner's diffuse, balletic incantations have, so far as I know, conjured no god from the silence behind language or from the absence behind appearance.
I'm afraid that George Steiner (me, too) writes a lot of merely elegiac, effusive stuff. A wreathing of serious-sounding words around a metaphysical void. It strikes me now that Steiner's writing is perhaps more language-as-musical-affect than language-as-semantical-effect.
I guess 60 changes a guy.
I still admire Steiner's writings. He's an impressive literary and culture critic. My general assessment: Steiner is an advocate for high culture as a kind of divine immanence. Art, music, and literature (especially literature) are bridges between the phenomenal and the possible transcendent. The Holocaust, for him as for me, is a thing of great temporal wounding -- time itself and its speaking through language have been permanently altered, made equivocal and dark. (Those who continue blathering out their postmodern novels and ego-saturated poems are oddly oblivious to how dimensions of being have been distorted by the industrial slaughter of Jews.)
For quite a while, I was sympathetic to Steiner's basic form of sensibility. There's probably a bunch of my essayic ramblings on this blog that echo Steiner's thought. For me, high culture was a weave of meaning that I thought could be discerned in the world. Made life worth living.
But...it's all beginning to go strange on me. Steiner's mandarin intellection, his brilliant observance of literary associations and allusions, his hypnotically elegant writing style -- all these are maybe only apparent and not actual excavations and examples of deep meaning.
How has human life as such been elevated and made more humane by high culture? At this moment, I can't think of an answer. And Steiner's diffuse, balletic incantations have, so far as I know, conjured no god from the silence behind language or from the absence behind appearance.
I'm afraid that George Steiner (me, too) writes a lot of merely elegiac, effusive stuff. A wreathing of serious-sounding words around a metaphysical void. It strikes me now that Steiner's writing is perhaps more language-as-musical-affect than language-as-semantical-effect.
I guess 60 changes a guy.
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