Camel Dust Heralds Our Arrival @dailetong - Tumblr Blog

‘...the use of language like a lover...not the language of love, but the love of language, not matter, but meaning, not what the tongue touches, but what it forms, not lips and nipples, but nouns and verbs.’

#william gass

‘I am inharmonious and deformed - but so I will remain till the grave, without any betrayal of myself.’

Andrey Platonov, letter to his wife, 1936

#andrey platonov #russian literature #soviet literature

On Writing Poetry

It's wonderful, there's nothing else like it, you write in a trance. And the trance is completely addictive, you love it, you want more of it. Once you've written the poem and had the trance, polished it and so on, you can go back to the poem and have a trace of that trance, have the shadow of it, but you can't have it fully again. It seemed to be a knack I discovered as I went along. It's an integration of the body-mind and the dreaming-mind and the daylight-conscious-mind. All three are firing at once, they're all in concert. You can be sitting there but inwardly dancing, and the breath and the weight and everything else are involved, you're fully alive. It takes a while to get into it. You have to have some key, like say a phrase or a few phrases or a subject matter or maybe even a tune to get you started going towards it, and it starts to accumulate. Sometimes it starts without your knowing that you're getting there, and it builds in your mind like a pressure. I once described it as being like a painless headache, and you know there's a poem in there, but you have to wait until the words form.

- Les Murray (1938-2019), BBC radio interview 1998

#les murray #writing poetry #australian poetry

Emile Zola, Germinal, 1885

#emile zola #germinal #french literature

I am deeply convinced that literature has no borders. There is one literature, and it uses different languages as its tools. That’s why translators are so important. They are like fragile links between languages, reminding us that literature is one. Sometimes when I read a book from China I can recognise something that is very personal and moving to me. That’s a miracle for me. There is something in our common unconsciousness that creates literature. I am a Polish writer by language and culture, but I treat myself as a universal writer.

https://pentransmissions.com/2018/05/17/olga-tokarczuk/

#olga tokarczuk #world literature #polish writers #polish authors

The Red-Haired Man There was once a red-haired man who had neither eyes nor ears. Nor did he have hair so he was called “red-haired” only theoretically. He couldn’t speak since he didn’t have a mouth. Neither did he have a nose. He didn’t even have any arms or legs. He had no stomach and he had no back and he had no spine and he had no insides whatsoever. He had nothing at all! Therefore, there’s no knowing whom we are even talking about. In fact, let’s not talk about him anymore.

#daniil kharms #russianliterature #the red-haired man #soviet literature

d7ux

dailetong

精疲力尽 10月14日齐小萌 ❤️戴乐彤

bsd-bibliophile

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.

Franz Kafka (via bsd-bibliophile)

amare-habeo

Gerardo Dottori (Italian, 1884-1977)

Fire-City (Incendio-città), 1926

Oil on canvas

Robert Forster, 'People Say', Jazz House, Copenhagen, 23.09.17. There is a Go Betweens compilation album where Robert writes in the liner notes that the band were trying for that 'wild mercury sound' when they recorded this. I think the phrase was Dylan's. Great song, great performance. That's me calling out the name of the song at the beginning of the tape. 🤹‍♂️

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcnr0SLwX7M&feature=share

#robert forster

Let others brag about the pages they have written; I am proud of those I have read

Jorge Luis Borges

#jorge luis borges

retentionalfinitude2

“Often I find the less plot a writer needs, and the more restrained his setting, the more significant his talent. I am immediately wary of writers who excel at plot and claim practically the whole world for their characters. Everyday things are beautiful and rich enough that we can coax poetic sparks from them.” –Robert Walser, quoted in Carl Seelig, Walks With Walser

Image: Photo of Walser by Carl Seelig

Paul Jacoulet (1902-1960), ‘Vendeur des masques’ or ‘The Mask Seller’

Fate blends the cards, but man plays the game' - Victor Hugo

#victor hugo

Elsa Morante, L'Isola di Arturo

#procida #elsa morante #Arturo's island #L'isola #di Arturo

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