mistranslations result in beauty
11.16.18
"Great literature is written in a sort of foreign language. To each sentence we attach a meaning, or at any rate a mental image, which is often a mistranslation. But in great literature all our mistranslations result in beauty."
"Great literature is written in a sort of foreign language. To each sentence we attach a meaning, or at any rate a mental image, which is often a mistranslation. But in great literature all our mistranslations result in beauty."
—Marcel Proust
as quoted by Gilles Deleuze in Dialogues II
as quoted by Gilles Deleuze in Dialogues II
Julius Kirchner, 1914
Blind children studying the hippopatamus
|
transforming milk
0.30.18
“Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature. Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function.”
“Overambitious projects may be objectionable in many fields, but not in literature. Literature remains alive only if we set ourselves immeasurable goals, far beyond all hope of achievement. Only if poets and writers set themselves tasks that no one else dares imagine will literature continue to have a function.”
—Italo Calvino
from Six Memos for the Next Millennium
from Six Memos for the Next Millennium
An annotated photograph by Allen Ginsberg of the artist Harry Smith "transforming milk into milk," 1985 |
nothing, really, dies
09.29.18
"In college I had a physics professor who wrote the date and time in red marker on a sheet of white paper and then lit the paper on fire and placed it on a metallic mesh basket on the lab table where it burned to ashes. He asked us whether or not the information on the paper was destroyed and not recoverable, and of course we were wrong, because physics tells us that information is never lost, not even in a black hole, and that what is seemingly destroyed is, in fact, retrievable. In that burning paper the markings of ink on the page are preserved in the way the flame flickers and the smoke curls. Wildly distorted to the point of chaos, the information is nonetheless not dead. Nothing, really, dies. Nothing dies. Nothing dies."
"In college I had a physics professor who wrote the date and time in red marker on a sheet of white paper and then lit the paper on fire and placed it on a metallic mesh basket on the lab table where it burned to ashes. He asked us whether or not the information on the paper was destroyed and not recoverable, and of course we were wrong, because physics tells us that information is never lost, not even in a black hole, and that what is seemingly destroyed is, in fact, retrievable. In that burning paper the markings of ink on the page are preserved in the way the flame flickers and the smoke curls. Wildly distorted to the point of chaos, the information is nonetheless not dead. Nothing, really, dies. Nothing dies. Nothing dies."
Nicholas Rombes
from The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing
from The Absolution of Roberto Acestes Laing
Tim Rollins and K.O.S. - from the series The Temptation of Saint Anthony |
small objects
08.19.18
My contemporaries like small objects,
dried starfish that have forgotten the sea,
melancholy stopped clocks, postcards
sent from vanished cities,
and blackened with illegible script,
in which they discern words
like “yearning,” “illness,” or “the end.”
They marvel at dormant volcanoes.
They don’t desire light.
My contemporaries like small objects,
dried starfish that have forgotten the sea,
melancholy stopped clocks, postcards
sent from vanished cities,
and blackened with illegible script,
in which they discern words
like “yearning,” “illness,” or “the end.”
They marvel at dormant volcanoes.
They don’t desire light.
—Adam Zagajewski
"Small Objects" (trans. Clare Cavanagh)
"Small Objects" (trans. Clare Cavanagh)
Christo and Jeanne Claude - Package, 1958 Photo by Eava Inkeri |
what is a poet?
08.03.18
“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music. And people flock around the poet and say: ‘Sing again soon’ - that is, ‘May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”
“What is a poet? An unhappy man who hides deep anguish in his heart, but whose lips are so formed that when the sigh and cry pass through them, it sounds like lovely music. And people flock around the poet and say: ‘Sing again soon’ - that is, ‘May new sufferings torment your soul but your lips be fashioned as before, for the cry would only frighten us, but the music, that is blissful.”
—Søren Kierkegaard
from Either/Or
from Either/Or
Nil Yalter - The Headless Woman or the Belly Dancer, 1974 |
all is linked
07.24.18
"When he grew old, Aristotle, who is not generally considered a tightrope dancer, liked to lose himself in the most labyrinthine and subtle of discourses… ‘The more solitary and isolated I become, the more I come to like stories,’ he said."
—Michel de Certeau
from The Practice of Everyday Life
from The Practice of Everyday Life
Still from Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville
|
language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square
07.05.18
"Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it’s the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it’s a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot."
"Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it’s the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it’s a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot."
From LIFE magazine, photographer unknown |
Perception of an object costs
06.30.18
Perception of an object costs
Precise the Object’s loss—
Perception of an object costs
Precise the Object’s loss—
—Emily Dickinson
Jakob Mohr - Beweisse (Proofs), ca 1910 from "Traces upon the Wonderblock," a collection of drawings and books made by psychiatric patients btw 1890 and 1920. More information here |
a professional schizophrenic
06.18.18
"A translator is a professional schizophrenic, continuously wandering on the edge, risking his sanity in the crashing zone of two languages and two cultures. He is operating in an elevated state of mind, as if in trance––indeed, it is a creative trance, a state of bipolarity, of being at two places simultaneously, moving parallel in two worlds. In this sense, he is an exotic stranger, an itinerant of the ever-growing literary world. Invisibly, condemned to solitude, he enters this atypical state of awareness, becomes a trance-later."
"A translator is a professional schizophrenic, continuously wandering on the edge, risking his sanity in the crashing zone of two languages and two cultures. He is operating in an elevated state of mind, as if in trance––indeed, it is a creative trance, a state of bipolarity, of being at two places simultaneously, moving parallel in two worlds. In this sense, he is an exotic stranger, an itinerant of the ever-growing literary world. Invisibly, condemned to solitude, he enters this atypical state of awareness, becomes a trance-later."
Source unknown |
how delicate
05.31.18
how delicate,
this holding of certain words in the mouth
this holding of certain words in the mouth
—Carl Phillips
from “Stray”
from “Stray”
Polaroid collage, artist unknown
|
brutal matter
05.19.18
"Literature is concerned with plot and character. Its intention is to be “well-written” and “comprehensible.” It’s a very commonplace activity. Then there is the progression towards writing … writing as writing … I mean simple textual writing.… It is that desire to do something new which compels one to move from literature to writing and from writing to matière écrite … brutal matter … no wasted words or wasted time. I also colored in the poem … the manuscript itself is a piece of visual art … There is an oral aspect to it, as well as a visual and a musical architectural aspect … This is no longer “writing,” it’s the process of working with a material that is common to all art. An artist who reaches this point – like Beethoven in music or Cézanne in painting – no longer knows, in the final count, how he does what he does. I am convinced of this. I call this a state of wisdom."
"Literature is concerned with plot and character. Its intention is to be “well-written” and “comprehensible.” It’s a very commonplace activity. Then there is the progression towards writing … writing as writing … I mean simple textual writing.… It is that desire to do something new which compels one to move from literature to writing and from writing to matière écrite … brutal matter … no wasted words or wasted time. I also colored in the poem … the manuscript itself is a piece of visual art … There is an oral aspect to it, as well as a visual and a musical architectural aspect … This is no longer “writing,” it’s the process of working with a material that is common to all art. An artist who reaches this point – like Beethoven in music or Cézanne in painting – no longer knows, in the final count, how he does what he does. I am convinced of this. I call this a state of wisdom."
—Pierre Guyotat
Antonio Tapies - Gran X, 1988
|