Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!

2011-05-04T15:03:00.001-07:00

Por insuficiência renal este blogue encontrou o seu fim.

2010-09-16T10:24:00.000-07:00

POEMA DRAMÁTICO

Orvalho como pérolas na orla do vestido.
A rosa jaz no velho poço, templo de ruínas.
No céu rosa e côr-de-laranja
Nuvens flutuam para cá e para lá
Em olhares que me não veêm...
A Primavera chega.

Quem irá amar esta beleza...?

Sozinha afundo-me como pedra em água funda,
Lágrima que me escorre o cansaço dos dias.

中山公园, 2010

Poemas Chineses e Poemas d'antemanhã

2010-09-16T09:55:00.000-07:00

POEMAS CHINESES:

Canto Longo

Girassóis na nebelina do verde jardim
Esperando que o sol orvalho matinal seque.
Radiate a Primavera espalha sua terna luz
E tudo é então fresco e brilhante.
Temo a vinda do Outono
Quando vermelhas flôres quedam, amarelas as folhas.
Centenas de fontes rumam este, para o mar:
Quando serão livres, virando oeste?
Se o máximo na juventude se não faz
Em vão será a velhice de arrependimento.

Dinastia Han.

No príncipio era Pan Gu

Nascido do vazio primordial;

Foi o primeiro a governar o mundo,

O caos a separar.

em História Rimada

北京秋天

秋到来,

雾褪色;

在西南

月明亮.

八月十六日

北京 2010, 胡徳力

D'ANTEMANHÃ:

Torpor de difusa luz em olhos semi-abertos,

Brilho que queima a película de se ver:

A mente acorda e afunda-se no ser,

Violenta chama que arrefece

Para lá do mundo-sonho.

A mente vagueia como barco que baldeia,

E entre suores e bruscos movimentos

Perde-se à deriva dos sete-ventos,

Ignoto caminho de mais um dia.

Das horas mortas e vias tortas

É o velar apenas que resta.

Lisboa, 2010

Aqueles que dormem soltam sonhos

De travesseiro em janelas semi-abertas,

Bruma que engole a cidade

Tal cigarro adormecido.

Deambulam nocturnos devaneios

Expurgando o pulso matinal,

Desejo inconsciente.

Nas águas de Lethe

Banham homens seus lábios,

Doce útero do viver despreocupado.

Perdidas memórias,

negra turba neblina,

Fossilização submersa

e a cidade esquece...

Raia a alba,

Profetizada terra de um novo dia.

Lisboa, 2010

No cortinado cinzenta neblina roça

Pelas ruas levantando a poeira do dia.

Que resta, ao anoitecer,

Depois da conversa fiada, de afirmação?

Depois das palavras que se exaltam,

Gestos que procuram?

Nevoeiro que a mente entorna

Inebriada de amarelos desabridos,

Corre, discorre por essas vielas

De olhares desconhecidos,

Volteia alto e desce bem baixo,

para ouvir,

Que a cidade se engole em sonhos

De mil gentes, esperanças quebradas

Na hesitação crepuscular.

Então, à antemanhã, esvanece...

O corpo quente abandona o recordar,

Cigarro à janela incandescente;

O curso do rio nunca irá mudar,

Mantendo o rumo incansável

É ao mar do esquecimento que vai desaguar.

Pequim, 2010

(O risco da repetição é sabido, é-o também propositado.).

(A Zénite)

2010-07-17T12:28:00.000-07:00

Até no mais utópico sistema de governação existe o tirano.
No governo que encontra a sua força na lei, os locais de governação não são mais que ilegais prostíbulos.
A única forma de governo justo é o não-governo.
A política é uma extensão da ética.

Poema

2010-07-03T16:36:00.000-07:00

Flowers bloom this time of year,
Petals white and yellow
And the lilac up above,
Green blades shine and waver
Dancing to the calling wind.

What life renews this time of year
Past the deadly grasp of the wrinkled face
In thin garment?
The creek with a hundred laughs?
The wind with a thousand voices?

The eye in retrospection sees things past,
Connecting them to things present.
What then, the chain in friction
Not of music?

I have watched and scrutinized
The several wandering moments;
Have I found but one in motion?

These things I cannot guess...

I have said to myself:
Forget these things material,
Breed thy life out of flowering
As the green casque breeds life
Out of Spring time.
Act in accordance to nature,
Contemplating, thus renewing
The eternal powers of the immature soul.

Thou art unheard within thyself.

Golden offerings of the earth
Trees in succession mantling the earth,
The progression of moment thought
And moment acted is but a tragedy of life
becoming life,
begetting it.
There is no sound in the self-bound existance,
There is no stillness in this heap of rock.

(Through the chambers of memory
That which was never seen, and yet perceived,
Draws fire to emotion,
New roots to the shooting-sprout.
Light tangled in white branches;
A million voices calling
From the depths o' the sea.)

2010-05-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

(i) Fred bought some hashish from Reuben.
(ii) Reuben sold some hashish to Fred.
(iii) Fred was sold some hashish by Reuben on purpose.

do material de estudo de linguística.

Pausa em tempo de estudos.

2010-05-15T17:49:00.000-07:00

,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot

2010-05-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

Organization has been made by man; it can be changed by man.

William H. White

NOH

2010-04-24T11:12:00.001-07:00

...A tradução para o inglês, tal como as notas indicadas com números, são da autoria de E.P., - let us care not for copyright. Tradução feita apartir das notas de Ernest Fenollosa, the scholar par excellence.

HAGOROMO

A PLAY IN ONE ACT.

CHARACTERS (DRAMATIS PERSONAE)

CHIEF FISHERMAN,HAKURYO.

A FISHERMAN..........................

A TENNIN.................................

CHORUS....................................

The plot of the play Hagoromo, the Feather-mantle, is as follows: The priest (chief fisherman) finds the Hagoromo, the magical feather-mantle of a Tennin, an aerial spirit or celestial dancer, hanging upon a bough. She demands its return. He argues with her, and finally promises to return it, if she will teach him her dance or part of it. She accepts the offer. The Chorus explains the dance as symbolical of the daily changes of the moon. The words about 'three, five and fifteen' refer to the number of nights in the moon's changes. In the finale, the Tennin is supposed to disappear like a mountain slowly hidden in mist. The play shows the relation of the early Noh to the God-dance.*

HAKURYO

Windy road of the waves by Miwo,

Swift with ships, loud over steersmen's voices.

...Hakuryo, taker of fish, head of his house, dwells upon the barren pine-waste of Miwo.

A FISHERMAN

...Upon a thousand heights had gathered the inexplicable cloud. Swept by the rain, the moon is just come to light the high house.

...A clean and pleasant time surely. There comes the breath-colour of spring; the waves rise in a line below the early mist; the moon is still delaying above, though we've no skill to grasp it. Here is a beauty to set the mind above itself.

CHORUS

I shall not be out of memory

Of the mountain road by Kiyomi,

Nor of the parted grass by that bay,

Nor of the far-seen pine-waste

Of Miwo of wheat stalks.

...Let us go according to custom. Take hands against the wind here, for it presses the clouds and the sea. Those men who were going to fish are about to return without launching. Wait a little, is it not spring? will not the wind be quiet? this wind is only the voice of the lasting pine-trees, ready for stillness. See how the air is soundless, or would be, were it not for the waves. There now, the fishermen are putting out with even the smallest boats.

HAKURYO

...Now I am come to shore at Miwo-no; I disembark in Matsubara; I see all that they speak of on the shore. An empty sky with music, a rain of flowers, strange fragrance on every side; all these are no common things, nor is this cloak that hangs upon the pine-tree. As I approach to inhale its colour I am aware of mystery. Its colour-smell is mysterious. I see that it is surely no common dress. I will take it now and return and make it a

treasure in my house, to show to the aged.

TENNIN

...That cloak belongs to someone on this side. What are you proposing to do with it?

HAKURYO

...This? this is a cloak picked up. I am taking it home, I tell you.

TENNIN

That is a feather-mantle not fit for a mortal to bear,

Not easily wrested from the sky-traversing spirit,

Not easily taken or given.

I ask you to leave it where you found it.

HAKURYO

...How! Is the owner of this cloak a Tennin? So be it. In this downcast age I should keep it, a rare thing, and make it a treasure in the country, a thing respected. Then I should not return it.

TENNIN

...Pitiful, there is no flying without the cloak of feathers, no return through the ether. I pray you return me the mantle.

HAKURYO

...Just from hearing these high words, I, Hakuryo, have gathered more and yet more force. You think, because I was too stupid to recognise it, that I shall be unable to take and keep hid the feather-robe, that I shall give it back for merely being told to stand and withdraw?

TENNIN

A Tennin without her robe,

A bird without wings,

How shall she climb the air?

HAKURYO

...And this world would be a sorry place for her to dwell in?

TENNIN

...I am caught, I struggle, how shall I...?

HAKURYO

...No, Hakuryo is not one to give back the robe.

TENNIN

...Power does not attain....

HAKURYO

.. ...to get back the robe....

CHORUS

...Her coronet [1], jewelled as with the dew of tears, even the flowers that decorated her hair, drooping and fading, the whole chain of weaknesses [2] of the dying Tennin can be seen actually before the eyes. Sorrow!

TENNIN

...I look into the flat of heaven, peering; the cloud-road is all hidden and uncertain; we are lost in the rising mist; I have lost the knowledge of the road. Strange, a strange sorrow!

CHORUS

...Enviable colour of breath, wonder of clouds that fade along the sky that was our accustomed dwelling; hearing the sky-bird, accustomed, and well accustomed, hearing the voices grow fewer, the wild geese fewer and fewer, along the highways of air, how deep her longing to return! Plover and seagull are on the waves in the offing. Do they go or do they return? She reaches out for the very blowing of the spring wind against heaven.

HAKURYO

(to the TENNIN)

...What do you say? Now that I can see you in your sorrow, gracious, of heaven, I bend and would return you your mantle.

TENNIN

...It grows clearer. No, give it this side.

HAKURYO

...First tell me your nature, who are you, Tennin? Give payment with the dance of the Tennin, and I will return you your mantle.

TENNIN

...Readily and gladly, and then I return into heaven. You shall have what pleasure you will, and I will leave a dance here, a joy to be new among men and to be memorial dancing. Learn then this dance that can turn the

palace of the moon. No, come here to learn it. For the sorrows of the world I will leave this new dancing with you for sorrowful people. But give me my mantle, I cannot do the dance rightly without it.

HAKURYO

...Not yet, for if you should get it, how do I know you'll not be off to your palace without even beginning your dance, not even a measure?

TENNIN

...Doubt is fitting for mortals; with us there is no deceit.

HAKURYO

...I am again ashamed. I give you your mantle.

CHORUS

...The young sprite now is arrayed; she assumes the curious mantle; watch how she moves in the dance of the rainbow-feathered garment.

HAKURYO

...The heavenly feather-robe moves in accord with the wind.

TENNIN

...The sleeves of flowers are being wet with the rain.

HAKURYO

...All three are doing one step.

CHORUS

It seems that she dances.

Thus was the dance of pleasure,

Suruga dancing, brought to the sacred east.

Thus was it when the lords of the everlasting

Trod the world,

They being of old our friends.

Upon ten sides their sky is without limit,

They have named it, on this account, the enduring.

TENNIN

...The jewelled axe takes up the eternal renewing, the palace of the moon-god is being renewed with the jewelled axe, and this is always recurring.

CHORUS

(commenting on the dance)

The white kiromo, the black kiromo,

Three, five into fifteen,

The figure that the Tennin is dividing.

There are heavenly nymphs, Amaotome, [3]

One for each night of the month,

And each with her deed assigned.

TENNIN

...I also am heaven-born and a maid, Amaotome. Of them there are many. This is the dividing of my body, that is fruit of the moon's tree, Katsura.[4] This is one part of our dance that I leave to you here in your world.

CHORUS

...The spring mist is widespread abroad; so perhaps the wild olive's flower will blossom in the infinitely unreachable moon. Her flowery head-ornament is putting on colour; this truly is sign of the spring. Not sky is here, but the beauty; and even here comes the heavenly, wonderful wind. O blow shut the accustomed path of the clouds. O, you in the form of a maid, grant us the favour of your delaying. The pine-waste of Miwo puts on the colour of spring. The bay of Kiyomi lies clear before the snow upon Fuji. Are not all these presages of the spring? There are but few ripples beneath the piny wind. It is quiet along the shore. There is naught but a fence of jewels between the earth and the sky, and the gods within and without, [5] beyond and beneath the stars, and the moon unclouded by her lord, and we who are born of the sun. This alone intervenes, here where the moon is unshadowed, here in Nippon, the sun's field.

TENNIN

...The plumage of heaven drops neither feather nor flame to its own diminution.

CHORUS

...Nor is this rock of earth overmuch worn by the brushing of that feather-mantle, the feathery skirt of the stars: rarely, how rarely. There is a magic song from the east, the voices of many and many: and flute and sho, filling the space beyond the cloud's edge, seven-stringed; dance filling and filling. The red sun blots on the sky the line of the colour-drenched mountains. The flowers rain in a gust; it is no racking storm that comes over this green moor, which is afloat, as it would seem, in these waves.

...Wonderful is the sleeve of the white cloud, whirling such snow here.

TENNIN

...Plain of life, field of the sun, true foundation, great power!

CHORUS

...Hence and for ever this dancing shall be called, 'a revel in the East.' Many are the robes thou hast, now of the sky's colour itself, and now a green garment.

SEMI-CHORUS

...And now the robe of mist, presaging spring, a colour-smell as this wonderful maiden's skirt--left, right, left! The rustling of flowers, the putting-on of the feathery sleeve; they bend in air with the dancing.

SEMI-CHORUS

...Many are the joys in the east. She who is the colour-person of the moon takes her middle-night in the sky. She marks her three fives with this dancing, as a shadow of all fulfilments. The circled vows are at full. Give the seven jewels of rain and all of the treasure, you who go from us. After a little time, only a little time, can the mantle be upon the wind that was spread over Matsubara or over Ashitaka the mountain,

though the clouds lie in its heaven like a plain awash with sea. Fuji is gone; the great peak of Fuji is blotted out little by little. It melts into the upper mist. In this way she (the Tennin) is lost to sight.

NOTAS:

1 Vide examples of state head-dress of kingfisher feathers, in the South Kensington Museum.**

2 The chain of weaknesses, or the five ills, diseases of the Tennin: namely, the hanakadzusa withers; the Hagoromo is stained; sweat comes from the body; both eyes wink frequently; she feels very weary of her palace in heaven.

3 Cf. 'Paradiso,' xxiii, 25:

............................'Quale nei plenilunii sereni

............................Trivia ride tra le ninfe eterne.'

4 A tree something like the laurel.

5: 'Within and without,' gei, gu, two parts of the temple.

*No século 5 a.c. o drama Grego surge dos rituais religiosos praticados nos festivais dedicados ao Deus do Vinho (Dionysus, Bacchus). O drama Japonês, século 5 d.c., surge dos rituais religiosos praticados nos festivais dedicados aos Deuses Shinto, principalmente ao Deus Shinto do templo Kasuga, em Nara. Ambos começaram como uma dança sagrada, ambos acrescentaram um coro sagrado entoado por padres (não me sinto confortável ao usar a palavra monge, nem sacerdote; já que nas traduções a que tenho acesso Waki aparece várias vezes como 'Priest', assim deixarei a tradução [não que o Waki seja sempre um padre, 'priest', mas muito frequentemente é]).

**TENNIN:

Nota:

2010-04-12T09:35:00.000-07:00

The fire that stirs about her, when she stirs,

Yeats, from The Folly of Being Comforted

É impressionante como apenas esse verso, isolado, dá um óptimo poema.

2010-04-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

And I was green, greener than a hill
Where flowers grew and the sun shone still
Now I'm darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be.

Nick Drake, Nicholas Rodney

Ulysses

2010-03-23T19:32:00.000-07:00

-You suspect, Stephen retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may be important because I belong to the faubourg Saint Patrice called Ireland for short.
-I would go a step farther, Mr Bloom insinuated.
-But I suspect, Stephen interrupted, that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me.
-What belongs, queried Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was perhaps under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the latter portion. What was it you ...?
Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding: 1170
-We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.

2010-03-23T15:53:00.000-07:00

Guido invites you thus*

"Lappo I leave behind and Dante too ,
Lo, I would sail the seas with thee alone!
Talk me no love talk, no bought-cheap fiddl'ry,
Mine is the ship and thine the merchandise,
All the blind earth knows not th' emprise
Whereto thou calledst and whereto I call.

Lo, I have seen thee bound about with dreams,
Lo, I have known thy heart and its desire;
Life, all of it, my sea, and all men's streams
Are fused in it as flames of an altar fire!

Lo, thou hast voyaged not! The ship is mine."

* The reference is to Dante's sonnet "Guido vorrei . . ."

E.P.

2010-03-12T16:31:00.001-08:00

ZZZmmm     ZmMm    zzZzm
Fly flie
Beat your wings
Against the glass
Soon, O soon,
So soon you'll be
Mine.
                         zzzzT
One wing
          two wings:
NHAM!

Imagisme

2010-03-08T11:28:00.000-08:00

Em laivos oblíquos
Tua mão se entrevê;

Delgados dedos
Sobre pálida pétala,
Puro marfim,
Translúcida gota
Que me toca
E leva ao mar.

..

Literature & Economics

2010-03-07T13:05:00.000-08:00

"A cynic might speak of the retreat of Marxism into literature departments— having failed to triumph in the real world, it had to seek refuge in the one place where it is least likely to be subject to the rigorous test of objective reality. And indeed the prominent role of Marxism in literary and cultural studies has developed in tandem with the spread of postmodernism in the academy and its attempt to subvert traditional conceptions of “naive” reality and objective truth. The curious alliance between Marxism and postmodernism in contemporary literary studies has led to the further paradox of a movement that once presented itself as an objective science joining forces with a movement that denies the possibility of objective science. Having begun under Marx as an explicitly anti-utopian movement, Marxism by the end of the twentieth century seemed to have prolonged its life only by entering a world of postmodern fantasy in the humanities wing of the academy. As the various attempts in literary criticism to salvage Marxism as a way of analyzing the world become increasingly subtle, sophisticated, and, some might say, sophistic, the time is ripe to raise the question of whether Marxism, which has proved to be a dubious guide to economic phenomena, is any more reliable when dealing with literary phenomena. Might forms of economic thinking sympathetic to free markets be more helpful in analyzing literature than Marxism, with its unrelenting hostility to capitalism?
"Of course, someone might object that this alternative simply swings from one extreme to another, substituting a pro-market ideology for an anti-market ideology. One might prefer simply to reject economic approaches to literature entirely, and try to maintain the aesthetic purity of the realm of literature by keeping it strictly divorced from the sordid, mercenary considerations of the economic realm. In view of the crudeness of many Marxist analyses of literature, one can sympathize with the impulse to keep the realms of literature and economics separate. And yet for all the high-mindedness of this approach, it amounts to a refusal to confront the entrenched position of Marxist and quasi-Marxist literary critics in the academy, thus abandoning any attempt to undo the damage they may have done to our understanding of literature. Marxist literary criticism shows no signs of going away, and it cannot effectively be countered by simply denying that economics has any application to literature. We need to put something in its place. Marxist literary critics deserve at least this much credit: they have made a plausible and even a persuasive case for the relevance of economics to literature and literary activity. Economics is a central realm of human activity, and to the extent that literature attempts to deal with human life, it must inevitably come to terms with economic issues. And however idealistic a view one holds of the creation of literature, at some level it does seem to be bound up with economic activity as ordinarily understood. If we need to raise economic questions in order to achieve a fuller understanding of literature, we should take care that we are being guided by sound economic principles, not by an outdated and discredited ideology. Those who have been repelled by Marxist literary criticism may find that it was not an economic approach to literature as such that bothered them, but only the use of the wrong brand of economics. A more humane form of economics—one that grants a central place to the human element in economic activity—may turn out to be more applicable than Marxism in the realm of the humanities. The most effective way to counter the negative effects of Marxist literary criticism is not to deny that economics has any relevance to literature, but to substitute sound economics for unsound, to offer a positive alternative to Marxism for relating literature and economics."

Ed. Paul A. Cantor & Stephen Cox, Literature and the Economics of Liberty - Spontaneous Order in Culture , "The Poetics of Spontaneous Order: Austrian Economics and Literary Criticism"

2010-02-25T15:05:00.001-08:00

Ignore.

Coisas com tempos III

2010-02-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

Choro-me.
Não, minto,
     não me choro,
          finjo.

Agrada-me fingir,
        usar a máscara,
Incessante procura
Na busca de me não ser.

'Qual delas a mais verdadeira?'
'Aquela que mentir melhor.'

Coisas com tempos II

2010-02-25T14:32:00.000-08:00

Errática pessoa perdida,
Errante, pela ideia dispersa
Aquecida; semblante negro
Circundante ao tempo esquecido
Do ar e coisas ouro fundido

Cristal, marfim e pedras preciosas
Olhar ruínas, o naufrágio e demora...
Ondas que quebram e separam o mar
Um redemoinho estático no ar!
E o grito-silêncio-delírio que afora:
Éfige de mim no espaço e agora!

(2008?)

Coisas com tempos

2010-02-25T14:22:00.001-08:00

Toca relógio dourado
Que a hora amanhece.

Brande! grita!
            recua, ecoa...

Tacteia cegamente,
                  vagamente,
Obscuro obstrutor
Das coisas que são.

Raia, que nada sob
      teu brilho renasce;
Repete-se, imutável,
              morrendo.

Rêve

2010-02-23T06:20:00.000-08:00

From a drawn circle in the sand
A ruined tower holds its head high,
Hiding multiple faces,
                             inquisitive faces.

The sun boils on high
The air is heavy
The sand is hot.

Hebrew stares observe.

A women, Arabian feminine,
Appears; through silk her shapes
Are made clear, calling all attention
                                    to herself.
I move closer, burning and desiring.

Two giants out of black stone,
                     fat, round, massive,
Pay her tribute;
The honor of beauty
Honored in the beauty of song.

One drums, holding some leather
                    percussion instrument,
The other blows on a sandy flute.
Harmonious homage climbing to
                         another world.

I listen; she listens.
The song is over,
I hear clapping.

Through the same circle I grew closer
I now drift apart,
The stranger, white, unknown,
Target of stares,
                       guesses, perhaps.

Fixed eyes, gloomy eyes,
                    dusty shades
Moving in the desert.

O women seated by the Rock,
Face as dusty as the rock,
With a bucket of water
And a wet white scarf
Would I wash your feet,
Clear the scars and wrinkles
Of your face, those carvings of time.

'You are truly beautiful', I say.
"She as gone away;
                    now They wait.
"The man in White,
                    leaning against Black,
"Shall die.

"You too shall die."

Depois de Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, Pirandello

2010-01-28T13:24:00.000-08:00

Art is the stage where life becomes real.

(Porque assim se não encontra a dualidade do termo.).

2009-11-29T09:46:00.001-08:00

Raia, sol, que nada
sob' teu brilho renasce;
Repete-se, imutável,
morrendo.

2009-11-27T15:55:00.001-08:00

Striving through a shoreless sea
And smoke swirls up the mouth,
Cloudy, the sleeve half covers the hand
Leaving the fingers thin untouched

2009-11-19T15:05:00.001-08:00

I don't want to turn fifty and find out I've measured out my life with fucking coffee spoons ....

Tirado d'um filme do Woody, sem certezas de que a frase realmente assim seja.

T.S.Eliot

2009-11-08T12:50:00.001-08:00

Atrás publicado um fragmento deste poema. Não sei porquê. Fica melhor na íntegra.

THE LOVE SONG OF J.ALFRED PRUFROCK

	S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
	A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
	Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
	Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
	Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
	Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo. *


LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats	5
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …	10
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,	15
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,	20
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;	25
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;	30
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go	35
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—	40
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare	45
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,	50
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—	55
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?	60
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress	65
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin? . . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets	70
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas. . . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!	75
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?	80
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,	85
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,	100
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:	105
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.” . . . . .	110
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old … I grow old …	120
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.	125

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

* «"If I thought that my reply was made to someone who would return to the world, this flame [of my tongue] would no longer tremble. But since nobody has ever returned from these depths alive, if what I have heard is true, I'll answer you without fear of infamy." These words are spoken by Guido da Montefeltro (1212-98) in Dante's Inferno, XXVII, 61-6. Guido, with other deceitful counselors, is punished in a single prison of flame for the treacherous advice he gave to Pope Boniface.» (Lawrence Rainey)

Essay

2009-10-25T10:08:00.001-07:00

Nota prévia: peço desde já desculpa pelo fraco trabalho de formatação, mas não irei esforçar-me para tentar mudar tal facto. Apesar deste ensaio não se encontrar na sua melhor forma, as suas ideias estão articuladas de forma simples e transparente, o que me parece suficiente para um trabalho de pouca extensão e de caracter pouco exaustivo como o que se segue.

Canto I em The Cantos, Ezra Pound

No presente trabalho proponho-me a analisar o primeiro Canto da obra The Cantos, tentando encontrar elementos que, da mesma forma que no texto Homérico, sirvam de pilares para o desenvolvimento de uma extensa obra que durou cerca de 60 anos a completar. Ezra Pound foi uma figura central no cenário modernista inglês: crítico literário, ensaísta fomentador do desenvolvimento de uma nova poesia capaz de exprimir o mundo moderno e ainda poeta de elevado mérito, “il miglior fabro”, nas palavras de T.S. Eliot.^¹

The Cantos encontram o seu início a meio da Odisseia de Homero, mais precisamente no Canto XI (descida de Ulisses ao palácio de Hades), e apresentam ao leitor uma figura heróica que é o enunciador do discurso: Ulisses/Odisseu. Ao abrir The Cantos com uma viagem, Pound deixa implícito que toda a obra será um percurso, e, ao começar esta com uma nekuia, torna-se ainda mais importante notar que essa viagem não será uma viagem normal, mas sim uma até ao reino dos mortos, ao 'inferno', um local onde nem os raios do sol chegam, para que de lá se extraia conhecimento. O percurso de The Cantos é em si uma busca por conhecimento, conhecimento esse que o leitor terá acesso através de uma leitura cuidada e, devido à complexidade e variedade de temas que o Poeta apresenta, através de um estudo da obra e das várias alusões culturais e históricas que esta comporta.

No Canto I Ulisses e os seus companheiros atravessam o mar, chegam ao mundo dos mortos, oferecem-lhes sacrifícios e esperam por Tirésias, que quando chega, dirigindo-se a Ulisses, enumera os eventos que se iram suceder até que este possa regressar à sua pátria. Após o aparecimento de Tirésias, sem qualquer indicação gráfica que indique uma mudança na voz que enuncia o discurso, o leitor depara-se com a seguinte passagem:

“Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus,

In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer. “^²

Identificando assim a fonte de onde partiu a tradução do primeiro excerto do Canto I, a descida de Ulisses a Hades, o Poeta, mediante a tradução de versões latinas de Hinos Homéricos (estas já não de Andreas Divus, mas sim de Georguis Dartona Cretensis, “The Cretan”^³), exalta Afrodite, deusa do amor, conferindo assim à sua obra uma componente sensual, presente nas palavras que este usa para venerar a Deusa

“Cypri munimenta sortita est, mirthful, oricalchi, with golden

Girdle and breast bands, thou with dark eyelids (...)” ^⁴

Tendo exposto de forma muito geral o conteúdo do Canto I, passarei de seguida a uma análise mais aprofundada dos seus conteúdos.

O primeiro aspecto que vou abordar é o relacionamento existente entre a voz do Poeta e a voz de Ulisses/Odisseu. Como referido anteriormente, após o aparecimento de Tirésias, o texto sofre uma alteração profunda. “Lie quiet Divus” não indica directamente uma mudança na voz enunciadora do discurso, mas, tomando atenção, o leitor irá notar que não é mais Ulisses que narra a sua viagem a Hades, mas sim o Poeta que identifica a fonte da sua tradução como uma versão Latina da Odisseia por parte de Andreas Divus, um obscuro humanista do renascimento. Não havendo qualquer indicação directa da mudança de voz, torna-se claro no texto uma ligação profunda entre a figura de Ulisses e a voz que se segue à narração deste, que António Botelho de Amaral indentifica como sendo a voz do Poeta^⁵. Sendo a nekuia inicial um importante indício do caminho que a obra de Pound irá seguir, a personagem que relata essa descida ao sub-mundo também se torna significativa. O mito de Ulisses, o vaguear deste durante anos a fio através do vasto mar, a morte de todos os seus companheiros, a sua relação com os deuses, a sua devoção aos seus próprios princípios, tornam-no uma persona ideal para Pound^⁶. O caminho a ser percorrido em The Cantos, a descida ao sub-mundo, ao inferno cultural e civilizacional do mundo moderno, tornam o mito de Ulisses uma metáfora essencial para toda a obra, sendo a condição de herói explorador e solitário o que irá caracterizar a voz do Poeta enquanto protagonista em The Cantos.

Embora haja divergências quanto ao género literário em que The Cantos se enquadra, neste trabalho considero a obra como um texto épico. Embora uma das características do épico seja a narrativa clara e objectiva e em The Cantos haver uma predominância da voz do Poeta, e não haver uma linha narrativa unitária que se possa estabelecer, não considero que tais aspectos afastem The Cantos deste género literário. A partir deste momento tentarei exemplificar como esta obra de Ezra Pound se pode enquadrar no género épico, tendo em especial atenção a tradição do poema épico se dividir, nas suas instâncias iniciais, em Proposição e Invocação.

Se numa primeira leitura parece que nenhuma destas técnicas está presente no Canto I isso deve-se ao facto de estas serem apresentadas de uma forma implícita, ou seja, ao contrário da Odisseia que apresenta em linhas objectivas a Proposição e a Invocação, no Canto I estas estão presentes não no que é dito, mas sim na forma como o Canto é cantado.

O primeiro ponto que converge para uma tal interpretação parece-me já ter sido devidamente explorado neste trabalho, sendo esse ponto a nekuia que abre o poema como representativa do percurso que irá ser seguido ao longe deste. Se tomarmos atenção à tradução que nos é dada de uma versão latina da Odisseia de Homero, mesmo não tendo acesso a esta para que se possa comparar os textos, torna-se óbvio que a linguagem utilizada, tal como o nível estrutural com que se apresenta, divergem do texto original. De facto, em vez de se utilizar o termo 'tradução' para caracterizar a abertura de The Cantos, talvez seja mais acertado usar o termo 'adaptação'. Pound, ao traduzir a versão de Andreas Divus adapta-a para um inglês moderno (deixando apenas as falas das personagens com arcaísmos «“Elpenor, how art thou come to this dark coast ?/ “Cam'st thou afoot, outsripping seamen? “»^⁷), e torna o discurso de Ulisses um pouco fragmentado, técnica essa que é um marco do modernismo. Essa fragmentação parece-me mais aparente na recriação da profecia de Tirésias, convertendo o discurso deste em núcleos essenciais:

«(...)”Odysseus

“Shalt return through spiteful Neptune, over dark seas,

“Lose all companions.” (...)»

Este afunilar da profecia de Tirésias, que na Odisseia se estende para além da chegada de Ulisses a Ítaca, é representativo de uma inovação do discurso épico que The Cantos propõe executar. Aqui encontra-se, na forma como é dito e não no que é dito, a proposição de inovar, técnica e estruturalmente, o discurso épico. De facto, como aponta Christine Froula em A Guide to Ezra Pound's 'Selected Poems':

«[...] Canto I [...] is not only the narrated descent of Odysseus but Pound's own linguistic descent to the depths of Western literary past to seek direction for his own journey 'home' to a language that belongs to the twentieth century as Homer's did to the ancient world and Divu's to the Renaissance.»^⁸.

A própria abertura do Canto I “And”, tal como a finalização deste “So that:”, são também exemplos da inovação que The Cantos propõe, tal como representativos da fragmentação do discurso. O “And” inicial tem, em si, implícito o continuar de uma acção, o que confere ao poema um início in media res. As palavras “So that:”, que fecham o Canto I, conferem continuidade e servem de ponte para o Canto II, sendo indispensáveis para estabelecer uma ligação entre os dois. A interjeição “So that:” permite que haja fluidez entre os dois Cantos, para além de, de certa maneira, abarcar todos os Cantos que se seguem.

Tendo tratado da Proposição, passemos então à Invocação. A Invocação em The Cantos é algo mais difícil de identificar que a Proposição. Não é possível encontrar elementos que possibilitem estabelecer com certeza o que faz parte de uma Invocação no texto, tendo muitos críticos defendido que tal característica do poema épico estava ausente em The Cantos. No entanto, parece-me pertinente dedicar a este assunto alguma reflexão: se a Proposição no Canto I se apresenta de forma tão dissimulada, porque não há de se passar o mesmo com a Invocação? A minha leitura faz-me crer que existem alguns elementos que se pode identificar como Invocação no poema épico de Pound, embora, se tivermos em mente o conceito clássico de Invocação estes não se possam aplicar. É preciso considerar as linhas de inovação que a Proposição nos sugere para que se possa ter algum vislumbre de uma possível Invocação no Canto I. Se The Cantos é um poema que tem como uma das suas bases inovar o discurso poético, então talvez a própria Invocação já seja alvo dessa inovação.

Consideremos: no texto clássico a Invocação tem como maior propósito legitimar a voz do narrador enquanto uma voz humana que relata feitos humanos e divinos, fazendo sentido então que o poeta invoque a Musa para que esta o inspire, que lhe dê acesso ao conhecimento que lhe permitirá relatar tais feitos; em The Cantos é óbvio que não existe uma invocação à Musa, nem mesmo a alusão e veneração a Afrodite no final do Canto I podem ser consideradas como tal; por outro lado, é preciso ponderar se o recurso a citações de textos alheios, se a abundância de documentos que o Poeta irá apresentar ao longo de toda a obra (linha que encontra a sua base estrutural em “Lie quiet Divus, I mean, that is Andreas Divus, / In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer.”) não representam em si a base que garante verosimilhança ao conhecimento que a voz do Poeta irá transmitir ao longo de The Cantos. Não será o recorrente uso de documentação, com o fim de transmitir uma mensagem, o que legitima a voz do Poeta enquanto enunciador de um discurso que visa transmitir um certo grau de conhecimento, que, para Pound, seria indispensável para se atingir um 'Paradiso Terrestre'? Talvez, para além da função de inovar o discurso poético que a abrupta mudança de voz toma, aquando a identificação de fontes, o recurso a textos alheios também sirva para tornar verosímil a voz do Poeta enquanto fonte de conhecimento (da mesma forma que a Invocação da Musa serve para legitimar a voz do narrador na Odisseia). É notável a forma como, para além de todas as características atrás apresentadas, o Canto I também estabelece a base para todo o didactismo presente em The Cantos.

António Botelho de Amaral tenta enquadrar The Cantos na tradição da epopeia, principalmente no contexto do épico americano (tendo em especial atenção a obra de Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass), estabelecendo aspectos básicos que se podem encontrar em The Cantos e que aproximam a obra da tradição milenar do poema épico: “o didactismo; a temática de interesse colectivo; a dimensão histórica, mitológica, cultural; a intervenção de «heróis»”^⁹. Tais princípios fundamentais sustentam o meu enquadramento da obra no género épico.

The Cantos é uma obra extensa e prolífera, cuidadosamente trabalhada e executada, que, apesar de todas as suas inovações, pode ser encarada como um poema épico. O Canto I torna-se exemplificativo tanto do que afasta The Cantos da tradição poética da epopeia, como do que os aproxima. O início in media res, a inclusão de dados históricos (no Canto I presentes nas indicações das fontes), o mito e o recurso a figuras heróicas aproximam o poema da tradição homérica da epopeia; a inovação da forma, o recurso a diversas fontes através da adaptação ou da citação, a fragmentação do discurso e o carácter alusivo do poema afastam-no dessa mesma tradição, não sendo suficientes, no entanto, para criar uma fissura intransponível entre The Cantos e o épico. De facto, em vez de estes aspectos entrarem em ruptura com a tradição do discurso épico, inovam-na, adaptando-a ao homem e ao mundo moderno.

1T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.

2Ezra Pound, Selected Poems, Faber and Faber Limited, London, s.d., p. 114.

3Michael Alexander, “The Cantos”, in The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound, Edinburgh University Press, s.d, p.p. 143 – 144.

4Ezra Pound, Selected Poems, Faber and Faber Limited, London, s.d., p. 115.

5António Botelho de Amaral, Ezra Pound: Escrita Inovadora em «The Cantos», Edições Cosmos, 1998.

6Michael Alexander, “The Cantos”, in The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound, Edinburgh University Press, s.d.

7Ezra Pound, Selected Poems, Faber and Faber Limited, London, s.d., p. 114.

8Apud António Botelho de Amaral, Ezra Pound: Escrita Inovadora em «The Cantos», Edições Cosmos, 1998, p. 195.

9António Botelho de Amaral, Ezra Pound: Escrita Inovadora em «The Cantos», Edições Cosmos, 1998, p. 193.

Bibiografia:

Ezra Pound, Selected Poems, Faber and Faber Limited, London, s.d.

António Botelho de Amaral, Ezra Pound: Escrita Inovadora em «The Cantos», Edições Cosmos, 1998.

Michael Alexander, The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound, Edinburgh University Press, s.d.

2009-10-24T13:55:00.001-07:00

In nature there are no negations, no possible transfers of negative force.

Ernest Fenollosa

AT THE HAWK'S WELL - A FRAGMENT

2009-10-24T12:33:00.001-07:00

Here the final scene from a play; for a fuller understanding of it I suggest reading the play in it's hole. One reads it very quickly and finds much delight in it's rhythms. It is based on the structure of the Japanese Noh theater, and though I'm not sure of this statement I will keep it, for I cherish it. There's one thing, though, the reader may find missing when reading: the actual acting - and I'm not saying it solely because it is a play. It becomes very obvious At The Hawk's Well requires music accompanying the very specific movements of the players, without which one get's some sense of incompleteness. The music, as well as the choreographed movements, are part of the THING and have so heavy a weight as the words and rhytms themselves have. Nothing is to be put aside here.
Nevertheless, for this fragment I present here, the words stand for themselves, being them sung or not sung. I suggest the reader should, after a quiet reading, try and read it out-aloud to himself: it does in fact become more lively.

from THE HAWK'S WELL, W. B. Yeats

(Songs for the unfolding of the cloth)

                              Come to me, human faces,
                              Familiar memories;
                              I have found hateful eyes
                              Among the desolate places,
                              Unfaltering, unmoistened eyes.

                              Folly alone I cherish,
                              I choose it for my share,
                              Being but a mouthful of air,
                              I am content to perish,
                              I am but a mouthful of sweet air.

                              O lamentable shadows,
                              Obscurity of strife,
                              I choose a pleasant life,
                              Among indolent meadows;
                              Wisdom must live a bitter life.

(They then fold up the cloth, singing.)

"The man that I praise",
Cries out the empty well,
"Lives all his days
Where a hand on the bell
Can call the milch cows

                              To the comfortable door of his house.
                              Who but an idiot would praise
                              Dry stones in a well?

                              "The man that I praise,"
Cries out the leafless tree,
"Has married and stays
By an old hearth, and he
On naugth has set store
But children and dogs on the floor.
Who but an idiot would praise
A withered tree?"    (They go out.)

                                             THE END

2009-10-22T15:23:00.001-07:00

Come in chiare acque albor lontan di stella
Ridea Palma ne gli occhi e trasparia. *

O facto de Carducci não ter conseguido uma audiência fora dos círculos mais cultivados e fastidiosos de Itália é uma prova evidente que a poesia é algo mais do que pensamento requintado.
Se a poesia faz parte da literatura - ao que, muitas vezes ponho as minhas dúvidas, já que a verdadeira poesia tem uma relação muito mais estreita com a melhor música, a melhor pintura e a melhor escultura, do que com qualquer parte da literatura que não seja poesia verdadeira; se, contudo, Arnold considerou a poesia como parte da literatura, então a sua defenição de literatura como "crítica da vida" foi a notável blasfémia gerada na frigidez do seu espírito.
O espírito das artes é dinâmico. As artes não são passivas, nem estáticas, nem, em certo sentido, reflexo da vida, embora este aspecto possa estar implicado na sua origem.
A poesia é tanto uma "crítica da vida" quanto o ferro em brasa uma crítica do fogo.

* Carducci: Juvenalia, I, XI. Como em águas claras a alvura distante da estrela / Ri a sua alma nos olhos e neles transparece.

Ezra Pound, The Spirit of Romance (1910)
Tradução: Isabel Pedro dos Santos

To Vaclav Klaus

2009-10-06T09:36:00.001-07:00

Read; Think; Sign

http://www.petitiononline.com/sptklaus/petition.html

W.B. YEATS

2009-10-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

A COAT (1914)

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it,
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.

from RESPONSIBILITIES: POEMS AND A PLAY

BERNARD REVISED

2009-09-28T17:15:00.001-07:00

BERNARD LAMPETIDES

Walked I among many a reverie
A weary step on the dullest face
I grew old in monotonous days
Long and fastidious, those were my ways

                          I feel her coming every day
                      I know the end's near anyway

In the reflection
A light, unknown presence
Saw these eyes of mine that stare:
A face thinner and thinner
Towards its end; I grew blind
          I saw no things,
Then myself, lifeless in colour
       and in water bathed, the sea colander
       the phoenician and the sailor
- that is your body but your body doesn't care

These images that in my mind occur
These are petals in a black bough
Apparitions and faces from the very unknown.

   'Behind like forgotten thoughts
    There remains this multitude . . .'
         - Do not force writing.

                          I feel her coming everyday
                     I know the end's near anyway

Unattainable and far the hours remain
The eyes see but do not retain.
I seat and drink my coffee
As black as the sky should be
In silence I do not say, I do not speak:
Thinking myself another artist
Am but a body growing old . . .

And body very like a train . . .
It passes and never stops
Inside we dwell but cannot stop.

          and in the midst
          of routine
          I forget my feet . . .

                       *   *   *   *   *

I wander and sing prayers to my soul
          skies entrance
          grey with clouds seems shut
But the songs heard within
A clear voice,
They clear the ravings of my mind

         (voices floating as if mist
          gazing upwards in golden light,
          about the fiery lit sky
          will and willing in their flight.)

Underneath the shapeless, crimson veil
A star shines, bursting in darkness
Where I lay; I listen to the choir
And the voices are of nymphs,
          pale clear and soft and beautiful,
          pale white and marvelous and dreadful.

                       *   *   *   *   *

The appearance of faces in midst of crowds:
          I saw her as a symbol
          wooden token of crafted wings . . .
So I stayed, and so I watched ,
          I watched awhile
          and did it with watchful eyes:
She was a girl and she was a bird
          in the measurements of her body
          feathery wings of white, as by magic, aglow:
A girl, a women and a bird:
          a girl whose eyes were fair,
          and I could tell
          by the movement of her hair.

To follow delicate wanderings
          'till one looks psychotic
          guilty of the rape of Philomela . . .
To stay, to half-hide
To condense ones presence in guilty eyes! . . .
There won't be time! O there won't be time!

We love at distance,
We talk no longer
Than the crossing of an eye . . .

                       *   *   *   *   *

The cool breeze by the river:
A precious moment of the world
Unfolding before my blindness
          - a vision, a glimmer,
            or a flower? . . .
This land's a man's wasted land,
Here is all rock and no water
No water and only rock.
Alone the inscape of the natural world,
   remir,
Alone the emotion,
The rest is dross.

There someone came/looked/stopped.
Talked about Motion I said I had no notion.
'Modern myths', says I,
   'On the loveliness which has not yet come into this world.'

What age now, shapeless, breathing?

(surely the old Gods are dead,
   as dead as a corpse lying
   feeding the vermin and the maggot)

   'They have never left us', he'd say, yes . . .

What if her touch approaches
Dressed as a lady,
An ordinary though marvelous one?
Empty eyes and my nerves still dancin'!
          (will I talk, knowing the end,
           will I converse, then?)
Thoughts within a felt soul,
A vision that spreads, goes up the stair
As tunes of air . . .
          the poet's dying fingers
          plucking the strings of his lyre,
'Till on the ground lying
I'm nothing but a stone:
          the universe is no more
          car c'est nous qui sommes les temps

(And in the midst
Of fortune
I forget my feet . . .)

                       *   *   *   *   *

Unwrapped thoughts

Blinking lights

Silk blankets of soul

Smoke fading at far sight

These fragments have I shored against my ruins

                          I feel her coming every day
                      I know the end's near anyway

Still and quiet brother are you still and quiet.

2009-09-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

À procura de respostas sobre o que poderia ser a 'falácia clássica de Bastiat' (ver Viver Mata) deparei-me com a teoria da falseabilidade de Karl Popper. Seguindo as recomendações que o Wikipedia me deu, fui dar uma vista de olhos à página de discussão do artigo sobre a falseabilidade e encontrei o seguinte:

The language here is too complex. It's full of philosophical buzz-words, which are supposed to make the writing sound precise and intelligent... but really we're just going to alienate anyone who hasn't already been schooled in this philosophical language. I'm going to try to dumb it down a bit. (e.g. "stands in contradistinction" = "contrasts")

Ao ler tal coisa é impossível não ficar boquiaberto. Note-se o que vem entre parêntesis.
É normal que alguém não familiarizado com o vocabulário filosófico possa encontrar alguma dificuldade em entender, não certas frases, mas sim certos termos que até então lhe eram desconhecidos, as "philosophical buzz-words". Agora: quando alguém se encontra nesta situação a coisa que me parece mais natural a fazer é 'ir saber o que é que a palavra quer dizer', ou, como calculo que muita gente faça hoje-em-dia, apagar a página e não pensar mais no assunto. Quem segue o segundo exemplo é alguém que não tem o mínimo interesse em aprender, aliás, seguindo o exemplo de Confúcio, dir-se-ia que não tem 'amor pela aprendizagem'.
Não me parece que haja, havendo há apenas em grau insuficiente, consciência da importância que uma terminologia exacta, objectiva e exaustiva traz, não só para o indíviduo em si mas também para as instituições que, supostamente, ensinam o indíviduo. Terminologia correcta traz claridade de pensamento. Como li algures "one who studies the illuminated manuscripts of the middle ages will understand the importance of a clear cut vocabulary", vocabulário esse que se tem vindo a perder, acrescento.
Mas o que mais me espanta aqui nem é o facto de alguém refilar com o vocabulário académico, ou o que quer que seja, que é usado para descrever uma qualquer componete de uma qualquer teoria filosófica; o que me espanta é que, quem quer que seja que escreveu aquilo, depois de fazer a sua piada " I'm going to try to dumb it down a bit.", demonstra "(e.g. "stands in contradistinction" = "contrasts")", tornando a sua piada numa frase de sentido literal. Alguém percebe o sentido da mudança que ele usa como exemplo? É que se a piada está no exemplo, e quem escreve está a ser irónico, então deixa de fazer o mínimo sentido eu ter encontrado este excerto onde encontrei, principalmente quando aparece sobre o título "LANGUAGE TOO COMPLEX".
O mais estranho no meio disto tudo é o facto de no mesmo texto encontrar-se "but really we're just going (...)", indicando que quem escreve está familiarizado com a linguagem filosófica, chegando a fazer parte de quem a usa. Como é que alguém que estuda filosofia pode sugerir a alteração que ali é sugerida, queixando-se da complexidade da língua? O que é que se passa?

Puro absurdo.

T.S.Eliot

2009-09-13T12:37:00.001-07:00

Tradition and the Individual Talent

I IN English writing we seldom speak of tradition, though we occasionally apply its name in deploring its absence. We cannot refer to "the tradition" or to "a tradition"; at most, we employ the adjective in saying that the poetry of So-and-so is "traditional" or even "too traditional." Seldom, perhaps, does the word appear except in a phrase of censure. If otherwise, it is vaguely approbative, with the implication, as to the work approved, of some pleasing archæological reconstruction. You can hardly make the word agreeable to English ears without this comfortable reference to the reassuring science of archæology.	1
Certainly the word is not likely to appear in our appreciations of living or dead writers. Every nation, every race, has not only its own creative, but its own critical turn of mind; and is even more oblivious of the shortcomings and limitations of its critical habits than of those of its creative genius. We know, or think we know, from the enormous mass of critical writing that has appeared in the French language the critical method or habit of the French; we only conclude (we are such unconscious people) that the French are "more critical" than we, and sometimes even plume ourselves a little with the fact, as if the French were the less spontaneous. Perhaps they are; but we might remind ourselves that criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism. One of the facts that might come to light in this process is our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects or parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet's difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavour to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity.	2
Yet if the only form of tradition, of handing down, consisted in following the ways of the immediate generation before us in a blind or timid adherence to its successes, "tradition" should positively be discouraged. We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition. Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order. This historical sense, which is a sense of the timeless as well as of the temporal and of the timeless and of the temporal together, is what makes a writer traditional. And it is at the same time what makes a writer most acutely conscious of his place in time, of his contemporaneity.	3
No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of æsthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjusted; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature, will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities.	4
In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitably be judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of dead critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art. And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value—a test, it is true, which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity. We say: it appears to conform, and is perhaps individual, or it appears individual, and may conform; but we are hardly likely to find that it is one and not the other.	5
To proceed to a more intelligible exposition of the relation of the poet to the past: he can neither take the past as a lump, an indiscriminate bolus, nor can he form himself wholly on one or two private admirations, nor can he form himself wholly upon one preferred period. The first course is inadmissible, the second is an important experience of youth, and the third is a pleasant and highly desirable supplement. The poet must be very conscious of the main current, which does not at all flow invariably through the most distinguished reputations. He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same. He must be aware that the mind of Europe—the mind of his own country—a mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own private mind—is a mind which changes, and that this change is a development which abandons nothing en route, which does not superannuate either Shakespeare, or Homer, or the rock drawing of the Magdalenian draughtsmen. That this development, refinement perhaps, complication certainly, is not, from the point of view of the artist, any improvement. Perhaps not even an improvement from the point of view of the psychologist or not to the extent which we imagine; perhaps only in the end based upon a complication in economics and machinery. But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past's awareness of itself cannot show.	6
Some one said: "The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did." Precisely, and they are that which we know.	7
I am alive to a usual objection to what is clearly part of my programme for the métier of poetry. The objection is that the doctrine requires a ridiculous amount of erudition (pedantry), a claim which can be rejected by appeal to the lives of poets in any pantheon. It will even be affirmed that much learning deadens or perverts poetic sensibility. While, however, we persist in believing that a poet ought to know as much as will not encroach upon his necessary receptivity and necessary laziness, it is not desirable to confine knowledge to whatever can be put into a useful shape for examinations, drawing-rooms, or the still more pretentious modes of publicity. Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history from Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum. What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career.	8
What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.	9
There remains to define this process of depersonalization and its relation to the sense of tradition. It is in this depersonalization that art may be said to approach the condition of science. I shall, therefore, invite you to consider, as a suggestive analogy, the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide.	10
II Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. If we attend to the confused cries of the newspaper critics and the susurrus of popular repetition that follows, we shall hear the names of poets in great numbers; if we seek not Blue-book knowledge but the enjoyment of poetry, and ask for a poem, we shall seldom find it. In the last article I tried to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and suggested the conception of poetry as a living whole of all the poetry that has ever been written. The other aspect of this Impersonal theory of poetry is the relation of the poem to its author. And I hinted, by an analogy, that the mind of the mature poet differs from that of the immature one not precisely in any valuation of "personality," not being necessarily more interesting, or having "more to say," but rather by being a more finely perfected medium in which special, or very varied, feelings are at liberty to enter into new combinations.	11
The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected; has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. The mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. It may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material.	12
The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings. The effect of a work of art upon the person who enjoys it is an experience different in kind from any experience not of art. It may be formed out of one emotion, or may be a combination of several; and various feelings, inhering for the writer in particular words or phrases or images, may be added to compose the final result. Or great poetry may be made without the direct use of any emotion whatever: composed out of feelings solely. Canto XV of the Inferno (Brunetto Latini) is a working up of the emotion evident in the situation; but the effect, though single as that of any work of art, is obtained by considerable complexity of detail. The last quatrain gives an image, a feeling attaching to an image, which "came," which did not develop simply out of what precedes, but which was probably in suspension in the poet's mind until the proper combination arrived for it to add itself to. The poet's mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.	13
If you compare several representative passages of the greatest poetry you see how great is the variety of types of combination, and also how completely any semi-ethical criterion of "sublimity" misses the mark. For it is not the "greatness," the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts. The episode of Paolo and Francesca employs a definite emotion, but the intensity of the poetry is something quite different from whatever intensity in the supposed experience it may give the impression of. It is no more intense, furthermore, than Canto XXVI, the voyage of Ulysses, which has not the direct dependence upon an emotion. Great variety is possible in the process of transmution of emotion: the murder of Agamemnon, or the agony of Othello, gives an artistic effect apparently closer to a possible original than the scenes from Dante. In the Agamemnon, the artistic emotion approximates to the emotion of an actual spectator; in Othello to the emotion of the protagonist himself. But the difference between art and the event is always absolute; the combination which is the murder of Agamemnon is probably as complex as that which is the voyage of Ulysses. In either case there has been a fusion of elements. The ode of Keats contains a number of feelings which have nothing particular to do with the nightingale, but which the nightingale, partly, perhaps, because of its attractive name, and partly because of its reputation, served to bring together.	14
The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a "personality" to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.	15
I will quote a passage which is unfamiliar enough to be regarded with fresh attention in the light—or darkness—of these observations: And now methinks I could e'en chide myself For doating on her beauty, though her death Shall be revenged after no common action. Does the silkworm expend her yellow labours For thee? For thee does she undo herself? Are lordships sold to maintain ladyships For the poor benefit of a bewildering minute? Why does yon fellow falsify highways, And put his life between the judge's lips, To refine such a thing—keeps horse and men To beat their valours for her?... In this passage (as is evident if it is taken in its context) there is a combination of positive and negative emotions: an intensely strong attraction toward beauty and an equally intense fascination by the ugliness which is contrasted with it and which destroys it. This balance of contrasted emotion is in the dramatic situation to which the speech is pertinent, but that situation alone is inadequate to it. This is, so to speak, the structural emotion, provided by the drama. But the whole effect, the dominant tone, is due to the fact that a number of floating feelings, having an affinity to this emotion by no means superficially evident, have combined with it to give us a new art emotion.	16
It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting. His particular emotions may be simple, or crude, or flat. The emotion in his poetry will be a very complex thing, but not with the complexity of the emotions of people who have very complex or unusual emotions in life. One error, in fact, of eccentricity in poetry is to seek for new human emotions to express; and in this search for novelty in the wrong place it discovers the perverse. The business of the poet is not to find new emotions, but to use the ordinary ones and, in working them up into poetry, to express feelings which are not in actual emotions at all. And emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Consequently, we must believe that "emotion recollected in tranquillity" is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquillity. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experiences which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all; it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. These experiences are not "recollected," and they finally unite in an atmosphere which is "tranquil" only in that it is a passive attending upon the event. Of course this is not quite the whole story. There is a great deal, in the writing of poetry, which must be conscious and deliberate. In fact, the bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him "personal." Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.	17
III This essay proposes to halt at the frontier of metaphysics or mysticism, and confine itself to such practical conclusions as can be applied by the responsible person interested in poetry. To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim: for it would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad. There are many people who appreciate the expression of sincere emotion in verse, and there is a smaller number of people who can appreciate technical excellence. But very few know when there is expression of significant emotion, emotion which has its life in the poem and not in the history of the poet. The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.

2009-09-05T04:54:00.001-07:00

Stephen Dedalus has bad teeth. Bloom eats kidneys.

2009-07-28T02:52:00.000-07:00

AMID THE WOOD

Brazen falls, and beneath it,
............................beneath it,
The valley is thick with trees
Bough by bough the light goes by,
Leaf by leaf
......................the leaves are singing.

Harsh, granite, stronghold out in cliffs,
A cave, swallow'd in earth's deep
A lake.......... chanting a lake
Drop by drop the waters dancing
And the wind blowing,
........................................blowing a cavernous wind
As if the waters should break

There, midst with shades
......................monumental, bearer of light,
............Thou who bathe with nymphs
......................floating breezes, ethereal voices
Peaceful tunes we know by heart

'Tis a watery kingdom, a sacred place !
'Tis fill'd in ambition to over throne heaven's grace !

Here there's riches long since forgotten,
Frail begotten in men's heart
But lo ! The wind caresses the earth
With it's soft flushes
......................Earthly riches by gods o'ergiven !
..............fleeting sounds,
..........................................rattle of leaves
......................Joyous tunes and our hearts forgiven !

Tito

P., ALBA

2009-07-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

Alba

As cool as the pale wet leaves
..........................of lily-of-the-valley
She lay beside me in the dawn.

Ezra Pound

LUSTRA

O «homem europeu».

2009-07-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Ver

2009-06-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

A SONG OF DEGREES

I
Rest me with Chinese colours,
For I think the glass is evil.

II
The wind moves above the wheat -
With a silver crashing,
A thin war of metal.

I have known the golden disc,
I have seen it melting above me.
I have known the stone-bright place,
................The hall of clear colours.

III
O glass subtly evil, O confusion of colours !
O light bound and bent in, O soul of the captive,
Why am I warned? Why am I sent away ?
Why is your glitter full of crimson mistrust?
O glass subtle and cunning, O powdery gold !
O filaments of amber, two-faced iridescence !

Ezra Pound
LUSTRA

Iridescence -"having colors like the rainbow; exhibiting a play of changeable colors; nacreous; prismatic; as, iridescent glass."
"Interference of light either at the surface or in the interior of a material that produces a series of colours as the angle of incidence changes. Best known are the colours seen in precious opal resulting from the interference of light by submicroscopic layers of nearly spherical particles 1,500-3,000 angstroms in diameter that are arranged in a regular pattern. Common opal lacks this layering, and scattered light merely gives a milky opalescence."

Browning

2009-05-31T14:03:00.001-07:00

'CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK TOWER CAME'

I.

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

II.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

III.

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

IV.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

As when a sick man very near to death
Seems dead indeed, and feels begin and end
The tears and takes the farewell of each friend,
And hears one bid the other go, draw breath
Freelier outside, (``since all is o'er,'' he saith,
``And the blow falIen no grieving can amend;'')

VI.

While some discuss if near the other graves
Be room enough for this, and when a day
Suits best for carrying the corpse away,
With care about the banners, scarves and staves:
And still the man hears all, and only craves
He may not shame such tender love and stay.

VII.

Thus, I had so long suffered in this quest,
Heard failure prophesied so oft, been writ
So many times among ``The Band''---to wit,
The knights who to the Dark Tower's search addressed
Their steps---that just to fail as they, seemed best,
And all the doubt was now---should I be fit?

VIII.

So, quiet as despair, I turned from him,
That hateful cripple, out of his highway
Into the path he pointed. All the day
Had been a dreary one at best, and dim
Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim
Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.

IX.

For mark! no sooner was I fairly found
Pledged to the plain, after a pace or two,
Than, pausing to throw backward a last view
O'er the safe road, 'twas gone; grey plain all round:
Nothing but plain to the horizon's bound.
I might go on; nought else remained to do.

So, on I went. I think I never saw
Such starved ignoble nature; nothing throve:
For flowers---as well expect a cedar grove!
But cockle, spurge, according to their law
Might propagate their kind, with none to awe,
You'd think; a burr had been a treasure-trove.

XI.

No! penury, inertness and grimace,
In some strange sort, were the land's portion. ``See
``Or shut your eyes,'' said nature peevishly,
``It nothing skills: I cannot help my case:
``'Tis the Last judgment's fire must cure this place,
``Calcine its clods and set my prisoners free.''

XII.

If there pushed any ragged thistle-stalk
Above its mates, the head was chopped; the bents
Were jealous else. What made those holes and rents
In the dock's harsh swarth leaves, bruised as to baulk
All hope of greenness?'tis a brute must walk
Pashing their life out, with a brute's intents.

XIII.

As for the grass, it grew as scant as hair
In leprosy; thin dry blades pricked the mud
Which underneath looked kneaded up with blood.
One stiff blind horse, his every bone a-stare,
Stood stupefied, however he came there:
Thrust out past service from the devil's stud!

XIV.

Alive? he might be dead for aught I know,
With that red gaunt and colloped neck a-strain,
And shut eyes underneath the rusty mane;
Seldom went such grotesqueness with such woe;
I never saw a brute I hated so;
He must be wicked to deserve such pain.

XV.

I shut my eyes and turned them on my heart.
As a man calls for wine before he fights,
I asked one draught of earlier, happier sights,
Ere fitly I could hope to play my part.
Think first, fight afterwards---the soldier's art:
One taste of the old time sets all to rights.

XVI.

Not it! I fancied Cuthbert's reddening face
Beneath its garniture of curly gold,
Dear fellow, till I almost felt him fold
An arm in mine to fix me to the place,
That way he used. Alas, one night's disgrace!
Out went my heart's new fire and left it cold.

XVII.

Giles then, the soul of honour---there he stands
Frank as ten years ago when knighted first.
What honest man should dare (he said) he durst.
Good---but the scene shifts---faugh! what hangman hands
Pin to his breast a parchment? His own bands
Read it. Poor traitor, spit upon and curst!

XVIII.

Better this present than a past like that;
Back therefore to my darkening path again!
No sound, no sight as far as eye could strain.
Will the night send a howlet or a bat?
I asked: when something on the dismal flat
Came to arrest my thoughts and change their train.

XIX.

A sudden little river crossed my path
As unexpected as a serpent comes.
No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms;
This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath
For the fiend's glowing hoof---to see the wrath
Of its black eddy bespate with flakes and spumes.

XX.

So petty yet so spiteful! All along,
Low scrubby alders kneeled down over it;
Drenched willows flung them headlong in a fit
Of route despair, a suicidal throng:
The river which had done them all the wrong,
Whate'er that was, rolled by, deterred no whit.

XXI.

Which, while I forded,---good saints, how I feared
To set my foot upon a dead man's cheek,
Each step, or feel the spear I thrust to seek
For hollows, tangled in his hair or beard!
---It may have been a water-rat I speared,
But, ugh! it sounded like a baby's shriek.

XXII.

Glad was I when I reached the other bank.
Now for a better country. Vain presage!
Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage,
Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank
Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank,
Or wild cats in a red-hot iron cage---

XXIII.

The fight must so have seemed in that fell cirque.
What penned them there, with all the plain to choose?
No foot-print leading to that horrid mews,
None out of it. Mad brewage set to work
Their brains, no doubt, like galley-slaves the Turk
Pits for his pastime, Christians against Jews.

XXIV.

And more than that---a furlong on---why, there!
What bad use was that engine for, that wheel,
Or brake, not wheel---that harrow fit to reel
Men's bodies out like silk? with all the air
Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware,
Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel.

XXV.

Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood,
Next a marsh, it would seem, and now mere earth
Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth,
Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood
Changes and off he goes!) within a rood---
Bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth.

XXVI.

Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim,
Now patches where some leanness of the soil's
Broke into moss or substances like boils;
Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him
Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim
Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils.

XXVII.

And just as far as ever from the end!
Nought in the distance but the evening, nought
To point my footstep further! At the thought,
great black bird, Apollyon's bosom-friend,
Sailed past, nor beat his wide wing dragon-penned
That brushed my cap---perchance the guide I sought.

XXVIII.

For, looking up, aware I somehow grew,
'Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place
All round to mountains---with such name to grace
Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view.
How thus they had surprised me,---solve it, you!
How to get from them was no clearer case.

XXIX.

Yet half I seemed to recognize some trick
Of mischief happened to me, God knows when---
In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then,
Progress this way. When, in the very nick
Of giving up, one time more, came a click
As when a trap shuts---you're inside the den!

XXX.

Burningly it came on me all at once,
This was the place! those two hills on the right,
Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight;
While to the left, a tall scalped mountain... Dunce,
Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce,
After a life spent training for the sight!

XXXI.

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counter-part
In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf
Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf
He strikes on, only when the timbers start.

XXXII.

Not see? because of night perhaps?---why, day
Came back again for that! before it left,
The dying sunset kindled through a cleft:
The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay,
Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay,---
``Now stab and end the creature---to the heft!''

XXXIII.

Not hear? when noise was everywhere! it tolled
Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears
Of all the lost adventurers my peers,---
How such a one was strong, and such was bold,
And such was fortunate, yet, each of old
Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years.

XXXIV.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. ``Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.''

Robert Browning, Men and Women (1855)

Owen

2009-05-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and strops,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Wilfred Owen

P. ; from RIPOSTES (1912)

2009-05-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

AN OBJECT

This thing, that hath a code and not a core,
Hath set acquaintance where might be affections,
And nothing now
........................Disturbeth his reflections.

Ezra Pound

Pound, from LUSTRA

2009-04-27T14:24:00.000-07:00

SALUTATION

O generation of the thoroughly smug
...........and thoroughly uncomfortable,
I have seen fishermen picnicking in the sun,
I have seen them with untidy families,
I have seen their smiles full of teeth
...........and heard ungaily laughter.
And I am happier than you are,
And they were happier than I am;
And the fish swim in the lake
...........and do not even own clothing.

Pound

2009-04-20T13:26:00.000-07:00

from THE LANGUEDOC COAST

(...)

Can a man
be bothered making
poetry of nights like
this! Fools, readers of books,
go south & live
there. It is
all I have to
say for this time
to the end of it,
that life,
despite all its damnable
tangles & circumformations
is worth the candle,
go south & live there
days nights &
the rest of it, in
body or in spirit.
Cueillez! Carpe
and the rest of it,
raris, the day, &
the colour, &
the sound, the
hour, or what thing
or things, is
most or
mostly
near to the heart-
or your desire!
But be
not cheap or
mediocre in
desiring. Almost, not
quite, I was quoting Baudelaire's
Be drunken.
I who have lived 4 mos at a stretch
in Venice, & twice
for weeks and months on end
in Sirmio "venusta",
shall I break
into dithyrambs for one
night, on a
quai in a forgotten
city. Because
there is a little
water under my
window
& the sky is of a reasonable
complexion?

On one side
the sea bleached &
colourless, on the
other the Etang de Thau deep
blue as if
seen thru
a frosted pane.

Ezra Pound
A Walking Tour in Southern France

Joyce

2009-04-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

from A PAINFUL CASE

(Mr. James Duffy)

When he gained the crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked along the river towards Dublin, the lights of which burned redly and hospitably in the cold night. He looked down the slope and, at the base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life's feast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her life and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame. He knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him and wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was an outcast from life's feast. He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river, winding along towards Dublin. Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of Kingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the darkness, obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight; but still he heard in his hears the laborious drone of the engine reiterating the syllables of her name.
He turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding in his ears. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hea nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.

James Joyce
Dubliners

BROWNING, MEN AND WOMEN (1855)

2009-03-23T15:20:00.000-07:00

LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

I

Where the quiet-coloured end of evening smiles,
....Miles and smiles
On the solitary pastures where our sheep
....Half-asleep
Tinkle homeward thro' the twilight, stray or stop
....As they crop -
Was the site once of a city great and gay,
....(So they say)
Of our country's very capital, its prince
....Ages since
Held his court in, gathered councils, wielding far
....Peace or war.

II

Now, - the country does not even boast a tree,
....As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdures, certain rills
....From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
....Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
....Up like fires
O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
....Bounding all,
Made of marble, men might march on nor be pressed,
....Twelve abreast.

III

And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
....Never was
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, 0'erspreads
....And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
....Stock or stone -
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
....Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
....Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
....Bought and sold.

IV

Now, - the single little turret that remains
....On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
....Overscored,
While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks
....Through the chinks -
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
....Sprang sublime,
And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced
....As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
....Viewed the games.

V

And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
....Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece
....In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey
....Melt away -
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
....Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
....For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
....Till I come.

VI

But he looked upon the city, every side,
....Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades'
....Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, - and then,
....All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
....Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
....Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
....Each on each

VII

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
....South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
....As the sky,
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force -
....Gold, of course.
Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that runs!
....Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
....Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
....Love is best.

Robert Browning
from Men and Women

2009-03-22T09:49:00.001-07:00

I'd go up only to come down again.

2009-03-06T11:50:00.000-08:00

THREE MONTHS IN A LIFE

PERSONAE: BERNARD LAMPETIDES

Walked I among many a reverie
A weary step on the dullest face
I grew old in monotonous days
Long and fastidious, those were my ways

...................................I feel her coming every day
..............................I know the end's near anyway

In the reflection
.................a light, unknown presence
.................saw these eyes of mine that stare
A face thinner and thinner
Towards it's end; I grew blind
.................I saw no things,
See myself, am lifeless in colour
.................and in water bathed, the sea colander
.................the phoenician and the sailor
..- that is your body but your body doesn't care

These images that in my mind occur
These are petals in a black bough
Apparitions and faces from the very unknown
Portraying beauty far beyond our days.
Behind like forgotten thoughts
There remains this multitude . . .
.................Do not force writing.

...................................I feel her coming everyday
..............................I know the end's near anyway

Unattainable and far the hours remain
The eyes see but do not retain
...................( - and body is like a train
........................it passes and never stops
........................inside we dwell but cannot stop)
I seat and drink my coffee
As black as the sky should be
In silence I do not say, I do not speak
Thinking myself another artisan
Am but a body growing old . . .

...................and in the midst
...................of routine
...................I forget my feet . . .

.............................* * * * *

I wander and sing prayers to my soul
........the skies entrance
........grey with clouds seems shut
But the songs heard within
A clear voice,
They smooth the ravings of my mind:
........voices floating as if mist
........gazing upwards in golden light,
........about the fiery lit sky
........will and willing in their flight.
Underneath the veil of thought
A star shines, bursting in darkness
Where I lay; I listen to the choir
And the voices are of nymphs
........pale clear and soft and beautiful
........pale white and marvellous and dreadful.

.............................* * * * *

To walk by the dead poet's grave
...................your tomb white,
...................bathed in golden beams
...................the sun's delight
Thou who lovest beauty
...................and the Gods:
Skies clear your home
No earthly blackness at your throne

...................you required
..........................the reading of a poem,
.................................the writing of another.

The appearance of faces in little crowds:
...................I saw her as a symbol
...................saw her as a token of the craft
So I stayed and so I watched,
...................I watched awhile
...................and did it with watchful eyes:
She was a girl and she was a bird
...................in the measurements of her body
...................feathery wings of white, as by magic, aglow
A girl, a women and a bird
...................a girl whose eyes were fair,
...................and I could tell
...................by the movement of her hair.

To follow delicate wanderings
...................'till one looks psychotic
...................guilty of the rape of Proserpine
To stay, to half-hide
To condense ones presence in guilty eyes . . .
...................And there won't be time!
Here all is indecisions,
...................no decisions a moment will reverse
There won't be time! O There won't be time!
...................we love at distance
...................we talk no longer
........................than the crossing of an eye . . .

.............................* * * * *

I remember one day
The cool breeze by the river:
A precious moment of the world
Unfolding before my blindness
...................- a vision, a glimmer,
......................or a flower? . . .
This land's a man's wasted land.
Here is all rock and no water,
No water and only rock
...................alone the inscape of the natural world,
...................remir,
...................alone the emotion . . .
...................the rest is dross.
There someone came/looked/stopped.
Talked about poetry
...................mentioned Motion
...................I said he had no notion.
Modern myths – on the
Loveliness which has not
Yet come into this world.
...................where are we? what times these now that I see?
...................surely the old Gods are dead,
...................as dead as a corpse lying
...................feeding the vermin and the maggot.

What if her touch approaches
Dressed as a lady,
An ordinary though marvellous one?
Empty eyes and my nerves still dancin'!
...................(will I talk, knowing the end,
.....................will I converse, then?)
My thoughts within a felt soul
A vision that spreads, goes up the stair
As tunes of air
...................the poet's dying fingers
...................plucking the strings of his lute . . .
'Till on the ground lying
I'm nothing but a stone:
...................the universe is no more
...................car c'est nous qui sommes les temps

And in the midst
Of fortune
I forget my feet . . .

.............................* * * * *

Like smoke fading at far sight
These visions occur an' flow:
...................zephyr diamonds
...................within ivory gates;
Images in a vortex do proceed
To the center-epi-center
...................of one's enwrapped mind
...................in silk blankets of soul.

These fragments have I shored against my ruins

...................................I feel her coming every day
..............................I know the end's near anyway

Still and quiet brother are you still and quiet.

Post diferente

2009-02-22T04:28:00.001-08:00

Nao sei se tenho muitos leitores, de facto nem sei se os tenho de todo. (Facto esse que em nada me chateia).Independentemente aqui vai, um daqueles sinais que nos deixam UM BOM BOCADO apreensivos : 'José Socrates convidou...'

Visitar: viver mata

(A falta de acentos neste post deve-se ao facto de estar a escrever num teclado frances, que nao da muito jeito).

Wilde, 2 Poemas

2009-02-18T14:46:00.000-08:00

Amor intellectualis

Oft have we trod the vales of Castaly

....And heard sweet notes of sylvian music blown

....From antique reeds to common folk unknown:

And often launched our bark upon that sea

Which the nine muses hold in empery,

....And ploughed free furows through the wave and foam,

....Nor spread reluctant sail for more safe home

Till we had freighted well our argosy.

Of which despoilèd treasures these remain,

....Solrdello's passion, and the honeyd line

Of young Endymion, lordly Tamburlaine

....Driving his pampered jades, and, more than these,

The seven-fold vision of the Florentine,

....And grave-browed Milton's solemn harmonies.

Santa Decca

The Gods are dead: no longer do we bring

.....To grey eyed Pallas crowns of olive-leaves!

.....Demeter's child no more hath tithe of sheaves,

And in the noon the careless sheperds sing,

For Pan is dead, and all the wantoning

.....By secret glade and devious haunt is o'er:

.....Young Hylas seeks the water-springs no more;

Great Pan is dead, and Mary's son is King.

And yet - perchance in this sea-trancèd isle,

.....Chewing the bitter fruit of memory,

.....Some God lies hidden in the asphodel.

Ah Love! if such there be, then it were well

.....For us to fly his anger: nay, but see,

.....The leaves are stirring: let us watch awhile.

...................................................................................CORFU

Oscar Wilde

Flowers of Gold

Eliot, THE WASTE LAND

2009-02-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

from THE WASTE LAND

He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience

T.S. Eliot
The Waste Land

Pessoa, Cancioneiro

2009-02-02T06:57:00.000-08:00

Treme em luz a água.
Mal vejo. Parece
Que uma alheia mágoa
Na minha alma desce -

Mágoa êrma de alguém
De algum outro mundo
Onde a dor é um bem
E o amor é profundo,

E só punge ver,
Ao longe, iludida,
A vida a morrer
O sonho da vida.

*****

Não é ainda a noite
Mas é já frio o céu.
Do vento o ocioso açoite
Envolve o tédio meu.

Que vitórias perdidas
Por não as ter querido!
Quantas perdidas vidas!
E o sonho sem ter sido. . .

Ergue-te ó vento, do êrmo
Da noite que aparece!
Há um silêncio sem têrmo
Por trás do que estremece. . .

Pranto dos sonhos fúteis,
Que a memória acordou,
Inúteis, tão inúteis -
Quem me dirá quem sou?

Fernando Pessoa
Cancioneiro

Pessoa, Cancioneiro

2009-02-01T17:15:00.000-08:00

Pobre velha música!
Não sei por que agrado,
Enche-se de lágrimas
Meu olhar parado.

Recordo outro ouvir-te.
Não sei se te ouvi
Nessa minha infância
Que me lembra em ti.

Com que ânsia tão raiva
Quero aquêle outrora!
E eu era feliz? Não sei:
Fui-o outrora agora.

*****

Trila na noite uma flauta. É de algum
Pastor? Que importa? Perdida
Série de notas vaga e sem sentido nenhum,
Como a vida.

Sem nexo ou princípio ou fim ondeia
A ária alada.
Pobre ária fora de música e de voz tão cheia
De não ser nada?

Não há nexo ou fio por que se lembre aquela
Ária, ao parar;
E já ao ouvi-la sofro a saudade dela
E o quando cessar.

Fernando Pessoa
Cancioneiro

T.D.

2009-01-31T11:15:00.000-08:00

It starts in a movement, neverstopping in the sea; it turns to something: into something it becomes. Then it breaks, another state in a kinetic dance, twofold, breaking and remaining, a transformation, hither and thither. We have reached the stasis... the ocean, movement of body and soul...

Dedalus

2009-01-26T18:42:00.000-08:00

.....26 April: Mother is putting my new secondhand clothes in order. She prays now, she says, that I may learn in my own life and away from home and friends what the heart is and what it feels. Amen. So be it. Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
.....27 April: Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead.

Stephen Dedalus

Auden, O TELL ME THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE

2009-01-13T11:40:00.000-08:00

from Lullaby

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Nor a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

W. H. Auden
Diz-me A Verdade Acerca Do Amor (dez poemas)

CONFRONTING CULTURE

2009-01-13T11:19:00.000-08:00

from High German Seriousness:
The Frankfurt School on Culture

(...) for 'a long time now, Raphael's blue horizons have been quite properly a par of Disney's landscapes. The sunbeams almost beg to have the name of a soap or toothpaste emblazoned on them; they have no meaning except as a background for such advertising.' (Horkheimer) The Culture Industry, especially its advertising wing, appropriates artistic styles of the past, and deploys them for its own commercial ends. Here nothing is sacred and everything is open to exploitation.
Those who run the Culture Industry- film producers, newspaper editors, media barons and so on- justify themselves by claiming all that they are doing is carrying a business operation. In this way they absolve themselves from any responsibility as to what they are in fact doing, which is destroying the Western cultural tradition in general and killing off its capacity for generating socially critical thought in particular. The very nature of the Culture Industry's products achieve this, because instead of being made by individual artists, they are now made as if on a production line. Just as Ford company could produce thousands of cars all just the same by making them out of prefabricated parts put together on an assembly-line, so too the Culture Industry made its wares. All genuine creativity had leaked out of the process of cultural production, leaving it as a soulless, wholly rationalized process. This form of assembly of culture was based around making standardized products without any real individuality.

Confronting Culture
David Inglis and John Hughson

Eliot, THE WASTE LAND

2008-12-24T07:30:00.000-08:00

from WASTE LAND FACSIMILE AND TRANSCRIPT

"The more we know of Eliot, the better."
Ezra Pound

Those are pearls that were his eyes. See!

And the crab clambers through his stomach, the eel grows big
And the torn algae drift above him,
And the sea colander.
Still and quiet brother are you still and quiet

The Waste Land

T.S. Eliot

Pound, THE CANTOS

2008-12-11T15:40:00.001-08:00

from Canto IV

And by the curved, carved foot of the couch,
................claw-foot and lion head, an old man seated
Speaking in the low drone . . . :
........................Ityn !
And she went toward the window and cast her down,
................"All the while, the while, swallows crying:
Ityn !
................"It is Cabestan's heart in the dish."
................"It is Cabestan's heart in the dish?
................"No other taste shall change this."
And she went toward the window,
........................the slim white stone bar
Making a double arch;
Firm even fingers held to the firm pale stone;
Swung for a moment,
.......................and the wind out of Rhodez
Caught in the full of her sleeve.
....................... . . . the swallows crying:
'Tis. 'Tis. Ytis !
Actaeon . . .
...........and a valley
The valley is thick with leaves, with leaves, the trees,
The sunlight glitters, glitters a-top,
Like a fish-scale roof,
.........Like the church roof in Poictiers
If it were gold.
.............Beneath it, beneath it
Not a ray, not a shiver, not a spare disc of sunlight
Flaking the black, soft water;
Bathing the body of nymphs, of nymphs, and Diana,
Nymphs, withe-gathered about her, and the air, air,
Shaking, air alight with the goddess,
............fanning their hair in the dark,
Lifting, lifting and waffing:
Ivory dipping in silver,
.................Shadow'd, o'ershadow'd
Ivory dipping in silver,
Not a splotch, not a lost shatter of sunlight.
Then Actaeon: Vidal,
Vidal. It is old Vidal speaking,
................stumbling along in the wood,
Not a patch, not a lost shimmer of sunlight,
.....................the pale hair of the goddess.

The Cantos
Ezra Pound

Pound, LUSTRA

2008-12-11T12:40:00.000-08:00

THE COMING OF WAR: ACTAEON

An image of Lethe,
...........and the fields
Full of faint light
...........but golden,
Gray cliffs,
............and beneath them
A sea
Harsher than granite,
.............unstill, never ceasing;
High forms
...........with the movement of gods,
Perilous aspect;
............And one said:
"This is Actaeon."
...........Actaeon of golden greaves !
Over the fair meadows,
Over the cool face of that field,
Unstill, ever moving
Hosts of an ancient people,
The silent cortège.

Lustra
Ezra Pound

2008-12-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

H.D. V/VII

2008-12-09T13:36:00.000-08:00

from EURYDICE

..............V

So for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I have lost the earth
and the flowers of the earth,
and the live souls above the earth,
and you who passed across the light
and reached
ruthless;

you who have your own light,
who are to yourself a presence,
who need no presence;

yet for all your arrogance
and your glance,
I tell you this:

such loss is no loss,
such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls
of blackness,
such terror
is no loss;

hell is no worse than your earth
above the earth,
hell is no worse,
no, nor your flowers
nor your veins of light
nor your presence,
a loss;

my hell is no worse than yours
though you pass among the flowers and speak
with the spirits above the earth.

(...)

...............VII

At least I have the flowers of myself,
and my thoughts, no god
can take that;
I have the fervour of myself for a presence
And my own spirit for light;

and my spirit with its loss
knows this;
though small against the black,
small against the formless rocks,
hell must break before I am lost;

before I am lost,
hell must open like a red rose
for the dead to pass.

H.D.
Eurydice

T.D. , POETRY

2008-12-03T12:49:00.000-08:00

Like leaves floating amid
The morning softness in a breeze
I wander, and still wandering:
What a wonder!

A slight pressure of the skull
Heavier than the weight of my body
And my body weights no more:
A corpse traveling within a soul

In lightness am I
A wind from softness blown
A fitful moment that sheds
Reason from the unknown

T.D.

Joyce, STEPHEN HERO

2008-12-02T16:08:00.000-08:00

from SEPHEN HERO

We recognize that it is that which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps to us from the vestment of it's appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany.

Stephen Hero
James Joyce

Pound, Personae

2008-11-24T04:13:00.000-08:00

THE TREE

I stood still and was a tree amid the wood,
Knowing the truth of things unseen before;
Of Daphne and the laurel bough
And that god-feasting couple old

That grew elm-oak amid the wold.
'Twas not until the gods had been
Kindly entreated, and been brought within
Unto the hearth of their heart's home

That they might do this wonder thing;
Nathless I have been a tree amid the wood
And many a new thing understood
That was rank folly to my head before.

Personae(1908, 1909, 1910)
Ezra Pound

Post à parte

2008-11-16T07:34:00.000-08:00

VIDA

Pound, HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY

2008-11-13T11:56:00.000-08:00

from E. P. ODE POUR L'ELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE

II

The age demanded an image
Of its accelerated grimace,
Something for the modern stage,
Not, at any rate, an Attic grace;

Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries
Of the inward gaze;
Better mendacities
Than the classics in paraphrase!

The 'age demanded' chiefly a mould in plaster,
Made with no loss of time,
A prose kinema, not, not assuredly, alabaster
Or the 'sculpture' of rhyme.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Contacts and Life)
Ezra Loomis Pound

Dedalus

2008-11-11T15:04:00.000-08:00

Are you not weary of ardent ways,
Lure of the fallen seraphim?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Your eyes have set man's heart ablaze
And you have had your will of him.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

Above the flame the smoke of praise
Goes up from ocean rim to rim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Our broken cries and mournful lays
Rise in one eucharistic hymn.
Are you not weary of ardent ways?

While sacrificing hands upraise
The chalice flowing to the brim.
Tell no more of enchanted days.

And still you hold our longing gaze
With languorous look and lavish limb!
Are you not weary of ardent ways?
Tell no more of enchanted days.

Stephen Dedalus

Pound, HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY

2008-11-10T17:35:00.000-08:00

from HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY
(Contacts and Life)

"VOCAT AESTUS IN UMBRAM," Nemesianus, Ec. IV.
E. P. ODE POUR L'ELECTION DE SON SEPULCHRE

For three years, out of key with is time,

He strove to resuscitate the dead art
Of poetry; to maintain "the sublime"
In the old sense. Wrong from the start-

No, hardly, but seeing he had been born
In a half savage country, out of date;
Bent resolutely on wringing lilies from the acorn;
Capaneus; trout of factitious bait;

"Idmen gar toi panth, os eni Troie
Caught in the unstopped ear;
Giving the rocks a small lee-way
The chopped seas held him, therefore, that year.

His true Penelope was Flaubert,
He fished by obstinate isles;
Observed the elegance of Circe's hair
Rather than the mottoes on sun-dials.

Unaffected by "the march of events,"
He passed from men's memory in l'an trentuniesme
De son eage; the case presents
No adjunct to the Muses' diadem.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Contacts and Life)
Ezra Pound

T. S. Eliot, THE WASTE LAND

2008-11-10T05:55:00.000-08:00

from THE WASTE LAND

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once,
Exploring hands encounter no defence;
His vanity requires no response,
And makes a welcome of indifference.
(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all
Enacted on this same divan or bed,
I who have sat by Thebes beneath the wall
And walked among the lowest of the dead.)
Bestows one final patronising kiss,
And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit ...

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,
Hardly aware of her departed lover;
Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:
'Well now that's done: and I'm glad it's over.'
When lovely woman stoops to folly and
Paces about her room again, alone,
She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

The Waste Land- Text of First Edition (New York, Boni and Liveright 1922)
T.S. Eliot

T.A. , POETRY

2008-11-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

from POETRY

Tell no more of broken days.
Let the sun fill our heart,
Expand our soul limitless.
Rays of light in beauty.

Are you not weary of silent ways?

Poetry
T.A.

Joyce, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

2008-11-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

from Chapter V

-We are right, he said, and the others are wrong. To speak of these things and to try to understand their nature and, having understood it, to try slowly and humbly and constantly to express, to press out again, from the gross earth or what it brings forth, from sound and shape and colour which are the prison gates of our soul, an image of the beauty we have come to understand-that is art.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce

Pessoa, CANCIONEIRO

2008-11-03T14:13:00.000-08:00

NATAL

NASCE UM DEUS. Outros morrem. A Verdade
Nem veio nem se foi: o Êrro mudou.
Temos agora uma outra Eternidade,
E era sempre melhor o que passou.

Cega, a Ciência a inútil gleba lavra.
Louca, a Fé vive o sonho do seu oculto.
Um nôvo deus é só uma palavra.
Não procures sem creias: tudo é oculto.

Poesia de Fernando Pessoa / Cancioneiro
Fernando Pessoa

Pound, COLLECTED EARLY POEMS OF EZRA POUND

2008-10-30T10:58:00.000-07:00

THE RETURN (1912)

See, they return; ah, see the tentative
..........Movements, and the slow feet,
..........The trouble in the pace and the uncertain
..........Wavering!

See, they return, one, an by one,
With fear, as half-awakened;
As if the snow should hesitate
And murmur in the wind,
.................................and half turn back;
These were the «Wing'd-with-Awe,»
..................................Inviolable.

Gods of the wingèd shoe!
With them the silver hounds,
................................sniffing the trace of air!

Haie! Haie!
.........These were the swift to harry;
.........These the keen-scented;
.........These were the souls of blood.

.........Slow on the leash,
...........................................pallid the leash-men!

Collected Early Poems of Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound

Pound, THE CANTOS

2008-10-29T07:53:00.000-07:00

from CANTO LXXXI

What thou lovest well remains,
...................................................the rest is dross
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee
What thou lov'st well is thy true heritage
Whose world, or mine or theirs
....................................................or is it of none?
First came the seen, thus the palpable
........Elysium, though it were in the halls of hell,
What thou lovest well is thy true heritage
What thou lov'st well shall not be reft from thee

The ant's a centaur in his dragon world.
Pull down thy vanity, it is not man
Made courage, or made order, or made grace,
........Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.
Learn of the green world what can be thy place
In scaled invention or true artistry,
Pull down thy vanity,
................................................Paquin pull down !
The green casque has outdone your elegance.

"Master thyself, then others shall thee beare"
.......Pull down thy vanity
Thou art a beaten dog beneath the hail,
A swollen magpie in a fitful sun,
Half black half white
Not knowst'ou wing from tail
Pull down thy vanity
........................How mean thy hates
Fostered in falsity,
........................Pull down thy vanity,
Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity,
Pull down thy vanity,
I say pull down.

But to have done instead of not doing
..........................this is not vanity
To have, with decency, knocked
That a Blunt should open
................To have gathered from the air a live tradition
or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame
This is not vanity.
........Here error is all in the not done,
all in the diffidence that faltered.

The Pisan Cantos
Ezra Pound

Joyce, A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

2008-10-26T12:28:00.001-07:00

from Chapter II

He returned to Mercedes and, as he brooded upon her image, a strange unrest crept into his blood. Sometimes a fever gathered within him and led him to rove alone in the evening along the quiet avenue. The peace of the gardens and the kindly lights in the windows poured a tender influence into his restless heart. The noise of children at play annoyed him and their silly voices made him feel, even more keenly than he had felt at Clongowes, that he was different from others. He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how, but a premonition which led him on told him that this image would, without any overt act of his, encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence: and in that moment of supreme tenderness he would be transfigured.

He would fade into something impalpable under her eyes and then in a moment he would be transfigured. Weakness and timidity and inexperience would fall from him in that tragic moment.

A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce

Pope, AN ESSAY ON MAN

2008-10-21T11:08:00.000-07:00

Epistle I

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man.
Placed on his isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise and rudely great:
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the Stoic's pride,
He hangs between; in doubt to act, or to rest;
In doubt to deem himself a God, or a beast;
In doubt his mind or body to prefer;
Born but to die, and reas'ning but to err;
Alike in ignorance, his reason such,
Whether he thinks too little or too much:
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world!

An Essay on Man
Alexander Pope

Pound, THE CANTOS

2008-10-20T17:00:00.000-07:00

Canto XIII

Kung walked
by the dynastic temple
and into the cedar grove,
and then out by the lower river,
And with him Khieu, Tchi
and Tian the low speaking
And "we are unknown," said Kung,
"You will take up charioteering?
"Then you will become known,
"Or perhaps I should take up charioteering, or archery?
"Or the practice of public speaking?"
And Tseu-lou said, "I would put the defences in order,"
And Khieu said, "If I were lord of a province
I would put it in better order than it is."
And Tchi said, "I would prefer a small mountain temple,
"With order in the observances,
with a suitable performance of the ritual,"
And Tian said, with his hand on the strings of his lute
The low sounds continuing
after his hand left the strings,
And the sound went up like smoke, under the leaves,
And he looked after the sound:
"The old swimming hole,
"And the boys flopping off the planks,
"Or sitting in the underbrush playing mandolins."
And Kung smiled upon all of them equally.
And Thseng-sie desired to know:
"Which had answered correctly,
"That is to say, each in his nature."
And Kung raised his cane against Yuan Jang,
Yuan Jang being his elder,
For Yuan Jang sat by the roadside pretending to
be receiving wisdom.
And Kung said
"You old fool, come out of it,
"Get up and do something useful."
And Kung said
"Respect a child's faculties
"From the moment it inhales the clear air,
"But a man of fifty who knows nothing
Is worthy of no respect."
And "When the prince has gathered about him
"All the savants and artists, his riches will be fully employed."
And Kung said, and wrote on the bo leaves:
"If a man have not order within him
"He can not spread order about him;
"And if man have not order within him
"His family will not act with due order;
And if the prince have not order within him
He can not put order in his dominions."
And Kung gave the words "order"
and "brotherly deference"
And said nothing of the "life after death."
And he said
"Anyone can run to excesses,
"It is easy to shoot past the mark,
"It is hard to stand firm in the middle."

And they said: "If a man commit murder
Should his father protect him, and hide him?"
And Kung said:
"He should hide him."

And Kung gave his daughter to Kong-Tchang
Although Kong-Tchang was in prison.
And he gave his niece to Nan-Young
although Nan-Young was out of office.
And Kung said "Wang ruled with moderation,
"In his day the State was well kept,
"And even I can remember
"A day when the historians left blanks in their writings,
"I mean for things they didn't know,
"But that time seems to be passing."
And Kung said, "Without character you will
"be unable to play on that instrument
"Or to execute the music fit for the Odes.
"The blossoms of the apricot
"blow from the east to the west,
"And I have tried to keep them from falling."

The Cantos
Ezra Pound

Pound, THE CANTOS

2008-10-18T07:46:00.000-07:00

from Canto XVI

And because that son of a bitch,
Franz Josef of Austria. ...
And because that son of a bitch Napoléon Barbiche...
They put Adlington on Hill 70, in a trench
dug through corpses
With a lot of kids of sixteen,
Howling and crying for their mamas,
[...]
And Henri Gaudier went to it,
and they killed him,
And killed a good deal of sculpture,
And ole T. E. H. he went to it,
With a lot of books from the library,
London Library, and a shell buried 'em in a dug-out,
And the Library expressed its annoyance.
And a bullet hit him on the elbow
... gone through the fellow in front of him,
And he read Kant in the Hospital, in Wimbledon,
in the original,
And the hospital staff didn't like it.

And Wyndham Lewis went to it,
With a heavy bit of artillery,
and the airmen came by with a mitrailleuse,
And cleaned out most of his company,
and a shell lit on his tin hut,
While he was out in the privvy,
and he was all there was left of that outfit.

The Cantos
Ezra Pound

William Carlos Williams, THE WEDGE, 1944

2008-10-18T07:32:00.000-07:00

A SORT OF A SONG

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quiet, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.

- through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

The Wedge
William Carlos Williams

T. S. Eliot, PRUFROCK

2008-10-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

from THE LOVE SONG OF J. ALFRED PRUFROCK

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
(They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!")
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
(They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!")
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
T. S. Eliot

Pound, HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLEY (Contacts and Life)

2008-10-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

ENVOI (1919)

Go, dumb-born book,
Tell her that sang me once that song of Lawes:
Hadst thou but song
As thou hast subjects known,
Then were there cause in thee that should condone
Even my faults that heavy upon me lie,
And build her glories their longevity.

Tell her that sheds
Such treasure in the air,
Recking naught else but that her graces give
Life to the moment,
I would bid them live
As roses might, in magic amber laid,
Red overwrought with orange and all made
One substance and one colour
Braving time.

Tell her that goes
With song upon her lips
But sings not out the song, nor knows
The maker of it, some other mouth,
May be as fair as hers,
Might, in new ages, gain her worshippers,
When our two dusts with Waller's shall be laid,
Siftings on siftings in oblivion,
Till change hath broken down
All things save Beauty alone.

Hugh Selwyn Mauberley (Contacts and Life)
Ezra Pound