book excerptise:   a book unexamined is wasting trees

Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers

Charles Simic and Mark Strand (eds)

Simic, Charles; Mark Strand (eds);

Another Republic: 17 European and South American Writers

Ecco Press (HarperCollins), 1976 / 1989, 256 pages

ISBN 0880011912, 9780880011914

topics: |  poetry | europe | latin-america

Excerpts


Zbigniew Herbert : Five Men p.71

		tr. Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott

1.
They take them out in the morning
to the stone courtyard
and put them against the wall
five men
two of them very young
the others middle-aged

nothing more
can be said about them


2.
when the platoon
level their guns
everything suddenly appears
in the garish light
of obviousness
the yellow wall
the cold blue
the black wire on the wall
instead of a horizon

that is the moment
when the five senses rebel
they would gladly escape
like rats from a sinking ship

before the bullet reaches its destination
the eye will percive the flight of the projectile
the ear record the steely rustle

the nostrils will be filled with biting smoke
a petal of blood will brush the palate
the touch will shrink and then slacken

now they lie on the ground
covered up to their eyes with shadow
the platoon walks away
their buttonstraps
and steel helmets
are more alive
then those lying beside the wall


3.
I did not learn this today
I knew it before yesterday
so why have I been writing
unimportant poems on flowers

what did the five talk of
the night before the execution

of prophetic dreams
of an escapade in a brothel
of automobile parts
of a sea voyage
of how when he had spades
he ought not to have opened
of how vodka is best
after wine you get a headache
of girls
of fruits
of life

thus one can use in poetry
names of Greek shepherds
one can attempt to catch the colour of morning sky
write of love
and also
once again
in dead earnest
offer to the betrayed world
a rose




Carlos Drummond de Andrade : Souvenir of the Ancient World

				tr. Mark Strand p. 169

Clara strolled in the garden with the children. 
The sky was green over the grass, 
the water was golden under the bridges,
other elements were blue and rose and orange, 
a policeman smiled, bicycles passed, 
a girl stepped onto the lawn to catch a bird, 
the whole world -- Germany, China --
   all was quiet around Clara.

The children looked at the sky: it was not forbidden.
Mouth, nose, eyes were open. There was no danger.
What Clara feared were the flu, the heat, the insects.
Clara feared missing the eleven o'clock trolley:
She waited for letters slow to arrive,
She couldn't always wear a new dress. But she strolled in the garden, 
   in the morning!
They had gardens, they had mornings in those days!


Miroslav Holub : The Fly 193

She sat on a willow-trunk
watching
part of the battle of Crecy,
the shouts,
the gasps,
the groans,
the tramping and the tumbling.

During the fourteenth charge
of the French cavalry
she mated
with the brown-eyed male fly
from Vadincourt.

She rubbed her legs together
as she sat on the disemboweled horse
meditating
on the immortality of flies.

With relief she alighted
on the blue tongue
of the Duke of Clervaux.

When silence settled
and only the whisper of decay
softly circled the bodies

and only
a few arms and legs
still twitched jerkily under the trees,

she began to lay her eggs
on the single eye
of Johann of Uhr,
The Royal Armourer.

And thus it was
that she was eaten by a swift
fleeing
from the fires of Estrees.


from http://www.utc.edu/Academic/English/pm/polpoet.htm:

On the one hand we can read the fly as a simple metaphor for a human being,
and certainly the idea that she meditates "on the immortality of flies"
invites this sort of reading. But we are missing the point if we downplay the
radical deconstruction of history here-- it is the peripheral, the small, the
seemingly frivolous, that gives us a key into our own actions. What is more
important, the charge of the French cavalry or the mating of the fly? We
would like to insist that man's history is more important. But from the point
of view of the cosmos, from that larger frame, where man is, like Salamun, a
speck, does it make much difference? The fly's perspective is only an
arbitrary frame as good as any other, and in turned framed as any other frame
is framed. From the swift's point of view at the end, the fly is
peripheral. The poem suggests that the historical and ideological frames are
just ways of privileging one perspective over another, usually opposite
perspective. That is why the great Mexican poet Octavio Paz said: "The
language that nourishes the poem is, after all, nothing but history, name of
this or that, reference and meaning....Without history -- without men, who
are the origin, the substance and the end of history -- the poem could not be
born or incarnated, and without the poem there could be no history either,
because there would be no origin or beginning." How does the poet rewrite the
perversions of history, then?



Miroslav Holub : Zito the magician p.197

		(Czech; tr. George Theiner)

To amuse His Royal Majesty he will change water into wine.
Frogs into footmen. Beetles into bailiffs. And make a Minister
out of a rat. He bows, and daisies grow from his finger-tips.
And a talking bird sits on his shoulder.

There.

Think up something else, demands His Royal Majesty.
Think up a black star. So he thinks up a black star.
Think up dry water. So he thinks up dry water.
Think up a river bound with straw-bands. So he does.

There.

Then along comes a student and asks: Think up sine alpha
greater than one.

And Zito grows pale and sad. Terribly sorry. Sine is
Between plus one and minus one. Nothing you can do about that.
And he leaves the great royal empire, quietly weaves his way
Through the throng of courtiers, to his home
						in a nutshell.


bio: Miroslav Holub


Miroslav Holub is a scientist by vocation and considers his poetry a
pastime. Holub told Stephen Stepanchev in a New Leader interview that, for
him, science and poetry enjoy an "uneasy
relationship." "In scientific circles," he said, "I try to hide the fact that
I write verse. Scientists tend to be suspicious of poets; they feel that
poets are, somehow, irresponsible." And he admitted that his profession was
similarly held suspect by his literary friends.

	Holub is an immunologist, and the rigorous logic of the scientist
	shows in many of the poems, which are almost mathematical in their
	analogies. But it is a mathematics with blood in it." - Paul Breslin,
	Poetry (7/1997)

But Holub sees no real conflict between science and poetry. As a scientist,
he says, he believes in "an objective reality" and hates superstition.

Holub often employs scientific metaphors in his poems, a technique that,
although he considers it "a risk," allows him to "find poetic equivalents for
the new reality of the micro-world." Holub told Stepanchev that one of the
reasons he uses metaphors at all is "to avoid the aridities of rationalism."
"The other reason," he adds, "is that I like the play or dance of metaphors,
just as I like the play of ideas in a poem. My poems, by the way, always
begin with an idea, an obsessive idea of some sort. . . . I try to achieve
effects of suspense with my long lines and tremendous emphases with my short
ones."

http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Holub.htm:

Miroslav Holub had taken an active part in the reformist movement in
Czechoslovakia in the 1960s (he published essays in the main Czech liberal
cultural and literary periodicals Literární noviny [The Literary Gazette,]
Plamen [The Flame], Orientace,[Orientation]). As a result, he was sacked from
the Microbiological Institute in 1970; from 1971 - like many other Czech
writers at the time - he suffered a publication ban, was not allowed to
travel abroad or to appear in public. His work was banned and his books were
removed from the libraries. A new collection of poems Strucné úvahy (Brief
contemplations), was destroyed, although it was already typeset. A book of
selections from the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Poe cili Údolí neklidu (Poe or
The Valley of Restlessness), compiled by Holub, could only be published
anonymously in 1972.

Henceforth Holub made a degrading public self-criticism and thereafter could
be employed at least in a junior position at the Institute for Clinical and
Experimental Medicine (in 1995 he returned to the Microbiological
Institute). His literary work could not be published officially in
Czechoslovakia again until 1982.

Although Holub was ostracised in his native country, his literary as well as
scientific work became very well known abroad.

In his native Czechoslovakia, he was not very well received even after the
fall of communism. Some of his fellow Czechs could not accept Holub's
self-criticism, there were even unfounded allegations of his alleged
cooperation with the communist secret police (since he could travel to the
West in the 1980s while other Czech authors were languishing as non-persons
in the dissident ghetto). Some people could not forget that Holub never came
out openly against communism in the 1970s and 1980s and became a dissident
himself, thus allegedly betraying his liberal credentials from the 1950s and
1960s. Others could not accept his rational, terse poetic style, which
foregoes linguistic embellishments and relies instead on the intricate
interplay. It so happened that this style is extremely well suited to the
English language - English translations have made Miroslav Holub a world
famous author.

Translations:

Translations of Holub are non-uniform.  Some translators like Ewald Osers
"seem fairly true to Holub, but Osers shows a great reluctance to trim any of
the poems." http://www.complete-review.com/authors/holubm.htm

On the other hand those which Holub himself co-translated (he is fairly
fluent in English) - are markedly more paired down.

Holub speaks English, French, and German.

Links:
   biography:	http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/miroslav-holub
   	  	http://www2.arts.gla.ac.uk/Slavonic/Holub.htm
   critique : http://www.complete-review.com/authors/holubm.htm

Contents


Francis Ponge (France, 1899-1988)

	  [tr. Beth Archer]
The Pleasures of the Door 25
Water 25
The Pebble (tr. Cid Corman) 27
The Horse 34

Henri Michaux (France 1899-1984)

	[b. Belgium; tr. Richard Ellmann]
I Am Writing to you from a far-off country 41
Icebergs 45
from In the land of magic 45
Birth 46
from The Emanglons 48
The Emanglom 51

Jean Follain (France, 1903-1971)

The Egg 55
The Barn Owl 55
Black Meat 56
Housewives 56
Father and Daughter 57
Signs 58
Asia 58

Zbigniew Herbert [Poland, 1924-1998]

		tr. Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott
Wooden Die 61
Study of the Object 61
Arion 66
Episode in a Library 67
The Seventh Angel 68
Rosy Ear 70
Five Men 71
Naked Town 74
A Halt 75


Julio Cortazar [Argentina 1914-1984]

		(tr. Paul Blackburn)
The Lines of the Hand 79
Theme for a Tapestry 79
The Behavior of Mirrors on Easter Island 80
Instructions on how to Wind a Watch 81
Instructions on or rather Examples of How to be Afraid 81
Marvelous Pursuits 83
Progress And Retrogression 84

Fernando Pessoa [Portugal, 1888-1935]

		(tr. Edwin Honig) [b. Fernando Antonio Nogueira Pessoa]
Tobacco Shop 87
If they want me to be a mystic, fine. So I'm a mystic 93
Salutation to Walt Whitman 93
I am tired (tr. Jonathan Griffin) 101

Octavio Paz [Mexico 1914-1988]

		(tr. Eliot Weinberger)
Hurry 105
Old Poem 106
Natural Being 107
Letter To Two Strangers 109
Marvels Of The Will 111
Obsidian Butterfly 112
Vrindaban (tr. Lysander Kemp) 114

Yehuda Amichai [Israel 1924-2000]

Out Of Three Or Four In A Room 121
Tourist 122
My Mother Once Told Me 123
A Pity. We Were such a Good Invention 124
Rain on a Battlefield 124
We Did It [in front of the mirror] (tr. Harold Schimel) 125
If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem 126

Johannes Bobrowski [Germany 1917-1965]

Childhood 129
Kaunas 1941 130
North Russian Town 132
On the Jewish Dealer A.S. 133
Cathedral 1941 124
Latvian Songs 135
The Spoor In The Sand 136

Czeslaw Milosz [Poland 1911-2004]

		  [b. Lithuania, US citizen 1970]
Dedication (tr. Czeslaw Milosz) 139
Mittelbergheim (tr. Czeslaw Milosz and Richard Lourie) 140
A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto (tr. Czeslaw Milosz) 141
A Song on the End of the World (tr. A.M.) 142
To Robinson Jeffers (tr. Czeslaw Milosz and Richard Lourie) 144
The Master (tr. Czeslaw Milosz) 146
Elegy For N.N. (tr. Czeslaw Milosz and Lawrence Davis) 148

Nicanor Parra [Chile b.1914]

		[Nicanor Parra Sandoval] tr. W.S. Merwin
Piano Solo (tr. William Carlos Williams) 153
Journey Through Hell 154
Litany Of The Little Bourgeois 156
The Pilgrim 158
The Tablets 159
The Tunnel 160
The Viper 162
Madrigal 165
I Take Back Everything I've Said (tr. Miller Williams) 166

Carlos Drummond de Andrade [Brazil 1902-1987]

		(tr. Mark Strand)
Souvenir of the Ancient World 169
The Elephant 170
Quadrille 173
The Dead In Frock Coats 174
Wandering 174
Don't Kill Yourself 175
The Dirty Hand 176
Your Shoulders Hold Up The World 178

Paul Celan (Paul Antschel) [German 1920-1970]

		tr. Michael Hamburger [b. Romania Jew]
Corona 181
Aspen Tree ... 182
Shibboleth 182
Psalm 184
Chanson Of A Lady In The Shade 186
Fugue Of Death (tr. Christopher Middleton) 187
Your Hand Full Of Hours  189

--Miroslav Holub [Czechoslovakia 1923-1998]
		tr. Ian Milner and George Theiner [immunologist]
The Fly 193
Cinderella 194
Man Cursing The Sea 196
Zito The Magician 197
Suffering 198

Yannis Ritsos [Greece 1909-1990]

		tr. Paul Merchant
The Poet's Place 203
   black, carved writing desk
Putting Out The Lamp 204
Final Hour 205
Dusk 206
Alone With His Work 207
Miniature (tr. Edmund Keeley)207
Beauty (tr. Minas Sarras) 208
Insignificant Needs 209

--Vasko Popa [Serbian 1922-1991]
		tr. Charles Simic [b. Romania]
The Stargazer's Legacy 213
Proud Error 214
Echo Turned To Stone 215
Forgetful Number 216
Prudent Triangle 217
The Tale About A Tale 218
The Yawn Of Yawns 219
The Little Box 220
The Tenants Of The Little Box 221
The Craftsmen Of The Little Box 222
The Victims Of The Little Box 223
The Enemies Of The Little Box 224
The Judges Of The Little Box 225
The Prisoners Of The Little Box 226
Last News About The Little Box 227

--Italo Calvino
Cities & Desire 5 231
Hidden Cities 1 232
Cities & Signs 1 233
Cities & Signs 2 234
Trading Cities 1 235
Cities & Signs 5 236
Cities & The Dead 3 237
Continuous Cities 4 238
Cities & The Sky 5 240


amitabha mukerjee (mukerjee [at-symbol] gmail) 2012 Apr 23