In a dream the author Graham Greene's mother appeared to him and read to him a poem which he had enjoyed as a boy. This so impressed Greene that he mentioned it in his posthumous dream diary, A World of My Own.
A Passer-by
Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding,
Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West,
That fearest not sea rising, nor sky clouding,
Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?
Ah! soon, when winter has all our vales opprest,
When skies are cold and misty, and hail is hurling,
Wilt thou glide on the blue Pacific, or rest
In a summer haven asleep, thy white sails furling.
I there before thee, in the country that well thou knowest,
Already arrived am inhaling the odorous air:
I watch thee enter unerringly where thou goest,
And anchor queen of the strange shipping there,
Thy sails for awnings spread, thy masts bare:
Nor is aught from the foaming reef to the snow-capped grandest
Peak, that is over the feathery palms, more fair
Than thou, so upright, so stately and still thou standest.
And yet, O splendid ship, unhailed and nameless,
I know not if, aiming a fancy, I rightly divine
That thou hast a purpose joyful, a courage blameless,
Thy port assured in a happier land than mine.
But for all I have given thee, beauty enough is thine,
As thou, aslant with trim tackle and shrouding,
From the proud nostril curve of a prow's line
In the offing scatterest foam, thy white sails crowding.
--------
Robert Bridges (1844-1930)
Monday, 13 July 2009
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Graham Greene's dream diary
Graham Greene was one of the outstanding writers of the twentieth century. He will be remembered for his wonderful books; books such as Our Man in Havana, Brighton Rock, The Heart of the Matter, and The Power and the Glory.
Shortly before he died he was visited by two women at the hospital in Vevey, Switzerland. One was his daughter Caroline. The other was Yvonne Cloetta and he asked her to prepare his dream diary and to publish it following his death. This posthumous book he would call A World of My Own after a quote from Heraclitus of Ephesus (500 BC): The waking have one world in common, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.
Greene kept a dream diary for almost twenty-five years. The result ran to more than 800 pages. He began the diary in 1965 and completed it in 1989. The published selection, chosen by Greene, runs to 116 pages. It was published in 1992, the year after Greene's death.
A few of my short stories have been drawn from [dream] memories, Greene admits. In Dream of a Strange Land he recorded his dream experience as a leper seeking treatment in Sweden. Only the sound of a shot with which the printed tale ends has been added, he reveals. Another story The Root of All Evil takes place in 19th century Germany. In this story he changed nothing after he woke.
There is another side to dreams that interests Graham Greene and this is when dreams contain what he calls scraps of the future. He points us to J W Dunne's interesting and investigative book Experiment with Time. I note time and again incidents ... a few days after the dream, Greene says. He is convinced Dunne was right when he claims that some dreams can foreshadow future events.
In his dream diary Graham Greene recorded a dream in which he found himself writing a poem for a competition in a magazine called Time and Tide. It was about my own death, he tells his readers
The Room Next Door
From the room next door
The TV talks to me
Of sickness, nettlerash, and herbal tea.
My breath is folded up
Like sheets in lavender.
The end for me
Arrives like nursery tea.
(title idea and verse construction by P-i-R)
When World War I broke out Graham Greene was a young boy. But in A World of My Own he records two dreams about the so-called Great War. The dream that interests Poet-in-Residence is the one where Graham Greene finds himself in the body of Wilfred Owen the poet. In fact he is Owen. He is wearing a steel helmet and an officers uniform and he is in a dug-out. There he begins to recite a verse he has called Givenchy to a girl in a photograph.
Givenchy
Imagine, dear, the shallow trench,
An impregnable redoubt
For this good night and more...
But suddenly the weariness of the war overcomes him and he begins, as Wilfred Owen, to weep. And as he sobs a voice cries out, "The Germans have dropped gas bombs..."
In her foreword written at Vevey in October 1991 Yvonne Cloetta writes,-
Graham -
In The Power and the Glory you wrote: 'The glittering worlds lay there in space like a promise; the world was not the universe. Somewhere Christ might not have died.'
If such a place exists, you have certainly found it.
A World of My Own a dream diary
Graham Greene
Penguin Books, Reinhardt Books, Alfred A Knopf
c) 1993, 1992, 1992
Shortly before he died he was visited by two women at the hospital in Vevey, Switzerland. One was his daughter Caroline. The other was Yvonne Cloetta and he asked her to prepare his dream diary and to publish it following his death. This posthumous book he would call A World of My Own after a quote from Heraclitus of Ephesus (500 BC): The waking have one world in common, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own.
Greene kept a dream diary for almost twenty-five years. The result ran to more than 800 pages. He began the diary in 1965 and completed it in 1989. The published selection, chosen by Greene, runs to 116 pages. It was published in 1992, the year after Greene's death.
A few of my short stories have been drawn from [dream] memories, Greene admits. In Dream of a Strange Land he recorded his dream experience as a leper seeking treatment in Sweden. Only the sound of a shot with which the printed tale ends has been added, he reveals. Another story The Root of All Evil takes place in 19th century Germany. In this story he changed nothing after he woke.
There is another side to dreams that interests Graham Greene and this is when dreams contain what he calls scraps of the future. He points us to J W Dunne's interesting and investigative book Experiment with Time. I note time and again incidents ... a few days after the dream, Greene says. He is convinced Dunne was right when he claims that some dreams can foreshadow future events.
In his dream diary Graham Greene recorded a dream in which he found himself writing a poem for a competition in a magazine called Time and Tide. It was about my own death, he tells his readers
The Room Next Door
From the room next door
The TV talks to me
Of sickness, nettlerash, and herbal tea.
My breath is folded up
Like sheets in lavender.
The end for me
Arrives like nursery tea.
(title idea and verse construction by P-i-R)
When World War I broke out Graham Greene was a young boy. But in A World of My Own he records two dreams about the so-called Great War. The dream that interests Poet-in-Residence is the one where Graham Greene finds himself in the body of Wilfred Owen the poet. In fact he is Owen. He is wearing a steel helmet and an officers uniform and he is in a dug-out. There he begins to recite a verse he has called Givenchy to a girl in a photograph.
Givenchy
Imagine, dear, the shallow trench,
An impregnable redoubt
For this good night and more...
But suddenly the weariness of the war overcomes him and he begins, as Wilfred Owen, to weep. And as he sobs a voice cries out, "The Germans have dropped gas bombs..."
In her foreword written at Vevey in October 1991 Yvonne Cloetta writes,-
Graham -
In The Power and the Glory you wrote: 'The glittering worlds lay there in space like a promise; the world was not the universe. Somewhere Christ might not have died.'
If such a place exists, you have certainly found it.
A World of My Own a dream diary
Graham Greene
Penguin Books, Reinhardt Books, Alfred A Knopf
c) 1993, 1992, 1992
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Klaus Bachler waves the white flag
Klaus Bachler is, or more correctly was, the manager of Vienna's Burgtheater.
Yesterday evening commencing at 8pm, and it may well have gone on until 3am, but even a Poet-in-Residence has to get some sleep, was Klaus Bachler's leaving party. Leaving after 10 years in the boss's chair Bachler is on his way to the Bavarian city of Munich to take charge of the Opera.
To be quite frank it was a rather dreary and over-priced affair. There was much scripted interviewing sprinkled with the usual in-jokes and some general pontificating from the stage. Actors are better when they stick to acting.
Unfortunately many of the audience, due to the special seating arrangements, couldn't see the actors, or at most only the heads of the tallest ones. Fortunately the Burg's best character actor Joachim Meyerhoff had the presence of mind to get to the front centre of the stage where he could be clearly seen, or at least the top two-thirds of him. But he was one of the few exceptions.
The Austrian Education Minister, a lady reported to have claimed 1,400 Euros in expenses for her make-up, got in on the act. And that really summed up the whole evening. A Finance Minister might have had something useful to say; but an Education Minister on the stage of an Austrian theatre? I ask you!
At the end of the official proceedings, after the edited song and dance routine, Bachler was duly hoisted onto the shoulders of a couple of actors and a white sheet, a flag of surrender, thrust into his hands. He briefly waved it. And that was that.
The real party followed but by then many of us were already on our way home.
Bachler will be remembered as the man who followed the man in the long black coat.°
°title of a Bob Dylan song. A reference to Bachler's predecessor, the controversial Claus Peymann who worked closely with Thomas Bernhard, and frequently walked through the streets of Vienna in his long coat. Peymann, courageous and beyond politics, introduced Vienna to its history with Bernhard's anti-Nazi play Heldenplatz. His leaving party was a theatrical event of the first magnitude.
Yesterday evening commencing at 8pm, and it may well have gone on until 3am, but even a Poet-in-Residence has to get some sleep, was Klaus Bachler's leaving party. Leaving after 10 years in the boss's chair Bachler is on his way to the Bavarian city of Munich to take charge of the Opera.
To be quite frank it was a rather dreary and over-priced affair. There was much scripted interviewing sprinkled with the usual in-jokes and some general pontificating from the stage. Actors are better when they stick to acting.
Unfortunately many of the audience, due to the special seating arrangements, couldn't see the actors, or at most only the heads of the tallest ones. Fortunately the Burg's best character actor Joachim Meyerhoff had the presence of mind to get to the front centre of the stage where he could be clearly seen, or at least the top two-thirds of him. But he was one of the few exceptions.
The Austrian Education Minister, a lady reported to have claimed 1,400 Euros in expenses for her make-up, got in on the act. And that really summed up the whole evening. A Finance Minister might have had something useful to say; but an Education Minister on the stage of an Austrian theatre? I ask you!
At the end of the official proceedings, after the edited song and dance routine, Bachler was duly hoisted onto the shoulders of a couple of actors and a white sheet, a flag of surrender, thrust into his hands. He briefly waved it. And that was that.
The real party followed but by then many of us were already on our way home.
Bachler will be remembered as the man who followed the man in the long black coat.°
°title of a Bob Dylan song. A reference to Bachler's predecessor, the controversial Claus Peymann who worked closely with Thomas Bernhard, and frequently walked through the streets of Vienna in his long coat. Peymann, courageous and beyond politics, introduced Vienna to its history with Bernhard's anti-Nazi play Heldenplatz. His leaving party was a theatrical event of the first magnitude.
And, for amusement only, more Virginia Woolf
The following Virgina Woolf how-to-write-a-novel item was composed in the usual fashion; that is, it's based on words and phrases and ideas scoured from Virginia Woolf's diaries. Despite the inclusion of the overconfident adjective blessed it is not intended to be sacrilege and shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Breakdown in miniature
The story shall run fast and free
Not poke in dusty holes and corners.
The circle should be complete each time
And the blessed thing brought to an end.
Barker's pins have no points to them!
You want to buy carpets, pots and chairs
You want to have fifty pounds in the Bank.
The material is not so rich as it was!
Don't doubt that the theme will be good or bad
Don't flog your brains all afternoon
Now write the greatest book in the world
It's only a question of getting up steam.
-----
gw2009
Breakdown in miniature
The story shall run fast and free
Not poke in dusty holes and corners.
The circle should be complete each time
And the blessed thing brought to an end.
Barker's pins have no points to them!
You want to buy carpets, pots and chairs
You want to have fifty pounds in the Bank.
The material is not so rich as it was!
Don't doubt that the theme will be good or bad
Don't flog your brains all afternoon
Now write the greatest book in the world
It's only a question of getting up steam.
-----
gw2009
Tuesday, 30 June 2009
Pollyanna
Pollyanna
To the birthday party I went
and Pollyanna was there
in her new yellow frock
Another turn of the page
in life's book
Another trick of the clock
The stare in her eyes
told the tale
That expressionless look
told me something was wrong
All the strange people
(perhaps someone looked vaguely familiar)
It's been a while since we spoke
She was bubbly and bright
like a starlet
(perhaps it's 2 years or a little bit longer)
We toasted her health
and we talked of old times
And someone quite gentle
will blow out the candles
--------
gw 2009
To the birthday party I went
and Pollyanna was there
in her new yellow frock
Another turn of the page
in life's book
Another trick of the clock
The stare in her eyes
told the tale
That expressionless look
told me something was wrong
All the strange people
(perhaps someone looked vaguely familiar)
It's been a while since we spoke
She was bubbly and bright
like a starlet
(perhaps it's 2 years or a little bit longer)
We toasted her health
and we talked of old times
And someone quite gentle
will blow out the candles
--------
gw 2009
Thursday, 25 June 2009
What's the future for Literature? wonders Vandana Datta
In the current issue of Research, the bi-annual journal of English studies from Patna Magadh University, the editor Dr. Vandana Datta concludes the editorial with the following words:
"Literature is above all isms, above all classifications and it is this that should be aimed at, irrespective of caste, class and gender. Things, however are not as simple as they may appear. Social issues are rarely just social issues. Politics has seeped into every aspect of our lives and made things far more complicated than they would have otherwise been. Let us try to keep literature away from the murkiness of politics. Let us keep it pure and clean, as clear as the fresh evening air, as clean as one comes out fresh from a bath."
When Dr. Datta writes these words what is being addressed are "categorizations based on caste and class" that "reflect the narrowness of the human mind".
In Northern Ireland recently some 200 Rumanians were forced to take refuge from the mob and hole up in a church. Were these unfortunate Rumanians also victims of "the narrowness of the human mind" wonders Poet-in-Residence. If so, the world's mentality is in a sorry state. One would have thought that in Ireland, at least in Ireland, a land famed for its warm hospitality, and which itself has a long sad and suffering history of persecution, reckless colonialism and brutal conflict; and wide-ranging and terrible it is too; from Viking invasions to Cromwell to the mass exodous to America, to the terrible famines, and more recently a history of senseless bombings and violence based at root on "caste and class" and decades of armed troops in armoured cars on the razor-wired streets, that something would have been learnt, at least there in the emerald isle, the poetic jewel in the Atlantic, the land that produced great writers such as Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh.
And in other countries too, not only India and Ireland, are we still facing tsunamis of turbulence based on "caste and class". Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Spain, Rwanda, Congo, Nigeria, Israel, Russia, North Korea, China, Peru are just a few places that spring immediately to mind. A little pondering will quickly bring forth many more. In fact, the list is almost endless. Perhaps it is endless.
So what does the future hold for Literature and for Mankind? The poem that follows is about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is by Erich Fried. The translation is by Poet-in-Residence. It starts and finishes with a question. But not the same question.
A prologue to the poem tells the reader that in some parts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the dust in the streets turned to glass.
Future?
The sun is the sun
The tree is a tree
The dust is dust
I am I you are you
The sun will be sun
The tree will be ash
The dust will be glass
I and you will be dust
The sun remains the sun
The tree needn't be ash
The dust shouldn't be glass
I will not be dust
You will not be dust
We will not be dust
They will not be dust
But what do we all do?
----
gw2009 trans. from Es ist was est ist
1983,1994 Wagenbach, Berlin
"Literature is above all isms, above all classifications and it is this that should be aimed at, irrespective of caste, class and gender. Things, however are not as simple as they may appear. Social issues are rarely just social issues. Politics has seeped into every aspect of our lives and made things far more complicated than they would have otherwise been. Let us try to keep literature away from the murkiness of politics. Let us keep it pure and clean, as clear as the fresh evening air, as clean as one comes out fresh from a bath."
When Dr. Datta writes these words what is being addressed are "categorizations based on caste and class" that "reflect the narrowness of the human mind".
In Northern Ireland recently some 200 Rumanians were forced to take refuge from the mob and hole up in a church. Were these unfortunate Rumanians also victims of "the narrowness of the human mind" wonders Poet-in-Residence. If so, the world's mentality is in a sorry state. One would have thought that in Ireland, at least in Ireland, a land famed for its warm hospitality, and which itself has a long sad and suffering history of persecution, reckless colonialism and brutal conflict; and wide-ranging and terrible it is too; from Viking invasions to Cromwell to the mass exodous to America, to the terrible famines, and more recently a history of senseless bombings and violence based at root on "caste and class" and decades of armed troops in armoured cars on the razor-wired streets, that something would have been learnt, at least there in the emerald isle, the poetic jewel in the Atlantic, the land that produced great writers such as Seamus Heaney and Patrick Kavanagh.
And in other countries too, not only India and Ireland, are we still facing tsunamis of turbulence based on "caste and class". Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Spain, Rwanda, Congo, Nigeria, Israel, Russia, North Korea, China, Peru are just a few places that spring immediately to mind. A little pondering will quickly bring forth many more. In fact, the list is almost endless. Perhaps it is endless.
So what does the future hold for Literature and for Mankind? The poem that follows is about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is by Erich Fried. The translation is by Poet-in-Residence. It starts and finishes with a question. But not the same question.
A prologue to the poem tells the reader that in some parts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the dust in the streets turned to glass.
Future?
The sun is the sun
The tree is a tree
The dust is dust
I am I you are you
The sun will be sun
The tree will be ash
The dust will be glass
I and you will be dust
The sun remains the sun
The tree needn't be ash
The dust shouldn't be glass
I will not be dust
You will not be dust
We will not be dust
They will not be dust
But what do we all do?
----
gw2009 trans. from Es ist was est ist
1983,1994 Wagenbach, Berlin
Monday, 22 June 2009
Erich Fried's Evening
Here is the final poem, for now, in the Erich Fried mini-series. It's PiR-translated from Warngedichte (pub: 1964 Hanser, Munich). This stark cold scene of Evening is reminiscent of some of the Thomas Bernhard poems that were translated here a few months ago.
Evening
We bring the cold
and place it on the table
cut it without a knife
with naked hand
for you and for me a slice
Simple fare
food and drink together
thirst killed
hunger chased away
and now sleep comes
We dream of stars
and again of the warm moon
snow softens the wind
and nothing
is harder than ice
-----
trans:gw2009
Evening
We bring the cold
and place it on the table
cut it without a knife
with naked hand
for you and for me a slice
Simple fare
food and drink together
thirst killed
hunger chased away
and now sleep comes
We dream of stars
and again of the warm moon
snow softens the wind
and nothing
is harder than ice
-----
trans:gw2009
Erich Fried, On the Search
The following short poem in the current Erich Fried series highlights important aspects of poetry: found (or not found) in both writing and reading. As usual the translation is by Poet-in-Residence. The source is Fried's volume Am Rand unserer Lebenzeit (Wagenbach, Berlin).
On the Search
Night after night
I search for comfort and encouragement
in the poems
of the living and the dead
Night after night
their poems surprise me
for in them I find so little
comfort and encouragement
Night after night
their poems help me
for they search for encouragement
and comfort as I do
------
trans:gw2009
On the Search
Night after night
I search for comfort and encouragement
in the poems
of the living and the dead
Night after night
their poems surprise me
for in them I find so little
comfort and encouragement
Night after night
their poems help me
for they search for encouragement
and comfort as I do
------
trans:gw2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)