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Ne faites pas de bruit, ne parlez pas:
vont explorer une forêt les yeux, le cœur,
l’esprit, les songes…
Forêt secrète bien que palpable:
forêt.
Forêt bruissant de silence,
Forêt où s’est évadé l’oiseau à prendre au piège,
l’oiseau à prendre au piège qu’on fera chanter
ou qu’on fera pleurer.
À qui l’on fera chanter, à qui l’on fera pleurer
le lieu de son éclosion.
Forêt. Oiseau.
Forêt secrète, oiseau caché
dans vos mains.
Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo
(1901? 1903? – 1937)
Lire (poème)
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Enough
When all my words were said,
When all my songs were sung,
I thought to pass among
The unforgotten dead,
A Queen of ruth to reign
With her, who gathereth tears
From all the lands and years,
The Lesbian maid of pain;
That lovers, when they wove
The double myrtle-wreath,
Should sigh with mingled breath
Beneath the wings of Love:
‘How piteous were her wrongs,
Her words were falling dew,
All pleasant verse she knew,
But not the Song of songs.’
Yet now, O Love, that you
Have kissed my forehead, I
Have sung indeed, can die,
And be forgotten too.
Digby Mackworth Dolben
(1848 – 1867)
Enough
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More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Digby Mackworth Dolben
Survivors—Found
We thought that they were gone—
we rarely saw them on our screens—
those everyday Americans
with workaday routines,
and the heroes standing ready—
not glamorous enough—
on days without a tragedy,
we clicked—and turned them off.
We only saw the cynics—
the dropouts, show-offs, snobs—
the right- and left- wing critics:
we saw that they were us.
But with the wounds of Tuesday
when the smoke began to clear,
we rubbed away our stony gaze—
and watched them reappear:
the waitress in the tower,
the broker reading mail,
a pair of window washers,
filling up a final pail,
the husband’s last “I love you”
from the last seat of a plane,
the tourist taking in a view
no one would see again,
the fireman, his eyes ablaze
as he climbed the swaying stairs—
he knew someone might still be saved.
We wondered who it was.
We glimpsed them through the rubble:
the ones who lost their lives,
the heroes’ double burials,
the ones now “left behind,”
the ones who rolled a sleeve up,
the ones in scrubs and masks,
the ones who lifted buckets
filled with stone and grief and ash:
some spoke a different language—
still no one missed a phrase;
the soot had softened every face
of every shade and age—
“the greatest generation” ?—
we wondered where they’d gone—
they hadn’t left directions
how to find our nation-home:
for thirty years we saw few signs,
but now in swirls of dust,
they were alive—they had survived—
we saw that they were us.
Joan Murray
(1917-1942)
Survivors—Found
(poem)
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More in: Archive M-N, Archive M-N, Joan Murray
After reading Homer
Happy the man, who on the mountain-side
Bending o’er fern and flowers his basket fills :
Yet he will never know the outline-power,
The awful Whole of the Eternal Hills.
So some there are, who never feel the strength
In thy blind eyes, majestic and complete,
Which conquers those, who motionlessly sit,
O dear divine old Giant, at thy feet.
Digby Mackworth Dolben
(1848 – 1867)
After reading Homer
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More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Digby Mackworth Dolben
First complete translation into English by Kathleen McNerney and Helena Buffery ⊕ Contains the most beautiful prose I’ve ever read in Catalan – Anna Murià, novelist and translator
In this often poetic and lyrical novel by the revered Catalan poet Maria-Mercè Marçal, we are taken on a journey through the multiple, mobile and contradictory life, letters and loves of the fin-de-siècle Anglo-French writer, Pauline Tarn-Renée Vivien, as researched and reimagined by two principal narrators – a 1980s Catalan documentary film-maker Sara T. and a 1920s French archaeology scholar and museologist Salomon Reinach – alongside the voices of the various friends, relations, lovers, companions and servants who made her acquaintance at different moments in her life.
In the process, we are presented with a compelling reconstruction of the Belle Époque and interwar years in Paris, alongside other key sites in this transformational literary geography – Nice, Bayreuth, Switzerland, Istanbul, and the island of Lesbos – that include often dazzling evocations of other cultural figures and influencers of the age, from Zola to Pierre Louÿs and Remy de Gourmont, Liane de Pougy to Mathilde de Morny and Colette, not forgetting the central figure of Natalie Clifford-Barney, the ‘Amazone’.
Maria-Mercè Marçal:
The Passion according to Renée Vivien
Translation into English by Kathleen McNerney and Helena Buffery
Francis Boutle publishers
ISBN 9781916490659
Language: English
Format: paperback
Number of pages 354
£12
»» website Francis Boutle publishers
# new books
Maria-Mercè Marçal:
The Passion according to Renée Vivien
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More in: - Book News, - Book Stories, Archive M-N, Archive U-V, Archive U-V, Émile Zola, Renée Vivien, Vivien, Renée
Matin Malade
Matin d’été, ô matin d’été,
bel et triste comme mon cœur,
tes arbres tremblent dans la clarté
en berçant mollement leur langueur.
Quel espoir de soleil virtuel,
paysage vert sans ramiers,
te nourrit de son leurre cruel
qui colore à peine tes palmiers
et te fait un frère adultérin
d’un sentiment lourd de chagrin
et plus lourd encor de soif d’azur
que du poids de l’épuisante nuit
qui m’a tendu son fruit bien mûr
mais gonflé de vénéneux ennui ?
Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo
(1901?/1903? – 1937)
Matin Malade (poème)
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More in: Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R, Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo
Die lach
Zooals wanneer opeens de zonneschijn
Door ‘t zwart der breede wolken heen komt breken,
En schittert in de tranen, die er leken
Van blad en bloem, als vloeiend kristallijn,
Zóó, dat het weenen lachen schijnt te zijn:
Zoo is, wat mij ontstemt, opeens geweken,
Mathilde! ontsluit úw mond zich om te spreken,
En doolt een glimlach om uw lippen, fijn: –
Doch van den lach is glimlach dageraad,
En klinkt uw lach, hoe drinken hem mijne ooren!
De vreugde vaart door pols en vezel rond. –
En met geloken oog zie ‘k uw gelaat,
Zoo zonnig: ‘k meen uw zilvren lach te hooren,
Wanneer ik roerloos wacht op de’ uchtendstond….
Jacques Perk
(1859 – 1881)
Die lach
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More in: Archive O-P, Archive O-P, CLASSIC POETRY, Jacques Perk
The Poet’s Thrift
My landscape only need comprise low hills,
For these are eminent and limitless
To me. They mean more than my dreams express;
They mean more than my word or deed fulfils.
The slender trees, the tuneless whip-poor-wills,
Impart quite ample themes to loneliness.
I find enough in scant elusiveness
Of springs and little brooks. My spirit thrills
To beauty, unprepared for the sublime.
I wonder, though, when I shall be completed
Even to transcribe these hills? Sometime
This landscape in few lines will show to me
The subtle mysteries I have entreated,
In the simple realm of poetry.
Gladys Cromwell
(1885-1919)
The Poet’s Thrift
From: Songs of the Dust, 1915
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More in: Archive C-D, Cromwell, Gladys, Gladys Cromwell
The Silent Woman is a brilliant, elegantly reasoned meditation on the nature of biography.
Janet Malcolm (author of Reading Chekhov, The Journalist and the Murderer, In the Freud Archives) examines the biographies of Sylvia Plath, with particular focus on Anne Stevenson’s controversial Bitter Fruit, to discover how Plath became the enigma of literary history, and how the legend continues to exert such a hold on our imaginations.
Janet Malcolm‘s books include Reading Chekhov, In the Freud Archives, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes and Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession. Born in Prague, she grew up in New York, where she now lives.
“One of the deepest, loveliest, and most problematic things Janet Malcolm has written. It is so subtle, so patiently analytical, and so true that it is difficu’lt to envisage anyone writing again about Plath and Hughes.” Guardian
The Silent Woman
by Janet Malcolm
Published: 02/04/2020
ISBN: 9781783786237
Granta Books
224 pages
Paperback
£10
# more biographies
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More in: #Biography Archives, - Book News, - Book Stories, Archive M-N, Sylvia Plath
Zij komt
Gij, berken, buigt uw ranke loovertrossen!
Strooit, rozen, op het zand èn sneeuw èn blad!
Gij, zwaatlende olmen, nijgt u naar het pad,
En kust den dauw van sidderende mossen!
En, snelgewiekte liederen der bosschen,
Stemt aan én zang én lof! En, klimveil, dat
Den slanken, diepbeminden beuk omvat,
Druk hechter aan de twijgen u, de rossen!
Voorzegger, die uzelven roept, o kom,
En roep uw koekkoek duizend blijde keeren,
En fladder aan, vergulde vlinderdrom!
Zij zweeft hierheen, die zon en zomer eeren:
De lof van hare schoonheid klinke alom,
Waar zon en zomer te beminnen leeren!
Jacques Perk
(1859 – 1881)
Zij komt
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More in: Archive O-P, CLASSIC POETRY, Jacques Perk
Été
Sème, sème l’été,
sème des grains d’eau lumineux.
Plante, plante l’été,
plante des tiges d’eau frêles.
Sème, sème, plante, plante,
sème et plante dans le crépuscule.
Qui ou quoi moissonnera les épis ?
Qui ou quoi cueillera les fruits ?
Est-ce le petit oiseau brûlé de soif
venu des sylves gorgées de cours d’eau pure
celée, celée sous des ronces ?
Ou l’abeille qui est comme ivre de soleil
et qui titube au cœur des branches ?
Ou la femme-enfant qui vient de dénouer sa chevelure
et qui a lavé des effets au bord du fleuve ?
Ou bien une source, quelque part, s’est-elle tarie
au point que son jaillissement éteint regrette les fleuves ?
Mais n’est-ce pas plutôt qu’un fleuve bruissant,
ici ou là, n’arrive plus jusqu’au golfe,
et n’arrive plus à grossir la mer ?
Ou que la plantation de ceux qui sont sous la terre
devient deux fois ombre dans les ténèbres ?
Je crois, moi, que ce sont les plantes
qui brûlent d’offrir à mes yeux parfois bleus,
et brûlent d’offrir au jour frais éclos
qui fermera ses ailes au seuil de la nuit,
des épis et des fruits fécondés par l’été.
Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo
(1901? 1903? – 1937)
Été (poème)
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive Q-R, Archive Q-R, Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo
A Song
The world is young today:
Forget the gods are old,
Forget the years of gold
When all the months were May.
A little flower of Love
Is ours, without a root,
Without the end of fruit,
Yet ― take the scent thereof.
There may be hope above,
There may be rest beneath;
We see them not, but Death
Is palpable ― and Love.
Digby Mackworth Dolben
(1848 – 1867)
A Song
• fleursdumal.nl magazine
More in: Archive C-D, Archive C-D, Digby Mackworth Dolben
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