Across the Sound Across the SoundSeven-night gales had been |
| This small book was a gift. I excerpted two wee pieces from it as Autumn is coming in, thus my trips to the place in the west will be not as frequent. The words contain almost a hunger to describe the island, the sea and the west of Ireland in it’s storm-damaged reality. Some of the images remind me of a view from Roman Island in Mayo and some indeed remind me of the Arnold Bax composition, The Garden of the Fand. |
I thought to do a note on some poems by Federico Garcia Lorca, though the images he conjures seemed to have thwarted that and instead I found myself ensconced in a book I found years ago in Charlie Byrnes bookshop up in Galway City.
The poetry of Lorca has run like a thread through my visual and intellectual life since I was nineteen, though it seems an age ago when I discovered his writing- it really is not that long. Thus I was unsure whether a poem or two would suffice to capture this greatness; and indeed had prevented me thus far from publishing anything by the man.
The line at the top of this post is by Jorge Guillén , Lorca uses it to begin his Poem Your Childhood in Menton , after he had found himself transplanted into the Americas as a student; and away from the very soil that made his songs, be it bleached by the sun or drenched in blood. Thus, I am going to publish here an excerpt from the poem along with an exhortation to read Lorca, to listen (if at all possible) to the music of the Deep Song; and to recommend from amongst the Biographies of FGL that of Ian Gibson.
Your Childhood in Menton.
love, love, love. The childhood of the ocean.
Your lukewarm soul which is without you and does
not understand you.
Love, love the roe’s flight
over the endless breast of white.
And your childhood, love, and your childhood.
The train and the woman who fills the sky.
Nor air nor leaves nor you nor I.
Yes your childhood fable of fountains now.
The above excerpt is taken from a series of published lectures by Federico Garcia Lorca, entitled: Deep Song and Other Prose, Ed and Trans Christopher Maurer. Publ. Marion Boyars 1954.
I believe my bilingual edition is also translated by Christopher Maurer but have not it to hand at the moment. I heartily recommend chapters , which are essentially speeches from these lecture series on The Duende and Lullabies for the new reader to familiarise him/herself with Lorca’s intimate tone , and Poet in New York for a good introduction to some of his later poetry.
Poetry |
Since buying Waiting for God in the last month and indeed in the centenary year of Ms Weil’s birth, I have been fairly ensconsed with her philosophical writings which part of me rejects because of the strength of her writing. She continues to intrigue however, with her strong likeness to Meister Eckhart, to images in the poetry of Paul Celan , and to Marguerite Porete, the beguine who found her death during the French Inquisition. All the above named authors are searchable in Poethead with a special emphasis on Paul Celan whose work features so little here, save in two small pieces.
This then is the Google doc note:
[ A brief note on Simone Weil‘s Notebooks ].
I had published Necessity on the Poethead blog to acknowledge and celebrate International Women’s day, which as everyone knows occurs annually on March the Eight (annually).
I shall add in the link to that poem at the end of this note. I have taken to carrying round the Joan Dargan book “Thinking Poetically” because my time is carved into segments of day in which certain functions and duties must occur. These largely revolve around the children, thus the luxury of reading has evolved into a certain office time which I have claimed totally for myself, or indeed in moments of utter frustration books are packed into a bag with the hope of a coffee shop, a traffic jam or a warm park.
“Even to let the imagination linger over certain things as possible (which is completely different from clearly conceiving a possibility, a thing essential to virtue) is already to commit oneself. curiosity is the cause of this. To forbid (not from conceiving but from lingering over) certain thoughts; not to think about. People believe that thought does not commit one, but it alone does commit one, and the licence of thought imprisons all freedoms. Not to think about, supreme faculty. Purity, negative virtue.”
and….
“if what is supreme can be expressed in our language only by means of negation, in the same way, we can imitate it only by means of negation.”
Simone Weil, Thinking Poetically, ed, Joan Dargan State University of NY press. 1999.
I am adding in the links to the other small pieces re Weil at the end of this post, along with the hope that when I have thoroughly finished the two books on my desk that I shall go beyond aphorism and discuss the works more intimately. The above note includes her ideas on negation which are more completely expressed in her essays on Catholicism which are manifestly not written by a theist, indeed she was unbaptized at her death, though she seemed to possess a catholic consciousness and philosophy that owes a lot to Aquinas and indeed to the tradition of Isacc Luria (She was an agnostic Jew in her upbringing).
Wikipedia on Weil
The Centenary of Ms Weil’s Birth.
Necessity.
Once by Paul Celan.
Paul Celan and Heidegger, ‘translation at the mountain of death’
I am publishing here the Poetry Ireland GBS (Google Book Settlement) pages, replete as they are with interesting factoids and links regarding how it effects authors. There is already a searchable quantity of links on Poethead regarding this issue which will be updated soon enough after the European Commission meets on the possible anti-trust elements on the 07/09/09.
Poetry Ireland Resource, Factoid and Link page.
Politics report on the story to date.
Poethead
Ephemera on copyright,statute, funding and GBS.
The presence of nature in my winter room
With curtains drawn across the clouds and stars,
lakes, fells, and green sweet meadows far away
Is fire, older and more wild than they.
Fire will outlast them all and take them all
For into fire the autumn woods must fall.
Spring blossoming is the slow combustion of the tree,
The phoenix fire that burns bird beast and flower away.
Once Troy and Dido’s Carthaginian pyre
And Baldur’s ship, and fabulous London burning,
Robes, wooden walls and crystal palaces
In their apotheosis were such flames as these.
Flames more fluent than water of a mountain stream,
Flames more delicate and swift than air,
Flames more impassable than walls of stone,
destructive and irrevocable as time.
Essential fire is the unhindered spirit
That, laid upon the lips of prophecy
Frees all the shining elements of the soul;
Whose burning teaches love the way to die
And selves to undergo their ultimate destruction
Upon those flaming ramparts of the world
That rise between our fate, and the lost garden.
Kathleen Raine : from Modern Verse 1900-1950
Oxford University Press (OUP), ed Phyllis M Jones.
I have before mentioned the two small book-fairs that occupy Howth village each Sunday afternoon, mostly its where treasures can be found and indeed regular customers get spoiled with first options on new boxes of books.
This time of year is when the gulls are encouraging the young to leave their nests and head out to sea, the boiling humidity and swirling grey closeness make the crèche loud and dramatic. Sea-birds run through Yeats and Joyce as tropes and images, especially Yeats whose doomed desire for Gonne was represented often by the squaking gulls up at Howth head where they walked out.
I cannot think of a Yeats’ poem off the top of my head to publish here (now) unfortunately, but I am so glad that the National Library exhibit is continuing for I was able to bring the little one in to show her the Lapis and sword of Sato this last week.
Writers are this year celebrating the centenary of Simone Weil‘s birth, sure if we did not have dedicated women’s departments where would we be?
A proliferation of books,essays and critiques are promised for this year, oft-times women of great vision and expression disappeared under the weight of history only to resurface with the creative effort of forensic archivists and dedicated communicators.
I have just completed reading Waiting for God by Ms Weil, and I have a small book of her writings in a SUNY publication. It will be great to be able to access more of her writing. I shall add in here at the base of this small post the few Poethead links to Simone Weil’s work and I hope to have another piece available over the next few days.
International Women’s Day,’ Necessity‘ by Simone Weill.
| Last night you passed by As slow as the shadows, And your thoughts were all drenched With dreams of her promise. But my window was laced with tears At your passing And you never came in And my heart on you fasting. And you never came in |
A wee tale, I found this poem in a small book of Irish Writing got yesterday in Howth; and edited indeed by the Late David Marcus. I will add in David’s Obit at the base of this piece. The volume number is 13 and the cost is 6/6.
It’s great when your government ministers do not recognise
their own traditions of blasphemy, thats mostly because they
have little in the way of time to read a book- though one hopes
when they are fcked out next election that they will increase
their literacy level…
Ireland has a wonderful tradition of blasphemic utterance, in poetry,
in fiction and in literature, mostly we are a people that refuse to take
ourselves so seriously:
I feel that Dermot Ahern has not one iota of intellection in this issue.
What a sad and expedient little man he has proven himself to be.
I hope many people submit as govt consistently erases cultural
memory in pursuit of what gain? Cheap and tawdry idiotic family
members pretending they can write books, or good tailoring- who
knows what attracts the witless bureaucrat to a position of power
therein to laud their ignorance as if it were somehow commensurate
with actually having a brain >?
Chris Murray 