Discover Top Posts Tagged with #anhypnic

Last self-portrait (?). Probably; we'll see. (Taken with instagram)

It's lovely seeing the Rilke quotations, and—as you earlier asked for questions—I wonder: which of his works would you consider your favorite?

I <3 Rilke

My favorite would be his Duino Elegies. They are beautiful. I honestly do not understand the fascination with his letters in their various forms; they are not so very remarkable.

#anhypnic #question

A poet once remarked—Crowley, I think it was, a century ago; himself a friend of Pessoa later in life—that the real benefit of metrical, rhymed verse *is* in that we more easily remember it. The rhyme serves as primary guideposts while the meter helps us keep our footing along the way and avoid mistakes. Some have gone so far as to suggest such structures evolved not out of art but for that memorable purpose itself to assist in the storytelling art of recalling great epics in their pre-written oral past, such as Homeric verse. I fear I am more translator than poet and lacking the latter's grace, I focus more on getting the poet's point across, as best I'm able, than repeating or mimicking the structural novelty. In Pessoa and some other moderns, it's not as much of an issue as they often forsook metricality and rhyme themselves, though in this particular poem Pessoa observed both in a basic form. I do not purpose to supplant Zenith or MacAdam or others who would translate Pessoa, but only, where it seems warranted, to add my little footnote to their work.I hope New England is proving a delight. :)

Good evening Sir or Madam,

I did not know that Crowley knew Pessoa. An interesting byway to walk along, thinking of the two of them in conversation over tea or a thorned bush for that matter. Did they speak Portuguese together?

As time goes by I find that the list I have in that old dinner party game of who would you like to have dinner with yourself is extending to the point I might need an Abbot's refectory table at the very least. Which would defeat the point of intimate conversation with such people.

As for translations, I take your point fully. And understand you. To be honest I would often like many different views, the better to smell inside the writer whose tongue I do him the disservice of not knowing. I feel I do know Pessoa though.

Forgive me (for the thought may not be obvious in its sense), but I imagine him somewhere in the shadows of the short story by Mister Hemingway 'Homage to Switzerland'. Perhaps listen to this reading by Mister Julian Barnes. Quite good. But irrespective of the piece (and The Guardian which hosted the series note how out of fashion Mister EH is these days), see if you can feel Fernando about the place. May alone be me. Things often seem so:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/audio/2010/dec/08/julian-barnes-ernest-hemingway-podcast

New England is well named and I like it for that. There are ghosts here.

#anhypnic